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Here Comes The New Boss (Nothing Like The Old Boss)

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  • Аннотация:
    Тейлор Хеберт предстоит обуть большие и ужасные ботинки. Но она пойдет своим путем.(Мясник Тейлор, АУ) Не могу читать через переводчик на оригинальном сайте - https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/here-comes-the-new-boss-nothing-like-the-old-boss-worm-au.853195/
  Here Comes The New Boss (Nothing Like The Old Boss)
  by HowlingGuardian
  Summary
  
  Taylor Hebert has some big, horrible boots to fill. But she's going to walk her own way.
  Butcher Taylor AU. Cross-posted from Spacebattles.
  
  Notes
  
  Thanks to the Great Spacebattles Server Crash of April '21, I've finally bit the bullet and started posting on AO3. There isn't enough Worm!fic on here anyway- which is a shame, because it makes it harder to find good fics, and harder for new people to here about it.
  Anyway, enjoy.
  
  See the end of the work for more notes
  1.1
  January 17th, Arcadia High School
  
  "Alright, you"ve got your lunch?"
  
  "Check."
  
  "Paperwork?"
  
  "Yup.
  
  "Pepper spray?"
  
  I shook the little black cylinder clipped to my keyring. "Present." I was still surprised that Dad had bought it for me- Arcadia was in a much better part of town than Winslow. Nevertheless, I appreciated the gesture.
  
  "Pepper spray," a man"s raspy voice sneered; "fuckin" useless shit. Get a knife or something-"
  
  I pushed the voice back down into the darkness, as easily as turning down the volume on the radio. By this point I could do it without showing it on my face.
  
  Dad reached across to put his hand on my shoulder. "Hey," he said gently, "it"s gonna be okay, kiddo."
  
  I just nodded, unsure of what to say. The better part of two weeks at home and away from the bitches had given me a chance to actually talk and rebuild our relationship, but things were still stilted between us- like we were actors who"d forgotten half their lines.
  
  Dad took his hand away after a second and opened his door. I grabbed my bag and followed him out into the cold January air. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, not enough to be anything other than a vague annoyance.
  
  "Christ, we used to get a couple of inches back in the day," a fluting male voice said. "Global warming in action."
  
  I left the voice alone- he wasn"t saying anything bad at the moment- and crossed the street with Dad.
  
  I knew Arcadia was a good school- not just good compared to Winslow, because that was a low bar to clear, but an actually good school. Still, even after filling out the paperwork for my transfer and reading through all the pamphlets and guides, seeing it in person was getting the message across.
  
  Four stories of red brick- no graffiti on the walls, no dirt on the windows. Even the grass we walked across was better than the scraggly weed-filled mess at Winslow.
  
  "Eyes up," a firm tone chided. "Look out for the other students- the Wards go here, remember? They"re the biggest threat to you right now."
  
  "Stop giving her fucking advice, Tac!" a woman screamed, smooth voice made rough by fury. In fairness, she did have good reason to hate me. I pushed her into the darkness as well, but I kept Tactical up.
  
  He was right about the Wards- whoever they were, they were the ones most likely to puzzle out my identity. I didn"t want to figure them out though- better for all of us if I didn"t know. I would just have to be careful with everyone.
  
  There were a few groups of people standing around outside in coats and hats, chatting before classes started, breath fogging in the air. I glanced vaguely at them as Dad and I approached the front doors, then turned my eyes forward.
  
  I flickered my sight for a second- silhouettes of people jumped into my vision, swirling red patterns that glowed through the walls. I could make out other kids standing in the halls, and adults in some of the classrooms.
  
  Mistake. I blinked hard, washing the bloodsight from my eyes. I was trying not to use my powers at school, and I"d slipped up not five minutes into the first day.
  
  Dad glanced at me as he grabbed the door handle, a faint look of concern on his face. "Taylor, are you alright?"
  
  I nodded quickly, even as he flickered red in my vision again. I forced the power down, and Vladimir along with it, even as he cackled at my slipup. "Just nerves," I said simply.
  
  Dad nodded back, then pulled the door open. A rush of warmer air breezed past us as we stepped through.
  
  The inside was nice-looking too- the posters didn"t have dicks drawn on them, the lights didn"t flicker. There were more kids inside as well, clustered into little groups, but not with gang colours.
  
  "Oh, they"re in here. Fuckers just know how to hide it better," an angry woman interjected. I pushed her down enough to ignore her. She was right, but I didn"t need to think about that right now.
  
  After a few minutes of walking, Dad knocked on a door with "Office" on the front. Once a muffled voice answered, he opened the door.
  
  There were several desks in the room, and doors at the far end leading off to more rooms. The desk nearest the door was occupied by a handsome Asian woman who glanced up from her computer as we walked in.
  
  "You must be the Heberts," she said warmly, standing up to shake our hands. "I"m Ms Fincher, I"m the school registrar. Basically, I do most of the paperwork here." She scooped up a cardboard folder and passed it to me. "Here"s your class schedule, map of the school, and some information on clubs and after-school activities."
  
  I flipped the folder open and started sorting through it as she retrieved a stack of books from a shelf behind her with a grunt and set them on the desk. "Here"s all your textbooks, brand new, delivered just yesterday, I"ll just need you to sign for them here," she held out a sheet, I read and signed, she dropped it into another folder, " Great! You"ve got homeroom with Mrs Williams and then a free period to get settled in! After that it"s right into the swing of things. Any questions?"
  
  I had several, but I wasn"t sure how to respond to such relentless peppiness. "Uhm... No- Wait, yes." I gestured to the pile of textbooks in front of me. "Where do I put these?"
  
  Ms Fincher tapped her forehead with a finger. "Knew I forgot something." She swung back down into her seat and clicked a few things. "Okay, Taylor Hebert, locker number is 434, that"s just left from here and hang a right, and your combination is here-" she scribbled something on a sticky note and passed it to me. "Okay, that should be everything, really this time."
  
  I already had a vague outline of the school in my head- a few points of light under the ceiling tiles in that corridor twitched at my thought. Reluctantly, I broke my no-powers rule for the second time today- as much as I wanted to avoid anyone seeing this power in particular, I couldn"t shake that little bit of fear of the unknown.
  
  I stuck the note on the folder, put that on top of the books, and then faked a grunt of strain in what I hoped was a convincing manner as I lifted the stack into my arms.
  
  "Laying it on a little thick there, four-eyes?" a young woman taunted. I shoved her down in a burst of anger- it must have showed on my face, because Dad stretched a hand out with a worried look.
  
  "You want me to hold those, kiddo?" I shook my head, even as I cursed myself for worrying him again. I shoved all the voices a little away from me to clear my head a little.
  
  "I think I can manage. Thanks though."
  
  Ms Fincher waved as we headed back out and down the hall; Dad cast a glance back at the door.
  
  "Geez," he muttered, "how much coffee does she drink?"
  
  "School with multiple capes attending, I"m guessing a lot," I replied, shifting the books in my hands. Dad nodded thoughtfully.
  
  "The New Wave kids go here, don"t they?" he asked as we finally stopped in front of locker 434. I put the books down to grab the combination note, taking the opportunity to sneak a fly down the wall and inside the locker. All it picked up was metal and cleaning products.
  
  I checked the note, set my hand on the dial, and ran through the combination, and then again just to double check.
  
  I"d have to open it to put my books away, instead of hauling them around all day.
  
  I couldn"t just keep standing here.
  
  I needed to open it but I really didn"t want to I really didn"t want to-
  
  Dad put his hand on my shoulder again. "I can open it if you want," he offered awkwardly.
  
  I seriously considered it. I knew full well that this locker was empty and clean, that the bitches weren"t anywhere near here, and that I could fight my way clear of anyone who wasn"t a particularly strong cape.
  
  "Fear like that doesn"t go away easily," said a stern woman in clipped tones. I still had trouble telling if she was lecturing me or sympathizing with me. "That does not mean you can let fear win."
  
  I clenched my teeth for a second, then spun the dial left-right-left-left-right, twisted the handle and stepped sharply to the side as I swung it open.
  
  Nothing but bare metal, and the fly I"d sneaked in, hiding on the underside of the shelf near the top. I quickly picked up my books, picked out the ones I needed for today, dumped the rest inside, and very deliberately did not slam the door shut.
  
  Dad shuffled his feet as I slung my bag over my shoulder. "I"ll see you after school," he said eventually. "Hope everything goes well." I mumbled something vaguely affirmative.
  
  Dad took a couple of steps down the hallway, then suddenly paused. I was about to ask if something was wrong when he turned back and gave me a slightly stiff hug. "Have a good day, Taylor," he murmured into my hair. I tentatively hugged him back, enjoying this quiet moment.
  
  Finally he let go, and headed back down the corridor without looking back. I pulled out my schedule and started walking, sorting through my thoughts. Idly, I picked out a few hundred more bugs in my range and sent them crawling inside the walls of the school, outlining the building in my mind"s eye.
  
  I made it to homeroom a few minutes before the bell, picked a seat near the back, and sat down. I tried to occupy myself by checking the school map and my schedule. By now I had bugs along the edges and corners of most of the building, giving me a decent map in my head. I was trying to use that to figure out where I needed to go, but I kept glancing up as people filed in, sitting with their friends or typing on their phones. More than a few of them gave me curious glances, but thankfully none of them tried to talk with me.
  
  Mrs Williams turned out to be a short woman with gray hair and a cardigan that looked thick enough to stop a bullet. She walked in and clapped her hands for attention just before the bell rang.
  
  "Okay, everyone!" she called briskly. "A few things for today, the yearbook committee needs volunteers-"
  
  There were a couple of other announcements of things I either didn"t know or didn"t care about before she picked up the register and a pen. Something in there made her frown for a second before she scanned the room, until her eyes landed on me.
  
  "Ah, that"s right." She raised her voice. "Everyone, we"ve got a new student starting today, I want you all to make her feel welcome. Taylor Hebert? -" She pronounced it Heb-hurt- "Stand up now, dear."
  
  I suddenly disliked Mrs Williams intensely for putting me on the spot. Nevertheless, I stood up, conscious of everyone in the room staring at me.
  
  "Tell us a little about yourself," Mrs Williams said insistently, as if there was no possibility of a teenage girl preferring not to speak in front of a whole roomful of strangers. I just wanted to sit down and blend in and have people stop looking at me.
  
  Best to get it over with quickly. I took a deep breath and blurted "My name"s Taylor, I transferred from Winslow, I like reading the classics and-" I stalled, scrabbling for something else to say while everyone waited on me.
  
  "...no, that"s it," I finished lamely, flopping back into my seat, burning with embarrassment as a few people snickered. Mrs Williams gave me an unamused look, like I"d just bullshitted my way through a presentation, and she was about to give me a low grade.
  
  "Up yours", I thought spitefully, glaring back at her; "If you hadn"t put me on the spot we could have avoided this."
  
  I pushed down the voices that were suggesting more open forms of payback, like throwing a pencil through her eye, and tuned out everyone else while Mrs Williams took attendance, half-heartedly answering when she called my name.
  
  Finally, homeroom ended, and everyone made for the door; I hung back a little, avoiding the crush at the door. Then I noticed a couple of kids heading toward me.
  
  "Hi, Taylor, right?" a blonde girl chirped- really chirped. One of the voices imagined little birds flying around her head. "Just wanted to say hi, welcome to Arcadia, all that. Well, that and-"
  
  "Why"d you transfer in?" the boy next to her cut in, leaning forward eagerly. "Was it "cause of the Teeth?"
  
  I went still, even as the blonde smacked him in the shoulder. "Christ, Jason! Have some fucking tact!" The boy rubbed his arm, not looking even a little cowed. The look of ignorant eagerness on his face stirred something dark and bitter in the pit of my stomach as my head filled with memories of screaming and gunfire.
  
  "Oh come on, I just wanna know! The Butcher"s been gone two weeks now, none of them have ever taken so long to show themselves! Hey," he turned back to me eagerly, "how close were they to Winslow? Like, did you see them or anything?"
  
  The voices started shouting all at once at that, roaring, jeering, mocking the horror I felt from remembering, urging me to hurt him. I didn"t realise I"d clenched my hands into fists until the knuckles popped. "No," I ground out, "I didn"t see them, because I"m pretty sure if they"d got that close I"d be dead."
  
  Blonde Birdie smacked him in the shoulder again, but Jason was apparently immune to hints. "How about the Swarm? I heard people could see it from like, a block away-"
  
  I jerked towards him, and he flinched so hard he almost fell over. "Listen," I hissed, jamming my hands into my pockets before I could give in to the longing to crush his skull, "I really don"t want to talk about it, so either back off right now or I will feed your own teeth."
  
  The voices laughed approvingly as Jason stepped back with a spooked expression. The others were looking similarly scared; the blonde raised her hands apologetically.
  
  "I"m so sorry about Jason, he"s just, he"s an idiot-"
  
  "Then what does it say about you, if you"re friends with him?" I snapped. She winced, but didn"t reply. I grabbed my bag and strode for the door.
  
  Mrs Williams caught me just as I grabbed the door handle. "Taylor, there"s no need to get angry like that," she scolded. "I appreciate that Jason was being insensitive, but threats aren"t necessary."
  
  I bit back the first dozen remarks that came to mind. It was always hardest to resist when the voices and I were actually in agreement about something, and we all agreed that Mrs Williams was a pain in my ass. The trouble was that their suggestions for knocking that judgmental look off her face were sounding really tempting...
  
  Instead I started running some cockroaches down in what I thought was the boiler room in circles, while I took another step toward the door. "It"s either that or actually hit him- which would you prefer?"
  
  I spun on my heel without waiting for a response and bolted into the hallway, throwing the door shut behind me. Maybe she"d blame me for acting out or think that I was a troublemaker, like the teachers back in Winslow. I didn"t care. I just wanted people to leave me alone, for their own sake.
  
  Ever since I got powers, I"d felt- skinless, it felt like. As if everything touching me, every little thing people said to me, grated against raw nerves, like salt in a wound.
  
  It certainly didn"t help that I had the voices constantly yelling and screaming, threatening and insulting, suggesting and demanding, and advocating every dark impulse I had 24/7.
  
  "You know you want to go back and hit that little shit," the oldest and foulest voice growled. "Stop pretending to be so fucking civilized and go hurt-"
  
  I shoved Butcher down as hard as I could and kept walking through the halls. The rest took the hint and subsided to low mutterings in the back of my skull.
  
  Less than an hour in, and it already felt like a long day.
  
  
  
  1.2
  Chapter Notes
  
  I'm not sure how quickly I'll be posting the chapters here, but if you're impatient, New Boss is also on Spacebattles.
  
  See the end of the chapter for more notes
  Monday January 17th, Arcadia High School
  
  The bell rang for lunch, and I started putting my things away as the classroom erupted into a mad rush for the door. I wasn"t in any hurry myself, even though I"d decided to give Arcadia"s cafeteria food a chance.
  
  I was pretty sure Butcher was lying about having used it to dispose of bodies in the past- if only because he didn"t have the subtlety to actually hide a body.
  
  I idly scanned the room as I zipped up my pencil case. I"d picked out a couple of other kids who"d transferred in today as well- lots of parents had tried to get their kids as far away from Winslow as possible after the incident, and we were only the latest batch.
  
  Just as I finally stood up and started for the door, Mr Jackson looked up from his desk. "Ms Hebert, could you stay a moment please?"
  
  I slowed to a stop, reluctantly. I felt as if I could like Mr Jackson- even if he"d dropped a Math pop quiz on us today, he seemed fair, and actually kept people from messing around in class. He hadn"t made me or any of the other new kids introduce ourselves either, and he"d pronounced my name right first try.
  
  Still, I was too on edge to feel comfortable as I stepped up to the desk. Mr Jackson put his pen to one side and picked up a sheet of paper. I saw my name at the top- the quiz sheet I"d filled out today.
  
  "Christ," Firecracker moaned. "I dropped out specifically to avoid this shit! Why didn"t you take home schooling or something?"
  
  "Would you want to be stuck at her house all day every day instead of getting out to see the world?" Vladimir answered reasonably.
  
  I tuned them out to pay full attention to Mr Jackson. Something must have shown on my face, because his first words were "This isn"t anything bad. I just wanted to ask you something."
  
  "Okay," I said cautiously. "Is it about my work?" I"d been told when the transfer went through that my grades were a bit below the accepted level for Arcadia, and that I"d have to do some extra assignments.
  
  Mr Jackson tapped the sheet. "Well, I haven"t properly marked your quiz sheet yet, but it looks like you"ve earned at least a B grade."
  
  I"d had a little help from the Butcher"s hazy memories of their own school years, but it still felt like an accomplishment. I didn"t relax just yet though- there had to be something more to this. "That"s... good?" I couldn"t stop it from coming out as a question.
  
  "It is good. Better than I expected, certainly." He fiddled with his spectacles for a second. "From what I saw of your grades from Winslow, you often missed in-class assignments, and the rest were mostly Cs. And now you"ve managed a B grade on your first day here."
  
  "Really? One good score and he thinks you"re copying? Are all the teachers this suspicious?" Needler said incredulously. I felt her indignant shock, swiftly followed by my own.
  
  "I wasn"t cheating!" I burst out, slamming my hands on the desk. Mr Jackson leaned back in his chair with wide eyes.
  
  "I wasn"t saying you were," he said in a surprised tone. "I didn"t see you so much as glance at anyone else during class. I fully believe this is your own work." He directed a pointed glance at my hands, and I quickly pulled them off the desk, jamming them into my hoodie pockets again. Mr Jackson gave me a heavy look before speaking again.
  
  "I understand you transferred in due to ongoing problems at Winslow. I"m guessing these problems were affecting your grades in some way."
  
  It took me a moment before I remembered to nod, feeling off balance. I shoved all the Butchers down before they could interfere or distract me.
  
  Mr Jackson opened a drawer and pulled out another sheet with some handwritten notes on it, peering at it through his spectacles. "Decent grades until halfway through freshman year, and then they started declining, or not being turned in at all." He looked up at me again. "Can you tell me what exactly caused this?"
  
  I almost wanted to look around to see if someone was going to jump out at me as part of a prank, but I held on to the tiny flicker of hope as I explained. "Well, there"s- there were these three girls, in my year, and a couple of others, but they were the main ones. And, yeah, they were messing with me. A lot. Part of that... They took my work sometimes, or they"d drop stuff in my bag, or just steal my books."
  
  "Didn"t your teachers do anything about them?" Mr Jackson looked faintly aghast. I shrugged wearily, far too used to it.
  
  "I tried complaining a few times, but they never really did anything, and they always believed the other girls."
  
  Mr Jackson huffed through his nose. "That," he said crisply, "is a disgusting state of affairs." It seemed like he wanted to say more, but after a second he just sighed and pushed his chair out.
  
  "Well, I don"t know if I can do much about those girls, since they"re in another school, but I could try and bring it up with the school board. More importantly," he heaved himself to his feet, "since your grades were effectively tampered with, I can arrange some make-up assignments to get your grades back up, at least in my class. I might be able to swing it so you can re-take a few as well."
  
  I stood there for a couple of seconds before I realised I should say something. "Uh, yes, thank you, that"d be- that"d be great, thanks." I floundered for something else to say. "Um, is there... anything else, or...?"
  
  "I think that"s all for now."
  
  I nodded jerkily and pointed a finger at the door. "Okay. I"m just gonna- get lunch. Bye."
  
  I walked out the door calmly and easily, although the Butchers compared me to various skittish animals, "or a cockroach when the light"s turned out."
  
  I pushed Firecracker as far back as I could for that remark and followed the flow of the crowd to the cafeteria, lost in though.
  
  I"d expected things to be different at Arcadia, and I"d hoped that things would be better. But it was the kind of hope that makes you buy a lottery ticket for the one-in-a-million chance of getting rich, not the hope with any kind of evidence behind it. I really didn"t know how to deal with a teacher that combined action with being on my side.
  
  "Seems like a decent guy," Bearskin agreed. "Could have done with someone like that in senior year."
  
  "One of the good ones, huh?" Quarrel said caustically. Bearskin winced, as much as possible without a face.
  
  "How many times do I have to apologise before you stop bringing that up?"
  
  "A few thousand more, I"d say," Muramasa chimed in, voice thick with schadenfreude. I tuned out the by now familiar argument as I made it to the cafeteria.
  
  A couple of gnats outside were crawling along the tables outside, but nobody was going out there in this cold, even with how crowded the cafeteria was. I joined the queue with a tray, looking around as everyone shuffled along a step at a time.
  
  True to what Anchorage had said, there were some subtle signs of the gangs when I looked closely. There was a table of bulky white guys off in one corner with short haircuts that couldn"t quite be called buzzcuts, Empire sympathisers if not actual members.
  
  "Probably more than that around here," Anchorage noted, uncharacteristically serious. "Maybe twice that many diet racists."
  
  "Diet racists?" I had to ask what that meant. Luckily, Anchorage kept it short.
  
  "The kind of people who argue there should be a White History Month, or say shit like "if you"ve done nothing, you don"t have to worry about being stopped". The kind of people who"ll stay friends with neo-nazis instead of doing the smart thing and killing them on sight."
  
  I had no idea how to respond to that, so I quickly looked around for something else to occupy myself.
  
  The other side of the room boasted a table filled only with Asian kids, and while none of them were wearing bandanas or anything obvious, there was a hardened look to them all.
  
  Muramasa sized them up. "I doubt they will be a problem," he intoned- really intoned, like a sage making a prophecy. "They lack the confidence of dangerous men, so they posture and pose to make up for it."
  
  "Like peacocks," Dirty Rotter mocked. That started another argument. I left them to it- as long as it wasn"t directed specifically at me, I could tune them out pretty easily.
  
  Right in the middle of the room was a different kind of danger. Things were more mixed in there, but the tables there were filled with well-dressed kids- letterman jackets and expensive shoes, designer coats and skirts way too short for a day with snow still on the ground.
  
  "Sure you don"t wanna go over there and make some friends?" Firecracker teased. "Some of those guys look like they might be good for some fun!"
  
  I fought the flush in my cheeks, and lost miserably. Dirty Rotter broke away from bickering with Muramasa to chime in with his slimiest tone, that one that made me want to scrub the inside of my skull. "Or try the other half. What"s that quote? "High school girls- I keep getting older, they stay the same age.""
  
  That drew groans of disgust from the others. "You"re sick," Nemean growled- she always growled, her throat had never been able to do anything else, but this was full of disgust.
  
  "Christ, none"a you buggers can take a joke," Rotter moaned, but he quieted down without me even having to intervene. I took a second glance as the line moved forward; this time I recognized one of them.
  
  The single biggest threat to me at Arcadia was in the middle of one table, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder. Victoria Dallon, aka Glory Girl. The most active member of New Wave, and the city"s resident Alexandria package. I"d looked her up along with all the other local capes as soon as I"d been able to use a computer again, and from what I got off the internet, she was pretty, popular, and dedicated to her family"s values of accountability for capes.
  
  Quarrel"s memories contained darker rumours in the short time between returning to the Bay and falling to me. Word among the street level crooks painted Glory Girl as entirely willing to interrogate someone from a thousand feet up, or use her emotional aura to have them shaking in fear.
  
  Nemean radiated approval of her as I sneaked glances at the blonde. "She"s tough. You should try to bond with her."
  
  "Make friends with the unmasked hero? Not happening. I need to keep my identity as far away from capes as possible, thank you very much." I"d explained it before, but Nemean was insistent on me building bridges with someone, for reasons I wasn"t entirely sure of.
  
  "Why couldn"t we have ended up with her?" Stoneknapper complained. "All it would have taken was one punch to the head! More strength, a forcefield, and some goddamn flight at last! But no, we got stuck with insects!"
  
  Quarrel immediately started raging at him, so I pushed them both back into the dark as the argument built up steam, but privately I wished I"d got something like her powers myself. Flight was the power every little kid dreamed of having at some point in their life.
  
  The line moved forward again, putting me next to the food. I looked it over for a second while the Butchers started making demands- Lasagne!/garlic bread/salad/salad, are you serious?- before grabbing a couple of slices of cheese pizza, an apple, and a bowl of pudding. I paid for it quickly and started looking for a free space.
  
  There was a table off to one side that was half-empty, so I headed for that. The other kids glanced up as I sat down, but didn"t say anything, one of them too busy working on homework spread out on the table.
  
  I kept looking around as I started wolfing down my food. I"d recognized a few kids from Winslow, but nobody that had actively picked on me. There didn"t seem to be any overt gang tensions, or any cliques throwing their weight around.
  
  Hell, even leaving Mr Jackson aside, the teachers I"d had today seemed pretty on the ball. Nobody had called me names or shot spitwads at me, messed with my stuff or ruined my clothes.
  
  It was depressing to realise that I had no idea what to do with myself besides just try to make it through the day.
  
  Maybe I could try making some friends. I could join a club; there probably wasn"t anything like a book club, but I"d picked up some other things from the Butchers besides fighting techniques and anger issues.
  
  "Try learning another instrument," Tactical advised. "We"ve already got guitar and drums- you learn keyboard and you could be a band all by yourself."
  
  "She"d have to buy the instrument first though," Firecracker pointed out. "Do art or something."
  
  "That"s called art lessons, idiot," Needler sneered. "I would suggest whatever the local LGBT association is called."
  
  "Hell yeah!" Anchorage enthused. "Get white girl a cutie!"
  
  "You do realise I"m straight, right?" I interjected wearily as I started on my pudding. Anchorage just cackled horribly.
  
  "Oh, give it time, you"ll be swinging every which way soon!"
  
  I gave her a shove down and refocused. There were some clubs I should avoid- I"d have to stay away from sports completely- but there had to be a few here that"d suit me.
  
  Vladimir nudged at me urgently. "Hey, girl, listen to the guys behind you- don"t turn! They"re talking about us!"
  
  Indeed, as I paused and focused, there was a very spirited conversation going on at the table behind me.
  
  "I"m telling you man, it"s got to be some kind of trick. Nobody"s ever killed Butcher for good, this is just to make the heroes drop their guard."
  
  "Why would Butcher need people to drop their guard? They"re, y"know, the Butcher," the other guy countered. "If they were still alive, they"d be setting bugs on people everywhere."
  
  "That"s what we should be doing," Bearskin complained. "Go out and pour cockroaches down people"s pants, spread the fear! You"re too damn cautious."
  
  I rolled my eyes and pushed him back. I wanted to hear what these guys had to say- they sounded unusually well-informed for civilians.
  
  "Okay, but maybe it"s not a Master power like people think- it could be Butcher XV is a Changer- turns into a swarm of bugs, but that means they"re less active in winter because all the bugs are hibernating!" The first guy seemed very pleased with that logic.
  
  "If they"re hibernating in winter, why"d they manage to kill Butcher in the first place, dumbass?"
  
  "Maybe," a third voice, a girl this time, cut in, "The new Butcher"s actually a Tinker, and the Swarm was a new weapon they were trying out. They could be lying in wait right now, building huge weapons to go on a rampage."
  
  First Guy hummed. "That... might work," he said reluctantly, like he didn"t want to admit to them having a point. "I mean, I don"t think there"s ever been a Tinker Butcher, right?"
  
  "Excuse me?" Tock Tick screeched. "What am I, chopped liver?"
  
  The entire conversation was getting to me- it had to be a coincidence that they were sat behind me, but paranoia was beating a tattoo inside my head. I scooped the last spoonful of pudding into my mouth and got up to get rid of my tray. Being a functional member of society would have to wait another day.
  
  Dad was waiting with his truck in the same place he"d dropped me off. I shrugged my bag off my shoulder and slid into the passenger seat in one movement, rubbing my hands together like they were cold. I didn"t really get uncomfortable about temperature anymore, but I needed to keep up the act.
  
  Dad was looking nervously hopeful as I pulled my seatbelt on. "So, how"d it go?"
  
  I"d been figuring out what to say ever since the final bell rang, so instead of my usual evasive remark along the lines of "same old, same old" or "not too bad" where I was lying through my teeth, I made eye contact as Dad started the engine and gave a small smile that wasn"t even forced.
  
  "Pretty good. The teachers are nice, and the other kids seem okay. I"m not the only new kid in school either, so I don"t really stand out much."
  
  Relief flashed across Dad"s face as he pulled out. "That"s good to hear. Uh, did you talk to anyone much?"
  
  I shrugged. "A little. Mostly introducing myself a bunch. They"re nice though."
  
  There was quiet for a moment while we both thought of something to say. I felt like I had the harder task, since I had to tune out the Butchers so I didn"t say anything they were spouting by accident. Once was enough. After a moment"s though, I remembered my thoughts at lunch.
  
  "I was thinking I might look at the clubs they"ve got, think about joining one," I ventured. Dad glanced at me as he made a turn.
  
  "That sounds like a good idea. Any idea which one?"
  
  "Maybe if there"s a literature club or something, that"d be my first pick. Otherwise, some kind of arts and crafts?" Stoneknaper relayed the image of me using his power to do some sculpture work or something. I fought down a smile at the thought of walking into class with a massive battleaxe over my shoulder.
  
  Dad nodded, tapping the wheel with a finger as we paused at a light. "I think that"s a good idea. You"ll have people to talk to, and you might get a new hobby out of it."
  
  "I could maybe see if there"s a sewing club or something." I at least had a head start on that; absorbing bits of memories from Needler, of her mother teaching her to darn clothes, had been very disorienting at first, but it was practical, especially now.
  
  "I think there"s an old sewing machine up in the attic, we could maybe dig that out. Anyway," Dad changed the subject in time with the traffic light, "I was thinking something easy for dinner tonight. Takeout sound good?"
  
  The clamour started immediately- nothing got the Butcher"s attention like food- since I"d denied them all their other vices. I barely kept my face clear as I wrangled them into some sort of order and worked out what the majority were clamouring for.
  
  "Can we get Chinese?" I said at length. "I"m suddenly craving the stuff."
  
  Dad"s mouth twitched a little. "Me too. I"ll dig out the menus when we get home."
  
  "Is Canton Star still open?" Needler wondered. "They did great sweet and sour chicken."
  
  "After 16 years? I doubt it." Tactical mentally shrugged. "At least Fugly Bob"s is still around. We never did get to try the Challenger."
  
  "Sounds good," Nemean rumbled. "We"ll do that some time."
  
  I pulled myself away from the discussion as several hundred particular bugs entered my range- the ones I"d kept stashed in the house. I rounded up all the flies and midges in my radius, including the ones I"d stashed in the truck bed, sending them walking into the jaws of the more important spiders, even as Dad pulled into the driveway and killed the engine.
  
  I made to open my door, but Dad"s expression made me hesitate. "Taylor..." he drummed his fingers on the wheel, not looking at me. "Do... Do you want me to keep driving you to school? I mean, it"s not a big deal, you can take the bus if you want-"
  
  I unclipped my seatbelt and leaned over to hug him. After a few seconds of him sitting there while the handbrake dug into my ribs, Dad slipped his arm around me and squeezed back.
  
  "I"ll take the bus," I said, "but thanks for offering. And thanks for taking me today." After a minute I let go and straightened up, reaching a hand under my glasses to wipe at my eyes.
  
  "So, Chinese?"
  
  Szechuan beef and prawn fried rice had worked their magic on Dad to make him turn in early. A moth perched on the wall above his bed was keeping track of his breathing, slow and steady, and a quick glance through the wall with bloodsight showed him as still and peaceful as he had been since I"d checked on him 30 minutes ago.
  
  I"d waited long enough, so I slipped a bookmark into my copy of The Great Gatsby and slid out of bed on thick-socked feet.
  
  In the days after getting out of the hospital, I"d tweaked the hinges on certain doors to remove the creaking, so there was barely a whisper as I crept out of my room and downstairs, or as I opened the basement door and padded down the steps.
  
  A steady drip of insects continued to crawl down the coal chute from outside and join the massive piles against one section of wall indistinguishable from the rest. I"d thought for a long time how I was going to hide my work from Dad, until Stoneknapper had shown me that the best kind of lock is one that only exists for you. I rested my hands against the cement and let the fizz of Stoneknapper"s power surge out into the wall.
  
  The concrete slowly rippled and split open in a wide rectangular seam, outlining the door I"d cut into the wall and then sealed over. I moulded a handle out of the surface and pulled the door open, opening up the alcove cut into the soil behind the foundation.
  
  The loom I"d built with Tock Tick"s clockwork Tinker power was working away on its shelf, no louder than a Swiss watch, even while its arms zipped back and forth weaving threads into a pair of leggings that was- I held up the trailing piece of cloth- about halfway done. I gave the handle a few twists to keep it going until tomorrow night and kept looking.
  
  The shelf below that was dedicated to making the thread itself. A horde of black widow spiders were lined up on the wooden plank, pulling silk thread from their spinnerets, while lesser spiders led the silk through a simpler device that stretched out the threads and wound them onto reels. I"d made another dozen since I"d made it home, by rotating the widows through shifts to either spin thread or feed off the other insects. I marched the new insects I"d gathered into the space and added them to the rotation, directing the excess into jars and containers that would dispense them to the black widows while I was home.
  
  "Can I just say, for the record, this is still really gross," Dirty Rotter complained. I rolled my eyes even as I loaded the new reels into the loom.
  
  I"d been looking for any way to use my power constructively- a sort of personal pride- when Tock Tick had speculated on the tensile strength of spider silk. A little research at the library had confirmed black widow silk as almost as strong as steel, but much lighter, and I"d built the weaving equipment out of scraps around the house. I didn"t have enough widows to make the silk more than one layer thick if I wanted to get to the action any time soon, but it was only really meant to be an undersuit. My real costume was going to be a full suit of plate armour, the single biggest use of Tock Tick"s Tinkering in over a decade.
  
  Wearing armour with my new durability was kind of superfluous, but after my little stunt at Winslow, people would be suspicious of anyone with powers that matched those of the Butcher, insect control in particular, but a high-level Brute popping up would raise suspicion as well.
  
  Luckily, Tock Tick"s time as the Butcher had been short enough most people weren"t even aware of it, so if I presented myself as a Tinker, nobody would make the connection. It still hurt the man"s pride, but it was my best bet at avoiding a witch hunt.
  
  So, layered silk as an undersuit, and thick steel plate on top. It"d keep me safe, misdirect people about my power, and look pretty cool too. The fact that it was almost completely opposite from the Teeth"s usual aesthetic of spikes and bones on leather was an extra bonus.
  
  "But it"s so boooorrrinnng," Firecracker whined. "You"ll just look like a little wind-up soldier- you need to jazz it up! Add some blades, or some creepy symbols!"
  
  I pushed her down as I finished checking the cloth and moved downward. The armour pieces that I"d finished were on the bottom shelves, along with the materials that I"d scavenged over the last two weeks. I knew enough from Tock Tick"s experience not to make the rookie mistake of ordering everything online, or to scrounge too much from scrapyards, since gangs watched them specifically to snatch up Tinkers.
  
  Stoneknapper"s power had proved its worth there- I"d simply located a condemned warehouse, ripped out one of the girders, and brought the pieces home a bit at a time to mould into the pieces I needed. Since I no longer required sleep, thanks to Nemean, I"d managed to work through the nights and get the breastplate and legs done. It wouldn"t be very good quality compared to other Tinkertech, but that would further my image as a new, unexperienced cape.
  
  "Please tell me we"re going to upgrade it soon though," Tock Tick pleaded. "This stuff could be so much better if we use the right materials."
  
  "I promise, Tock," I replied wearily. I liked the guy, but after I"d started using his power heavily, he"d begun getting really pushy about trying to incorporate the ideas he"d had over the years as a disembodied mind.
  
  I grabbed a chunk of metal, some tools, and a music player I"d found, and carried them over to Dad"s old workbench. As an afterthought I set the ants I"d collected to start tunneling further into the soil, digging out chambers I could store more black widows in. Larger insects were tasked to carry the soil out for them, and to reinforce the tunnels with various secretions; there were even some worms breaking up the soil for the ants.
  
  The rustle of the swarm and the soil added to the ticking of the loom as I slipped on the headphones and hit play. After several solid days of arguing, bargaining and outright pleading from the collective, I"d given the Butchers a choice of music as something to keep them occupied, since I wasn"t planning on drinking or starting fights, let alone their more disgusting habits. Tonight was Vladimir"s turn, which meant a weird mix of jazz and disco.
  
  I hit play and laid a hand on the metal, letting the shapes I needed bloom out of its surface. I plucked the first segment off with tweezers, a wide piece to go on the back of the hand, and fixed it on to a stand as the next segment started to form, picking up a couple of pins to link them together.
  
  A sense of peace settled over me as I worked away, adding tiny pins and rivets to each new joint, while the bugs wove and dug and carried and ate. The music flowed into my ears, with the ticking of the loom a muted metronome at the edge of my hearing. Tock Tick watched through my eyes as the index finger started to take shape, offering tips on how to layer the plates to balance flexibility with durability.
  
  I loved these moments. I didn"t have to deal with kids at school that I suddenly felt so much older than, or worry about how to rebuild my relationship with Dad. Even the Butchers were more subdued after I"d made it clear I would shove away anyone who interrupted, talking among themselves or just listening to the music.
  
  Ever since I"d woken up in the hospital with voices raging in my head, and heard from a gossipy nurse how Butcher had died, these moments were the closest I"d come to being alone.
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Kudos, comment, subscribe, etc. And if you really want to be an angel, Here Comes The New Boss has a TVTropes page in desperate need of some love!
  
  1.3
  Chapter Notes
  
  The Motivation Fairy is a fickle creature. Suddenly I felt the need to post another chapter.
  To be honest, I should probably hurry up and just post the whole thing. Stay tuned for more updates!
  
  January 21st, Arcadia High School
  
  The computers in the school library were leagues ahead of the outdated clunkers and Winslow, and certainly better than the computer at home. I had several tabs open to work on my current project, zipping back and forth between them while I scribbled ideas into a notepad.
  
  The costume was nearly finished by now- I just needed to finish the left leg of the leggings and the left gauntlet tonight, and I"d be ready to go out on the street and kick ass.
  
  But before all of that, I needed a name. If I didn"t pick something myself, I"d be stuck with whatever the PRT or PHO gave me, and I remembered awful things about that. Vladimir had literally had to spell his name in blood on a billboard before they stopped calling him Sanguine.
  
  The Butchers weren"t making this any easier on me- their suggestions mostly consisted of profanity. Tock Tick was the only one trying to be helpful, and that was because I would be effectively claiming his powerset.
  
  "Gearhead?" I hummed a negative. Tock Tick tutted, then tried another name after a moment of thought. "How about Flywheel?"
  
  "Christ you suck at this," Firecracker grumbled.
  
  "Name yourself for a quality, perhaps," Muramasa said reasonably. "This city has Gallant and Dauntless after all."
  
  "How about you name yourself after a-" Quarrel"s sentence dissolved into a storm of profanity; I just rolled my eyes and pushed her down again, then clicked over to a different tab.
  
  Synonyms for Brave: Courageous, Plucky ("What are you, five?" Bearskin demanded), Fearless, Valiant was already taken by a hero in Florida, Intrepid-
  
  I paused to write the last one down- that actually sounded pretty good, even if the Butchers disagreed. Still, I needed more options.
  
  I clicked on the next tab, open to synonyms for hope. Aspiration, want, belief- nothing good there. A link lower down did catch my eye- a site for myths about hope. I clicked on it out of curiosity.
  
  The page loaded with a slight flicker on the screen, to a website in black with blue text. The page I was on had a picture of an old clay jar at the top.
  
  "Pandora"s box?" Needler queried. "What on earth does that have to do with hope?" I remembered something about hope in the myth, but I didn"t know the specifics, so I started reading. Pandora the first woman, created by the gods as a bride for Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. The gods had set her up by creating her to be curious and then giving her a jar full of horrors and evils, which was later mistranslated as a box.
  
  "Damn. I always thought she was just a moron," Firecracker commented cheerfully. "I mean, someone tells you, "don"t open this box, it"s full of evil", ya gotta be pretty dumb to open it."
  
  "As if you wouldn"t do it just for fun," Bearskin snorted. Firecracker shrugged, or at least gave off the feeling of a shrug.
  
  "Fair enough."
  
  There was more to the myth- the one thing left in the jar after disease, famine, cruelty, sadness and everything else had escaped was the spirit of hope, who refused to abandon humanity.
  
  "Gee, stuck in a jar with a bunch of assholes, wonder what that"s like," Tock Tick groused. The rest started yelling at him, and I started shoving down the ones that got too loud, but the majority of my attention was on the myth.
  
  Tock Tick did have a point- there were some parallels to my situation. I"d been thrown into the Butcher"s shoes without any real choice in the matter, acting as a container for some of the worst of the worst. I clicked on the link for the spirit of hope, which took me to a page with only a few lines of text and a picture of some old coins.
  
  The spirit was named Elpis, usually depicted as a young woman carrying flowers, as the coins showed. I rolled it around on my tongue even as I opened another tab and started a search. How would people say that? "The new hero Elpis"? "Elpis is a Tinker"? "Oh, Elpis couldn"t possibly be the Butcher"?
  
  Butcher himself pulled away from the argument as he noticed what I was doing. "No! You are not embarrassing us by picking that shit! If you"re too dumb to go back to the Teeth and accept what you are now, then you"re not ruining us by calling yourself Hope-!"
  
  I shoved him down reflexively. Honestly I was weirdly impressed that he"d managed to say that much before I"d pushed him back into the dark. The rest went quiet at that- Butcher spent most of his time in the dark by now, and they"d gradually learned not to mouth off too much.
  
  "Just throwing it out there," Stoneknapper began cautiously, "but naming yourself after hope seems kinda... cheesy?" I nodded vaguely as I scrolled through image results for "hope"- mostly artsy pictures of landscapes with "hope" written over it, or flowers growing out of cracks in concrete. I added "symbol" to the search and tried again.
  
  Stoneknapper had a point, as he usually did. Naming myself Elpis would be a little tacky- it took serious power to be able to name yourself after a myth and not look stupid. The heavy hitters like Legend or Myrddin could manage it, or even Panacea, but being a street-level hero with that name sounded a little silly.
  
  Except- I hesitated as the idea formed in my head- that was what I wanted. I wanted to distance myself from the Butchers and their legacy. Having a name so trite and sappy would go a long way toward that. I"d insult their memory every time someone said my name.
  
  "You"re a spiteful little bitch, you know that?" Anchorage commented cheerfully. She felt more amused than anything else. I didn"t bother to deny it, too focused on a new page of quotes I"d opened up.
  
  Then there was a stirring in the dark of my mind. I stopped everything else and focused on the presence I"d heard only a few times.
  
  Flinch had had the worst of it in his time as the Butcher- nobody had really believed Vladimir"s claims of gaining Butcher"s powers and mind at the time, but once the two of them had been transferred to Flinch, and broken down his mind and will to live over the course of two weeks, the Butcher"s legend had begun. As for Flinch himself, he"d spent the last 20 years as an unwilling witness to every atrocity the others had committed, until he"d curled in on himself and shut out everything.
  
  I pushed everyone else to the side before they could say anything, and let Flinch take his time, like a wounded animal. Eventually he managed to muster up the words "H-hope. It s-sounds nice."
  
  "I"m glad you think so," I said gently. That one sentence seemed to exhaust him- he slipped back into the dark again and clammed up. After a moment, I let the others rise up again.
  
  Bearskin broke the silence. "We"re not talking you out of this, are we?"
  
  "Not a chance," I said. A fly I"d hidden on the minute hand of the library"s clock felt it tick forward, so I got up, closing the tabs and shoving the notes into my bag. I felt strangely light as I made my way to the last class of the day.
  
  I had horrible memories of Gym class ever since I"d started high school; If there was a game, I"d be picked last, and targeted with the ball by the opposing team while the team I was on tripped and pushed me at every opportunity. If we were just doing drills or planned exercise, I"d just have to deal with insults thrown at me every few seconds.
  
  My good mood had steadily evaporated as I"d got changed and filed into the gym. Then the teacher announced that we were doing dodgeball, and my stomach dropped like a bowling ball.
  
  Even if I was bulletproof now, even if I didn"t feel pain, that didn"t stop the dread I associated with Sophia aiming for my face for a solid hour. I"d mostly just covered myself and taken a hit as soon as possible so I could sit out, and even then they"d "accidentally" manage to hit me on the bleachers sometimes.
  
  "Don"t forget that you"re stronger now," Tactical reminded me. "You"ll have to hold back extensively."
  
  "Yeah, or someone"s gonna be all over the wall!" Dirty Rotter cackled. I shoved him down as hard as I could, wishing for the hundredth time that I could bring something more unpleasant to bear on him.
  
  Two girls were picked, seemingly at random as opposed to "most popular", and they started going back and forth picking teams while the teacher lined up the balls on the centre line. I stood at the back of the group, trying to blend in while I fretted.
  
  "Yo, tall girl!"
  
  I"d managed to hold back my strength the last few weeks without any major incident, other than crushing a fork accidentally, and I"d used Stoneknapper"s power to fix it immediately.
  
  "You in the back, with the glasses!"
  
  But besides Tactical"s memories of first aid, I didn"t have anything that could fix a person if I broke them- everything I had was geared for brutality and bloodletting in some capacity.
  
  "Hey, you deaf or something?"
  
  No, no, I"d be fine. I just needed to get out as soon as possible, not let myself even touch the ball. And I"d have to fake a reaction when it hit me. God, would I even feel it? Nemean"s invulnerability was weakened from her, but it was still enough to take a shotgun to the gut without flinching-
  
  Someone pushed at my shoulder gently, startling me out of my thoughts. Literally everyone was staring at me, and I felt myself starting to hunch up under the attention. One of the captains beckoned impatiently.
  
  "C"mon, you"re on my team, let"s go already!" I blinked in surprise and hastily jogged over. The captain rolled her eyes as the pickings continued.
  
  The girl to my left looked at me confusedly. "Uh, you alright? You were really out of it."
  
  I shrugged and hunched my shoulders a little. "Yeah, just... lost in thought. I, uh, didn"t really do too well in Gym before."
  
  "How come? I mean, you look fit." I glanced down at my arms- I"d always been naturally skinny no matter what I did, which meant that the results of the various Brute packages and Needler"s regeneration stood out like rocks on a string. I wasn"t exactly disappointed at gaining muscles with minimal effort, but the change was too sudden for me to be used to it yet.
  
  "Dallon, let"s rock!"
  
  I glanced up at the name- a mop of brown frizz with a freckled scowl underneath walked over to the other team. A shock ran down my spine, while the Butchers started chattering away. There was a world of difference between seeing Glory Girl across a crowded room and seeing Panacea not ten feet away from me.
  
  "That"s Brandish"s daughter? Damn, she really doesn"t get it from her mama," Firecracker mocked.
  
  Vladimir radiated agreement. "She"s definitely familiar though. Maybe it"s that Dallon brand of bitchiness."
  
  "She looks tired," Nemean grunted. I had to agree with her the most- secondhand memories of tangling with New Wave weren"t particularly clear, but I could see the slump in her posture and the bags under her eyes for myself.
  
  The last girl went to our team, and I shook myself out of my thoughts. I could speculate about other people later. Right now I just had to get through this without hurting anyone.
  
  Dad had a bemused expression as I dug into the pasta. "Built up an appetite today, huh?" he asked awkwardly.
  
  I nodded while I finished my mouthful. "Mm. I had gym today. Dodgeball. It was fun."
  
  It actually had been- despite my worries about not being able to control my strength, I"d managed to be involved. I"d even enjoyed myself towards the end. That, plus finally taking the plunge and making small talk at lunch had left me in a good mood by the time I"d got home.
  
  I"d still had to let myself get hit early on in the games though, just to avoid standing out as overly athletic so I"d let myself get hit in the leg and faked a whine of pain as I"d left the court. Not too loud though- I wasn"t sure if Panacea would volunteer to help someone who got hurt in Gym, but I figured I"d be better off if I never got close to her.
  
  Dad looked pleased as I recounted how I"d been drawn into gossip at lunch about the shops down at the Boardwalk- apparently there was talk of a cape opening a business down there. "That cape with the dolls," I waved my fork vaguely, "Parian? I think she donated some dresses to a charity auction and got a lot of business from the publicity. So now she"s opening a shop."
  
  Dad whistled. "That"s impressive. Clothes made by a cape. Does that make her a, uh, a Tinker? They"re the ones that make things, right?"
  
  "Really flattering description there," Tock Tick grumbled.
  
  "Oh hush," I chided him. Out loud I answered, "I don"t think so. Tinkers make super-advanced tech, like Armsmaster or Dragon. I think Parian can control fabric, so she can just wave her hands and make the clothes like-" I snapped my fingers, "-that."
  
  "Right, right. I just thought of clothes that"d make you fly or something." Dad took another forkful of pasta with a shrug.
  
  "That would be kind of cool." I admitted. "Parian"s stuff is supposed to be really expensive anyway, because it"s- well, not handmade, I guess you"d call it power-made? But Frankie said she can weave something together super-fast with all kinds of really tiny details, like patterns a few threads across."
  
  "Which one"s Frankie again?" Dad asked as he finished his mouthful.
  
  "The artsy girl. I was sat next to her at lunch."
  
  "Right." Dad paused and smiled a little. "I"m glad you"re making friends."
  
  I fiddled with my fork. "I mean, I"ve only had one conversation with her. Not that I don"t think she"s friendly, just- right now she"s more of an acquaintance."
  
  Dad looked slightly crestfallen, but didn"t push the point. I hastily changed the subject. "So how was work? Any good news?"
  
  Dad perked up as he started explaining how there were some new contracts coming through for warehouse work, and how he"d been able to negotiate a higher number of placements, while I nodded along.
  
  After dinner, and a few sitcom episodes with Dad, I headed upstairs to finish my homework, slipping on the headphones to play Anchorage"s playlist of rap and metal. At the same time, I checked the map of the city I"d tacked to the wall above my desk, where I"d marked out in a coded pattern where I"d be going tonight, as soon as I"d finished the last pieces of the costume.
  
  Rationally, I knew that I should double-check the armour first, put together some simple weapons, and wait a little longer for the fear of Butcher"s return to die down before I made my debut in costume, but by this point I was as wound up as one of Tock Tick"s springs, as much from my own wish to get out and actually do something as the second-hand tension bleeding through from the Butchers.
  
  The gangs were starting to lose their fear too- my time away was now a week longer than any previous Butcher had managed to resist, and plenty were by now certain that Butcher 15 was either dead or no longer in the city. What I"d read on PHO and overheard on my scavenging missions, filtered through Bearskin"s recollections and Tactical"s Thinker power, suggested that the Empire was gearing up to push the headless Teeth out of the city.
  
  As much as I wanted to jump into the middle of that, taking out members of the Teeth and the Empire both, I didn"t want to start off against the gang who were most familiar with the Butcher, or the gang with the most capes.
  
  Instead, my target for tonight would be the Archer"s Bridge Merchants. Despite the name, they hadn"t held territory around Archer"s Bridge for years, having been pushed out by the ABB; even the bridge itself was smashed to rubble now. Instead they mostly stuck to the Trainyards and the Boat Graveyard up in the north of the city- places filled with scrap and abandoned buildings.Despite Tactical"s grumblings about how broadcasting your location in your very name was a bad idea, the Merchants had survived like cockroaches, beneath the notice of everyone else. Their main, almost sole, source of income was drugs, and they weren"t smart enough to avoid sampling their own product. Plus, the only territory they could really hold was the abandoned industrial spaces in the Docks.
  
  "This"ll work out well for us then," Tactical mused., more cheerfully. The others turned their attention on him, Nemean speaking first.
  
  "How"s this help us?"
  
  "Less civilians around, no occupied buildings; that means we won"t have to worry about collateral damage?"
  
  "Are you out your gourd?" Dirty Rotter said incredulously. "Since when have we ever given two wet shits about collateral damage?"
  
  Tactical rolled his eyes, or at least the mental equivalent of that. "Never, but Taylor does. She"ll be able to cut loose this way. And before you try to act like you don"t care how she does things, I know you"re all as bored as I am with the lack of action."
  
  There was a pause, the kind you get when everybody"s thinking the same thing but nobody wants to admit it. Firecracker broke it first with her customary lack of patience.
  
  "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck," She groaned. "Fine, it"s true, we"re al bored as shit. Hey four-eyes," she directed at me, "Promise me you"ll break some bones tonight, if you"re not gonna use the coolest power you"ve got."
  
  "Yeah, how about no?" I fired back, splitting my attention between the conversation, the math sheet I was filling out, and the spiders I had running around in my little alcove. I took a moment to scribble a note on a scrap of paper- cut tunnel frm chute to loom, no need send thru bsmnt- before I filled in the next problem.
  
  Firecracker booed. "You"re no fun."
  
  "C"mon, they"re a bunch of druggie losers," Bearskin wheedled. I didn"t even know he knew how to do that. "They"re probably getting kids hooked on crack- you"re doing the world a favour by smashing them into the dirt."
  
  I shoved him back a bit as a warning. "If any of you try to talk me into hurting people unnecessarily again, you can join Butcher," I indicated the space where Butcher was thrashing and ranting impotently, too muffled to make out his words, "And I won"t let you up until the morning."
  
  That shut them all up quickly, and I managed to finish the sheet in relative peace.
  
  Four hours later, Dad had turned in for the night. I gave it a little longer to make sure he wasn"t going to get up before I crept down to the basement again.
  
  The loom had finished the last of the undersuit- a mask, long-sleeved top, leggings and gloves- and half an hour of Tinkering finished off the left gauntlet, plus some tweaks to the neck plates that I"d had an idea for during lunch.
  
  I quickly changed into the undersuit, keeping my eyes closed the whole time. The constant presence of the Butchers was most awkward at times like this- the only thing worse was when I needed the bathroom; awkward didn"t begin to cover it.
  
  The silk all fitted well, even the gloves, which had been the hardest to make. I put the mask on last, once I"d pinned my hair up into a tight bun. I"d had to shape the mask and the helmet specially to allow for it, but as much as I would have liked to leave my hair hanging loose, I needed to conceal as much detail about myself as possible. I fiddled with the lenses a bit to make sure they fit over my eyes right- I"d pulled them from a pair of swimming goggles, mirrored prescription lenses that turned my eyes into wide mirrors.
  
  Once the undersuit was fully on, I started on the armour. First the segmented breastplate; I flexed as I locked it into place, to get the supports around my ribs and along my spine properly aligned, so the armour would follow my movements exactly.
  
  The legs went on next, thighs and calves, plus the boots that encased the trainers I was already wearing. Then the arms, from shoulder to elbow, and then the gauntlets locking onto there. I flexed and wriggled my fingers to make sure I had full range of motion, then picked up a screwdriver off the bench and tossed it from hand to hand. The silicone grips I"d added to the fingertips and palms worked well- just plain metal wouldn"t have had much traction.
  
  Tock Tick kept dreaming up ideas for improvements and advancements as I flicked my wrist and twitched my fingers a certain way. The panel on top of the left gauntlet split open and aside, and the grappling hook assembly I"d built in moved up and out. It looked like two crossbows, stripped down and compressed, then stuck on back to back, with reels of cord in the middle.
  
  I retracted it with another gesture, and checked the right assembly before I came to the final piece. The full-face helmet, in two pieces right now, with only a thin slit for the eyes and a grid of holes in the jaw guard as any kind of opening.
  
  I slipped the main part on over my scalp, attaching the clasps under the ears and the nape to the overlapping plates covering the neck, and then the jawguard, locking it on with a J-shaped motion. I took a breath, feeling the pull of air through the outer openings and the filter I"d assembled inside, then let it out- the sound was deeper, with a metallic echo to it.
  
  I spent a couple of minutes flexing my arms, lifting my legs, rolling my shoulders and twisting my neck to make sure all the joints worked. As they all checked out, I advanced to walking around, then a bit of shadowboxing. The armour followed my every movement almost soundlessly, nothing but a slight whisper of steel to be heard. I even turned a cartwheel for the first time in years, feeling light as a feather.
  
  Finally, I grabbed a chunk of steel off the shelf and held it up. Stoneknapper"s power flattened it out, smoothed it to a mirror shine, until I could see myself in it.
  
  What I saw was a slim figure in dull grey armour, silvery eyes peeping out from the visor. Every square inch was covered by overlapping plates. There were raised ridges along the bracers and greaves, and a crest along the top of the helmet. A belt full of useful bits and pieces was slung around the waist.
  
  "Coulda maybe done something with the chest," Firecracker said slyly. It took me a moment to realise she was making yet another joke about my lack of bust. Unfortunately, she did have a point- with the armour making my shoulders wider and hiding everything feminine about my figure, I could probably be mistaken for a boy very easily.
  
  I shook it out of my head- I could always tweak it later, but for now I just wanted to get out and use my powers more freely. I put the steel back on the shelf, sealed the door shut, and made for the stairs.
  
  "Uh, are you just going to go out in costume like that?" Tock Tick asked. I paused at the foot of the stairs, unsure what he meant. Quarrel snickered, apparently at my expense, but didn"t say anything.
  
  "He means you shouldn"t be seen in costume near your house," Muramasa explained impatiently. I looked at my armour again. The armour that I"d been planning on walking up the stairs, out the door and down the street in. I hung my head in realisation at my glaring oversight.
  
  "Fuck."
  
  1.4
  Chapter Notes
  
  Taylor's first night out in costume. I remember how proud of myself I was when I posted this the first time.
  
  See the end of the chapter for more notes
  January 22nd, The Docks
  
  Once I was several streets away from the house, I"d stopped in an alleyway, using bugs to check nobody else was nearby. I was getting better at controlling them, using them to monitor people in real time. Still, this was past midnight in January, so there wasn"t really anyone around. Not that there were many people around in the Docks at all.
  
  "This place really has started to die," Vladimir complained mournfully. "Back in the day, even in snow, this place would be heaving with people. Land of opportunity."
  
  "Ah, cheer up," Anchorage insisted. "We"re finally getting some action, even if it"s the kiddy "no killing" kind."
  
  Despite their enthusiasm, and, admittedly, my own, I"d made sure I was prepared for this. I had pouches full of zipties, a first-aid kit fastened to the small of my back, pad and paper for any details, and my freshly charged burner phone in a reinforced compartment. I was also wearing thermals under the silk for extra insulation; of all the powers I"d gained, there wasn"t anything to keep me warm. Even pain immunity wouldn"t keep me from shivering.
  
  At any rate, I"d snapped every piece into place quickly, and then taken to the roofs. Even weighing about 200 pounds total with the armour on, it was easy enough to jump the gap between buildings, and where I couldn"t, the grappling hooks proved their worth.
  
  I started using them more and more as I went deeper and deeper into the Docks- the warehouses and factories were each surrounded by parking lots and loading bays, now cracked and overgrown with weeds, and that spaced them out more.
  
  The grapplers worked just as I"d designed them. Flick my wrist to extend or retract them, twitch a finger to fire the first bolt, which would hit a wall or roof. The impact would activate the mechanism to fix the bolt in place- if it had sunk through a surface, then it would extend grippers from the head. Otherwise the screw bit would spin up and bore itself into the wall.
  
  Then I"d fire the bolt on the back into the roof I was standing on, hit a switch, let the grappler pull me across as the front retracted and the rear unspooled cable, then detach and retract both while I fired the other grappler. I wasn"t quite moving at Tarzan pace, but it was faster than walking.
  
  "Be faster if you just teleported," Firecracker grumbled for the fifth time tonight. I rolled my eyes in response.
  
  Even as I moved along, I kept the few bugs I"d found able to brave the cold looking out for anyone on the streets, occasionally adding bloodsight to peek into buildings, but all I found were people sleeping rough inside. A few stirred as I landed on their roof, but nobody woke up.
  
  I was grinning under the armour. I wished I could teleport out in the open, instead of the few times I"d found a warehouse isolated enough to try, but this was a decent substitute. The cold air seemed to find the most miniscule cracks in the armour and worm in like a sadist"s knife, and it was starting to snow, but the feeling of constantly ziplining between buildings was wonderfully fun.
  
  When I"d first decided on taking out the Merchants, I"d only thought of attacking their base and taking out the capes in one fell swoop, until Tactical"s Thinker power had brought up the problems in that. In retrospect, having most of the Butchers agree with me should have been a warning sign.
  
  I still had no first-hand experience in a fight, let alone against capes, and certainly not enough to take on three at once, with one of them a Tinker in her lair. A few dozen baseline gangbangers would serve as good practice before I took out the leadership.
  
  The other problem was that, contrary to the old adage of "cut off the head and the body will die", if I decapitated the Merchants, then all the drug dealers and lowlifes that made up their ranks would simply disperse into the streets. That seemed to be the reason why the Protectorate had never simply rolled in with a couple of squads and flattened them- they served as a collection point for the scumbags that the ABB and E88 wouldn"t recruit, making them one medium-sized problem instead of a dozen little ones.
  
  So tonight, I"d be taking out a production facility I"d stumbled across while I was carving up old factory machinery for the metal- A meth lab hidden in an old factory, in one of the many facilities that dotted the Docks. The fumes coming out of the chimney were a pretty obvious sign, but in this part of town, nobody cared enough to interfere.
  
  I"d sent my bugs out to scout for me as soon as the location came within range, and by the time I stopped on the roof of the factory, I"d managed to slip bugs onto everyone in there, and I was now tracking their movements in real time.
  
  "This is pretty damn useful," Tactical commented. "Even if we never used the Master power for anything other than this, it"s still a huge advantage."
  
  "Feels super weird though," Firecracker noted. "It"s like having thousands of fingertips moving around the place."
  
  Vladimir spoke up suddenly- "Hey, think we could use this for shooting? Stick a bug on someone, you"ll always know where to aim."
  
  "Hey, yeah!" Firecracker switched her focus to Quarrel. "Come on, don"t be grumpy, Q. This could work pretty well with your aiming."
  
  "Piss off."
  
  I switched to bloodsight even as the conversation continued. There were more people in the factory than I"d expected- a delivery maybe? Or had they just invited some friends around to get high with?
  
  Whatever the reason, there were 18 people in there where I"d expected 10 at most. Several were standing around a bunch of tables set near the factory"s old brick fireplace, fiddling with the various paraphernalia they"d cobbled together to cook, while the rest were scattered around the place, flopped onto various bits of furniture or leaning against the walls.
  
  I almost jumped right in, but Tactical"s Thinker power- which, despite Firecracker"s wheedling, I refused to call strategy-sense- drew me to the edge of the roof, to look down at the doors. The Merchants had apparently had enough forethought to post a lookout, a scraggly looking man smoking an equally scraggly rollup, occasionally shivering as the snow settled on him.
  
  I stepped back and fired both grapplers into the roof, gave a quick tug to make sure they were secure, then simply stepped forward and off the edge of the roof. The speed regulators I"d added kicked in after a few steps, slowing my descent to just above walking pace, letting me literally walk down the wall toward the lookout.
  
  "Okay, I"ll admit it," Anchorage said grudgingly, "This is pretty cool."
  
  The reluctant compliment was nice, but I was busy trying to focus as the ground approached. The collection of instincts and reflexes that the Butchers had accumulated was a whole other animal to the Butchers themselves, and not as easy to supress. So when I thought about wanting to take out the guard, I had to focus on the non-lethal method, as opposed to breaking his neck, or driving a knife into his brain, or that sweet spot left of the fourth lumbar down that was practically highlighted by Needler"s minor Thinker power.
  
  Instead I lowered myself down to him, quiet as a whisper, until our heads were barely a foot away. Then in one movement, I released the grapplers, dropped down behind him, and wrapped my arm around his neck. He immediately struggled, but I used my free hand to jab him in the armpit and thigh with stiff fingers, numbing the nerves there, before covering his mouth to muffle his shouts.
  
  "Could just hit him on the head," Bearskin griped. I rolled my eyes even as the lookout"s struggles slowed.
  
  "Yeah, no chance I"d actually hurt him doing that," I thought as sarcastically. Eventually the guy passed out, so I gingerly lowered him to the ground and searched through his filthy jacket. There was a length of pipe tucked inside that I liberated, a dime bag of weed, and a burner phone. I pocketed the phone, then carried the pipe to the double doors, threading it through the handles before bending it in a circle.
  
  With the rest of the Merchants unknowingly trapped inside, I slung the lookout over my shoulder and fired my grappler again, swiftly moving back to the roof. I would have just left him there, but in this kind of cold frostbite was a real concern.
  
  "Oh, come oooon," Rotter complained. "He"s supposed to be the enemy, remember? You don"t have to give a shit about them!"
  
  "Maybe you don"t, but I do."
  
  Rotter tried to press the point, but I gave him a shove to quiet him as I reached the roof and jogged to the stairwell. The door wasn"t locked, so I crept in and down the stairs to a balcony overlooking the factory floor. I let the lookout down and tied his wrists to a railing for good measure, then checked the Merchants over with my own eyes for the first time.
  
  Most of them were now gathered around a fire in a barrel, passing around a joint and a bottle of liquor. The rest were still busy cooking up the meth, wearing cobbled-together protective gear that somehow made them look even less threatening than the guys getting stoned.
  
  I briefly considered waiting for some of them to get up and wander off so I could pick them off one by one, then dismissed the thought. None of these guys could be a threat to me even if they had heavy weaponry.
  
  "Hey, how about a dramatic entrance?" Firecracker directed my attention upward to the girders holding the roof up. I quickly realised what she meant, and a horrible grin spread itself across my face.
  
  I took a few steps back, then broke into a run and leapt off the side of the balcony. The nearest girder was 10 feet away and two feet higher. I landed on it easily, bending my knees to take the noise out of it. From there, I simply crept along the girder until I was just above the circle of increasingly wasted Merchants.
  
  "God I love these moments," Vladimir sighed. Of course the ambush specialist would enjoy this.
  
  I put the thought aside, and simply took one small step forward, plummeting off the girder.
  
  I landed just outside the circle, barely bothering to bend my knees. There was a shout of surprise at the loud thump, which was joined with cries of fear when I grabbed the two guys closest to me by their collars and threw them bodily across the circle into others.
  
  The woman holding the bottle of hooch tried to throw it at me, but she was so wasted that she missed by three feet. Meanwhile the guy who"d been holding the joint- he was on his knees, clutching his throat and retching. A wisp of smoke trailed from his mouth.
  
  "Hahahahahaa holy shit!" Firecracker gasped, "He swallowed the fucking blunt! Oh god, we shoulda had a camera!"
  
  I winced at the thought of how much that hurt, even as I brought my arms up. One guy to my right came swinging wildly at me- I deflected the blow and popped him in the sternum, all with my right arm, then threw him into the black guy who was charging at me with a wrench. They went down in a tumble of limbs and groaning.
  
  The woman who"d been drinking last tried to run, so even as I slapped the switchblade out of a guy"s hand and jammed a finger into the nerve cluster behind his ear to drop him, I kicked a chair across the floor to knock her over; she hit the floor hard, but judging by the swearing, she wasn"t badly hurt.
  
  By now, the others had armed themselves, though none of them were attacking, too intimidated by how I"d laid out their friends. I didn"t give them the chance to find their courage, striding forward to close the distance.
  
  A grubby guy with a neck tattoo panicked and dropped his stick, trying to circle around me to get away. I let him go as the others charged forward, riding the instincts to make it through. I slapped one guy out with a backhand, shattered the bottle swung at me with a jab of my fingers, drove an elbow into ribs, headbutted the guy with ratty dreadlocks, then threw a back-kick into the gut of Neck Tattoo, folding him up like a piece of paper.
  
  Two heads clapped together cartoon style, a flurry of jabs to the ribs and a chop to the side of the neck dropped three more. The remaining guy took one look at me as I lowered the last of his buddies to the floor and bolted. To my disgust, the fly I"d sneaked onto his pants reported a feeling of wetness.
  
  The meth cooks had all made for the door as soon as I"d dropped, and had been reduced to banging on it futilely as I strode over to them. I couldn"t even be bothered to run after them- better to let them tire themselves out.
  
  They started turning as I got close, the fear on their faces visible even through the goggles they were still wearing. Wet Pants was still banging on the door, screaming every swear word I"d ever heard of, and a few I needed the Butcher"s memories to understand.
  
  Then one of them, fat and sweaty, pulled the kitchen gloves off his hands and threw them to the ground with a scream. The danger sense pinged, and I hustled forward, but not fast enough to stop him from pulling a gun and getting a shot off.
  
  He was holding it sideways in a way that no actual gunman ever uses, and his arm was waving wildly, so it must have been sheer blind luck that had the bullet hit me smack between the eyes. My head was thrown back from the force, helmet ringing like a bell.
  
  "Holy fuck, the guy actually hit us?" Stoneknapper exclaimed. Nemean was not so calm about it.
  
  "Gut him," she snarled. I let out a long, rattling breath as I lowered my head to meet his gaze. The gun slipped from nerveless fingers to clatter on the cement, followed by his knees as he collapsed with a whimper.
  
  I turned to the rest of them. "You know," I said conversationally, "you could just surrender."
  
  A couple of them looked terrified enough to consider it, until the shortest jumped forward and tried to punch me in the jaw. I leaned back to dodge and slapped him on the back of the head to down him, but the damage was done- the rest bolted forward in a shrieking mass. I groaned in frustration, blocking a fist with an elbow, a kick with a back-hand, and caught a crowbar in my hand before yanking it out of the guy"s palm. I tossed it aside and pushed forward, laying them out with quick punches and a few low kicks to sweep their feet out from under them.
  
  Just as I punched out another guy, another dove for the discarded gun, snatching it up with his left while he pulled his own with his right. I rushed forward as he pulled the triggers, clamping my hands down over the barrels as he unloaded the guns, screaming all the while.
  
  Finally, the gunshots were replaced with empty clicks, and he dropped them, stumbling back from me. I let the guns slip from my fingers, then turned my palms up and opened my fingers, letting him see the flattened bullets I held before I tossed them aside and grabbed him by the collar.
  
  Tock Tick wasn"t so impressed. "God, he ruined the palms. They"re dented all to hell now."
  
  Stoneknapper shrugged. "So what? She can straighten them out easy."
  
  "That"s not the point," Tock retorted impatiently. "The armour couldn"t withstand small arms fire, ergo it"s insufficient."
  
  "Pistol fire from point blank range to the weakest part of the suit," Tactical pointed out. "I"d say it held up great."
  
  Even while I eavesdropped on their conversation, I lifted the wannabe sharpshooter off the floor. "Come quietly," I said with forced patience. "It"ll be easier on you-"
  
  The guy sneered and spat in my face. "Fuck you, you greased-up cunt! You think you can fuck with Merchants? Skidmark"s gonna pull you apart from asshole to mouth-hole, and I"m gonna watch-!"
  
  I spun and spiked him into the ground so hard he bounced- I caught him by the collar on the rebound, lifted him once more, and let him fall to the ground with a thud and a yelp. Then I dropped to a knee beside him and drew back an arm, ready to beat this stupid bastard into a literal pulp.
  
  The Butchers cheered me on as I curled my fingers into a fist and stared down at his head, the fear blooming on the face of this little shit who thought he could talk shit to us and live-
  
  I rammed all the Butchers down into the furthest recesses of my mind as hard and fast as I could. The sudden loss of mental noise and emotion was like cold water down my back, but I welcomed it. I uncurled my fist and turned the guy over, hands moving in a practiced motion to pull his wrists together and zip them up, even as he struggled some more and groaned.
  
  I let him swear and yell as I grabbed him and a few of the others to take over to the fire, my body going through the motions. Inside my head I was reeling, even with the numbed emotions that came from pushing everyone down.
  
  I"d lost control. Not for long enough to kill someone, but long enough to go too far, to hurt someone just because they"d made me angry.
  
  Worst of all, I hadn"t been thinking in terms of I, Taylor Hebert. I"d been thinking in terms of us, the Butcher. They"d always repaid any slight or insult in blood- and if there wasn"t a grievance, they"d make one up, or just fight for the hell of it.
  
  The collective raged and struggled inside the darkness of my mind as I dragged each of the Merchants over to the seats by the fire and ziptied their wrists and ankles in a numb haze, their groaned insults and moans of discomfort barely reaching me. I had enough presence of mind to take their phones as well before I wandered over to the workbenches.
  
  I relaxed my grip on Flinch as I walked, feeling a measure of emotion trickle into my mind as he came up out of the darkness- I trusted him not to encourage me to maim and murder, at least. He didn"t say anything as I searched through the equipment laid out on the tables, pocketing the contents of the jar labelled "Expenses". Possibly that was their funds to buy chemicals and more equipment.
  
  At length Flinch cleared his throat. "Www- www- wwhat about the other g-guy?" I didn"t remember what he meant until he nudged my attention toward the balcony and the stairwell at the opposite end of the building.
  
  Right, the lookout. Best to keep him with the others. I started toward the stairs.
  
  "Y-you didn"t kill anyone."
  
  I leapt up to the balcony- only ten feet or so. The lookout had come around by now and was straining against the ties around his wrist- as soon as I showed up he stopped. I cut the ties and slung him over my shoulder, ignoring his renewed struggles while I answered Flinch.
  
  "I came too close. Maybe I"m not ready for this."
  
  Flinch went quiet for a long while, long enough for me to pop the lookout down with the rest and re-tie his wrists, long enough I started thinking Flinch had curled up again. Then-
  
  "I th-thought that too, m-my first night. Y-you"re doing better th-than I did."
  
  I sighed and sat down on one of the tables, pulling out my burner phone. "Thanks, Flinch." He gave a mental shrug and curled up again, that one conversation exhausting him.
  
  I tapped 911 into the phone, but hesitated over the call button.
  
  Even numb as I was, the second-hand anger of the Butchers was seeping in as they inched up out of the dark- still too quiet to make out their words, but close enough to understand the tone. Angry not at the guy who spat on me, but at me for resisting them once again- it rattled around inside me like a lump of hot coal, making every breath taste like fire.
  
  That they were angry at me was a distant comfort- I"d beaten them again, even by a narrow margin, and I"d celebrate that later. But right now I needed a second.
  
  I put the phone down and turned my back to the fire, bringing my hands to my jaw, flipping the hidden catches on the mouth guard to take it off. The feeling of cold air on my mouth was a balm after so long in the stifling helmet- Note to self; improve ventilation and airflow without compromising filter; maybe an automatic pump to regulate it, with a mesh of activated charcoal? But that could wait for later.
  
  I tilted my head back and took long slow breaths, watching them fog in the air as I breathed some of the rage out of myself.
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  I know I've been leaving you guys hanging with my slow update schedule, so I'm going to try and hurry things up a bit. Watch this space.
  
  1.5
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Saturday January 22nd, The Docks
  
  "Brockton Bay 911, what is your emergency?"
  
  "Multiple injured criminals in a meth lab, corner of, uh-"
  
  "Broadstreet and Vine," Vladimir supplied. I repeated the address into the phone; I could make out the sounds of a keyboard as the man on the phone entered the address into the system.
  
  "There"s a lot of drugs in here as well, I don"t know what you guys do for that, but I guess they can be charged with possession at least."
  
  There was a chorus of shouts from the Merchants, all tied up and dumped on the chairs. I wished I"d had something to gag them with as well. I cupped my free hand around my mouth and the phone to keep out the litany of curse words.
  
  "Just to check sir, are you a cape? Can I get your identification?"
  
  "Sir?" I almost shouted down the phone. The guy backpedalled immediately.
  
  "Sorry, ma"am, I think the line"s not too good. Can I please get your identification?"
  
  "There goes your chance to disguise yourself as the opposite sex," Stoneknapper pointed out.
  
  "Didn"t ask you, Knapper," I countered indignantly. It might have been the smarter option to disguise myself that thoroughly, but I wanted to hold onto this much at least.
  
  "Elpis. I"m a new hero, first night out."
  
  "How do you spell that?"
  
  "E-l-p-i-s, that"s Echo Lima Papa India Sierra," I recited, the NATO phonetic alphabet rolling off my tongue with ease. Another odd use of Tactical"s power.
  
  More keyboard clattering. "Okay, we can have a couple of patrol cars to you in a few minutes. Are any of them injured?"
  
  I shook my head, then remembered that he couldn"t see that. "No, I checked them all over, nothing worse than heavy bruising." I mentally crossed my fingers at the slight lie- while they were mostly okay, the guy I"d bounced off the floor would be pissing blood for a day or so. I consoled myself that he"d recover quickly, if painfully.
  
  "See, when you give them to the cops, they just get out on the streets again," Bearskin sneered. "When we take them down, they stay down. Aren"t you being a better hero if you stop the problem completely- ?"
  
  I pushed Bearskin down for that, hiding my worry carefully. Bearskin wasn"t the most cunning of the Butchers, but if he was changing tack to try and persuade me like that, then the others might start coming up with arguments that would be harder for me to refuse.
  
  "He"s got a point," Anchorage said slyly, confirming my fear. "You could"ve just torched the place and left them inside- way easier to do, and it stops-"
  
  I shoved her down as well, just as the dispatcher spoke again. "Okay, we"ll have cars at your location in 3 minutes. Can you stay that long?"
  
  "Uh, do I have to?" I didn"t think I was ready to talk to the police, but would it be better for me to give a statement, let people see me, and paint myself as an upstanding hero?
  
  "You don"t have to," the dispatcher admitted reluctantly, "but it"d help us a lot to get your statement."
  
  I idly picked up one of the phones I"d confiscated off the Merchants- judging from how he started thrashing about and renewed his yelling, the fat guy who"d shot me in the head was its owner. I fiddled with it as I tried to come up with an answer to the dispatcher.
  
  To my surprise, the phone unlocked with ease. "Not like addicts are gonna be good at thinking ahead," Firecracker pointed out.
  
  I flicked to the main screen- and immediately recoiled at the sight. By contrast, the Butchers whooped and cheered at the image Fat Guy had set as the background.
  
  "Oh, that"s the best kind of nasty!" Rotter laughed, poring over the obscene sight. Anchorage radiated agreement.
  
  "Reminds me of a poster I used to have in my closet," she said with a note of lusty nostalgia. "Got it out of a girly mag when I was 14, kept it in there for years."
  
  "Elpis? Are you still there?" The dispatcher"s voice broke me out of my horrified disgust, and I put the phone back to my ear while I flicked through a few circles of the menu and brought up Fat Guy"s recent texts, ignoring the groans of dismay and demands for more inside my mind.
  
  "Yeah, sorry, I, ah, I got... distracted. I"ll stick around and give a statement, but I don"t think I can stay too long. I might have more to do tonight." Possibly a lot more. Fat Guy"s texts had lots of map links in them, related to conversations with other people in the Merchants. Clearly Fat Guy was relatively well connected.
  
  This phone alone was a gold mine of information. There was details of drop points, weed farms, places and times for deliveries. I tucked my phone between shoulder and head while I brought out my notepad to start copying down as much as I could. I spared half a second to realise I"d never been able to get the hang of that before- something learned from the collective.
  
  Fat Guy was struggling even harder now, yelling insults at the top of his voice. Pretty brave considering he"d seen me tank a bullet to the forehead.
  
  "Elpis, what"s that noise?" The dispatcher cut into my thoughts again, sounding vaguely worried.
  
  "Well, seems these guys are kind of ticked off that I just took them all down and tied them up." I finished with Fat Guy"s phone and picked up the next. Nobody reacted when I picked it up, so I wasn"t sure whose it was, but it was similarly without a password. Not nearly as much intel on it though.
  
  "Still got a lot though," Tactical noted with a satisfied tone. "I always love going up against idiots, especially idiots with no clue about opsec."
  
  I agreed with him, even as I added a few more notes. "Quick question," I asked the dispatcher, "How far off are those patrol cars?"
  
  "About- let me see- four minutes."
  
  "Got it. I"ll have the doors open for you. I"m going to hang up now, just to keep my hands free." He started to say something else, but I ended the call and tucked it back into its compartment. Technically a lie, but I wanted to concentrate on the phones.
  
  Unfortunately, it seemed Fat Guy had been the one highest in the hierarchy, because the rest of the phones had little to no new info for me. It seemed like most of these guys weren"t Merchants proper but friends invited over to kill their braincells in company. Still, it was enough to point me towards a few more operations I could shut down.
  
  A line of bugs I"d laid out across the road outside was suddenly broken in two places. Car tyres. I tossed the last of the phones onto the table and got up. The Merchants started up again as I headed toward the front door, undaunted by my lack of reaction to their shouts.
  
  There were two police cars and a large van parked outside, as far as the few insects I"d collected could guess, and bloodsight confirmed six people getting out of them as I reached the doors.
  
  "Hey genius, you barred the doors, remember?" Quarrel jeered. "Didn"t think that one through, huh? Now you"re gonna have to go all the way back around and out to-"
  
  I grabbed a door handle in each hand and gave a hard yank. I"d expected the handles would break off, maybe part of the doors, enough for them to open up. Instead, both doors came straight off their hinges, leaving me holding the double doors in their entirety.
  
  Muramasa rolled his eyes. "If you had listened to me and brought a sword you could simply have cut the bar and opened the doors without this mess, but no, you had to insist on nothing but your bare hands, not even trained. Now we look ridiculous."
  
  Unsure of what else to do, I tossed them to the side with a clatter and turned back to the cops who were now staring at me. I could make out which ones had met capes before by their wary expressions, and which ones hadn"t by their wide-eyed gawking.
  
  I struggled to think of something to say, not helped by the Butchers deliberately recalling all the times they"d beaten, shot, stabbed, and otherwise attacked cops. Anchorage in particular was running the cheesegrater incident through her thoughts on a loop, and she hadn"t even been responsible for that one.
  
  I went with the first thing that came to mind. "Uh, hi?" I said, raising a hand. "Good evening- or, I guess it"s morning, I don"t-" I stopped and tried again. "I"m Elpis. New hero. Got the Merchants in there," I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder, just as a very loud "Fuck you!" echoed from the inside.
  
  One of the cops nodded and stepped forward. "Alright, we"ll take it from here. Can you stick around so we can get a statement of how you did all this?"
  
  "Yeah, sure." I waited until he"d started into the factory to follow him, and after a second, so did the rest.
  
  "Sorry about the doors," I said to fill the silence. "I just built this suit, I"m still kinda getting used to the range of strength. I should probably build some tools in or something..."
  
  "Ah, don"t worry about it," one of the cops said. "Those doors looked like they were about to fall off anyway."
  
  The first cop whistled as we reached the tied-up Merchants still trying to wriggle free of the zipties. "It take you long to get all these guys squared away?" he asked, raising his voice above the shouts.
  
  I shrugged. "Not really. I spent more time tying them up than fighting them, and more time waiting for you guys than that. Not that I"m criticising or anything," I added hastily, "I just mean it wasn"t difficult to get them."
  
  He shrugged right back- I noted from his sleeve that he was a sergeant. "No skin off my nose. Alright guys, let"s get on with it." He motioned to the other cops, and they moved in closer, hauling the Merchants upright, reciting the Miranda rights and cutting the ties on their legs to march them toward the door. Some of the Merchants struggled and swore some more, but others seemed to realise they couldn"t really get out of it and went quietly.
  
  "Make sure to search "em before you get "em in the wagon," the sergeant called. "Remember that, Finster?"
  
  "Come on sarge, that was one time," Finster complained, hauling the guy with the neck tattoo up and making a show of patting him down.
  
  "Yeah, one time when you missed a matchbox full of snow," another cop taunted as he prodded the lookout guy into moving. There was a round of laughter from the rest of the cops.
  
  Something occurred to me as I looked over the remaining Merchants. "Hey, that guy there might need to get his throat looked at," I said, pointing. "He swallowed his blunt when I showed up. I gave him some water and a once-over, but I"m no doctor."
  
  "He swallowed it?" The sergeant looked confused for a second. "Wait, while it was lit?"
  
  Firecracker started snickering again as I explained. "Yeah, so maybe want to have him looked at? If nothing else, he won"t be able to answer any questions if his throat"s messed up."
  
  "Hey sarge," Finster called as he finished searching the guy I"d bounced, "None of these guys have phones on them."
  
  I raised a hand. "Sorry, that one"s on me. I took them to look through their messages."
  
  The sergeant turned to look at me with a crestfallen look. "What?" he said weakly.
  
  "Well, I wanted to see if I could get anything on their operations..." I trailed off at the look on his face. It reminded me of Dad when I"d tried to make breakfast by myself as a kid and wound up flooding the kitchen. "Sorry," I finished lamely.
  
  The sergeant rubbed his forehead. "And I suppose you got your fingerprints all over them too-"
  
  "No, no, I didn"t," I held up my hand and waggled my metal-clad fingers. I"d even wiped the gauntlets with a cloth after putting them on to keep my fingerprints off the metal, after Tactical had mentioned a guy who"d been caught despite wearing gloves, because he"d left the fingerprints of one hand on the outside of the other glove while putting them on.
  
  The sergeant perked up. "Well, alright then. I guess we can still work out which phones are whose back at the station."
  
  "This one belongs to the fat guy, not sure what his name is," I pointed it out on the table, "It"s got loads of intel on it. Delivery times, caches, whatever. Doesn"t even have a password."
  
  "Hot damn." The sergeant picked up the phone in one gloved hand. "Glad I sprung for gloves that work on touchscreens," he muttered as he hit start.
  
  "Uh, you should know-"
  
  "Jesus!"
  
  I winced. "Yeah, that." The sergeant had gone red in the face.
  
  "I don"t know if it"s illegal to have something like that on your phone, but I"m gonna try and charge the guy anyway!" He stuck the phone in an evidence bag with jerky motions, unaware of how the Butchers were laughing.
  
  "Ahhhahaha! Wassamatta piggy, never seen the good shit before?" Anchorage howled.
  
  Nemean joined in the conversation for once. "Don"t know what he"s upset at. It"s good porn."
  
  I cleared my throat. "You guys need me to do anything else? I could carry some of those guys if you want."
  
  The sergeant nodded, still looking disgusted. "Yeah. That"d be a help. And we"ll need your statement."
  
  
  
  
  
  "And then I called 911 and started taking notes off their phones, and that"s about it," I concluded. Finster stopped the recorder he"d been holding and tucked it back into his pocket.
  
  "Okay, that should do it. But," he fiddled with his flashlight awkwardly, "I mean, you really shouldn"t have thrown that guy like that. His back"s just one big bruise."
  
  "I know," I said guiltily. "I lost my temper, forgot how much the suit amps my strength, and..." I shrugged helplessly.
  
  "I still can"t believe you told them," Needler complained. "All your talk of trying to avoid being associated with us, and you admit to brutalising criminals the first chance you get."
  
  "I told them because it"s the right thing to do," I snapped, fed up with the collective prodding at my guilt. "Unlike you guys, I don"t take pride in being a horrible person."
  
  "Give it time," Rotter said, laughing even as I forced him down.
  
  "Am I in trouble?" I asked tentatively.
  
  At that, Sergeant Locke walked over from where he"d sat the last of the haul down in the wagon. "You"re not in trouble with us at least. This is a damn good haul for us. Still," he gave me a stern look, "I may not be PRT, but we are going to be passing this along to them, and I know damn well heroes have to hold back some. This better be the first and last time I hear you spiking somebody like a Thanksgiving football."
  
  Despite the fact I could have folded this man in half like a piece of dry toast, I felt cowed by the air of paternal disapproval. "Yessir."
  
  "You fucking traitor," Anchorage spat. I contemplated shoving her down, but considering her history with police, I decided to leave her be.
  
  Sergeant Locke relaxed. "Alright then. Is that you done for the night?"
  
  I shook my head. "I"ve got some great info right now- I want to act on it before the Merchants move again."
  
  "Yes!" Vladimir cheered. "More action tonight, folks!" There was a brutal cheer at his words.
  
  Locke huffed in surprise, his breath fogging in the air. "Damn, you"re eager," he muttered, before raising his voice. "Well, best of luck to you then. Just make sure to call it in when you find something."
  
  I nodded. "I look forward to working with you guys," I said politely. It seemed like the right thing to say.
  
  After a second of awkwardly trying to think of something else to say, I gave up on holding a conversation and started walking away across the street.
  
  Just as I"d brought out a grappler to get to the rooftops, I heard Finster call out. "Hey, I forgot to ask! What the heck does Elpis mean anyway?"
  
  I half-turned to see the officers looking at me. Apparently they all wanted to know as well. I shrugged and fired the grappler up and out behind me.
  
  "It means "hope"." Without another word I set the grappler to reel in, and zipped up the wall in one long movement, pushing off the wall with my feet to flip backward and land on the roof"s edge, looking down at the cops and the Merchants.
  
  I took one last peek at Finster"s slack-jawed look of amazement, and then I turned away, heading east.
  
  "So what now?" Tactical said, getting down to business as usual.
  
  "I"ve taken out a lab already. So I"ve hurt their production, that leaves their stockpiles of drugs and their money." I broke into a run as I reached the other side of the roof, clearing the gap to the next building in one long bound.
  
  "I"m not going to hurt anyone else tonight," I warned them. There was a round of disbelieving and mocking noises, but I held firm. "I mean it."
  
  "So what are you going to do?" Tock Tick asked reasonably. I felt my face split into a horrible grin.
  
  "I"m thinking I"ll knock over a cache of money."
  
  "A cache of cash," Bearskin commented. Needler turned her attention to him in disgust.
  
  "Are you proud of yourself? Are you proud of that stupid joke you just made?"
  
  I shook my head and continued onward, focusing on the journey.
  
  The inside of my head might look like a madhouse, and I might have slipped up, but I"d caught myself before I could do anything irreparable, and scored some goodwill with the police.
  
  I might be stuck with the Butchers, but I was finally starting to feel like I had them under control.
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  God, I still love how dumb that last line is.
  
  Interlude 1
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Saturday January 22nd, PRT ENE HQ
  
  Emily rubbed at her forehead. She didn"t drink, couldn"t drink, hadn"t been medically capable of a drink in just over a decade, but a situation like this was making her want one.
  
  "Do we have any idea," she ground out, "why the Thinkers can"t come to a conclusion on this?"
  
  Neither visitor volunteered a response. Not Armsmaster, sat in front of her desk on a reinforced chair, power armour freshly polished to a glossy blue, with his signature halberd on his back. The head was slightly different from last time she"d seen it- apparently the upgrade to his EMP generator that he"d submitted had been installed.
  
  Not Miss Militia next to him, in her neatly tailored fatigues. Other people in her situation might have fiddled with their hair, the stars-and-stripes scarf around the lower half of her face, or the matching sash around her waist. Instead she was fiddling with her power- green and black energy arcing from one hand to the other restlessly, forming into a variety of different knives before dissolving again.
  
  After a moment, Emily sighed and lowered her gaze to the screen on her desk, showing the message from the PRT"s Thinker division Watchdog, with their answer to what she personally considered a simple question; What is the status of the entity known as Butcher XV?
  
  She hadn"t really expected a response along the lines of "Butcher is permanently dead", but somewhere deep in her soul she"d hoped. Almost as good would have been "Butcher is weak and recovering" or "Butcher has returned to Boston". Mostly she"d been braced for the blow of "Butcher is building their strength" or "Butcher is preparing for a surprise attack".
  
  Still, even accounting for just how notoriously unreliable Thinkers could be compared to every other category of cape, and the nonsensical ways in which powers like precognition and clairvoyance might express themselves, the answer should have been along the same lines, even if that was in terms of "2 out of 10", or "purple shading to blue".
  
  Instead, there were a dozen or so results, and almost no two of them were alike. Butcher XV is active, Butcher XV is inactive, Butcher XV does not exist.
  
  "Alright," she said finally, turning back to the leader and second-in-command of East-North-East"s heroes, "since we don"t have any clear answers from them, we proceed as if Butcher XV will show up to lead the Teeth any day now, and we"ll keep to that assumption until we get a better answer."
  
  Armsmaster leaned forward slightly. "I"ve updated the list of possible leads on the Butcher"s identity." He unfolded a small keyboard from his left forearm and started typing, accompanied by several small twitches on his face as he manipulated his HUD via facial gestures.
  
  Emily clicked on the request for access that popped up on her screen, and the screen changed to show several images of local capes, with Butcher XIV"s face at the top and the long list of Butcher"s known abilities next to it. The display screen on the wall switched on to show the same, so Militia could see.
  
  "There still haven"t been any signs of activity from the Teeth, or reports of extreme violence from new or unknown capes," Armsmaster began. "However, we have had some changes to the list. For starters, we can eliminate Spektacular from the list of suspects; he"s resurfaced at last and hasn"t displayed any unusual behaviour- more than is typical for him, at any rate."
  
  Spektacular"s image was highlighted, and a short summary appeared next to it- Stranger/Shaker, a rogue who could create illusions, working at the local theatre. Other than the suspicion that his power extended beyond just illusions, he wouldn"t have been considered if he hadn"t disappeared right around the time Butcher died. The fact that the insects that had killed Butcher were confirmed to be very real had eased their suspicions of Spektacular, but they still needed confirmation.
  
  "Can you elaborate on that? I"d prefer something more concrete than "not acting funny"."
  
  A muscle twitched in Armsmaster"s jaw at the jab, but he ploughed on with his explanation regardless. Possibly it wasn"t wise to needle Armsmaster"s ego, but then again the man was in desperate need of a reality check.
  
  "Velocity found him last night on patrol, coming out of the theatre. It turns out he took some time off for mental health reasons. He quickly figured out that we were investigating leads on Butcher, and actually told Velocity his civilian identity as an alibi- Spektacular had a doctor"s appointment last week, including a blood test."
  
  Emily caught on to the line of thinking. "And since the needle went in, that means no toughened skin or Brute rating."
  
  "Precisely." Spektacular"s image faded from the screen, and the next one expanded to fill the space; this time it was a video, grainy security camera footage, showing one man inside a storeroom of some sort.
  
  "This next one was pulled off Parahumans Online." Onscreen, the man teleported around the room frequently, each time producing a shockwave that sent the shelves around him toppling.
  
  "Explosive teleporting," Emily muttered. "That"s a strong possibility."
  
  Miss Militia spoke up for the first time. "The data analysts are running through the full video, but the quality isn"t good. Still, they think that the cape shown might be exploding as they disappear, rather than at the arrival point. Plus the crime scene didn"t show any scorch marks, or signs of other powers."
  
  It always had to be complicated. "Alright. We"ll keep an eye out for this one. What"s next?"
  
  The next image was a still from dashcam footage. Several police officers were manhandling what looked like homeless people into a van, while an armoured figure stood off to the side.
  
  "A new cape, reported in the early hours of this morning. A solo hero called Elpis. Claims to be a Tinker, used power armour and a grappling hook to hit a Merchant meth lab and handed them over to the police, then in a separate encounter, she found where the Merchants were storing some of their cash and emptied it out."
  
  Emily raised an eyebrow. "Unless she handed the Merchants over in pieces, that doesn"t sound like the Butcher."
  
  "True," Armsmaster admitted with a shrug. "I included her more for completion"s sake."
  
  Miss Militia was reading the police report off the wall screen. "Nonviolent takedowns, only exception was a man who emptied two magazines at her, cooperated with the police- that definitely doesn"t sound like Butcher."
  
  "True. Put her at low priority unless she gets violent," Emily instructed. "And make sure we get someone to talk to her, definitely try to sell her on joining us. We could always use more Tinkers."
  
  "Understood." Armsmaster hit a few keys, and Elpis"s image shrank down to be replaced by the next.
  
  There were several more capes on the list- heroes, villains and rogues, all independents, and none of them with anything concrete to tie them to the Butcher.
  
  The whole thing reminded Emily of a training exercise back when she"d been just a trooper. The training area had been filled with a dozen dummy IEDs, one of which was supposed to be the "real" one. The entire exercise had left her on edge, jumping at shadows, because she"d had to second-guess every choice and double-check every decision.
  
  She"d absolutely hated that exercise.
  
  Finally, Armsmaster wrapped up with the final cape on the list- a vigilante in a massive suit of armour, with a crude club in one hand. The whole ensemble must have weighed half a ton, but he didn"t seem at all encumbered.
  
  "Konnigit has been ranked with low possibility of inheriting the Butcher powers, but his control over his metal combined with the strength to move it was similar enough to warrant a place on the list. He"s also been noted to use excessive force- several of the criminals he stopped were brought in with broken bones."
  
  Emily grimaced. Another violent vigilante on the streets. "Do we have any idea what the name is supposed to mean? Sounds Germanic- I don"t want to see another new Empire cape."
  
  Armsmaster shook his head a fraction. "Intelligence is checking the name, but they still haven"t matched it to any European language-" He broke off at the sound of a small but heartfelt groan from Miss Militia; a rare break from her usual professionalism.
  
  Emily regarded her blandly. "Care to share?"
  
  Miss Militia"s file noted that she"d undergone a lot of PR training in order to maximise what expression she had with her mouth perpetually covered. The pained look in her eyes seemed to prove that the training had paid off.
  
  "You said it was Konnigit? Pronounced just like that?"
  
  "That"s right," Armsmaster confirmed bemusedly. "You"ve heard it before?"
  
  "Yes," Militia sighed. "It was in a Monty Python film."
  
  "...What?"
  
  "Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the scene where King Arthur and his knights arrive at a castle occupied with French soldiers, the soldier speaking to them says, quote "Ah blow mah nose at you, so-called Arthur King! You and all your silly English konnnnnigits!" unquote."
  
  There was a pause as both Emily and Armsmaster tried to wrap their heads around Miss Militia quoting a British comedy film, including the accents.
  
  Armsmaster cleared his throat. "How-?"
  
  "Mouse Protector."
  
  "Right."
  
  "Getting back on track," Emily said pointedly, "Konnigit is a Brute with some form of metallokinesis and signs of extreme violence, so right now he"s our biggest suspect as Butcher XV. Try to track him down and confirm things one way or another, and for god"s sake avoid provoking him. Keep looking for anyone else that might fit the bill; try looking into possible trigger events around where the Swarm showed up as well, see if anything pops up."
  
  The two capes nodded in unison. "Alright, I think that"s as much as we"re going to get out of this meeting. Dismissed."
  
  Only once the two of them had shut the door behind them did Emily let out a groan and rub at her forehead again.
  
  Butcher and the Teeth had been pushed out of the city years before she"d become Director of PRT ENE, seemingly never to return, and she"d been glad of it. Trumps were rare and dangerous, but a Trump that only got stronger and more dangerous when someone killed them was a unique problem. The PRT casefile on Butcher still did not have any definite ideas on how to contain something like that.
  
  One of the few things she"d never envied Director Armstrong over in Boston was having to deal with that walking clusterfuck. Except now said clusterfuck was somewhere in her city, dangerous in a whole new way, with one of the most aggressive gangs on the East Coast waiting to follow their orders, and the bastard was still refusing to send her any reinforcements from his overstocked roster of capes because the clusterfuck still hadn"t resurfaced!
  
  Even if Butcher wasn"t coming back any time soon, the gangs were getting bolder as their fear of the unknown enemy was gradually replaced by their customary arrogance. The E88 were showing signs of arming up and closing in on the Teeth"s last known locations, getting ready to drive them out. The ABB were similarly moving- Lung himself had been spotted a few times, seemingly inspecting the troops.
  
  The thought of what would be created if Lung killed the Butcher was something that Emily avoided thinking about as hard as possible.
  
  Even the Merchants were poking their heads out again, most notably a rash of car thefts that would probably wind up as part of Squealer"s latest monstrosity.
  
  And all that Emily had to stand between them and the city was a handful of emotionally damaged overgrown children, another handful of emotionally damaged actual children, and a few hundred brave troopers who were nevertheless completely outmatched against most of the capes in the city.
  
  Business as usual.
  
  Emily indulged herself with five more seconds of frustration before she straightened up and brought up the latest reports from the Intelligence department. Nobody had ever said this job would be easy, but she still intended to do it.
  
  ...God she wanted that drink.
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Aaargh, I hate this chapter. Looking back on it, I should have had so much more to it.
  One thing I tried to do with HCTNB was to write the story so that readers would only need a minimal amount of Worm knowledge. That meant adding in exposition and characterisation to keep it closer to the original story, and to avoid falling into the trap of presuming the audience already knows obscure crap.
  So for this, I should have had stuff on Armsmaster, on Miss Militia, and on Piggot herself.
  Ah well. Too late to do anything about it now. Chalk it up to early installment weirdness.
  
  2.1
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks
  
  "Boooooored. Bored, bored, borororororororrred," Firecracker chanted. I gave the mental equivalent of rolling my eyes even as I kept looking through my scope at the target. I was personally hoping this didn"t take too much longer- I"d told Dad I"d be wandering around the Lord"s Street Market this afternoon, so I wanted to finish up before he started to worry.
  
  Bearskin joined in on the complaints. "We"ve been sat out here for an hour already. They aren"t coming- get off your ass and go crack some skulls!"
  
  "You guys saw my memories of inheriting, remember?" Stoneknapper cut in. "Breaking into a Tinker"s hideout is never an easy thing to do."
  
  I shifted position from my perch on the edge of an apartment building"s rooftop, but I didn"t bother to join the argument- especially when Tock Tick started sniping at the lot of them. After a second"s thought, I poured myself another cupful of tea from my thermos and took a sip.
  
  The weather was still frigid at best around this time of year, and even though it was early afternoon the temperature was barely above freezing. I"d made sure to wear double layers of thermals under my undersuit, and packed a hot drink. Jasmine tea, at Muramasa"s insistence.
  
  Truthfully, I could have just jumped right into the old mechanic"s shop I was staking out and started taking out the Merchants inside, but I was hoping to make a much bigger catch today. This site seemed to be serving as a place for the Merchants to bring the cars they"d stolen, in order for them to carve them up and strip them for parts. Which meant that maybe, if I was patient, I could take out the Merchant"s most important member by myself.
  
  Skidmark might have been the leader of the Merchants, but a low-level Shaker with terrible choice in names and a severe case of meth mouth couldn"t have kept a gang running in the Bay by himself. The real muscle was Squealer, the only Tinker in any of the gangs.
  
  Her speciality was vehicles, and the images I"d dug up on the web all showed a theme of being grossly over-engineered and heavily armoured to the point of being able to treat small buildings as something to be driven through. But those were her big projects, for when the Merchants wanted to try and push against the other gangs. Most of her creations were regular cars that were souped up to be able to outrun the cops and still haul around the various drugs the Merchants dealt.
  
  "You"re learning," Tactical noted approvingly. "Tinkers are one of the first enemies to be removed- they can produce such a wide set of options that they"re a nightmare to fight."
  
  "Well, if she does show up, it"ll be Tinker against Tinker. If I can get her while she"s out of her ride, she"ll be an easy target."
  
  A couple of insects laying on the road around the corner died in unison as something ran over them. I turned my scope toward the sensation just in time to see what looked like an armour-plated truck cab turn onto the street with incongruous quiet, cutting through the thin dusting of snow on the ground. The snow ploughs didn"t come to areas as shitty as this after all.
  
  "God, it even looks like it was made by someone on drugs," Tock Tick said with a tone of disgust. The truck was bristling with extra antenna and lights, including a few that looked like disco lights. The wheels had blades sprouting from the axles, the grill had jaw-like plates on the front, and the side had lurid graffiti painted on, including the Merchant symbol of a large blue M with two vertical lines, like a dollar bill. A short, heavy looking trailer rode on the back, ugly welding lines marking out where armour plates had been added on.
  
  It had to be Squealer"s work, which probably meant Squealer herself was driving. I put away the scope as the truck trundled down the road toward the garage and stood up, creeping forward to follow along the rooftops.
  
  The truck stopped in front of the garage and reversed toward one of the doors, then stopped entirely. I snuck a gnat onto the underside to confirm there weren"t any vibrations from the engine.
  
  "I wanna drive that thing," Firecracker said suddenly.
  
  "Are you serious?" Quarrel said as two guys climbed out of the cab, one blowing on his hands to warm them while the other lit a cigarette.
  
  "Aw, c"mon, look at the fucking thing," Firecracker wheedled. "It"s built like a fucking tank, with all kinds of cool shit packed in. How long"s it been since we had a good joyride?"
  
  "That"s assuming the thing"s still going to be intact when all this is over," Vladimir pointed out as I drew level with the garage, and the truck. I could see through the cab"s windshield now- nobody inside. Also a pair of fuzzy pink dice for some reason. No sign of Squealer.
  
  "Bugger," Rotter said vaguely. "Maybe she"s already gone inside?"
  
  "Maybe, but I doubt it. If she was here, she"d probably be driving her own work," Tock Tick answered. "I guess she built that monstrosity for her help to make supply runs for her."
  
  "That vehicle is hardly a subtle affair," Muramasa insisted. "Would she not be better off keeping her deliveries more low-key?"
  
  Quarrel snorted. "Hayaki, that"s assuming Squealer"s got more than a handful of functioning brain cells left. She works for a guy named Skidmark, for chrissakes."
  
  While the debate about Squealer"s lack of brain continued, I turned and walked to the opposite side of the roof, unclipping a pair of short rods from my belt as I did. The Butchers picked up on the shape of my thoughts as I did so.
  
  "Aw no, no, no," Firecracker moaned. "Christ, this is gonna be awesome, but I still don"t want you to smash-"
  
  I turned around again and broke into a run, sprinting toward the garage. Right as I hit the edge I pushed off with both feet, hard enough to send me sailing across the street.
  
  "And an excellent launch there, but can she stick the landing?" Anchorage said gleefully as I plunged feet first- right into the engine of the truck, rocking it on its axles. The metal buckled inward with a screech, and I felt something heavier bend under my feet.
  
  "And she"s made it, ladies and gentlemen!" Anchorage crowed. "That"s a 9.2, an 8.9, and a 7 from the Russian judge!"
  
  I smirked as I pulled my feet free of the ankle-deep dents I"d left, idly shattering the windscreen with a kick as I stepped out, before hopping over the top of the cab and the little trailer to land right in front of the open door.
  
  The Merchants were panicking, which was fine by me. A particularly short specimen was running for the back door as fast as his legs could carry him. Before any of them could come to their senses, I flicked the rods in my hands- they telescoped out into long batons, the tips crackling with electricity.
  
  A fairly basic design- I"d bought a couple of wind-up torches yesterday with the money from raiding the cash drop, then ripped out the dynamos and given them a serious upgrade with extra coils and magnets. Extending the batons sent them spinning enough to build up a charge, and then pressing on the triggers in the handle could charge them further.
  
  The two Merchants I caught with the tips helped me test the principle- they both yelled, spasmed, and dropped like sacks of potatoes. Unfortunately, that broke the others out of their panic, and into a mad rush for weapons to deal with me. More serious this time- there were racks of tools all over the place, from hammers to oversized wrenches. One guy picked up an acetylene torch, hefting the canister in the other hand.
  
  While I and the others scoped out the opposition, Tock Tick was practically drooling at the materials inside the garage. There must have been five or six cars disassembled around the room, sorted into neat stacks of parts. Tyres, seats, headlights, batteries, suspension coils, brake pads, canisters of drained engine oil- there was also what looked like a couple of engines in the process of being rebuilt into one monster on a table.
  
  "New plan," Firecracker said with a tone of glee. "You beat the shit out of these guys, take their money, and use all their nice gear to build us a kickass ride. Deal?"
  
  I spun the batons in my hands, just to give the Merchants a scare. "Deal."
  
  Without another word, I rushed forward, letting the instincts guide me. Jab one guy in the chest, catch his spanner on the tip as he dropped it, throw it into another guy"s face while disarming a third, drop low and elbow a fourth in the ribs, throw him into more.
  
  "I told you practicing would pay off," Needler said primly. Her thoughts had an overtone of smugness to them. Not that I could blame her- I"d spent a solid two hours last night practicing the Silat forms she"d mastered, strengthening the half-formed muscle memories I"d inherited. I was still nowhere near as good as her, but now I had actual technique backing me up.
  
  The guy with the welding torch came in close, flame turned up to maximum. I ducked behind a couple of his friends, jabbing them in the kidneys with the batons as I circled around, then dropped one baton to grab his wrist while I elbowed him in the face.
  
  He fell back with a squeal as his nose gushed blood, and I took the moment to turn off the torch and set it on the ground carefully. No sense in burning the place down.
  
  "Duck!" Flinch called out, in synch with his power"s warning. I dropped low, and a sledgehammer whipped through the air where my head had been. The Merchant who"d crept up on me almost fell over from the swing, and then I kicked him in the back of the knee, and he really did fall. I jabbed him with the baton and held it there for a few seconds while he jittered.
  
  I scooped up my other baton as I moved away, mantling over a table to hit one guy with a flying knee, then using my right baton like a rapier to parry the length of pipe his buddy swung at me. I turned it into a riposte, angling my weapon around his to flick it out of his hands before shoving the tip into his belly. The guy behind me didn"t fair any better- I reversed my grip on my left baton and thrust it back, catching him in the ribs.
  
  "Seriously?" Bearskin asked as the guy somehow stayed standing, backing away with a snarl as he pulled a knife to go with his wrench. I was a bit puzzled too, but I didn"t dwell on it, darting forward to crack the batons down on his wrists, driving the weapons from his hands.
  
  He yelped, but still tried to lunge at me, so I whacked him on both knees, then brought my own up to meet his face as he fell. Finally I jabbed him in the shoulders with the batons and let fly with the volts. This time he got the electricity, spasming for a moment before collapsing.
  
  I turned the dodge of a thrown hammer into a crouch, pulling aside the guy"s jacket to see a thick vest wrapped around his chest. Standard bulletproof vest, police issue.
  
  "Where"d some lowlife get Kevlar from?" Tactical pondered. I mentally shrugged as I straightened up to face the remaining goons. One grabbed at a stack of hubcaps and started winging them at me like frisbees. I had to fight back a laugh as I slapped them out of the air and started toward them.
  
  "That may be the single most moronic attack I"ve ever seen," Vladimir commented dryly.
  
  The others seemed higher up the chain than Frisbee Man, since they all pulled pistols and started blazing away at me. I turned my walk into a run, zig-zagging to mess with their aim, then dropped low and kicked out at the empty table in front of me, sending it skidding across the room towards them. One dodged it, one took the hit and fell under it, and the last two were pinned to the wall by it. I caught the first as he ran for the door and jammed a finger under his sternum to knock the breath under him.
  
  The two against the wall aimed at me again, so I tossed my guy to the ground before he got hurt and crossed the distance with a leap onto the table, grabbing their pistols and ripping them from their hands, tossing them over my shoulder as I did so. A couple of rabbit punches knocked the two of them senseless enough to stop bothering me.
  
  The last guy had wormed his way out from under the table and was running for the back door, screaming his head off. I hopped down off the table, grabbed a wooden chair that had fallen over in all the commotion, and simply hurled it after him.
  
  Even without Quarrel"s aiming power, the throw was a good one, smacking right into the back of his legs. He went over with a high-pitched yelp several feet from the door, struggling to untangle his legs from those of the chair. Before he figured it out, I"d strode over and hauled him up by his collar.
  
  "Now I don"t want this to turn out like the last guy I offered this to, so think carefully. Come quietly-"
  
  "HEEEEELP! HEEEEEEEEELP!" The guy started screaming at the top of his lungs toward the back door. "FOR FUCKS SAKE COME AND HEEEEEELLP!"
  
  "What"s he on about?" Rotter asked. "There"s nobody left standing here, right?"
  
  There was a horrendous screeching of metal from outside. I dropped the guy and hustled over to the door, quickly peeking my head outside.
  
  The sound had come from a dumpster being dragged across the ground, and it had been dragged across the ground by the little guy I"d seen running away when I"d arrived, or at least, one arm of him.
  
  The actual man looked like a pot-bellied shrimp of a man, right down to the boiled pink look of his skin. There was some thin hair visible over the top of his sack-cloth mask; his left arm was skinny, as bare as the rest of his torso despite the cold weather.
  
  His right arm, and his legs, were another story entirely. Even as I watched, tendrils peeled off from his exposed skin, branching and extending to sweep up every bit of junk from the dumpster and the alleyway, pulling it in to join the piles of detritus that his other limbs had already become. A quick flicker of bloodsight showed me that the piles were held together by a network of those same tendrils weaving throughout the mounds.
  
  He caught sight of me as the last of the trash and dirt was pulled into his new form, shifting all around him to form a humanoid figure about 8 feet tall.
  
  "So you"re the fucker who thought messing with us was a good idea," he sneered as a pile of junk formed around his face like the world"s most disgusting helmet. "Well, I don"t know what you were thinking, and I don"t care. I"m just gonna crush ya."
  
  I brought my batons up. I"d been prepared to take out a Tinker without any tech, an easy fight. I wasn"t prepared for my first real cape fight to be against a giant trash monster.
  
  "What a glamourous life you live," Needler sighed, as the figure started toward me.
  
  
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Out of curiosity, does anyone know how to get rid of the extra notes at the end? It seems like they're repeating from the earlier chapters, which is not what I need.
  
  2.2
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks
  
  My senses had been enhanced and expanded when I"d inherited the Butcher collective. Vladimir"s bloodsight for one, but also the spatial awareness required to steer Firecracker"s teleportation and Quarrel"s warping aim, to say nothing of the senses of every insect within a block radius.
  
  Nemean"s senses came up most in day to day situations though- while the changes from inheriting her leonine Case 53 physiology weren"t too noticeable to an outside observer, longer teeth and sharper nails had made themselves known to me immediately, followed by her sense of smell and hearing. I was vaguely annoyed that my eyesight hadn"t improved, but I"d been living with glasses for years, and I was well used to it.
  
  Being able to smell Dad cooking in the kitchen from my room, or catch the scents from down the block on the wind, were a pleasant enough experience.
  
  The combined scents of the pile of living garbage in front of me was anything but. The filter deadened it somewhat, but I could still pick out overripe banana, coffee grounds, burst tomatoes, rotten fish, and even a hint of dead rat in there. I had to fight down my gag reflex with every breath.
  
  "Trust the Merchants to recruit a literal shitpile," Stoneknapper complained. Tactical was more concerned with how to take him out.
  
  "Don"t let him get inside the workshop," he advised. "We don"t know just how much stuff he can pick up, and there"s a lot of metal in there that"d make him way more dangerous."
  
  I briefly considered the thought of trying to fight an armour-plated trash heap. Agreed.
  
  The good news was that my opponent slammed the door to the workshop closed with a tentacle suddenly extruded from his mass. The bad news was that he was aiming for me, forcing me to dodge back as he whipped it at me, and incidentally cutting off my best escape route.
  
  "Get him talking," Firecracker said, serious for once, "Maybe he"ll give something away. Or it"ll distract him."
  
  I checked with bloodsight again to see where his head was- by now it was mostly unravelled, but I could make out where the eyes where, shielded by bits of glass his tendrils were holding in front. The rest of him was spread throughout the pile, except for a clump in the middle that probably used to be his torso.
  
  Another swing forced me to hop back. I brought my batons up, even though I knew they wouldn"t be that effective against him.
  
  "So," I started, then had to fight down a sudden bought of nausea. I could actually taste the garbage a little- it brought back horrible memories of the last time I"d been exposed to something so rank. It was so bad I could feel the insects in my radius start to come to me, drawn on some instinct.
  
  "This is horrible," Needler gagged, while I pushed away both the bugs and the urge to vomit. Another swipe from the Merchant cape"s tentacle made me leap back, almost tripping in my haste to get away from the smell.
  
  The move took me out of the alley behind the garage, and the breeze coming down the street brought relatively clean air to me. I took a few grateful breaths and focused on the trash heap shambling after me.
  
  "So," I started again, "you"re the Merchant"s new cape. Moist, right?"
  
  "Fuck you!" Moist lashed out with two tentacles at once, both tipped with glass shards. I spun out of the way, jamming a baton into the tip of a tentacle as it was retracted. Bloodsight let me target one of the tendrils, drawing a yelp from Moist, but he almost yanked the baton out of my hand as he pulled back.
  
  "About time you got the guy," Bearskin complained impatiently. "C"mon, get after him!"
  
  I ignored the demand, edging further away from the mouth of the alley. I could still see the mass of tendrils in the heap, glowing red in my vision as it hauled itself along. I kept shouting at Moist, trying to bait him as I reached the corner of the garage.
  
  "That seems like an overreaction," I called out. "I was just asking your name, and you take a swing at me?"
  
  The head of the pile leaned around the corner; glassy eyes locked on to me. With the banana peel above them arranged like a monobrow, it felt like he was glaring at me.
  
  Moist suddenly slid out from the alley- another tentacle split off from the mass and whipped at me, this time with the lids of used cans at the end like buzzsaw blades. I dodged sideways, ducked under his following swipe at me, then pinned it under a foot as it came back again, ramming both batons into the nearest tendril.
  
  There was a crackle and a smell of burning garbage, even as I held my breath. Moist thrashed and shrieked for a few seconds, before yanking the tentacle from under my foot with a heave. I could see how some of the garbage had come off his pile as he"d spasmed from the pain.
  
  Too late, I noticed the full bins by the alleyway as Moist grabbed them with a couple of tendrils and upended them over himself with angry movements. The garbage spilled onto him, snatched up by tendrils to add to his mass, adding a foot to his height. I backed away further as his form shifted, wrapping rotten fruit and paper bags around and through his tendrils, before grabbing the trashcans and swinging them at me.
  
  "Insulating against the shock," Tock noted. "So he"s got some brain after all."
  
  I kicked out at the first one, knocking it away as the hit caved it in, but the second one came down from high up, forcing me to back up even further. The Butchers were all yelling what to do at me.
  
  "Get a blade and cut away at him!" Muramasa bellowed.
  
  "Get in there and tear him up!" Nemean roared.
  
  Rotter was laughing away merrily. "Ah, girly, you"re gonna get your ass kicked by a power even nastier than mine," he chuckled as I dodged and parried the next swipes. I tried zapping the metal with my batons, but Moist"s improvised insulation held against the charge; then he launched the lids at me like frisbees.
  
  I managed to smack them aside, but there was a lot more force behind them than those hubcaps, enough for me to feel it. One of the batons was bent a little out of shape from the impact, and Moist seemed to notice, pressing the offensive with a gleeful roar.
  
  I thought desperately for a new approach- Moist had both reach and mass, and was unsettling me just with his smell. My batons only worked if I could pin a limb, and his pile was too thick for me to reach his torso. I mentally rifled through my options, searching for something that wouldn"t out me instantly. I even took the risk of having a couple of insects crawl over the tables inside for something I could use.
  
  "Not a bad move there, Moist," I said, trying to project bravado. "Still, swinging a couple of trash cans around, is that really the best you can do?"
  
  The pile snarled and swung one can into the window next to him, absorbing the broken glass into a third tentacle that lanced out at me. "My name"s! Not! Moist!" he roared, jabbing at me with every word.
  
  I slapped the tentacle aside at the next jab, breaking some of the glass off and clipping a tendril. More burning garbage smell, plus a yelp from Moist- or whatever his name was.
  
  "Wait, waitwaitwait," I said, blocking a can with my elbow, "That"s not your name? There"s a whole thread about you on PHO-"
  
  "Well they"re fucking wrong!" The pile drew itself up, bunching his tentacles up like he was flexing his biceps. "The guy that"s gonna paste you all over the fuckin" street is Mush, bitch!"
  
  "...Oh my god," Anchorage said at last. "Oh my fucking god. I can"t even make fun of these guys. First Skidmark, then Squealer, and now Mush? Mush?! Is that even any better than Moist?"
  
  "I dunno, I think it has a certain flair to it- nope, nope, couldn"t say it with a straight face," Dirty Rotter laughed. "Holy fuck these guys are dumb."
  
  Vladimir was a lot less amused. "Taylor, you"d better beat this guy, and you"d better do it well, because I will never forgive you if you lose to this idiot."
  
  "I"m not sure I could forgive myself." Aloud, I said "Okay, Mush, if you"re the new cape, one of the big dogs, why are you running errands for Squealer like an unpaid intern?"
  
  That seemed to strike a nerve- Mush roared and charged me with surprising speed, whipping his tentacles back and forth, hard enough to knock chips off the wall, which I saw him absorb as he moved over them.
  
  I ducked and weaved between the tentacle for a few seconds, then punched one can aside and darted forward. The glass-tipped tentacle shot out at me, but I smacked it aside with a baton and jumped up to ram both weapons deep into the pile, right at the dense mass of tendrils that made up Mush"s torso.
  
  He had enough sense to try and move his tendrils aside as I rammed the batons in, but I still managed to clip a couple, sending his whole body jerking. Clumps of garbage sloughed off him as he screamed and thrashed, but I dug my feet into the pile and held on grimly, struggling not to inhale as some of the garbage started to visibly smoke.
  
  Just as I thought I had Mush down, the front of his pile simply fell off like a landslide of filth, pouring down on me. One involuntary sip of air was all it took, and suddenly I was stuck in a memory, trapped in filth, screaming for help-
  
  A coiled bunch of tendrils hit me in the chest, knocking me away. I lost my grip on the left baton, and then Mush"s arm reached down and swatted me, sending me flying back several feet.
  
  I managed to turn the landing into a roll that brought me back to my feet, but Mush didn"t give me time to recover, rushing forward again. For a second I noticed the baton being tossed away over his shoulder, before a tentacle grabbed my ankle and whipped me around.
  
  The garage had two doors for cars to come in through- the Merchant truck was parked in front of the open one. The other was closed by a rolling shutter, and Mush sent me through it like a bullet through paper.
  
  I crashed through a couple of tables before coming to rest right between some cabinets. I didn"t hit any of the Merchants scattered around the room, more by luck than anything else- by this point, several of them had recovered and were making an escape, looking more scared of Mush than me.
  
  Tactical took stock as I climbed to my feet. "So, you"re minus a weapon, your enemy is weakened but not down, and will probably adapt to defend against that move. What now?"
  
  "Some advice would be helpful," I retorted, pushing the debris of my impact aside and casting about. I picked up Mush with bloodsight again- his network of tendrils glowed red through the wall, branching out and swelling as I watched, presumably reabsorbing his garbage.
  
  "You need a better weapon," Tock Tick said, ideas pouring off him. "Something to reduce his mass enough to take him out."
  
  "Yeah, like a sword or something," Stoneknapper agreed. "If only there was a huge pile of materials you could make a sword from- oh wait," he shouted sarcastically, "There"s literally piles of steel stacked against the wall!"
  
  I shoved Stoneknapper down a bit to try and concentrate- as tempting as the option was, I couldn"t just pull a sword out of nowhere without broadcasting my powers. Still, I was in the middle of a workshop- there had to be some kind of cutting tool-
  
  My foot clunked against something, and I looked down to see a handheld circular saw with a blade wider than my hand, resting on the floor.
  
  That would do. Snatching it up, I ripped the safety guard off and bent the handle into a new position, then strode across to grab some strips of metal from across the room. I glanced at Mush through the wall- his network was almost back to full size, though he was still moving sluggishly.
  
  I flexed my wrist, panels sliding aside to extend my grappler. I let the cable unspool while I started bending the metal strips around the saw handle, then grabbed the grappler bolt and wound it around the handle a few times before bending the strips over all of it.
  
  "Ooooh, I see what you"re doing here. Copying from my playbook, huh?" Anchorage said gleefully.
  
  The saw now dangled from the end of my grappler cable, the blade fully exposed. I grabbed the handle and yanked on the starter cable. The saw coughed and whirred into life- I used one more strip of metal to hold the throttle at maximum, then slipped the cable into my hand, holding my arm well away from my body. It probably couldn"t get through my armour easily, but I"d rather not cut myself with my own weapon.
  
  Mush rounded the corner, looming in the open doorway between me and the truck. I hefted the saw in my hand and met his gaze. "Mush, stand down. I really don"t want to see what kind of damage this"ll do to you."
  
  Mush just growled and raised his arms. The trashcans were crushed into crude metal fists on the ends, and the glass flail now had a twin, tipped with rusty nails.
  
  I glanced down at the saw for a moment. "I warned you." I heaved on the cable and started to swing the saw in a circle, then faster as I built up momentum, until the saw was a roaring blur at the end of the cable, like Anchorage used to do with her anchor. As Mush started forward, I flung the saw forward.
  
  Mush slapped it aside with a metal fist, but it cost him- the blade gouged a deep cut in the can and sent a few scraps of greasy paper falling tom the floor. Before he could recover, I flicked my fingers to retract the cable a bit, spinning the saw in a circle again, then criss-crossing it in front of me to show off.
  
  "Goddamn, this is more like it!" Bearskin roared. "Time to cut the shit!"
  
  "Literally!" Anchorage agreed. "Why"d I never think of adding a saw to my anchor when I had the chance?"
  
  "You did sharpen it pretty well," Vladimir pointed out. "It"s not like it would have added much more cutting power."
  
  "No more talk!" Nemean snarled, indicating Mush. "Rip him apart! I can"t take his smell anymore!"
  
  I threw the saw out again- this time Mush tried to grab the cable, and I let him, pulling on the cable to send it swinging up and around his tentacle. There was a screech as the saw glanced off the ceiling before swinging back down again, then I yanked hard on the cable.
  
  The saw was pulled back along Mush"s arm, carving a deep rent in the garbage and clipping at least one tendril. Mush let go with a howl of pain, and I glimpsed a spot of blood drip to the floor.
  
  I pressed the attack, swinging the saw out in front of me in wide, roaring arcs, forcing Mush to back up even as he tried to deflect. I wasn"t actually trying to hit him- I just had to drive him back outside before he absorbed any metal, or either of us accidentally hurt some of the Merchants still inside.
  
  The few bugs I had near me swept over the tools scattered on the floor as Mush retreated. It was interesting to see how I could figure out the shape of each tool by having the bugs crawl over them- a cold round object was the tank for the acetylene torch, a long thing with prongs at the end was a spanner, a right-angled thing with a hole in the end was a gun, rising from the ground-
  
  I pulled the saw back mid-swing to dodge as the Merchant emptied his gun at me- the guy with the Kevlar vest, struggling to his feet. One bullet clipped my wrist, and I almost lost control of the saw"s swing, forcing me to reel it all the way in. Mush took advantage of that to send his smaller tentacles at me, glass shards and nails slashing at my armour.
  
  I snipped the tip off the nail tentacle, driving another yell from Mush, but the glass one ducked under my guard and scraped along my helmet. My vision blurred in one eye, and I panicked until I realised Mush had just scratched the lens.
  
  "Stop worrying, we don"t feel pain," Nemean ordered, bloodlust clear in her voice.
  
  With Kevlar Vest back on his feet, I made the decision to take the fight outside, diving through the hole Mush had made with me. The trash heap himself swivelled toward me in a supremely unsettling way- I could see how his tendrils simply twisted into a new position instead of turning his body around.
  
  I circled around, dodging some of Mush"s swipes and hacking at others. Unfortunately, Mush was wising up- he reached behind him for a second and came back with tools bunched in his tendrils- wrenches, crowbars, tyre irons. The saw glanced off them with a shower of sparks.
  
  I backed up a step, swinging the saw out to build some speed. If I could cut Mush"s tendril"s further up, toward whatever passed for his shoulder, I might be able to break his defence long enough to taze him again-
  
  Then all my plans went out the window when Mush brought something big around- the partially built engine I"d seen earlier. A few flies I"d sneaked onto it reported the smell of fresh gasoline in it.
  
  Before I could do anything else, Mush hurled the whole thing at me. I felt the breeze of it passing by me as I twisted desperately out of its path-
  
  Then the engine hit a wall across the street, and there was a roar of heat and noise.
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Ah, Baby's first cape fight. I tried so hard to make Mush seem like an opponent worth worrying about.
  I'm also rather proud of myself for the battlefield Tinkering Taylor does here.
  
  2.3
  Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks
  
  The explosion wasn"t really all that big, by the high standards of the Butchers, or by my low standards. Despite being filled with super-aerated gasoline fumes, the engine must have had some safety measures built in to limit the blast.
  
  Nevertheless, the force was enough to crack the wall the engine hit and knock me off my feet from six feet. My one saving grace was that Mush seemed too shocked to take advantage of my lapse.
  
  I glanced behind me as I made it to my feet- the wall was heavily cracked, blackened by smoke, and rapidly being scorched further as the gasoline spilled from the engine burned fiercely. The engine itself was malfunctioning in the fire- pistons pumping erratically in the heat. Still, not a bad design- Tock Tick gave it a good once-over before I looked away.
  
  Mush had backed away a little, eyes focused past me to the flames.
  
  "He"s scared of the flames," Bearskin noticed. "Might be a phobia there."
  
  "Yeah, or maybe it"s because he"s made of flammable garbage," Firecracker pointed out.
  
  I started swinging the saw around in front of me again. Oh that"s a shame, I left my flamethrower at home.
  
  "There"s gas back inside, and I"m pretty sure I saw some pumps we could repurpose," Tock volunteered.
  
  Anchorage goggled. "Goddamn, nerd, where was all this when I was in charge?"
  
  "You never bothered to ask," Tock replied sniffily.
  
  Geez, I was being sarcastic, I thought as I hurled the saw forward, pulling at the last minute so it only made a shallow cut in Mush"s front. He swung back with those spiked tendrils, now lined with scavenged tools- I side-stepped one as I reeled in, then spun the saw in a circle to clip the second in a shower of sparks, knocking a few bits loose.
  
  One was a large bit of cardboard, stained but dry. I caught it under my foot as I advanced a few steps. Mush didn"t back up- instead he started swinging faster, alternating the larger and smaller arms.
  
  I could just about dodge him, but I wasn"t doing much damage in return, other than a few nicks. Without any better ideas, I fired my left grappler down at the cardboard, then retracted the cable a bit, the cardboard stuck on it. Once I swung the saw out again, I threw the other grappler back toward the fire, right into a puddle of gas.
  
  It caught immediately, turning into a blazing sheet on the end of the grappler. I drew the saw back in, simultaneously whipping the sheet forward. Mush threw himself backward with a shriek, batting the flaming sheet away with a trashcan fist.
  
  I meant to press the attack, but Mush shifted some metal to his nail-tipped tendril and swatted at the sheet as I came at him again, tearing it off the grappler before hastily throwing it aside.
  
  "Damn," Stoneknapper said sarcastically, "There goes that plan. What"re you gonna do now?" he added, in a tone that implied "make a sword" should be right at the top of the list.
  
  Searching for another option, I relaxed the restraint on my bug senses, sending them looking around for something that might help me turn the tide.
  
  A fly perched on fabric was heading out of my range at speed- one of the Merchants making a run for it. More were crawling over the workbenches again, trying to make sense of the shapes they felt and interpret them into objects.
  
  One of Mush"s tendrils curled back on itself as I dodged it, coming back around to hit me from behind. The danger sense twinged a warning, but even before that there was a sense of movement before I backflipped over the blow, pulling the saw back to my hand to slash at it as I went.
  
  There- nestled in the tendril were some maggots, being repeatedly thrown about by Mush"s movements, but still alive, and giving me a constant awareness of their position now that I"d focused on my original power.
  
  "For crying out loud, you"ve used it before- why did it take you so long to figure it out now?" Tactical criticised as I started moving the other bugs in Mush"s pile to map him out better.
  
  "Sh-shut up," Flinch said with surprising force. "Sh-she"s not used to her power in a fight."
  
  There was a moment of surprised quiet in my head; I used the opportunity to shift some cockroaches into the base of Mush"s heap, hiding them away in boxes and crevices where they wouldn"t get squashed. When Mush tried to surge forward and rush me, I was able to see it coming and jump out of the way, slashing at his back as I went.
  
  "Damn," Rotter said finally. "Look who regrew his spine." I shoved him down into the darkness for that, and the others took the hint, either staying quiet or pointing out ideas for the fight as I spread the bugs out more.
  
  Within a few more moments I was slipping past blows without needing to see them at all, and Mush was getting angry.
  
  Finally, he lost his temper. "Fucking hold still!" he bellowed, slamming his bigger arms together and swinging down. I jumped back, then again as his smaller tendrils lashed out. With only some maggots at the base of those tentacles, I realised too late that they weren"t coming for me- the glass tipped one grabbed at the cable for the saw before I could pull it away, wrapping itself and its garbage around in a death grip.
  
  "Goddamnit, there goes the saw," Anchorage swore.
  
  The cable could still slide, though. Calling up Anchorage"s memories, I used one of her favourite tricks, yanking the cable so the saw swung up and back to me, then kicking it into Mush"s heap. A wrench stuck in there got cut in half with a screech, and then bits of filth started spraying out from where the blade was still spinning.
  
  Mush started smacking at the saw, trying to knock it loose, but the saw was stuck in deep, and all his appendages were shaped like crude clubs, not hands. One hard blow even pushed it in further, nicking a tendril and driving a shriek from him.
  
  "Dumbass," Firecracker snickered.
  
  I tried yanking on the cable to free it, but Mush had somehow found purchase on it, enough that I couldn"t pull it free.
  
  No sense in getting stuck on one way of doing things. I ejected the cable from the grappler and bolted for the garage while Mush was still trying to get the saw out.
  
  "Just. Make. A. Sword." Stoneknapper ground out. Needler rolled her eyes at him, so to speak.
  
  "You know she"s not that stupid, Knapper. Whining isn"t going to achieve anything here."
  
  "I am not. Whining," he insisted.
  
  Kevlar Vest guy was just making a run for it as I reached the door- he fell on his ass in shock at the sight of me. I was expecting another bullet from him, but he just rolled out of the way and kept fleeing. I passed into the building without a second thought, making a beeline for the table I"d searched with my bugs.
  
  "Finally, a chance for something interesting," Vladimir sighed. "Except you"re going to make this complicated, aren"t you?"
  
  Ignoring him and the rest, I grabbed a gasoline canister off one table and a couple of valves of another, plus some tubing, a couple of clamps, and parts of a tyre pump. Almost as an afterthought, I started up a grinder bolted onto a bench, and got cracking while it spun up to speed.
  
  It certainly wasn"t clockwork, but putting my improv weapon together was only slightly harder than attaching the saw had been. In under a minute, I had the canister held by a couple of clamps. The pump had been stripped down, one tube leading into the canister, the other pointed forward by a carefully bent strip of metal holding it in place. I"d clamped a wrench around the pump"s piston to act as a grip; I gave it a pull to test, and a stream of gasoline shot out the nozzle easily.
  
  "This is way less interesting than I thought it"d be," Firecracker said, disappointed. "This is basically just a super soaker filled with gas."
  
  "It was created in under a minute out of scraps, what did you expect?" Tock said indignantly. I half-listened to the argument, even as I realised I"d missed a few things. Like a flame, and a back-up weapon. I grabbed a long spanner and pressed it against the grinder a couple of times, putting a crude edge on it before tucking it into my belt.
  
  Inside my head, the argument continued without pause. "Gee, I don"t know, something fun," Firecracker shot back, "Like that time with Nemean and the oil. "member that, Neems?"
  
  "Took forever to get that oil out of my fur," the Case 53 grunted.
  
  "Okay, but going into that fight on fire was awesome, wasn"t it?"
  
  Nemean gave the question some thought. "Yeah."
  
  While they were bickering, I"d found a lighter in the pockets of the nearest Merchant- the guy who"d thrown hubcaps at me earlier. Had it only been a few minutes? It felt like so much longer. I grabbed one more strip of steel and bent it around the lighter, then fixed the whole thing to hand just under the front pipe. A flick of the lighter gave me a pilot light for my DIY flamethrower at last.
  
  Not a moment too soon- danger sense twinged in time for me to duck the object that smashed through the window and came at my head, letting it smash into the wall and break into pieces.
  
  The saw. Mush had pulled it out and decided to use it. I"d lost focus on the bugs while I was busy tinkering, and he"d almost brained me with my own weapon. I didn"t need the Butchers to realise how dumb that was.
  
  They still yelled at me anyway.
  
  "Pay attention to your surroundings!" Tactical shouted despairingly as I started for the door, refocusing my attention on Much and the bugs around me as the gasoline sloshed in the canister and the sharpened spanner banged against my side. "For goddsakes, you should have better battlefield awareness than any of us, and you almost fall to that shit?!"
  
  "Tactical is right," Muramasa agreed. "It is the blow you don"t see that fells you. To have it happen from your own weapon is just ridiculous."
  
  Yeah, great advice. You guys should write a book. I made it outside, keeping the truck between me and Mush as I sprinted back onto the street. The shape of him in bloodsight"s glowing red-gold was peering into the building for a second, but he swivelled as I came out from behind the truck.
  
  There was a patch on his front where the garbage was more chewed up, and a few larger pieces had been cut up. I felt a weird little rush of pride at doing some visible damage to the asshole.
  
  He started toward me; I hefted the flamethrower and sprayed a line of burning fuel at the ground between us. He slid to a hasty stop and backpedalled quickly- I could see his heart beating faster within the network of tendrils too.
  
  "We can end this right here, Mush," I said, trying for the persuasive tone hostage negotiators had sometimes used on the Butchers (not that it had ever worked). "I really don"t want to use this. Just drop the garbage and give up."
  
  I was really expecting him to run rather than surrender, but I expected him to back down either way. Instead, after a wavering moment, the whole pile shifted and- churned, there was no other word for it, pieces and lumps slipping over each other to bring all the harder materials to the front- metal and glass and a few bits of plastic. The trashcan fists uncurled and flattened out to cover further up the arms, and the head gained a covering of broken tools mixed with more glass.
  
  "N-no," Mush quavered. Then, louder, "No. I"m a Merchant. I"m a Merchant! And nobody fucks with the Merchants!"
  
  "I"m pretty sure everybody fucks with the Merchants, even our little bitch," Quarrel snorted. Needler was a bit more thoughtful.
  
  "He"s desperate," she noted, "but his fear of failure outweighs his fear of fire. Perhaps the newest member feels insecure in his position?"
  
  "Or maybe he"s got something to prove," Tactical noted.
  
  Firecracker groaned. "This isn"t Psych 101, just fucking toast the shitpile!"
  
  "I gave you the option Mush," I said out loud, working the pump to send another spray of flame closer to him. He backed up for a second, then surged forward.
  
  To our collective surprise, Mush collapsed down and then sprang up as he came; he didn"t so much jump over the fire as bounce over it.
  
  I leapt out of the way and rolled under the swipe of a larger arm, spraying it with flame as I came up. It mostly hit the metal, but a few splashes hit further up. Mush flicked the burning pieces off his arm quickly, but I"d already circled around him, spraying more gas at him.
  
  Mush swivelled on his base to keep the armoured parts facing me, so my shots just splashed off the metal, while he flicked the pieces to knock the burning droplets off. I was still doing some damage though, as Mush had to continually let go of bigger and bigger pieces of his pile.
  
  "Holy Christ this smells awful," Bearskin complained, as the scent of smoke and burning filth spread through the air, even worse than before. I agreed with him, taking sips of air where the smell was faintest to avoid gagging.
  
  Mush started trying to dodge out of the way, bouncing his pile away from my shots; I sent sprays of gasoline at the ground to box him in; he could jump over them, but once I got him with a few shots in midair, he stuck to the ground.
  
  Larger and larger clumps of trash started falling off him as he backed up desperately, contracting the metal parts into an armoured shell around him, compacting the other trash into a compressed layer under that.
  
  The pressure killed off a lot of the maggots as I advanced on Mush, keeping the flamethrower pointed low. "Come on Mush!" I shouted. "You"re almost out of trash, you"ve got no backup, and I"m still fuelled up. Just drop the pile and surrender!"
  
  The rest of the maggots died off as Mush"s body churned and condensed even further. That was my undoing- only the danger sense warned me when Mush suddenly exploded into a dozen metal-pronged tentacles that spun in a frantic circle.
  
  I leapt back fast enough that they only scored a few scratches on the armour, but a nail jammed into the gas can, tearing a hole in the bottom and sending gasoline spraying all over the place. I hurled it away from me as hard as I could before it could get any on me, drawing my remaining baton and the sharpened spanner.
  
  "Now what you should"ve done is thrown that at him," Firecracker said. "It"d smell fucking awful, but he"d be finished." I shoved her down just for that.
  
  "You should have brought blades," Muramasa chided patiently. "Then this fight would have ended long ago."
  
  "A couple of sticks aren"t going to beat him," Stoneknapper agreed with a gloating tone. "You"re going to need our help for this."
  
  Mush pulled himself back into a more human form, more skeletal than amorphous with all the material he"d lost, but he still stood 8 feet tall. I raised my weapons into a fighting stance in response, beckoning Mush with confidence I didn"t feel.
  
  Every sharp piece seemed to move to the tips of Mush"s hands, glass shards next to nails next to metal scraps next to can lids. Mush lunged forward with a roar-
  
  -And smacked into a bright blue forcefield that blinked into place between the two of us. I backed away in surprise, looking around for the source.
  
  There. Hovering a good twenty feet above us, two teenagers. The boy was younger, maybe 14, with a blue shield on his white jumpsuit, matching his visor and hair. Eric Pelham, aka Shielder, hand outstretched toward his wall.
  
  The girl was already streaking forward, skirt, cape and platinum blonde hair flying out behind her, fists pointed forward in the classic "flying bullet" style every flying brick used at some point. Glory Girl shot right over the shield to hit Mush like a freight train.
  
  "Shit, heroes!" Bearskin called, already thinking of how to counterattack.
  
  "Moron." Vladimir rolled his eyes. "We"re in a hero, remember?"
  
  "Right. Sorry, I forgot."
  
  "Panicking at a couple of little kids," Tock teased.
  
  Outside my head, Mush hit the ground with a clatter of metal, but before Glory Girl could follow up he rolled away, not so much standing back up as morphing into a standing position, with his head drawn down into the torso, bottle-bottom eyes poking out of the front.
  
  Shielder fired a couple of lasers at Mush"s new form, but they barely moved the guy. Mush flicked his arm out, sending a wrench flying with a flick of a tendril. Shielder blocked it with a hemisphere in front of himself.
  
  "So this is New Wave"s next generation," Butcher mused. "So far, I"m not impressed."
  
  I thought of shoving him down again, but he might have something useful. Better to keep him up until he said something horrible- which would probably be a couple of minutes.
  
  "I dunno," Rotter said, having floated back up around the same time, "Decent defense and a respectable Alexandria package. I can see why you wished we"d got her, Knapper. Look at her go!"
  
  True enough, Glory Girl was pursuing Mush with haymakers that tore chunks away from his body and dented whatever remained. Her strength was impressive, probably more than mine, but her technique left something to be desired.
  
  Mush was starting to adapt to her attacks, stretching his body out to sway away from her fists, deflecting her blows with almost fluid arms, then swinging around her next punch to wrap around her like a trash-octopus.
  
  Glory Girl started prising his arms off her with superior strength, until Mush slammed a lump of trash the size of a soccer ball down on her head. She immediately let got to claw the stuff away from her, which gave Mush a moment to morph his arms together and swing the one fist like a spike-studded wrecking ball, sending her flying into the garage wall, bringing it down on her.
  
  "Not so respectable, I think," Needler sneered.
  
  "Vicky!" Shielder fired off a salvo of laser with an outraged yell; Mush blocked them with his one arm almost negligently, but they were only a distraction. The shield in front of me lifted off the ground, bent outwards into a shape like a plough, then shot toward Mush.
  
  Mush dived out of the way, but the shield clipped his foot, spinning him around in mid-air. I rushed forward as he hauled himself up, lashing out with baton and spanner, shocking him with the one and prising bits off him with the other. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Shielder drift toward his cousin with a scared look on his face.
  
  Mush continually backed away, dodging like a ragdoll on speed- every part of him could bend, twist, and contort in ways the human body couldn"t. I even lunged at him with the baton, and he simply split his torso in half to dodge it. He was small enough now I could have taken him down with one good hit to the cluster that was his head- the problem was landing it.
  
  Holding off three heroes at once seemed to have given Mush a confidence boost; He was getting cocky, putting spins into his moves- he backflipped away from my next baton swipe, his eyes staying fixed on me the whole time.
  
  "Fuck that"s creepy," Anchorage shuddered. "Can we just finish this guy already?"
  
  As Mush backed away further, maybe looking to run as Glory Girl pulled herself out of the rubble, brushing off Shielder"s concern and flicking her hair over her shoulder. Something twisted in my chest at how annoyingly at ease she seemed.
  
  A massive forcefield popped up behind Mush as he tried to bolt, too tall for him to get over. He yelped as I charged forward, throwing his hands out- not to strike, but to grab my shoulders, vaulting over me. I spun around as he landed and rammed the spanner"s points into the last bit of trashcan armour he had, before tearing it away from his tendrils. He ignored it, breaking into a run, only for Glory Girl to fly into him with a door she"d ripped off the Squealer-truck.
  
  Mush went sprawling, shifting into a four-legged form that ducked under Glory Girl"s next swipe. However, with his head mounted at the front, he couldn"t swivel his eyes around as much- so when I rammed the spanner through his back and up into his torso, he was caught off guard. With bloodsight showing all the tendrils to me, I twisted the spanner like a spaghetti fork, catching half of his major branches around it.
  
  "Yes!" Quarrel crowed. "Let"s see you hop around now, you smelly fuck!"
  
  I pressed the head of the baton against the spanner. "Sorry Mush," I said, pulling the trigger repeatedly.
  
  The charge hit Mush right in the equivalent of his spine, sending every tendril he had flailing wildly- pieces flew off him as every tendril convulsed, reducing him to a massive heap of fleshy strings, but I kept pumping the trigger until I was absolutely sure he was out, then gingerly untwisting the spanner and drawing it back out.
  
  Finally, I dropped him to the ground, watching as the tendrils slowly began to contract and merge together, pulling Mush back into the form of a man. By some miracle his sackcloth mask and filthy shorts had stayed on, so I was at least spared any further disgust.
  
  "Well, it was far too drawn out, required a great deal of improvisation, and left half the street covered in flaming garbage," Tactical noted. "Still, not the worst I"ve seen."
  
  "Plus it"ll get us on the radar of the other capes," Quarrel pointed out. "Which means less time until someone pops this little shit"s head and gets us a better ride." I was so used to her bile that I didn"t even bother pushing her down for the comment.
  
  Glory Girl tossed the door aside with a clang and lowered herself to the ground to walk over. Shielder stayed airborne, drifting over with a mildly freaked out look on his face.
  
  Glory Girl nudged Mush"s reassembled body with the toe of one high white boot. "Gross." She brushed some hair out of her face and shot me a beaming smile. "So! I"m Glory Girl. And you are?"
  
  2.4
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks
  
  I took as deep a breath as I could without gagging on the smell of burning trash. "I"m Elpis. New hero, nice to meet you both." I nodded to Shielder as I said it; he returned the nod awkwardly.
  
  "Cool! Always good to meet someone new! So how long"ve you been going out? Is this your first time, "cause, I mean, that"s some shitty luck if you have to fight this guy straight off-"
  
  "Is, uh, is he gonna be alright?" Shielder asked, breaking through Glory Girl"s stream of overly peppy questions. I was a little surprised at how squeaky his voice was- then again, he was only- what, 14?
  
  "Can"t believe you needed help from some kid whose balls haven"t even dropped," Bearskin said caustically. I gave him a shove, and he grumbled himself into silence.
  
  I knelt to give Mush a once over as he finished reforming, pulling the first aid kit off the back off my belt. "A lot of shallow cuts," I noted, "probably from the tendrils that got cut, and a few bits that look like light burns. That, uh, that"s from me," I added with a wince. "And, y"know, he got tased until he blacked out. Still," I checked both wrist and neck, then held a hand in front of his mouth, "pulse and breathing are fine, and that"s the main thing."
  
  "Do you think we should cover him up?" Glory Girl interjected. "It"s pretty cold, and he"s practically naked. Which I really don"t need to see," she added, scrunching her face up in revulsion.
  
  "Amen to that," Anchorage chimed in. "I think he was actually better looking when he was a trash heap."
  
  I nodded. "Yeah, let"s get him inside. I probably ought to secure whatever Merchants haven"t run off too, and call someone to take them." I gathered Mush up like a pot-bellied sack of potatoes and slung him over my shoulder in a fireman"s carry as I straightened up.
  
  Glory Girl followed me into the garage- Shielder lingered outside for a moment, creating a couple of shields to scrape the bits of garbage on the ground into a neat pile, and then a dome over the pile as it burned. I could see the fire start to die down as it was starved of air.
  
  Very practical of him- I approved.
  
  There were still a few Merchants that hadn"t made a run for it- five in total, all ones that I"d hit with the batons. Apparently, their buddies hadn"t bothered to try and carry them out. Glory Girl lifted off the floor a little and began hauling them up, pulling zipties out of a pocket in her skirt and fastening their wrists up.
  
  Shielder followed behind me, still hovering as I found a relatively clear table and swept the few bits and pieces off it, then laid Mush down in the recovery position. Once I"d checked his breathing again, I started cleaning his cuts and bandaging them up.
  
  "What"re you doing?" Shielder asked, peering over my shoulder. I glanced back at him, vaguely noting that the hovering had thrown off my estimate of his height- I probably had a good three inches on him, even without the armour.
  
  "Pipsqueak"s right," Dirty Rotter said. "The fuck"re you doing patching up this guy? He was trying to drown you in crap not five minutes."
  
  "I"m disinfecting his injuries," I explained to both of them. "Mush here was wallowing in all kinds of filth. Maybe his power makes him immune to bacteria and stuff, but I don"t want to take the chance. Need to show a little mercy to the enemy."
  
  "Wait, his name"s Mush?" Shielder"s eyebrows drew together over the visor. "I thought he was called Moist."
  
  I snorted. "Yeah, I thought that too. He got all pissy when I called him that."
  
  Glory Girl came over with the Merchants being dragged behind her; she dumped them on top of another empty table and showily dusted her hands off. "That"s five scumbags to go," she announced cheerily. "Want me to tie ugly up too?" she offered, waving a ziptie in her hand.
  
  I shook my head. "I"ve got my own. Besides, I don"t think it would work on him. His power would let him slip right out of most restraints." I placed the last bandage carefully and started repacking the first aid kit. "We"ll just have to keep an eye on him until the PRT show up."
  
  "And what, tase him every time he wakes up?" Doesn"t seem very heroic," Stoneknapper taunted.
  
  "This is why we"re better," Butcher sneered. "When we take someone down, we do it so they don"t get back up, instead of-" I pushed him down before he could finish the sentence, resigned to his usual spiel of violence and bloodshed.
  
  "And there he goes again," Rotter snickered. "New record there. He lasted, what, five minutes before he pissed you off?"
  
  Shielder raised a hand tentatively. "I think I could hold him," he volunteered. I gave him a glance as I clipped the first aid kit to my belt again and took a step back, gesturing to Mush.
  
  "Go for it kid."
  
  Shielder raised a hand, fingers outstretched. A dark blue dome popped into place around Mush and the table he was on. I prodded it experimentally and felt no sensation from my matter-shaping or decay powers, nor any give to the surface whatsoever. "Impressive."
  
  He scratched his neck awkwardly. "Well, it"s okay, I mean, I"m the shield guy, y"know? It"s my thing."
  
  "Hold up," Glory Girl interrupted, "Why didn"t you just to that at the start? You could have just bubbled him and left him there."
  
  "Wait, she"s right!" Anchorage said, "Little Boy Blue coulda just locked him down like that!" She snapped her fingers to illustrate her point.
  
  Shielder shrank a little at the comment. "I, uh, I didn"t think of it until now?" He said weakly. Glory Girl put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes.
  
  "C"mon Eric, you gotta use your head in fights or you"re gonna get your butt kicked."
  
  "Hey, ease up," I ordered, seeing how Shielder was curling in on himself. "What if he had? Mush might have just broken the shield, and then we"d have had to take him down anyway, but Shielder would have used up a bunch of energy just to buy time."
  
  "I"ve never made a shield big enough to cover something like that either," he said weakly. Glory Girl sighed and folded her arms.
  
  "Alright, alright. Anyway, uh," she hesitated, "Sorry, what was your name again? I"m blanking here."
  
  "Elpis." I spelled it out for her. "As in the Greek goddess."
  
  "Huh. Fair enough. Anyway, I was gonna call the PRT to pick these guys up. Are you gonna take off, or...?" She trailed off, waving a hand vaguely while the other pulled out a cell phone.
  
  "Oh no, we are not walking away from this!" Tock Tick exploded. "The amount of materials here, the tools- we have got to take this for everything we can carry!"
  
  I agreed with him- looking around the garage, even with the tools scattered and a few tables busted from the fighting, there were enough parts for me to make all kinds of things. And if the fight with Mush had shown anything, it was that I was severely under-equipped for facing off against other capes.
  
  "I"ll stay," I said, making a beeline toward a stripped down chassis held off the floor by jacks. "I want to get some credit for this, and there"s a lot of material I could scavenge."
  
  "You"re a Tinker then? I mean, I assumed with the armour and all, but I wasn"t 100% sure about it."
  
  I nodded vaguely as I gathered up armfuls of tools and dumped them on the closest table to begin sorting through them. The larger tools weren"t really necessary for me with Stoneknapper"s power, but there were limits to its precision- to develop any further, I"d need to start building my own tools. Ideas were already forming in my head- upgrades to my armour, designs for weapons- I"d definitely need a ranged option, something non-lethal, maybe a net launcher...
  
  With that in mind, I tossed out the stuff like lug wrenches or hammers that were too clumsy for me to need, but needle nosed pliers and Philips-head screwdrivers stayed.
  
  "Uh..."
  
  I glanced up; Shielder was hovering on the other side of the table, twisting his fingers together nervously. He shrugged at my gaze. "Anything I can do?"
  
  "Don"t you need to keep an eye on Mush?" I asked, trying not to sound dismissive. I wasn"t too sure how well I succeeded, judging by his awkward shrug.
  
  "I mean, I can sense when someone touches my shields, so I"ll know if he tries to punch his way out."
  
  "Huh. Useful." A thought occurred to me- the flames starving under the dome. "Wait, does he have enough air in there?"
  
  Shielder looked startled. "Yeah, he"s fine. I can make my shields so they let air through."
  
  "You can choose the properties of your shields?" I asked, intrigued. "I don"t think I"ve heard of anyone who could do that."
  
  "It seems the boy"s defence has variety as well as strength," Muramasa commented. "I wonder if it would be enough to withstand my blade."
  
  "It"s probably more a matter of total force," Tactical pointed out. "Forcefields tend to be more susceptible to being overwhelmed than pierced."
  
  Shielder perked up, blessedly unaware of how the Butchers were speculating on how to break his defences. "Yeah, I"ve got a lot of options with my shields. I can fix them in place mid-air, I can move them around, I can change their shape without having to pop them. I know it"s not as cool as lasers and stuff, but-"
  
  "Well, you did me a solid, stopping Mush," I said. "If you don"t need to watch him, you could help me with this stuff. I"m thinking I"m going to take as much as I can carry."
  
  "Now that"s more like it," Stoneknapper said approvingly. "Take everything that"s not nailed down."
  
  "Shame none of these cars are intact," Vladimir noted wistfully. "We could have got ourselves a decent ride instead of walking everywhere."
  
  Tock Tick rolled his eyes. "You do realise Taylor can probably build three cars out of all the pieces around here?"
  
  "Ooh, there"s a thought..."
  
  "Say again?"
  
  I refocused on Shielder; I hadn"t realised I"d said that out loud. "Just had an idea." I grabbed a selection of tools and tucked them into my belt. "I"m going to start on a project while we"re waiting. Fancy helping?"
  
  "Oh, hell yeah!"
  
  Glory Girl cleared her throat as she walked over. "PRT says they"ll be here in about 15 minutes. They"re a bit tied up with some other stuff, otherwise they would have already sent somebody to check that explosion out. What was that anyway?" she asked me.
  
  "Mush tossed an engine at me. I think it was one of Squealer"s creations, and it went off like a barrel of gunpowder."
  
  Glory Girl winced, casting an eye about the workshop. "Yeesh. None of this stuff is going to explode, right?"
  
  "I doubt it. That engine was the only thing that looked like Tinkertech." I dumped the tools in front of the chassis and walked around to pick up the engine block next to it. It seemed like a low-power model for a family car- I"d have to do some work.
  
  "Hey Shielder, there"s a welding torch over there, could you grab it?" I picked up some suspension coils and a small cutting tool as I gestured vaguely.
  
  Glory Girl handed the torch to him, looking on with vague interest. "What are you doing with this stuff anyway?"
  
  I pulled a pair of gearboxes off the ground and started taking them apart, sorting the gears by size. "There"s enough material here for me to make some serious upgrades, but I need to be able to take it with me. So I need a vehicle."
  
   "Wait, can you just take stuff from a crime scene?" Shielder asked as I started cutting some of the gears into finer shapes.
  
  "Vigilantes get a bit of leeway in that kind of stuff," Glory Girl answered. "As long as it"s not drugs or guns. Or Tinkertech, I think."
  
  "A shame we couldn"t take that engine," Tock muttered. "Imagine what we could have done with that."
  
  "Okay. So, what"re these for?" Shielder pointed at the gears I was rapidly shaping.
  
  "These go on the axles," I explained as I threaded the gears into place, then took the welding torch off Shielder and went to start it up. "You guys might want to look away," I added.
  
  Glory Girl turned her back- Shielder went one step further and created a thick, dark forcefield to shade his eyes as he turned.
  
  "So how long"ve you been going out in costume?" Glory Girl asked as I started welding the gears into place, to interlock with the winding system I was going to set in place next.
  
  "This is really only my second time out," I replied absently, more focused on aligning the parts correctly.
  
  "Seriously? You"re doing pretty well for a newbie," Shielder said, loudly enough to be heard over the tools. "Second time out and you took out a cape."
  
  "With help."
  
  "Yeah, "cause you can"t fight worth shit," Rotter snickered. I shoved him down as I started assembling an armature to mount the secondary gear system on.
  
  The New Wave kids kept asking questions as I welded, cut, shaped and bolted, and I did my best to explain. With them watching, I couldn"t use Stoneknapper"s power to speed up the process, but I instinctively knew which tools to use, how each piece had to be shaped, and where to place them.
  
  By the time I heard the authorities pull up to the garage, I"d combined two engines into a twelve-cylinder beast, custom-built the gearbox, added regenerative braking to the axles, which would help wind the mainspring power source, beefed up the suspension, and pried half the armour panels off the Squealer truck to reshape into bodywork, with a little help from a hastily rebuilt saw and Glory Girl"s strength to pound them into shape.
  
  The end result had two axles at the back, with four tyres on each, a wide front to accommodate the engine, a roll cage over the centred driver"s seat, and every spare inch of space packed with all the tools and equipment that I"d been able to scrounge up.
  
  "Now that," Vladimir said approvingly, "is a damn fine car."
  
  "It"s ugly," Needler sniffed.
  
  "Well, this is only a crude first attempt," Tock pointed out. "We can start improving it once we get it back... to..."
  
  I know, I know, we need somewhere to put all this, I thought to them all. I"ll drive around and try to find a warehouse I can stash this in, alright?
  
  The conversation was cut off as PRT troopers flooded out of the large van that had pulled up in front of the garage, while cops stepped out of the smaller one. Shielder drifted out to guide the PRT toward Mush, still unconscious under the shield. They flooded over him as soon as the shield disappeared, binding him hand and foot with some complicated shackles, and spraying a few blobs of containment foam over that. I watched that out of the corner of my eye, but my focus was on the woman who"d swung herself off her bike and was walking- marching- into the workshop toward us.
  
  Her costume was army fatigues tailored to fit her figure, with a stars-and-stripes scarf wrapped around her lower face, and a matching sash at her waist. Her power was on display too- a fizzing cloud of green-black energy that flitted from hand to hand, changing into a pistol, a rifle, a knife, a sword. It became a knife again as she reached us, held in a sheath strapped to her thigh.
  
  Miss Militia, second in command of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, and one of the longest serving heroes in the country. No pressure.
  
  Anchorage made a noise like a purring cat. "Girls with guns. Mmm-mmm."
  
  "She"s strong," Nemean said. "You can see how she walks."
  
  "Oh I"m looking!" Anchorage whistled. "Shake it honey!"
  
  I tuned out their conversation as Miss Militia reached us, glancing at Glory Girl standing next to me before focusing on me. "Glory Girl, good to see you again," she said briskly. "And you must be Elpis. I heard about your debut on Saturday morning."
  
  "That"s me. Nice to meet you." Glory Girl added a "hiya" as well, but otherwise stayed quiet.
  
  "If you don"t mind me asking, how long did it take you to make that suit?" I didn"t miss how Miss Militia"s hand rose up, pointed at me. For anyone else that would be reassuring, but I"d heard how she could summon her weapon to her hand in an eyeblink. Which meant that while she seemed to be making a friendly gesture, she was perfectly ready to draw on me.
  
  Her question wasn"t just idle curiosity- it was an attempt to establish when I"d got my powers. It made sense- I was a new cape, popping up only a few weeks after Quarrel bit it. It seemed the Protectorate were maintaining an impressive amount of paranoia; I"d respect it more if it didn"t put me at risk.
  
  "Nnnot sensing a threat," Flinch managed. "She"s not going to draw anytime soon."
  
  I forced my hands to remain still, trying for a light tone of voice. "A couple of months. I got kind of perfectionist over it. Took me forever to get the suit to the point where I felt like I could take it for a run, y"know?"
  
  Miss Militia gave me a very searching glance. "I think so. I only ask because we"ve had several new capes pop up since the big fight with the Teeth."
  
  After a long moment, Miss Militia glanced over at where the troopers had finished covering Mush in the yellow-white containment foam. I knew, more from the Butchers than my own knowledge, that the substance expanded on contact with air, was porous enough to breathe through, and yet elastic and adhesive enough that getting out of it was near impossible without teleporting or blasting out.
  
  "Kinda wondering how you"d try to get your way out of that when you"re holding back like this," Stoneknapper said slyly.
  
  As long as I keep being the good guy, you"ll never know, I retorted.
  
  "Good work on capturing Mush," Miss Militia said at last, turning back to me. It still felt like she was looking right through me, and I couldn"t shake the feeling she would figure me out any second. "We"d heard reports of him, but we hadn"t been able to pin down his actual power. What exactly did you see him do?
  
  "I guess he"d be a Changer- he basically unravelled into a bunch of strands and used them to pick up bits of trash and clump them into a body." I shrugged self-deprecatingly. "I didn"t see that until after he"d absorbed a couple of dumpsters."
  
  "Because you"re an idiot," Quarrel said pettily. I pushed her into the dark, rolling my eyes in the privacy of my helmet.
  
  Militia nodded, pulling a phone out of her pocket. "Can you walk me through what happened here?" she said, tapping at the screen- pulling up a recording app maybe.
  
  I cleared my throat, sending a cloud of breath out through the filter. "Well, I was staking the place out after I got intel on my first night out. I heard the Merchants were taking stolen cars here to break them down for parts, so I figured I might be able to catch Squealer..."
  
  I walked her through the entire encounter, stopping to explain a few details as Miss Militia asked for clarification on a few things. I made sure to explain away my knowledge of Mush"s structure as intuition rather than bloodsight, and she seemed to buy it.
  
  The whole experience felt surreal- not just because I, Taylor Hebert, sophomore student, was talking to a woman I looked up to, who"d been fighting the good fight since before I was born, but because the Butchers" experiences of heroes were so radically different. Heroes were to be fought, evaded, sicced on rivals, occasionally worked with in S-class scenarios. Not engaged in pleasant conversation peppered with what seemed like honest respect.
  
   However, when I got to the end of the fight-
  
  "A flamethrower?"
  
  I held up my hands defensively. "I know, I know, it was really overboard, but I couldn"t think of another way to take his trash out of play."
  
  "Oh my god." Glory Girl was staring at me wide-eyed, mouth open and feet not touching the ground. "I thought that was the engine exploding. You actually set him on fire?"
  
  "I set his trash on fire, it"s not the same."
  
  "Semantics," Vladimir scoffed. "That"s like saying you set someone"s clothes on fire, not the person. You"re not being some perfect hero right now."
  
  "You could have done serious damage though!" Glory Girl put her hands on her hips and gave me a look. "Honestly, what were you thinking?"
  
  "Definitely Brandish"s daughter," Needler noted. "Snap judgements and criticism."
  
  It might have been the condescending tone, or how she was using her flight to literally look down on me, or maybe having the pretty popular girl prodding at me hit something sensitive, but I rounded on her like a dog on a rat. "I was thinking that I was disarmed and facing an opponent I couldn"t easily counter. We don"t all get to be wrecking balls in cheerleader outfits!"
  
  "Excuse me?" Glory Girl demanded, rising an inch higher. "I saved your ass, how about a little gratitude?"
  
  "How about a little less judging me for working with what I had? All you did was punch him a couple of times and get knocked into a wall!"
  
  "Enough," Miss Militia ordered, her weapon shifting into a taser. "The villain is down without serious injury. As someone whose power comes with a lot of lethal options, I can sympathise with difficulty in using minimal force. However," she added severely, giving me a pointed look, "We do expect heroes to restrict themselves to methods that won"t cause major injuries wherever possible. Am I clear?"
  
  "Crystal," I said promptly.
  
  ""kay," Glory Girl answered, drifting back to ground and blowing a strand of hair out of her face. "Sorry," she added grudgingly. "Can we just draw a line under that and move on?" She put a hand out toward me.
  
  What I wanted was to flip her over and use her as the world"s blondest broom to sweep up the trash. That wasn"t even an image the Butchers had provided me.
  
  But I had to be the hero. So I let out a long, hot breath, imagining the anger as smoke drifting out of my lungs, and took her hand. "Okay." We shook twice and released. "For what it"s worth, I"m planning on building some better weapons after this. The taser batons are pretty good, but I need more options, I think."
  
  "Taser batons?" Miss Militia cocked an eyebrow, then motioned to a trooper who was carrying something. The trooper jogged over, revealing the baton Mush had taken off me. There was a bend in the middle like an elephant had sat on it.
  
  "Bastard," Tock Tick muttered.
  
  I took it anyway, tucking it into my belt. "So where were we?"
  
  "The flamethrower," Miss Milita said, holding the phone out again.
  
  "Right. So I sprayed at Mush a few times, trying to damage the trash so he couldn"t just keep re-absorbing it-"
  
  We finished the report, Glory Girl chiming in with her account of things, sheepishly admitting to being swatted into a wall, and Shielder confirming things once he drifted over from helping secure Mush.
  
  "That should do it," Militia said, ending the recording and putting the phone back into her pocket. "Thank you for your co-operation. On that note," she said, shifting to a more professional demeanour, "What exactly are you planning to do, going forward?"
  
  "Ooh yes, do tell," Bearskin said mockingly. "Tell her how you"re going to help old ladies cross the street and help Girl Scouts sell cookies and shit."
  
  "Well, I"m planning on focusing on the Merchants for the time being," I said, feeling the New Wavers looking at me as I spoke, "But I think you mean, am I joining the Protectorate?" I shrugged. "Afraid not."
  
  Miss Milita kept a good poker face, but I could see her eyebrows draw together slightly. "Are you sure? We do provide excellent support for heroes, especially Tinkers. We can give you access to almost any resource you might need, including components from other Tinkers."
  
  "Christ, that"d be the dream," Tock said with a wistful tone.
  
  "Wait, the Protectorate?" Shielder said incredulously. "I thought you were like, our age or something!" He looked like someone had just told him Christmas was cancelled.
  
  "I"m not saying my exact age," I said carefully, "But yes, the Protectorate."
  
  "Huh." Glory Girl was looking at me speculatively. "I"m with Eric, you definitely have more of a teen vibe."
  
  "Regardless," Miss Militia cut in, with a tone that was very emphatically not please-stop-interrupting-my-pitch, "If you don"t want to join, that"s your decision. I should warn you though, independent heroes often struggle without backup. It"s rare for someone to make it more than six months without joining some other group. As a Tinker, you"ll be in greater danger than most, given how the gangs would be able to use your abilities; they aren"t the sort of people to take no for an answer."
  
  She stepped in closer and added in a low voice, "There is some speculation right now as to whether Butcher is actually dead."
  
  I was certain, absolutely certain, even with the Butchers suddenly yelling and jeering inside my head, that I wasn"t giving anything away, but fear beat a tattoo against the inside of my head. "Shit, really?" I asked. "You think there"s a new Butcher hiding themselves or something?"
  
  "Precisely." Those bottle-green eyes were boring into me now. "So we have to keep an eye on any new or unusual activity that might fit the Butcher"s abilities."
  
  "Oooooh, they"re onto you now," Bearskin gloated. "How long do you think you can last when they"re looking at you properly, eh?"
  
  "Seriously?" Glory Girl asked incredulously, glancing back and forth between the two of us. "You think she"s Butcher in disguise or something? Look, I saw Elpis fighting, and no offence, she wasn"t doing so hot. If she was really Butcher, she"d have just gone "Mwahaha, pain blast! Bug swarm! Teleport!" instead of trying to hit Mush with a spanner, which is what she did."
  
  "For your information, I had it completely under control," I retorted, focusing on the reflexive annoyance at her description of the fight, so that I wouldn"t show any of the rush of gratified relief as she vouched for me. The Butchers simply howled in frustration at her interference.
  
  I turned back to Miss Militia. "Well, I"m not going to lie and say that doesn"t worry me, because frankly that"s terrifying. But I"ve made my decision. Besides, while I respect the Protectorate, I"ve got serious trouble when it comes to obeying authority figures," I half-lied. "I just don"t think I"d be a good fit."
  
  "HEY MISSY WE"RE IN HERE! COME GET US!" Anchorage yelled at the top of her mental voice. "I"LL SHOW YOU A GOOD FIT! ME AND YOU WITH A BOTTLE OF-"
  
  I pushed Anchorage down with a grimace, refocusing on the conversation. "I"m not planning on joining New Wave either," I added. "No offense."
  
  "None taken," Glory Girl shrugged.
  
  "Well, I suppose that covers everything." Militia made to turn away, then stopped and faced me again. "One more thing." She pointed a thumb at the vehicle I"d put together- I still hadn"t come up with a name for it yet. "There is some official leeway for independents claiming salvage from crime scenes, moreso for Tinkers. That said, we can"t turn a blind eye to outright theft, so in future, please clear anything you"re going to take with proper authorities before making off with it. Understood?"
  
  "Got it. Glory girl said the rule of thumb is- what, no drugs, no guns, no Tinkertech?"
  
  "Nothing fun," Firecracker said, resurfacing from the void.
  
  "Money"s fun," Muramasa countered.
  
  "Not with Little Miss Boring, it"s not."
  
  "That"s close," Militia admitted. "Regardless, we"ll be keeping an eye on your activities."
  
  I tried to convince myself that there wasn"t an edge in her voice as she said that, that she couldn"t possibly have any reason to suspect me. The paranoia refused to fade.
  
  "Right." I nodded to the vehicle. "So, I guess I"ll just go then?"
  
  "Go ahead. Best of luck to you, Elpis."
  
  "See you around," Glory Girl added. "Message me if you want to team up again, or if you want costume tips or something."
  
  "What"s wrong with the costume?" I looked over the armour- scratched in places, but well-shaped and functional.
  
  "I dunno," she shrugged, "It"s just missing some flair."
  
  "Right." For a brief moment I dearly wished I"d left part of my face uncovered so I could pull a face at her. "Well, if there"s nothing else, I"m going to head off." I turned and made for the vehicle- Speeder, Tock Tick called it, walking up the hood to drop into the seat. I fastened the harness I"d kludged together, put my feet on the petals, and turned the ignition.
  
  The engine started quickly, then faded to a dull grumble. I took a moment to check over the displays. Fuel, full. Mainspring at 5% and winding slowly while I had it on idle. I tested the brakes, feeling the armatures press against the gears on the axles, revved the engine a few times, then finally disengaged the handbrake and rolled it forward.
  
  "C"mon, c"mon, c"mon," Rotter whined. "Let"s frigging go already!"
  
  Some of the troopers turned to look as I eased it out of the garage and onto the road. Miss Militia raised an eyebrow as I drew past her. "How long did it take you to put that together?" she asked speculatively.
  
  I shrugged. "20 minutes-ish. Not being so perfectionist this time."
  
  Without another word I stomped on the accelerator and went from zero to sixty in about 3 seconds, trailing a whoop behind me.
  
  Later, I would worry about the Protectorate"s view of me, how they hadn"t given up the search for Butcher XV, how New Wave might join in the search and force me to fight against Glory Girl and Shielder.
  
  For now, I didn"t think about any of that. I just drove like a bat out of hell, laughing in tune with the Butchers for one long, carefree moment.
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  I remember I specifically wanted to bring Shielder into the story because we see so little of him in Worm. I'll probably find out more as I read through Ward, but for now I'm having to invent things a little.
  
  2.5
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Monday Jan 24th, Arcadia High School
  
  A hand waved in front of my face. "Taaayyyloooor?"
  
  I shook my head. "Sorry. Drifted off. What were we talking about?" Tock, try and remember that for me, I added internally.
  
  "No problem. You"re going to need the firepower if you don"t want to get caught out again."
  
  Stacy gave me a look of patient amusement, one that I"d finally been able to accept as genuine after several classes and lunches together. She"d invited me to sit with her on Tuesday, and every day after, and despite my paranoia, had been nothing but pleasant. "Well, we were talking about how Zenzation cheated on his boyfriend, then we moved to local celebrities, like how the school power couple," she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, "Is back in their "on" phase."
  
  "You better not use this as an excuse to put off getting Zenz"s new album," Anchorage warned. "I don"t care how much of a douchebag the guy is, that man"s got a direct line to my inner funk!"
  
  "Inner funk?" Stoneknapper parroted disbelievingly. "You know you weren"t actually around for the 80s, right?"
  
  While the argument started to build up steam, I followed the line of Stacy"s thumb to the centre of the cafeteria, where Victoria Dallon was indeed cuddled up to her on-again, off-again boyfriend- or should that be on-yet-again? It was weird to see the girl who"d been smashing chunks off a villain not 24 hours earlier now halfway onto a guy"s lap.
  
  "So did something bring them back together, or did they just need time to cool off?" I asked, turning back to the table and taking another forkful of lasagne. Stacy shrugged, sending the beads in her braids rattling. Anchorage had said several times how she missed being in a body with afro-textured hair, especially hair that came down almost to the hips.
  
  "Something about Glory Girl meeting a new hero yesterday. She called him up to share deets, they started talking again, and now they"re sickeningly cute together. Again."
  
  I hastily popped the lasagne into my mouth before I accidentally said anything I might regret. "Mm?"
  
  Frankie looked up from the doodles she was drawing in her notebook. "Wait, I think I heard about that. A woman in armour, took on that big garbage cape from the Merchants?"
  
  Stacey shrugged. "Something like that, I think."
  
  "Shit, is that all we get?" Firecracker asked. "We set off explosions, set him on fire, and talked to Miss Militia, and we don"t get any damn recognition?"
  
  "What did you expect from a bunch of school kids?" Vladimir pointed out.
  
  I was a little disappointed that there were so few details- I was proud of having come out of my first cape fight, with several times my own weight in materials for Tinker projects. My fingers still itched to pick up tools and start working on the impact absorption/amplification system that would be critical to one of the new weapons I had in the works-
  
  "So what"re the odds people are going to make a conspiracy theory about the new hero being the Butcher or something?" Callum asked, flicking his bright red scarf over his shoulder for the fifth time since lunch started.
  
  I almost bit through my fork; as it was, I had to use Stoneknapper"s power to straighten the tines out from where my teeth had bent them out of shape before I took it out of my mouth.
  
  Quarrel was cackling at my concern. "Aw, look at that, the little bitch is gonna get found out now! Can"t wait for you to get stuck in here with us so I can tear you apart-!"
  
  I pushed Quarrel as far into the dark as I could and set my fork down, clearing my throat quietly. "Does that happen often?" I asked, as calmly and poker-faced as I could manage.
  
  Callum shrugged, pushing his fringe out of his eyes again. I honestly wanted to tell him to either stop wearing his scarf indoors or cut his fringe or both with how often he fiddled with them both. "There"s like, four or five different threads on PHO where people do nothing but go "this guy"s the Butcher because they have super strength" or "this guy"s the Butcher because they"ve got a power that none of the other Butchers did but it kinda looks like one of theirs if you squint". It"s nuts."
  
  "Isn"t there some new teleporter in town that people were worried about for a bit?" Frankie asked, tucking her pencil back into her bun of tomato-red hair. "I saw a video somewhere..."
  
  "I think I heard about that," I said, a little hastily. "Teleportation with an explosive effect, right? Seems rare enough to be suspicious."
  
  "Bitch, please, there"s nobody like me," Firecracker said proudly. "Only ones that come close are all theses guys stealing my schtick."
  
  Needler butted in with some advice while the others jeered at Firecracker. "A little too eager there," she cautioned. "Best to seem unconcerned with the whole thing."
  
  "Hey, anybody who"s not concerned about us has a death wish," Bearskin countered.
  
  "Yeah, but they checked on the guy-" Callum pulled a face as Stacy leaned in to interrupt him.
  
  "Who checked on him? The guys who spend all day saying they banged Alexandria and pretending they"re not 30 year old virgins living in their mom"s basement?"
  
  "The PRT checked on him, actually," Callum retorted, waving his hand around for emphasis. It would have worked better if he wasn"t holding a slice of drooping pizza in his hand. "Turns out the guy"s just a thief."
  
  "And his power just happens to look exactly like one of Butcher"s?" Frankie looked sceptical.
  
  "No, see, Butcher created an explosion at the point they teleported to. Boombox blows himself up, then reforms from anywhere the shrapnel landed."
  
  The other girls both made sounds of disgust. "He makes himself explode?" Stacey made a gagging noise.
  
  "Okay," Callum conceded, "it"s gross, but," he held up a finger while he took another bite of pizza, "fhis broofs muh bon."
  
  Frankie wrinkled her nose again. "God, Callum, close your mouth, you"re an animal."
  
  "Ooh, are we insulting Callum?" A pale boy with spiky dark hair dropped down next to Frankie.
  
  "And the twink arrives at last," Rotter snorted.
  
  Nemean snarled like a tiger. "They"re children! Don"t even think about it!"
  
  "Fuck, calm down Neemy! It was a joke! You know I don"t do that!"
  
  "Rotter says the wrong thing once again." Vladimir rolled his eyes.
  
  "To be fair, we"re stuck in a high school student who hasn"t even had her first kiss," Stoneknapper pointed out. "Not defending Rotter," he added hastily as Nemean rounded on him, "but we"re all feeling the urge."
  
  I tuned out the conversation with growing disgust. I"d never given much thought to... intimate matters, and with these guys in my head, just going to the bathroom was a traumatising experience. I"d basically resigned myself to a lonely life.
  
  Enough self-pity. I refocused on the world outside my head, putting some effort into being sociable.
  
  "Hey T, where"ve you been?" I asked as he picked up his sandwich. I"d had the least contact with T since Stacy had pulled me into her group of friends, but he was the easiest to get along with, mostly because he never probed for details about Winslow or my noticeable lack of other friends. With Stacy, I got the feeling that she"d befriended me because she felt sorry for me, and while I appreciated the gesture, it also grated a little.
  
  T shrugged with the air of apathy generated by someone trying very hard to look too cool to give a shit. "Went outside to get out of the jammer, check my messages. You guys heard about the new heroes?"
  
  "We were just talking about one," Frankie said. "Some lady in armour."
  
  T nodded. "There"s a guy in armour too. He"s been kicking ass the last couple of weeks. Named Konnigit."
  
  "What the hell does that mean?" I asked. Any of you guys know what it means? I asked the Butchers.
  
  "Got me," Firecracker shrugged. "Sounds German."
  
  "Sounds close to the N-word," Rotter said.
  
  "Thank god someone else said it," Bearskin sighed.
  
  "How do you spell that?" Frankie pulled the pen out of her bun again and wrote it down as T spelled it out.
  
  "Weird how there"s two new heroes in armour now," Stacey noted, finishing her chicken wrap in two quick bites. "Think they"re related?"
  
  "Oh my god, stop," Callum begged. "Just because they both wear armour doesn"t mean there"s any connection between them. It"s like saying Armsmaster is Hero"s secret son or something."
  
  "Christ, Callum, take it down a notch," T said surprisedly.
  
  "Bite me, Tarquin."
  
  There was a chorus of indrawn breath at the table. T set his sandwich deliberately. "Callum," he said pleasantly, "Do you want to repeat that?"
  
  Callum rolled his eyes. "Fine. Sorry T, just..." He waved a hand, still holding his slice of pizza, "Everybody on PHO"s talking about bullshit theories, and it"s getting to me."
  
  "If you"re seeing stupid shit on the internet, that"s your fault," Stacy pointed out.
  
  "Yeah, yeah."
  
  "Was there anything about the woman in armour?" I asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.
  
  "You gonna Google yourself too?" Quarrel sneered.
  
  T shrugged. "Her name"s Elpis, hell if I know what it means. Glory Girl and Shielder met her on Sunday, they took down the Merchant"s new cape together. Apparently Elpis used a flamethrower on him or something."
  
  "Jesus," Frankie breathed. "Are we sure she"s a hero?" I supressed a wince.
  
  "Yeeees," Rotter hissed, "Feel the power of the dark side..."
  
  "Miss Militia showed up to take the guy in, and she didn"t arrest Elpis, so I guess it"s okay."
  
  "Hey, doesn"t Armsmaster have some kind of plasma shooter in his halberd?" I said, a defensive note coming into my voice. "Nobody gives him shit for that."
  
  Stacy gave me a surprised look. "I guess so."
  
  "S"probably a good way to fight a guy who turns into a trash heap," Callum said, cramming the last of his pizza into his mouth like some kind of disappearing trick.
  
  Frankie rested her elbows on the table. "It"s kinda weird how there"s a bunch of new capes showing up in town, isn"t it?" she said contemplatively.
  
  "Hey, I wouldn"t want to go out in spandex in this kind of weather," T said, nodding to the window, where a fine layer of snow still dusted the grass.
  
  "Yeah, but that"s why everyone"s crapping themselves thinking Butcher"s going to pop back up," Callum said. "Which is dumb."
  
  "Callum, if you think it"s dumb to be scared of a reincarnating multi-powered psycho, then I dare to be stupid." Stacy pulled the top off her pot of fruit salad and stabbed a piece of apple with a little more force than necessary.
  
  I understood where she was coming from, better than I once would have. Being a black girl in a city that was infamous for its roster of white supremacist villains was not easy- keeping track of cape news had a greater degree of urgency when half the capes preyed on minorities. Anchorage and Butcher both had memories of nasty experiences with the kind of people that agreed with the Empire.
  
  Callum was backpedalling from his misstep yet again. "Okay, being aware of Butcher"s a good idea, yes. But," he added, raising a finger along with his point, "Butcher"s been dead for three weeks today. That"s a week longer than anyone else has lasted before going crazy, and there were always sightings of the others. I keep saying, Butcher"s gone for good."
  
  Butcher himself descended into a howling rant laden with every obscenity, aimed at Callum, me, and the rest of the world. He didn"t even seem to notice as I pushed him into the dark as far as he could go.
  
  "Strange to think our legend fades so quickly," Muramasa mused. "The work of twenty years, washing away within a handful of days."
  
  "Good," Flinch said with a rare burst of energy.
  
  T swallowed a mouthful of tuna melt. "I still think the idea that Butcher turned into a bug and hibernated is good for a laugh. Big horrible bastard sleeping in a bug about yay big." He held up finger and thumb held slightly apart to illustrate his meaning.
  
  "Maybe there"s just too many voices in there to make any decisions anymore," Stacy suggested.
  
  "Maybe Butcher XV offed themselves." Everybody glanced at Frankie, who didn"t look up from where she was drawing out- I craned my head to look- Konnigit"s name in gothic script.
  
  "Frankie, that"s really dark." I"d been considering going up for another portion of pudding, but now it felt like there was a ball of lead sitting in my stomach.
  
  Quarrel pounced on the feeling like a cat on a mouse. "Awww, is the little girl feeling sad? Give it a try, bitch. Hell can"t possibly be any worse than being stuck-"
  
  I rammed her down angrily, even further than Butcher, and kept pushing even when she hit the limit. I couldn"t really hurt her like this, but I wanted to-
  
  Stacy laid her hand on my wrist. "Taylor, you alright?" she asked gently. I clenched my jaw and took a couple of breaths, reining in the instinct to shout, to lash out, to project pain, draw a weapon, swing a fist-
  
  I breathed out, and turned to meet Stacy"s worried gaze. "I"m alright. Just... bad memories."
  
  Stacy didn"t look particularly convinced, but she nodded and took her hand off my wrist.
  
  "Well," T said with his weird sense of artless tact, "I"ve had enough of cape talk for today. Anybody wanna help me with Mr Jackson"s assignment?"
  
  "Right here," I said, raising my hand a little, glad for a topic change. I was always decent with math, but now I was great with it, since it was the one topic that had remained relatively consistent over the years, other than Butcher"s vague memories of New Math being phased out. Plus, I could get away with writing out notations for Tinker projects on the side, passing them off as scribbles.
  
  The Butchers were smart enough to keep to themselves as T pulled out his assignment and started pointing out the bits he didn"t get. I switched seats to read over his shoulder, and then Callum pulled out his as well.
  
  I needed moments like this. Moments to remind me to be human; Moments to remind me that there was a life outside of a mask and costume; Moments to keep the pull of the Butchers instincts at bay.
  
  I vaguely wondered how these guys would react if I told them that they were some of the anchors I relied on to keep from following in the Butcher"s footsteps.
  
  "Better not," Tactical said with dry humour. "Callum"s head would probably burst."
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Ah, Taylor's school friends. Spot the references.
  
  Interlude 2
  Chapter Notes
  
  Warning: This chapter is from the perspective of white supremacists. Trigger warnings for racial slurs and extreme violence.
  
  Tuesday Jan 25th, Brockton Bay Downtown South
  
  Pistols, check.
  
  Spare magazines, check.
  
  Knife, check.
  
  Throwing knives, check.
  
  Grenades, check,
  
  Flashbangs, check.
  
  Victor rolled his shoulders to even out the loaded harness he was wearing and stood up.
  
  The rank and file parted for him as he walked toward the front of the empty lot they"d assembled in. He could feel the pools of their skills around him, like pots of many flavours, each flavour mixed with the others, yet distinct.
  
  The stronger flavours, more varied, had loitered at the back, as Kaiser had ordered. Closer to the front were the lower-ranked members, the fighters who had less power in the Empire.
  
  The pawns.
  
  There was little interesting skill among them- no real fighting technique to them, though a few odd sips of skills that Victor had only rarely come across. Victor didn"t bother siphoning them- the benefit to him would be negligible, and they would need their meagre abilities in the fight to come.
  
  At the head of the group were the strongest of the Empire, its champions. Rune was perched on the edge of a massive slab of cement that floated a foot off the ground, lost in the folds of her robe. If it wasn"t for the streaks of red in the black fabric, she"d have blended into the shadows. Crusader was next to her, spear resting against his shoulder, flanked by a couple of his ghostly copies. It was always strange to Victor, to feel a phantom sensation from each of Crusader"s clones- the savoury tones of combat, with an aftertaste that tasted like prawns- Crusader"s spear techniques, as he"d found out one day when he"d siphoned just a little off out of curiosity.
  
  Perhaps the ghosts were derived from Crusader"s mind- echoes of him that carried echoes of his mind in order to function? Victor couldn"t siphon anything from them though, much as he tried.
  
  A riddle never to be solved, he supposed.
  
  Hookwolf was pacing back and forth, metal barbs sprouting and retracting from the man"s broad shoulders. Eager for a fight- the taste of the man"s fighting prowess always put Victor in mind of a rich meaty stew. Stormtiger and Cricket stood by, Cricket checking the edge of one of her kamas.
  
  Alabaster was smoking a cigarette of in a corner. The sight made Victor"s lip curl, but he supposed that if he were able to reset damage as easily as the albino, he might have fallen into bad habits as well.
  
  The twins were easy to spot- Fenja and Menja had grown to 10 feet tall each, looming over the crowd. Their ornate armour covered more than usual- Kaiser had demanded that everybody be properly equipped for this battle, so the girls looked like proper warriors rather than the armour-clad lingerie model look they usually sported. Privately, Victor hoped they kept this heavier armour- leaving large amounts of skin uncovered in combat grated on his instincts, never mind that the twins were virtually impervious at full size, and tantalisingly attractive to boot.
  
  As for the leaders of the Empire Eighty Eight, they stood in the shadow of the twins, discussing final strategy.
  
  As with the twins, Kaiser and Krieg were well prepared for the fight ahead. Krieg had added knuckledusters and a heavy leather coat to the replica SS uniform that served as his costume, and although his gas mask concealed his entire face, his posture was anticipatory.
  
  Kaiser"s changes were less noticeable- since he formed a fresh suit of armour from his blades every time, his appearance in costume changed with every outing. To the untrained eye, he would have been his usual self.
  
  Victor, however, possessed very trained eyes, and to him the thicker plating, the serrated edges along the seams, the spikes on the limbs, and the crown of blades were all obvious. Kaiser rarely took the field himself, and almost never in so ferocious an appearance.
  
  His voice held a current of restrained anger as he and Krieg talked: "-send him into the melee to weaken their fighters, then we can pick them off while they"re flailing about."
  
  "It"s a good strategy," Krieg admitted, "Though if you"ll allow me to say so, I think Victor-". He broke off as he spotted Victor approaching and waved him over. Curious, Victor broke into a jog toward them.
  
  The flavours of the two filled his senses- Krieg had strong tones of kiwi-flavoured accountancy to him, while Kaiser had a stewed-apple streak of charisma. Once again, the temptation to reach out and gorge welled up, though he strangled the impulse with the ease of long practice.
  
  "Victor," Kaiser said. "We were just discussing your role in the fight."
  
  There was a noticeable lack of Kaiser"s usual smooth charisma in his tone. Normally he oversaw the functions of the organisation with understated confidence, but in the skirmishes with the Teeth over the past month, ever since the running battle that had been interrupted by a dark cloud of insects pouring down Butcher"s throat, Kaiser had been harsher, more volatile.
  
  The difference here was that it was personal for him. The story of Heith had circulated rapidly after Butcher XV fell- Kaiser"s first wife, who"d only just given him a son before she was mortally wounded in a fight with the Teeth.
  
  "Tell me," Kaiser said flatly, "Where do you think you"d be best positioned in this fight?"
  
  Victor considered the question carefully. On the one hand, his power worked best at close range, even more so with eye contact and physical contact. Siphoning hardened warriors like the Teeth would strengthen him and weaken them, as Kaiser had apparently already considered.
  
  On the other hand, Victor was under no illusions regarding his abilities. Being perhaps the most skilled man on the planet was not the same as being invincible, even if Othala could make him so for a few minutes- if they could delay him long enough for the gift to wear off, several of the Teeth could counter him at close range, so he might be better served using his acquired marksmanship to pick targets off from range.
  
  Gripping hand, Kaiser seemed in too foul a mood to accept an outright refusal, and frankly, even the uncertain danger of the Butcher"s possible attendance wasn"t enough to make him want to miss the melee. To drain a being with multiple capes worth of memories and experience...
  
  "I think," Victor spoke, choosing his words carefully, "That I should start the battle in an overwatch position, possibly with Rune and Crusader, to pick off priority targets like Animos and Reaver. Once we"ve cleared out the chaff, I could switch to a battlefield role and take the Teeth"s skills for my own."
  
  Out of the corner of his eye, Krieg nodded his head ever so slightly, approvingly. Kaiser didn"t seem to notice, eyes focused on Victor for a long moment.
  
  Abruptly, he nodded as well. "Acceptable. Find a rifle and join Rune and Crusader."
  
  "Understood." Once Kaiser waved a dismissal, Victor took off at a jog toward the trucks that had brought the weapons, skipping to the head of the queue and grabbing a large hunting rifle. Check the barrel, load the bullets, adjust the scope, find the balance- done.
  
  One last thing. Othala was leaning against a wall not too close to the front, where the lower ranks were milling around, some talking quietly, others psyching themselves up for the fight to come. The more sensible were checking their weapons; Victor made a note of those ones. This fight would be a proving ground for many, and there would be a few promotions in store for those who fought well enough.
  
  His wife looked up as he approached. The movement shifted the curtain of hair hanging over the left side of her face, exposing the Odal rune over the covered eye of her mask.
  
  "Victor." There was relief in her voice as she stood up, stretching her arms out with a grunt. "Any news?"
  
  "We"re almost ready. The last load of soldiers should be coming in any minute."
  
  "Mm." Othala folded her arms, rubbing her shoulders.
  
  "Hey," Victor said, concerned. "You alright?" Othala had never been very enthusiastic about violence, even before the attack on the meet that had introduced them, granted Othala her powers. Fitting that her power emphasised giving gifts to others, letting them fight for her.
  
  "Just... This is a lot. I mean, the Teeth? These guys are savages. And we still don"t really know about Butcher..."
  
  Victor thought for a moment, then leaned the rifle against the wall and held his arms out. Something in his chest warmed at how readily Othala stepped into his embrace.
  
  "We"ll win this," he said. "The Teeth are aggressive, but they don"t have any real technique. And they won"t even have that once I"m done with them," he added, drawing a snort from Othala. "Kaiser fought these fools before he was even leading the Empire. Now we"re stronger than ever.
  
  "As for Butcher- that thing is only strong because people are afraid to kill it, and we"ve got plans for that. Remember, that thing started out as a nigger, and it"s added nothing but chinks, fags and traitors since then. That crazy half-breed isn"t going to beat us, if it"s even still alive."
  
  Othala was silent a moment longer. Then "Okay," and she stepped back a little. He let her go- it was fairly well known in the Empire that they were together, but it was best not to push it where people could see.
  
  A harsh scraping sound came from the front- when Victor looked, he could see Kaiser rising from the ground, standing on a podium supported by blades, growing to lift him six feet off the ground. Everything fell silent.
  
  "The Teeth," Kaiser stated, "are a blight on this city that we drove out years ago. They are murderers, thieves, rapists- they are the epitome of the filth that we work to eradicate, led by a creature formed from the diseased minds of lesser filth."
  
  The crowd stirred, muttering agreement, but not raising their voices. Kaiser had ordered them to keep the element of surprise as long as possible. Victor listened closely even as he picked up the rifle again and slipped through the crowd toward Rune"s rock.
  
  "Today, we repeat our good work from years ago, and more. We will not simply drive them out- we will crush them."
  
  Kaiser"s helmet slowly turned to look over the crowd. A good technique- giving time for the statement to sink in, while meeting the eyes of the crowd, to make it seem personal to every soldier. The capes weren"t left out- Rune straightened up as Kaiser"s gaze swept over her, barely noticing Victor as he hopped onto her slab next to Crusader.
  
  "The Butcher is a monster with a power fitting its original user. It only grows stronger by stealing the strength of those who rightfully defeat it, just as the lesser races steal the works of their betters and twist it to suit them."
  
  The mood was palpable now, a tension in the air. The crowd were struggling not to cheer, to shout. Instead they were brandishing their weapons, snarling, muttering angry words. Hookwolf was growing more and more metal off in his corner, the beginnings of his favoured wolf form taking shape.
  
  "Either the Butcher has finally done the world a favour and died for good, or it has hidden itself in one of its capes. So, to begin with, we must avoid lethal force until we have seen if any of the capes have inherited. Once that is certain," Kaiser extended a hand, palm up, and curled it into a spiked fist, "I want you, my soldiers, loyal men of the Empire, to crush them to a pulp.
  
  "You know the plan. Go to your squads, ready your weapons, and prepare. Tonight we end the Teeth for good."
  
  As the crowd began to shuffle into place, gathering into knots of people, Kaiser gave one last command; "Show no mercy. Whoever kills one of the Teeth shall immediately be promoted."
  
  If the speech had fired them up, that last sentence electrified them. The soldiers rushed into position, and at Kaiser"s signal, stormed out of the lot and down the street toward the building the Teeth had holed up in.
  
  Victor crouched to keep his balance as Rune made the slab rise into the air, along with a couple of wrecked cars that trailed along behind them as she flew them out over the crowd. Fenja and Menja simply strode along at an easy pace, lifting sword and shield and spear, respectively. The others hopped onto the backs of the trucks, Kaiser in the lead as they brought up the rear.
  
  The target was a dilapidated apartment building, at the very north of the Docks. Squat and square,, ugly even before it had been abandoned; half the windows were broken, and the walls were marked with graffiti all the way up to the first floor, but a few lights flickered in the windows.
  
  The Empire had harried them hard over the last month, sending groups of capes out to ensure a numbers advantage, slowly homing in on their base. Victor had been disappointed in the encounters he"d had with them- there was something missing in them, a fire that had gone out. Without their leader, they were lacking.
  
  The army spread out to encircle the building, capes on each side. Fenja and Menja split to take the west and east, Kaiser remained at the south where he"d arrived, while Rune floated them clear over the roof to cover the north.
  
  There were a few moments of quiet as the last few stragglers slipped into place, forming a cordon around the building.
  
  The attack began with a ear-splitting shriek of metal and a crash as Kaiser sent two girder-sized spikes into the front of the building, then two more ploughing into the first floor. Fenja and Menja struck out to carve into the building with their weapons, and Rune sent her two wrecks flying into the façade. This was the first step of the plan, to soften the Teeth up with a massive blow.
  
  There were shouts from inside the building, screams of pain and rage. Now to see how the Teeth would respond.
  
  A huge crowd of men poured out of the massive hole in the north wall, all wearing armour with spikes and hooks. It took Victor a moment to realise that despite the different weapons, the different sets of armour, they all had the same body as they ran straight out, some dropping from the first floor to the ground in a well-practiced crouch, while others fell straight down and were trampled by the next clones, and the next. Dozens of them, with more every second.
  
  The soldiers made to rush forward, but Hookwolf beat them to it, leaping forward with a noise like razor blades in a blender to slam into the clones. Blood flew in every direction as Hookwolf leapt and spun, shredding them into pulp. In seconds he was more red than steel-grey, the ground around him covered with scraps of flesh and bone, larger pieces scattered here and there.
  
  "I think I"m gonna be sick," Rune managed, before she dropped to her knees and pulled up the bottom of her mask in time to vomit over the edge of the slab. It narrowly missed hitting one of the squads standing in awe of Hookwolf"s berserker performance.
  
  Crusader shook his head even as ghosts poured off him, drifting down through the slab as easily as the air to form a ring around the building, lying in wait for the rest of the Teeth. "Shake it off kid," he tutted.
  
  Victor spared him a look, then unclipped his water flask from his belt and wordlessly offered it to Rune. She grasped it eagerly and took a sip, spat that over the side, then drank until it was empty.
  
  On the west side, a dark shape crashed through a window and bolted toward Fenja, the reddish crest of hair along its back highlighting it in the darkness. Crusader"s ghosts poured toward it, but not fast enough to prevent the creature from dodging a swipe of Fenja"s sword and letting out an ear-splitting screech. Fenja stumbled, then stumbled more as she began to collapse- shrinking down in a couple of seconds to her usual height.
  
  Victor brought up the rifle and let off a shot with the ease of other"s long practice- the bullet hit Animos between the shoulders, driving another shriek from him, this time one of pain. The next bullet hit his paw, and he screeched again, limping back at speed as Crusader"s ghosts closed in.
  
  The east side had unpowered combat, Cricket dancing through the crowd to slice away with casual ease, until another woman swung at her with two curved blades the colour of old blood. Cricket blocked and fell back, and Hemorrhagia pursued with wild swings that caught Empire soldiers as Cricket dodged.
  
  The Spree clones were still coming, beginning to slip past Hookwolf at the edges- a dozen bolted toward Animos, smashing into the ghosts surrounding him. Crusader swore as Animos crouched and leapt over the ensuing fight, charging toward his gore-soaked counterpart. Victor sent another shot, but the beast dodged behind a crowd of Spree, and the bullet simply popped one of their heads.
  
  Hookwolf saw him coming too late to dodge the screech- he shrank into a man in an instant, swatted aside with the good paw.
  
  "Shit!" Rune slapped a hand on the slab- a corner of it broke off with a sharp crack and hurtled toward Animos, pursuing him like a wrecking ball.
  
  Crusader slapped her on the shoulder. "Watch it, moron! You"ll hit our guys!"
  
  Victor crossed to the other side of the platform as Animos made for the east, screeching his way through the crowd. One Empire soldier tried to stop him, and was snapped up in his jaws, crushed and tossed aside like a ragdoll.
  
  Meanwhile, without Hookwolf, the Spree clones were charging forward without resistance. Stormtiger flew over from the to retrieve his leader before the mob could trample him, cutting away at the crowd with his air claws, followed by Krieg, crossing from the east in great bounds to land in their midst, throwing attacks that tossed them into the air.
  
  The remaining Teeth capes must have seen the opportunity- with the east side weakened, they burst out from the door, some on foot, others jamming into a battered truck, a fresh wave of Spree clones leading the charge, soaking up bullets. Menja made to step in, but Animos charged her, forcing her to circle around to avoid his screech.
  
  The Teeth burst forward as a column, sweeping up Hemorrhagia from her duel as they went, Vex laying down walls of glittering forcefield razors on either side to protect them while Animos leapt about to keep the Empire capes off balance.
  
  One of the Teeth burst forward in a blur, too fast for Victor to track with the rifle, slashing about with daggers, cutting a path through the Empire"s soldiers. Reaver actually seemed to be laughing as he gutted one man, beheaded another, then stabbed a third in the eye, all within a heartbeat.
  
  Crusader created more ghosts, and Rune pulled her chunk of stone away from pursuing Animos to aim at the truck, only to duck with a scream as bullets slapped into the cement slab. Victor crouched beside her for a second, then rose at the first pause in the gunfire to fire at the truck. One of the Teeth dropped with a scream, but the truck kept going.
  
   Víctor could see the shape of things-In a few more seconds they"d cross the cordon, and then the Empire would be forced into a chase, with Spree"s clones clogging the pursuit all the while, until the bastards escaped.
  
  Then a wall of spikes swept up like a tidal wave in the truck"s path, more spikes extending from them. The driver braked desperately, only for a spear to shoot up from the ground and through the engine block. Rune"s stone crashed down on it a second later.
  
  Víctor spared a second to search for- Kaiser, striding around the southeast corner, more blades appearing to trap the Teeth as he approached. At his appearance, the Empire soldiers raised a war cry and charged with renewed vigour.
  
  The Teeth began to flee again turning for the north; Víctor raised the rifle again and caught Hemorrhagia with a shot that almost took her arm off at the shoulder. She fell, and her comrades didn"t even spare her a second glance.
  
  Victor"s lip curled. Savages.
  
  Krieg and Stormtiger dropped from the sky to block their path- Reaver bolted toward them, slowing dramatically as he hit Krieg"s resistance field, but he wasn"t looking to fight them head-on- he opened his palm and let the grenade fall to the ground, backpedalling out of the field just before it went off.
  
  Victor shouted a warning, yanking the scope out of his eye just in time- even through his eyelids, with the lip of the slab blocking most of it, the flashbang was blinding. It took precious seconds to blink the spots out of his eyes, time that the Teeth used to keep running, aided by a growing crowd of Spree clones. The older ones were starting to drop already, leaving a trail of twitching bodies that piled ever higher, forcing the Empire to climb over them. Had the Teeth planned that, our was it dumb luck?
  
  Kaiser was raising more blades from the ground, effortlessly cutting through the clones stumbling toward him, but they were blocking his view of the fleeing Teeth, preventing him from wiping them out. Victor searched for another shot-there.
  
  Vex"s head was right between the crosshairs, but the bullet ricocheted off a cloud of razor-sharp forcefields. Of course- Vex knew there was a sniper, so she was covering their heads as well as their sides.
  
  The Empire"s ring was drawing inward, trying to close in on the last of the Teeth before they could escape. Stormtiger somehow re-joined the pursuit, gusts of air speeding him along, though Krieg still knelt on the ground, blinded and bleeding from one arm. A vague memory; Stormtiger had once mentioned how his aerokinesis enhanced his sense of smell.
  
  Menja began to stride after them now that Animos was no longer harrying her, joined by Fenja, shaking off the last of the screech and growing with every step.
  
  Trucks drove forward to block their escape, Crusader"s ghosts chased after them, and soldiers closed in on every side, cutting through the Spree clones, getting closer to the core group.
  
  A voice called out from the Teeth: "SCATTER!" A figure jumped onto Animos"s back, grabbing handfuls of the crest to hang on, even as more copies poured off him left and right. Spree yelped as Animos bounded forward, leaping over the trucks in front to bolt off into the night.
  
  Víctor quickly shot again, the bullet hitting Spree in the leg, but despite his roar of pain he held on as Animos rapidly disappeared down a side street. Reaver followed after them, weaving and zig-zagging, even doubling back, all too fast and too random for Victor to do more than send a few wild shots in his direction before he zipped off.
  
  Two other figures peeled off from the crowd together- one in ivory-coloured armour, limping on a bloodied leg, the other in black supporting them. Victor repositioned to aim at them, only for a huge cloud of white to block his view. He pulled away from the scope to see a white cloud expanding over the fleeing duo, dropping snow all around them to rapidly cover the ground. Those that tried to block them were pulled to the ground and mauled by the dozens of shadowy arms that punched up through the snow, gouging and twisting whatever they could reach.
  
  Snowblind and Sinster then- the two newest recruits, the wild cards the Empire had had little intel on them. Victor hazarded a guess as to the centre of the cloud and let off a shot. There was a crack of an impact under the gunshot, but not one of hitting armour or flesh.
  
  The rest of the Teeth spread in every direction, but with Spree"s clones rapidly dwindling they no longer had a crowd of expendable troops to hide behind. Stormtiger caught up and started tearing into them with blasts of air as the twins hemmed them all in. Within a minute, the last of them were backed up against each other, dusted with white as Snowblind"s cloud continued to expand slowly over them.
  
  "We surrender!" a voice yelled. Vex stepped forward, hands in the air, even as more shards blossomed into being around the group. "We surrender," she said again, dropping to her knees and tossing the knife in her hand onto the ground.
  
  Rune brought the slab down to hover near the cage, her other chunk of stone drifting over to position itself on the other side. Crusader split off a few more ghosts to ring around the Teeth, each pointing their spears at them menacingly.
  
  Victor stepped off the edge, landing easily, and pushed his way forward through the rapidly growing crowd, until he was close enough to taste the rich flavours of combat coming off the defeated. He circled around them, drawing their eyes to him, siphoning greedily on their skills at hand to hand, marksmanship, athletics, and anything else useful, or that would hurt them- musical instruments, foreign languages, cooking.
  
  The Empire crowded around them, parting along one side as Kaiser strode forward, blades growing around the Teeth to form a cuboid cage eight feet on a side, barbs pointed inward toward the prisoners.
  
  Kaiser stopped in front of the cage, regarding them coldly even as more spikes grew from the bars, branching again to form a lattice that continued to divide and sub-divide by the second. "Where is Butcher?"
  
  Vex grimaced. "We don"t know," she said. Her voice was pained, like it cost her to admit it. "We haven"t seen anything since those fucking bugs. Swear to god."
  
  The crowd murmured with surprise. It was one thing to see no sign of the Butcher, and another thing entirely to have the Teeth outright admit that Butcher seemed to be gone.
  
  Kaiser"s head turned toward Víctor as he finished his circuit of the cage, drawing the last of the skills into him with satisfaction. "Well?"
  
  Víctor glanced toward Vex, cold-reading and psychology aiding him in analysing her posture, her tone, her eye movements. "She seems to be telling the truth. And there"s no-one left in there who has massive amounts of skill like I"d expect from Butcher."
  
  "Unless Butcher already escaped."
  
  "Possibly, but I doubt it. No Butcher would stay out of a fight like this, one that spells the end of the Teeth."
  
  Kaiser stood still for a moment, no movement besides one hand curling into a fist. Then, abruptly, he relaxed. "Very well." He turned back to the cage.
  
  "We will leave you here for the authorities," Kaiser said smoothly. "I expect they"ll throw you into the darkest hole they can find, if not the Birdcage itself, but it"s more merciful than what I had planned for you." Some of the Teeth paled at the veiled threat.
  
  Vex started as more metal grew out of the ground either side of where she knelt- this close, Víctor could make out the tell-tale ripple of energy in the ground as the metal grew forth, branching into blunt strips that extended over Vex"s legs to pin her to the ground. In less than a second she was bound securely.
  
  "Consider that a gratuity for telling me the truth," Kaiser told Vex.
  
  Screams erupted from the remaining Teeth- a forest of blades had sprouted from the ground, right through their feet, more blades extending from the sides to nail them to the floor. Some collapsed onto their hands, some grabbed at each other to stay upright. A few fell against the blades of the cage walls and hurt themselves more, while one supremely unfortunate man fell backward so suddenly that the blades simply split his feet in two, spattering the snow on the ground with red. Victor vaguely heard Rune throw up again.
  
  "That should keep the rest of you in place," Kaiser continued over the howls and sobs of pain. "We"re done here. Gather our wounded, take whatever trophies you like, return to your stations. If you"re wounded, get in line for Othala to heal you."
  
  Without another word, Kaiser turned and strode away through the crowd. Víctor followed after him, jogging a little to catch up, just in time to hear Kaiser mutter, "That damn bitch."
  
  Victor"s brow wrinkled. "Sir?" He could understand Kaiser"s foul mood, given that they hadn"t caught all of the Teeth"s capes, particularly Spree as the leader of the Boston cell, but the comment confused him.
  
  "That damned bitch," Kaiser muttered, his venomous tone at odds with his regal posture as he strode back toward the truck he"d rode in on, "had the gall to surrender. We had them trapped like rats! Of all the times for the Teeth to show some brain!"
  
  Victor floundered for a response. "I"m not sure I understand?"
  
  "Of course you don"t," Kaiser said. "Think, Victor. If they"d kept fighting like the mindless animals they are, we could have slaughtered them down to the last man and wiped them off the face of the earth. Instead they scattered like rats, and then they surrendered. That made them hostages, hostages that we couldn"t execute without sending a signal of escalation toward the rest of the city."
  
  It made a sort of sense to Victor. Killing someone in the heat of battle could be waved aside, but killing hostages was another thing entirely. "Why not just swear the men to secrecy?"
  
  "Over a hundred men came tonight, Victor. Short of killing them all, there"s no way to make that large a group remain silent. All it takes is one idiot bragging, or telling a friend, and then not only does the Empire become known for killing captives, but for trying to cover it up!" Kaiser clenched his fists until the metal plates began to creak against each other. Throughout it all, he kept walking, straight-backed and head held high. Victor could taste the caramel-apple taste of acting and self-restraint wafting off him as Kaiser held himself in check.
  
  Eventually, the faint creaking ended as they reached the truck. A metal step emerged from the ground as Kaiser put his foot out, not even breaking stride as he stepped into the truck bed. "Get Hookwolf and Krieg taken care of," he ordered, pointing a finger at Victor, "and have Crusader sweep the building for any stragglers, then search it yourself. Find any weapons or funds you can and have them brought back with us. Understood?"
  
  Victor nodded, and Kaiser slapped the top of the truck cab. The driver started the engine, and Victor stood watching as the truck rolled away from the building, down the street, and out of sight.
  
  3.1
  Thursday January 27th, Hebert Residence
  
  "Better, but you need to keep your elbows higher," Needler said. "The point is to be able to protect your head quickly if necessary."
  
  "Got it," I replied, running through the kata for the 50th time. I"d skipped going out in costume last night, as I had every night since I"d fought Mush; instead, I"d been running through every move Needler had learned from 1am. Her regeneration had let me keep going for hours without pause- even now, reaching 6am, I was only lightly tired, like I"d been for a brisk jog.
  
  "You"re crazy," Firecracker said flatly. "You just spent your whole damn night practicing technique? What the hell do you need skill for with all of us?"
  
  Vladimir simply pulled up a memory of Firecracker flailing wildly at an enemy not long after she"d inherited, managing maybe one hit in five. Firecracker gave him the finger.
  
  I finished up the last punch combo just as the fly I"d left on Dad"s pillow felt a shift, and vaguely registered a noise that I heard better with my own ears- Dad"s alarm clock.
  
  That spelled an end to my training for now. I grabbed a towel to wipe off the worst of the sweat while I tracked Dad with my hearing, getting out of bed and heading for the shower. I couldn"t wait for my turn in the shower- I"d drank multiple bottles of water over the course of the night, and sweated it all out. By this point my workout clothes were so crusty I could have used them as armour.
  
  "Fuck, even I think this is gross," Rotter groused. Nemean grunted agreement.
  
  Fortunately Dad was quick in the shower, and I slipped in while he was getting changed in his room, so he wouldn"t ask why I was caked in sweat first thing in the morning.
  
  By now I could get around the bathroom with my eyes closed- not out of familiarity, but because I"d resolved that I wasn"t giving the Butchers an eyeful. So I tossed my clothes into the laundry basket, started the water, washed my hair and scrubbed my skin with as little contact to intimate areas as possible, then dried off, all without parting my eyelids. By the time I opened them, I had a thick towel firmly wrapped around myself as I headed back to my room.
  
  "You should practice using your insects to navigate in low visibility," Tactical suggested. "You"d be basically immune to blinding techniques."
  
  "You"d be able to feel enemies coming as well. Block blows without seeing them, hit people without having to look their way. God knows what you could do with Quarrel"s power." Stoneknapper grinned horribly at the thoughts that occurred to him.
  
  "Eat shit," Quarrel grumbled.
  
  The various debates, arguments and rap battles (Anchorage vs Firecracker) continued as I dressed, also with my eyes closed, and made my way down to breakfast.
  
  Dad was just plating up two stacks of pancakes as I came in. "Morning," he managed through a huge yawn.
  
  "Hi Dad. Sleep-?" I broke off as the yawn spread to me, the kind that would have made my cheeks ache. "Sleep well?" I managed once it passed.
  
  "So-so." Dad shrugged, setting one plate down in front of my usual seat. "You?"
  
  "Forgot what I was dreaming about, but it was fun," I replied, snagging the maple syrup. "Something about kung-fu movies."
  
  "Sounds fun." Dad picked up the newspaper and unfolded it one-handed while he grabbed the jelly.
  
  "Oh my god, this is torture," Bearskin moaned. "We have to sit here every fucking morning and suffer through small talk? I"d rather watch paint dry!"
  
  "Careful," Firecracker warned. "She might actually do it. She spent all night practicing Needy"s boring-ass silat, remember? If someone told her watching paint would make her "a better hero"," I could feel the quote marks in there, "I bet she"d be there staring at it."
  
  There was a sudden lull as the Butchers considered the thought.
  
  "She would," Anchorage said at last.
  
  "Yup," Nemean grunted.
  
  "Without question," Muramasa agreed.
  
  "Very funny, guys," I rolled my eyes as I finished pouring maple syrup over my stack and picked up my fork.
  
  "Let"s just enjoy the pancakes," Tock Tick said reasonably.
  
  "Anything in the paper, Dad?" I asked, more to make conversation than anything else. I wanted to get back some of the old closeness we"d had, so I was trying to keep talking to him about anything that came up. It wasn"t like I could admit any of my personal secrets to him, so this would have to do.
  
  "More on the Empire and the Teeth," Dad said grimly, turning the page with one feeling while he took a bite off his fork. I craned my neck to see what he was looking at.
  
  The picture seemed to be a street in the aftermath of a cape fight- heavy gouges in the walls, broken glass, and a disconcerting amount of blood. There was a corpse laying face down in the street, beyond recognition.
  
  "Did somebody die?" I said faintly. I didn"t really care about what happened to the villains- hell, even the Butchers weren"t exactly close to their subordinates -but I wasn"t comfortable with the sight of mutilated bodies.
  
  "Just you wait," Butcher leered. "It"ll be second nature before you know it-"
  
  I pushed him down as Dad shook his head. "It says here," he tapped the page, "the body"s from a guy called Spree. That one who clones himself. A couple of gang members got hurt, but nobody died last night."
  
  I sank back into my seat and started working on the pancakes before I said something too knowledgeable about the situation, unable to supress the little spark of relief that Spree was still kicking. He"d never held any aspirations about becoming Butcher, preferring to stay as leader of the Boston cell, and his power wouldn"t have been a real threat anyway, so he was probably the closest thing to a friend the Butchers had within the Teeth.
  
  "More of a drinking buddy really," Knapper said nostalgically. "He nearly outdrank us that one time, remember?"
  
  "When was that?" Bearskin asked, confused.
  
  "Oh yeah, that was after the Egregious thing, right? To be fair, we had lost both legs then." Firecracker snickered. "And he was the one who ended up legless! Geddit?"
  
  "That"s a shit pun," Tactical complained. Hardly surprising that he was annoyed by the reminiscing; It had been his legs that had to regrow after that, after all.
  
  Ever since I"d caught wind of the Empire"s initial assault on the Teeth, I"d been following the events as closely as I could without showing up in person. The Empire"s first attack had forced the Teeth capes on the run, while Vex and the unpowered were left for the PRT. Hemorhaggia had been reported dead of blood loss from having her arm shot off, something that didn"t sit right with me. The remaining Teeth had gone to ground, only appearing twice to make quick attacks on Empire locations. Apparently three now, judging by the newspaper.
  
  "Fuckers executed Alice," Anchorage snarled. "Taylor, you better start fucking them up the first chance you get, you hear? No way somebody with blood control couldn"t stop herself from bleeding out. Those fuckers murdered her."
  
  "Why didn"t the newspapers report it?" Muramasa wondered. "I"d have thought the vultures would jump on a story like that."
  
  "You dickless mother-"
  
  "I am not trying to make light of her death," Muramasa said over Anchorage"s yell. "I agree that it would take more than a missing limb to have killed Hemorhaggia. I am only wondering why her death was misreported."
  
  "People are idiots," Nemean said. "Whatever happened, we hurt the Empire, right?"
  
  Anchorage subsided into growls as I kept eating, staring into my pancakes as I wondered what to do. The Teeth were Butcher"s gang, so an argument could be made that I had to clean up their mess. On the other hand, I wanted as little connection to them as possible, and nobody would blame a rookie hero for not jumping into a conflict between two major gangs.
  
  Not to mention my work against the Merchants had been paying off so far. Though I hadn"t been out since fighting Mush, I"d heard through the grapevine how they"d been forced to pull back from the edges of their territory and hide away. If I could pick up the trail again soon I might be able to find Skidmark and Squealer, and without them the gang would fall apart.
  
  I was almost finished on the last of my new equipment as well, some of which I"d designed specifically for taking them down, based on what I knew of their powers. Competent Shakers and Tinkers could be a nightmare to fight, so I didn"t intend to give Skidmark or Squealer the opportunity to suddenly get their game together.
  
  A hand waved between my face and my pancakes. I managed to strangle the impulse to stab it with my fork, instead looking up and Dad"s worried face.
  
  "Are you alright, Taylor?" I blinked in surprise.
  
  "Uh, yeah. I mean, do I not seem okay?"
  
  "You just looked kind of-" Dad waved a hand vaguely, "-spaced out. I know this whole gang fight thing is pretty scary."
  
  "You"re a n-normal teenager, remember?" Flinch hinted. "Normal g-girls get scared by these guys."
  
  "Oh," I said aloud. "Oh, no, I- well, a little," I changed tack, "It is sort of nuts having capes beating the hell out of each other in the headlines. It kinda doesn"t feel real though, like it"s happening somewhere else. I mean, neither of us have ever seen capes in person, right?"
  
  "Liar liar, pants on fire," Rotter sang.
  
  Dad was nodding. "True. Still, I remember when the Teeth used to be in the city, back in the bad old days. One of my dad"s friends got held up by some of them, they pulled one of his teeth out with a claw hammer."
  
  "That"s what you get when you don"t pay up fast enough," Vladimir shrugged. I sent him into the darkness in disgust while I pulled a face.
  
  "God, that"s horrible."
  
  "Yeah, and they"ve only got worse since then. Even without Butcher leading them, they"re monsters." Dad prodded his pancakes with a distant expression for a moment, then shook himself and focused on me. "Listen, Taylor, I know you already keep yourself safe, but I want you to promise me you won"t go anywhere risky while all this is going on, alright?"
  
  "Dad, the riskiest place I"ve been going lately is the library," I said to an inaudible chorus of boos and laughter at my outright lie. "The Boardwalk"s safe, Arcadia"s safe- and I"m not really going anywhere else."
  
  "I know, I know, I just... It"s my job to worry about you, you know? Until things have calmed down, I"ll drop you off if you need to go into town again. Deal?"
  
  So much for daytime patrols on the weekend. No way could I sneak all my gear into and out of Dad"s truck. "Deal, but I don"t think I"ll be doing anything like that for a while. Sunday was really just to check some books for school."
  
  "If by check you mean kick, and by books you mean ass, and by school you mean the cops, that one wasn"t even a lie!" Firecracker mocked.
  
  Dad sat back with a sigh, finishing off his pancakes with one overloaded forkful. "That"s good to hear. I mean, if you want to go out with some friends, that"s fine," he added hastily, "but I"m glad you"re keeping safe."
  
  Guilt coiled in my stomach like an ice-cold snake, with spikes on it. I had good reasons for not telling Dad what I was now, or what I was doing. That didn"t stop me from hating myself a little for lying to him so blatantly, and the Butchers picking apart my internal arguments didn"t help.
  
  "Just think, if Daddy found out you were stuck with us, he"d be so scared of you," Quarrel taunted. I pushed her into the dark, but the others were joining in.
  
  "Ooh yeah, old guy lived through us tearing this city up the first time. Think he"d wet himself?" Firecracker snickered.
  
  "Probably," Bearskin rumbled. "Guy looks like a stiff breeze"d knock him over."
  
  "Okay, all of you can shut the hell up," I snapped, shoving the worst of them into the dark en masse. I managed to keep the anger off my face, but only barely. As it was, I crumpled the handle of my fork in my fist before I managed to calm down.
  
  Dad spoke again as I was unobtrusively moulding the fork back into shape. "If you don"t have any plans this weekend," he said tentatively, "How about having a day together? We could rent a movie, order some takeout, veg out on the couch. Sound good?"
  
  I opened my mouth, a refusal already prepared- and then I thought. Why the hell was I refusing to spend time with Dad? I couldn"t go out and fight, I didn"t feel like wandering around to window shop, so why not?
  
  "Because you"re afraid he"ll find out what you are," Nemean said in a moment of blunt insight. "And because you"re used to hiding your problems." Only the sheer lack of interest in her tone kept me from shoving her away with the others.
  
  "You know," I said deliberately, looking Dad in the eye, "That sounds like fun. Count me in."
  
  Dad gave a small smile. "Alright." He glanced at the clock. "Damn, I need to get moving," he said, getting up and taking his plate to the sink. "Be safe on the bus, okay?"
  
  "Got it," I replied, stuffing another forkful into my mouth.
  
  
  
  The Docks
  
  "C"mon, you know these babies need breaking in on somebody worth it!" Anchorage wheedled. I didn"t push her down, but I was still doing my best to ignore her as I finished strapping the last of my new equipment to my armour.
  
  "Plenty of Nazi capes out there, all in dire need of an ass kicking," Stoneknapper agreed. "Not saying you ought to go up against bucket-head himself, but some of the easier guys would be worth the effort of finding them."
  
  "And the fact that this would draw pressure off the Teeth means never no mind to you?" I replied sarcastically, slinging a contraption shaped like a fat shotgun over my back.
  
  "Aww, it"s like you don"t trust us."
  
  "Hey Bearskin, you"ve been quiet. Nervous about your old crew?" Vladimir asked.
  
  Of all the varied backstories in the collective, Bearskin was perhaps the most unusual. He"d originally been a part of the Empire Eighty Eight, joining at the turn of the millennium and making a name for himself with his rage-inducing powers to cause havoc.
  
  Then he"d had a massive disagreement with Kaiser over topics so personal I still hadn"t looked at those memories, and been summarily forced from the city. He"d wound up in Boston, trying to re-establish himself, and made the mistake of thinking that inducing others to kill Butcher VIII, Stoneknapper, would leave him out of the inheritance.
  
  The collective had quickly beaten his prejudices out of him as he began leading the Teeth, but they"d never let him forget how he"d started off. He"d been against Quarrel"s decision to return to Brockton, not eager for fights against former comrades, and my inheritance hadn"t really changed that situation for him.
  
  At last he came to a decision. "Purity"s left the Empire now, so try to leave her alone. The rest of them..." He hesitated a second, "Fair game."
  
  Quarrel snorted. "We"re all gonna be fighting old friends if Skinny Bitch finds any of the guys," she pointed out acidly. "Anybody consider that?"
  
  "Yes, well, I think Taylor has low odds of getting anywhere near the Teeth by accident," Tock Tick huffed. "Tonight will be a field test against the Merchants, nothing dramatic."
  
  "Yeah, if we ever get out of here," Firecracker whined. Tactical sighed at her impatience.
  
  "Preparation is key to successful operations. Rushing in without thinking has always been your weak point," he lectured.
  
  "Hey. Before you guys start complaining, I"m done getting ready," I said, cutting off the impending argument before it could begin. I could have just pushed them down, but I could always feel them still swatting at each other in the back of my mind, like an itch on the back of my scalp.
  
  I strode past the speeder, reminding myself yet again to think of a better name for it. I"d improved it a lot since I"d hid it in this old warehouse, but It was a little too heavy for tonight, more suited to large assaults or transporting salvage.
  
  "Still think you should just smash whatever you find," Nemean said. "Being subtle"s too fucking boring."
  
  While the Butchers agreed with her, the order of business tonight was scouting and skirmishing, so I needed a smaller ride. The low-slung bike I"d put together on Tuesday night was bare-bones, a skeletal frame with a beast of an engine and low-profile tyres. I swung one leg over the seat and leaned forward to grab the handles, my boots locking into the footrests as I pressed them home. The engine started with a flick of a switch, a low throbbing I could feel in my chest as I eased it toward the door.
  
  I"d been very careful about securing the warehouse- Stoneknapper"s power had let me seal over every door and window from the inside, moulding the concrete into seamless walls. The only ways in and out would be to either teleport into the soundproof brick booth I"d constructed inside, or to flip the hair trigger switch I"d hidden inside a wall.
  
  Speaking of which, a couple of ants wound their way through the little tunnel in the brickwork, all the way to the platform no larger than a bottlecap. It was set up so that when five or so ants climbed onto it, the platform would dip, releasing the switch for the mechanism that would unlatch the only door I hadn"t fused with the walls, pulling it aside on soundless rollers to let me drive the bike out onto the street.
  
  "We should really find a way to incorporate your power into other control mechanisms," Tock Tick noted as the door rolled closed equally quietly. "Think how much stuff we could get done if you had your insects operating everything."
  
  "Maybe for controlling tools when I"m building stuff," I admitted, "But I couldn"t use that kind of stuff out in the field. What if it breaks and somebody sees my stuff is crammed full of ants?"
  
  "Sounds hilarious," Rotter sniggered.
  
  I cranked the accelerator and pulled away from the lair, letting the senses of my insects seep in as I went. Even with the weather starting to warm up, most insects were still keeping themselves sheltered to wait out the cold weather. Luckily, plenty of them had found shelter indoors, so I could get a sense of all the buildings within my range almost immediately, and search the place from top to bottom if I was willing to take a few minutes.
  
  The upshot was that if I cruised along at about 30mph, I could cast a very wide net to find anything useful, and if something did catch my attention, I could slow down and look closer, using bloodsight to find anyone nearby. In that manner I made my way along the length of the Docks, trawling for any signs of trouble.
  
  Within 15 minutes I picked up on several people thrashing back and forth and swung the bike around to head for them, quiet as a murmur.
  
  "About damn time we got some action," Anchorage complained.
  
  Right around where the south end of downtown bordered the Docks, a parking lot was playing host to a battle. Ten Empire soldiers were firing over and around a couple of parked cars at several Asian gangbangers on the other side, yelling slurs and insults with every bullet.
  
  "The ABB must be taking advantage of the situation," Tactical mused. "With Kaiser"s capes occupied, this is a prime chance to push forward and claim some territory."
  
  "Except for these guys not bringing anything like enough men," Vladimir pointed out. "They"ll be dead in a couple minutes at this rate."
  
  "Count again," I responded, gunning the engine to burst out from around the corner I"d been lurking behind. I zipped straight past the gobsmacked ABB members huddled behind an ugly sedan, reaching out to slap one unconscious as I passed, then veered around to head straight for the Empire goons.
  
  Before they could start firing at me, I pulled the contraption off my back and aimed it one-handed, toggling a switch with my thumb to select the right ammo type to fire. It resembled a fat grenade launcher in steel grey, with three magazines feeding into the body, a folding stock, and a really complicated scope on top.
  
  A projectile about the size and shape of a slim drink can shot out of the barrel, right into the midst of the skinheads. The second it hit the ground, the impact broke the seal on the pressurised container of air inside, which sent the gas bursting out through the vents along the exterior, along with a mixture of chalk dust and pepper spray. The skinheads were quickly enveloped in a cloud of stinging white dust.
  
  "Booooooring," Firecracker booed. "You wouldn"t even need Tactical"s thinking to make some bombs- or you could tinker up a spring-loaded grenade full of razor blades, or a bullet that drills into people, or something-"
  
  I pushed her down as the imagery became more graphic and focused on the gangers. The smarter ones had jumped away from the grenade immediately, but more than half were now howling and clutching at their eyes, or coughing violently. Meanwhile, I simply closed the vents of my mouthguard and swung myself off the bike, catching the nearest ganger in the chest with my foot. I slapped him upside the head as he fell over to knock him out, then strode forward to finish the others, firing off another dust round at the ABB across the lot to keep them occupied.
  
  One of the skinheads who"d got out of the cloud fastest charged toward me with a crowbar. I simply flicked to a different ammo type and fired into his chest. The rubber head of the punch round meant the impact didn"t break anything, but the guy must have felt like he was kicked by a mule. It certainly knocked him off his feet.
  
  "Now to the melee," Muramasa ordered. "The time has come for you to wield your blades at last!"
  
  I mostly wanted to avoid wasting any more ammo I might need, but I still slung the launcher back onto my back and drew the swords sheathed at my hips. They were short and wide, like a roman gladius, with triggers on the handles to control the extra functions.
  
  Crowbar skinhead was gamely struggling to his feet, holding his weapon out in front of him. I tapped one sword against his crowbar and pulled the first trigger, sending a jolt of electricity through the blade and down into him. He dropped the crowbar with a yelp, and I shocked him with the other sword to take him down.
  
  "Doing wwwell," Flinch praised. "Minimum force, quick and quiet."
  
  I smiled inside my helmet at the compliment, then turned and waded into the crowd. More guys went down to electric shocks or blows from the flats of my swords, plus an elbow to the face for one stubborn guy.
  
  Within seconds there was only one guy still standing, a man who"d covered his face with a bandana and had just managed to reload his shotgun when I finished shocking one more guy into unconsciousness.
  
  "Don"t fucking move!" Shotgun shrieked, bringing the gun up to point unsteadily at me. At this range I could see the stylised eagle tattoos on his arms, mostly perched on swastikas or similar.
  
  "Sloppy," Tactical critiqued. "You should have taken him down before he had a chance to bring a weapon to bear on you."
  
  "And the ABB guys are getting away," Rotter pointed out. I glanced sideways with bloodsight- indeed, several silhouettes were stumbling out of the second cloud, coughing and retching.
  
  "Awright!" The shotgun guy yelled, bringing my attention back to him. "Drop the fucking swords and get on the ground! A-and take that armour off!"
  
  "Does he seriously think we"re going to do that?" Tock said disbelievingly. Vladimir shrugged.
  
  "Hey, we"ve been standing still, like he said. Maybe he actually thinks Taylor's intimidated."
  
  "Then we must teach him otherwise," Muramasa growled, memories of countless sword drills flowing out from him. Reacting to his instincts, I shifted my stance a little and clicked the second trigger on the right sword.
  
  "I said don"t fucking move!" the skinhead shrieked, jabbing the gun at me. I simply swayed out of the way and swung the sword up, pressing the second trigger all the way in. The blade went through the barrel of the gun like a hot knife through thin ice, leaving the skinhead holding the halves of his weapon with a slack-jawed look of fear.
  
  Tock Tick"s power hadn"t gone entirely unused before my inheritance- Muramasa had jumped on a design that had great synergy with his swordsmanship, and had browbeat the others into leaving him alone long enough to build the devices into his swords.
  
  The effect was to oscillate the blade several thousand times a minute, so it would cut through most objects easily. Adding in Muramasa"s own cutting power, the blade would be unstoppable to ordinary materials. I"d re-used the design when building my swords, along with retractable cutting edges to keep the swords blunted until I needed them. With the edges out and vibrating, and augmented by Muramasa"s power, I could have feasibly cut through a building.
  
  If the skinhead had been smarter, he might have realised I"d turned his shotgun into a sawn-off, but I jabbed the other sword into his chest and tased him senseless before he could join the dots. He joined the rest of his friends, groaning and writhing on the ground.
  
  "Hahahahahahahaaaaa!" Anchorage was laughing her metaphorical head off. "Oh god, the look on his FACE! Dumbass actually though he had the drop on her, but NO!"
  
  "Other guys"re running," Nemean pointed out impatiently. I sheathed the swords again and spun around, pulling the launcher into my hands again and switching to the third magazine. I"d been hoping for a chance to use these ones.
  
  The ABB guys were just managing to get from a stagger to a run when I lined up on the short guy bringing up the rear and pulled the trigger.
  
  These rounds were more complicated than either of the others- the rubber head was linked to the four spring-loaded segments of the casing, which held the packed nylon net inside. When the head smacked into his back, the casing exploded outward and forward, throwing the net and its weighted edges around the guy. He toppled over with a shriek, wrapped up like a burrito.
  
  "After them!" Firecracker whooped as I sprinted back to the bike and flung myself on, gunning the engine to chase after the rest of the pack.
  
  The group split in two as I got close, heading down opposite streets. I fired a net round at the smaller group and chased after the larger, quickly overtaking them to block the road with the bike and wrapping two of them before they could even change direction. The remaining two immediately put their hands up.
  
  "Smart choice," I said, re-attaching the launcher to my back and dismounting again. The two backed up a bit as I approached them, eyes wide in fear. I ignored them to hunker down and grab the two on the ground. The weighted edges of the nets were made to attach to the rest of the net, and then the central mechanism would draw it in until the subject was too tightly bound to do more than wriggle. The central portion also unfolded into a carry handle for ease of use.
  
  All I had to do was grab one handle in each hand and lift their occupants off the ground like sacks of potatoes, if potatoes could shout streams of profanity in Japanese and what might have been Vietnamese. I turned to the two that had surrendered and jerked my head back toward the parking lot. "Let"s move."
  
  "Nets and tasers," Butcher grumbled as we headed back, the captives in front of me. "What the hell have we sunk to that this is the kind of kiddy shit we"re using?"
  
  "Personally, I"m appreciating the greater requirement of skill that goes into non-lethal measures," Needler mused. "This might be why heroes always had trouble getting the better of us, being obliged to use minimum force."
  
  "Well, it was only ever the crazies that wanted to kill Butcher," Knapper pointed out without a trace of irony. "Everyone with a self-preservation instinct had to hold back on us."
  
  "Hey! I resemble that remark!" Anchorage shouted.
  
  Once we reached the lot, I set the two netted guys down by the car the ABB had been hiding behind. and pulled out some zipties. "Hands behind your backs," I ordered, cinching them shut around the wrists of the standing two.
  
  "Now then," I said, pulling out a notepad and pen, "I"m not really going after either of your gangs right now; I"m focusing on the Merchants. I"m sure you can see the upside in cooperating with heroes to snitch on your enemies." The confusion on their faces was indeed turning to comprehension as I explained.
  
  "So guys," I flicked to a new page, "Tell me where I might find Skidmark and Squealer."
  
  3.2
  Thursday 27th January, The Docks
  
  In the time-honoured tradition of low-level gang members everywhere, I"d barely had to say anything before the crooks had started talking, offering me rough locations, times and dates, and known members of the Merchants.
  
  <"I"m telling you man, it"s on 89th Street,"> the tallest ABB member insisted. The guy next to him, propped up against the car in his net, kept shaking his head.
  
  <"Look, I"ve seen their messed-up cars there myself. I"ll bet my right nut they"ve got a place on Wilson.">
  
  I listened as closely as I could while I was tying up the E88 members. It was getting harder though, with most of them starting to come around and struggle against their bonds, or shout various slurs. I"d held back with the various nerve clusters that Needler"s Thinker power had highlighted, to avoid permanent injuries, which unfortunately meant they wouldn"t stay down for long.
  
  "Next time bring some gags," Vlad grumbled. Firecracker radiated with sudden inspiration.
  
  "We could just use their socks."
  
  There was a moment where the Butchers all considered the idea- I used the relative quiet to ziptie another skinhead"s hands and feet and haul him over to where I was lining up the rest.
  
  Stoneknapper broke the silence first. "Kid, that is disgusting, cruel, and degrading. I love it! Hey Taylor, can we-?"
  
  "No." I grabbed the last Empire soldier as he was trying to get to his feet and got him in an armbar. He started demanding I let him go, screaming slurs at the same time. Apparently neither he nor his friends knew what I looked like under the armour, so they assumed I was a minority.
  
  I put Loudmouth down next to his friends and walked back to the ABB guys, who were still arguing over where the Merchants were storing their cars. Being able to understand Japanese now didn"t make listening to them any more interesting, so I clapped my hands in front of them, hard enough to echo off the buildings.
  
  "Okay guys, one answer. Where are they stashing their cars?" Tall and Wrapped exchanged looks, before Tall shrugged and nodded to his friend.
  
  "Okay, Joji thinks it"s on 89th, I say it"s on Wilson. We don"t know anything else." Wrapped shrugged, as much as he could with the net around him.
  
  "It"s a start. Thanks for letting me know- I"ll be sure to tell the cops you guys cooperated." I made to pull my phone out.
  
  A fly I"d hidden on the jacket of one of the skinheads felt a vibration. I cocked my head like I"d heard something. "Just a moment."
  
  The skinhead in question was a ratty looking guy, with a terrible attempt at a moustache. He tried to spit on me as I hauled him up- I simply grabbed his belt and collar, then flipped him upside down in one quick movement, and back again.
  
  "Don"t try it," I advised, setting him back down without further resistance and pulling his phone out of his jacket. The screen was lit up with a text alert.
  
  Frankie:
  
  >Dude herd frm J Mrchnts got some Teeth<
  
  >there sellin them 2 th Empire<
  
  >Strmtger gonna mess them up<
  
  "...What?" Muramasa managed. Without thinking, I started typing a message.
  
  >where?<
  
  I bolted for the bike, barely remembering to loosen my grip on the phone so I wouldn"t crush it. Moustache was yelling at me to give it back, but it barely registered. As it was, I barely remembered to swap it for my phone and dial 911.
  
  "Brockton Bay 91-" I cut the dispatcher off as I started the engine and peeled out of the lot as fast as I could.
  
  "This is independent hero Elpis, I"ve got a bunch of E88 and ABB guys secured in the parking lot on Oakwood, send somebody to pick them up. I just got info that the Merchants are holding a couple of the Teeth at-" I slowed to glance at the phone, relying on the bugs I was sweeping in front of me to navigate, "-a warehouse on Franklin. They"re selling them out to the Empire, they"re sending Stormtiger. Get some heroes over there, I"m on the way now."
  
  I hung up and jammed the phone into a spare compartment, then gunned the engine as I took a right. Franklin was a way away from here, but the roads were deserted at this time of night and this bike was a beast. I could probably make it in time.
  
  The Butchers were in uproar, shouting back and forth about every detail.
  
  "How the hell did the Merchants capture anybody?" Tactical raged, uncharacteristically furious. "Those addicts lost their one physical cape to us, and Squealer probably couldn"t build something to hold them-"
  
  "Reaver could outrun them, Spree could outnumber them, Vex is already in jail, Hemo"s... gone. That leaves Animos, Snowblind and Sinister." Needler was biting her lip worriedly. "Skidmark"s power might be able to hold them."
  
  "No, no, fuck "em all! This has got to be a setup!" Firecracker"s denial was so strong it felt almost solid. "No fucking way those shits got the best of any of us!"
  
  The one good thing about this was that they weren"t talking to me right now. Unfortunately that left me to think about my reaction. I hadn"t hesitated to rush into this; to drop everything and race halfway across town because of a couple of texts.
  
  Certainly it was a good move from a tactical perspective. I was focused on the Merchants, and a large gathering held a good chance of their remaining capes attending. Taking out a couple of the Teeth or the Empire could help settle things down in the Bay as well.
  
  But, although it burned to admit, a large part of the reason I"d rushed into this was because I didn"t want the Teeth to die. Arrest them, send them to jail, I could do that. I knew better than anyone the horrible things they"d done, would continue to do.
  
  It wasn"t just because I wanted to keep anyone at all from dying. Some twisted little part of me cared about what happened to the Teeth, the part that remembered parties after jobs and patching up injuries together, the camaraderie of monsters. The Teeth were by no means affectionate, and the Butchers cared more about the gang as a concept than as people, but there was a bond there stronger than anything I"d had in years.
  
  I hated it. I hated that those bastards had more human connections than me. I hated that I felt any concern for people who delighted in causing pain, who were just scaled up versions of the bitches who"d made me into this. I hated that after trying to sever any possible ties between me and the Teeth, I was rushing into this anyway- because they were going to die if I didn"t, and that would be on my conscience.
  
  "Can"t this thing go any faster?" Anchorage snarled. I didn"t bother to respond- the bike was in maximum gear with the engine at redline. The only thing slowing me now was dodging the occasional late night driver.
  
  "That"s Kennedy Avenue, which means- Here!" I jerked the bike into a 90 degree skid at Rotter"s words, screeching to a stop facing a dilapidated warehouse with holes in the roof. I could see the light leaking out and hear a crowd roaring with shouts and laughter, but more importantly, I could see the blood silhouettes of people in a circle, surrounding two figures who were retreating into the centre.
  
  I directed bugs to slip onto everybody in there- the ones I sent into the middle of the ring were swept in, like they were blown by a strong wind. There was another person standing apart from the crowd, up on a balcony or something. Based on the ring, it had to be Skidmark himself.
  
  Jackpot.
  
  I locked the front wheel in place and cranked the throttle- the bike jumped forward a foot before I got it under control, smoke starting to stream from the tyre as it accelerated against the tarmac. I hit a switch, and a reinforced framework folded down from the front faring, locking into place around the wheel. Then I released the brake.
  
  The bike shot forward like a bullet, front wheel leaving the ground. I grimly forced it down to the ground again and hunched down as far as I could, dropping my head at the last second.
  
  The ramming frame punched through the corrugated iron of the wall with ease. Sparks flew as the edges of the hole scraped against the bike and my armour, and then I was through, raising my head to take a look.
  
  Sure enough, a mess of grubby people were surrounding a ring on the ground, purple on the outside, shading to dark blue on the inner edge. Right in the centre were two figures in spiked armour; a slim woman in white, and a bulky man in black, with thick metal plates in places.
  
  A miniature snow cloud hung over their heads, and shadowy left arms grew from the ground around them like nightmarish seaweed, clawing and gouging at the few Merchants who"d wound up inside the circle with them. All of them were turning to face me with looks of shock on their faces as I veered to the left and grabbed the grenade launcher off my back.
  
  "Of course it"s the fucking newbies!" Bearskin snarled as I fired two pepper rounds into the crowd. "A matched pair of morons!"
  
  "How"d they get captured?" Nemean demanded. "They should have torn these guys apart by now!"
  
  They should have- Sinister"s hands weren"t individually strong, but they were fantastic for crowd control, and Snowblind should have frozen these guys solid by now- the gangers who"d fallen into the ring were covered in thick frost, barely moving. Except I could see that while Sinister had carpeted the ground inside the ring with his power, the ones fading into existence from the ring itself were ripped to shreds by the force of Skidmark"s acceleration fields before they could solidify.
  
  Likewise, the snow falling from Snowblind"s cloud and her blasts was being continually pushed back into the ring, forming a knee-high wall of powder inside. By sheer dumb luck and power interactions, Skidmark had managed to trap both of them like rats.
  
  "Okay, so Skidmark"s fields move stuff above them, not just what they"re touching," Vladimir noted. "Something to keep in mind."
  
  "We need to take that crackhead out first," Tactical growled, trying to look around. I flicked my gaze to the fly I"d planted as I circled the crowd, keeping the launcher ready.
  
  There. Standing on a metal balcony above the floor, a dark skinned man in dark blue, wearing a mask over the top of his head that looked like a pair of briefs more than anything else. Skidmark, leader of the Merchants, with a mouthful of some of the nastiest teeth any of us had ever seen.
  
  "Wow. That"s a boner killer right there," Rotter managed.
  
  "Who the fucking fuck"s this cunt?!" the Merchant leader shrieked. "Somebody shoot them for shit"s sake!"
  
  A couple of Merchants who"d avoided the pepper dust pulled guns and tried to aim at me. I hit the throttle and looped around the crowd before any of them could squeeze off a shot, taking aim with a punch round as I came back around.
  
  Skidmark had enough sense to dodge the round, so it bounced off the wall behind him and pinwheeled back into the crowd; somebody shouted in pain as the round hit them, but I didn"t look to see who. Instead I switched to pepper rounds once more and launched one just over Skidmark"s head, enveloping him in a cloud of stinging white dust. I felt the fly on his back struggling to breathe through the cloud. Something to remember there- pepper was supposed to be an insecticide after all.
  
  A stray bullet smashed the wing mirror on the bike, and I immediately changed course, switching back to punch rounds and firing at the larger guns. A woman with a shotgun keeled over clutching her gut, while a fat man who"d somehow got an AK47 almost flipped right over when the punch round hit him in the face. I winced at the blood that spurted out from the impact.
  
  "Might need to tweak the rounds to spread the force better," Tock Tick mused. "Maybe change the magazines too- we"ve only got two of each ammo type left; well, one pepper round. A helical design would let us fit more in, though the weight distribution would be a problem if we"re storing ammo along the length of the barrel-"
  
  "We"re in the middle of a fight, you prick!" Quarrel raged. "It"s bad enough the twig isn"t using my power, we don"t need your nerd babble making it worse!"
  
  "I"m trying to help!" Tock protested. "I"m the Tinker! This is all I can do!"
  
  I accelerated toward the body of the crowd, racking the launcher again before I threw the bike into a drift, bleeding momentum just before I crashed into the front. The force wasn"t enough to break anything, as far as I could tell through bloodsight, but getting sideswiped by a bike was enough to put half a dozen on their asses.
  
  Before anybody could recover, I leapt off the bike with swords set to blunt and taze, jabbing and swinging my way through the remainder of the crowd, whoever wasn"t downed from the pepper or running for the exits.
  
  More went down as Sinister"s arms began hurling whatever debris they could high over the ring to hit them in the backs. Some was thrown too low and was pushed back in, to be scooped up and thrown again.
  
  The few people who fell in were immediately dragged to the ground and pinned by dozens of arms as Snowblind hosed them with frost. I"d have to see to those people as soon as possible- Snowblind"s frost didn"t just encase people, it actively leeched the heat out of whatever it touched. Too much could cause dangerous frostbite if left for long enough.
  
  "Th-the fields are getting weaker," Flinch called. "Maybe S-s-s; he needs to concentrate to keep them up." Bearskin grunted an agreement.
  
  "Look at the ring- it"s starting to fade, and there"s uneven bits. My guess, he needs to layer the zones to get them this strong."
  
  Muramasa scrutinised the arcs of the objects that were being thrown over. "The field seems to cut out at about ten feet," he announced. "In theory we could jump over it."
  
  The two Teeth capes shrank back from me as I made it to the edge of the ring. I vaguely noted that their costumes had been updated since Quarrel had seen them last. Sinister now had spikes only on the left side of his outfit, heaviest on his arm, while Snowblind had spiked cleats and a mask that opened from eyebrows to cheekbones
  
  An incoming bug alerted me to easily duck a swung pipe from a scrawny guy that really should have known better and repaying it with a side-kick that knocked the wind out of him. He toppled sideways onto the ring, shooting him into the centre like he"d fallen on a treadmill.
  
  The pair in the middle hastily stepped aside as he skidded between them, only to reverse direction and slide straight back when he hit the other side, finally stopping right in the middle with a whimper. A few arms clamped down over his limbs almost perfunctorily.
  
  "...Okay, those fields are stronger than I was expecting," Stoneknapper admitted bemusedly.
  
  "Wait!" Firecracker jolted in sudden realisation. "We forgot to wrap the guy!"
  
  I swivelled on the spot to see Skidmark staggering down the steps leading from the balcony, snatching up a bottle of something to wash his face. I swapped a sword for the launcher and fired one-handed at him.
  
  The net round took him in the chest, pinning the arm with the bottle to his chest and sending him staggering as the net constricted around him, but he didn"t fall. Instead the air around him shimmered like a heat haze, and the ground under him swirled with colour. Skidmark stepped onto it and slid slowly forward, more shimmers appearing in front of him as he began to skate forward on his fields, making a beeline for the door a couple of fleeing Merchants had left hanging open.
  
  "He"s skating away," Anchorage stated flatly. "The fucker is skating away. I don"t believe this shit."
  
  I switched to punch rounds and drew a bead on the Merchant leader, who was now shooting along, head down and legs pumping like a hockey player headed for the goal. Just as I was leading the shot, something bounced off my head with a dull clunk.
  
  "Who the fuck?" Nemean snarled as I turned. Sinister was taking a beer bottle off one of his shadow arms with a defiant expression, Snowblind shrinking back behind him.
  
  "Did we really recruit somebody that stupid?" Needler asked incredulously. I wordlessly switched to my last net round and shot him right in the chest. Sinister went over with a curse, only the carpet of hands preventing him from hitting the ground. With all the arms holding him up, he looked like he was crowdsurfing in hell.
  
  "What sounds better, being arrested by me or having the Empire come down on you?" I asked them over my shoulder as I turned and re-aimed at Skidmark with my last punch round. He was almost to the door when I pulled the trigger.
  
  Somehow, the bastard managed to spin to face the round as it came, and the net around him shimmered into colour. The punch round simply skipped off it and shot up toward the ceiling, spinning merrily.
  
  "Oh that is it!" Bearskin roared as I ran back toward the bike. "We are crushing that son of a bitch right now!"
  
  "Can we catch up with him?" Tactical demanded. Tock Tick snorted.
  
  "He"s leaving a trail of acceleration fields behind him, of course we can!" An old memory of a racing video game flickered in the dark for a second.
  
  "So long assholes!" Skidmark shouted cheekily as he skated toward the door, blowing a raspberry as he slid outside-
  
  -and hurled back inside as a blow took him off his feet. He landed on his trail of fields, crushing the fly I"d planted, and slid forward again, coming to a stop by the bare feet of the man who"d just strode through the door.
  
  The guy had the kind of physique you saw on bodybuilders, muscles rippling beneath the pale skin of his bare chest. All he wore were tattered black slacks, chains wrapped around his hands, forearms and calves, and a blue-white tiger mask.
  
  "Well shit, this just got harder," Stoneknapper commented. Quarrel shrugged.
  
  "Hey, look on the bright side. I"d rather lose to him than Mush."
  
  "Ooh, good point. We might get some real fun now! Nothing personal, kid," Rotter added almost as an afterthought.
  
  Stormtiger pinned Skidmark"s ankle beneath one large foot and leaned over with a smug air. "If it isn"t the dumbest named cape in town. Hey, Skidmark."
  
  "The fuck? The fuck? The fuck are you doing here?!" Skidmark shrieked, spittle flying from his mouth.
  
  Stormtiger"s voice was loud in the warehouse, nothing but the groans of beaten Merchants and the bike"s engine to add texture to the quiet. "See, we got a tip from one of your guys," he said teasingly. "Something about you cockroaches cornering a couple of Teeth, wanting to sell them to us?"
  
  "I never said shit to you guys! This is my turf, my crew, my prisoners! You guys can go home and fuck your cousins some more!" Skidmark struggled inside the netting, to no effect.
  
  "I can"t deny the guy"s got guts," Vladimir admitted.
  
  "Yeah, and we"re probably going to see them in a minute," Anchorage countered. "Black guys being held by racist capes don"t have much lifespan."
  
  Stormtiger ignored Skidmark"s ranting to glance around the room, at the Merchants strewn over the floor, the dust settled everywhere, before stopping on me, and the Shakers a bit behind me, still stuck in the ring.
  
  "Now this is unexpected," he rumbled, flexing one hand. The air around it swirled and condensed into a bunch of translucent blades jutting from each knuckle. "Don"t think we"ve been introduced." He reached down with his free hand to grab at the handle on Skidmark"s net and hauled him up like a novelty suitcase. "Name"s Stormtiger, of the Empire Eighty Eight."
  
  "I"ve heard," I said politely, arms hanging loose at my side, not close enough to my swords to seem threatening.
  
  I"d actually heard a lot more than most. Stormtiger had been making his name in New York years ago, in a parahuman fighting ring along with Hookwolf and Cricket. The Teeth had actually considered trying to recruit them, admiring their power and unrestrained brutality, before Hookwolf had shredded the fight promoter and made off with the vault"s earnings. The three had joined up with another group of white supremacists for protection before moving to join the Empire in Brockton.
  
  I knew Stormtiger could form those claws out of the air and explode them at will to create blasts of air. I knew he could at least hover in the air, if not actually fly, and I knew his power formed a shell of air around him that could deflect bullets.
  
  Really not what I was expecting to fight tonight. The launcher was down to one net round, and the other weapons I"d brought were more to disable machinery than capes.
  
  "Looks like it"s going to be blades then." Needler rifled through the katas I"d drilled the last few days. "He is more agile, but you have the advantage of strength."
  
  "It depends how durable his claws are," Muramasa said thoughtfully. "If we can break them, victory is more certain."
  
  "Hey girl, why not just tell the newbies who you are?" Butcher said as slyly as he could manage. "All three of you could crush this guy."
  
  I pushed him into the darkness before he could say anything else, keeping my focus on Stormtiger as he slowly padded my way. The others were thinking something similar, I could feel it in the shape of their thoughts, but they were anticipating the fight to come.
  
  "Don"t think I caught your name," Stormtiger continued, perfectly at ease as he strolled toward me, Skidmark dangling from his hand.
  
  "I"m Elpis. Just starting out, been focusing on the Merchants. Didn"t want to get mixed up with the big dogs."
  
  "Too fucking late for that," Sinister muttered as Snowblind pulled him to his feet. "Bitch."
  
  Stormtiger glanced past me at the pair, then refocused. "Well, I don"t have anything against you right now, so I"ll let you go. I only came here to get him," he shook Skidmark, starting him on another torrent of profanity, "and them."
  
  I was speaking even before the Butchers started screaming at me, demanding I hurt him, kill him, drink his blood and feed him his own eyes, all of it centred on not abandoning their crew. "If you"re planning on killing them, I can"t walk away."
  
  "G-good. You"re doing a b-brave thing," Flinch praised. That made my decision a little easier- not for the horrible little knot in my soul that actually cared about them, but because I had to be the good guy, even if it hurt.
  
  Stormtiger cocked his head, slowly waggling his fingers, the claws moving with them. "You a hero?"
  
  "Yup." The others all gawked at me like I"d just grown another head.
  
  "Well." Stormtiger"s jaw worked behind the mask for a moment, then he nodded. "I can respect that."
  
  I saw his shoulders tense at the same time that the danger sense blared in the back of my head, and threw myself sideways just before he dropped Skidmark and swept his free hand up toward me. A hurricane rush of air tore past me and slammed into Sinister and Snowblind, tossing them back until they reached the boundary and simply bounced back onto the floor. The snow inside was thrown up into a storm as the ring flung it back and forth, only to fall back onto the pair.
  
  I"d already rolled to my feet and drawn my swords, moving into a stance. Stormtiger rushed at me, feet leaving the ground as he swiped at me with those claws. I parried both, feeling the air around him turning the swords aside, and swept a leg low to hit his ankles.
  
  "What was that supposed to do?" Firecracker demanded. "He"s floating, remember?"
  
  Stormtiger hopped over it easily, but I could see how his manoeuvrability wasn"t that good in the air- he didn"t fly, he floated and drifted. I backed up as his feet touched ground again, sending a few clumsy swings at him that he leaned away from, before bursting forward to sweep the leg again.
  
  Like before, he jumped over the swing, but this time I swung one sword up and lunged forward with the other. He avoided the first with a twist of the hips, but the lunge plunged deep into the whirling air around him, almost hitting him before he swept his arms and flung himself back with a burst of air. I could see a reddening spot on his chest from where a few sparks had jumped the gap.
  
  "So close!" Anchorage crowed. "Let"s mess this guy up!"
  
  I rushed forward, bringing one sword up to smack aside a claw he threw at me. Danger sense flared again, and I threw myself into a roll as the claw exploded with a burst of air that tossed me forward. I managed to land on my feet, but Stormtiger was already swiping at me.
  
  The claws scratched lines into my breastplate before I could block them, but I forced him back with a wild swing. The bastard actually looked cheerful as I glanced at the shallow gouges in my armour.
  
  "Okay, so we know the armour can stand up to his claws." Tock Tick winced at the damage. "Partially, at least. We probably shouldn"t take many more attacks like that."
  
  "So we need to pin his arms and get rid of his claws," Bearskin said.
  
  I raised my swords again. "Great. Nothing difficult about that."
  
  Stormtiger made the next move, tossing a claw from each hand at me. I zig-zagged to avoid them, feeling my ears pop from the explosions of air as I closed the distance. Stormtiger backpedalled, parrying with his claws and joyful roars as we traded blows, neither making headway.
  
  Then I saw the ground change colour behind him as he tried to slash at my stomach. A familiar block of purple-to-blue, getting darker and darker. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Skidmark wriggling around like a worm, struggling to his knees with a furious expression as he layered fields behind Stormtiger.
  
  "Well, not the weirdest three-way I"ve been in," Anchorage announced. "Maybe we won"t break the guy"s face after this."
  
  "Did you mean fights or sex back there?" Needler asked with a kind of revolted curiosity. Anchorage snickered.
  
  "Either/or. Remember that time Blasto made those octo- croc things?"
  
  I tuned out the weird anecdote as I brought both swords down in a x-shape that would have broken Stormtiger"s arms if he hadn"t hopped back smartly.
  
  A massive, over-committed blow like that would normally be a bad move in a fight, because it took time to recover, and your opponent could exploit that opening ruthlessly.
  
  Except as Stormtiger raised a handful of claws that seemed to thicken as he channelled more air into them, his heel landed on the layered field, and his foot shot sideways, dragging the rest of his body along with it and throwing him into a cartwheel.
  
  "Not so smug now, you stripey fuck!" Rotter shouted gleefully.
  
  "Get in there!" Bearskin roared as I lunged, with both swords at maximum voltage.
  
  Somehow, Stormtiger managed to stop himself, upside down mid-air and deflect my blows with his claws, but I could see how he strained as his arms were forced back to his body.
  
  I pushed forward, letting my right arm fold to swivel and smash my elbow into his sternum. Stormtiger made a strangled noise as he fell back into the field- the force swept him to my right, still upside down.
  
  "Your boy"s running," Stoneknapper said suddenly. It took me a split-second to realise he wasn"t talking about the Nazi.
  
  I had some more bugs heading over to Skidmark just as he managed to hop from his knees to his feet and started for the door again, laying more fields to speed himself up. Stormtiger flipped himself over and chased after him, making for the trail Skidmark was leaving behind him.
  
  "Looks like we"re playing chase!" Firecracker shouted. "Sure would be a good time to be able to teleport, huh?"
  
  I ignored the jab as I pounded after the both of them- Stormtiger was hampered by the hit to his chest, and the gap between him and the Merchant leader was growing by the moment. Instead he came to a halt and brought up a handful of claws.
  
  "He"s going to kill him!" Flinch yelled. I threw myself into a tackle at Stormtiger, slamming into his waist. His claws flailed mid-throw, spiking into the ground as I bore down on Stormtiger.
  
  Then the claws exploded all at once.
  
  For a second there was noise too loud to actually be understandable, louder than gunshots and grenades or much of anything the Butchers had felt. I felt myself hurtle up and through the air until I hit something that dented at the impact and fell to the floor.
  
  I"d never been more thankful for Nemean"s immunity to pain. As it was, I could feel the tightness in my muscles of deep bruising, the vision in one eye was blurry, and all I could hear was a loud ringing. When I shook my head, I felt hot wetness running out of my ears. Blood.
  
  "Eardrums burst," Nemean spat. "Bastard"s going to pay."
  
  I managed to raise my head off the ground. The warehouse had been tossed by the explosion. Some of the Merchants had been thrown about from the force, writhing in pain from broken bones. The pepper dust had been kicked up as well, hanging in the air as a white haze.
  
  Most of my bugs had died from the pressure, so I glanced about with bloodsight. Nobody was bleeding out at least. As for the capes-
  
  Sinister and Snowblind were hobbling out of the ring- where the ring used to be. The fields had faded to nothingness, and Snowblind was sawing at the net around Sinister with a small knife, the man himself trying to use the barbs on his armour to help.
  
  My ears popped unpleasantly- I could feel the tissue growing back into place. My hearing started to come back. Close to me was a deep retching. Stormtiger was on his knees, clutching at his nose and sobbing in pain.
  
  "Shot in the dark; he"s got enhanced smelling," Firecracker said. That would certainly explain his current predicament.
  
  I cast about for my swords in the haze. One was halfway across the room, away from the door, but the other had fallen close to me. I got to my hands and knees and reached for it.
  
  The ground under it turned purple-to-blue; the sword slid away from my hand with a scrape of metal. Then another patch appeared under me, the colours going the other way. I tried to grab onto something, but the floor was smooth, and I slid back until my feet bumped the wall.
  
  Skidmark was standing next to the door, holding a rag over his nose and mouth. He made several one-handed gestures with his free arm, then turned and jogged out.
  
  "Fuck! Fucking fucking fuck!" Bearskin raged and thrashed, gnashing his teeth, wanting to hit something, bit something, anything.
  
  "We had him! We could have just knocked him out and dealt with the rest, but we didn"t focus!" Tactical fumed, already picking apart all the mistakes I"d made tonight. Now Skidmark would know who I was, what I could do, and he would know to expect me.
  
  Muramasa was angry too, but he kept a better hold on it. "There will be other opportunities. We can interrogate these Merchants here, learn from them, and continue to pursue-"
  
  "Knock it off with the "noble samurai" shit, "masa! We got hosed and you know it! We got our collective skinny white-girl ass beat by a crack head and a Nazi!" Anchorage"s anger made my knuckles itch, brought the urge to find something heavy and swing it at something soft.
  
  I gritted my teeth and pushed them all down, all but Flinch and Tock Tick, taking deep breaths that pulled at the filter in my mask. Calm. I needed to be calm for this.
  
  I stood up, avoiding the field in front of me, though I could see how it was already fading, and headed over to where Stormtiger knelt, vaguely noticing that one of my ankles was sprained, though almost healed.
  
  Stormtiger glanced up as I approached and pushed to his feet, trying to leap away with a burst of air. I snatched at one of his ankles as he jumped and yanked him back, slamming a fist into his diaphragm.
  
  Even with the breath knocked out of him, Stormtiger tried swiping at me with half-formed claws- I grabbed his wrist and let Needler"s Thinker power draw me to the weaknesses that stood out like diamonds on black velvet. I dug my thumb into the pressure point between the tendons, then twisted it up behind his back and jammed a finger into his armpit, hitting the brachial plexus and numbing the arm.
  
  I stamped on the back of his knee, forcing him to the ground, then simply clapped my palms to his temples. He swayed for a second, then flopped back, unconscious.
  
  "C-careful," Flinch said worriedly. "I know it"s hard right now, but-"
  
  "I know," I said dismisively, then blinked at my own tone. More quietly, I repeated "I know."
  
  I knelt to tie Stormtiger up, hands and feet, using extra ties to be sure he wouldn"t be able to reach his restraints with his claws.
  
  I felt a cockroach die across the room. When I looked up, Sinister and Snowblind were standing halfway across the warehouse, staring at me while Sinister"s arms dragged the Merchants into a pile of pained groans.
  
  "What?" I asked after a long moment.
  
  "What now?" Sinister said. I"d forgotten how nasal his voice was.
  
  "Now?" I rose slowly, avoiding sudden movements. Snowblind looked jumpy nonetheless, eyes wide under the mask. I could feel heated disapproval from the other Butchers in the back of my head, disdain for her lack of nerve.
  
  I might have been able to take them. Snowblind"s power took time to put someone out completely, especially someone who could smash through the frost before it was fully formed, and Sinister needed to lay a trail for his arms to sprout from anywhere outside his six foot radius. He was also inexperienced enough to have summoned hands out of everywhere he"d marked instead of keeping some in reserve, meaning I knew exactly what areas to avoid.
  
  But I was tired, and low on ammo. My swords were across the room, and I"d wasted a lot of energy tonight. The thought of letting them go felt like edging toward the rim of a bottomless pit, but it appealed to my exhaustion.
  
  "Now, I call the authorities and hand over what I"ve found tonight. You can either leave or stick around." I shrugged my shoulders, wincing at the scraping noise one of the plates made. I"d have to bend that back into shape later.
  
  Snowblind took a few steps back, clearly preferring the first option. Sinister didn"t move, slowly summoning more arms from around his feet. A couple more slid out from the heavy plates on his armour, giving him about a dozen extra arms from his shoulders, forearms, knees, hips, chest and back.
  
  "How many shots you got in that thing?" He nodded at the launcher" stock poking over my shoulder.
  
  "Enough," I said flatly, not sure if Sinister was actually going to be as stupid as I expected he was.
  
  "See," Sinister"s shadowy arms reached to various sheathes and pulled a variety of knives, "You did us a solid by coming when you did. Kept us from being sliced up by the Nazi.
  
  "So I"m going to give you this one freebie. You walk off, wait five minutes, then call the cops to pick up the bodies. You get to see another sunrise."
  
  Apparently, he was going to be that stupid.
  
  "This is a bad matchup," Tock Tick fretted. "They"ve got range on you, your armour"s damaged, and nobody else can help fight."
  
  "T-taylor, these two are new, but they"re vicious. Don"t g-get yourself killed." Flinch winced at his own warning. "Maybe you should go."
  
  I sighed, long and deep. "I can"t." I took a step to the left, blocking Stormtiger from view. "I have to be the good guy."
  
  "I wasn"t going to let him cut you up," I said steadily, putting my hands on my hips. "I can"t let you guys do any killing either."
  
  Sinister"s eyes bulged. "Do you not know who the fuck we are?" he spat. "We"re the fucking Teeth! We"re the nastiest motherfuckers around! And you"re gonna stop us? With your fucking trashcan armour and no weapons?"
  
  "Never said I was happy with it," I said, with the resigned facade I"d had to cultivate to survive Winslow. Bad as the situation was, I"d still rather fight these guys than deal with that again. Barely.
  
  "Taylor, if they kill you, you"ll be stuck in their head forever," Tock insisted. "This is too dangerous."
  
  The other Butchers, meanwhile, radiated approval at this course of action. Fighting two members of the Teeth gave them a chance of a host who would return to be the rightful leader of the Teeth.
  
  I could leave. The only people here were gangbangers and a white supremacist with a double-digit body count. Nobody would mourn them.
  
  But was that my own thought? Or was that the callousness of the Butchers seeping into me? Either way, I couldn"t let myself listen to it.
  
  "I have to do this Tock." I reluctantly pushed him into the dark, gently, and felt my emotions numb a little bit more. I"d need that coldness for this.
  
  Snowblind stepped up next to her lover, raising her hands to about hip height, palms down. Her cloud started to form over her head, about the size of a frisbee, dropping a light dusting of powder onto her head and shoulders. "You know what really bad frostbite looks like? When they have to saw your toes off because they"ve gone black? That"s what I"m gonna do to you if you don"t move." There was a nervous edge to her voice, like she"d either really do it or chicken out. That unpredictable bravado had made her someone the Butchers had kept an eye on. Pushing hard might make her back off.
  
  "You know what getting your face kicked in looks like?" I retorted. "That"s what I"m going to do if you try it."
  
  What I could see of her face flushed red; her hands came up in a flash, and a blizzard spewed right at me.
  
  3.3
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Thursday January 27th, The Docks
  
  I snatched up Stormtiger as I threw myself sideways, the chill of Snowblind"s blast seeping in from where it"d clipped my feet. The stream of frost followed us, but not before I"d dashed far enough to put one of the girders that held up the roof between us.
  
  The two quickly broke into a run as I shifted Stormtiger to one arm and raised the other, firing the grappler. It lodged neatly in the corner of two struts, and I hit the retract function, zipping toward the roof fast enough that Snowblind"s shriek of anger dopplered behind me.
  
  I managed to swing both Stormtiger and myself up onto a central beam thick enough to support both of us and laid him along it as I grabbed a spare grappler cable off my belt.
  
  "So what"re you going to do now?" Tactical demanded as I quickly wound it around Stormtiger and the beam. "You"re going to fight both of them? You could barely handle Mush or Skidmark for god"s sake! And these are our people!"
  
  I pushed him back into the dark again, unsettled by how quickly he"d managed to resurface. Then again, Tactical had always been one of the calmer Butchers.
  
  He did have a point. Once again I was against opponents that I hadn"t specifically prepared for, who knew the Butcher"s capabilities better than anyone else. They might have been idiots, but they worked well together.
  
  Proving the point, Sinister was manifesting arms from the base of the beam, spiralling up and around to form an unsettling staircase. As I watched, he took his first tentative steps, then grew bolder as his power supported his weight. Snowblind followed behind him, holding one of the shadowy hands that sprouted from the armour on his back.
  
  On the other hand, I couldn"t back down from this.
  
  I wanted to be a hero, or at least not be the Butcher, and if I let members of the Teeth execute people in cold blood, I"d be taking another step toward the abyss. That was how it always started- being worn down by their influence until whatever was left was corrupted, easily driven.
  
  I refused to let them win; I refused to be worn down.
  
  Instead I released my grappler and fired across to the next beam, then simply stepped out into open air.
  
  I"d timed it just right- I swung down just as the villains were on the opposite side of the girder from me. Snowblind leaned out to try and aim at me as I passed, but I simply released the grappler and fell the last ten feet to the floor, rolling with the landing to come up running, dodging around the trail of Sinister"s arms, or just jumping over them.
  
  There were almost no bugs left alive in the building- Stormtiger"s air bomb and the wave of pepper dust had killed off almost all of them. The survivors were damaged or slowly succumbing.
  
  I chose to push them on anyway, searching across the floor. Even as they struggled and stopped, my will overrode their instincts to survive, driving them to search for me.
  
  The fly on the hilt of the sword closest to me died just as I picked it up, asphyxiated by the dust. I brushed it off and continued to the other sword at a run, scooping up a few other items along the way.
  
  "They"re c-coming," Flinch warned. True enough, Snowblind had come back down her lover"s creepy staircase. Sinister had simply grabbed at the girder with all the arms sprouting from his armour and walked himself down like a man-sized spider.
  
  I could feel the shape of the Butchers" thoughts in the back of my mind- they were split between derision for his showboating, and appreciation for the aesthetic.
  
  With all of them pushed down, my emotions were dulled too. Right now I mostly felt cold. The thought of fighting them wasn"t intimidating, and the thought of losing was only an abstract concept.
  
   I had both swords in hand by the time their boots hit the floor, cutting edges out as I began walking toward the lovers, slashing through the arms that got in my way. The shadows wavered and melted away as they were severed.
  
  "Really wish we could have done more tests with his power," Tock pondered. "They can"t form on an unstable surface, and impacts dissipate them, but I wonder what else affects them."
  
  "Really not the time, Tock," I thought back. I was close enough now to see Sinister"s furious eyes under his mask as he paced back and forth, letting his power soak into the areas he hadn"t already covered.
  
  Still, out of idle curiosity, I pulled the taser trigger on my next swing. The arms burst apart at the touch with a crackle of electricity. Sinister"s stride faltered as he stared at the spot where the arms had been.
  
  "Huh." I turned my head towards him. "That"s something."
  
  "Fuck you," Sinister snapped. A couple of arms started to form from where I"d burst them. "I can keep making my hands all night, and you still have to get close to stop me. You ain"t winning this."
  
  I shrugged. Then I threw the sword to land between his feet. Sinister fell over backwards with a yelp, the arms on his armour keeping him from sprawling.
  
  Snowblind immediately shot at me, a blast as strong as a firehose, but I was already dodging, pulling the launcher off my back to point at her.
  
  I"d used all my pepper rounds tonight, and all but one net, but the punch rounds were re-usable. I"d simply picked up the ones I"d fired as I was getting my swords back.
  
  The first round hit Snowblind in the stomach; she doubled over with a choked sound, her frost splashing across the ground. Sinister grabbed the sword off the ground and rushed forward to stand between me and her. "Come on you bitch!"
  
  I shot at him too- the shadowy arms on his suit all folded themselves over in front of him, grasping at each other and intertwining to form a barrier. The impact dispelled a couple, but Sinister barely moved, and the punch round was quickly passed to the arms on the floor and ferried away.
  
  I replaced the launcher and lunged to meet him, bringing the sword up to parry his wild swing. I could tell right away he didn"t have any experience with a sword, while I had experience from Stoneknapper onwards, and especially Muramasa"s Kendo memories.
  
  What really made him a challenge was the arms sprouting from him that swung wildly with a variety of knives, some nicking at my armour, and the dozens more that bloomed from the ground around him, grabbing at my armour, failing to find purchase, but still slowing me down.
  
  I turned the parry into a riposte, flicking the sword out of his hand and into the air, then jabbing him in the chest. The arms slowed it with their knives, and his suit insulated a lot of the electricity, but he still shrieked in pain, letting himself fall back to be carried back by the carpet of left arms behind him.
  
  "What I wouldn"t give to have that many hands to tinker with," Tock Tick mused.
  
  "Are you seriously hoping he"ll kill me just so you can tinker more?" I demanded as I caught the falling sword in my off hand. I thumbed the taser functions to maximum and dropped low, spinning in a circle to clear an area around me.
  
  "You know that"s not what I meant," Tock protested- I grumbled at him while my arms swung in wide arcs, hacking a path through the arms as I advanced toward Sinister.
  
  Sinister backed away toward Snowblind, his feet passing through the arms like they weren"t there. A part of his power- he could choose how the arms interacted with him, solid or intangible.
  
  The arms were growing more thickly, more of them sprouting to fill the gaps between us as Sinister drew on his power. The plates on his suit were boasting two or three shadow arms apiece.
  
  "S"like spaghetti made of bad dreams," Firecracker commented as she resurfaced at last, not as boisterous as usual. I could feel the others bobbing back into the light as well.
  
  I wasn"t pushing the Butchers down as much now that they"d spent their anger on losing Skidmark, but there was a new irritation directed at the pair of Teeth with me. Angry that they didn"t run, or didn"t fight harder, or didn"t kill me so they could return to their gang.
  
  "Don"t count me in that," Firecracker insisted as I kept swiping my way through the jungle of shadows. "These guys are too dumb to stick with the Teeth if they don"t know when to run."
  
  "What, you"re not wishing they"d kill me and take you all back to your gang?"
  
  Firecracker shrugged. "I mean, you"re boring, but you"re a different boring. Fresh boring. I get that"s a oggy-mon or whatever-"
  
  "Oxymoron," I corrected absentmindedly as I did another spin to wipe out the arms sprouting around me. Sinister had taken long enough to try and attack me from behind, but now he was going full force, desperation in his actions.
  
  "What I mean is, being stuck in here, I know things always end. Everybody thinks they"ll be the guy who lives forever, and they aren"t. You"ll get offed at some point, and we"ll go back to the Teeth, even if we have to start it up all over again, but for now?" She shrugged again. "It"s something new."
  
  "What a ringing endorsement." I eyed the support beam to my right as unobtrusively as I could, about halfway between me and the pair. "Maybe this"ll keep your interest."
  
  I threw myself into a leap, slashing away the arms that tried to clutch at me, throwing a leg out to land on the side of the beam, then pushing off again before I could fall.
  
  I landed just behind Sinister as he started to turn; The right sword swept out behind me to clear the area, while the left whirled in front of him, tearing the shadows on him to shreds.
  
  Sinister fell back again, that same crowd-surfing trick, but I followed this time, leaping up to land on him with both feet, driving him to the floor as I rammed the swords into his chest. This time he had no extra arms to deflect the blow, and nowhere to go, pinned to the concrete as he was. Within a few seconds of pained shaking he"d passed out, the arms all over the building bursting into wisps of darkness that faded into nothing.
  
  Danger sense flared, a feeling behind me, and I rolled forward, grabbing Sinister"s costume to drag him with me, flipping him over me so the blast of frost from Snowblind splashed over his back. Her attack cut off with a frantic apology as she tried to move around us, attack from an angle where I wasn"t using her boyfriend as a shield.
  
  Stoneknapper had just bobbed to the surface, and his thoughts weren"t complimentary. "Really? Friendly fire? Why"d we let these idiots in again?"
  
  "A matched pair of Shakers doesn"t come by often," Tactical grunted. "We"ve always been lacking in battlefield control."
  
  Rotter snickered. "After how he just got buzzed, he"d prolly be glad for the icepack!"
  
  I rolled sideways, taking Sinister with me as I rose to my feet, holding him by the armpits as an unwilling shield. His head lolled back and his limbs dangled limply, thoroughly out of it.
  
  "Let him go!" Snowblind shrieked, the cloud over her head visibly growing with her anger, snow falling from it faster and thicker.
  
  "Sure." I pulled him in toward me, then hurled him at her. His unconscious form bowled her over with a cry of surprise. She didn"t even manage to untangle her limbs from his before I took two smart steps forward and jabbed her with the sword.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was about two minutes later when one hero in red smashed through the wall, and another in grey dropped through the skylight. "Nobody move!" the first one bellowed.
  
  "Loud much?" Firecracker commented.
  
  I looked up from where I was crouched next to the last of the Merchants. I"d moved them all around a couple of trashcan fires I"d started to warm them up while I brushed the frost off them and used bloodsight to check for any tissue damage.
  
  I recognised the guy, obviously. Assault, one of the local Protectorate heroes, respected and well-liked. Red body armour from head to toe, with a matching visor that covered everything from the eyes up. His power was some kind of kinetic manipulation, touch-based, that made him a very flexible combatant.
  
  The other guy was harder to make out, grey and dark grey in the shadows of the rafters, but I recognised the silhouette. Still, Assault was the one to talk to right now.
  
  Under better circumstances, I would have been polite. As it was, all I could do was wearily gesture to the wall- specifically the hole he"d made, above the hole I"d made and across from the door. "Did you have to go through the wall?" I asked wearily.
  
  Anchorage gasped mockingly. "Oh, heroes causing all that horrible property damage, whatever is the world coming to?" She couldn"t possibly have sounded more sarcastic.
  
  Assault eased out of the fighting stance he"d dropped into upon landing. "Right. Sorry, we were kind of expecting... more." He sniffed, then winced and gagged. "Gah, what the hell is that?"
  
  "Pepper dust," I explained, picking up the unconscious Merchant gingerly and placing him a bit closer to the fire in the recovery position. Only then did I straighten up and walk a few steps toward him. "I"m Elpis, good to meet you."
  
  "Assault. I"ve heard about you. Good work on Mush." He stuck out a hand, and I shook it briefly.
  
  "Thanks. That means a lot."
  
  "Quick, rot his hand!" Dirty Rotter blurted, as if I"d actually listen to what he said. I pushed him out of the light a bit as a warning.
  
  "So," Assault asked, letting go, "pepper dust?"
  
  "Yeah, I made a couple of canisters of the stuff for dealing with large crowds." He followed as I started walking over to where I"d tied up the capes, the Teeth to one support beam and Stormtiger to another. "It"s just pepper spray and chalk dust, really. There"s still a little in the air though, so you might taste a bit of spice."
  
  "More than a little." Assault spat off to the side as we reached the captives, turning his head back and forth from Stormtiger to Snowblind and Sinister in an almost cartoonish manner; then he gave a long, loud wolf whistle.
  
  "Well, this is a lot better than I was expected tonight. Hey, Gargoyle!" he yelled into the rafters, "Quit skulking around and get down here!"
  
  The second hero dropped from the rafters, drifting down a lot slower than an actual fall. Up close I could make out the suit; slate grey on the chest, forearms and shins, and a lighter, almost silver colour on the thighs and biceps, with the lightest part being the mask that wrapped around his head from hairline to lip, with pointed earpieces and white lenses.
  
  Of course, that was the second thing to notice about him- the first thing that really sprang to mind was-
  
  "It"s the stone man again," Nemean exclaimed.
  
  I dipped into bloodsight for a half-second. Sure enough, nothing in him lit up. All I could see was the smooth grey surface of his skin, like polished marble. Even the hair poking out from the top of the mask was rigid grey spikes.
  
  The figure extended a hand politely. "Uh, hi. I"m Gargoyle, you probably already guessed that, Assault just said- anyway."
  
  I gripped his hand and pumped firmly. "Good to meet you. I"m Elpis." I"d already heard of him, of course. The news had made a big deal about the small-time independent hero who"d decided to join the local Protectorate in the aftermath of Quarrel"s death. It probably had something to do with how a thrown sewer lid had broken one of his legs off.
  
  "This dumbass," Quarrel griped. "I should"ve aimed for his head."
  
  "Would that have even killed him?" Vladimir wondered. "He wasn"t bleeding when the leg came off, and he seems to have stuck it back on okay; Maybe he can reattach parts when he"s made of stone."
  
  Needler disagreed. "He certainly screamed as if it hurt, I doubt that it was that easy for him. Most likely that New Wave healer fixed him up."
  
  "So," Assault said, unknowingly interrupting the conversation, "Can you walk us through what happened here? I really want to know how you took down three villains all at once."
  
  "It wasn"t really all at once," I admitted. "I got a tip that the Merchants were going to sell those two-" I pointed, "-to that asshole-" pointed with the other hand, "-so I rushed over to bust it up. Skidmark had them in a ring of his fields, and I tried to take him down, but Stormtiger arrived and knocked him over. So then I had to fight Stormtiger, which let Skidmark escape, and just when I"d got him tied up, Snowblind and Sinister wanted to fight me, so I had to take them on as well."
  
  "Like you weren"t enjoying it," Bearskin snorted.
  
  "Getting the shit kicked out of me isn"t my idea of fun," I shot back.
  
  "Damn." Assault"s expression was sympathetic. "Well, that"s a rough night alright, but I"m still damn impressed you managed to pull this off." He swept his hand around to indicate the piles of restrained and unconscious Merchants, and the three villains. "Hell of a haul. You should be proud."
  
  "Yeah, I"ll feel that when I"ve got all the dents out of this armour," I said snippily. One hand went to the claw marks on the breastplate. "And this."
  
  "What the hell did that?" Gargoyle sounded faintly horrified.
  
  "Pussy," Butcher grunted.
  
  "Wonder if my power could work on him like this," Stoneknapper pondered.
  
  "Stormtiger"s got claws, and he knows how to use them. Plus they can explode."
  
  "Jesus."
  
  "Good to know your armour can take a hit though," Assault said cheerily. "I"m liking the Mandalorian look you"ve got going for you."
  
  "Like in Star Wars," Tock Tick said when I didn"t understand the reference. "Boba Fett, Jango Fett, all those guys. A clan of armoured warriors."
  
  "I was really going more for function than looks," I admitted. "Might be time to spruce it up a bit."
  
  "Yeah, it"s not really that heroic," Gargoyle blurted. Assault shot him a venomous look.
  
  "Sorry about him, he"s new. Doesn"t know when to shut up." His expression smoothed back into a boyish grin. "Anyway, we"ve got troopers following behind us, should be just another minute. You want us to help get everything cleared up?"
  
  True enough, two vans of troopers showed up within 30 seconds, as well as several police cars. I stood back and watched as they loaded the villains onto stretchers, covered them with containment foam, and then loaded the resulting piles into the vans.
  
  I had to give a more complete account of how things had gone; Assault proved to be a great audience, oohing and aahing at all the dramatic moments. I found myself opening up about how frustrated I was in losing Skidmark, the sheer stress of trying to keep anyone from dying, and some plans I had for upgrading my equipment.
  
  "I wish I had one of these," Assault said wistfully, holding the sword up to look at it closer. The lights of the police cars flashed red and blue off the blade.
  
  "I still can"t believe you let him hold it!" Knapper exploded. "He"s the enemy, remember?"
  
  "Nah, we"re an upstanding, respectable hero now, remember?" Anchorage said. "It"s our duty and honour to keep the peace and- pffffffhahahahaahahaa! Ah fuck, couldn"t, I couldn"t say it!"
  
  "You"ve really made a splash so far," Assault said, handing the sword back carefully. I"d locked all the functions down before I"d let him handle it, but it was gratifying to see him be cautious with it.
  
  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gargoyle finish helping to carry the last of the Merchants into the back of a paddy wagon, shivering from the aftereffects of Snowblind"s blasts. A few others were having their eyes washed out before being loaded in- that pepper dust had really got in everywhere. Dusting his hands off, Gargoyle turned toward us and made his way over in a couple of long slow bounds, like he was walking on the moon.
  
  He reached us just as Assault asked "So I know Miss Militia already gave you the sales pitch-"
  
  I held up my hands apologetically. "Sorry, I"m really not looking to join up. I appreciate the offer, but..." I trailed off and shrugged in what I hoped was a what-can-you-do sort of way.
  
  "You sure?" Gargoyle said quizzically. """Cause I"ve only been in for three weeks and I"m loving it. Didn"t know how much I wanted somebody to talk about this stuff with until I had "em, y"know?"
  
  Assault made a chopping motion in front of his chest to cut Gargoyle off, before turning back to me. "It"s okay; We"d rather have you friendly with us than pressure you and ruin that. I was just wondering if you"d be okay with some time working together.
  
  "See, it"s mostly low-level stuff right now, but the Teeth are either running from the Empire or hitting them around the edges, and every so often that turns into a huge brawl that wrecks a whole street. They always fade away before we can catch them, or they use Spree"s clones to bog us down.
  
  "And the other gangs aren"t staying still either. The ABB"s pushing into the west and south where they can- hell, you saw that tonight, right? Because the Empire"s got every cape trying to pin down the Teeth, so we"re getting more clashes like that.
  
  "Downtown"s about the only place that isn"t seeing action, because Coil"s holding that."
  
  "Yeah, I"ve heard almost nothing about him," I broke in. "Nothing about his power, he"s got no other capes working for him- what"s his deal?"
  
  Gargoyle opened his mouth, finger raised in a lecturing manner- then lowered his finger again. "I"ve actually got no idea," he admitted. "Don"t think we"ve even had a briefing about him."
  
   Assault hummed. "Yup. Honestly, we"re not sure about him. He hires mercenaries, all of them ex-military, all in serious gear. Body armour for them, automatics for other gangs, and some Tinkertech lasers for anything else."
  
  "Jesus Christ," Tactical muttered, "Where the hell"s he got the money for that from?" I repeated the question aloud out of curiosity.
  
  "No idea. We thought maybe he"s making the tech himself, but no sign of material deliveries. Heck, some guys think he might not even have powers."
  
  "A normal man could not hold such territory in this city," Muramasa proclaimed. "You mark my words, there is something subtler at play."
  
  "The Merchants aren"t doing anything with a visible direction- not that they ever had much territory either, so right now they"re just a nuisance." Assault waved a hand to indicate the troopers and cops finishing up everything. "Case in point."
  
  "So basically you want to be able to call on me for some unofficial backup if things get hot between the big guys," I summarised.
  
  "Fuckers need help to do their jobs for them," Quarrel sneered. I gave her a light shove and tuned her out.
  
  Assault chuckled. "Well I wouldn"t call it out quite like that, but yeah, pretty much. You can definitely handle yourself, and we"d love to see what you can do. I know Armsmaster"d love to talk shop with you, maybe swap some ideas." His cheeks twitched slightly, and I realised he was waggling his eyebrows under the visor.
  
  I chewed my lip. "Guys, thoughts?"
  
  Tock Tick rolled his eyes. "Like you have to ask. Take it! Armsmaster"s one of the best Tinkers on the continent! Just think what we could pick up from him!"
  
  "There is no fucking way you"re helping these shits fight our guys, you shit-stained toothpick-" Butcher"s thoughts seemed to doppler away as I shoved him back down again. In a perverse way I admired his commitment to spewing insults at me at every opportunity.
  
  "Yep, there he goes," Tactical noted. "Teeth aside, if the guys are keeping to hit and run tactics, we"re more likely to take the fight to the other gangs. We could soften them up for when we finally get out of here."
  
  "We took down two of our own like, twenty minutes ago!" Firecracker protested.
  
  Nemean snorted derisively. "Morons," she grunted simply. The shape of her thoughts had already moulded to the new situation- as loyal as she was to her people, she had no patience for fools.
  
  "You know what? I"m in," I said out loud. "Do you guys have a hotline I can call to get in touch or something?"
  
  "Sure, let"s trade." Assault pulled a sleek phone from a concealed pouch and we traded my number for a PRT direct line- then Assault gave me his work number as well "just in case", and showed me how I could request a special cape line when I called emergency services to report something.
  
  "Right, that should do it," he said at last. "We need to take these guys in for tonight, so," he pointed finger-guns at me, "you stay safe out there, Elpis." He walked off without another word, chuckling as if he"d made a joke.
  
  I noticed Gargoyle was lingering, fiddling with his fingers. "You need something?"
  
  The hero sighed and ran a hand over his hair- not through it, his hand simply slid along the spikes with a faint clicking noise. It seemed to annoy him, because he dropped his hand with a grimace.
  
  "Listen, I know you said you don"t want to join, and they already tried the speech, but," he hesitated, grey teeth worrying at his lower lip. There was no give there either, just a faint clicking. Then he started speaking again, in a rush of words, like he had to get it out as fast as possible.
  
  "Look, I did the whole lone wolf thing myself, and it was good for a while. Or at least, it felt like it. But," he waved a hand, "I never managed to pull off anything like this. Three villains in one night, that"s," he made a mind-blown gesture on either side of his head, "boosh, that"s awesome, better than I ever did."
  
   Gargoyle licked his lips for a second. "But I didn"t really start making a difference until I joined up, and maybe you"ll do better than me, but I didn"t consider joining until I got my leg smashed off." He stuck out his right leg and waggled it demonstratively.
  
  "I guess I"m saying, don"t wait until you"ve had the shit kicked out of you to think about getting some backup, because I was dumb enough to do that and it really fucking sucked."
  
  "He"s a good k-kid," Flinch said approvingly.
  
  It struck me that I really wasn"t sure how old Gargoyle was. He was the same height as me in the armour, and the all-grey skin didn"t give any clues, but the way he spoke, and just how uncertain he sounded, made it seem like he was barely out of his teens. For one brief moment I felt sorry for the kid.
  
  "I"ll keep it in mind, Gargoyle," I said gently. After a moment, he nodded to me and walked off to join Assault.
  
  I made my way to the edge of the crowd of law enforcement, where a couple of troopers had moved my bike. I gave myself a once-over before I hopped on.
  
  The dents, the scuff marks, the patches of pepper dust, the claw marks on the chest, the ammo I"d need to replace, the maintenance checks I"d need to perform on the swords after the beating they"d taken, and last but not least, the blood I"d need to wash out of the undersuit.
  
  All that, balanced against the dozens of gang members I"d brought in, the Empire cape and two Teeth. Intellectually, I knew it was a good night. Emotionally was a different matter.
  
  I swung my leg over and started the engine, rolling away before I"d even locked my feet in. I"d had enough for tonight. Spend a few hours tinkering, then go on home.
  
  "You"re going to need to wash yourself as well," Needler noted. "I think your father might notice if you"re bloodstained and smelling of pepper spray in the morning."
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Gargoyle's an OC I created to fill out the cast a bit. There was talk of lone heroes and villains in canon, so I figured there was room for someone like him. Thanks to ripples from the Teeth, now he's with the Protectorate.
  
  3.4
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Monday 31st January, Downtown South
  
  "I swear to fucking God, I don"t know where they aaaaarree!"
  
  I sighed frustratedly, then let go of the man"s ankle. He already had his hands pressed to the ground of the alley to try and steady himself as I"d questioned him, so he was left doing an impromptu handstand for a second before he overbalanced and flopped onto his back.
  
  I knelt to tie his wrists together just as a "Hey," floated over to me. I glanced up as Battery walked over.
  
  "Shorties in skin-tight suits," Anchorage hummed appreciatively. "If Assault isn"t tapping that, he"s a damn fool."
  
  Battery"s suit was pretty flattering- a form-fitting mix of white and dark grey, with cobalt blue circuit board lines running along it, still lit up from the little bit of charge she still had.
  
  As much as the Butchers leered and shouted demands for her to shake her hips more, I respected the woman"s career more. She"d transferred over from New York, been leader of the Wards around here for a while, back when I was in junior high, and then she"d joined the Protectorate. Despite the ambiguity in her relationship with Assault that the gossip columns liked to jump on, she was pleasant, hardworking, and level-headed.
  
  Right now, she was looking disapproving as I put the guy over my shoulder and stood up. "You really aren"t supposed to intimidate prisoners like that."
  
  "Fucking right!" the man shouted from over my shoulder, kicking his legs for emphasis.
  
  "Are you serious?" Stoneknapper said. "All we did was turn him upside down! No knives, no pliers- just shaking him a bit! What does it take with these guys?"
  
  Nemean snorted. "No wonder we keep beating these guys if they have to hold back like this."
  
  "You called me to help out with these assholes," I said, gesturing to the other Empire members we"d found selling truckloads of stolen goods, and their unlucky customers. "So I"m helping. I"m just trying to get some information for my own work, and it"s not like I"m hurting them. Besides, it"s for a good cause."
  
  "We can"t condone that kind of behaviour," Battery insisted. "I"m glad you"re trying to help-"
  
  "Trying?" I said incredulously.
  
  "-that you are helping," Battery continued without missing a beat, "but we have limits, and they have rights; like the right to remain silent."
  
  I bit my tongue before I could say anything I might regret, taking a few deep breaths. The Butchers were finally learning to avoid comments that would have me push them into the dark, but I could feel the amusement coming off them at my frustration.
  
  "Okay," I said after a long moment. "Okay, I"ll go easier on them. How would you do it?"
  
  The uncovered part of Battery"s face radiated approval. "For starters, don"t dangle them upside down by their ankles. Try it the same way a police officer would- you can lay out the consequences if they don"t talk, you can offer incentive to talk, but don"t get physical with them."
  
  "Like the coppers never put the boot in on guys they nick," Rotter snorted derisively.
  
  I kicked at the ground. "Yeah, okay."
  
  "Good." Battery gave me a smile. "For what it"s worth, it says a lot that you"re willing to listen. You"re doing well."
  
  "Yeah, thanks." I started toward where Battery had tied up most of the other gangers we"d caught. Battery sped past me after a moment to charge, scooping up another guy in a glowing blur and depositing him with the rest.
  
  "God, super speed is such bullshit," Firecracker said cheerfully. "Only power that"s almost as good as mine."
  
  "My god, do you ever shut up about that?" Quarrel demanded.
  
  "Really, I mean it. You"re already making waves." Battery snorted. "Heck, it took me a while before I managed to bring in a villain." She muttered something else with an odd expression that I couldn"t quite decipher.
  
  "Not the villains I want though," I groused, sitting my non-informant down next to his buddies.
  
  Despite using every night since then to scour the city, I hadn"t seen hide or hair of the Merchants since I"d faced off against Skidmark. I"d stopped a bunch of muggings, a break-in, and a guy trying to steal a car, but not one dope-dealing dirtbag.
  
  On the other hand, the Empire were still scouring the city for the Teeth, and being increasingly heavy-handed about it. There weren"t as many fights in the streets as the Teeth retreated further and further, but collateral damage was increasing. The Teeth had even resorted to arson, torching a restaurant used for laundering Empire money.
  
  The Protectorate were chasing down every lead they could, and when they didn"t have a lead, they were trying to squeeze the gangs as much as possible to slow them down, which was why Battery had called me in to help with a routine bust- to be absolutely sure none of the dirtbags got away.
  
  "And because they"re still trying to recruit you," Vladimir pointed out. "This is the third hero they"ve introduced you to now."
  
  "Well, that too," I admitted.
  
  "I almost want to see what"d happen if you actually said yes to joining them," Dirty Rotter snickered. "Imagine the looks on their faces when they realise!"
  
  "There any more news on the Empire?" I asked as I checked the restraints on the gang members. "Or the Teeth?"
  
  Battery glanced at the Empire goons. "Not in front of them." She beckoned to me as she walked to the end of the alleyway, so I followed quickly.
  
  "Word is that the Teeth are packing up," Battery whispered once I"d reached her. "There"ve been sightings near car lots and the like- when we gave that to the Thinkers, they figured the Teeth are looking for vehicles to get out of town."
  
  "So much for a triumphant return to Brockton Bay," Tactical said dolefully. "Now look at us: stuck in a teenager while the gang falls apart."
  
  "Bitch, I swear, when you get offed, I"m gonna-" I pushed Quarrel into the dark yet again and refocused on the real world.
  
  "Trouble is, the Empire doesn"t just want them gone, they want them dead. Kaiser"s whipping them into a frenzy, and now they"re all out for blood." Battery grimaced. "Plus Lung"s pushing south to expand into Empire territory, so there"s that to deal with."
  
  "Why does Kaiser hate the Teeth so much anyway?" I asked curiously, pretending that I didn"t know damn well why.
  
  "Part of it"s probably that they were around in the early days of the gangs, before Kaiser took control of the E88. The other part," Battery winced, "well, the Teeth killed an Empire cape called Heith years ago. Everybody speculated that she and Kaiser were an item, so..."
  
  "Revenge for his lost love? I wouldn"t have thought he had it in him." I shook my head. "So now he"s tearing the city apart trying to finish them off."
  
  "And we"re stuck trying to stop him," Battery concluded.
  
  "See, we could be having fun doing the tearing ourselves if you weren"t such a killjoy," Firecracker remarked.
  
  "Hell, taking the fight to the Nazis would make us look like heroes by comparison," Tactical said.
  
  "I am taking the fight to them," I replied, "And I"m doing it without risking passing you guys on to someone like Hookwolf."
  
  "Ah, we can take him," Bearskin said dismissively.
  
  Muramasa tsked. "We can defeat such as he- Elpis lacks the will to take a life."
  
  I gave everyone talking a quick shove as Battery cocked her head. "You alright?"
  
  I sighed. "Yeah, just... lost in thought. This whole situation"s a lot to deal with. Not exactly fun times fighting the good fight."
  
  "True. Never thought I"d miss Assault"s bad jokes on patrol." Battery cracked a smile as she started back toward the Empire members. "God, he had this thing today about-" she snapped her fingers a few times, "-Ursine fractals, that was it."
  
  "What"s that mean?" I asked, nonplussed.
  
  "He said it bears repeating."
  
  The Butchers groaned with me at the crappy pun. "I know, I know," Battery said. "Do me a favour, never let him know I thought his puns were funny."
  
  "Crappy puns seem like more of a sibling vibe to me," Tock Tick said. "Anybody want to change their bet? I won"t judge."
  
  "Oh please." Needler rolled her eyes. "Sharing bad jokes is practically traditional for couples. You"re not winning this one, Tock."
  
  "Where is Assault anyway? I kind of thought he"d be the one calling me for a team-up first."
  
  Battery winced. "Keeping an eye on things in downtown. They can"t spare the manpower to have us paired up in quiet areas."
  
  "So that"s why you needed me for this," I concluded. "Actually, do you still need me here, or can I go now?"
  
  Battery shrugged. "Up to you. I can take it from here if you"ve got somewhere to be."
  
  "See you around then." I launched a grappler upward and zipped up toward the top of the building next to us, dropping down next to my bike on the other side.
  
  "Back to uselessly looking around then," Vladimir said. "I know Skidmark"s been frying his brain with god knows what, but he wouldn"t have survived this city without knowing when to keep his head down. If you weren"t so determined to ignore when we give you actual advice, you"d be fighting the Empire right now."
  
  I started the engine and took off without replying. The annoying thing was that he was right, and I knew the smart thing to do was to focus on the Empire and the Teeth to actually get results. It was what I wanted to do, even.
  
  Still, I couldn"t shake the feeling that I"d be putting myself closer to what the Butchers wanted me to be. So instead I was running myself ragged looking for the lowest gang in the city, and finding only petty crooks who couldn"t tell me anything.
  
  It was taking its toll on my attitude- I"d been getting increasingly bad-tempered over the weekend, and downright pissy all through school today. I"d have to remember to apologise to Stacey for snapping at her at lunch.
  
  "Don"t let it g-get to you," Flinch said gently. "There"s plenty of times when I felt like I was stuck. This"ll p-pass too."
  
  "I hope so," I said as I pushed the bugs I"d collected further out from myself- moths and flies mostly, at this time of night. As I did, something caught my attention- a bright light several moths were focusing on. I turned towards the sensation at the next intersection.
  
  I moved more bugs in as I got closer, picking up on great patches of light and heat. Some of the bugs were dying just from getting too close, cooking where they stood. I killed the engine and switched the bike over to the mainspring, the escapements I"d built in keeping the wheels quiet as a whisper.
  
  One more turning, and I could see flickering light coming out of an alleyway with my own eyes. There were shouts of alarm, and then a gunshot and a scream.
  
  "That"s fear, not pain," Stoneknapper opined. "Bullet didn"t hit anyone, but whoever it is, they"re either a civvie or a fresh cape."
  
  Charging in against an unknown didn"t sound like a good idea, so I brought the bike to a stop and swung myself off, firing a grappler to pull myself to the higher roof, and then creeping to the edge to catch a glimpse of the scene.
  
  The back end of the alley was blocked by a high brick wall, and the open end by a couple of rough-looking white guys, one fat and bearded with a leather vest covered in patches, the other skinny with a moustache and a denim jacket. At a closer look, every patch on them had something to do with white supremacists. Fat one was pointing a gun down the alley, badly aimed.
  
  "Oh wow, a couple of dumbass neo-nazis, never seen that before," Firecracker said sarcastically.
  
  The middle section of the alley was where things got interesting. A wall of white-hot flames separated the two goons from a smaller figure in ragged clothing, radiating enough heat to make me sweat from ten feet away. The flames were splashed along the ground in long streaks, along the walls, and across a dumpster. As I looked closer, I realised I could see the steel and the bricks melting under the sheer heat of the flames.
  
  "Holy mother of fuck!" Firecracker yelled. "Who the hell is this guy and how do we get him to work for us?"
  
  "Maybe he already is," Bearskin said. "Remember, the guys burnt down that restaurant?"
  
  "Oohohohoho!" Rotter rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Gotta love the pyros!"
  
  Fat Beard raised the handgun- in his meaty paws it looked like a toy- and fired off a shot. By my estimate, the bullet missed by at least two feet, but the cape ducked down behind the dumpster with a high-pitched shriek, then stuck their head out for a moment.
  
  The cape spat a stream of something liquid about ten feet, landing just past the far edge of the flame barrier. Where the liquid hit the ground it immediately burst into more flames. Another spray of liquid followed, filling in a gap in the wall. The Empire goons backed up a few steps, squawking in fear.
  
  "Five buck says new guy"s called Spitfire or some shit," Stoneknapper said cynically.
  
  "No bet," Tactical replied.
  
  "Could be something like Firehose," Anchorage suggested.
  
  The attacks from either side changed the situation; A couple of Empire goons going after a new cape was bad, and against someone who was rapidly melting a dumpster like wax, even more so.
  
  But if the Teeth had someone like this on their side, the amount of damage they could do would be bigger than ever. At worst, they could take out entire blocks.
  
  Just as I thought that, I felt a tremor in the wall I was leaning on. I laid a hand on it and let Stoneknapper"s power fizz through my fingers into the brickwork, giving me a rough idea of its condition. The fire was eating away at it, breaking down the bonds through sheer heat, cracking the cement and making a wider and wider hole with every second. I needed to stop this before the whole building went up.
  
  "Oh, I see what you"re thinking," Tock said as a plan unfolded in my mind. "That should work well."
  
  "Whatever you intend to do, I suggest you do it quickly," Muramasa insisted. "It is only a matter of time before one of those idiots manages a lucky shot."
  
  I was already walking away from the edge, drawing my swords ands thumbing them to maximum cutting power. The bugs had mapped out this rooftop, and all the neighbouring rooftops, so I knew that the water tower on the corner was full.
  
  The swords were giving off a slight whine at the edge of my hearing- I let the sharpening power flow over them, and then swung them together as hard as I could. The swords went through the side of the metal tank with barely any resistance, and water started spurting out. I slashed again, perpendicular to the first, and a rough square section was cut out of the metal, letting the water out in a torrent.
  
  "Tut tut, and there"s that horrible disregard for property damage again," Anchorage teased. Being able to feel her amusement kept my old cringing reaction from surfacing.
  
  "Pretty sure letting a building or two burn to the ground would be worse," I countered, striding through the gushing water back to the edge and giving it a sharp kick, knocking out a large chunk to the street below, right into the largest patch of fire.
  
  With a clear path, the water poured off the roof in a waterfall; it flashed into steam at first as it hit the flames, but gallons upon gallons more followed it, smothering the flames with sheer volume, even the patches along the walls.
  
  The Empire guys panicked, Fat Beard firing randomly into the alley. It took bloodsight to see the cape through the steam, diving behind the remains of the dumpster and curling into a ball. No danger of them getting shot just yet, but as soon as the water ran out they"d be vulnerable.
  
  "You gonna get those guys or what?" Firecracker said impatiently. I sheathed my swords without a word and stepped off the corner of the roof.
  
  Skinny Guy shrieked in surprise as I landed next to him, and then yelped as I brought a foot up and into his chest, kicking him into his friend, which knocked both of them into a streetlamp. Before either of them could say a word I brought the launcher up and around to hit them with a net round, pinning both of them to the lamp and each other.
  
  I stepped forward to pry the pistol out of Fat guy"s hand as he struggled to aim it at me, giving it a cursory glance before I jabbed a finger into the nerve point behind his ear, making him go limp. The gun was a Cobra Arms Freedom .380, seven-round magazine. Lightweight and damn cheap, exactly the cheap crap a low level moron would be packing. I quickly pulled it apart and aimed the launcher down the alleyway while the thugs groaned semiconsciously.
  
  I could see the blood silhouette behind the dumpster slowly unfolding, making as if to peek around the edge. I could have just nailed them with a net round the moment they popped their head out, but I decided I should at least try to appeal to a peaceful solution. Battery"s earlier warnings echoed in my mind for a minute, much to the displeasure of the Butchers.
  
  "God, how goody-two-shoes can you get?" Quarrel complained.
  
  I raised my voice and projected down the alleyway as hard as I could. "You in the alley! Come out with your hands up and I"ll go easy on you! Don"t make this hard on yourself- I already took down Snowblind and Sinister at the same time, you won"t be a challenge."
  
  There was a pause, then the cape"s head leaned out slightly. "Who the fuck are they?"
  
  I was thrown off for about half a second. The cape was a girl- about my age if the voice was any indicator, though it was rough, like she"d smoked a couple of times. She coughed as she finished the sentence, waving her hand in front of her face. Possibly the steam and ash wasn"t quite so easy for her to deal with.
  
  More importantly, if she didn"t know who they were, she might not be a part of the Teeth after all.
  
  "So who the hell is she?" Vladimir wondered as the steam began to clear.
  
  "Actually," the girl called, shrinking back a bit, "Got a better question. Who the fuck are you?"
  
  "Name"s Elpis. Independent hero. And to answer your first question, they"re from the Teeth. Now come on out, or I"ll have to come in and get you."
  
  A hand emerged from around the dumpster, middle finger jabbing at the sky. "Come get me then. One loogie and you"ll be charcoal."
  
  "Holy shit, she is sassy as fuck, I like her!" Rotter laughed.
  
  Needler snorted. "You certainly can"t deny her spirit."
  
  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see lights going on across the street. The fire, the gunshots and the water tower had all made a hell of a noise- frankly it was a surprise nobody around had woken up before. Then again, this was Brockton Bay after all.
  
  I still wanted to wrap this up before people worked up the nerve to come and see for themselves. Having to deal with rubberneckers when a jumpy fire-spitting kid was on the street could get messy easily.
  
  "Listen," I said impatiently, "You almost demolished a couple of buildings. By accident." A piece of charred brick fell off the hole on the right wall, neatly punctuating my statement. "If you try to fight your way out, you"ll just make yourself look worse. This is the easier route, okay? This is me trying to help."
  
  "They started it!" The girl shouted. "I was just trying to get warm, and those fuckers came up and tried to grab me, "cause they figure if you"re not with the Empire you"re just another target, and now I"ve got some tin-can asshole trying to arrest me "cause my fucking stupid spit power doesn"t have a "stun" setting!"
  
  "...Who the hell tries to get warm with that kind of firepower?" Tock asked at last.
  
  Firecracker rolled her eyes. "Somebody who can"t spend the nights indoors, dickhead." A brief memory of the overpass she used to sleep under flickered briefly before vanishing. "Hell, I tried stupider shit to keep warm when I was sleeping rough."
  
  "Sh-she needs help," Flinch insisted. "It"s the right th-thing to do."
  
  I ground my teeth for a second. Even if she was just a victim of circumstance, I still wanted to shout at this girl some more, yell at her for being careless with her power. She could have hurt so many people in her one moment of panic.
  
  "Says the murderer," Quarrel spat.
  
  The thought was like ice water down my back.
  
  I was a killer. I"d been out of my mind with despair and sensory overload when I"d swiped at the shape and sounds of Quarrel with my bugs, a semi-conscious flailing, but the end result had been her death.
  
  "You had an accident," Flinch said. "So did sh-she. She"s like you."
  
  "It"s not the same," I protested feebly.
  
  "Sc-scary power, nobody on her side, it"s c-close enough. If you want to do the right thing..." He wordlessly indicated the girl.
  
  What would someone like Miss Militia do in this situation? A fresh trigger with a lot of power and a cornered mentality?
  
  "Talk to her," Tock suggested. "Build a connection.
  
  I cleared my throat. "I always wanted to fly. When I was a kid, I mean." I shrugged, even though the girl couldn"t see me with her head turned away. "We don"t get to choose our powers, fair enough. You probably didn"t want to be a squirt gun filled with napalm."
  
  "Fuck you," she said. The tone of it was subdued.
  
  "I"m sorry you went through that shit. But these guys are down, and you"re still in one piece. I"m still mad at you, but I"ll put that aside for now. I"m not sure you deserve it, but I"ll listen."
  
  The girl"s silhouette fiddled with her hands for a few seconds before she spoke again. "You know I can burn you if you try anything, right?" She would have sounded bold and brazen if her voice hadn"t broken on the word "burn".
  
  "She doesn"t have the balls," Butcher sneered. I rolled the thought around in my mind for a second.
  
  "You could. But I don"t think you will. You could have barbequed these assholes, but you didn"t. You"re not a killer, at least. Just kinda stupid."
  
  "Hey, no, you don"t get to use me to sound like a damn-" Butcher kept ranting even as I pushed him down just far enough that his voice was a dull buzz.
  
  "Hey, shut it! Not a lot I can do if I don"t wanna set people on fire!" The girl seemed offended at the implication that she ever would want to.
  
  I grudgingly admitted her point. Fire was a pretty villainous power- dangerous, damaging, easy to lose control of. If she didn"t have something between retreat and lethal force...
  
  An idea hit me like a lightning bolt. I crouched down and set the launcher on the ground. "You can take this if it makes you feel safer," I said, and shoved the launcher so it slid down the alley, coming to a halt next to her.
  
  "The hell is that?"
  
  "A launcher. All non-lethal rounds. The switch above the trigger changes the ammo type. Net, pepper, rubber bullets. Okay? Now you"ve got a weapon, and I don"t." Not that I was telling her I had several other weapons on me, or that none of the ammunition types would actually be a threat- I wasn"t that trusting. Hopefully the gesture would be enough to convince her.
  
  There was a long, tense moment, before the girl snatched up the launcher and hefted it with a bit of strain. "Okay," she called, "I"m coming out."
  
  I took a few steps back and kept my hands out to my sides as the silhouette came through the steam, the launcher pointed at my head.
  
  She was about average height, several inches shorter than me in my armour, pale hands holding the launcher at her shoulder. Purple raincoat over grey hoodie, tattered jeans, a balaclava over her face. Every item of clothing was singed or outright burned in places.
  
  "Kid must"ve had a couple accidents, huh?" Bearskin grunted.
  
  "She looks hungry," Nemean said. "Get her some food. She"ll be less angry." Sure enough, when I looked closer, I could see how the girl was subtly straining to keep the launcher steady. She"d been sleeping rough after all- food must have been hard to come by.
  
  "When"s the last time you ate something?" I asked. The brown eyes behind the balaclava blinked, then narrowed.
  
  "What"s it to you?"
  
  "Just that there"s a decent all-night coffee shop a few streets that way," I pointed with a finger, "And if I"m going to get your story and figure out what we"re going to do here, I"d rather do it with a drink and a snack."
  
  The girl jabbed the launcher at my face. I didn"t flinch- hell, it was hard not to laugh. "No tricks."
  
  "No tricks," I echoed. "I"d offer you a ride, but..." I nodded in the direction of the bike.
  
  The girl glanced at it. "No way."
  
  "Right. Let me just call the cops to pick those guys up, and then we"ll get something to eat while we talk, okay?"
  
  The girl stared at me for a long moment, and then let the launcher barrel drift down to point at the ground. "Okay."
  
  I puled my phone out with slow, careful movements, and dialled 911, requesting the special line like Assault had showed me. Within a minute, the operator confirmed a squad car moving to pick up the idiots.
  
  "So," I said, pocketing the phone, "Doughnuts?"
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  I never really saw Spitfire used a lot in other stories, but this was the right point in the timeline for her to have triggered, so I figured I'd work her in, cause some more butterflies.
  
  3.5
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Tuesday 1st February, Downtown South
  
  "Man, what did that poor sandwich do to deserve that?" Anchorage asked.
  
  "Did something bad in a past life," Needler replied. "Perhaps someone choked to death on it."
  
  "That kid"s gonna choke if she eats any faster," Stoneknapper said. "At least none of us went out to something like that."
  
  Spitfire, as she"d insisted on being called, was currently wolfing down her second sandwich of the night like someone was coming to take it from her. At this point I wasn"t sure if the few other people in the diner we"d found were staring because we were capes or because Spitfire had managed to get mustard smeared all the way up to her ear.
  
  When she paused to breathe and take a sip of her cola, I spoke. "Can you tell me why those guys thought you were in the Teeth? You really don"t give that kind of vibe." I indicated her layered, damaged clothing with one hand.
  
  "Damn right. This kid doesn"t look like she"s a danger to anyone except free food," Vladimir noted.
  
  Spitfire shrugged. "They saw me making a trash can fire, figured I was the one who burnt down that restaurant of theirs." She took another bite of turkey and lettuce and mumbled, "Jfust muh luck thuy were right."
  
  My mug stopped halfway to my mouth. "What?"
  
  "Hey, hang on, let me explain," she said hastily, putting the sandwich down and finishing her mouthful. "The whole thing was a big fucking accident, alright? They were saying something about giving free food out- leftovers and stuff, y"know? So I went over to try it out, get something to eat in the warm; next thing I know this guy with a swastika on his shirt stands up and starts going on about how the Empire needs support from "real Americans"." The air quotes she made could not possible have been more sarcastic.
  
  "Sounds about right," Bearskin rumbled. "They did that in my time, too. Get the no-hopers in with free food, make them an offer. Standard recruitment strategy."
  
  Tactical agreed absentmindedly, his thoughts awhirl with his Thinker power. "They might be trying to increase their numbers as fast as possible to try and fight us. The Teeth, that is. Untrained homeless wouldn"t be much, but quantity has a quality all its own."
  
  "What did you do then?" I asked, raising my mug again. Spitfire shrunk in on herself a bit, and when she spoke, her voice was subdued.
  
  "I tried to leave. Couple of big assholes grabbed me when I got to the door, said I couldn"t leave until the talk was done. I tried to push them off, so they dragged me into the kitchen. I got loose, and then..." She trailed off, staring down at her sandwich.
  
  "You don"t have to tell me," I said hastily. "I"m not going to ask you to talk about that, I know how bad that is."
  
  "Yeah..." Spitfire took another bite in silence, chewed and swallowed. "Y"know, on TV they always talk about getting powers like it"s some huge thing. I was just scared out of my fucking mind."
  
  "They can"t tell people the truth," I explained quietly, glancing at the other customers, a few tables away from us. They hastily went back to their coffees like they hadn"t been trying to eavesdrop.
  
  "They can"t let people know what trigger events are really like," I said, turning back to Spitfire, "because then we"d get morons killing themselves because they tried hooking their dick up to a car battery to get superpowers."
  
  Spitfire suddenly snorted, then giggled, then burst out laughing, a rib-clutching laugh that rolled out of her so hard I thought she might fall out of her seat. "Car battery!" she wheezed, then dissolved into another flood of giggles.
  
  "Damn, that"s an image," Rotter chortled. "Didn"t know you had it in you, girl!"
  
  "I don"t. You guys did that, remember?" I answered.
  
  "She"s right," Tock Tick said. "That guy who sold us those booby-trapped guns, when Bearskin was driving? You cornered him at a chop shop and got creative." The memory made him shudder.
  
  "Oh yeah. Man, that guy could scream," Bearskin said.
  
  I decided to focus on lighter subjects, so I sat and waited for Spitfire to finish, sipping my coffee through the opened mouthguard of my helmet while the Butchers reminisced. The other customers gave us more weird looks, and I saw the waitress falter midway as she came over to us with the coffee pot.
  
  "Uh, can I get you guys... anything else?" she asked awkwardly, looking sideways at Spitfire, who"d finally clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle herself, shoulders shaking.
  
  "We"re good," I started, then added as the Butchers quickly clamoured, "Actually, could I get a refill?" I raised my mug toward her.
  
  "Sure." The waitress quickly topped up my mug, and then scurried off back to the counter.
  
  Spitfire finally pulled herself together, drinking deep from her bottle of cola to sort herself out. "Okay," she said, wiping her mouth, "I"m okay. Just had to get that out."
  
  "No problem. So, that"s when you started spewing napalm all over, right? That"s how the place burnt down?"
  
  Spitfire shrugged, good mood fading at the reminder. "Yeah. Don"t think anybody died, and I got away, but the place burnt to the ground, so I wound up with everyone thinking I"m a villain, and the Empire looking for the fire girl so they could string her up. So I"m basically screwed."
  
  "Damn." I thought for a moment. "Look, if you really want, I can vouch for you with the PRT. You"re not the first person to have accidents with their power, and certainly not the worst."
  
  Spitfire blinked in surprise. "Seriously? After all that?"
  
  "Hey, they"ve got good reason to not want you not to end up as a villain. So do you want me to put a word in for you?"
  
  "Hell yeah! I kinda like not having a criminal record!" Spitfire took a massive swig of her cola and banged it down on the table with a gasp.
  
  "Aw, that"s cute, she"s acting like it"s a grown-up drink!" Firecracker cooed sarcastically.
  
  "Shame on you, Elpis." Rotter shook his head mournfully. "To think you"re turning this fine, fledgling cape away from the bright and exciting world of villainy, and toward the boring as fuck life of a hero. For shame."
  
  "You"re a fucking idiot," Nemean told him bluntly.
  
  "I"m amazed he said that with a straight face," Quarrel added. "So to speak."
  
  I cleared my throat. "So, what do you want to do then? If you don"t want to be a villain?"
  
  Spitfire shrugged. "Dunno. I"d kinda wanna just do something for the money, stay out of all the fighting, but I don"t think anybody needs stuff melted."
  
  "The Protectorate seem like good people," I volunteered. "They"d probably love to have a powerhouse like you in the Wards. They"re not really supposed to fight anyway."
  
  Spitfire gave me a sceptical look. "Yeah, they"d love to have the arsonist on their team. "sides, I like doing my own thing. Government"s never done shit for me."
  
  Flinch radiated sympathy for Spitfire. "Talk to her. She n-needs someone watching her back."
  
  Before I could say anything, Spitfire jabbed a finger at me. "And if they"re so good, how come you didn"t join them?"
  
  I couldn"t stop the shudder before Spitfire saw it. "Besides my laundry list of issues?" I said as jokingly as I could manage. "I prefer to be able to walk away if I want to. No strings, you know?"
  
  That, plus the flashes of anger I still got, all the ways I thought about how to fight them, and just the fact that they were Authority with a capital A. Memories of uncaring teachers letting me suffer mixed with racist cops, apathetic bureaucrats and abusive parents. The heroes might have been good people individually, but I couldn"t bring myself to believe in the system. I wasn"t even sure how much of that was me, and how much was the Butchers.
  
  "Don"t kid yourself," Butcher sneered. "All those memories of yours, you hate the people in charge too. All they"ve done is hurt you, ignore you; so why are you on the same side as them?"
  
  I shoved Butcher down as hard as I could, too late to stop his words from making sense. I took a big gulp of my coffee, and I had to force myself to relax my grip so I didn"t break it.
  
  Luckily Spitfire didn"t pursue the conversation any further, taking another bite of her sandwich. We sat in silence for a minute, while the diner moved on around us. The trucker at the counter finished off his doughnut and motioned to the waitress to pay his bill, giving us another glance as she came over.
  
  "Makes you wonder what he"s doing in here," Tactical said suddenly. "It"s 3am on a Tuesday. Is he setting off, arriving, taking a break? What"s he driving?"
  
  Firecracker gave him a weird look. "You feeling alright, Tac? You sound all... philosophical."
  
  Tactical shrugged. "Liminal spaces, or something. Just about everyone walks into a diner in the daytime at some point in their life, but 3am? Makes you wonder."
  
  Nemean snorted. "We got enough people living in here without thinking about random strangers."
  
  Spitfire finished off her sandwich and chugged the last of her cola. "Okay, I"m gonna head off. Thanks for the food."
  
  "Speaking of random strangers," Dirty Rotter said as the pyrokinetic got up from her chair.
  
  "Don"t l-let her leave," Flinch said suddenly. "She"s all alone, she"s homeless, the Empire"s h-hunting her- she needs help."
  
  My knee-jerk reaction was dismissal- Spitfire had incredible offensive power, and she was streetwise. She wasn"t looking for a team or anything like that, and I had enough on my plate to deal with. The pragmatic thing, the sensible thing, would be to just let her go on her way.
  
  The pragmatic thing was what a lot of the Butchers had done too- when they"d unexpectedly inherited, they"d all chosen to kill rather than be killed, to give in to the demands of the Butchers rather than try to weather their screaming, to turn on everything they"d loved and hurt it, to enjoy the violence.
  
  This wasn"t like that. But it felt like a step toward that.
  
  "Fuck." I drained the mug and slapped a couple of twenties on the table, then added one more as a tip, snatched up the launcher from where Spitfire had leant it against the table, and followed her out the door, closing my mouthguard as I went.
  
  "Wait a second." Spitfire jumped at the sound of my voice, dropped into a fighting crouch before she recognised me.
  
  "What? You forget something?" Her tone was defensive, like she was expecting something bad. Now that I was looking closer, I could see how her shoulders were hunched in, ready for a blow, ready to break into a run.
  
  "She is no fighter," Muramasa noted. "Terrible stance, her power is not readied. The girl lacks instinct."
  
  "If this is going where I think it is, we can fix that," Needler purred.
  
  "You said you don"t want a team, or fighting. And that"s fine," I added hastily, seeing her expression, "But I was thinking, uh-" I invented desperately, "-you"ve got information, right? You know what"s going on at street level."
  
  "Yeah. Gotta know the territory so you don"t run into trouble. So what?"
  
  "So, I need intel. And maybe some backup."
  
  "Okay, were you not hearing the part where the Empire"s after me?" Spitfire demanded. "The fuck makes you think I"m gonna fight them?"
  
  "I"m not going after the Empire; I"m trying to fight the Merchants. Trouble is, they"ve all gone to ground since the last time I hit them. I almost had Skidmark, but," I shrugged, "Things got in the way."
  
  Spitfire straightened up a little. "Okay, I can do that. But what"s in it for me?"
  
  "I can pay you, for one. Or I could make you some stuff to keep you safe: you liked the launcher, right? Something where you don"t have to burn people."
  
  "It"d have to be something low-maintenance," Tock noted, spinning off ideas already. "A melee weapon maybe, something that doesn"t need ammunition. Hmm, if we can reduce it down to something she can wind, or if we make something that could use her flames as a power source..."
  
  "Yeah, but no matter what Taylor makes her, she"ll have to keep coming back to get it repaired, and that gives us time to win her over. Devious," Vladimir said approvingly.
  
  "Not what I meant to do, Vlad," I said, giving him a warning shove.
  
  "That"s what you did though," Anchorage teased.
  
  "Plus," I said out loud, keeping my tone light, "If you come with me, I can cut you in on whatever we get off the Merchants. Vigilantes get to take some cash off criminals. Imagine how much folding money a bunch of dealers have stacked up.
  
  "And it"d help show the PRT you"re not a villain if you"re working with a known hero to take down an entire gang. You think your flames could damage Squealer"s rides?"
  
  "Uh, maybe?" Spitfire looked a little dazed. "I haven"t really tested it on a lot of metal- I mean, I know I melted that dumpster, and some of that kitchen stuff, so, I dunno, maybe?"
  
  "So you get money, rep, tech, and a chance to go all out with your fire. Interested?"
  
  Spitfire shuffled her feet. "I guess?" She pointed a finger at me. "Just don"t try to screw me over. We split money 50/50."
  
  "Deal." I opened a compartment and started pulling some cash out. "You got a phone?"
  
  Spitfire gestured to her tattered clothes. "The fuck you think?"
  
  "Yeah, figured I should ask anyway." I held out the money to her. "Consider this an advance. Get yourself a place to sleep or whatever you like, and meet me here at midnight tomorrow. Or I guess it"s today, whatever."
  
  "And then what?" Spitfire didn"t look up from counting the cash, but I could see from the set of her shoulders that she liked what she saw. "We go out fighting?"
  
  "Aw yeah!" Firecracker whooped. "Out on the town with our first new minion!"
  
  "Not yet. First, we"re going to test how hot you can burn. Then," I looked her up and down, "If you"re going to be a hero, you"re going to need a better costume."
  
  
  Wednesday 2nd February, Downtown North
  
  One thing I liked about my schedule for Arcadia was that I got every other Wednesday afternoon off as a free period. In theory I would be using it to study, but in practice I was using my spare time today to do some cape work in daylight hours.
  
  I"d tweaked the speeder a little bit more after the testing session with Spitfire last night, so now it had a passenger seat and a proper roof, plus wing mirrors and indicators and the other stuff I needed for when I was moving through traffic at a normal pace instead of engaging in a high-speed chase or whatever. We were still getting astonished looks from everyone we passed, but I"d expected that at least.
  
  "In future a normal-looking car would be better if you"re trying to be discreet," Tactical advised. "Everyone"s going to be paying attention to this vehicle after today."
  
  "Any car a cape gets out of is gonna get attention," Firecracker pointed out.
  
  Spitfire herself had set the passenger seat as far back as it would go and dozed off almost immediately. I didn"t begrudge her taking a nap- we"d worked until 2am to get a handle on the limits of her power before we"d called it a night, so she"d had to sleep through the day to catch up. Another reason I was glad I didn"t need to sleep anymore.
  
  I pulled into the parking lot near our destination and got out to pay for our time. I saw people pointing and taking pictures as I bought a ticket and walked back to the speeder.
  
  "Man, this is surreal. We"re paying for parking, in costume, in broad daylight." Stoneknapper shook his head. "Crazy stuff."
  
  Muramasa hummed. "The strangest part is that we are paying for it."
  
  I stuck the ticket in the windshield and prodded Spitfire"s shoulder. "Wakey wake-"
  
  Spitfire jolted up at my touch, slammed into the limit of her seatbelt and flailing about for a second. "Gaah- Oh, right. Yeah." She glanced about for a second. "We there yet?"
  
  I snorted. "Almost. No parking right by the shop. Come on."
  
  I"d searched around for any advertising firms or design companies that might take on the challenge of a cape costume. Unsurprisingly, there"d been no real results. The Protectorate had their own PR department, New Wave had hired a discreet tailor before they"d gone public, and everyone else had to make their own outfits or buy pieces online. The Teeth, for instance, had mostly used sports pads and leather, studded with spikes and gruesome trophies.
  
  That might have worked for Spitfire, but considering how her power could easily set fire to any loose folds of clothing, a tailored costume seemed best, and the perfect solution had presented itself when I"d glanced at the gossip page yesterday.
  
  We stopped just by the edge of the Boardwalk, in front of a shop with a large plate glass window with a couple of mannequins posing for the window shoppers: one in a dinner jacket, the other in a slinky dress. The sign hanging out over the door and its larger counterpart over the window displayed the same name in flowing gold script.
  
  Parian"s.
  
  "Pretty well set up for a couple of weeks work," Vlad noted. "Could do with another coat of paint."
  
  "It needs cleaning," Needler said, focusing on smears at the bottom of the window. The way they cut off suggested they were the remains of larger stains someone had wiped off.
  
  Nemean made a rumbling noise. "Someone marking territory."
  
  "Empire perhaps? Parian does not seem to fit the standards of Lung or the Merchants." Muramasa mulled the thought over by himself while I made for the door.
  
  "You sure this is a good idea?" Spitfire asked nervously. "I could just get a jacket and put a patch on-"
  
  "It"s better to just get you a costume that works from the start instead of constantly replacing it," I said over her protests. Without another word, I pushed the door open, a bell jingling merrily as I went in.
  
  Rotter whistled loudly as I took in the interior. "Fuckin" "ell, looks like a little doll house in here," he said crudely. "All tea cozies and lace doilies."
  
  "Okay, true, but you saying "lace doilies" sounds so creepy," Anchorage admitted.
  
  "That"s how I do, luv."
  
  Rotter did have a point though. Parian"s shop could be described as sumptuous, or decadent, or a dozen other words to mean really fancy. More mannequins were spaced along the walls, with bolts of cloth resting on racks in between or hanging from the ceiling. The lights were actual chandeliers hanging from the stucco, the carpet was dark red and deep pile, and there were even little side tables spaced around with picture frames and catalogues neatly stacked.
  
  Spitfire was scrubbing her sneakers on the mat inside the door hard and fast. "I feel like I"m going to leave smudges or something," she said, looking around wide-eyed.
  
  I sensed the movement through a couple of ants I"d slipped inside the shop before I heard the muffled footsteps. "No need to be shy," the owner trilled brightly.
  
  Parian was short, maybe five foot even in her flats, but the old-fashioned frock she wore was so full of ruffles and pleats that it filled her out from side to side. She really did resemble a doll, from the expressionless china mask and a mass of golden curls too perfect to be real, all the way down to the lacy gloves on her clasped hands. Watching this cape walking over from the back of the shop felt less intimidating than people I talked to at lunch.
  
  The real display of power came from the seven foot denim teddy bear waddling along behind her. Parian"s power let her control cloth, and while she could use it to quickly create exquisite, high quality clothing, she could also use it to make and animate puppets. She"d had a bit of a side business doing children"s shows before her break into fashion, but no fights whatsoever, so nobody was sure how tough the things actually were. Considering the nervous edge to her voice, she might not know either.
  
  Bearskin looked her up and down despairingly. "I like people being scared of us as much as the next guy, but this is just pathetic. Little slip of a girl trembling at us."
  
  "I mean, it is two against one," Tock Tick pointed out half-heartedly, even as Parian"s hands trembled in front of us. He didn"t sound like he believed his words. Parian definitely wasn"t a fighter.
  
  I racked my brain for a way to put her at ease, but nothing came to mind. "Any suggestions? Useful ones," I added warningly.
  
  "Be p-polite," Flinch said. "Maybe show a bit of your face, like when you and Spitfire were talking. The armour makes it look like you"re here for a fight."
  
  The others shouted various crude suggestions, but nothing I could use, so I went along with Flinch"s idea, bringing a hand to my face to lower the mouthguard. "Miss Parian," I said, trying for smooth and clear. "Thank you for having us." On impulse, I gave a shallow bow as I spoke.
  
  "Ooh la la, aren"t we fancy?" Firecracker snickered. "You sound like one of those boring old dramas."
  
  "Pride and Prejudice, that kind of thing?" Tock asked. "It might fit, since we"re talking to a Victorian doll."
  
  Strangely enough, it did seem to work. Parian relaxed a fraction, waving a gloved hand. "Of course, of course. So, you must be Elpis then?" Her head turned towards Spitfire. "I don"t believe you mentioned your friend"s name...?" Parian left the question hanging in the air.
  
  "Spitfire." She stuck her hands in her pockets. "No prizes for guessing my power."
  
  Parian seemed taken aback. "Right. Well, you"re here for your fitting, then? Right this way." She gestured to the back, where a little platform was placed in front of a set of mirrors. Spitfire shrugged and walked toward it. I expected Parian to follow her immediately, but she stood still until I started after Spitfire; then she trailed after me, her teddy bear bringing up the rear with clunky movements.
  
  "Smart girl," Tactical said approvingly. "Doesn"t want us behind her. Little paranoid, but smart."
  
  "I think it"s just paranoid, Tac," Knapper pointed out.
  
  It stung a little to think Parian was scared of us. I"d called ahead yesterday specifically to keep her from freaking out at the armoured figure arriving on her doorstep, explained very patiently that we only needed one costume made, and emphasised that we weren"t trying to recruit her. Parian had continually stated to the press that she was avoiding any sort of conflict, and I didn"t want to offend her; even if she wasn"t technically on anybody"s side, I didn"t fancy pissing off any more capes than I had to.
  
  Spitfire had stepped up onto the platform and pulled off the raincoat she"d worn over her clothes. "So how"s this work?" she asked, looking around. "I hold still while you stick a bunch of needles into a sheet or something?"
  
  "Not quite," Parian said, circling around. "If you could give your coat to the puppet?" she asked as the teddy reached its nubby arms out. Spitfire shrugged and draped the coat over its arms.
  
  Parian opened a box at the base of the platform and took out a notepad, pencil, and a tape measure. "If you could just put your arms by your side, please?" she asked. Spitfire shrugged again and let them dangle at her waist. Parian put the tape to Spitfire"s shoulder and measured down to her wrist, making a note of it, then from shoulder to neck.
  
  "Could you hold your arm out slightly?"
  
  "Now hold your arms up please."
  
  "To shoulder height please."
  
  "Don"t hold your stomach in or the outfit will be too tight there."
  
  Parian seemed to settle into an understated confidence as she took down Spitfire"s lengths and circumferences and whatever else went into making clothes. Maybe this sort of thing was routine enough to override her reaction to a couple of capes in her shop.
  
  "Have you done costumes before?" Spitfire asked suddenly, as Parian was holding the tape measure from waist to knee. Parian stiffened slightly, not enough that I"d have seen it if I wasn"t watching.
  
  "This is actually my first commission from heroes," she said lightly. "Of course, it can"t be any more demanding than a three piece suit."
  
  "She can"t even lie with a full mask." Quarrel rolled her eyes. "This kid"s so goddamn spineless."
  
  I realised I should probably try to reassure Parian. "We"re really going for function more than form. It doesn"t need to look fancy."
  
  "Probably just gonna get dirty anyway," Spitfire added cheerfully. Parian stepped away to write the last measurement in, not looking at either of us for a moment.
  
  Finally, she cleared her throat. "Right. We"ve got your measurements, now we just need an idea of how you want your outfit to look."
  
  "I was thinking a jumpsuit, in thick fabric, with a bunch of pockets. A mask that leaves the mouth open, obviously-"
  
  Spitfire cut in. "Don"t I get a say in this?" she asked, annoyed.
  
  I held up my hands in a placating gesture. "Sorry. We know you don"t want loose fabric on your outfit though, right? We saw that last night."
  
  I"d driven Spitfire up to the Docks for her power testing last night, to the area everyone called the Boat Graveyard. With that whole section of shoreline blocked off by the rusting hulks that gave it its name, it was a good place to cut loose without being disturbed by anyone but homeless and seagulls.
  
  Over several hours, we"d learned that Spitfire could vary the viscosity of her spit with some effort, from flowing to adhesive. Similarly, she could roughly decide how hot the flames would burn, from campfire to blast furnace. At her hottest she"d left patches of glass in the sand, and molten holes in the hulls of the ships.
  
  We"d also found out Spitfire was in fact resistant to all but her hottest fire when the trailing edge of her previous coat had brushed through a puddle of napalm spittle and immediately burst into flames. After a minute of panicked flailing and me ripping the coat off her, Spitfire had realised she was completely unharmed, and worked up the nerve to discover that fire felt like a hot bath to her.
  
  The Butchers still thought it was hilarious though.
  
  "Of course it was!" Rotter laughed. "Running around like a chicken with its head cut off, that"s comedy gold!"
  
  "Aahh! I"m on fire!" Firecracker added mockingly.
  
  Spitfire grumbled something but didn"t argue the point any further. Parian looked between us, then tapped her notepad. "So something like overalls, and a mask to match? And what sort of material would you like?" She flipped a page and started drawing something with quick strokes of her pencil.
  
  Spitfire shrugged.
  
  "Wool"s supposed to be pretty flame-retardant, especially if it"s tightly woven."
  
  Both the girls turned to look at me quizzically. "How"d you know that?" Spitfire asked.
  
  "I did some research on this stuff yesterday. We can treat it with some chemicals to improve it some more."
  
  Spitfire nodded. "Cool. Can I get some armour in it or something?"
  
  "Smart kid," Tactical praised. "Always good to have defence."
  
  Parian"s fingers twisted together for a second. "I"m afraid I can"t make anything like that," she said apologetically. "I could design your suit so it"ll fit over any armour you decide to add to it, if I know how it"ll be shaped."
  
  "I"ll handle the armour," I said, idly thinking of a design for a simple breastplate and some pads for knees and elbows. A utility belt could be good too- if I used a vacuum flask design on the compartments, the contents should be safer from high temperatures... I puled out my own notepad and started sketching the basic designs out with a pencil.
  
  "So long as it"s something I can still run in," Spitfire said, stepping off the platform. Something seemed to occur to her, and she snapped her fingers. "Hey, why don"t you just tinker me something fireproof? Or armour like yours?"
  
  "Oh, here we go," Tock rolled his eyes. "People always want the Tinker to make them something."
  
  "Because" I said with a long-suffering air that was more Tock Tick"s than my own, "Tinkertech takes effort to make, and effort to maintain. I"m already making you a weapon anyway, I won"t have time to maintain anything else." My creations were actually pretty low-maintenance compared to other Tinkers, but I didn"t want to get tied down making too much stuff for her.
  
  Spitfire scratched the back of her neck awkwardly. "Yeah, okay."
  
  "Wool overalls, tight weave, plenty of pockets," Parian muttered, adding details to her sketch. "And the mask to cover everything but the mouth- actually, I"ll need to get measurements of your head if I"m making that as well," she added, picking up her tape measure again.
  
  Spitfire held still as Parian reached up to run the ribbon around the circumference of her head, then along her scalp. She scribbled the results down into her notes, then turned to her design sketch again.
  
  "Holy fuck, this is the most boring shit ever," Butcher complained. "Having you listen to you lot bitch about your outfits-" I shoved him lightly, enough to keep him out of the light for a few minutes.
  
  "Some of us care about our appearance," Needler sniffed.
  
  "Says you. You were mostly just wearing knives," Bearskin pointed out.
  
  "A costume is supposed to be more than jeans and a furry jacket, like some people I could mention!"
  
  "Oh, knock it off, you two," Stoneknapper complained. "Besides," he added slyly, "We all know I had the best costume."
  
  "Wearing scraps of cement as armour? Bitch, please." Anchorage tossed her hair. "I was killing it, and you know it."
  
  "With that raggedy old trenchcoat?"
  
  I gave everyone in the argument a warning shove just as Parian turned her notepad around for us to see. "Will this do?"
  
  Spitfire peered at it. "Looks kinda boring..." she hummed. "Can we add some flames on the legs? Maybe some spikes?"
  
  "Now that"s someone with taste," Rotter said approvingly.
  
  "Flames yes, spikes are probably too aggressive. Plus, we need to work in the armour." I held out my pad to both of them- an armoured vest to cover the front and back, and the utility belt.
  
  Parian glanced at it for a moment, then flipped her pencil around to scrub out the pockets on the chest. Spitfire grabbed at the pad to look more closely. "Sweet. Can we paint something on the front? And on the arms and- oh shit, waitwaitwait, not the arms, I don"t need the sleeves," she said suddenly. "I just had the best idea ever."
  
  To my confusion, she started rolling her sleeves up to her elbows. "What if I use my spit to set my hands on fire?" She held up her fists in a boxer pose. "Then I can go all flaming fists of fury!"
  
  "Oh my god," Firecracker breathed. "I love this kid! Taylor, you have got to keep her!"
  
  "The girl is mad," Muramasa said flatly.
  
  "All the best people are!"
  
  I stared at Spitfire. "No, absolutely not. You are not going to punch people with fire, Jesus Christ!"
  
  "Aw, come on!" Spitfire pleaded. "It wouldn"t set them on fire, it"d just scorch them a bit, right? They"d all be too scared to get near me anyway!"
  
  "What if you do set someone on fire anyway?" I retorted. "And what if you want to do literally anything with your hands? Go ahead, try to pick up money with burning hands, see how that goes."
  
  Spitfire paused. "...okay, that"s a point."
  
  "And we"re getting you a fire extinguisher," I added. "Two of them. I"ll strap them to your hands if I have to." Something about that sentence flickered in my mind for a second, related to Flinch"s power. I put the thought to one side for later, too exasperated with Spitfire at the moment.
  
  "Hey, I"m not going to burn stuff for fun," Spitfire protested, "give me some credit!"
  
  "Fine. Still, flaming fists bad. I"ll give you some knuckledusters if you want to punch better."
  
  "Fire"d still be better," Nemean rumbled. "Give her spiked knuckles at least. Or let her set those on fire."
  
  Parian"s head was turning back and forth between the two of us- I got the feeling that her face was probably looking increasingly horrified under the mask. "Will there be any other pieces you want to add?" she asked, in a tone that clearly said she hoped the answer was no.
  
  I hesitated for a second. There was one more idea I"d had while I was researching, but I still wasn"t sure if I wanted to put it out there.
  
  "It"ll be f-fine," Flinch soothed. "You"ve got a good cover story for it. Besides, you know it"ll help keep Spitfire safe."
  
  "There"s one more thing," I said slowly. "I was thinking, I could maybe- maybe," I held up a finger warningly, "make a sort of undersuit to wear under the costume."
  
  "Okay? And what would that do?" Spitfire asked sceptically.
  
  No going back from this. "It"d be a fabric that"s basically cut-proof. It"s similar to nylon," I explained, the lie rolling off my tongue easily, "but it"s a lot stronger. I haven"t tested its absolute limit, but this stuff could conceivably keep a small calibre bullet from penetrating."
  
  This was all technically true. I"d read somewhere that nylon was originally an attempt at making an artificial form of silk, so genuine spider silk could be considered similar. I"d had the black widows I"d collected constantly spinning thread just to build up a stockpile for grappler cable, or to repair my undersuit: I had just enough to spare to make one for Spitfire.
  
  "I hope she understands how valuable that is," Tock Tick said. "That stuff"s worth half its weight in gold."
  
  Spitfire whistled. "Well, shit, yes please I"d like some of that."
  
  "Wait a moment." Parian was staring right at me. "Did you say you can make Tinkertech fabric? Bulletproof fabric?"
  
  "I mean, I don"t know if it"s really bulletproof, like I said, I haven"t tested-"
  
  "Would you be willing to organise a trade deal?"
  
  I stopped mid-sentence. "What?"
  
  "I have to agree with the twig," Quarrel said. "What?"
  
  "Would you be willing to sell me some of your fabric?" Parian said insistently. "The market for something lightweight but so durable would be fantastic-"
  
  "Hold on," I interrupted. "Look, Parian, that sounds like a great idea, and I could use the money, but this stuff"s really difficult to make in large quantities. It took me weeks to make enough for myself, and I"d be using a lot of what I"ve built up since then just for Spitfire."
  
  That, and I was worried that the Protectorate might get hold of a sample and test it. Armsmaster was one of the best Tinkers in North America- he"d definitely notice that the silk was genuine spider silk, and then I"d be outed as fast as a bullet.
  
  Parian"s shoulders slumped. "Ah. Never mind then, forget I asked."
  
  "Probably should have seen this coming," Tactical noted. "Tinker fabric to a fashion designer, that"d be like a red rag to a bull."
  
  Spitfire glanced at Parian awkwardly. "Uh, so this stuff, you"re wearing some of it too?"
  
  "Yep. Under the armour. Sort of a last line of defence." I noticed Parian"s fingers twisting and untwisting again, and felt a rush of guilt at turning her down. Her whole demeanour was like a kicked puppy.
  
  "Letting her take a look can"t hurt, right?" I thought.
  
  Anchorage faked a scandalised gasp. "Whah, Miss Hebert!" she said in a very Gone With The Wind sort of voice. "Ah declare, to show your underclothes so brazenly, ah nevuh-!" She broke off in floods of laughter, and most of the rest joined in.
  
  "Okay, fuck all of you," I thought, undoing the catches on my left gauntlet and sliding the entire thing off. Parian and Spitfire both leaned in to look at the greyish silk glove underneath as I flexed my fingers to demonstrate.
  
  "So I"d make you a one-piece of this to go under your costume," I explained. "Just remember, it won"t absorb the force of a hit, so if you get stabbed or shot, you"re looking at deep bruising, broken bones, stuff like that."
  
  "Maybe get her some chainmail if you"re going this far," Stoneknapper suggested, still snickering from Anchorage"s bit. "That"s pretty good for armour as well, less traceable."
  
  "Better than bleeding," Spitfire said, prodding at my wrist. "This is kinda cool. I didn"t think you were into stuff like this."
  
  "What do you mean by that?" I said puzzled. Parian reached out a hand to touch the fabric as well, but hesitated at the last inch.
  
  "C"mon, in for a penny," Rotter urged. "Little doll"s not gonna do it by herself."
  
  I moved my wrist to meet Parian"s hand- then I changed my mind and just pulled off the silk glove to give to her. She dumped her notepad into the arms of the teddy and peered at the glove closely, rubbing the fabric between finger and thumb.
  
  Spitfire shrugged, slipping her hands into her pockets. "Little stuff. You got the armour like a tank, you got the huge car and the big-ass launcher- you"re really going for the "large and in charge" style."
  
  "Not really? I"m just trying to keep it practical."
  
  "Hey, I"m not complaining, I think it"s badass- all intimidating, like Robocop or something."
  
  I frowned. "I really wasn"t going for intimidating. Honestly, I tried for Chevalier"s style when I put this together, a sort of courtly knight aesthetic."
  
  "Okay, tiebreaker. Parian, do you think-" Spitfire broke off as she saw what Parian was doing with the glove. I stared as well.
  
  "Anybody getting Addams Family vibes from this?" Anchorage said, as the glove wriggled in Parian"s grip independently. Looking closer, I could see how she"d used needle and thread to stitch the wrist of the glove shut; presumably she needed a closed shape to animate with her power.
  
  "Right, the hand," Vladimir said. "What"d they call that thing?"
  
  "I"m fairly sure they just called it It," Needler said.
  
  "No, cousin It was the hairy blob," Tactical said. "The hand was named Thing."
  
  Parian finally broke the silence. "I, I just wanted to test. With my power, I mean. The fabric works well with my power." The glove gave a thumbs up as she spoke.
  
  "That sure looks like a Thing alright," Bearskin said, unsettled.
  
  Spitfire wordlessly help up a hand in a peace sign. After a second, Parian made the glove do a peace sign as well.
  
  Spitfire gave a wide grin. "Awesome."
  
  "That is kind of cool," I agreed as Parian started unpicking the stitches she"d made.
  
  "Just a simple trick," she demurred, tugging the thread out in one long pull. "What were you saying before?"
  
  "Do you think Elpis" armour is intimidating?" Spitfire blurted. Parian fumbled and almost dropped the glove.
  
  "Uh, well, I don"t really think it"d be fair for me to comment," she stammered, jabbing her sewing needle into the teddy bear"s arm. "I mean, I wouldn"t want to be rude-"
  
  "She is too afraid to even say she is afraid," Muramasa said unnecessarily. Even I could pick up on how uncomfortable Parian was right now.
  
  I opened my mouth to say something, just as the spider I"d positioned inside the door felt its thread snap. I strangled the urge to reach for a weapon, forcing myself to wait until I heard the bell ring before I turned around.
  
  "I knew I recognised that helmet!"
  
  "What is she doing here?" Needler asked as Victoria Dallon strode into the room, sparing a glance for all the outfits on display. She was out of costume today, in a white padded jacket and jeans.
  
  Over her shoulder I could see a smaller figure in a thicker coat shove the door closed and shake out a mass of brown frizzy hair- which meant Victoria had brought her sister along. Amy followed along with a grumpy look on her face that changed to surprise as she noticed me and Spitfire.
  
  "Elpis, how"ve you been! I heard about how you took down Stormtiger! High five!" Victoria gushed, holding a hand up. It took me a second to muster a response in the face of such intense cheer, but I eventually raised a hand and slapped it to hers.
  
  "Miss Dallon," I said formally. "Shouldn"t you be in school right now?"
  
  Victoria shrugged. "Well, I have these classes on Parahuman Studies up at Brockton U, but the lecturer called in sick today; so I gave Amy a lift into town, and I detoured to check out Parian"s on the way, and then I saw you, so here we are!" she finished brightly.
  
  "Jesus," Spitfire said, staring at Victoria, "How much coffee did you drink this morning?"
  
  "I"m with the minion; Blondie"s way too peppy to deal with," Firecracker said.
  
  Victoria turned to look at Spitfire speculatively. "Enough. And you are?" She said it with a challenging tone, cocking her hip to strike a pose. Spitfire folded her arms in response, unimpressed.
  
  "Spitfire. S"up?"
  
  "Never heard of you," Victoria said dismissively. "You"re new then?"
  
  "Yes, she is," I broke in, before the posturing could get any further. "We were just sorting out Spitfire"s costume with Parian here," I gestured to the dressmaker, who shrank back under Victoria"s sudden gaze.
  
  "Throwing her to the wolves there, huh?" Tock snickered at Parian"s reaction.
  
  "Oh, cool. I wanted to come see your place the literal second I heard about it, but life"s been getting in the way, y"know?" Victoria stuck a hand out to shake.
  
  Parian hesitantly returned the grip, then let go after two pumps. "I"m glad to hear it," she said uncertainly. "We were actually in the middle of a consultation, but if you"d like to wait a moment, I can be right with you."
  
  "Nah, that"s fine, I was just window shopping, then I saw Elpis and I had to catch up!" She playfully punched me in the shoulder. "Too busy to say hi?"
  
  "Come on Vicky, reel it in," Panacea said tiredly. I"d almost forgotten she was in here, standing just behind her sister, overshadowed by her intensity. She was huddled into her coat, hands in her pockets, looking like she wanted to leave as soon as possible.
  
  "Yeah, we were actually in the middle of something before you barged in," Spitfire said rudely. "So, y"know, you can leave any time you want?"
  
  "Excuse me?" Victoria said in a brittle tone of voice. "I"m not sure what your problem is-"
  
  "I"ll give you a hint: it smells like hair bleach and teen spirit."
  
  "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" Stoneknapper started shouting, others joining in the chant to beat a drum tattoo on the inside of my head. My patience broke.
  
  "Alright, both of you, knock it off!" I shouted, stepping between them. "Spitfire, this is Glory Girl, she helped me out in a fight about a week ago; and this is Panacea," I gestured to the younger sister, who seemed startled to be mentioned, "the city"s resident healer, so be nice. Ladies, this is Spitfire, I"m helping her get started, we came here to sort out a costume for her. Everyone got that? Good. Now act your goddamn age."
  
  There was a moment of silence while everyone gawked at my sudden outburst.
  
  "Aw come on, you never break up a girl fight!" Dirty Rotter complained.
  
  "Look on the bright side," Quarrel said with vicious satisfaction. "Twig just lost her temper. Not as calm as you want to be, huh?"
  
  I shoved both of them into the dark and took a deep breath, visualising the anger as red smoke leaving on the exhale, an anger management trick I"d learned weeks ago. Flinch supported me wordlessly, radiating sympathy for my temper. The rest of the Butchers stayed silent, not wanting to be pushed down as well.
  
  Spitfire cleared her throat. "Let me be the mature one," she said, extending a hand. "I"m Spitfire, nice to meet you."
  
  Victoria took it and shook. "Call me Vicky."
  
  "Sure. Hey to you too," Spitfire added to Panacea. "Uh, big fan of your work."
  
  Panacea nodded wordlessly, still glancing between me and her sister uncertainly.
  
  I turned to Parian, who"d retreated several steps to stand by her teddy bear. The fear in her posture made my stomach twist with guilt. "Sorry for shouting like that," I apologised.
  
  "It"s fine," Parian said in a small voice that piled on the guilt. I"d spoken like that back in Winslow, a defeated little tone from having all the fight stomped out of you. "I think we"ve got all the details of Spitfire"s costume now."
  
  "Uh, we were actually talking about Elpis"s costume before you guys came in," Spitfire said in a transparent attempt to change the subject. I jumped on it with pathetic gratitude.
  
  "Yeah, apparently my armour"s intimidating. Do you two have an opinion?"
  
  Victoria- Vicky- shrugged. "I mean, it is kind of," she jerked her arms around stiffly, "clunky, I guess?"
  
  "No ornamentation," Panacea volunteered suddenly. "it needs details."
  
  "Yeah," Spitfire nodded. "Like, my costume"s not just gonna be a suit, I"m gonna have flame designs and stuff all over it."
  
  "Wait, so you"ve literally got fire powers?"
  
  "Duh. I spit fire. Clue"s in the name."
  
  Vicky glanced at me with a look of horrible glee. "You know, when I first met Elpis, she"d put together a flamethrower to fight Mush. Maybe she"s got a type?"
  
  Spitfire caught on quickly. "Oh, so that"s how it is?" she asked, turning to face me. "You only want me for my flames?"
  
  "Okay, no, we"re not doing this," I protested. "I"d rather have you guys insult my armour, thanks."
  
  "I could stand to hear them make fun of you some more," Knapper sniggered.
  
  Tactical groaned. "They"re laughing at all of us too, Knapper. Quit sounding so happy about it."
  
  Parian hesitantly raised a hand. "We"ve actually still got some time for your appointment, so, I mean, if you want, I could help you with designs at least."
  
  "Vicky, we should get going," Panacea cut in insistently. "You said you"d get me to the hospital by 2, it"s-" she rolled her sleeve up to check her watch, "-2:20."
  
  "You spend too much time at the hospital anyway," Vicky said dismissively. "C"mon, this is helping too! We"re supporting Brockton"s latest heroes in establishing an approachable identity to connect with the public."
  
  Panacea rolled her eyes. "You just want to pick out outfits, but with capes."
  
  "A little bit. C"mon Ames." Vicky clasped her hands together and made puppy-dog eyes. "Please?"
  
  Panacea wilted under the sustained pleading assault. "Fine." She looked me up and down. "I don"t know, some colour besides steel?"
  
  "Gallant"s suit"s all silver," I pointed out indignantly. I knew the girls weren"t being malicious, but I still felt the need to defend my appearance. If a local Ward could pull it off, why not me?
  
  "Yeah, but he"s got those lights and stuff in there too," Spitfire pointed out. "Kid Win"s red and gold, Armsmaster"s blue and silver- and you"re just grey. Not even cool grey, it"s Just Grey™."
  
  "This is better than TV," Vlad smirked. "Everybody talking about your crap sense of fashion in real life."
  
  I gave him a warning shove, but Parian was joining in the conversation. "Some accents would help," she offered meekly. "Some secondary colours to break things up."
  
  Glory Girl pointed to her. "She gets it. And you could get a symbol too, splash it over your chest." she pointed to her own top, and I almost followed her gesture before I managed to wrench my gaze away with burning cheeks.
  
  "We saw that!" Anchorage cackled.
  
  "It wasn"t like that!" I protested.
  
  "We can tell when you lie," Muramasa said in a rare moment of humour.
  
  "Maybe I should add a cape as well, really push the envelope," I blustered, trying to move the conversation on.
  
  "Why not?" Spitfire said with malicious amusement. "You could pull it off."
  
  Parian flipped to another page on her notepad, scribbling some ideas down. "If you and Spitfire are pairing up, it might be worth choosing contrasting colours- cool to warm, your grey to Spitfire"s... uh."
  
  Spitfire blinked. "Wait, did we not decide what colour my costume"s going to be?" she asked incredulously.
  
  Vicky threw up her hands. "Okay, that tears it. You guys need serious help. Lemme see that," she insisted, rising an inch of the ground to peer over Parian"s shoulder.
  
  Panacea glanced at her watch again with a huff. "Great. Vicky"s got a project now, nothing"s going to stop her."
  
  I winced. "I"m not getting out of this, am I?" I said to Panacea as I stepped back next to her. She just shot me a commiserating look.
  
  Glancing up from the notepad, Vicky beamed. "Nope!"
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  This was, and still is, the longest chapter in the story. Hardly surprising considering it's basically two scenes welded together.
  A bit more of Spitfire, and introducing Parian. Again, I wanted to feature her in the story some more, so an early introduction seemed like the way to go.
  
  3.6
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Saturday 5th February, Southern Docks
  
  Spitfire rolled her shoulders a few times, crossed each arm over her chest in turn, waggled her ankles, and finally did a couple of jumping jacks. "Okay," she admitted at last, "this fits pretty good."
  
  I rolled my eyes at her antics. "Glad you like it."
  
  "You know people can"t see when you"re rolling your eyes under the helmet, right?" Vladimir pointed out. I rolled my eyes again, just for him.
  
  "Hey, come on," Spitfire wheedled as she noticed my tone. "I mean, it might"ve shrunk after you did your thing with it, or whatever." She flicked her arms out to the side to illustrate her point. "And I"ve got all the armour on too."
  
  Parian had done a great job on the suit- simple, but effective. Thick wool overalls in a deep orange, deep pockets on the hips and thighs, and the flame designs on the cuffs that Spitfire had insisted on circling the wrists and ankles in red and gold. A cowl and mask extended from the collar to cover everything but her mouth and chin, with dark lenses I"d provided to protect her eyes. I"d soaked the whole thing in a bath of chemicals last night that would make it way more flame-retardant as well.
  
  I"d managed to get the armour to work with it- a thick black vest made of woven steel cable covered her torso, with a stylised spiralling flame painted on the front. A metal belt made of fist-sized containers chained together hung on her waist, armour pads covered Spitfire"s elbows and knees, and a pair of thick gloves with metal plates on the knuckles protected her hands.
  
  "It does look kinda badass," Firecracker admitted grudgingly. "Probably would"ve worn something like that myself."
  
  "Sort of paramilitary in shades of traffic cone," Tactical snarked. "And the chest symbol just gives people a bullseye to shoot at."
  
  "Means they"ll all be trying to shoot at her strongest point instead of her head," I pointed out. Out loud I asked, "So the armour"s fitting alright? Not sliding about, not too heavy?"
  
  Spitfire shrugged, lifting her arms to twist at the waist a few times. "Nah, all good. And the undersuit"s so damn comfy." She slapped her vest for emphasis. "How "bout you? Liking the new look? Because I am. Very slimming."
  
  "Yeah, I"m a little impressed by how much I managed to reduce the suit"s size," I admitted, glancing down at myself.
  
  Wednesday"s brainstorming session had produced some good ideas, even if I"d had to repeatedly shut down Vicky"s attempts to get me to add a skirt. The ideas of a symbol and some secondary colours had sounded best to me.
  
  I"d moulded a symbol of my own into my breastplate- an abstract pithos, the sort of Greek storage jar that had been part of the original Pandora myth before the detail was changed to a box. I"d outlined the symbol in lines of sky blue, and then painted more lines swooping down my arms from my shoulders, along the ridges on my forearms, down to the backs of my hands. Together with the less bulky design, I did look pretty good, though I wasn"t yet used to leaving my jawguard open.
  
  "Can"t believe you picked Legend"s colours for this," Dirty Rotter grumbled. "All the times we fought that sparkly ponce, and now we"re dressing like him."
  
  "We"re as flat as him too," Quarrel said meanly. "Pushing the armour out doesn"t change the fact you"d need two pushup bras to look-"
  
  Whatever she was going to say next was cut off as I shoved her into the darkness. I had added a sort of keel to the breastplate to change my silhouette a bit more, but I still didn"t have to take that from her.
  
  "Anyway," I said to Spitfire, carefully keeping the irritation out of my voice, "now you"re all dressed up, let"s hit the party. You"re sure the info"s good?"
  
  "Positive. Filthy Sam couldn"t lie to save his life. That"s why everybody asks him about stuff."
  
  "Filthy Sam?" Anchorage sounded amused. "Friend of yours, Rotter?"
  
  "Get fucked."
  
  "Party it is, then." I jerked my head toward our ride. "Let"s go."
  
  Spitfire followed me across our parking lot-meeting place to what I"d finally decided to call the Chariot. The former speeder had been tweaked in a bunch of little ways- nothing massive, but enough to make it a lot more impressive overall.
  
  "We have to try and salvage some of Squealer"s tech if we can," Tock Tick insisted. "Imagine how we could upgrade this thing if we copied from a vehicle Tinker."
  
  "Yes, but she"s usually out of her mind on drugs," Needler countered as we climbed in, Spitfire only reluctantly fastening her seatbelt after I gave her a look. "How much worthwhile tech can there be?"
  
  The streets were quieter past midnight, even on a Saturday, and certainly in this part of town. We only saw a few other cars on the road, mostly taxis ferrying home various drunks. I caught glimpses of their astonished faces through the windshields as we passed them easily, our engine barely straining.
  
  Spitfire had spent the last couple of days casually asking around for any info on where the Merchants were holed up, even using a couple of small bribes with money I"d given her. As she"d eventually found from Filthy Sam, the Merchants were throwing a private party to drum up new business, recoup their losses, and do some recruitment. Word had finally spread around of how the Merchants had managed to corner Snowblind and Sinister, boosting their standing in the city somewhat.
  
  Therefore, the party: held not in an abandoned warehouse for once, but in an office block on the same lot as one. It was supposed to be held on several floors, with your status in the gang determining how far up you could go and what kind of delights you could get.
  
  "That"s actually not a bad move," Bearskin admitted. "Gives people a reason to prove themselves, try to impress the leadership. Take your licks and get the fun."
  
  "On the bright side, it also means the guys in charge are going to be even more wasted than everyone else when we get there," Stoneknapper pointed out.
  
  I checked the next street we passed. "Okay, that"s 56th, so we"ve got three more blocks to go... Time to stealth it." I flipped a cover up and clicked the switch inside. The engine cut out instantly, replaced by a quiet humming as the mechanical power source took over, quiet as a whisper.
  
  Spitfire leaned back in her seat. "Time for some ass-kicking," she said nonchalantly, polishing her knuckles on her vest. Despite her confident tone, I could see her leg jiggling up and down as we approached.
  
  I took a moment to dip the headlights as I thought of what to say. The Butchers offered unhelpful advice that I ignored, until Flinch came up with something. "Don"t tell her it"s okay to be scared. She"ll just get defensive and try to overcompensate. Relate to her instead; open up a bit."
  
  As much as I disliked the thought of looking vulnerable, it was solid advice, so when I got us to within a block of the location, I rolled us into an alley just around the corner, parked, and turned off everything, letting all the little noises die down for a few seconds before I spoke.
  
  "I think this might be the biggest move I"ve pulled yet. Building full of Merchants, both their capes, right in the middle of their turf. This could get messy."
  
  "You call that opening up?" Bearskin said incredulously. "You"re supposed to encourage the kid, not scare her even more."
  
  Spitfire looked as sceptical as Bearskin, not that she"d know it. "You suck at pep talks, you know that?"
  
  I winced. "Okay, yeah."
  
  "Why"re you saying this shit anyway? Not like you get scared, right?"
  
  I couldn"t stop the laugh from bursting out, sudden and bitter. "No. God no, I get scared, believe me. I"ve just got better at handling it." Scared of dying, scared of being found out, scared of Dad finding out, the list went on.
  
  Spitfire went quiet at that. I forged on before I lost my nerve.
  
  "I mean, I guess it"s a good thing. It"d be dumb not to be scared of something like this, right? So," I floundered for a second, "just... watch my back, alright? And I"ll watch yours. Deal?" I held a fist out toward her.
  
  After a second, Spitfire reached out and bumped her knuckles to mine. "Yeah. I gotcha." Her voice steadied noticeably even as she spoke.
  
  "Good speech," Nemean said simply.
  
  Without another word, I popped the doors, and we both clambered out, walking round to the hatches on the back to get out our gear. I"d rebuilt my launcher after a lot of thought- now it was one large barrel as wide as my fist, and a thinner one below, with a helix magazine on either side feeding in. I"d also put together a couple of smaller devices for tonight, specifically for anti-Tinker use.
  
  "Just remember n-not to underestimate Squealer," Flinch cautioned. "She might be a Merchant, but her t-tech is damn tough. She won"t go down easy."
  
  "So long as we get to see some fireworks," Stoneknapper said dismissively.
  
  "And so long as you use my baby!" Anchorage insisted. "I"ve been waiting years for this shit!"
  
  "Little help?" Spitfire asked, holding up a steel framework helplessly. I racked the launcher onto my back and came over to help.
  
  "Okay," I said, taking the framework from her and opening the canister on the front, "this is the power source. Just spit into this, medium temperature, low viscosity."
  
  Spitfire obediently hawked a burning loogie into the intake, and I closed it as the engine inside started to spin up to speed. "Arms out."
  
  I lowered the whole thing over Spitfire"s head, engine on the front, water tanks on the back, and frameworks locking over the arms, then started fastening everything into place while Spitfire fingered the triggers that flipped into her palms.
  
  The obvious problem with Spitfire"s power was how easily fire could spread out of control, and the obvious solution was to equip her with an extinguisher. Since I"d also needed to make her a weapon, I"d killed two birds with one stone. The engine was fuelled by her own spit, providing power to both the hoses on her wrists, and the pneumatic frames over each arm that boosted her upper body strength.
  
  "Except now she"s not going to set people on fire, so what"s the point?" Rotter said. I gave him a quick shove as a warning as I fastened the last clasp at her wrist and stepped back. "Okay, try a short burst. Nothing too big."
  
  Spitfire gingerly raised both arms and pointed them at a trashcan a few feet away, then jammed her thumbs down on the triggers. Sprays of water shot out like riot hoses, and the side of the can crumpled in from the force, before the whole thing fell on its side with a thunderous clatter.
  
  I winced as the sound echoed off the buildings. "I said nothing too big, not "wake up half the neighbourhood."" The Butchers were killing themselves laughing at the whole spectacle.
  
  Spitfire hissed through her teeth for a second. "You know," she said at last, "this is kind of your fault for giving it to me."
  
  Anchorage dissolved into giggles, laughing too hard to say anything. Firecracker managed to force out "I-love-this-kid!" before falling apart herself. I gave them both an exasperated shove so their mirth wouldn"t bleed into me. "Let"s just get on with it," I muttered, flicking my jawguard up and closing the hatch.
  
  Spitfire followed me as we crept closer to the Merchant"s location. The building was five stories tall, a squat grey cube, every window covered from inside or outside, and the top floor had metal plates along the walls. Light leaked through the cracks in a variety of colours, and I could just make out music at the edge of my better-than-human baseline. Something with a lot of drum and bass.
  
  "Guards," Tactical pointed out. Sure enough, there were a couple of guys outside- two flanking the front door, looking around nervously with hands on their weapons, and a couple more circling the perimeter.
  
  "Y"know, I didn"t think those guys"d be so alert," Spitfire mused. "Like, villain guards, you always think they"ll be just huddled up in the office playing poker or something, not actually doing their jobs."
  
  "Maybe they heard something," I said acidly. Spitfire wilted at the barb: Vladimir wordlessly expressed a lack of sympathy for her.
  
  I watched the guards for a little longer, tracking the runners through bloodsight and a couple of bugs I managed to move into position. Hundreds more were slowly creeping through the building, dodging between feet to put themselves at the edges and corners of the rooms, marking out the dimensions for me. Ideally I"d mark everyone in there with bugs, but I doubted I could pull that off in so large a space without someone figuring it out.
  
  "We circle around and take out one runner," I said eventually, Tactical"s Thinker power thrumming through my mind as I considered lines of fire and possible cover, "then the doormen, and then we jump the last runner. Fast and quiet, before they can raise the alarm. Then we seal the doors and rappel in, take the capes by surprise and leave everyone else penned in for the cops. Got it?"
  
  "Sure. This kinda feels like a video game," Spitfire whispered as we slipped through the shadows, avoiding the eyes of the guards. "Huge enemy stronghold, bunch of levels with worse and worse guys, with the boss fight right at the top, 'cept we got a cheat code to skip to the end. We should get, like, power-ups or something."
  
  "You guys work great together," Stoneknapper enthused. "She"s tons of fun, and you"re no fun at all. It balances out."
  
  I hushed both of them as we reached the edge of the building"s parking lot. The place was half-full of various crappy cars parked wherever, and a few right up against the building that were covered in asymmetrical armour plates and technicolour graffiti; Squealer"s work, no doubt.
  
  I hunkered low and started stalking my way around the cars, Spitfire following wordlessly. Within a moment, we reached the back of the building, out of sight of the doormen, just as the first patroller rounded the corner.
  
  I waited a moment, then silently loped out, matching his pace for a moment, footstep for footstep, before lunging to wrap my arms around his neck and cover his mouth. He struggled immediately, thrashing with manic energy, but I simply held the sleeper hold, not even breaking stride as I carried him along. By the time I"d turned the corner, he"d stopped struggling.
  
  At my signal, Spitfire jogged out of her spot, catching up to me as I stopped to lay him down and tie his wrists and ankles. "Doormen next," I breathed, checking the guy"s pulse quickly. Spitfire nodded, then pointed to her lips and mouthed "Holy Shit," at me. I snorted silently and beckoned.
  
  The doormen were just starting to relax when I burst around the corner, launcher up and firing a net round into the furthest guard. He went down with a strangled squawk and a thump.
  
  The closer guard yelped and fumbled for his gun, just as Spitfire sprinted past me and slammed a fist into his chest. I closed the gap to twist the gun out of his hands while Spitfire bent him into a full-nelson, then clapped my palms to his temples to knock him out.
  
  The first guard had somehow managed to palm a switchblade and was frantically sawing at the net when I grabbed him and forced him to the ground. "I can beat you unconscious, or you can give up and just be tied up. What"ll it be?" I hissed.
  
  After a moment, the Merchant dropped the knife. "Smart man," I praised, tossing the knife away and shoving a ready-made gag into his mouth. Spitfire was hesitantly doing the same with her guy, fiddling with the ziptie to secure his wrists.
  
  A quick glance with bloodsight showed the last patroller walking along the back wall. I put my guy down and slipped round the corner to grab the first guy we"d dropped, dragging him over to the front door.
  
  Half a minute later, the last guy rounded the corner, and had just enough time for his eyes to widen and the cigarette to fall from his cracked lips before I fell on him like a tonne of bricks.
  
  "Hahahahahahaaa! Oh, his fucking face!" Rotter was doing the unrestrained laugh of someone who doesn"t need to breathe as I forced the guard into a hold.
  
  "You"re scary sometimes, you know that?" Spitfire said as I finished putting him to sleep. "Like, huge respect, but you"re scary."
  
  I shrugged, tying the last up and setting him next to the others. "If I"m only scary sometimes, I"m doing better than I"d feared. Come on, let"s get the doors."
  
  It was the work of a few minutes to seal the ground doors, despite my misgivings of blocking fire exits. I also placed a quick call to 911 to let the authorities know we were about to raid a Merchant party, making sure to specifically mention Spitfire as my partner. They promised to send a couple of cars to make the arrests, and divert a hero to us, but it"d take a couple of minutes. Apparently the Empire was acting up tonight.
  
  I also took a moment to pop the hoods on the Squealer-made cars and pull out the engines, along with some of the armour plates, then pushed the gutted vehicles together and let Spitfire go full force on them, covering them in her hottest flames to melt them into uselessness. I could feel the heat from yards away as the parking lot rapidly became a bonfire.
  
  "So are you gonna use these in the chariot?" Spitfire asked, kicking one greasy engine block for emphasis. I shook my head, wiping my gauntlets on a rag.
  
  "We can"t take Tinkertech as salvage, more"s the pity. I"ll definitely take these apart when we"re done though, get some ideas."
  
  "It"s crude, but there"s good work here," Tock enthused. "Look at the differential bearings here- I never thought to use interlinked drive exchanges! And the alloys! So simple!"
  
  At last, Spitfire and I stood before the door, guards neutralised, and escape routes closed. With bloodsight and bug senses, I estimated there were at least 200 hundred people inside the building, and no idea how many of them were armed.
  
  "Oh, to have a cock again," Bearskin said wistfully. "I"d be hard enough to cut glass at this shit."
  
  "Classy," Vladimir said, voice dripping with sarcasm. I wordlessly agreed, pushing Bearskin into the dark.
  
  I held an arm out to Spitfire, who stepped in close and grabbed on to me, just like we"d practiced. I raised my other arm, flicked the grappler out, and fired the bolt toward the top floor.
  
  The bolt flew straight up and hit the wall easily- then there was a sound like a power chord on an electric guitar, a flash of purple light, and the bolt was flung back off. I quickly hit the retract as it fell, reeling the bolt back in.
  
  "What the hell was that?" Spitfire demanded, stepping away from me to peer up. "Seriously, what the shit was that?"
  
  "Tinkertech," I said grimly. "That must be what the panels are for. The Merchants put in a defense mechanism."
  
  "I"ll wager Squealer found a way to mimic Skidmark"s power," Needler remarked. "That light certainly looked similar to his power."
  
  "I can"t tell if that"s sweet or not," Tactical added. "On the one hand, letting your significant other study your power is certainly a gesture of trust. On the other hand-"
  
  "On the other hand, it"s Skidmark and his sewer-mouth getting busy," Firecracker said with a shudder. "Let"s just not think about it anymore, "kay?"
  
  I drew my swords. "Looks like we"re doing this the hard way," I said, advancing toward the door.
  
  "Woah, what?" Spitfire protested. "You want us to fight our way up? Are you nuts?"
  
  "There"s probably alarms going off in there from when I hit that wall, and the longer we wait, the more time they have to prepare a defense. Skidmark will have time to layer his fields, and Squealer"s probably already building something to smear us all over the asphalt. We either sit here and wait, or we take the fight to them." In fact, I could see people rushing the doors through bloodsight, pounding on them frantically; and although I couldn"t really interpret insect senses well, I could tell there was a lot of frenzied activity on the top floor.
  
  "Damn right," Nemean snarled. "Let"s get in there!"
  
  Butcher radiated eager agreement. "It"ll be a fucking meat grinder," he cackled. "Let"s see how long it takes before you hit someone too hard, little shit-"
  
  I pushed him all the way down and turned to Spitfire. "I know this isn"t what we planned, but no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. You got my back?"
  
  Spitfire wavered for a moment. "Ah hell. Fine, I"m in."
  
  I nodded, then turned back to the door and flicked the grappler out again, firing it into the door. I flexed my toes, and felt the drill bits in my boots bore into the asphalt, pinning me to the ground. Then I simply wound the cable around my hands and yanked as hard as I could.
  
  The double doors came right off their hinges, falling forward as the crush of desperate partygoers behind, now without an obstacle holding them back, surged out in a wave of humanity. Spitfire ducked behind me as they stampeded past us in ripped jeans and skimpy dresses, some girls throwing off their high heels to run faster.
  
  The Butchers leered at some of the more outrageous outfits, including one guy who was shirtless under his leather jacket, showing off a massive skull tattoo. I found myself following him with my eyes for a second as well.
  
  "Ooh, nipple!" Anchorage yelled, indicating a girl whose breast had bounced right out of her tube top as she ran. I quickly looked away, unfortunately not fast enough to keep the rest from unloading various lewd comments.
  
  In a few seconds, the rush began to ease off as people made it out to the parking lot and started frantically driving away. I wasn"t interested in most of them- they were users, the Merchants" customers, and no real threat. The actual members would probably still be inside, grabbing weapons to fight us off.
  
  I looked back over my shoulder at Spitfire. "Stay close to me, and be careful with your water. We"re probably not going to get a chance to refill you tonight." Once she nodded, I retracted the drills and led us into the building.
  
  The first floor was surprisingly mundane- Bare cement floor and walls, a few folding tables with drinks and snacks, speakers against one wall and a disco ball on the ceiling. With the room empty of people and the floor strewn with dropped drinks and personal effects, it just looked pathetic.
  
  There was music playing through the sound system, but I could barely here it over the sound of Skidmark"s amplified voice shrieking orders to all his underlings; "-find them and fuck them up, you hear me?! You shitlickers want a bonus, you bring them to me dead! You want a promotion, you bring "em alive, so I can feed these horsefuckers their own nipples for thinking they can mess with the Merchants!"
  
  "Too noisy," Nemean complained. "Make him shut up."
  
  I pointed to a stairwell. "This way. Watch yourself, there could be traps." I glanced with bloodsight- there were a bunch of guys gathered around on the floor above, their stances suggesting bats and pipes. "Or an ambush," I added, as if I was going off intuition rather than knowledge.
  
  I swapped my swords for the launcher as we approached, setting the main barrel to charge while I selected a pepper round. A few steps up, then I vaulted over the railing to face the clustered Merchants at the top. The pepper round smacked into the chest of the middle guy, and then they were all coughing and shrieking as a stinging white cloud covered them all.
  
  I pressed the initiative, barrelling up the stairs with Spitfire on my heels to hit the Merchants like bowling ball on pins. Spitfire went with body blows, putting her enhanced arm strength to use on the coughing gangsters, while I mixed quick jabs with blows from the stock of my launcher. We"d reduced them to a groaning pile within seconds.
  
  "Not a bad appetiser," Firecracker said, "but we"re all eager to get to the main course. Something more robust, with a hint of, uh... Fuck, I can"t think of anything."
  
  "Don"t bother trying to sound snooty, "cracker," Stoneknapper said. "You"re more fun when you"re yourself."
  
  "Was a good bit though," Rotter praised. "hey, if Skidmark was food, whatcha think he"d be?"
  
  Needler snorted. "One of those rancid burgers where the cook has undoubtedly sneezed on it before serving it to you."
  
  I tuned them out with the ease of long practice as I glanced around. This floor was noticeably better equipped- the speakers were bigger, and the tables were stocked with better drinks, as well as a couple of plates piled high with what must have been pot brownies. There were a couple of ratty couches off in one corner, with a couple huddled behind them, only visible through bloodsight.
  
  "Nothing else here," I said out loud, for their benefit. "let"s move-" Danger sense pinged, and I threw us both sideways as a chubby guy in a baseball cap rushed down the next stairwell, brandishing a sawn-off. "Eat shit!" he squealed, pointing the wavering barrel in our direction.
  
  I grabbed a table and flipped it over just as the gun went off, spraying shot everywhere, but failing to get through our makeshift shield. Spitfire shrieked and covered her head as Chubby fired another round, as ineffective at first. There were another couple of sorry clicks as Chubby suddenly realised the limitation of a double-barrel shotgun.
  
  "Guess nobody told him sawn-offs are crap for anything past short range," Tactical said as I popped out of cover with the launcher. Or rather, the former launcher.
  
  I hadn"t had enough sensors in my armour when I"d tangled with Stormtiger to get any decent data on his power, but seeing how he compressed air into compact shapes for melee/ranged attacks had sparked a few ideas from Tock Tick"s Tinker power.
  
  With side vents constantly drawing in air, a fat compressor at the back, and some adjustments to the rotating inner barrel to shape the rush of air, the effect now was to launch a ball of compacted air that could, for example, knock Chubby off his feet with an effeminate squawk and a comical thump.
  
  "Ha! Ah, look at him," Anchorage jeered. "Like a beached whale. Or a pig. Or something fat, whatever."
  
  I stomped over, launcher slowly recharging, and grabbed his wrist while he floundered weakly. One of my minor devices was locked around his wrist, then I jabbed the spike on the cuff into the wall, holding it long enough for the spike to bore into the cement, and then extrude two more spikes at right angles inside the wall. The only way Chubby was getting out now was with boltcutters.
  
  "Don"t forget about Spitfire," Flinch warned me. I shook myself a little to clear my head, and crossed back over to the busted table. Spitfire was just starting to uncurl herself when I popped my head over the edge.
  
  "You alright?" I asked gently. Spitfire gingerly sat up, then took my outstretched hand to get to her feet.
  
  "That was," Spitfire fumbled for words, "a lot. A lot. Fuck, it was so loud." She rubbed at her ears under her cowl.
  
  "See, that"s why I had you wear earplugs," I pointed out.
  
  "Not just that," Spitfire protested. "I mean, it was just," she waved her hands vaguely, then dropped them to her sides. "Fuck."
  
  I bit back my instinctive retort that getting shot at is one of the least things that can happen to you as a cape. It wouldn"t help right now. Spitfire was still new to all this, and I"d dropped her in the deep end.
  
  Muramasa snorted. "She hasn"t even shed blood yet," he said derisively. "The girl needs this to toughen-"
  
  I shoved him and his unhelpful comments away, then laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to be comforting. "We"ve got two floors down already. It"s just a little further to finish these guys off, and I"ll take point all the way, okay? I"ve got your back."
  
  Spitfire took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths. "Okay. Okay. I"m alright." She slapped her cheeks a few times and brought her fists up. "I"m ready."
  
  "Atta girl." I pulled my launcher again and checked the dial for the airblast. Almost full. "Hey," I added suddenly, "I was thinking I should name this. Any ideas?"
  
  Spitfire blinked. "Uhhh. Iunno. Something about wind? Like, if you"re doing the Greek thing, just name it after a wind god or something. Or just call it an air cannon? I mean, I don"t think you gotta name every little thing."
  
  "She"s right about that," Vladimir said. "It"s kind of pretentious to give your weapons names."
  
  "What am I, chopped liver?" Tactical demanded. "You never complained about Caroline. Anyway, lots of people name their weapons."
  
  "Lots of morons," Nemean grunted.
  
  "I"ll look it up when we"re done then," I said, bringing it to my shoulder as the argument began. The question had served its real purpose anyway- taking Spitfire"s mind off things, just a little. "Next floor then. Ready?"
  
  Spitfire levelled her water shooters. "Yeah."
  
  Two stairwells to choose from, both with Merchants stationed at the top, about half of each group pointing guns down the steps, ready to be our personal firing squad.
  
  I didn"t give them the chance. Instead I passed Spitfire a couple of toys for one set of stairs and positioned myself at the bottom of the other. At my signal, we both lobbed a small flashbang up the stairs.
  
  Once I heard roars of pain, I added a pepper grenade to the mix, then fired my left grappler and swung my way up to hit my group like a wrecking ball. A whirlwind of blows had them disarmed, with a couple of nets for the tougher ones, and then I wrapped a couple of Spitfire"s group from behind as she advanced up the steps.
  
  A couple of the Merchants who were still standing fired at her. The bullets simply rattled uselessly off the collapsible round shield I"d passed her, and then I grabbed the two idiots and banged their heads together until they stopped.
  
  Spitfire hit the last few with quick bursts from her hoses and a couple of punches. The last one came at her with a bat, but she caught it on the shield and then swung it into his face.
  
  "Nice job," I praised as he dropped like a sack of bricks. "Come on, let"s get the guns." I started picking up all the weapons I could find, ejecting magazines and clearing the chambers.
  
  Spitfire slipped the shield back onto her forearm with a critical air. "Man, this thing"s all beat up." She traced a finger over the dents in the metal, and the bullets that were still caught in the surface.
  
  "Yeah, not really my best work," I admitted, glancing up from the Uzi I was taking apart. "It"s really just something to use a couple of times and then recycle. At least it held up, right?"
  
  "Yeah." Spitfire passed me a couple of pistols for me to take apart. "So what"re we doing with these?"
  
  "No sense in risking anybody picking them back up before the cops get here. So," I tossed the last bullets aside, and dumped the empty pistols onto the pile I made in the middle of the room, "We"re going to destroy them. Have at it."
  
  "Waste of good weapons," Stoneknapper griped. "Could"ve saved a couple for later."
  
  Spitfire cracked a grin as wide as a banana. "Sick." She hawked and slurped loudly, then spewed a massive blob over the pile. The liquid immediately became white-hot flames, and the polymer parts started to visibly soften.
  
  "Man that"s satisfying," Spitfire said, taking a few steps back. "God, they really did a number on this place," she added, glancing about.
  
  I had to agree with her- This floor was even more lurid than the lower two put together. More lights, more speakers, more tables of booze and snacks. The snacks were name-brand now, and the drinks were a lot stronger- bottles of tequila and vodka. One table had stacks of joints, next to a hookah surrounded by cushions.
  
  "Guess these wankers really can throw a decent party after all," Rotter said. "We shoulda just come along and got wasted. Hell of a night."
  
  "Could be. You think that hookah would be enough for us to get high?" Firecracker wondered.
  
  The speakers crackled to life suddenly. "Alright, you cock-garglers," Skidmark"s nasal voice announced, "you just beat up a fuckload of my boys, and I"m through with just waiting for you bitches to do the world a favour and catch a bullet. So I"m gonna be reasonable to ya."
  
  Spitfire and I exchanged glances. "This has to be a setup, right?" she said, raising her fists.
  
  "If both you jizz-banks strip down and surrender, I"ll let you lick my taint to prove how sorry you are, and then I"ll let you go," Skidmark explained cheerily. "So what"s it gonna be?"
  
  Needler gagged. "Oh that is vile," she complained. "Please tell me we"re killing him." Nemean just roared, too angry to manage words.
  
  I raised the launcher. "I"d rather try to spank the Siberian, shit-for-brains. How about you give yourself up, and we"ll only kick you in the nuts a little?"
  
  "Cunts!" Skidmark shrieked. "Fucking get her! I"ll have every one of the guys take turns with your holes, you little piss-ants!"
  
  "Was it really a good idea to make him mad?" Spitfire asked, putting her back to mine and raising the shield. I snorted.
  
  "As opposed to having to lick his taint?" A couple of cobwebs laid across the stairs snapped as someone started coming down- one from each side. I swivelled and put a pepper round into the one Spitfire was facing, then turned back to fire a net round at the guy coming down my stairs.
  
  The guy grinned and dropped through the floor, the net round sailing over his head to burst open on the stairs.
  
  "Look at the floor," Bearskin said as he rose out of the dark. "Looks like a portal." There was indeed a shimmering shape on the floor, reflecting the party lights oddly. The guy"s head slowly poked out, like an alligator in the swamp. Now that I was looking at him properly, I could see the black bandanna tied around his head Zorro-style, and the snorkel strapped over that.
  
  "Skiddie"s been recruiting," Anchorage said unnecessarily. "Looks like things finally got fun."
  
  The portal guy rose a little higher, enough for me to see his gap-toothed grin. Then he turned his head and spat. The glob expanded as it left his mouth, expanding to the size of a basketball before it splashed on the floor, forming a shapeless, oily puddle on the floor. Still grinning, he sank into his puddle, then emerged from the new puddle a second later.
  
  "Spit portals," Vladimir managed. "That"s... new."
  
  Quarrel rose out of the dark, buoyed by sheer indignation. "If you lose to these guys," she threatened, "I swear I"ll kick your ass."
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  A lot of inspiration for this came from Dredd and The Raid, in the sense of fighting through a tower of gangbangers.
  Mindless violence- gotta love it.
  
  3.7
  3.7
  
  Saturday 5th February, Southern Docks
  
  The spit guy smirked at me from his oily rainbow portal, everything from the sternum up sticking out into reality. Where the rest of him was, I couldn"t say for sure.
  
  "If that means his portals have some kind of space between them, we could exploit that," Tactical noted. "Drop a grenade in there, force him out."
  
  "Hey, thought- can he make his portals on walls, or is it just puddles on the floor?" Vladimir asked. "Be a lot easier if it"s just the floor."
  
  I mulled it over while I risked a glance behind me at the guy Spitfire was facing. Something thick and brown was oozing out of every bit of exposed skin, expanding as it dripped down, and hardening into craggy splotches all over his body like armour. That explained why the pepper round hadn"t worked on him- even his face was hidden behind increasingly stony armour.
  
  "So, Spit and Shit," Firecracker commented. "Guess they fit the Merchant look."
  
  I turned back to my guy and raised the air cannon- he dropped down into his puddle until only his eyes were poking out. "So what do we call you guys?" I said in a loud, clear voice. "Mush was pissed when I got his name wrong- figured you guys would want to introduce yourselves." In a lower tone I muttered to Spitfire, "These guys are just stalling for Skidmark. We need to take them down fast."
  
  The diver raised himself out of the puddle a little. "The name"s Spittoon," he said in a surprisingly deep voice, "And my boy here is Mudslide. And you"re the dumb fucks who thought crashing our party was a good idea." His tone was full of projected bravado, but I could hear the nervousness in his voice.
  
  "New cape," Needler stated with certainty. "Probably hasn"t had more than a few fights against people with powers of their own, if any. I doubt he"s much good with his power yet."
  
  "Let"s give him a lesson then," Anchorage said, projecting the sensation of cracking knuckles. "Sink or swim," she added, laughing at her own joke.
  
  "I don"t suppose you guys would just step aside and let us go up?" I asked. I didn"t expect them to say yes, and frankly, I was hoping they wouldn"t.
  
  Spittoon snorted amusedly- then suddenly spat at my feet and dropped down completely. I leapt away from the puddle expanding at my feet, just as his grubby hands popped out, latching on to Spitfire"s ankles and pulling. She toppled forward with a yelp, catching herself on her arms as Spittoon started dragging her into the puddle.
  
  Mudslide charged forward, the muddy armour all over his body adding weight to his stride. I fired the air cannon at him, and he just shielded his face with one arm as the blast of air splashed off him uselessly.
  
  I dropped the cannon as he came close, catching his swing by the wrist and ramming a punch of my own into his gut. The armour cracked with a noise like shattering pottery, but Mudslide didn"t so much as flinch, swinging at me with his free arm.
  
  I pulled my fist out and caught the second swing as well- there was barely any force behind it. Apparently Mudslide didn"t have any added strength. Instead of wasting another punch, I simply twisted at the hips and swung him with me, throwing him across the room to smash into the far wall. The shattering noise this time was like a whole china cabinet falling over.
  
  "Anyone else get a real satisfied feeling from that noise?" Stoneknapper asked while I bent down and grabbed Spitfire"s hands to help pull her out of Spittoon"s clutches. "It"s just a really crisp cracking sound, y"know?"
  
  "Oh, for sure," Firecracker agreed. "Like stepping on a frozen puddle."
  
  "Exactly!"
  
  Spittoon was pulling harder than I"d thought, but between Spitfire"s thrashing legs and my strength I was steadily pulling her up and out, revealing his hands still holding onto her. I aimed a kick at one and he let go hastily, disappearing into the puddle. I popped Spitfire down on solid ground and scooped up the cannon, firing it into the puddle. The surface rippled violently, but shallowly, as if it was just surface-deep liquid.
  
  "Bugger," Rotter said with feeling.
  
  Bearskin was more verbose. "Guess it only works if he brings stuff in himself. You gotta wait for him to come out of hiding."
  
  "You alright?" I asked Spitfire, just as I heard a symphony of clattering, cup-on-saucer noises. Mudslide was up and running again, bounding over one of the Merchants we"d beaten a moment ago with surprising grace as he came at us again.
  
  I didn"t waste a shot on him- just took two steps forward and spun into a kick that caught him in the middle of his chest with a "dropped-a-stack-of-plates" kind of noise. He went sailing back again, landing on his back and sliding a few feet, leaving streaks of mud along the floor that swelled and hardened into rocky growths.
  
  "Check your feet," Nemean said suddenly. Sure enough, when I looked down, my left foot had traces of mud on it which were also growing into tiny crags on the metal.
  
  "You"ll have to t-take him down with as little contact as possible," Flinch advised, "otherwise he"ll start to weigh you down."
  
  "Fair enough." I switched to net rounds, aimed and fired.
  
  A gob of spit splashed onto Mudslide as I aimed, instantly trickling off him to pool on the floor- and then he disappeared into it like it was a trapdoor, while the net round simply bounced off it and burst open fruitlessly in mid-air.
  
  "Eyes up," I ordered, training the cannon on the direction the spit had come from. Nothing there but a rippling puddle. "Guess Spittoon"s faster than I thought."
  
  Spitfire raised her arms and gripped the triggers for her extinguishers. "Stealing my schtick too," she hissed. "And now my ankles are killing me."
  
  I made an agreeing noise while I slowly walked forward through the room, glancing at every puddle. It seemed the duo had hit on a strategy- hit and run tactics to wear us down and spread Mudslide"s power on us. Time was on their side after all.
  
  "You need a way to limit his movement," Tactical said. "We can"t enter his portals ourselves, but maybe we can block them off, or disrupt them."
  
  I gingerly prodded at one puddle with my clean foot, sending it rippling as it hit the floor underneath. "Hey Spitfire," I said aloud as an idea came to me, "do you think you can-"
  
  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye; I spun just in time to see Mudslide come shooting out of a puddle with a roar, aimed straight at Spitfire. I fired an airblast immediately, knocking him off course as Spitfire dodged, then hit him with a burst from her extinguishers. To my surprise, the mud on his chest started to soften and run as the water hammered against it.
  
  Danger sense pinged- I looked all around, then down, to see Spittoon"s grubby hands grab my legs, and the puddle he"d spread under my feet, just before he pulled me down with him.
  
  I sealed my helmet filter as I fell into thick liquid. When I looked around, I could see clearly- it looked like a grey-white void, pierced here and there with shafts of light from the portals into the world. They were getting further away as Spittoon pulled me down and down.
  
  "Oh Christ, does this mean we"re swimming in spit?" Firecracker asked in a nauseous tone.
  
  "Oh, you just had to say it," Bearskin said, revolted.
  
  Quarrel was radiating smugness at my predicament. "Not so fun to be on the receiving end, huh?"
  
  I growled inside my helmet and kicked out at Spittoon- he jinked several feet right without moving a muscle and grabbed at my other leg. I tried pointing the cannon at him, and he just zipped around again and grabbed it with both hands, yanking at it so suddenly I lost my grip.
  
  Spittoon tossed it over his shoulder, and I saw it begin to float up toward a portal. Without him pulling me down, I began to rise up again. Spittoon darted around behind me and started pushing on my shoulders.
  
  "So he"s trying to drown us in his portal," Vladimir said. "That"s a new one."
  
  It was looking like it might work too- I hadn"t thought to put an air reserve into the suit, so I was running on the air that was in the helmet before he"d pulled me under, and I was almost out now. I quickly swung a punch at him- It didn"t connect, but then I didn"t need it to. I just needed a moment to raise my arm and fire my grappler at the portal directly overheard.
  
  The extra buoyancy worked on the grappler head as well- it shot up like a firework, right through the middle of the portal. As soon as I felt the head hit something, I hit the retract and let it pull me up.
  
  Spittoon came after me at once, grabbing at any part of me he could reach to try and drag me down again. I drew a sword with my free hand and slashed wildly to scare him off; then I broke through the puddle"s surface, and I pulled my helmet open to take the sweetest breath of my life.
  
  For a moment I just hung from the ceiling with sword in hand, getting my breath back. Then I heard Spitfire shout "A little help here?!"
  
  Spitfire was backing away from Mudslide as he stomped after her. She kept firing blasts of water at his feet and face, presumably trying to mess with his balance or rattle his brain a bit, but it wasn"t doing much.
  
  "And she"s not setting him on fire, why?" Rotter asked.
  
  The question was answered as Spitfire dodged around the pile of melting guns, putting them between her and Mudslide; he simply kicked his way through, scattering the weapons around as the flames licked uselessly at his mud before going out.
  
  Still hanging from the ceiling, I hefted my sword and hurled it right at him. Even blunted, it slammed into his shoulder and stuck there, drawing an angry roar from him as he fell to one knee.
  
  Spitfire dodged around puddles as I swung myself forward and released the grappler to land on solid floor. "Where"s the other guy?" she demanded as she reached me.
  
  "Somewhere in his own little dimension, but I think I know how to draw him out." I briefly explained my idea to her, glancing behind her as Mudslide pulled the sword out of his mud and got to his feet, mud bubbling and expanding along the blade to turn it into more of a club. A quick glance with bloodsight showed me I hadn"t even broken the skin.
  
  "Get to it: I"ll deal with ugly here." Spitfire nodded and ran off as I reached to my belt.
  
  "Oooohohohoh," Anchorage chortled as I unclipped the weapon I"d finished building last night. "About damn time you brought out the good shit. Come on, whup his ass with it!"
  
   I took a couple of long slow steps toward Mudslide, letting the round head of the flail droop toward the ground as the cable spooled out; then with a quick jerk of my wrist, I started swinging it in a circle, slow at first, then faster and faster, until it was humming through the air. Then I began swinging it in an x-pattern in front of me, fast enough to blur in the air.
  
  Mudslide raised the sword he"d taken, holding it like a baseball bat; through bloodsight I could see his eyes darting around in an attempt to keep up with the speed of the head as I approached. I gave him a moment to get used to the pattern, then yanked on the cable mid-swing, sending the flail hurtling toward me; I side-stepped, spun with it, and swung the flail around as I completed the turn so the head crashed right into Mudslide"s chest.
  
  Mudslide hit the wall so fast the two impacts almost mixed together- I saw pieces of his mud crack and fall off him before fresh mud bubbled up to fill the gaps. I quickly spun the flail back up to speed and hurled it forward again, this time smashing into his knee as he tried to stand. He fell over with a pained shout.
  
  Anchorage whooped with delight. "Hell yeah! Cave his freaking skull in! I told you this"d be good, and I was right!"
  
  "There"s mud building up on the head," Bearskin warned; there were indeed splotches of mud that were expanding into rocky protusions.
  
  "Then I suppose we should clean it up a bit," Tock Tick said with an uncharacteristically bloodthirsty tone. On the other hand, he"d been seriously satisfied with working on this project.
  
  I"d decided to create something similar to Anchorage"s signature anchor as an extra melee weapon a few days ago, but with a lot of Tinkertech to augment it. What I"d come up with was a flail with a head the size of a cantaloupe, filled with an ingenious weight-shifting mechanism that effectively allowed me to steer it in mid-air, rather like how Anchorage had used her mass-affecting powers to pull off tricks with her anchor.
  
  "Man, studying our own powers to make tech," Knapper said admiringly. "Why the hell"d we never think of that?"
  
  "I can think of a few reasons," Tock said caustically.
  
  It certainly seemed to have put Mudslide on the back foot- rather than try to tank my next swipe, he threw himself under it, belly-sliding on a trial of slick mud toward me. I reeled in the cable to bring the flail back toward me, then swung it underhand as he stood up.
  
  This time he threw himself forward and grabbed the flail in a bearhug, letting the impact push him back on his trail of mud. More mud oozed from the cracks of his armour to coat the flail completely. A gurgling laugh came from under his armour as he held the lump of rocky dirt to his chest.
  
  "Oh that poor fool," Muramasa snorted as I hit a button on the handle. The flail didn"t hit so hard just because it was heavy and fast- the outer shell was composed of dozens of small segments attached to pistons, all of which fed into the kinetic battery at the centre. It meant I could let the flail absorb part of the impact to recharge and avoid hurting someone too much- or, if used in reverse, it could create a massive pulse on impact.
  
  All the mud encasing the head, and the whole front of Mudslide"s body, exploded off as the pulse ripped through it, splattering the walls and floor with thick brown muck. Mudslide himself crashed to the floor, groaning weakly. I could make out his ragged t-shirt between the remaining patches of dirt that were sluggishly expanding again.
  
  "Now that," Needler said in a pleased tone, "was a joy to watch."
  
  "God DAMN I missed that!" Anchorage howled. "Fuck, I wish we could"ve seen the look on his face when that went off. All over the fucking wall!"
  
  I retracted the flail completely and brought it back to my belt as I walked over and slapped a cuff on his wrist. Holding the other end, I dragged him over to the wall and jammed the drill into the wall to secure him.
  
  "Spitfire, how"s it going?" I asked as I turned to check on her.
  
  Spitfire spat another stream of fire over a puddle, leaving a line of intense flame slashed across it. "Think I"ve got all of them," she said, looking around. Just as I"d asked, she"d put a line of flame over every puddle in the room. Spittoon couldn"t exit any of them now without setting his head on fire; I noticed that Spitfire was holding my cannon to her shoulder, and looked ready to use it.
  
  "Smart move," Nemean said. "Can"t make him come out to fight, just stop him from fighting at all."
  
  "Nothing like fire to keep people back," Vladimir agreed. "We need to keep this kid around."
  
  "Yeah, but she"s too soft right now," Quarrel pointed out. "It"d take forever for her to be okay with burning people."
  
  I very carefully didn"t react to possibly the first thing I"d heard Quarrel say that wasn"t an insult at me or an angry rant- even if it was still about hurting people. Instead I looked around the room for any clear puddles, or any other sign of Spittoon. Nothing at all- just streaks of flame and two piles of groaning Merchants by the stairs.
  
  "I think he"s basically dealt with," I said at last. "If he escapes, that"s not on us. Let"s move the captives away from the fire, then get upstairs and finish this."
  
  "Just a sec," Spitfire said, jogging to the table filled with weed at the end of the room. She grabbed a cashbox and quickly emptied the bills inside into one of her belt punches.
  
  "Atta girl," Firecracker praised. "You gotta take what you can before it"s gone."
  
  I felt like I should say something, but I had promised Spitfire money from this operation, so I wordlessly began hauling the Merchants down to the landing on the stairs. Once Spitfire had gathered all the cash she could find, she joined me in shifting them.
  
  I checked with bloodsight and bugs as we worked- no sign of any more ambushes. Sending his new capes must have been Skidmark"s last gambit. Everybody left on the upper floors was huddled away from the stairs or scurrying about frantically at something at the very top. I sketched out a quick plan as I kicked out a couple of windows to let the smoke out of the room.
  
  "This could get dangerous," Flinch warned as I took my cannon back from Spitfire and smashed the rock off the sword Mudslide had coated. "Skidmark"s c-cornered now, and he doesn"t seem like the kind of man to worry much about collateral damage."
  
  "He"s probably had time to turn the top floor into a killing field, too," Tactical pointed out. "It"s going to be tough."
  
  "Ah, you two worry too much," Rotter said dismissively. "We burst in, beat him "til he pisses blood, hand him to the coppers, then split the money and leave. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy."
  
  "Aaaand you just jinxed us," Firecracker deadpanned.
  
  I motioned for Spitfire to get behind me as I stood at the bottom of the stairs; she hefted her shield nervously. The cannon was charged, the swords were cleaned, and the flail had passed its field test with flying colours.
  
  I counted down on my fingers for Spitfire"s benefit, then rushed up the stairs with her on my heels. The fourth floor was baggies of cocaine and pills, and an overturned DJ setup, with a pair of stripper poles in the middle. I was pretty sure the women hiding behind a curtain were the entertainment for tonight.
  
  "Man, we should"ve just shown up to party," Stoneknapper said frustratedly. "Booze, drugs, girls- we could have got seriously fucked up on all this."
  
  "And to think there is one more floor above this." Muramasa had a note of lust in his voice.
  
  I looked around the room to make sure there weren"t any more guys waiting to fight us, or booby traps to slow us down. Spitfire took the time to pocket some more cash- though I saw her slip a few wads under the curtain and whisper something to the ladies behind it.
  
  "Smart girl," Rotter said. "You always want to tip the dancers."
  
  "Honestly Rotter, every time you open your mouth," Needler complained.
  
  I signalled Spitfire over to the last set of stairs. "Last floor. Hope you"re ready for this."
  
  Spitfire took a couple of deep breathes and raised her fists. "Hell yeah."
  
  I nodded. "You look ready."
  
  Just as I turned toward the steps, there was a tremendous boom that shook the room. The dancers screamed as dust fell from the ceiling and a table full of drinks fell over to smash on the ground. I pounded up the steps without a second thought, Spitfire shouting something after me before she reluctantly followed.
  
  The top floor was a gaudy mess- disco lights warred with black lights, and the walls were solid banks of speakers. Tables of every kind of drug the Butchers could name were scattered about, and the corners were curtained off. To judge from the blood silhouettes I could see of cowering people, there were large beds behind every single one.
  
  "The more I see of this party, the more I wish we hadn"t busted it up," Rotter admitted. "I mean, how often have you found a tasty piece, and then you"ve had to spend forever trying to find some quiet corner to shag? Here they"ve got beds! That"s just fucking considerate, that is!"
  
  "And fucking in a crowded room with just a curtain for privacy is better how?" Bearskin asked.
  
  The back wall had a wide platform with a throne-like chair on top of it, and Skidmark was planted firmly in it. He"d switched his flimsy cape out for a lurid purple fur coat with matching feathered hat, and he had a jewelled cane clasped in one hand. The other held a gorgeous Smith & Wesson revolver unsteadily.
  
  Even with all that, it was hard to focus on him, because behind him was a short truck that throbbed with power; literally. The engine was powerful enough I could feel the vibrations in my chest, and the armour panels covering it had a faint glow to them, just like the panels that had stopped us from rappelling in. The wheels were massive, with spikes coming out of the hubcaps, and a thick bundle of cables led from the back of the empty trailer to the walls, and down through the floor, presumably to power the whole building.
  
  It would have looked more intimidating if every corner and edge wasn"t made of thick weld lines and wide rivets; every surface had some kind of graffiti on it, from a pin-up girl on the driver"s door to a shark mouth on the grill, and a couple of bullseyes painted on the armour panels, as if to goad people into trying to hit them.
  
  "Okay, but how the fuck did they get that thing up here?" Quarrel demanded. "We"re inside! Five storeys up!"
  
  Tock Tick shrugged. "Damned if I know. Maybe the damn thing can drive up walls."
  
  "You," Skidmark slurred, "have been the biggest fucking pain in my ass." He raised the gun a little higher, pointed at my head. "The fuck did I ever do to you, huh? All I ever did was shift some product and throw some parties. I even had those Teeth shits dead to rights- that"s practically a public service!"
  
  "It"s nothing personal," I explained, keeping the cannon ready as I worked my way forward, weaving between tables and beds. "It"s just that you"re a disgusting waste of a person."
  
  Skidmark threw himself to his feet and squeezed off a shot, but danger sense had me already leaping out of the way. The bullet hit a table and smashed it into two rough halves and a cloud of splinters, and took a chunk out of the floor as well.
  
  "What was in that gun?" Tactical demanded. "A Magnum isn"t that powerful!"
  
  Vladimir gave the answer as I peered through table legs. "It"s his fields," he explained, indicating the deep band of purple-blue that stretched from wall to wall in front of Skidmark. "It"s accelerating the bullets. We get hit with that, armour"s not going to matter."
  
  "I am conflicted," Muramasa admitted. "That does make his power seem more impressive, and no doubt with all of us thinking we could find greater use for it. On the other hand, being hosted by that man is an unpleasant prospect."
  
  "I"m not dead yet," I snapped as I burst from cover across the room and fired a shot off at Skidmark"s face. He had just enough time to sneer "Dumbass" before the airblast hit him in the face and knocked him back into his throne, which fell over.
  
  I"d mostly chosen to build the air cannon because it was less lethal and didn"t need ammo, but another reason had been something I"d noticed when I"d tangled with Skidmark and Stormtiger- namely, that Skidmark"s fields didn"t repel air. So now I had a weapon that could ignore all his defenses.
  
  Firecracker was killing herself laughing. "Oh god," she gasped, "I would pay actual money to get video of that! Ah, Jesus!"
  
  "Oh, and there"s the wannabe pimp"s main ho," Anchorage jeered as Squealer hopped out of the truck cab to check on Skidmark. "What kind of drugs do you have to take that fries your head enough to want to shack up with that?"
  
  "All of them?" Nemean suggested. I tuned out the argument to take another shot at the Merchants, but Squealer ducked behind the upturned throne, before hauling Skidmark to his feet and bundling him into the cab.
  
  "Spitfire, where are you?" I called over my shoulder. "They"re getting away!"
  
  The reply echoed up from the stairwell. "I"m not coming up until I know I"m not getting shot at by a fucking tank or whatever the hell that was!"
  
  "I get what you were saying, Quarrel," Bearskin admitted. "She"s missing a bit of spine."
  
  "I think it"s reasonable not to want to be shot," I retorted. Out loud I shouted "He"s dropped the gun, now hurry up!
  
  Spitfire edge out, holding the shield in front of her gingerly while I kept firing at the truck, cursing the cannon"s slow recharge rate. "The hell is that?" she asked.
  
  "Squealer"s latest creation. And I"ll bet my ass it"s powering those panels outside," I said grimly, firing another shot at the windshield. The force rattled the glass, but nothing else. Squealer shot me the finger from where she"d belted herself into the driver"s seat, then pulled a lever.
  
  The walls shook again, and then I saw the wall behind the truck start to shift and move, breaking into sections that arranged themselves onto a rack on the trailer.
  
  "Oh, that"s clever," Tock Tick praised as cables retracted into the trailer bed and the last of the panels slotted themselves into the trailer, leaving the top floor massing about two-thirds of the walls. "The truck isn"t just the power source for the panels, it"s a mobile headquarters. You could park that anywhere and use the panels to set up a fortress."
  
  I saw Squealer glaring at us one last time before she shifted the truck into gear and rolled it toward us.
  
  "Move!" I grabbed Spitfire and flung us both to the side just as the truck hit Skidmark"s fields and shot forward like a cannonball, ploughing through tables with ease before driving right off the edge of the building.
  
  I pulled Spitfire up and half-dragged, half-carried her across the room to look out, and see the truck easily driving down the side of the building.
  
  "Huh," Needler raised an eyebrow. "You were right, Tock."
  
  "I was joking," Tock Tick admitted.
  
  I racked the cannon onto my back and fired my grappler into the roof, then reversed it and fired the other side down to the other side of the street. "Get a good grip," I ordered, slinging my arm around Spitfire"s waist and grabbing onto her belt.
  
  Spitfire looked at me, looked down at the truck, looked at the cable stretching across and down, and flung her arms around me. I took one big step forward, and then we were ziplining down to the street, just fast enough to overtake Squealer"s truck as it slowed and tilted 90 degrees to land on the street with a thump.
  
  "Whee!" Firecracker called out.
  
  I hauled on the brakes as we reached the ground and took the landing on my feet as I retracted the cables, then tossed Spitfire over my shoulder and made for the alleyway where I"d parked the chariot.
  
  Spitfire pounded on my back as I ran along. "They"re-back-there-asshole!" she yelled, punctuating every word with a fist.
  
  "We need the chariot to keep pace with them!" I explained as we reached the alley. "We can"t beat them in that, and we"d just waste time trying!" I set Spitfire down and leapt over the hood to yank my door open and fling myself into the seat just as Squealer roared past us.
  
  Spitfire piled in as I started the engine and stomped the accelerator hard enough to throw us both back in our seats. I fought the steering wheel to turn us around after the Merchants without losing speed.
  
  Vladimir couldn"t resist. "I feel the need!" he called.
  
  Tactical joined him. "The need- for speed!" they chorused.
  
  Spitfire hastily belted herself in as I straightened us out and shifted gears. Unfortunately, the truck had a good head start, and as proud as I was of the chariot, I just wasn"t specialised in vehicles like Squealer was. The gap was widening.
  
  I reached behind me, grasping blindly until I found a handle, and tugged. A length of pipe with an upturned hatch slid forward between us, and I flipped it open. "Spit!"
  
  "What?!" Spitfire shrieked.
  
  "Thruster!" I shouted back. "Same as your harness engine! We need a boost to catch up!"
  
  Spitfire goggled at me for a second, then leaned over and pressed her mouth to the pipe. I"d had the foresight to add a shaped mouthpiece to it, so there wouldn"t be any chance of her flames leaking out when- I turned the wheel sharply- Squealer took a sudden left.
  
  Butcher finally rose out of the dark, cackling horribly. "This night is finally being fun! New capes to pummel, and now a car chase!" I could feel his dark glee seeping into me as I roared after Squealer.
  
  I checked a gauge on the control panel- there. I jabbed a button, and the thruster spun into motion as the napalm-hot spit reached the container. "Sit back," I told Spitfire, "and hold onto something."
  
  Spitfire finished pouring fiery loogies down the pipe and closed the hatch. "How bad is this gonna be?"
  
  I clicked a second button, and a rush of heat intense enough to soften steel rushed through the turbine mounted on the back of the chariot, spinning the blades to the limit of the inbuilt cooling system and sending a long tongue of superheated air licking out behind us.
  
  The chariot leaped forward, slamming the two of us back into our seats as another 40mph was instantly added to our speed, shooting us up the long straight of 56th street. Spitfire screamed through her teeth as we hammered along at triple the speed limit and Squealer"s truck grew closer in the windshield.
  
  "Hooooly hell," Tock Tick breathed. "I don"t remember the last time I had a power source like that to work with! This thing"s a monster!"
  
  The burst began to peter out, but we"d closed the gap on Squealer now, close enough to make out the words of the graffiti on the rear fender before the truck made a sharp left.
  
  I twisted the steering wheel a certain way, splitting it into four semi-independent sections, then swung the chariot into a drift, turning each tyre to angle around the corner perfectly before pumping the accelerator to chase after them again.
  
  A dozen more quick turns followed, and one advantage of the chariot made itself clear- though it might have been less powerful, my creation was lighter, better suited for taking corners at speed than Squealer"s armoured slab; Although using bloodsight to see Squealer"s movements as she steered didn"t hurt.
  
  "Nice driving, but how the hell"re you going to bring them down?" Bearskin demanded. "You didn"t put any weapons on this thing!"
  
  I fished my phone out of its compartment as Squealer turned onto a straight and hit the gas, passing it to Spitfire. "Call the PRT, tell them we"re in pursuit, maybe they can set up a roadblock or something."
  
  Spitfire grabbed the phone and punched in the number, quickly asking the operator for a special line like I"d shown her. "Yeah, we"re heading down- what street is this?"
  
  "Maple Avenue!" Rotter said- I repeated it aloud, and Spitfire said it into the phone.
  
  Just as the operator was replying, I saw Skidmark"s blood silhouette sit up and do something to the window- then the maniac leant his entire upper body out of the window and waved his hands forward.
  
  A huge patch of purple-blue appeared on the road ahead of us, and Squealer steered right over it, instantly jumping forward. I steered after them on instinct, and felt the field shoot us forward as well.
  
  "Cool! Like Mario Kart! We"ve got speed zones now!" Anchorage was giggling manically. "All we need now is fucking Bowser!"
  
  Skidmark waved his hands again and again, throwing down more patches for Squealer to speed up; and I swerved back and forth to catch each one, playing a desperate game of keep-up. Spitfire kept shouting directions into the phone, asking me for street names as we turned and doubled back.
  
  We"d just hit the edge of downtown, hammering down a main road, when Spitfire held a finger to her ear. "Say again? ...With who? ...Ah shit."
  
  "What?" I asked tersely, not taking my eyes off the road as the Butchers whooped and cheered inside my head. "What"d they say?"
  
  "There"s another chase going on tonight," Spitfire explained hastily, "they think Squealer"s trying to drive past them and lose us or something."
  
  "So who"s chasing who?" I asked, just as I followed Squealer onto the raised road that lead to the freeway. Then I saw what Squealer was aiming at.
  
  Two pickups were roaring along, swerving back and forth across the lanes. A couple of people were standing up in the bed of each, being held by others as they threw out obstacles. The front car had a man standing tall as copies of himself burst from his body, pouring off the back to fall into the road, mindlessly struggling even as they were dashed against the asphalt.
  
  The second pickup had shadowy hands sprouting from all over it, and a dozen of them were holding up a short woman whose armour had little bits of jagged glass embedded in it. She was flicking her hands out to the sides, and clouds of tiny, razor-sharp forcefields appeared wherever she pointed, swiftly left behind as the truck kept driving.
  
  Their pursuers were stranger still. One was a flatbed truck, driven by a man in a domino mask who swerved around the pulped clones and banks of razors with insolent ease. A man so white that it went beyond albinism was standing on the back, elbows resting on the cab as he aimed a rifle at the trucks.
  
  The other was a wide slab of cement that raced through the air with disturbing speed for something so massive. A girl in a red and black robe was tied to its surface, shouting wildly as the slab flew along. A woman with a cage on her head and sickles in her hands balanced on the slab with inhuman grace.
  
  Squealer"s truck forced itself into the middle of the chase, several clones bursting under its wheels as it swerved between the two gangs. Skidmark hastily pulled himself back into the cab just before a cloud of razors scraped along the passenger side, scoring the paint.
  
  Quarrel broke the stunned silence inside my head. "WAAAHHHHHOOOOOOO!" she hollered. "WE"RE COMING HOME, BITCHES!"
  
  My grip tightened on the steering wheel, even as I boggled at the sheer mass of bad luck that had led to all this.
  
  "Uh, Elpis?" Spitfire"s voice broke into my thoughts. "What do we do now?"
  
  I swallowed. Then I shoved down the rowdier half of the Butchers, and pressed the accelerator down.
  
  3.8
  Sunday 6th February
  
  Spitfire gripped the sides of her seat with an increasingly high-pitched whine of terror. The gap between us and the rest of the chase was steadily shrinking.
  
  Squealer"s abrupt entrance had shaken up the order of pursuit. Spree"s car was barely keeping ahead of her, Spree gesticulating wildly as he fired off manic clones that turned to pulp under the wheels of Squealer"s panel-truck.
  
  Behind that, Vex and the Empire truck were neck and neck, slamming into one another aggressively as their riders tried to aim at each other. However, Alabaster was being held back by the shadowy arms that had sprouted all over the truck"s body- evidently, Victor had strayed close enough for Sinister"s power to spread. Vex was trying to throw razor-clouds around, but at the speed they were going, she couldn"t aim properly.
  
  Floating to the side of Squealer"s truck, Rune and Cricket seemed to be at a loose end. Cricket was a close-combat cape stuck at a distance, and Rune was struggling to keep pace. As I watched, the slab of cement veered away from the truck- then suddenly swung back to slam into its side.
  
  The impact briefly brought Squealer"s truck up on two wheels before it came crashing back down again. Cricket took the opportunity to hop from the slab to the top of the rack of the panels, balancing there with insolent ease. I shifted the few bugs I"d managed to sneak onto the truck into more secure spots before they could be shaken off.
  
  "Faster, damnit!" Butcher demanded. "We have to get in the middle of this!"
  
  I gave him a shove- I couldn"t physically push the accelerator any further, but-
  
  "Spit, we need another boost," I urged, pulling the turbine feed pipe forward again. Spitfire shook her head frantically.
  
  "No, no-no-no, fuck that! I didn"t sign up for this shit!" She pointed a wavering finger forward, just as Vex managed to put a cloud of razor-fields in front of Alabaster"s raised head. Half the skin came off his head as he slammed into it.
  
  "Huh, white blood," Tactical noted as Alabaster keeled over. "Interesting."
  
  "Yeah, now hurry the hell up and get us into the fight!" Anchorage bellowed.
  
  "Spit, listen- I know this is more than you were expecting, and I"m sorry to drag you into this, but these guys could do all sorts of damage if they keep running loose. I just need you to boost the chariot, and maybe drive it a little." I swerved briefly to avoid a Spree clone that was less pulped than the rest. "I promise you won"t get any closer to the fight."
  
  Spitfire stared at me- I could see through bloodsight how her eyes were wide as dollar coins. "I don"t know how to drive," she protested weakly.
  
  "Seriously? That"s what she focuses on?" Firecracker asked incredulously.
  
  "Leave her alone- she"s still new," Nemean grunted.
  
  "I"ll set the controls, it"ll be easy, just make a decision fast." The situation was devolving even as I spoke- Victor"s truck was swerving out of control. His blood silhouette jerked and thrashed like he was being pulled by dozens of invisible hands- Sinister again.
  
  Spitfire swore and bent over to spit into the boost pipe. I steered us into the outside lane, then slammed the ignition button the second she was done. The turbine flared once more, sending us speeding along, past the duelling pickups, between Squealer"s creation and Rune"s rock, drawing level with Spree"s truck. For one brief second, he glanced up as I turned my head, and I felt a shiver run down my spine, thinking that this was it, that he"d see me and know in an instant.
  
  "We"re in here!" Quarrel screamed. "Come on Spree, you know us! Come get us!"
  
  A second later he turned his head back and continued firing clones out- Squealer"s truck was close enough now that some of them were able to cling to the hood and try dragging themselves up the body, forcing Squealer to jink back and forth to shake them off.
  
  I quickly fiddled with the controls, locking the accelerator and sliding the boost pipe back. "Just keep following the road, I"ll handle the rest," I explained, taking one hand off the wheel. Spitfire quickly leant over and grabbed it with her own hand. "Actually, give me your shield while you"re at it."
  
  "Oh this is going to be so fucking rad," Vladimir crowed delightedly as he saw the shape of my thoughts.
  
  Spitfire shot me a look, but passed over the collapsible shield, now dented and battered almost beyond recognition. I took it with my free hand, then in a few quick movements, I let go of the wheel, undid my belt, and opened the door, swinging myself out and up onto the roof, crouching there as we hurtled along.
  
  "I think this might be a genuinely new experience for us," Stoneknapper pointed out as I slid one foot into the shield"s strap and fired my grappler at the side of Squealer"s truck. The bolt hit home on the side of the hood, just in front of a very persistent Spree clone.
  
  The Butchers whooped as I leapt off the chariot, landing on the shield as I was pulled along, throwing up a mass of sparks and a horrific screeching noise as the asphalt ground away at the metal.
  
  I quickly started reeling myself in, knocking aside the Spree clones that fell into my way as Squealer shook them off. I"d just managed to get a hand on the truck"s bed when the danger sense flared behind me.
  
  I swung myself around and under the body of the truck in a hanging plank, just in time to see Rune"s slab smash into the truck again. The robed teenager sat up and gave the truck the finger with both hands.
  
  "That kid"s gonna be a problem," Rotter opined. "How"re ya gonna take her down, eh? Kinda hard to shoot like this."
  
  The few bugs in the cab sensed movement- and then the panels, all neatly lined up and dark, began to glow and shift around, locking together to form walls along the truck"s sides.
  
  Rune seemed to hesitate for a minute, before gamely swinging her slab at the truck. This time, there was that massive power-chord noise and purple flash, and Rune"s rock was flung away from the road entirely, trailing a high-pitched scream.
  
  Bearskin shook his head. "Goddamn idiot. How do you not know not to mess with Tinkertech?"
  
  "Well, she"ll learn it now," Tock Tick pointed out. "More pressingly, this puts a crimp in climbing up the side, doesn"t it?"
  
  I dug my fingers into the undercarriage and began working my way hand over hand toward the cab. Conveniently, there was a little step under the passenger door, and I managed to slide one foot on there, then grab the door handle while I pulled the shield off my foot. The road had scraped it shiny across half its surface.
  
  "It certainly did hold up well for something put together in a half hour," Needler admitted.
  
  Spitfire was keeping pace with Spree"s truck, nervously bent over the steering wheel. I gave her a thumbs-up, then slid the shield onto my arm and threw myself onto the hood.
  
  Skidmark shrieked as I landed and punched the windscreen hard enough to crack the glass- Squealer simply jerked the wheel again, swerving the truck so sharply I had to grab the windscreen wipers to stay on. Then she pulled a lever, and the hood sprang up like a catapult, throwing me back over the cab.
  
  "Okay, why did she have a switch just to do that?" Tock Tick asked.
  
  I came down awkwardly on my shoulder and tumbled over and over, until I hit a metal ridge and fell over it- and down. There was another blaring noise and a purple flash, and pressure slammed into me on both sides, cancelling out and pushing me up.
  
  "The hell is that?" Firecracker exclaimed as I was tossed into the air yet again. I saw- most of the panels were arranged into the walls on the sides of the trucks, but a few were spaced out between them, perpendicular. The effect was like looking at a ladder laid flat.
  
  I managed to get my feet under me and land on the top of one panel- it was only an inch wide, and I wavered for a moment, windmilling my arms before I caught my balance. I glanced back toward the cab, only to see the tell-tale glow of Skidmark"s fields.
  
  "Guess the guy"s got enough brain power to keep us away from him," Vladimir admitted.
  
  "So the panels only produce the repulsion effect along their sides, not their edges. And being caught between the two pushes you up- that means there must be a general upward bias in their design, interesting choice-"
  
  "Focus, Tock," Tactical scolded. "We"ve got more important problems."
  
  When I raised my head, I saw what Tactical had noticed before me. Cricket was standing at the other end, perched atop another panel in a vest and loose pants that showed off her dozens of scars. As I watched, she straightened out of her crouch and pulled her kamas from her belt. What little I could see of her face under the cage she wore like a helmet was twisted in a bloodthirsty grin.
  
  "How many people do you think have tried to tell her that the kama is a traditional Japanese weapon?" Muramasa wondered with a tone of derisive amusement.
  
  Flinch shrugged. "I d-doubt she lets them talk long enough to explain."
  
  "True enough. I suppose we shall simply have to beat her. A duel atop a moving Tinkertech vehicle!"
  
  I tried to collapse the shield, with no success. The rough treatment I"d given it on the road had bent it out of shape all over. Instead, I drew one sword and beckoned, advancing along the tops of the panels cautiously. There was roughly a foot"s space between them, illuminated by a faint purple glow. It was made even harder by the way the truck randomly lurched from side to side or shook as it ran over obstacles.
  
  Cricket had no such problems- she simply bounded forward from one panel to the next, spinning her kamas around as she lunged high and low in a pincer movement.
  
  I swung the shield down to block her low strike while I stabbed with the sword, forcing her to catch the blade in the crook of her kama. We both disengaged at the same time- I settled into a low stance to keep my balance while she simply bounded backward, balancing on her toes like she"d been doing this all her life.
  
  I moved first this time, stepping forward as quickly as I could to lunge at her. Cricket twisted away from the sword and hooked one kama around the edge of my shield, pulling it away from my body. I pulled right back, hard enough to throw her off-balance for half a second- then she planted a foot on my leg and heaved herself onto my shoulders, swinging a blade down at my face.
  
  I barely got the sword up in time to stop it, and Cricket didn"t stop there, hooking the other blade around the straps of the shield and tugging hard. The straps were just nylon webbing, and the kama went right through them as it scraped up my arm.
  
  I grabbed the shield as it fell and swung it up at her- Cricket batted it aside almost dismissively and hauled on my sword again. I twisted my grip to force it away from my face, then threw myself into a half-spin that threw her off me.
  
  Even that wasn"t enough to faze her- she simply caught herself on her hands and flipped in place to land on her feet, facing away from me.
  
  "Okay, this is some bullshit. How"s she doing this?" Anchorage asked.
  
  "Hell if I know," I admitted. On a whim, I shifted some bugs to start moving toward us. I wasn"t sure what they could do, but they might give me an edge in awareness, or help me to keep my footing.
  
  Cricket glanced over her shoulder at me, and twitched a kama.
  
  "Cheeky shit," Butcher snarled.
  
  "Pit fighter," Bearskin countered. "She"s used to making a show."
  
  I threw the shield like a frisbee, drawing my other sword as Cricket spun under it and came toward me again, lunging for my face. I parried hard, using my strength to push her back. This time I pressed the attack, driving her back with wide swings that forced her to give ground even as she deflected them. I stabbed forward with my next attack, pulling the taser trigger as I did.
  
  Cricket caught it with the crook of one kama- and then gave a strangled yelp as the charge hit her. The wooden handles were decent insulators, but the way she almost dropped her kama was a pretty good sign to me.
  
  I pumped the triggers and swung for her shoulder- this time she gave ground, desperately dodging the blades. I followed with a lunge, and she almost tripped over herself in her haste to avoid it.
  
  Even better, the bugs I"d moved had made their way up the edges of the panels, so now I could feel where the tops of the panels were as easily as I knew where my fingertips were. Although they were picking up some kind of odd noise that my own ears couldn"t quite make out-
  
  A wave of nausea suddenly came over me- my bugs suffered too, their movement slowed and their senses disrupted. On the edge of my hearing, enhanced by Nemean"s abilities, I could hear a constant warbling screech.
  
  "Oooooh, I get it now," Stoneknapper exclaimed. "Cricket, she makes noise. Obvious really."
  
  "Not helping, Knapper!" I snapped, bringing my swords up as Cricket attacked with a strangled snarl. The sound was throwing me off, and her right kama wove through my defence to jab into my side. The blade didn"t puncture my armour, but it did dent it.
  
  I shoved at her with both hands- she simply ducked low and hooked both of my knees, yanking hard. I toppled, and then Cricket leapt on me, still giving off that horrible noise as she jabbed all over, searching for an opening.
  
  In desperation, I flicked my wrist and pointed at her chest as the grappler extended. Cricket immediately leapt back, long enough for me to get to my feet. Not that the grappler would have done much more than bruise her- I"d spent some time specifically designing the drill function so that it would stop at materials similar to human flesh, to avoid any accidents.
  
  The sound was still going, and I felt myself weakening further.
  
  "So, what tricks up your sleeve do you have that could beat her?" Rotter wondered innocently. "Maybe festering wounds?"
  
  "Or make her too angry to fight smart," Bearskin chimed in with uncharacteristic slyness.
  
  "Just fucking pain blast her!" Butcher snapped, not even trying to be subtle.
  
  I growled out loud, wracking my brain for any ideas. The flail wouldn"t work well here, and the air cannon definitely wasn"t suited for close-up fighting. I tried picking at Tactical"s Thinker power instead.
  
  I glanced down. If I couldn"t take advantage of my weapons, I"d take advantage of the environment.
  
  I charged forward, bringing the swords into a ready stance. Cricket slid into her own pose as I came, radiating confidence.
  
  I kept moving until I saw Cricket tense up- then I pulled my foot back mid-step and let myself fall between two panels. I fell maybe six feet before the repulsion effect kicked in with that blaring noise, throwing me back up like a trampoline, swinging my swords as I rose.
  
  "Wheee!" Firecracker whooped.
  
  Whether the noise threw off Cricket"s sonar or she was just taken by surprise, I managed to catch one of her kamas, knocking it out of her hand. It flew off the side of the truck to disappear into the night.
  
  Cricket snarled as I caught my footing and lunged again, making that horrible noise again- but a second"s reprieve had done wonders for me, and I was back to good condition, even as the noise whittled away at me again.
  
  Cricket dodged to the side, backed up against the side of the truck. Then the noise shut off, she glanced back, and simply stepped off the truck.
  
  "NO!" Flinch shouted, distraught.
  
  Needler rolled her eyes. "For goodness" sake Flinch, use your brain."
  
  Sure enough, when I ran over and looked down, Cricket had landed on the back of Victor"s truck next to Alabaster as they sped past the Merchant truck. She paused in cutting the last few Sinister arms off her comrade to give me the finger.
  
  I quickly glanced around with bloodsight to check on everything. Skidmark and Squealer were still driving along, Spree"s truck in front. Spitfire was parallel to them, staying clear of the fight, and Vex"s truck was lingering behind the Merchants, the passengers shuffling around as Vex swapped places with someone else.
  
  A gunshot rang out, and Spree ducked as one of his clones took a hit. Victor was leaning out of the driver"s window with a pistol, firing at the lead truck. The constant flood of clones was soaking up most of the damage, but not all of it.
  
  "Do something!" Vladimir insisted.
  
  I glanced forward. The field Skidmark had laid on top of the cab was dimming as I watched.
  
  I sheathed both swords and started toward the front, unlocking a reinforced compartment on my belt as I went. There were two locks, because I really hadn"t wanted to risk this particular gizmo falling out or being used against me, considering how hard it was to make, and how dangerous it was.
  
  Just as the field ran out, I leapt out over the cab, hand clutched around the grenade. I could see Spree"s eyes widen before I twisted myself in midair to ram the spike-grenade down into the hood of the truck as I landed.
  
  The drill on the business end was similar in design to my grapplers, but stronger, built for a single spectacular use. I heard the motor whine as it struggled for a second with the armour plating on Squealer"s truck, before it finally bit through. I quickly twisted the timer on top, simultaneously activating the matched one in my helmet, and threw myself to the side as Skidmark waved his hand from behind the windshield.
  
  I grabbed at the wing-mirror for a handhold, batted aside yet another Spree clone as it fell to the road, then pushed off as hard as I could, landing on top of the chariot. Spitfire shrieked at the impact, and the chariot swerved for a second before she got things under control.
  
  Something rammed us from behind, and the chariot jolted forward.
  
  "Oh come on!" Quarrel howled. "What now?"
  
  Victor glared at us from his seat. Behind him, Alabaster levelled his rifle at me and squeezed off a shot.
  
  I was already ducking as the danger sense flared, and I swore I felt the bullet whizz over my head. I pulled out the air cannon and fired at Alabaster, knocking him back before he flickered back to normal a second later.
  
  "Bloody hell that"s annoying," Dirty Rotter remarked nonchalantly.
  
  "Pretty sure he still feels pain," Bearskin interjected. "That"s something at least."
  
  Cricket gave me a look, then took as much of a running start as she could and leapt across the gap to the Merchant truck, her one kama hooking around the wing mirror to anchor here. I could just make out Skidmark"s astonished expression as she nimbly worked her way around to balance on the front fender, clinging with fingers and blade despite the flood of clones still being dashed under the wheels of the truck.
  
  Cricket swung her kama out in a wide sweep- at her signal, Victor leaned out of his window and fired a shot that hit Spree in the shoulder. He dropped to one knee with a yelp, the flood of copies briefly interrupted. Cricket used that moment to leap across, stepping on one of the clones mid- leap to land in the bed of the pickup and swing at Spree.
  
  The bones laid along Spree"s forearm snapped as he blocked her swing, and then Spree straightened up enough to launch a pair of clones that nearly bowled her over.
  
  "Come on Spree!" Butcher roared. "You can take this Nazi bitch!"
  
  "Taylor, you gotta get in there!" Anchorage urged me frantically. "Spree"s good, but he"s not a close-in fighter."
  
  Victor took the opportunity to close the gap some more, threading his flatbed between the Merchant truck and the chariot until he rammed the bumper of Spree"s truck. A second later, the Merchant truck accelerated until it slammed up against Victor"s, trapping it in place.
  
  "Clustertruck," Rotter said, giggling manically.
  
  Alabaster turned and fired at the Merchants, the bullets leaving spiderweb cracks in the glass without breaking through. Skidmark ducked down, hands over his head.
  
  More Spree clones scrambled over the hood of the middle truck, flooding their way toward Alabaster, forcing him to turn around and start fending them off, using the rifle like a staff. Cricket was carving her way through the clones at the source, slamming her kama into Spree"s wounded shoulder. This time his howl was so loud his voice cracked.
  
  As much as I"d tried to deny it, as much as I wished it wasn"t true, this was personal to me. I knew the Teeth- knew them like old friends. I couldn"t stand by.
  
  I raised an arm and fired the grappler- the bolt sank into the back of Victor"s truck just as I leapt across, yanking the cable taut to clothesline half the clones and throw Alabaster off his feet.
  
  "Yeah, nice move, now hurry up!" Firecracker shouted. Cricket was raising her kama to deal a death blow.
  
  The blade came down- and was caught between two long daggers. Reaver shoved her back and swung himself the rest of the way out of the cab, taking a stance in front of Spree as his outline started to blurr.
  
  Alabaster lunged for me with a snarl, dropping the rifle to pull a pistol and knife. I grabbed his wrists and forced them down as he let off a shot that hit nothing but air.
  
  "Cunt," Alabaster spat at me, "we"re cleansing this city of their filth! Why stop us?"
  
  I didn"t dignify that with an answer, too incensed by his insult. Instead, I slammed my head into his, producing a crunch as his nose broke. While he reeled back, I yanked the knife out of his hand and rammed it into his shoulder as I kicked out his knee, forcing him to the bed of the truck as the blade punched through into the metal. He howled as I tossed the pistol over my shoulder and drew a sword.
  
  Cricket backflipped over the cab as Reaver chased her, his feet hammering out a drumbeat on the metal with each step as he vibrated faster and faster. He struck his knives against each other for dramatic effect, giving a screech of tortured metal.
  
  "We will have to break him of that habit," Muramasa noted. "Foolish."
  
  "Oh, like you"ve never postured during a fight," Tock said as sarcastically as possible.
  
  Danger sense flared again just as I saw Alabaster reset, roll, and come up with the rifle, firing at Reaver. I stepped into its path in time for it to glance off my shoulder, jolting me like a hard punch. Cricket took the opportunity to step past me, kicking me in the chest as she went. I overbalanced, and only the grappler I"d forgotten to retract kept me from falling.
  
  Reaver spared a glance at me, but still kept his daggers up as I regained my balance and drew my other sword. For a moment that was the tableau, Reaver in front, Alabaster and Cricket behind, me in the middle with the Butchers whispering and demanding and offering advice.
  
  Alabaster broke the silence, brandishing his rifle. "You knew Hemorhaggia?" he yelled over the roar of engines and the wind.
  
  I barely kept myself from reacting. Reaver"s vibration made it hard to read him, but the surprise was clear regardless.
  
  "The fuck is he talking about?" Nemean asked.
  
  "Oh no," Flinch murmured. "Oh no, no, no,"
  
  Alabaster grabbed at something hanging off the stock of his rifle. "Look familiar?"
  
  For a moment I didn"t understand. Then the shape clicked into my head like a jigsaw puzzle, and brought a cascade of memories from Quarrel.
  
  Watching horror B-movies and laughing at the terrible acting.
  
  Feasting on packets of every kind of candy and bottles of stolen liquor, bitching about whatever came to mind.
  
  Trash-talking the other Teeth, making mocking jokes about Spree"s acne or Muramasa"s moustache.
  
  Watching TV, eating dinner, guarding each other"s backs in a fight as she formed blood into swords, axes, shields and armour.
  
  And always, Hemorrhagia- Alice- had kept that little keychain on her, worn around her neck. A four-leafed clover with Kiss Me, I"m Irish written on it, that she"d used to try and flirt with Quarrel a dozen times, smiling so hard her freckles all bunched up together.
  
  Alabaster had taken it off her corpse.
  
  Quarrel screamed long and loud inside my head, full of rage and pain. "KILL HIM! KILL HIM! MAKE HIM DIE!" The rage flooded me from all sides as the Butchers demanded Alabaster"s head.
  
  Reaver lunged forward with a roar, too angry to see Alabaster pulling a second pistol out of his white suit-
  
  My first sword cut Alabaster"s arm off at the elbow. The second one went through his chest, before I heaved it upward and split him in half from sternum to scalp. Both halves of his face had an astonished expression as I sliced his rifle in two and grabbed the half with Alice"s keychain.
  
  Cricket lunged for me, but Reaver forced her back with lightning-quick swipes. She retreated up the hood of the Merchant truck and over the roof toward the panels. Reaver came after her, just as Skidmark poked his head up and waved his hand.
  
  A field appeared across the hood, and Reaver went sliding off, barely catching himself on the driver"s mirror, then slamming a dagger into the metal to steady himself.
  
  Something grabbed at my ankle as I yanked my sword free of Alabaster; I looked down to see one of Sinister"s arms poking out of the metal, a second before danger sense flared again. I reflexively dropped low and pocketed the keychain before impact.
  
  Vex"s truck slammed into the side of us, forcing the Empire truck into the concrete barrier with a horrible screech of metal. I could see Sinister at the wheel, and Vex beside him, and Animo"s Changer form in the bed, a blunt-snouted creature with a shark"s mouth and a red crest atop the brown fur. I saw the muscles in his legs bunch up before he leapt across and landed foursquare in the bed of Spree"s truck, directly in front of us.
  
  Skidmark stuck himself out of the window, holding his awful pimp coat like a shield as it glowed with the light of his power, and waved a hand. A field sprang up, pushing Alabaster and me toward Animos, Alabaster resetting as he was forced along.
  
  Animos"s maw opened wide, rows of pointed teeth exposed as he inhaled. Too late, I realised what he was doing.
  
  "Ah, fuck," Firecracker managed before Animos screamed.
  
  The scream hit me as a wave of distortion in the air, an excruciating physical noise that only emphasised the instant mental silence. Suddenly I was weak, half-blind and half-deaf. I couldn"t feel my bugs, my strength was gone, my body twinged in various places as pain reasserted itself. My sword dropped from numb fingers as the biggest effect hit me.
  
  I couldn"t hear the Butchers, and the silence was deafening.
  
  Animos swatted me with a paw, and something in my arm gave way at the impact, more painful than anything I"d ever felt. The world dropped away from me as I screamed, falling sideways onto hard metal. Something flashed past my eyes, and then something stabbed into my palm. I screamed again, barely making out the metal cage as Cricket pulled the blade out of my hand, raising my own sword for a killing blow.
  
  Reaver blew past her in a blur, one blade snaking out to slice Cricket"s leg open before he hurdled the truck cab, a struggling Squealer over his shoulder. Animos pinned her with a paw as Reaver dumped her down and turned to me, flipping one dagger around.
  
  I barely registered the timer in my helmet finally reaching zero, or the hissing sound as the grenade on the Merchant truck ignited, dumping its payload of burning thermite powder directly into the truck"s engine. All I really understood was the sudden jolt of deceleration as the Merchant truck lost all power, no longer pushing the other trucks along.
  
  I fell off the side of the Empire truck into the back of Vex"s truck, sending a dozen new bolts of pain through me as things inside my body broke further- then a dozen shadowy arms grabbed me and shoved me off the back.
  
  I hit the road all wrong- something in my knee broke, then my shoulder as I rolled, all while my arm and hand burned with pain. I knew I was screaming, but the pain in my throat wasn"t even in the top five.
  
  My eyesight started to waver as I came to a halt, vision dimming, but I could still make out the roar of engines mixed with the squeal of braking tyres.
  
  
  
  Things blurred and fragmented- flashing blue lights, being lifted, snatches of Spitfire"s worried voice as I was moved along.
  
  The only constant as I drifted in and out was the pain. Everything hurt, and all I could do was try to scream and struggle incoherently as hands grabbed at my face.
  
  Something soft laid against my face, and I heard a voice. I couldn"t make out the words.
  
  Something changed, and I sucked in a breath. The pain was gone like turning off a light switch- I felt like I could float away in sudden euphoria.
  
  The voice came again, and this time I understood. "Do I have your permission to heal you?" said Panacea wearily, fingers pressed to my jaw.
  
  "Panacea," I breathed, grateful as a prayer. "Yes please."
  
  Panacea let out a little huff through her nose. "Dislocated elbow, bruised spine, cracked ribs, compound fracture in the patella, through-and-through of the right hand, bruises all over, and a huge concussion. Nothing I can do about that last one, I"m afraid, but the rest"ll only take a minute."
  
  I felt my body start to return to normal- the strangest thing, to feel a hole in my hand seal up, my ribs slip back into place, my knee shift slightly so there wasn"t something digging into the tendons. Even with my past experience of Needler"s regeneration, it felt odd, but that absolute sense of well-being and bliss was too nice to question. I sighed deeply, relishing the sensation, and the absolute quite with it.
  
  "That feels so good."
  
  "It happens," Panacea said with a shrug. "When I cancel out the pain and start healing you, all the adrenaline and endorphins stay. Simple side effect."
  
  I hummed agreeably. After all that horrendous pain, I wouldn"t have cared about any side effect.
  
  As the endorphins started to fade, I remembered with a jolt. "Where"s Spitfire?" I asked, trying to sit up. "The Merchants? The Teeth?"
  
  Panacea pushed me down with a light touch. "Lie back. You"ve still got a lot of damage to your lower spine I need to fix."
  
  I lay down again, taking the opportunity to glance about. I was in a hospital room by the looks of it, all clean white walls and monitoring equipment. I managed a look at my armour- half the paint lines were scraped off, and I had scuff marks all over, some with bits of grit embedded in the metal.
  
  "Spitfire"s just outside," Panacea said, her gaze distant as she focused on whatever her power was doing. "She called the PRT, told them where you were, ambulance brought you both here."
  
  "As for the villains, they caught Skidmark- foamed him while he was trying to run away. The Teeth got away though, and they took Squealer with them."
  
  "Fuck," I muttered, troubled by that, though I wasn"t entirely sure why.
  
  "Miss Milita chased the Empire, but they slipped away. Good news is that Victor and Cricket were pretty torn up, so hopefully they won"t be back on the streets for a while."
  
  "Good," I said. "Especially Cricket." I raised my hand and flexed the fingers, staring at the hole that had been punched in the metal. When I turned it over, there was a smaller hole on the back of the gauntlet. "Bitch stabbed me with my own sword."
  
  "Sounds bad."
  
  Something in her tone caught my attention. I twisted my head to look at her.
  
  This close, I could make out the individual freckles on her face, splotchy as they were. I also realised for the first time that one of my lenses was scratched up, blurring my vision in my left eye.
  
  I could still see clearly enough to make out the downturn of Panacea"s mouth, and the dark rings under her eyes. I glanced to the side, at the little clock I"d built into the inside of the helmet. It read 3:24 am.
  
  "Sorry," I mumbled.
  
  Panacea gave me a weird look. "What?"
  
  I fumbled for the words. "Just- sorry. That you got dragged out of bed at 3am to heal me."
  
  Panacea ducked her head, pulling up the red scarf around her neck so that it covered her mouth. "I was already here when the call came in. It"s not a big deal," she muttered.
  
  I stared at her. "Yes, it is. It"s not fair to you, having to come here and put people back together instead of getting some sleep-"
  
  "I choose to do this," Panacea snapped suddenly. "Would you rather have waited another half-hour while they called me and drove me over, with a hole in your hand and broken bones all over? No? Then shut up and let me work."
  
  I sat back, utterly blindsided by her sudden anger. I tried to summon up anything else to say, but the words wouldn"t come, so we sat in silence as she worked.
  
  Abruptly, I grew aware of something- like an itch, except without any physical component, growing stronger and stronger-
  
  Awareness exploded into my head- every insect within a block, scuttling about in the dark; the metal and fabric against my skin, ready to be shaped or decayed; the feel of Panacea"s skin against mine, pulsing with rich warm blood.
  
  "Ffffffuuuuuuuccckk!" Nemean bellowed. "That"s what pain feels like? How the fuck do you deal with it?"
  
  "You spoiled bitch!" Firecracker said good-naturedly. "We grow up with that shit! Lucky you, a whole life without feeling that!"
  
  Nemean snorted. "Two years on my own isn"t a lifetime."
  
  "Well, now we know what Animos" scream does to us," Vladimir noted.
  
  "At least the guys got away," Stoneknapper said optimistically.
  
  "Yes, but now the world at large will believe that we are gone for good. We were the nuclear deterrent that prevented other gangs from trying to wipe us out, and without that-"
  
  "They"re tough," Bearskin interrupted, "They"ll figure it out. Besides, they got Squealer, right? Maybe they can force some work out of her."
  
  Tock Tick shuddered. "That poor woman."
  
  "Didja miss us, girlie?" Dirty Rotter said, his very voice bringing oil and grime to mind.
  
  "About as much as a wart on my ass," I grumbled.
  
  Panacea cleared her throat above me, and I refocused on her face. "Okay, you"re all fixed up."
  
  "Thanks," I said, sitting up and swinging my legs off the bed. Panacea quickly put her hand back on my jaw.
  
  "Hold on," she ordered, "I"m not done with you yet."
  
  "But you said I was done," I replied, confused.
  
  "Yes, you"re completely healed. Including the concussion, which I didn"t do anything about."
  
  The fear was like a bucket of cold water over my head. Needler"s regeneration must have kicked in while Panacea was healing me, and a concussion fixing itself in a matter of seconds might as well have been a signal flare to a healer.
  
  "Oh-ho-ho-ho," Butcher chortled cruelly. "You"re in the shit now, you thin streak of piss! Let"s see you-"
  
  I forced Butcher down into the dark and readied myself. I hadn"t found any instances of Panacea using her power in a fight, but that didn"t mean the Striker holding my face wasn"t dangerous. Teleporting would get me out of reach immediately, but I might as well have started juggling bee swarms for all the good it would have done my identity.
  
  "Hey, relax." Panacea"s voice broke into my thoughts. "I"m not going to tell anyone unless you want me to."
  
  I stared at her stupidly. "Wha?"
  
  "I"m with the kid. What?" Quarrel asked.
  
  Panacea held up her free hand, fingers crossed. "Doctor-patient confidentiality. I mean," she admitted," I"m not technically a doctor, but I do have an honorary degree; and I guess cape powers are kind of a grey area-"
  
  She shook her head, sending wisps of frizzy brown hair flying as her hood fell down about her shoulders. "Point is, I"m not going to spread this around. You"re not the first hero to keep parts of their power hidden."
  
  I sagged forward, almost as relieved as when she"d turned my pain off. "Oh, thank you so much."
  
  "To be honest, I was going to ask you even before your powers came back. There"s a few differences in your body I was wondering about."
  
  "Differences?"
  
  "Me," Nemean answered.
  
  "For starters, you"re in phenomenal shape. Fresh cartilage, no toxin build-up, no internal or external scarring whatsoever, and that"s pretty consistent with regenerators. I could bring somebody to that level of health with my power, but it"d start to wear down almost immediately."
  
  "Interesting to know," I acknowledged, squirreling the thought away. All the Butchers since Needler had been bursting with rude health, but it was interesting to have it confirmed.
  
  "Then there"s the other stuff," Panacea went on. "Your skin"s way tougher than should be possible, even when your powers were off. Plus, your hair"s stronger, your eyes have more photoreceptors, your ears are more sensitive. And then there"s the Teeth."
  
  I froze up. Panacea frowned.
  
  "The extra row of teeth in your mouth? You can"t tell me you didn"t notice them."
  
  Tactical whistled. "Dodged a bullet there, huh?"
  
  "Uh, yeah, that was kind of a surprise to find," I said. That was certainly true- finding a row of small fangs nestled behind my regular teeth had been a shock when I"d woken up from the locker. Nemean"s extras had been about the size of her first teeth; at least mine were small enough that other people wouldn"t be able to find them without a dentist"s mirror, although the damn things lengthened slightly when I was agitated.
  
  "Told you she was seeing my stuff," Nemean said, radiating vindication.
  
  "Anyway, I was basically curious about all that. It"s pretty rare for capes to be physically changed by their powers, and it"s especially rare for Tinkers to have extra powers."
  
  I casually shrugged as the idea that I might make it out of here without being outed begin to grow in my head. "I did a lot of research after I got my powers, trying to make sense of things. From what I can tell, I"m what"s called a cluster cape, or Grab-Bag or whatever."
  
  "Hey, that actually works," Tock Tick said in surprise. "It explains the power mix, the solo act- hell, it could even explain any personality changes."
  
  "So I"ve got the Tinker power, the regen, the other stuff. The trouble is there"s people with similar powers who all hate my guts." Metaphorically speaking, this was true. The Butchers had similar powers, and they despised me, even if it wasn"t the result of what the scientific community often called Kiss-Kill dynamic. I was mildly proud of myself for such a fitting explanation.
  
  "From what I read, it"s pretty common for clusters to want to kill each other; so I hid all my other powers, so I don"t have people trying to hunt me down and kill me."
  
  Panacea gave me a long, slow look, then took her hand away from my face. "Close enough," she said, standing up from her chair and making for the door.
  
  "What"s that supposed to mean?" I asked, feeling vaguely insulted as I slid off the bed and stood up, rolling my shoulders. The left was catching at the top- I"d need to fix that when I got back to base.
  
  Panacea turned and waggled her fingers. "I read your whole biology. Heart rate, breathing, nerve signal, the works. No amount of poker face can hide when you"re lying to me- which was about half your explanation."
  
  I swore internally, but Panacea was still talking.
  
  "Still, I believe the bits you were being true about. You"ve got several powers: you"re hiding from people. I can respect that, especially with things the way they are right now."
  
  She snorted. "Hell, if you"d just popped up with a bunch of different powers a few weeks ago, people might have thought you were Butcher or something."
  
  "God, so close and yet so far," Anchorage hissed.
  
  Panacea started for the door again. "I mean, one of the Butchers was a regenerator, and another was a Case 53, so you"d... really... be..." She trailed off as she looked at me, eyes widening.
  
  I made a conscious effort to relax, to appear unworried, but it was too late. I saw her turn on her heel, almost slipping as she reached for the door handle.
  
  I lunged.
  
  3.9
  Sunday 6th February
  
  My left hand reached around and clamped over Panacea"s mouth just as her fingers brushed the door handle. She immediately started screaming through my fingers, thrashing around in my arms, but I just tightened my grip and hauled her backward, closing my jawguard as she tried to claw at my face.
  
  "Oh-ho-ho-ho, let"s see you get out of this one!" Dirty Rotter whooped gleefully. I forced him into the dark as unpleasantly as I could, then the other Butchers as they cheered for my failure, letting the numbed emotions slow my panic.
  
  "Stop screaming," I hissed in her ear, looking past the wall with bloodsight. A handful of pulsing red silhouettes were standing a little way away from this room, one leaning against an invisible counter, and more silhouettes were laid out in the rooms on this floor, but none of them were looking this way. Maybe the walls were thick enough they hadn"t heard.
  
  Panacea yanked at the hand over her mouth, then the arm around her waist- then she yanked at my left again, while simultaneously twisting her body around. Her head slipped out of my grasp, and she sucked in a breath-
  
  I threw her onto the bed and grabbed a pillow, pushing it down over her face. She struggled even harder, muffled shrieking leaking out. I scooped up both her arms and pinned them above her head with my right arm, careful to keep my damaged gauntlet away from her bare hands. If her power had an offensive aspect, and I was willing to wager several internal organs that it did, I really didn"t want to find out what it could do.
  
  This only made her struggle even harder. I felt a stirring of panic as I realised I wasn"t sure how easily she could breathe through the pillow.
  
  "I don"t want to hurt you!" I hissed again. "I"ll take the pillow away if you stop making noise, okay?!"
  
  She struggled for a few more seconds, thrashing her body from side to side, kicking her legs in every direction, until she finally seemed to realise she wasn"t going anywhere. All the tension went out of her body in bitter defeat, and I felt her head nod under the pillow.
  
  I gingerly raised the pillow, expecting her to start screaming again as soon as her mouth was uncovered. Instead, she simply glared up at me wordlessly, taking deep breaths as she narrowed her eyes so intensely it looked like she was trying to set me on fire with her mind.
  
  "Okay," I began, then stopped, realising I had absolutely no idea what to say next. I"d just outed myself and taken her hostage in the span of a few seconds; the Butchers had never bothered trying to ingratiate themselves with their captives, and I had trouble keeping a conversation going myself.
  
  "Listen," I fumbled for words, "I... reacted badly, and I"m sorry. Please, just let me explain."
  
  Panacea"s glare somehow intensified. "Explain?" she snarled venomously. "You"re the fucking Butcher! You"re an insane monster!"
  
  I winced, and deep in the darkness I felt the Butchers stir at the insult, mostly out of amusement. "I swear I"m in control. You"ve met me before, you"ve seen me shopping for god"s sake."
  
  "Oh, so you don"t have the voices of all the other Butchers screaming inside your head?" came the acidic response.
  
  "I can shut them out if I want to- look, not 30 minutes ago, I helped chase the Teeth out of town. Why would I do that? How could I possibly benefit from that?"
  
  Internally, I was hoping she would start to consider it. From the little I"d seen of Panacea in our two face to face meetings, she"d seemed like a decent person, even without her reputation as one of the most powerful healers in the country, if not the world, who cured cancer-ridden children in the morning and AIDS patients in the evening. Having someone like that believing in me would be an enormous boon.
  
  One thing the Butchers had learned over the years was inevitability. The smarter Butchers had lasted longer because they"d accepted that they weren"t invincible, and had planned accordingly, taking precautions when someone crazy enough to go lethal came along.
  
  In the same vein, I knew that at some point I would have to teleport out of danger, or be caught regenerating injuries at an inhuman pace, and I would be a target. If I could last long enough, prove myself enough, I hoped that I could convince the heroes to give me the benefit of the doubt. To that end, her trust would be a massive advantage.
  
  Panacea, however, seemed determined to despise me. "I"m not going to believe anything you do is for anybody but yourself," she spat. "I don"t know what you"re doing by pretending to be a hero, but I"m not going to let you get away with it!"
  
  "I"m not-" I broke off, gritting my teeth as my anger started to rise, along with the Butchers; I gave them another shove as they started to float up to the light again.
  
  "I"m not pretending to be a hero," I said with forced patience. "I am being a hero. I"ve spent weeks driving out the Merchants, I went up against Stormtiger- I fought Sinister and Snowblind, remember? And like I already told you, I just helped get rid of the Teeth. Wouldn"t it be easier for me to just go back to the Teeth and lead them instead of getting thrown off the back of a moving vehicle?"
  
  "You"re holding me hostage," Panacea snarled. "And what I see is you softening up the city. Push out some of the competition, let people get comfortable thinking you"re dead, then come back with your gang and attack."
  
  I stared at her scowling expression for a moment, then wordlessly took my arm off her wrists and moved back one pace.
  
  Panacea stared at me warily, glanced at the pillow I was still holding, then sat up, rubbing at her wrists. I let the silence draw out, trying to work up the courage to say something that hurt in a confusing way.
  
  "Hemorhaggia"s dead. The Empire killed her in that big attack, because there wasn"t a Butcher to help fight. Alabaster murdered her and looted her corpse." I opened my belt compartment and extracted the cheap little keychain with two fingers, holding it up to the light. "If I"m a Butcher, then I"m a really fucking crap one."
  
  The Butchers were still too far down to vocalise, but Quarrel and Anchorage were both dimly radiating a sullen, angry sadness, the kind when you were angry with someone but too upset to lash out. Sort of "We agree that you"re shit, but it hurts too much for us to really rip into you."
  
  Panacea peered at the keychain, then scoffed. "As if Butchers care about anybody," she said dismissively, but her tone had a trace of uncertainty in it.
  
  "They do. Not a lot, but some. And getting turned into this didn"t stop me from caring." A thought occurred to me. "You said you could see all my reactions when you used your power, right? What was I feeling when I asked about Spitfire?"
  
  Panacea shook her head roughly. "No, no, you"re not going to make me believe that you have a heart. You"re probably trying to groom her into joining the Teeth!" she said, jabbing a finger at me.
  
  The accusation and the way she phrased it stirred up some anger. "I fought the Teeth! Tonight! You remember, that"s why they brought me in with broken bones and a hole in my hand?" I held up my right hand and flipped it back and forth to show the puncture on both sides.
  
  "I- You"re a regenerator! You knew you"d survive that!"
  
  "Not without my powers. Animos nullified my regeneration, remember? Why would I take such a huge risk? Face it, there"s no scenario that makes sense for me to still be with the Teeth."
  
  Panacea shook her head again, clutching at her temples. "No, no, this is insane. You can"t be Butcher and be- be fucking reasonable! You murdered the last Butcher just to get the powers, you don"t get to act like you"re a good person!"
  
  Before I could try to explain further, there was a buzzing noise from the door, and I whirled around, pillow at the ready. A second later I realised how stupid that looked and lowered it, pointing at Panacea. "Quiet."
  
  She glanced between me and the door as a male voice came out of the speaker next to the door that I"d somehow missed. Bloodsight showed a broad-shouldered male silhouette was standing on the other side, holding a finger to what must have been the speaker"s counterpart.
  
  "Everything alright in there? We heard a bit of noise."
  
  I put a finger to my lips to shush Panacea again, then pressed the button helpfully labelled "Talk". "Yeah, sorry, things got a bit personal. Feminine hygiene and such," I said cheerily, invoking the trick the female Butchers had used for ending conversations quickly.
  
  "Ah. Right. Let us know when you"re finished." The silhouette let go of the button and retreated down the corridor.
  
  "That was too- too close," Flinch said as he came back into the light. I wordlessly agreed as I let out the breath I"d been holding.
  
  "Look," I said, shoving the clover keychain back into my belt and turning back to Panacea, "I"d love to sit here and argue the point all night, but we don"t have much time. You need to decide- quickly- what you"re going to do."
  
  Panacea snorted. "There"s no way I"m letting you walk out of here. You might as well make it easy on yourself and give up now, before you have every hero in the city after you."
  
  "I"ll have everybody after me, you idiot. What do you think the villains are going to do when they find out the new Butcher"s sane? How many people do you think will want the Butcher powers, hold the crazy? Half the villains on the East Coast will come here and duke it out over me. You might as well unmask me and paint a target on my back."
  
  "Not my problem."
  
  The callous look on her face was like a match to dry paper. The anger flared up, and I couldn"t stop the next barb before I said it. "It goddamn is your problem. You remember what happened to the last capes in the Bay that unmasked? You remember how one of them died?"
  
  Panacea physically recoiled as if I"d slapped. "You- bitch," she said breathlessly.
  
  I felt disgusted with myself, and the vicious approval of the Butchers wasn"t helping, but I pushed on anyway. "If you let the secret slip, then I don"t get to be Elpis anymore. I have to be Butcher. And then it"s goodbye shiny hero, hello monster, and then death after that. And it"ll be your fault. Got it?"
  
  Panacea had gone pale. "No," she mumbled.
  
  "Yes," I retorted. "So," I held up a finger, "you can rat me out and bring that whole shitstorm down on us all, or," I put up a second finger, "you can keep that doctor-patient confidentiality you were talking about, and we all go on with our lives."
  
  Panacea swallowed, kneading the sheets between her fingers. For a long moment, neither of us said anything.
  
  "Damn, we should have brought popcorn for this," Firecracker said cheerily, rising out of the dark. "I haven"t seen shit like this outside of soap operas."
  
  Nemean hmmed. "It feels bad," she admitted. "She"s just a kid."
  
  "You going soft, Nemean?" Vladimir asked incredulously. "We"ve done worse to each other every time somebody inherits, why do you give a shit about some little hero bitch?"
  
  "Doesn"t feel right, is all." Nemean said it in a way that clearly said to drop the subject.
  
  "Alright."
  
  Panacea pushed off the bed and stood up. "Alright, you colossal bitch. I"ll keep your secret. But you stay the hell away from my family, okay?" she demanded, jabbing a shaking finger at me. "You so much as scratch them and I"ll shout it from the rooftops, no matter what."
  
  I slumped in fervent relief. "That"s fair. That"s totally fair. Look, I want to explain the rest of this shit to you. Can you meet me tomorrow?"
  
  "Do I have a choice?" she snapped.
  
  I blinked, then reminded myself I probably shouldn"t be surprised at the venom in her voice. She still had plenty of reason to dislike me. "Yeah, you do. But I want to give you the full story." I opened a different compartment on my belt, extracted pen and paper, and quickly wrote an address and time. "There"s a Pancakes Worldwide on Sycamore. We"ll meet up there, have a talk, sort the details out. Okay?"
  
  Panacea barely glanced at the note before crumpling it in her fist and shoving it into her pocket. "Fine."
  
  "God fucking damn it! We were so close!" The rage coming off Butcher was like a heat lamp. "We could have got back on the streets! How the fuck did you talk her out of it?!"
  
  I shoved him down, rolling my eyes inside my helmet. "Thank you," I said out loud.
  
  "Go fuck yourself."
  
  I wasn"t sure how to respond to that, so I just grabbed the door handle and swung it open.
  
  Spitfire looked up from where she was leaning against a nurse station with a paper cup- Miss Militia was standing in front of her with her phone out. "Oh thank fuck," she blurted, charging toward me, neatly skipping around the broad man from before- an orderly in blue scrubs.
  
  I met her halfway in a few quick strides. "Just like new: not even a scar."
  
  "Good." Spitfire raised her free hand, balled it into a fist, and banged it down on my breastplate, the nozzle of her framework knocking against the metal. "Don"t. Ever. Do. That. Again," she said, pounding my chest with every word.
  
  "Alright, alright," I said, holding my hands up in pretend surrender. After the nerve-wracking conversation with Panacea, getting back into the easy back-and-forth with her was a relief. "Relax; I wouldn"t want to go through all that twice."
  
  "Better not," Spitfire mumbled. "There was so much blood."
  
  "Aww, she was worried about us," Anchorage cooed sweetly.
  
  "Not like she knows how tough we are," Bearskin pointed out. "She still thinks we"re just some squishy Tinker."
  
  "You know I can hear you, right?" Tock Tick said indignantly.
  
  "Spit, I"m fine," I soothed. "Panacea does great work. I was all better in a couple of minutes."
  
  "Really? Seemed longer than that," Spitfire said curiously, absently taking a sip from her cup.
  
  I shrugged, drawing a horrible scraping noise from the left shoulder as a bent plate ground against others. "Had to talk with her about some personal stuff." I glanced back at Panacea as I said it; she just shot me a scowl and walked off.
  
  Miss Militia approached the both of us. "I"m glad to see you"re alright, Elpis. I caught some of the aftermath of that fight- nasty business."
  
  "Better now that you"re here, baby," Stoneknapper said. "Let that hair down and let"s get it all hot and sticky!"
  
  I pushed him into the dark with a disgusted expression, glad yet again my helmet was closed.
  
  "Yeah, Panacea mentioned you chased after the Empire- can"t have been a fun thing to do on the graveyard shift."
  
  Miss Militia waved a hand negligently. "Late shifts are all part of the job- it"s not as if the villains work 9 to 5. And frankly, I volunteer for the night shifts. I actually don"t need to sleep, so it only makes sense."
  
  "You"re a Noctis cape?" I said, surprised. "I never knew that."
  
  "There"s some kind of joke about how patriotism never sleeps, but I can"t be bothered," Vladimir admitted.
  
  "Every possible gun ever, in a woman who can kick ass 24/7." Tactical sighed. "If only she was a villain..."
  
  "What"s a Nocturn cape?" Spitfire asked with a puzzled look.
  
  "Noctis capes," I said, putting emphasis on the word, "are capes who don"t or can"t sleep," I explained. "They"re named after a vigilante called Noctis who was up all hours."
  
  "You"re well informed," Miss Militia said, impressed. I shrugged the praise off awkwardly.
  
  "Not exactly. I mean, I just wanted to know if there was a word for capes like me."
  
  Miss Militia"s gaze sharpened. "You"re a Noctis cape too?"
  
  "Uh, yes?" I replied, suddenly wondering if I"d given the game away. Panacea had known about Nemean and Needler- the Protectorate would know even more. I felt my heart speed up in anticipation, ready to fight or flee.
  
  "Did you see it?" Miss Militia asked.
  
  I stopped, dumbfounded. "Come again?"
  
  The older hero paused a moment, then shook her head, sending the loose end of her stars-and stripes scarf fluttering. "Never mind."
  
  "What on earth was that all about?" Needler asked.
  
  "Capes who don"t need to sleep get strange dream when they do. Maybe she meant that?" Muramasa ventured. "A shame that Nemean lacks her earlier memories."
  
  Nemean growled at him, but said nothing else.
  
  I took the hint and changed the subject, nodding at her phone, "I"m guessing you wanted us to answer a few questions?"
  
  
  
  Two hours later, after I"d given my statement to Miss Militia and dropped Spitfire off, I silently eased the chariot into the lair, the mainspring ticking over noiselessly as a few ants on the right pressure plate rolled the doors shut. I locked the handbrake and turned off the engine, then just sat there for a long moment.
  
  "Fuck me, that was a lot," Stoneknapper said at last.
  
  "The Teeth are still together," Muramasa said. "As long as they are alive, we have a hope of returning."
  
  Quarrel made a small, pained noise. Muramasa immediately realised his mistake.
  
  "Yuki, I"m sorry, I didn"t mean- We will all miss her."
  
  "She was a fucking terror," Anchorage said fondly. "And someday we"re gonna make that chalky shit suffer for taking her away."
  
  "...Thanks," Quarrel said. It was strange to feel her this despondent- like the truth about Hemorrhagia"s death had left her hollowed out.
  
  I undid my seatbelt and slid out of the chariot, walking over to the wall. I laid a hand on it and exerted Stoneknapper"s power, feeling the brickwork respond to my will as I drew some of it out into a small ledge.
  
  My other hand went to my belt, pulling out the keychain. Sometime in the night, one of the corners had been bent forward. Stoneknapper"s power straightened that out too; then I placed it on the ledge, drawing a bit of brick up to hold it at an angle.
  
  Hemorrhagia had not been a good person by any stretch of the imagination. She had stolen, maimed and killed with a smile on her face, and worn the bones as trophies. Few people would mourn her.
  
  But most of those people were inside my head- the ones who knew how she snorted when she laughed, the shuffling dance she did when she made her mouth-watering chili, and how she sang along to every bit of Irish music she could find, whether it was traditional Celtic music or the Dropkick Murphys.
  
  At the very least, she deserved some little acknowledgement that Alice Kelly had lived, and laughed, and fought, and bled.
  
  All the Butchers went quiet as I placed the clover on its stand. Even the bugs in the glass tanks against the far wall stilled as I made them stop moving, so as not to break the silence.
  
  "...thanks," Quarrel said. I nodded slightly.
  
  Without another word, I turned away and moved toward the workbench, undoing the catches on my armour. The left shoulder was too dented to come off, until I angrily grabbed it and ripped it away, flinging the metal onto the tabletop.
  
  This had not been a good night. I"d intended to take Spitfire and quickly finish off the Merchants, collect some cash, examine Squealer"s tech, and then hand them over to the PRT. Easy.
  
  The right gauntlet wasn"t articulating properly- hardly a surprise with the massive hole in it. I moulded the metal away from my skin slightly and yanked it off my hand.
  
  Nothing had gone according to plan. The Merchants had been stronger than any of us had been expecting, and far better prepared. I never would have credited Squealer with the inspiration, or maybe the sheer recklessness, to ram into another car chase to shake us off.
  
  I laid my remaining sword on the table. I"d need to check it over, repair whatever needed it. And I"d need to make a new one to match, since Miss Militia had confirmed Cricket had run off with the one that she"d put through my hand.
  
  At no point had I wanted to come into contact with the Teeth, and yet I"d found all the remaining capes at once. Probably they would never make the connection between me and the Butchers, but splitting Alabaster in two had been a mistake. The Empire might wonder why I"d gone so hard against one of their capes, even considering my fight with Stormtiger. At the very least, they would consider me a proper target now, and my identity was shaky.
  
  Taking off the armour was tedious to do piece by piece. Maybe I could join it into a single piece that could be shucked off like a coat. Though I"d have to keep some of the connections for when I wanted to work on just one part.
  
  Worst of all, I"d been made. I"d had to attack the most untouchable hero in the city, and throw her aunt"s death in her face to keep her quiet. I felt like I"d betrayed a fundamental part of myself in doing it- dredging up painful personal memories and using them to attack. For a brief moment I remembered Emma laughing at me, wielding the happiest moments of my childhood like a scalpel.
  
  I stepped out of the leg armour and tossed the legs carelessly on the table, then sat down on the one chair and rested my head in my hands.
  
  What now? Both the Teeth and the Merchants were gone. That left the Empire, the Azn Bad Boys, Coil"s organisation. To a lesser extent, there was also Uber and Leet, possibly even Faultline"s Crew; but probably not. Faultline rarely caused trouble within city limits, and her reputation preceded her. They"d gone up against Protectorate leaders and escaped cleanly.
  
  More to the point, I didn"t want to fight right now. Putting Hemorrhagia to rest left a weight in my stomach, and the whole thing with Panacea had added more on top of that.
  
  I needed time. Time to find my balance, to fix my equipment, to see how the status quo would change after tonight.
  
  "It"s- it"s okay to take care of yourself," Flinch said kindly.
  
  I sighed. "Maybe later." I"d have to get home soon, get up in a few hours, and figure out what the hell I was going to say to Panacea. Probably an apology, but that felt hard to do. I"d dodged a bullet with her, and just thinking about her brought back creeping thoughts of my own mortality.
  
  I straightened myself up and stared at the parts of my armour, then picked up the notepad I kept to the side and started noting down what would need repairing, what materials I"d need, the improvements I planned to make. Tonight had exposed a few weaknesses in my fighting style that I needed to shore up.
  
  Weaknesses.
  
  I needed to apologise to Panacea.
  
  I pulled the pad all the way toward me and began to write, shutting out the protests of the Butchers as they saw the shape of my thoughts.
  
  Butcher, I wrote on the first page.
  
  Interlude 3
  Sunday 6th February, Boston, Massachusetts
  
  Spree slammed a fist onto the table. "Enough."
  
  It wasn"t a shout, but it didn"t need to be. Everyone stopped talking and turned towards the head of the table.
  
  Spree sent a long, slow gaze around the room. Animos was to his immediate left, worrying at his thumbnail, and didn"t look up to meet his gaze. Next to him, Vex was leaning back in a chair, boots on the table. She gave him a jerky up-nod.
  
  At the opposite end of the table stood Sinister and Snowblind, cuddled up together as usual. The sappiness of it irritated Spree. The pair acted like they were joined at the hip, like they were Bonnie and Clyde, lovers against the law. Or that couple from Pulp Fiction. Either way, it made Spree want to knock some sense into them.
  
  On the right side of the table, Reaver stood ramrod straight, arms folded. He knew he was in trouble, and he was bold enough to act like he didn"t care. Spree had noticed the truculent look in his eye the past few months, and figured Reaver was planning on trying to become the next Butcher.
  
  Not that he could get a shot at that now. Which was just one small part of the honking big problem that had dropped into their laps like God"s own turd.
  
  "Alright," Spree began, shifting his left arm in its makeshift sling with a wince, "we need to talk about what we"re doing next."
  
  "Running away," Reaver said snidely.
  
  Spree jabbed a finger at Reaver. "Don"t start with me, you little shit. You"re on thin ice as is."
  
  Reaver rolled his eyes, but shut up. Spree gave him one more glare for good measure, then addressed the room.
  
  "Butcher is gone," he slapped the table again as the protests started up once more," Butcher is gone! We need to face facts- if Butcher didn"t come for us when the Empire attacked, or when we got chased out, they aren"t coming at all. We"re on our own now."
  
  At last, everyone accepted his words without comment. Grudgingly, by the looks on their faces, but they accepted it.
  
  Spree hadn"t wanted to believe it either. Butcher was the heart of the Teeth, a shifting but constant presence that held them together, and in a morbid way, gave the best of them something to strive for.
  
  Spree had served as second in command of the Teeth for years, leading the secondary cell of the Teeth, and felt he was maybe one of the few, maybe the only person on the planet who could call the Butcher a friend.
  
  Now they were gone.
  
  Vex slid her boots off the table and let her chair touch the floor. "So what do we do?" she asked quietly.
  
  Spree chewed his lip for a moment. "We hunker down," he admitted eventually. "Stay under the radar, pull some small jobs, start recruiting. Maybe do some mercenary work if we have to."
  
  "Are you fucking serious?" Reaver demanded, uncrossing his arms to slap his hands on the table. "Now we"re whoring ourselves out? Did you leave your balls back in Brockton, Spree?"
  
  Spree growled, reaching for the pry bar hanging from his hip- Maybe a broken leg would puncture Reaver"s attitude. His fingers barely brushed it when clouds of glittering edges flickered into being on either side of Reaver, and then a third behind him.
  
  "Shut up," Vex said, dropping her hand into her lap. "Shut the fuck up, Frankie. We lost. We lost Butcher, all the normies, we lost..." Vex slumped back into her seat. "We lost Alice." Animos laid a hand on her shoulder, which she shrugged off.
  
  Reaver sighed and slumped a little. "Awright," he admitted. "That was a dick move. "m sorry."
  
  Spree glanced between the two of them, then continued once he was sure they were done. "Right now, we don"t have the muscle for a fight. We rest up, heal up, recruit and re-arm. Then..." he paused, floundering for words, "...we figure out how to make the Teeth work without Butcher."
  
  Snowblind hesitantly raised a hand. "What?" Spree barked.
  
  Snowblind flinched slightly. "Uh, for the recruit part, do you mean normal or capes?"
  
  "Literally whatever we can get our hands on," Spree ground out exasperatedly. "Any more dumb questions? Or a smart one for a change?"
  
  There were a few cleared throats and a few shaken heads, but nobody said a word. Spree grunted and flicked a hand. "We"re done. Go do whatever."
  
  Snowblind hopped to her feet, tugging Sinister out of his chair behind her. Reaver glanced back at the razor fields around him, then simply hopped onto the table, walked across it, and jumped back down and out the door.
  
  Animos unbuckled his mask and pulled it off, vigorously scratching at his beard. "Fuuuuck," he grumbled. "I"m gonna go get breakfast."
  
  "There"s food in the fridge," Spree said, "and I don"t want us going out too much."
  
  "I"ll behave," Animos said. "I just gotta get out of here, y"know? I feel like I"m gonna bite someone if I don"t get some air."
  
  Spree sighed. "Fine. Grab me something with bacon while you"re out."
  
  "Fine," Animos agreed, already making for the door with a backwards wave.
  
  That left him and Vex, who was now resting her head in her arms. She"d taken off her helmet without him noticing and placed it on the table. A snarling face made of shards of glass stared back at him.
  
  "Vex," he said. She stirred briefly.
  
  "G"way."
  
  "Not happening." He grabbed a chair and spun it around so he could sit in it backwards, resting his bad arm across the back with another twinge of pain. "Let"s talk."
  
  Spree would be the first to admit that he wasn"t great when it came to emotions in general, or dealing with loss. He"d mobbed his uncle to death with clones without so much as a twinge from his conscience.
  
  Still, right now they needed Vex, so he took a deep breath and plunged forward. "I know it hurts. And that"s fair."
  
  Vex grunted from inside her arms, but didn"t actually say anything.
  
  "Look, you want to be miserable, go for it. We"ve got the time. But try to work through it, okay? Shit"s going to start happening again sooner or later, and the assholes aren"t gonna wait for us to be ready. So drink some of the booze, start a fight, get laid, whatever you want. Just handle your shit."
  
  There were a few seconds of silence. Then Vex lifted her head to stare at him incredulously. "Holy fuck," she said, tucking a few braids back behind her ears, "you suck at being comforting."
  
  Spree snorted. "Never said I wasn"t."
  
  Vex huffed a laugh. "No, Spree, you are like, really, really fucking terrible at it. Like," she waved her hands, eyes brightening as she built up momentum, "when my cat died, and my dad told me "it"s just a dumb cat", that was pretty bad. But he wasn"t even trying to be comforting. You actually tried with that, and you sucked so hard."
  
  "You"re smiling," Spree said laconically. Vex stopped mid-rant and stared at her outstretched hands incredulously.
  
  "That doesn"t count," she said lamely.
  
  Spree snorted. "Whatever you say, kid."
  
  Vex groaned and grabbed her helmet. "Whatever. Guess I"ll go whale on Fatty for a bit."
  
  "Try to leave it so he can speak," Spree yelled after her. She kept walking without any indication of hearing him.
  
  After a moment, Spree sighed and hauled himself out of the chair. It was a damn nice chair, red leather and mahogany. Shame it was too bulky to take along when they left. Still, years of moving around had let him learn not to bother too much with things that couldn"t fit in a backpack.
  
  Absently, he strolled out of the dining room, stopping to push over a delicate glass vase full of flowers. It toppled off its little table to smash on the tiles with a satisfying sound.
  
  Sinister looked up from the hob, where he was frying up what looked like all the sausage and eggs in the fridge. Snowblind jumped a little, glared at Spree, then went back to chugging the fancy bottled water Fatty had stocked the fridge with.
  
  Speaking of, there were muffled grunts of pain coming from the study. Spree wandered over and cracked the door.
  
  Fatty was still strung up by his wrists, forced to stand on tiptoe. Vex was slinging punch after punch into his flabby belly, making it jiggle unpleasantly.
  
  Spree pulled a face. They really should have let Fatty keep his shirt on. All that blubber was just horrible to look at. He clicked the door shut and wandered back over to the breakfast bar.
  
  Snowblind paused in her painstaking perusal of the fruit bowl to glance up at him. "So you"re in charge now; does that mean we have to call you Lord Spree or something?" Her nasal Brooklyn accent could have cut glass. It certainly had Spree wincing.
  
  "Jesus fuck, no." Spree grabbed a banana for himself and started peeling it. "Just call me boss, or whatever."
  
  "Okay, Mr Whatever," Snowblind replied, biting into a picture perfect apple with a crunch that damn near echoed. "Mm. Fuck, the rich sure know how to live."
  
  "Hey babe, how many eggs you want?" Sinister asked, turning away from the hob again. One of his shadow arms held the frying pan, while another poked the spatula at the contents. A few more were blindly sorting through the spice rack for the various jars and containers.
  
  "Gimmee three. And I"ll be wanting plenty of sausage too," she added suggestively, running one foot up Sinister"s leg toward his crotch.
  
  "And I"m out," Spree announced, tossing the banana peel at Snowblind"s face and delighting in the squawk she let out. "Just don"t leave any spunk where I might step in it."
  
  A couple of Sinister"s arms popped out of the wall to flip him off as he passed.
  
  "Hey, I saw caviar in th"fridge. Wanna try it?" Snowblind asked as Spree walked through to the living room.
  
  The lovers were probably going to be one of Spree"s biggest pains going forward. They didn"t just have to be lovey-dovey, they also had to be as randy as rabbits, and disturbingly public about it.
  
  They also compounded the insult by actually being useful. Snowblind"s frost had been critical in icing the roads behind them to throw off the cops chasing them, and Sinister had scored them their cushy new place. The penthouse apartment had been scouted out weeks ago as a possible target, but they"d only made it in with Sinister using his arms to climb the outside of the building and let them in from the inside. Now they had a decent place to crash, a food supply, and as much of Fatty"s money as they could carry, once they"d finished working all his PIN numbers out of him.
  
  Honestly, money was wasted on the rich. Some rich corporate bastard with a wallet the size of a brick, and the best he could do with the place was some boring modern art and a couple of vases? The man deserved to be used as a punching bag.
  
  Still, at least he had good taste in entertainment. The TV in the living room was 80 inches of plasma glory, with huge speakers and a bunch of boxes plugging into it to play anything reasonable.
  
  Spree"s other major pain was firmly ensconced on the overstuffed leather couch, bare feet propped on the glass coffee table, holding a lighter up to-
  
  "Where the hell"d you get a cigar?" Spree demanded.
  
  Reaver looked up. "Found Fat Boy"s stash." He held up a fancy wooden box. A dozen more cigars nestled inside. "Want one?"
  
  "Damn right." Spree grabbed one and patted his pockets for a lighter. He only smoked occasionally, but arson was old business for the Teeth. It paid to be prepared.
  
  For the next few minutes, Spree and Reaver sat in companiable quiet as sweet blue smoke gradually filled the air. Reaver eventually started fiddling with the six remotes, trying to figure out the TV and its various accompaniments, while Spree got up and wandered over to the drinks cabinet.
  
  A blare of noise came on as Spree poured himself a glass of brandy into a fat glass. Reaver hummed with satisfaction and started flicking through channels, eventually settling on the morning news. Apparently things had shifted around while they were gone. Accord and his Ambassadors had pushed a little to the south, while Blasto had dropped a bunch of horrible creatures into Chain Gang territory. The image behind the newscaster looked somewhere between an orangutan and a parrot, with some horns for flair.
  
  Reaver eyed him as he sat back on the couch. "Pretty sure you"re only supposed to fill the glass a little," he said, nodding toward Spree"s brimming glass. "You"re supposed to sniff it or something."
  
  "I"ll just keep putting it in my mouth, thank you," Spree replied, taking a good swig. The brandy burned on the way down and warmed him to the core. Fantastic stuff. That and the cigar really took the edge off.
  
  The two of them sat wordlessly for a while longer, listening as the newscaster went over road closures and some teacher at Harvard that got caught sleeping with his students. Eventually Spree sighed, tapped his cigar into an ashtray, and set down his glass.
  
  "Reaver," he said, stretching his free hand across the back of the couch.
  
  "Yeah?" Reaver didn"t look away from the screen.
  
  Spree"s palm smacked into the back of Reaver"s head with a loud clap. The blow threw Reaver forward just as he was taking a puff of his cigar, and he coughed and choked for a second trying to avoid swallowing the damn thing.
  
  Spree quietly picked up his glass again and took a sip as Reaver hacked and retched. That really was a fantastic drink. Maybe he"d take some of the drinks with him when they had to move. No sense in leaving it all to be burned.
  
  "Reaver," Spree said at last, once the younger man had regained some control of his breath, "do you mind telling me what the hell you were thinking?"
  
  "The fuck," Reaver wheezed and spat something unidentifiable into the ashtray, "the fuck you talking about?"
  
  "I"m talking," Spree said with worn patience, "about the Tinker you decided to bring along with us last night."
  
  Reaver stared at him through reddened eyes. "You couldn"t have just asked?" he hissed.
  
  "I think you"ve forgotten how we do things, Reaver," Spree said, setting the glass down once more and standing up. He put his hands to the small of his back and pushed with a groan, letting his spine pop and crackle.
  
  "We"re not in the business of taking prisoners, Reaver. Oh sure, we"ll hold normals for ransom, send their ears along to their families until they pay up. But there"s a distinction between kidnapping and taking prisoners. We certainly aren"t in the business of taking Capes hostage."
  
  "She"s a Tinker," Reaver growled, standing up as well.
  
  "And that"s what took you from an idiot to a complete idiot," Spree explained, blowing a cloud of smoke into Reaver"s face. "Tinkers are a nightmare to keep locked up. Leave them with a couple of paperclips and a stick of butter, wait an hour, and they"ve built a flamethrower out of it."
  
  "She builds cars, asshole; so unless you left her some tyres and an engine block I really doubt-"
  
  Spree threw a punch to the sternum. Reaver bent double, wheezing for the second time in as many minutes.
  
  "I don"t care about how you try to cover your ass after the fact, dumbass," Spree said plainly, taking another drag of the cigar. "You grabbed her. What, right then, were you thinking?"
  
  Reaver managed to look up at him. "I was thinking," he forced out, "that we were fighting Nazis and some bitch who split Alabaster like a wishbone. I was thinking that we needed to grab everything and go. And I was thinking that Squealer might be useful. "
  
  Spree paused. The Teeth had never really had a Tinker. Oh, Butcher had picked up a weak Tinker power from that Tock Tick asshole, but they never really used it much, certainly not for the others. Tinkers needed a base, materials, and time. The Teeth moved once or twice a month, and only brought what they could carry on their backs.
  
  On the other hand, they were going to have to change things up a little to adjust for the loss of Butcher. And Squealer made vehicles. Her stuff could effectively carry itself, and the rest of the Teeth with it.
  
  Spree entertained the idea of commanding the Teeth from atop a tank a moment longer, before looking back down at Reaver again, who was starting to get his breath back once more. For all that he was a contrary little prick, the kid could certainly bounce back.
  
  "Quick thought," he said genially, tapping the ash off his cigar into Reaver"s hair. Reaver yelped and swatted frantically at his scalp, scrubbing it all out.
  
  Ignoring that, Spree leaned in closer and said hoarsely "When you decided to bring her with, did it have anything to do with her dressing like a party favour?"
  
  Reaver looked away. Spree chuckled horribly at the kid"s discomfort and leaned back.
  
  "Alright kid," Spree said, grinding his cigar out in the ashtray, "I"m gonna go talk to your girl. Maybe she"ll be useful after all, who knows? Stranger things have happened.
  
  "But," he added warningly, pointing a finger, "you don"t pull this kind of shit again, alright? And don"t bother saying the heroes scared you, alright? We"re supposed to be the scary ones. Next time you think, do it with the right head. Or better yet, don"t think at all. Got it?"
  
  Reaver mumbled an assent. Spree pointed his middle finger at his ear. "I said, got it?"
  
  "Yes. Spree," Reaver spat sullenly.
  
  
  
  Sherryl put her elbow on the back of the big chair and rested her cheek in her hand. It was always kind of fun to be higher up than other people- to literally look down on them. Having the two supposed capes looking up at her and Skidmark on the platform was a real power trip.
  
  "So," Skidmark said, leaning forward in his big fancy chair, "what can you two assholes do?"
  
  The black guy gave a long, rumbling snort, then turned and spat a wad of something across the room. By the time it hit the floor it was the size of his head- that made for a pretty big puddle.
  
  Another wad landed at his feet, and then he dropped straight down, disappearing into the oily pool in an instant. After a few seconds, he rose up out of the far puddle.
  
  Skid nodded. "Okay. If you can use it in a fight, you"re in. Just don"t ever spit that shit at me or I"ll tie you to a car as a hood ornament. Welcome to the Archer"s Bridge Merchants..." Skidmark hummed and took a drag of his pipe. "Loogie," he said at last.
  
  The spit guy chuckled. "Ah, that"s funny, man. Real funny. You call me that again and I walk."
  
  "Listen, you cock-gargler, no other gang in town"s gonna take your black ass." Skidmark gestured grandly to his sunken, pitted, but obviously black, face. "All we care about is how much you wanna smoke at a time. But that means you take what you get, and you act nice about it."
  
  He glanced back at Sherryl as he said it, and she gave him a wink. Skidmark might not have been a looker, but he was decent in bed and fantastic with weed, which was what she really looked for in a guy.
  
  Spit guy snorted. "I"m calling myself Spittoon. You don"t like it, I"ll go do my own thing."
  
  Skid rolled his eyes. "Fucking fine then. And you?" he asked the skinny white guy. "Lucky us, getting two capes at once, but if one of you turns out to have a shitty power, I can just toss you out and keep the other."
  
  The skinny guy pulled a face like he was concentrating- or taking a really uncomfortable shit. Sherryl started to think it was the second thing when fat brown globs began oozing out from his skin, spreading and hardening at the top. In seconds he was covered in what looked like inch-thick cracked mud.
  
  Skidmark leaned forward and blew a cloud of weed smoke thoughtfully. "Gross." Sherryl pulled a face behind her welding goggles.
  
  Spit guy- Spittoon- pulled a baseball bat out of his dirty jacket, took a batter"s stance, and then swung right into the top of the mud pile. There was a massive crash like a bunch of dropped plates, and the mud guy staggered forward a step, but he straightened up a second later looking completely unbothered.
  
  Skidmark slapped his knee excitedly. "Damn! That"s more fucking like it! You got a name yet, or do I get to pick?"
  
  "Mudslide," burbled the brown blob. Sherryl idly wondered if the stuff was getting in his mouth, to make him sound like that.
  
  "Sounds dumb, but awright. I guess if you kick enough teeth in it"ll start to sound good. Now listen, both of ya," Skidmark put his pipe down on the platform and stood up, sweeping his cape out with his hands. Sherryl straightened up from where she"d been leaning against his chair and sashayed forward to stand next to him, wrapping her arm around his. She noted with some amusement that Spittoon"s eyes wandered across her body for a second before Skidmark spoke again.
  
  "Business is pretty good for us right now, since word"s got round about the fight last week. Two of the Teeth, Stormtiger, that new hero, and me. The rest of those shits got arrested, and I walked out." Skidmark puffed himself up importantly. "People are finally seeing what the Merchants can do."
  
  Sherryl noticed Spittoon subtly rolling his eyes. It wasn"t like they needed reminding about that- it was the reason they"d come to join up in the first place.
  
  "We need to make some money to make up for what that Elpis cunt"s been doing to us, so we"re throwing a party. With the rep we"ve got, we"ll rake in cash and recruits, and after that we"re just gonna keep on going up.
  
  "Thing is, even our regular parties get pretty wild, and with that tin-plated twat running around, it"s a sucker bet that she"s gonna pull some shit. You guys want to prove yourselves? It"s up to you to keep things from going to hell. And if you see El-Piss show up, you stomp her flat and bring what"s left to me."
  
  Mudslide"s head-blob swung about weirdly, making some muffled clicking noises. It took Sherryl a moment to realise he was popping his neck. "You got it, boss."
  
  Skidmark gave them a yellow-brown grin. "Good. Go talk to Dougie, he"ll get you guys set up. And try to figure out some kind of costume before the party, awright?"
  
  The new guys nodded and shuffled out, Mudslide leaving a trail of thick footprints that expanded and hardened behind him into rocky slabs.
  
  "Looks like we"re moving up in the world, huh Skiddie?" Sherryl pressed herself a little closer to her squeeze, letting her breasts rest against his shoulder. He grinned and slid a hand on her waist.
  
  "You know it baby. So what were you saying about the new truck?"
  
  Sherryl groaned and rolled over. She barely had a hangover compared to some of the benders she"d been on, but she ached all over, and her wrists were really sore.
  
  Light shone through her eyelids, and she tried to throw her arm over her face. Who the fuck was dumb enough to try and wake her up after a party?
  
  Her arm wouldn"t move around- something was caught around her wrist. Actually, both her wrists. And something else was holding her ankles together. She sat up, blinking blearily at the man standing in front of her-
  
  "Fuck!" Sherryl toppled back onto the bed, kicking out with both feet at the spiked mask leering at her. He simply grabbed her feet and pushed them to the side dismissively.
  
  "You done?" He asked simply. There wasn"t anything threatening in his words, but his stance radiated a sense of "I don"t have time for this shit".
  
  Sherryl gaped, floundering for something, anything to say, as last night came back to her in bits and pieces.
  
  That hero bitch had shown up after all, with help; and they"d gone through the party like a razor through coke. They"d chased after her and Skid, got them caught in a high speed chase...
  
  And now she was being held hostage by the fucking capital-T Teeth.
  
  The man sighed and lowered himself into a chair across from the bed. "My name"s Spree," he said simply. "I"m the leader of the Teeth now."
  
  Sherryl regarded him with bewilderment for a second, then decided to assume that he probably wasn"t going to try and kill her right just now, and also that she was getting a crick in her neck from trying to stare straight down her tits at him. With a grunt, she managed to get her legs under her and slowly roll upright, carefully testing the rope around her wrists. It was all coming back to her now.
  
  "Why "m I here?" she asked cautiously.
  
  Spree shrugged. "Because you might be useful. You"re a Tinker without a gang, and we"re looking for new talent."
  
  "Yeah, fuck that." A second after she"d said that, Sherryl realised she probably shouldn"t have said that. Oh well, might as well go for broke. "The Merchants always bounce back, and Skidmark"s gonna come and get all up in your business if you don"t let me go."
  
  Privately, she doubted that Skids could actually pull something like that off. His power was good, but he wasn"t a bad-to-the-bone monster like these guys. She was fairly sure he"d at least make the effort to try and get her back. And if she made an effort to get out, maybe they could meet in the middle.
  
  Spree shook his head. "Yeah, he isn"t. Look." He pulled a battered smartphone out of a metal pouch on his hip and tapped at it, swiping through the circles on the screen for a few seconds before turning it to face her.
  
  The phone showed a news article. A picture of the building they"d thrown the party in was just above the title MERCHANTS AND TEETH REMOVED FROM BROCKTON BAY.
  
  The rest of it was boring details about people giving quotes, and stuff that she"d already lived through, but one sentence caught her eye.
  
  "...Skidmark, leader of the criminal organisation known as the Archer"s Bridge Merchants has been taken into custody following a prolonged escape attempt."
  
  Fuck.
  
  Fuck-fuck fuckity fuck.
  
  Skidmark wasn"t coming for her.
  
  The old feelings welled up inside her, the way they had every time she"d felt scared since she"d got her powers- the urge to run away, to wrap herself in armour, to build something that would carry her to safety and protect her from all the horrible shit that life kept dropping on her. She had to force away the idea of a segmented tank that would be able to "walk" over obstacles.
  
  "So," Spree said, pulling the phone back, "you"ve got two choices. You can get dropped off for the cops, or you can join us. We"re not in the habit of leaving our enemies around to come back and mess with us."
  
  "The hell do you want with me?" Sherryl asked, well aware she was whining, and too upset to care.
  
  "Like I said, we"re looking for more capes," Spree said patiently. "I"ve seen the stuff you build, and it"s definitely our style."
  
  Sherryl blinked, surprised. "Really?" Everything she"d heard about the Teeth suggested that they"d drive around in cars with skulls mounted on the grille.
  
  "Big, fast, and heavily armoured. You sure handled yourself against those Empire fucks," Spree added. "Plus you were crazy enough to jump into the middle of us in the first place."
  
  This was a very surreal conversation to be having with someone who had finger bones stitched across his chest like medals. Sherryl decided not to mention that crashing into the chase had just been a crazy idea in the heat of the moment, or that she"d have happily left the Teeth, the Empire, and those hero bitches to beat the hell out of each other. Instead she shifted a bit and rolled her shoulders- the rope around her wrists was really starting to pull on her arms.
  
  "Uh, no offense, but you guys are way more hardcore than I"m used to. Like, I just want hash, cash, and a couple of fights. Maybe some coke on the weekends. I"m not a-" she floundered, "-not a "drink from the skulls of my enemies" kind of girl."
  
  "We"re not as bad as you think. And you"re tougher than you think." Spree leant forward. "You build trucks with deflector shields and put rocket boosters on sedans, and you"re okay with being a footnote? An afterthought?"
  
  Sherryl wanted to argue back, but she was still afraid of pissing him off. Instead, she sat quietly, unable to stop the feeling of doubt. True, a lot of the bigger stuff she"d wanted to make lay out of reach- not enough materials, or enough money for materials, or Skidmark would say something about staying under the radar.
  
  Staying under the radar kept you alive though. Okay, people didn"t talk about the Merchants like they talked about the Nazis or the Asians, but who wanted to be mentioned in the same sentence as bastards like that? So what if people said "Oh, there"s also the Merchants"?
  
  "If you want recognition, you need to build it," Spree said, watching her carefully. "The rep you have right now is as Skidmark"s chick. And that"s if people are being polite."
  
  That stung. Skidmark was a decent enough guy, and she was happy to let him lead- more time for her to tinker and smoke- and he"d made sure to kick the crap out of anyone talking shit about her. Still, she knew people saw her as Skidmark"s woman before they saw her as her own.
  
  "People never respected the Merchants. Not their strength, not their goals. You want respect? You need to think bigger."
  
  The question of how much respect the Teeth would get without Butcher was on the tip of Sherryl"s tongue, but she wasn"t hungover enough to be suicidal. Instead she bit the inside of her cheek and tried to think of something to say that wouldn"t get her tossed out the window.
  
  "Bigger like wearing bones. And, y"know, killing enough people to get those bones."
  
  "Yup." Spree looked completely at ease with the idea. "If you"re gonna kill someone, why not take a trophy? No sense in pretending to be civilised."
  
  Plenty of sense in holding back. But holding back against people in Brockton Bay was a good way to get mulched. She"d had plans for something that could have chewed up Hookwolf and melted him down for scrap, but Skidmark had argued her down because the rest of the Empire would come after them.
  
  How civilised were capes? Hookwolf ran dogfights and murdered people for being the wrong colour, Lung"s guys pulled girls off the streets and sold them. They got away with it because everybody knew they never held back- they went for blood every time. What could she do if she really pushed her limits?
  
  "You guys kidnapped me," Sherryl said feebly, her last line of her defence as she felt her resistance crumbling.
  
  Spree shrugged. "Reaver took initiative last night. It wasn"t what I would have had him do. But," he held up a finger, "if he hadn"t grabbed you, you"d have been caught, and we wouldn"t be having this conversation, because you"d be in the slammer."
  
  Sherryl couldn"t think of a single damn thing to say. Her wrists hurt and her shoulders were going stiff from having her hands behind her back. Her head still ached, and her mouth tasted horrible. Maybe if she felt better, she"d be able to come up with a decent argument.
  
  "One job."
  
  "Say again?"
  
  "One job." Sherryl lifted her head and looked Spree right in the eye- or at least, the dark holes of his mask. "I do one job with you guys, and then I- I figure it out from there."
  
  Spree sat back and tapped his fingertips to his knuckles for a second.
  
  "Fine," he said suddenly. "One job, and then we discuss it. But one condition." He stood up, and his face was thrown into shadow as he loomed over her. "Don"t try to fuck us over. Got it?"
  
  Sherryl gulped. "Got it."
  
  "Alright then. Up you get." Spree hauled her up by the armpit and quickly cut the ropes off her with a few efficient movements from a small knife.
  
  "Hey," Sherryl ventured, rubbing at her wrists, then pushing until the joints popped, "There anything to eat around here?"
  
  A door slammed open outside the bedroom, and a loud Boston voice bellowed, "Daddy"s home!"
  
  "Probably," Spree said, not even reacting to that. He opened the door a little and stuck his head out. "Masks on, assholes! We got company!"
  
  4.1
  Sunday 6th February, Brockton Bay, Pancakes Worldwide
  
  Two Gangs Down! was splashed across the top of the Brockton Bay Tribunal. I could almost feel the writer"s enthusiasm radiating off the page as I read my way through it.
  
  The article stated- or maybe shouted- that after a lengthy series of "violent conflicts" with the Empire, and "engagements" with the local Protectorate, the Teeth, formerly one of the worst gangs to have ever set foot in Brockton Bay, et cetera, had finally been forced out of the city, unable to hold their ground with the ultimate death of the entity known as Butcher.
  
  "Entity? Bitch, what?" Firecracker demanded. "We"re a- a collective. Or a badass."
  
  "I"m more surprised that they said the Protectorate had anything to do with it," Vladimir said frankly. "It seems like an exaggeration. They seemed to be keeping it contained more than anything else."
  
  "How is that the thing you"re focused on?" Tactical demanded, uncharacteristically agitated. "Have you forgotten what"s going on here?"
  
  "Shut up," Flinch said, equally unusually irritated. "This is happening, and I"m n-not passing up the chance to send something to my family."
  
  The article went on to mention me and Spitfire by name, as a pair of independent heroes who had "conducted a raid against a gathering of the minor street gang known as the Archer"s Bridge Merchants". I wondered if Skidmark was reading the paper in his jail cell, and how angry he would be to have his gang called minor.
  
  The text got a lot more descriptive then, despite lacking any concrete details. Probably a high-speed chase with fourteen capes was the sort of thing that brought in the readers. The writer managed to suggest his idea of what happened at least.
  
  Skidmark was in custody now, awaiting transfer to a parahuman-rated prison. As Miss Militia had said, the Empire had escaped, though Victor and Cricket had visible injuries. The police had been quoted on how they were going to mop up the last of the Merchants, and the unpowered Teeth members were all being processed.
  
  I thought for a moment, then checked near the top of the page. I"d somehow missed a paragraph- Vex, Snowblind and Sinister had been broken out of the convoy that was taking them out of Brockton that night. Spree had hit with a wave of clones, Animos had jumped Dauntless, who"d been escorting the convoy, and then Reaver had cut them all out.
  
  "Nice and easy does the trick," Dirty Rotter enthused. "Spree"s still got a good loaf."
  
  I absently radiated agreement while I popped the last bite of pancakes into my mouth. By now the syrup had soaked all the way through and made it a bit soggy, but I didn"t mind. I slid the plate to one side and turned the page. There were some more details about the Protectorate and PRT efforts to capitalise on the situation, and a separate section on the history of the Butchers.
  
  The TV in the corner was playing a similar story on the news, but they were basically repeating the same details, intercut with interviews of random people that didn"t seem to have any actual relevance to the story. Janet, 33, was currently giving her opinion despite not being law enforcement or anywhere near any capes ever.
  
  The waitress came bustling over, notepad and pen at the ready. This time I checked her nametag- it said Anna. I also realised the studs in her earrings were made to look like golden screws.
  
  "Ooh, we should get some of those," Firecracker broke in.
  
  "Yeah, it"s a cool style," Stoneknapper agreed. "Guess we"ll have to see if these ones heal up."
  
  "Okay, second plate done, can I get you anything else?" Anna said brightly.
  
  I glanced at my empty plate like I was making a decision. "Yeah, I think I can go for another stahck," I said at length, in the thickest Boston accent I can muster. "An" can I get another coffee?" I held my mug out and gave it a shake.
  
  "Sure, no problem!" Anna chirped, taking plate and mug in hand to zip back toward the counter.
  
  Bearskin snorted. "Someone"s angling for a tip."
  
  "That, or she"s had a lot of coffee herself." Tock Tick paused reflectively. "We could give her a tip just for the view."
  
  "True. Never thought I"d be getting horny over waitress uniforms," Bearskin muttered.
  
  Something caught my attention through the senses of my bugs. Before even entering the diner, I"d spent a good twenty minutes using teams of flies to carry spiders between the buildings, trailing lines of silk in a grid pattern, and I"d only continued to add more lines as I"d worked my way through my food.
  
  Several species of spiders used their webbing as tripwires or snares, using the vibrations to alert them to prey or threats. I"d taken the technique and simply applied it on a greater scale. One of the rookie mistakes the Butchers had learned before me was that people rarely expected threats from above.
  
  Several of the lines had just broken as something plunged through them from above, a block away. I didn"t look up, because a normal person can"t pick up on something like that, but I did slip a few small insects onto the figures that had just landed on the street, attracting plenty of attention from passers-by.
  
  I couldn"t really see through any of my insects, but I could make out a few things by positioning a few flies. Both had long hair, so probably women. One was short, with hair that fluffed out in a tangled mess of frizz as she stepped out of the flier"s arms. Panacea had arrived.
  
  The flier was taller, with straight hair. I had trouble placing bugs on her; there seemed to be some kind of surface covering all of her, glassy smooth and utterly impenetrable. Like a forcefield.
  
  "Glory Girl." Needler tsked. "Panacea talked."
  
  "She- she might have just needed a lift," Flinch said weakly. I felt a pulse of irritation; I understood that Panacea didn"t fully trust me, but dropping out of the sky with her sister was pretty damn far from subtle.
  
  The Dallon sisters shared a quick hug, and then split up- Glory Girl wandering off to the other shops around, while Panacea made a beeline for the Pancakes Worldwide.
  
  "Hehe, beeline," Firecracker snickered.
  
  I waited until the bell over the door rang before I looked up, waving a hand. I couldn"t make out the look on Panacea"s face when she spotted me, but the way she stomped over said plenty.
  
  "Is it me, or did she recognise us strangely quickly?" Muramasa asked.
  
  "We"ve got the red scarf like Taylor said she"d wear," Vladimir pointed out. "I"m not sure what you"re getting at."
  
  "I just mean that she has never seen Taylor out of her armour, but she did not hesitate to head for the first person wearing a red scarf."
  
  Anchorage snorted. "Because Taylor waved her over, dude. What"re you getting at?"
  
  "Never mind," Muramasa sighed. "I will explain it when I can articulate it properly."
  
  "Morning," I said neutrally as Panacea flung herself into the booth. "You want to order anything while you"re here? My treat."
  
  "I"m not eating anything bought by dirty money," she sneered, slouching lower in her seat. "Just say what you want and let me go."
  
  Anna took that precise moment to bustle over with another stack of pancakes and a steaming cup of coffee, plus a little jug of cream.
  
  "Thanks, ma"am," I said with cheer I didn"t feel. She smiled and trotted off, skirt swishing around her knees enticingly.
  
  I shook myself and turned back to Panacea, ignoring the grumbles from the peanut gallery at the less interesting view.
  
  "So," I began, picking up my knife and fork, "I wanted to apologise, first of all. I stepped over- a bunch of lines, actually. I"m sorry for manhandling you, and for bringing up your aunt." I paused in cutting a bit off the stack to reach into my bag and bring out the notepad, sliding it across the table toward her. "I hope this"ll show I"m serious."
  
  Panacea straightened up, going from sullen to angry with a flush that made her freckles stand out. "You think you can apologise for threatening my family?" she hissed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
  
  "Wait, what?" Anchorage asked. "I"d swear you didn"t make any threats." She radiated confusion, enough to briefly forget her surly attitude towards me.
  
  I leaned forward over my pancakes and lowered my voice. "What the hell are you talking about?" I questioned. "I never threatened your family, I swear."
  
  "Yes you did! You were being all "be a shame if something happened"! You said "goodbye hero, hello monster, and then death"; don"t try to act like that wasn"t a threat!"
  
  I frantically gestured at her to keep her voice down. There weren"t any occupied tables next to us, but we were getting a few glances from people.
  
  "Maybe they think you girls are breaking up," Rotter leered. I gave him a short push into the dark with a scowl and tried to think back on what I"d said last night.
  
  "I was trying to persuade you," I recalled slowly, "and then I said something about Fleur dying after unmasking, and then I said people wouldn"t let me be a hero if they knew who I was, and that people would try to kill me."
  
  "You said heroes would die if I said anything," Panacea countered. "You were talking about New Wave."
  
  "I meant me!" I spluttered, dropping my cutlery onto my plate with a clatter. "And you thought..."
  
  I groaned in sudden realisation and rested my head in my hands, while the Butchers broke into hysterical laughter.
  
  "Oh my fuck!" Quarrel bawled. "You threatened her family- by accident!"
  
  Needler tittered in sheer schadenfreude. "Oh Taylor, you are terrible at this."
  
  "Who"s on first!" Vladimir hooted. "What"s on second, and Somebody"s going to die!"
  
  "Are you seriously telling me," Panacea asked with mounting incredulity, "That you managed to threaten me and my family... by accident?"
  
  That got another groan from me and even more laughter from the collective.
  
  "Hey Quarrel, jinx on you and Panacea!" Stoneknapper chuckled, ignoring Quarrel"s snarl at him.
  
  "Just..." I slid the notepad across the table. "Just read this."
  
  "You"re a goddamn idiot," Tactical snarled. I shoved him into the dark, not wanting to hear his complaints again. The rest of the Butchers had largely stopped after 8 hours of persuasion and argument, but Tactical always loathed giving up a strategic advantage.
  
  Panacea snatched it away from me and opened it slowly, like she was expecting it to explode. I managed a few more bites of pancakes while my face slowly cooled from my tomato-red blush. Unfortunately, none of my powers could hide that.
  
  Panacea finished the first page, then flicked to the second- then flicked through the whole thing rapidly, barely stopping to look. Several envelopes fell out onto the table as she scanned the pages, face twisted into disbelief.
  
  "This can"t be real," she said finally, putting it down. She picked up one of the envelopes instead and slid her thumb under the flap-
  
  I whipped the envelope out of her hand so quickly that she yelped in surprise.
  
  "I was going to ask you about that, actually," I said with forced patience. "If something happens to me, could you pass these along to the PRT? They ought to be able to get them delivered."
  
  Panacea rubbed at her fingertips. "What the hell are they, anyway?"
  
  "Famous last words. PRT"ll probably read them anyway to make sure I"m not ordering a hit or something, but I"d appreciate it if you didn"t." I put the envelope back down, with a significant look at her. She rolled her eyes, but she didn"t reach for it again.
  
  "So these are all some P.S. I Love You kind of thing? Why are there so many?"
  
  I popped another forkful of syrupy pancake into my mouth, clicking against the stud in my lip as I did; holding up a finger for a pause while I chewed and swallowed. "They"re not all mine," I said finally, pausing again to sip my coffee. "Actually, only one of them"s mine. The rest are from," I hesitated, looking for a way to avoid speaking about the Butchers in public, "my predecessors."
  
  That had been an emotional couple of hours. The Butchers almost never had much of a civilian life to begin with, and sharing a headspace made it very difficult to remain articulate enough to have an extended conversation without someone butting in.
  
  They had their moments, certainly- Muramasa still visited his mother"s grave every winter, and had extracted a promise from Quarrel to continue in his stead; Tactical insisted on celebrating Saint Patrick"s Day at full blast; Anchorage would occasionally check in on her parents and leave a bundle of cash at the door. Flinch spent more time thinking of his wife and daughters than he did paying attention to actual events.
  
  But speaking, writing; no. The Butchers had to debate and argue just to agree on a few short sentences for the current host to say. Managing a sincere note was out of their grasp.
  
  Except for me.
  
  So after I"d filled up the notepad with entries on all of them, I"d decided to write out a letter to Dad that explained what had happened and all the things I wished I could say. When I"d dotted the last I and crossed the last T, I"d asked the Butchers if there was anything they wanted passed on.
  
  They"d mostly declined. Actually, declined was too soft a word. Tactical had gone on a rant over how idiotic I was being, a far cry from his usual bloodless pragmatism, virulent enough to force me to push him down. Several more had said no in various ways. Nemean hadn"t even bothered to respond.
  
  But Flinch had leapt at the chance to send something to Angie and the girls, and had dictated to me through two and a half pages of emotional writing in what, I"d only realised when I"d signed the bottom, was his handwriting.
  
  Stoneknapper had managed a quick note to his old curmudgeon of a boss, and Bearskin had embarrassedly requested a letter to an old flame. Anchorage had grumpily put down a message to her parents, and I"d very carefully not said anything about her words to Pop and Mama.
  
  One rule of sharing a brain- family was off-limits.
  
  Panacea poked at the envelopes with a slightly dazed expression. "You"re serious."
  
  "Yes."
  
  Panacea held up one letter and stared at it like it held God"s own autograph. "Why?"
  
  "I can"t send these on while I"m alive, obviously; I want people to think I don"t exist, and mysterious letters turning up would be kind of a hint. So, if and when some bastard gets a lucky shot in, I"d like you to send these off. Please," I added belatedly.
  
  "I somehow doubt that"s going to help," Needler pointed out.
  
  Panacea rubbed at her temples with a groan. "This is so messed up."
  
  "Try living it."
  
  "Just- how? How did this happen? All the other-" She broke off mid-sentence at my frantic gestures, then continued "-nobody else stayed sane. And you"re just sitting here eating pancakes!"
  
  I tried to think of some sort of witty, fitting response. Nothing came to mind, so I took another mouthful of pancake.
  
  Panacea rested her elbows on the table and put her head in her hands, staring at the notepad. "I need an explanation. How you got like this. How you"re still sane. What you"re doing." She glanced up at me, and did a double take. "And when did you get so many piercings? Those weren"t there last night."
  
  "Took her long enough," Dirty Rotter sneered, already bobbing back up into the light.
  
  My hand strayed to my lower lip, and the steel stud poking out of it. "It"s a disguise. People see loads of piercings, and they remember that. They"ll heal up when I take them out."
  
  It was a trick that the Butchers had used since Needler, though it had got easier with Stoneknapper"s power to shape the metal. Simply poke a needle through whatever you wanted and let the regeneration seal up around it. Of course, Nemean"s toughened skin wasn"t so easy, even if the pain immunity helped- unless, like Muramasa had done to inherit, you used his sharpening power on the metal.
  
  I had three rings dangling from each ear, a bar through one eyebrow, a stud in one nostril, and the lip stud. Pinning my hair up, using a different pair of glasses, and the Boston accent, had completed the disguise, turning me from geeky Taylor Hebert to some nameless outgoing punk.
  
  "You could try dressing like this normally," Anchorage suggested. "Maybe not punk, but you could do goth."
  
  "Pale, skinny, dark hair, dark clothes- it fits," Vladimir agreed.
  
  "You would say that, you Dracula-knockoff," Nemean sniped. The two dissolved into bickering.
  
  "It probably would have worked better if you hadn"t come slamming out of the sky in your sister"s arms," I added, mood souring as I remembered. "What part of discreet is hard for you to understand?"
  
  "The part where I"m supposed to trust you." Panacea"s glare returned in full force. "If I scream, Vicky"ll rip your arms and legs off."
  
  "We can take her," Nemean said dismissively.
  
  I blinked, feeling a sudden rush of apprehension. "Did you tell her?" The bugs on Glory Girl were currently meandering through a shop a hundred yards down and on the other side of the street. I could make some guesses at her posture, and she didn"t seem wary or tense. Still, I started shifting insects closer to her. Even if I couldn"t hurt her with them, I could block her vision, maybe misdirect her.
  
  Panacea hesitated. "She didn"t," Firecracker said immediately. "Kid"s got a lousy poker face."
  
  "Kid? That"s rich," Tock Tick replied.
  
  "Bite me, old man."
  
  "Okay, so what did you tell your sister then? Might as well get our stories straight."
  
  Panacea blinked at my non-sequitur, then leaned back in her seat. "I said I was meeting a patient with ongoing brain problems. Nothing about you or your "predecessors". Though she might have figured out I was meeting you, after last night," she added quietly.
  
  I jabbed my fork into the pancake with a bit more force than necessary. This whole meeting was going a lot worse than I"d hoped.
  
  "I mean, you are technically crazy," Anchorage snickered. "You"ve got brain problems alright."
  
  "Yeah, the terminal kind," Butcher cackled nastily. I rammed him down hard and fast, and he laughed all the way.
  
  "Fine," I said at last, taking another bite. "So long as she isn"t coming after me. What did you want to know?"
  
  Panacea flicked back to the first page of the notepad. I didn"t need to read it- I"d written it. Butcher"s name, powers, a rough estimate of the upper limit of his strength both before and after his death, the range of his pain inducement ability. Every page had an entry for each of the Butchers, listing their powers, a brief history, how they"d inherited, how they"d died.
  
  Tactical had every reason to be pissed- it"d be a serious information windfall for the PRT. I"d managed to talk the others around by pointing out they already knew the vast majority of it anyway, and some of them had taken a perverse satisfaction in having their lives going on proper record. Tock Tick particularly wanted me to list his various creations down so people would remember that he was in here- he"d always felt like he didn"t get enough credit.
  
  "How did it happen?" Panacea looked up from the pad, looking very lost and bewildered. She looked younger than I"d ever seen her before, and strangely vulnerable.
  
  "She is young," Muramasa said.
  
  "So"s Taylor," Vladimir pointed out. Muramasa was already shaking his non-existent head.
  
  "Taylor has not been young since she joined us. She had our memories. And Panacea-"
  
  "Panacea," Stoneknapper interjected, "is soft. You keep the healers away from the fighting, right?
  
  I grabbed my mug and chugged the last of the coffee, briefly wishing it was something stronger, then set it down with a gasp.
  
  "It was my Trigger Event," I said hoarsely. Panacea"s eyes widened, but I didn"t stop. I wasn"t sure if I"d be able to start again if I stopped.
  
  "Suddenly I could sense all the bugs around me for- a block, I guess. Everything they heard, saw, smelled, tasted- you don"t want to know the kind of stuff cockroaches can eat.
  
  "And the absolute loudest thing was the fight going on about half a block away from Winslow. Shouting, gunfire, explosions. Quarrel was all of that at once."
  
  "Quarrel?" But Panacea had already found the page. "Right. XIV."
  
  "Cunt," Quarrel spat.
  
  "That"s right," I said. "She was teleporting around in explosions, firing off a minigun, tossing a couple of grenades- she was the loudest, most dangerous thing around. And I didn"t know what was going on, I thought I was having a nightmare, or hallucinating, or something. You ever wake up from a nightmare and lash out at whatever woke you up?"
  
  "So that"s what the Swarm was? That was you lashing out?"
  
  "Mm." I scooped up a massive forkful of pancakes and shovelled it in.
  
  "Hell, that"s what I call throwing a wobbler," Rotter said. His tone was teasing, but I could feel the mild sympathy behind it.
  
  Panacea flipped the page to my entry and stared at it for a while. "How are you still... stable, I guess? How does it work?"
  
  I swallowed what felt like a softball of pastry and syrup. "I can kind of- push them down." I waved my fork vaguely. "They"re still connected to my senses, but they can"t talk to me, and I don"t feel their emotions as much."
  
  "I"m waiting for the "but"."
  
  "I"m waiting on the boobs," Anchorage said, almost reflexively. Firecracker snickered.
  
  "She"s more perceptive than I thought," Needler admitted.
  
  Bearskin snorted. "When she"s got her head out of her ass."
  
  I nodded slightly. "But. My emotions get dulled the more of them I push down. I shoved them all away as soon as I started hearing them, and I was just," I waved a hand, "numb. On autopilot. The paramedics thought I was in shock."
  
  Dad had thought that too, when he"d rushed over. I"d had the filth cleaned off and been given some spare clothes, but I was as unresponsive as a mannequin when he"d wrapped me in a desperate hug. Even now, that memory was an apathetic blur. It took a long time, focusing on the gentler emotions of Flinch and Tock Tick, to let them rise back up, and bring some feeling with them.
  
  Panacea looked from the notepad to me, and back again. Then she gathered up the envelopes, stuffed them in, and closed it with a soft snap. "Alright," she exhaled, "where do we go from here?"
  
  I shrugged. "I keep doing what I"ve been doing. Chase the bad guys, help the good guys."
  
  "And then what?" Panacea tapped the notepad. "I don"t think you"ll stay hidden forever. The regeneration alone is a pretty big giveaway. What am I supposed to tell people when they ask why I"ve got a book full of B-" she stopped herself, "-of your secrets? They"ll think I was working with you."
  
  "Oooh, imagine the scandal!" Rotter said horribly. "New Wave"s precious healer consorting with the likes of us! The tabloids"ll have a field day!"
  
  I paused and laid down my fork. "If I"m being really optimistic, I"d like to think I"ll have done enough good, for long enough, that people could give me the benefit of the doubt. But," I indicated with a hand, "you didn"t trust me. With good reason," I admitted, "but still..."
  
  Panacea shrugged, not seeming at all embarrassed. "So how do I avoid getting lumped in with you? No offense," she added carelessly.
  
  I nodded in acknowledgement. "If people are going to think I"m the stuff of nightmares anyway, might as well use it. Worst case scenario, you say I threatened you to keep quiet. Apparently, I already did."
  
  Panacea suddenly snorted and clapped a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking with supressed laughter. I found myself snickering along for a moment. It wasn"t even that funny, but I needed a laugh.
  
  At last, Panacea managed to stop laughing, just as Anna came over once more. I crammed the last of the pancakes into my mouth and set the cutlery down on the plate, which she swept up with a smile. "Okay, anything else?"
  
  I shook my head, mouth too full to speak, and signalled for the bill. She promised to bring it right away, and trotted off again.
  
  "Definitely give her a tip," Stoneknapper said absently.
  
  "And ask about the earrings," Firecracker insisted.
  
  Panacea cleared her throat, drawing my attention back to her. She fiddled with her fingers and took a deep, nervous breath. "I," she stopped, and started again. "I believe you. Mostly. But if I"m going to keep this quiet, I need solid evidence."
  
  "The hell"s she-" Quarrel broke off as Panacea laid her hand on the table, palm up. "No. no, no, no fucking way, no!"
  
  "Taylor, this isn"t a- a good idea," Flinch said urgently. "She might be able to disable you, try to take you in. She could call her sister in, and then you"d be trying to fight two heroes at once."
  
  "Don"t you dare do it," Tactical demanded, finally rising back into the light. "You"ve done enough damage without shaking hands with a Striker."
  
  They were completely right. Panacea"s power was used for healing, but I doubted it was just healing. The Butcher"s rule of thumb was to assume that a power could do three times more bad than good. Whatever a world-class healer could do didn"t bear thinking about.
  
  Against that was one small, slightly pathetic truth.
  
  I didn"t have anyone else to talk to. Nobody else on the planet knew my secret identity, let alone my role as Butcher XV. I hadn"t been that good at introspection, but sharing my mind with the Butchers meant they could see everything I did, and in turn I could see their reactions, and understand myself through them.
  
  I was lonely.
  
  I took a deep breath and put my hand on hers, shutting out the demands and outright screaming by pushing half of them down. Panacea seemed surprised that I"d actually done it, but her gaze quickly sharpened.
  
  "Do you promise that you won"t return to the Teeth?"
  
  "Yes." A flare of anger from the Butchers.
  
  "Are you going to keep being a hero?"
  
  "Yes." Derision from most, though I could feel a small kernel of pride from Flinch.
  
  "Are you going to hurt me or my family?"
  
  "Not unless they attack me first and I have to defend myself."
  
  Panacea frowned. "You could have just said no."
  
  I shrugged. "You wanted the truth."
  
  She scowled, but didn"t argue the point. She slid her hand out from under mine, and I pulled my arm back to my side of the table.
  
  "I believe you," Panacea said at length. "I still can"t trust you completely though. Or," she flicked a hand at my head, "I guess I can"t trust- them."
  
  "Don"t trust the devils inside," I muttered. More clearly, "Okay."
  
  The conversation dropped when Anna came over to drop off the bill. One order of never-ending pancakes, two cups of coffee, plus tip. I pulled a twenty out for the bill, and after a second"s thought, added another twenty for her tip.
  
  "I guess that"s it then." Panacea slid out of the booth, tucking the notepad into her jacket. "I"m going to visit the hospital. Behave yourself," she said wearily, already turning away.
  
  "Wait."
  
  "Oh my god, what now?" she demanded, turning back to me. "I swear, if there"s some other shocking thing you want to reveal-"
  
  "Actually, yes." I laid a hand on my chest and swallowed my nerves. "Taylor Hebert. We"re in gym class together."
  
  For a second Panacea"s expression was blank. Then her eyes went so wide I thought they might fall out of her head.
  
  "Okay," she said faintly. "Okay. I"m- I"m going to go now," she pointed in the vague direction of the door. "Bye."
  
  She turned and almost ran for the door.
  
  "Smooth," Stoneknapper snickered. I shoved him into the dark, picked up my bag, and headed out the door to figure out what to do now I"d dodged that bullet.
  
  Monday had certainly gained a new sense of terror to it, for one.
  
  4.2
  Monday 7th February, Arcadia High School
  
  The usual "Oh-god-Monday-I-hate-school" mood wasn"t as strong as usual when I made it through Arcadia"s front doors. Kids were clustered together in groups, and the most popular topic I could make out was capes; the Teeth, the Merchants, the Protectorate; I heard someone on the other side of the hall mention Elpis. I managed to restrain myself from twitching.
  
  Enhanced hearing was a mixed blessing in school. I couldn"t really move my ears like Nemean"s big top-of-the-head radar dishes, but I could still pick up things from all around me and focus on particular noises. I"d accidentally eavesdropped on so many conversations that I probably could have run my own gossip column.
  
  "Hey, there"s Dumbass," Firecracker pointed out. Jason from homeroom was leaning against the wall, distractedly chatting with another boy while browsing his phone. He looked up just in time to catch my glance, and rolled his eyes.
  
  I glared back and walked faster. Ever since his dumb questions on my first day, Jason had treated me like I"d said something about his mother. To hear him tell it, I"d lashed out at him for a polite hello, and he was just popular enough that the story had started to spread. A lot of people now seemed to think of me as "touchy", or "bitchy" when they thought I was out of earshot.
  
  "God, I didn"t miss all this popularity contest bullshit," Anchorage grumbled. "I swear there were villain meetings that weren"t so full of bitching and whining."
  
  "That is probably because villains know they can resort to violence for an insult," Muramasa pointed out.
  
  Vladimir made an agreeing noise. "I reckon my younger years would"ve been easier if I"d just knocked Seth Anderson"s teeth out."
  
  I made a left toward my locker, stepping around a couple of football players, and spotted a familiar head of scarlet hair with pencils sticking out of the bun. "Hey Frankie," I called as I closed the distance.
  
  Frankie looked up just as she shut her locker. "Hey Taylor. Good weekend?"
  
  "Pretty good. Got all the homework done super fast, so I hit the Market on Sunday. Got this," I held out the new hoodie I was wearing with finger and thumb.
  
  I"d let the Butchers talk me into some retail therapy after my meeting with Panacea, and allocated each of them some cash for small purchases. Most of them had chosen samples from the various food stalls, but Nemean had insisted on some big earrings made of dark wood that I was definitely going to wear another day.
  
  I"d vetoed the suggestions for clothing, since it was mostly spiky or skimpy or related to metal bands, and when they"d started complaining, I"d bought a lemon yellow hoodie out of spite. Far from my usual style, but it was warm and comfortable, so I"d kept it.
  
  "Looks good on you," Frankie praised sincerely. "Really cheery, goes with your complexion. Just like my jacket fits my face." She gestured grandly to her patch-laden denim jacket, then pointed to where a couple of zits peeked through the layer of concealer on her features. "A crowded mess."
  
  Stoneknapper chuckled. "I knew there was a reason I liked this girl."
  
  "And it"s not just because of your instincts as an "artist", huh?" Quarrel heckled.
  
  "Kiss my ass," Stoneknapper replied cheerily.
  
  "Hey, there"s nothing wrong with either," I defended. "Actually," I took a second look at her sleeve, "did you add a new patch?"
  
  "Yup! Grandma finished this one on Saturday." Frankie pointed to just above her elbow, where a grey rabbit in profile lay over the letters R.I.P. "In loving memory of Mr Herriman."
  
  "Who?" I said in synch with the Butchers, taking a step toward my locker further down.
  
  "Grandma"s old rabbit. He died last summer, Grandma had me bury him in the yard, had his picture on the wall, it was a whole thing," Frankie summed up, falling into step with me. "I never liked the little guy that much, but, y"know," she shrugged expressively.
  
  "I think so," I said as we reached my locker. "We never had pets, but I kinda get it."
  
  Butcher"s fuming impatience was like the heat off a glowing coal in the back of my mind, but he was finally holding in his usual stream of insults rather than going off on a rant about how I was wasting time making small talk and pretending to be a normal person.
  
  "Ooh, progress," Rotter said.
  
  "Anyway, the big topic." Frankie leaned in. "Please tell me you"ve heard the news about the gangs."
  
  "Yeah?" I asked, delving into my locker for the books I needed before lunch, not trusting myself to a longer response.
  
  "Coward," Anchorage said bitingly.
  
  "So?" Frankie spun her hand impatiently. "Reactions, opinions? This is kind of a big deal?"
  
  I pulled out the books, closed my locker, spun the dial, and slotted the books into my backpack, all while Frankie stood there vibrating with energy. "Okay," I said at last, breaking the suspense, "do you want my personal opinion, or do you want a really deep analysis?"
  
  "Both, either, whatever!"
  
  "Well, pretty much the whole city is glad that the Teeth and the Merchants are gone," I started, ignoring the Butchers" usual flare of annoyance. "Neither had much ideology, so they didn"t have a lot of followers. The Merchants were just drug dealers, and the Teeth are just-"
  
  "Mon- monstrous?" Flinch suggested.
  
  "Violent," Needler stated.
  
  "Predators," Nemean rumbled.
  
  "Roving marauders," I said, ignoring their immediate complaints. "Everybody"s glad to see the back of them."
  
  "Amen," Frankie agreed, blissfully unaware of the vitriol inside my head. "We got rid of, like," she counted on her fingers, "eight villains in one night."
  
  "What"s all this "we" business?" I said archly. "Are you going to tell me you"re a hero on the side?"
  
  "Ha ha, very funny."
  
  "That is a terrible joke and I respect it," Firecracker admitted.
  
  "Hey guys!" came a peppy voice and a gust of lavender scent.
  
  "Hey Stacey," we chorused as she came up to us.
  
  "Did you guys hear about the Teeth?" she asked excitedly.
  
  "We were literally just talking about it," I answered.
  
  "You"re doing this to torture us, aren"t you?" Bearskin demanded. "You"re making us suffer through this on purpose, right?"
  
  "Well, that"s not the only reason," I said with a small smile.
  
  "God, it"s so good to have less villains for a change," Stacey said dramatically, flicking her braids over her shoulder. "I mean, we"ve still got way too many, but it"s a start."
  
  "Pretty sure we"re still in the top 10 cape cities," Frankie pointed out.
  
  "This is probably going to have large effects going forward," I agreed. "E88"s been attacking the Teeth since they arrived, so they"re probably going to try and take credit for it to boost recruitment. The ABB"s harder to guess, but they"ll react to the Empire for sure. And all the extras who would have joined the Merchants or stayed solo might decide to band together for safety in numbers. We might get a whole new faction in a couple of weeks."
  
  Stacey visibly wilted at my words; Frankie nudged me with her elbow, muttering "Way to kill the mood, Tay."
  
  "This might be an opportunity though," I added hastily, drawing on Tactical"s Thinker power to analyse the situation. "The Empire"s taken some damage from all the fighting, and I did hear a couple of their capes got hurt, so they probably won"t be able to move right away. There might be an opening for the heroes to push back while the villains are adjusting."
  
  "This has been your daily cape nerd forecast," Frankie said jokingly.
  
  "You may want to downplay your knowledge of the cape scene in front of your friends," Needler suggested. "You sound suspiciously well informed right now."
  
  I bit my tongue at her words. Infodumping about the situation in the city wasn"t something anybody needed to hear from me.
  
  Stacey was looking more cheerful though. "Yeah, that"s true. Gotta keep your hopes up." She snapped her fingers. "That reminds me, I was going to ask you guys; Do you want to come over to my place for a slumber party? My parents didn"t want me going out while the gangs were all," she waved her hands around frantically, "but now the Teeth are gone, they"re cool with it."
  
  I blinked, surprised. I liked Stacey, and I could certainly call her a friend, but I didn"t think we were at the point of having slumber parties. That seemed more like a "best friends forever" kind of activity.
  
  "You"re just saying that because you haven"t had friends in a year," Quarrel said, harshly but not cruelly. "We get it, your Emma was a bitch."
  
  "One betrayal does not mean that all are traitors," Muramasa agreed.
  
  I could feel they were sincere, but I still hesitated. As I"d told the girls, there was a narrow opportunity to hit the gangs while they were adjusting. It"d be irresponsible of me to take a whole night off with no Tinker work, no patrolling, no action- not even making more silk with the black widows. My armour still needed repairs, I had a couple of new gadgets to work on-
  
  "It"s okay to-to spend time with your friends, Taylor," Flinch said kindly. "You"ve worked so hard. You deserve some fun."
  
  "Sounds good to me," Frankie enthused. "We haven"t done anything like that since before Christmas."
  
  "Sweet. Taylor, how about you?" Stacey asked.
  
  I bit my lip- then made my decision. "Uh, when? I mean, what day?"
  
  "I was thinking Friday. We could rent a movie, get some snacks, the whole nine yards."
  
  "Uh, yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. I"ll need to check with my dad, but that sounds fun."
  
  "Cool." For a second, there was something searching in Stacey"s expression. Then it was gone, and she was all smiles. "So! Anything fun on the weekend?"
  
  Conversation turned to the book Stacey had finally got around to reading, Frankie"s attempt to listen to all of Queen"s music, and the movie I"d watched on Sunday night with Dad. The Butchers had fallen into hot debate about whether the Aleph version of The Breakfast Club was better.
  
  Personally, I"d thought that Judd Nelson had done a better Bender than Nicolas Cage, but Dad had insisted Bet"s version was superior.
  
  As we talked, I simultaneously organised the thousands of insects within my range. The vermin were rounded up and marshalled toward the spiders, which I spread around the building in small clusters. I"d clear everything out at the end of the day, see if I could discreetly take them home. I needed more black widow silk for one project I had in mind, but I could use lesser species for the throwaway stuff like nets and cables.
  
  One insect stood out among the rest- a spider, but one that wasn"t responding to my commands. Or rather, it couldn"t- its body was locked up, completely paralysed. Not entirely unusual, since plenty of bugs got disabled or hurt every day.
  
  This one was tucked away in a warm, soft space though, and periodically a finger brushed against it. I couldn"t make heads or tails of it.
  
  "Son of a bitch," Tactical swore, speaking for the first time in hours. "It"s Panacea."
  
  "Dude, you think maybe you"re being paranoid?" Stoneknapper asked.
  
  "Oh, my mistake, it must be the other cape who goes to Arcadia with biological powers. Touch-based biological powers! I kept telling you idiots it was a bad idea to tell her anything, but you wouldn"t listen!"
  
  "Wait," Tock interrupted, "You think she"s worked out how to use her power to detect us?"
  
  "YES!" Tactical roared. "Because Taylor," he sneered my name derisively, "was stupid enough to tell one of the heroes how all our powers work, including her own! Automatic control of all insects within range! Panacea must have found the part of bug brains that light up when Taylor"s controlling them."
  
  "...well, shit," Vladimir pronounced.
  
  "Guys, it"s not a huge problem," I argued, even as I juggled a conversation about who the best guitar players were. "Panacea already knew I go to Arcadia, this doesn"t change anything. It"s not like she can track a block"s radius with one spider."
  
  The outer conversation was heating up as we turned to walk past the office. "Look, Brian May is good, but Eric Clapton was better than him; he didn"t have Freddie on vocals to make everything sound better."
  
  "Okay, but May built his own guitar, you can"t tell me that"s not cool."
  
  Stacey held up a finger. "Are we arguing on sound or coolness? Because those are separate criteria."
  
  Frankie blew a stray bit of hair out of her face. "Okay, fine. Jimi Hendrix is the absolute best though."
  
  "No question- Oh, sorry," Stacey said belatedly to the small girl she"d almost bumped into. I almost walked into Stacey, too caught up in my own head to watch out.
  
  "Oh, it"s okay. Uh, actually, do you know where Mr Jackson"s room is? I"ve got him for homeroom."
  
  "Yeah, you just go down that way-" Stacey turned and pointed back the way we"d come, "and turn left, and it"s the door next to the corkboard."
  
  When Stacey turned, I got my first proper look at the new girl. A bag with a dozen textbooks crammed in, a puffy pink jacket, and mousy brown hair held back with sky blue pins.
  
  My breath left me like I"d been punched in the gut. My hands curled into fists, so tight I could feel the nails dig into my skin.
  
  Butcher snorted, then chuckled, and then burst into booming, clutching-your-belly rolling-on-the-floor laughter. "Oh this is too good!" he howled. "Whatcha gonna do now, girl? You gonna be the better person?!"
  
  "Taylor, just get out of here and go," Flinch warned. "Just leave, that"s the smart option-"
  
  "See, the problem with being the good guy," Butcher said in a smug, unctuous voice, "is that you can"t have any fun. Go on," he urged. "Hit her. You know you want to. You know she deserves it. A little bit of payback, that"s all."
  
  The Butchers shouted, demanded, cajoled and howled inside my head, but I couldn"t stop staring at Madison Clements, cute as could be, chatting with my friends in my school like she hadn"t spent over a year ruining my fucking life-
  
  "-and this is Taylor- Taylor? You feeling all right?"
  
  I unthinkingly grabbed Frankie"s wrist as she reached for my shoulder, digging my thumb in between the tendons on the underside. I could feel her pulse sending her blood through her veins; I could feel how a quick twist would snap her ulna and radius like dry twigs; I could feel Dirty Rotter"s power leap to my control like an eager dog, raring to be let off the leash and turn her flesh into a suppurating mass-
  
  "Ow! Shit, Taylor, what the hell?"
  
  Frankie"s voice hit me like ice water- I let go in shock and slammed down on all the Butchers as hard as I could, forcing them into the dark in a chorus of wails.
  
  Stacey was looking at me with confused shock. Frankie was hissing as she rubbed at her wrist.
  
  Right in front of me, Madison stared blankly. Then her mouth twisted at the edges for a second, before turning into a concerned smile.
  
  "Are you feeling okay, Taylor?" she asked, in a honeyed voice full of sympathy. "Are you having problems again?"
  
  With all the Butchers down, my emotions were cooling rapidly to nothing, but I still felt a dull throb of anger at her fake kindness. "Gotta go," I grunted, stepping around all of them and bolting for the end of the hall at a fast walk.
  
  Stacey called after me, but I just headed straight for the girl"s bathroom. A quick glance with bloodsight showed nobody inside, so I shoved the door open and swung myself in front of the first sink, jamming the plug in and ramming both taps open.
  
  I didn"t take my glasses off or wait for the sink to fill- as soon as there was a depth of water in there I simply bent forward and stuck my whole head in the sink, letting the water wash over the back of my head. I let out a breath, long and slow, feeling it trickle out of my mouth in little bubbles.
  
  One of the Butchers had read something about this, years ago. A reflex in all mammals caused the heart rate to drop in response to feeling water on the face while holding your breath, as well as a bunch of other minor effects. There was something about the spleen in there, part of the half-memory, but I didn"t care to think about it.
  
  I didn"t want to think about anything at all, because then I"d get angry again.
  
  I pulled my head out once I needed to take a breath, turning off the taps and pulling the plug out. My glasses were so wet I couldn"t see myself in the mirror, and drying them on my sleeve just made them smear.
  
  After a couple of deep breaths, I reached toward Flinch, Tock Tick, and Tactical, and pulled them up. It wasn"t easy- I hadn"t practiced this, and it felt more difficult. Moving the Butchers around in "the dark" was like handling oiled balloons under water. Easy to push down, but they would eventually bob back up on their own, and getting a grip on them was a chore.
  
  Nevertheless, I managed to bring the three of them back into the light. A subdued sense of anger came with them, but low enough for me to control.
  
  "I"m p-proud of you, Taylor," Flinch said immediately. "You got out of a bad situation without losing con-control."
  
  "Yyyeeah," Tock allowed, "but Madison"s still in this school. You"re going to need a plan for actually dealing with her."
  
  "Plus," Tactical began in a laborious tone, "Since you TOLD PANACEA, if you cause any trouble where she can find out, she"ll call the heroes down on your ass. With that full list of all our weaknesses. That you gave her-"
  
  "Oh my god, Tac, I get it, you don"t like my decision, but will you please shut up about it?" I demanded, resting my forehead against the mirror. Absently, I turned the cold tap on and put my hand under it.
  
  Anchorage"s power mainly reduced the effective mass of an object, but it also reinforced it inside and out. Applied to water, it increased surface tension to practically solid, which was how her trick of walking on water worked.
  
  In the same way, I used her power on the water as it poured into my hand, gathering into a shapeless mass in my palm that felt more like a water balloon. When it was about the size of a softball, I turned the tap off, brought the water blob to my lips, and slurped it down in a few quick swallows.
  
  "Okay," I said at last. "Madison"s here. That"s not good, but it"s manageable. I"m not the same beaten down girl I used to be, and she doesn"t have the other bitches backing her up. If she tries anything, I can stand up to her."
  
  Tock Tick cleared his throat. "Listen kid, you"re doing great at managing your temper, but do you really think you"re going to be able to handle her without taking a swing at her?"
  
  I paused. "I... don"t know," I admitted at last.
  
  There was another part of the problem too, one Madison couldn"t know about. I"d gone along with Winslow"s efforts to hide that final prank from the world because if it had got out, anybody who knew about Trigger Events would look at something like that happening within an hour"s time and a block"s distance of Quarrel dying, and put two and two together and come up with a witch hunt.
  
  The warning bell for homeroom rang, so I straightened up, scrubbing at my wet hair with my sleeves to get the worst of it out.
  
  The idea of my past intruding on the better present I was building for myself left a weight in my stomach. I felt that exposed feeling again- of being skinless, unable to withstand any irritant. And in that metaphor, Madison was a whole block of salt.
  
  I refused to let her win though. I"d fought villains that would tear her in half with ease. I"d made new friends, I"d started talking to my dad again- hell, I was getting along with most of the Butchers!
  
  "I"d say half," Tock estimated.
  
  "That"s being generous," Tactical jibed.
  
  "Oh, you guys are no goddamn help," I snapped, pushing the bathroom door open.
  
  4.3
  Monday 7th February, Arcadia
  
  "Uh, mind if I sit?"
  
  The guys glanced up, and then Stacey immediately shuffled a foot to the left, until she bumped up against Callum.
  
  "Bet he"s okay with that," Firecracker snickered, indicating his sudden blush.
  
  I slipped into the free spot, placing my tray of lasagna and salad down gingerly. There was an awkward silence where nobody said anything. Stacey fiddled with one of her braids, Callum scratched his neck, T lazily drummed his fingernails on the tabletop, but there were no actual words.
  
  By now I"d let the Butchers back into the light, but with how nervous I was, I seriously considered pushing some of them down to kill my emotions a bit.
  
  "Come on kid, you gotta say something," Stoneknapper urged, uncharacteristically serious. Usually he was one of the more laid-back Butchers, enjoying the show of my life and offering occasional suggestions in an unconcerned way. For him to be so insistent was unusual.
  
  I cleared my throat- when everyone"s heads swung toward me, I almost gave up then and there.
  
  Still, I pushed forward. "I guess you guys want an explanation for this morning?"
  
  "That"d be nice," Frankie said, rolling her wrist. As her sleeve rucked up, I could see a faint yellow bruise on the inside, and a wave of guilt rolled over me.
  
  "You don"t have to if you don"t want to," Stacey said hastily, putting her hand over mine.
  
  "It"d be better for you to open up," Vladimir admitted. I shouldn"t have been surprised by his support- growing up as a gay teenager in the late 80s did not make for a happy school experience.
  
  I blew air through my lips and fiddled with my knife for a second. "Okay," I began, "Madison probably told you a whole mountain of bullshit."
  
  "Yup," Frankie said casually, twirling her fork into her spaghetti. "Load of stuff about you lying for attention." She popped the spaghetti into her mouth. "Aw hat hoolfhit."
  
  "She could at least cover her mouth," Needler complained.
  
  "We don"t believe any of that," Stacey broke in. "I mean, we"ve known you for weeks, and you only started acting strange when you saw Madison."
  
  I ducked my head as a warm, embarrassed yet happy flush spread across my face. I"d wanted to believe that my friends would trust me, but I wasn"t prepared for the sudden rush of affection I felt at such a simple act.
  
  "You"ve got good friends," Nemean stated.
  
  "So the new girl"s covering her ass then?" T drawled. "Try to undermine Taylor"s side of the story in a-" he snapped his fingers, "what"s it called, it"s a fallacy, ad something."
  
  "Ad hominem," Bearskin said. I repeated it out loud, and T pointed a finger.
  
  "That"s the one."
  
  I breathed in through my nose, and then out through my mouth. "I"ve got two conditions for telling you guys this. First, I don"t want you guys to get involved, at least not right away. I know that sounds dumb," I added hastily as Stacey opened her mouth with an indignant expression, "but I want to at least try and stand up for myself for once. Okay?"
  
  "What"s the other condition?" Frankie asked, winding her fork into her spaghetti again.
  
  "When we"re done talking about this, we change the subject. I don"t want to be talking about this all lunch."
  
  Once everyone agreed, I took a sip of water, cleared my throat, and took the plunge.
  
  "I was... being bullied. Back at Winslow."
  
  Frankie slowly set her fork down and leant on her elbows.
  
  "Madison was one of them. She never did anything physical- obviously, I"ve got 5 inches on her- but she"d always do something like dump pencil shavings in my hair, or steal my worksheets, or just make up dumb insults and rattle them off when I walked by. Every day."
  
  Stacey rubbed my hand comfortingly. I twitched a finger in acknowledgement, but didn"t stop talking.
  
  "I tried asking them to stop, telling the teachers, avoiding them. Nothing worked. And then I managed to get a transfer to Arcadia after the whole thing in January, and I thought I"d never see any of them again."
  
  Frankie laced her fingers together, rested her forehead on them, and emphatically said "Fuck."
  
  "That to-took a lot of courage," Flinch reassured me.
  
  "So that"s why you rushed off? To get away from her?" Frankie shook her head. "That"s rough."
  
  "It"s worse than that," I muttered. At her questioning look, I elaborated. "I"ve had a month away from those bitches, to start sorting my head out. The thing is, I"m not afraid of them anymore."
  
  "Good for you," Callum started, before I shook my head.
  
  "Honestly kid, I think you should just do it. Nobody"s gonna miss the little streak of dog piss," Dirty Rotter said frankly. I gave him a hefty shove, too strung out to push him all the way down.
  
  "I hate them," I admitted, surprised at how easy it was to say that. I"d disliked the Trio, certainly, but I"d never really had the energy to truly hate them at Winslow; I"d hated them like I hated a storm- something that ruined my day, without me having any way to stop it. "And I"m pretty sure if any of them started up that shit again, I wouldn"t bother asking them to stop or telling a teacher. I"d just attack them on sight."
  
  T leaned across and met my gaze with a frank expression. "Taylor, I think I speak for everyone at this table when I say that if you decided to fight them, we"d hold them down for you."
  
  "Jesus Christ, T!" Stacey blurted as Callum burst out laughing. I couldn"t stop the corners of my mouth from quirking up as the Butchers roared their approval.
  
  "Now that"s a real friend!" Anchorage cheered. "Helping you wreck someone"s shit!"
  
  "How"s that saying go?" Quarrel asked. "A good friend will help you move house-"
  
  "-A great friend will help you move a body," Stoneknapper finished with a grin.
  
  "Thanks, guys. And I"m sorry about snapping at you, Frankie."
  
  Frankie waved her free hand carelessly as she picked up her fork again. "No prob, just warn me if you"re having a moment."
  
  "Deal." It felt like an easy promise to make. For the first time in years I had people- actual friends- who were on my side. The whole thing felt- dreamlike, in a way.
  
  Regardless, I wanted to hang on to these guys with everything I had. I would have said that I"d take a bullet for them, but that saying lost a lot of its impact when you were bulletproof.
  
  "Anyway, you wanted a change of subject, right? Who"s got a good one?"
  
  "Ooh, ooh!" Callum waved his hand. "Hypothetically, if a shapeshifter copied you and tried to steal your identity, what would you say to your family to prove you"re the real one?"
  
  -----------
  The Lair, The Docks
  
  My phone started vibrating, juddering its way along the workbench. I glanced at the clock on the wall- 2.16am- then set it to speaker.
  
  "Didn"t think she"d call until morning," Firecracker said, surprised.
  
  "Hey Spitfire," I said, turning back to the cables I was weaving together. "Didn"t think you"d be up at this time of the night." I refocused on the magnifying lens I"d clipped to my glasses, and through it to the wafer thin gear I was currently grinding.
  
  "Yeah," Spitfire said, her voice raspier than usual. "Couldn"t sleep, and this motel"s got no decent late-night TV. Figured I"d see what you texted me about."
  
  "Sorry you"re having trouble sleeping," I said, sending a couple of ants scurrying forward inside their compartments, and several more scurrying back. Their movements shifted the switches they were standing on, moving joint, rotator cuff, and pincer simultaneously. "I guess I"m glad I didn"t wake you, at least."
  
  "Yeah, lucky you, not having to sleep," Spitfire groused as the skeletal waldo arm bent, twisted, and closed its grippers on the next control cable I needed to install. More commands to the ants had the waldo lift the control cable and begin sliding it into the space in the weave I"d created.
  
  Three more waldos danced over each other on the table, threading strands of steel wire into a five-by-two foot rectangle. All Tinkers had to build their own tools at some point, for the fine manipulation necessary to create the really esoteric stuff; Tock Tick had filled several tool chests with his. However, the multitasking aspect of my insect control gave me control of as many systems as I could install hair-trigger switches into. I was still clumsy with the finer movements, but I"d come a long way from the first awkward fumblings as I"d assembled the air cannon.
  
  "You missed that," Muramasa chided. I glanced at the phone, then picked it up with my actual hand and brought it closer to me.
  
  "Sorry, can you repeat that last bit?"
  
  "I said," Spitfire grumbled, "What"s this about? Call me when you"re awake is a weird text to get. Also, have I mentioned it"s weird that you use capitals and punctuation?"
  
  "I think you might have said it before," I answered, ignoring Rotter"s snickering. "Anyway, I know I said we"d take a break after the whole thing on Saturday, and I"m not going back on that, but there"s some things we need to sort out."
  
  "Shit, that"s right, I forgot to split the cash with you," Spitfire exclaimed. "No worries dude, I got it safe."
  
  "Wait," Vladimir asked, "did we just... forget about the money?"
  
  "How"d you useless fuckers forget about the money?" Butcher demanded. "You never forget about the money!"
  
  "Butcher, you forgot too!" Anchorage "turned" to me. "Seriously though, kid, you gotta get the money."
  
  "The money"s part of it," I said, picking up a pair of angled tweezers, "but did you see the papers? We had our names printed."
  
  "Yeah, am I gonna have to worry about that?" Spitfire asked. "Empire"s probably still looking for me."
  
  "Easy now," Tock Tick cautioned. "We get this wrong, the whole thing locks up."
  
  "I know, Tock." I rolled my eyes as I picked up the ratcheting system, a disc of nested gears the size of a penny, and began connecting it to the control cable, and from there to the bottom edge of the project.
  
  "I don"t know if the Empire"s going to be looking for you specifically," I admitted. "Now that your name"s out, they"ll probably ease off on you. Bad publicity to kill a hero the public knows about."
  
  Bearskin had been pretty forthcoming about some of the Empire"s operations. As he"d explained, the Empire"s upper management tried to frame the organisation as heroes of the white race, with the actual heroes being "misguided guardians of multiculturalism", or whatever pretentious phrasing Kaiser would trot out. That meant they tried not to cause lethal damage to heroes, to keep their image relatively presentable.
  
  Other villains, vigilantes who hadn"t made it to known status, and droves of minorities were fair game though. There was a reason why one of my practice targets had Kaiser"s face on it.
  
  "On that note," I said while I guided the connectors together and screwed them shut, "since we"re semi-famous now, we need to lean into that. Reputation defines you."
  
  "At least you can remember that," Tactical grunted. "Being well-known makes you a bigger target. Maybe a few more fights will beat some sense into you."
  
  "We might want to think about upgrading our costumes again. I"ve already got some upgrades planned for my armour- functionally and aesthetically. I actually got an idea from Skidmark, if you can believe it."
  
  "WHAT?!!" Spitfire"s voice was so loud I had to take the phone away from my head for a second. "You"re taking cues from Skidmark?! Why?!"
  
  "You could have phrased that better," Needler said with a sort of prim amusement. The others were less restrained about laughing at me- Dirty Rotter would have been falling on the floor laughing if there was an actual floor in my mind.
  
  "Not exactly," I said defensively. "Just an idea I had from the chase."
  
  "Wait, is this like that thing you told me about where Tinkers can study powers for their tech?"
  
  "Again, not exactly. I"ll show you when I see you- I want it to be a surprise.
  
  "At any rate, I wanted to talk about what we"re doing going forward. We"ve got a narrow window of opportunity before the gangs shift gears. Even a couple of patrols could make a difference."
  
  "I guess," Spitfire admitted, "but I don"t want to get caught up in anything big again. I just don"t know if I"m cut out for the hardcore stuff. It was bad enough seeing you all torn up..."
  
  I frowned as she trailed off. "Hey, Spit, you alright?"
  
  "Yeah. Yeah, I"m fine."
  
  That sounded about as sincere as my "I"m fine" to Dad after a long day at Winslow, but I let it drop. If she was anything like me, pushing would only make her clam up.
  
  "Okay. So I was thinking we"d just drive around a few times this week, look for some muggings to stop, stuff like that. Sound good?"
  
  "Sure, I could go for that."
  
  "Excellent. If you can do a meet this week, I can pick up your power-frame for some quick maintenance, and then we can go cruising around. And split the money," I added as an afterthought.
  
  "Sure."
  
  "Alright. I can"t do Friday night, but I"m free basically the rest of the week. Or do you feel like doing something in the daytime?"
  
  "Uh, weekend works. What are you doing Friday night anyway?"
  
  "Personal stuff," I replied. "I don"t really want to get into it. How does Saturday afternoon work for you?"
  
  "Uh, fine, yeah. We could meet up, get lunch, then go around hero-ing?" There was a questioning, hopeful tone to her voice.
  
  "Something like that. Anyway, I"ve got Tinkering to do, and you need to sleep. I"ll text tomorrow to sort out the details." I hung up and put the phone down, leaning over the ratcheting system again.
  
  "Do you think maybe you should have talked with her a little more?" Flinch suggested.
  
  I shrugged. "It"s the middle of the night, she should be sleeping. Besides, I"ll talk with her plenty tomorrow."
  
  "That"s not what I meant," he countered. "She"s your friend, she looks up to you, she wants to spend time with you. You don"t need to be all business with her."
  
  "I"m not all business with her," I protested, even as I wracked my brain to remember what we"d done outside of caping. Nothing came to mind.
  
  Before Flinch could reply, Tactical hastily cut in. "Please tell me you aren"t going to be stupid enough to unmask to her as well."
  
  I hesitated. It would be the expected thing to do if we were going to keep working together. I wouldn"t even have to tell her about the Butchers- we could just reveal names and faces to each other. We could hang out during the day, no costumes or disguises.
  
  For a brief moment I wondered about possible excuses for introducing her to my Arcadia friends; asking her about her hobbies, going to movies together; maybe even slumber parties.
  
  "I forget just what a softie you are sometimes," Firecracker teased. "G"wan, you know you wanna."
  
  I slid a hand across the table, toward the phone. The waldos slowed their movements as I considered the possibilities.
  
  Then I thought further ahead. When I was discovered, what would Spitfire think? Would she be scared? Angry? Disgusted at being watched through my eyes by unknown strangers? Would she have Panacea"s knee-jerk opposition to me, or would I have earned her trust by that point? Would any amount of trust make up for it?
  
  Maybe it was better to keep her at arm"s length. Nothing good seemed to come out of different parts of my life mixing together- as Tactical had repeatedly pointed out.
  
  "Christ, I"m starting to wonder if we even need to mess with you," Quarrel marvelled. "You"re doing a pretty good job all by yourself."
  
  "You"ve fought together. That"s enough," Nemean grunted. "Stop making things complicated."
  
  I chewed my lip for a second- a habit I"d picked up from Firecracker. Then I pushed the phone away with one finger, and finished connecting the control cable to the auger assembly. The waldos resumed their earlier pace, weaving threads over-under-over-under, then starting a new layer over that.
  
  Maybe in time I could open up to Spitfire- when I was sure I could trust her. For now though, better to keep things professional.
  
  Once the last screw was in position, I put my tweezers down and pushed my stool back to stand up, pushing my hands into the small of my back until the joints popped. Regeneration and pain immunity still didn"t keep me from tensing up when I was hunched over a bench for hours on end.
  
  "Come onnn," Stoneknapper wheedled. "You know you want to."
  
  I rolled my eyes hard, but couldn"t stop myself from glancing over at the far end of the warehouse. I"d pulled a lot of concrete out of the floor and moulded them into various figures from the Butcher"s memories.
  
  "I wouldn"t normally agree with random smashing," Tock Tick interjected dryly, "but I think some stress relief would be good for you."
  
  I chewed my lip again. "Yeah," I said aloud, "I guess you"re right."
  
  "Talking to yourself?" Vladimir asked with mock shock. "Careful, that"s the first sign of madness."
  
  I huffed a laugh as I pulled the lens off my glasses and crossed to the pallet where I"d stacked ingots of steel, arranged by quality. I picked up some of the crappier stuff and exerted Stoneknapper"s fizzing power, forming the metal into a simple round-headed mace as I walked toward the statues.
  
  The figures were decent replicas of their subjects- which meant they were each pretty terrifying. When the Slaughterhouse Nine had visited Brockton Bay in 1996, they"d only had a fraction of the reputation they held today, but even then they were the people that villains told scary stories about.
  
  Needler had been Butcher then, with Firecracker as her truculent subordinate. Both of them had been among the few to meet Jack Slash"s eye when he"d walked into the meeting of all the villains at Somer"s Rock.
  
  The various factions had cast their bids for the services of the Nine, and Needler had won, commanding the Nine to attack the newly installed Protectorate team in the city.
  
  The Nine had done so- and when that was done, they"d turned on the Teeth and nearly wiped them out.
  
  The statues were based on the memories- when several people saw the same event through the same eyes, it became very easy to remember clearly. Thus, Crimson"s bulging face and swollen musculature was accurate, Nice Guy"s nondescript face was as recognisable as the Stranger hadn"t been, and the pretentiously intricate beard on Jack Slash"s chin was millimetre-perfect.
  
  I took a batter"s stance, sucked in a breath, made a slow test swing, then pulled the mace back and swung hard. Jack Slash"s smirking concrete head shattered under the blow with a thunderous crash, pieces rattling off the back wall.
  
  My follow-up swing came down through the body as it toppled, and I kicked the one intact leg into the wall, where it snapped in two.
  
  "That"s the stuff!" Bearskin roared. "Come on, more!"
  
  I moved toward Crimson"s grotesque figure, shattering one arm at the elbow. I grabbed the severed limb as it fell, morphing it into an axe, and slammed that into his forehead. Muramasa"s sharpening let it sink into the concrete like soft wood; then I twisted the axe and snapped half of his head off.
  
  The mace became a spear at my fizzing touch, rammed through his chest; then I dug my hands into the hole and ripped him apart at the sternum, knocking his upper half to the floor. His lower half was left standing, so I simply swung a high kick into his crotch, which both shattered it and sent the rest to crash against the wall.
  
  Nice Guy"s head was twisted off, one-handed, and hurled into Muscular"s rippling chest hard enough to crack both. The lack of result frustrated me, so I picked up Nice Guy by the ankles and swung him into Muscular. Both shattered on impact, which was far more satisfying.
  
  Kaiser, Allfather and Iron Rain stood side by side, all clad in armour bedecked with blades and spikes; Kaiser still had a knife I"d thrown earlier sticking out of his eye socket. I kicked the spear into my hand and rammed it into Allfather"s head, morphed the head into a barbed set of hooks, then planted one foot on his chest and yanked. Most of his head came off in pieces.
  
  I broke the spear in two, moulded the halves into short swords, and slashed along Iron Rain"s front, leaving deep gouges in her body, then rammed them forward through her. She fell back, so I shaped the swords into hooks and dragged her upright to meet a high kick that obliterated her head. Then I let her body drop to the floor and break.
  
  Lastly, Kaiser. For him I simply shaped the steel into a fist-shaped casing around my hand, added spikes to the knuckles, and swung a haymaker into his chest. The left side of his chest was obliterated, and the rest collapsed in on itself.
  
  I came to a halt, taking deep breaths with my hands on my knees while the Butchers whooped with exhilaration.
  
  "YEAAH!" Stoneknapper bellowed, "THAT"S WHAT I"M TALKING ABOUT! THAT"S MY GODDAMN POWER RIGHT THERE!"
  
  "Oh my god, that"s so much fucking fun!" Firecracker gasped. "Taylor, you gotta do that more often, holy shit!"
  
  I huffed a laugh, infected with their good moods even as I grabbed the broom from where it leant against the wall to start sweeping all the fragments into a pile. I"d reshape them all later when I needed more target practice, or just to blow off some steam like this.
  
  "Ha! Now aren"t you glad you listened to me?" Stoneknapper asked, radiating smugness at me and the chunk of Allfather"s torso I kicked into the pile.
  
  "Yeah, okay, Knapper, you were right. This is pretty fun." I idly picked up a chunk and moulded it into a swan, then a thorny rose, then a polygonal doll, before crushing it between my palms.
  
  "There you go. I"ll make an artist out of you yet," Stoneknapper encouraged.
  
  "I"m still not putting more ornamentation on my armour," I warned him, chasing the last bits of dust. "It"ll just get crumpled up every time I"m in a fight."
  
  "Aw, come on! You could fit so much cool stuff on there! Some knotwork engravings at least." He formed an image of my armour, the larger pieces traced with delicate overlapping patterns at the edges. A further thought filled them with gold, then with the sky blue I"d used for my arm streaks.
  
  "Okay, that is pretty cool," I admitted, putting the broom back, "but it doesn"t really fit the Greek theme. What about those square spiral things?"
  
  "Oh my god, will you two stop?" Anchorage groaned. "It"s bad enough listening to Knapper prattle on about his "art" without you listening to him!"
  
  "Excuse me, whose power helped make that anchor you love so much?" Stoneknapper fired back.
  
  "Okay, both of you knock it off," I said aloud with a warning shove. "I"ve still got more Tinkering to do, so either say something helpful or shut up."
  
  "It is not a matter of Tinkering, but of strategy," Muramasa intoned. "I know that Tactical would normally bring this up, but since he is sulking-"
  
  "Eat shit."
  
  "-that duty falls to me," Muramasa continued, not even acknowledging Tactical"s retort. "Now that the Merchants are defeated, where do you intend to strike next?"
  
  I paused, turning toward the large map of the city I"d pinned to the wall. The ocean to the east, the mountains to the west. I"d put a thin pane of glass over the map and bought some markers so I could note the current state of the gang"s territories. Leaflets warning about the dangerous areas of town, printouts of villain"s wiki pages, and my own ideas for how to fight them were tacked up around the map.
  
  Empire Eighty Eight controlled a large chunk of the west and north, including the northern end of Downtown. I had their territory marked out in yellow, with a couple of important points circled. Even with Stormtiger currently locked up, they had more capes than anyone else, several of whom would be trouble for me even if I used all my powers.
  
  I could probably take out some of their legbreakers to soften them up, but E88 had connections to white supremacist organisations across the country, and Kaiser was known to recruit from across the whole state. If I couldn"t take out one of their big guns, or several weaker capes at once, they"d bounce back rapidly.
  
  "Counterpoint, they"re fucking Nazis," Quarrel said. "At least take down Alabaster."
  
  "I will- I just want to make sure I"m hurting them as much as possible," I said diplomatically.
  
  The Azn Bad Boys- "That is still the most ridiculous name for a gang I have ever heard," Muramasa sneered- mostly held the east, including a big chunk of the Docks, though they"d been creeping south toward Downtown ever since the Teeth had first arrived. They were outlined in red where I was certain of their presence, and some shading where I"d heard of sightings. Only two capes, but both were trouble for me. Oni Lee had incredible manoeuvrability with his teleporting, and that had always been a good counter to the Butchers.
  
  Lung, on the other hand, was an entirely different weight class. He was almost an urban legend to villains, but everyone agreed that he grew larger and stronger with time, changing into a fiery dragon the longer he fought. Whether he"d actually gone solo against Leviathan was a matter of hot debate.
  
  "Aw, you can take him," Butcher snickered cruelly. "Just walk right up to him and tell him off for being mean, see where that gets you!"
  
  I shoved Butcher down into the dark with a grimace. If there was one person in the Bay the Butchers hoped to have inherit, it was Lung. For that reason, I was determined to keep my distance.
  
  Finally, in black was a poorly defined blob that squatted in Downtown and a little to the South. Supposedly that was where Coil"s organisation operated from, but they were the only gang in the city that I hadn"t yet interacted with. They intrigued me- well-equipped mercenaries led by a man who never took the field himself sounded like something out of James Bond, not a typical street gang.
  
  There were a few other marks on the map- blue circles around police stations, a double circle around the PRT building, stars over the junkyards that I knew I could scrounge materials from, the kanji for home over where the lair was, in a sort of "you are here" way.
  
  I chewed my lip as I stared at the map. Strength in numbers, strength in individual power, and the unknown threat.
  
  "I"m open to suggestions," I admitted. "Rotter, don"t be disgusting."
  
  "Aw."
  
  "The Empire will always deserve a beating," Needler voted. "And you did say you could get some interesting results from studying Cricket"s power."
  
  "Yeah, but the ABB grabs girls off the street," Nemean countered. "We find a couple of their places, get the girls out, and torch the place."
  
  "Spitfire needs a say in this." Flinch"s voice was as firm as stone. "She"s a part of this too; and I am not going to let you all drag a vulnerable teenager into a fight against monsters like Hookwolf."
  
  There was a moment of collective surprise at Flinch"s steely will.
  
  "Alright," I said before anybody else could start arguing, "all good points, but Flinch is correct. Spitfire"s still green, and she really doesn"t have the experience for the deep end. I"ll do some scouting this week and let her choose what we do."
  
  "Okay, but scout what?" Firecracker said. "You might have noticed it"s a whole goddamn city. Lot of ground to cover."
  
  "Coil," Tactical said immediately. "It"s always the punch you don"t see coming that knocks you down."
  
  There was some arguing, some bickering and persuasion, before the Butchers reluctantly agreed to start with the unknown quantity.
  
  "Okay." I placed a small x in the middle of Coil"s territory. "Let"s see what makes Coil so special."
  
  4.4
  Wednesday 9th February, Arcadia
  
  On the whole, I enjoyed World Issues at Arcadia far more than I ever had at Winslow. Mr Gladly, or "Mr G" as he"d insisted on being called, had been sociable and friendly; setting group work to let kids talk with their friends; setting up pop quizzes, occasionally buying snacks from the vending machine for prizes.
  
  If I"d had the mental energy to spare, I would have despised him.
  
  Because he wanted to be the fun teacher, he never stepped in when I was being picked on. He didn"t raise his voice or hand out punishments, so the other girls did what they liked without fear of repercussions.
  
  "About as useful as a chocolate kettle," Dirty Rotter had called him.
  
  Arcadia"s World Issues class was taught by Mr Callahan, and he was so much the opposite of Mr Gladly that I was fairly certain if the two men ever touched each other there would be some sort of explosion. Tall where Gladly was short, dark-haired and stern, always dressed in a three-piece suit; he gave me a sort of deja-vu in how he reminded me of Accord"s sharply dressed Ambassadors in Boston.
  
  Nobody could get away with dumb pranks in Mr Callahan"s class. Nobody dared to even chew gum or pass notes. If we were allowed to discuss topics, it was done quietly, and you stayed on topic, or he would suddenly be looming over you with a face of steely disapproval.
  
  There were only three problems I had. First, Panacea was in the same class, and while she hadn"t shown a single reaction to my name being called in attendance, her presence left me feeling a little on edge.
  
  Second, Madison was now in this class, which had my nerves firing in a way that was disturbingly similar to my danger sense. Luckily, she was on the other side of the classroom from me, but I kept having to disperse the clusters of spiders I kept automatically gathering in the ceiling tiles over her chair. I"d already resolved to talk to Mr Callahan about her at the end of class, in case she started trying her old tricks.
  
  Third, and most disturbing, was that Mr Callahan resembled one of Anchorage"s professors at her community college that she"d had a crush on. The first few classes I"d had with him, I"d had to keep Anchorage as far down in the dark as possible to avoid feeling second-hand attraction for him. She was better about it now, but I would have to see how things stood when he showed up.
  
  "Hey Taylor," T said, flopping into the seat next to me. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair wasn"t as styled as usual- although his eyeliner was still so sharp that he could have shaved with it.
  
  "Hey T. Rough night?"
  
  "Too many video games," Stoneknapper bet confidently. "Actually, why don"t we get some? You could set a console up in the lair, get some good shoot-em-ups; be a great way to pass the time."
  
  "Ooh! We could get Doom!" Firecracker said excitedly. "Been too long since we splattered some demons!"
  
  "So you guys want to watch through a first-person perspective as I fight my way through hordes of ugly, murderous monsters using all kinds of oversized weapons?" I fought to keep a smile off my face. "I could just go out on patrol if that"s what you want."
  
  "Yeah, but you don"t get to chainsaw people"s heads open," Bearskin pointed out. "I miss the ultraviolence."
  
  T shrugged expansively. "Woke up too early, wound up wasting time watching reaction videos of Uber and Leet"s stuff."
  
  "So, reaction videos of capes who imitate video games in real life. Very meta."
  
  "Someone"s being extra sarcastic today," Vladimir snickered.
  
  T just shrugged. "How about you? Anything to complain about?"
  
  I hesitated, eyes darting toward Madison. T followed my gaze, and his eyes widened a fraction. "Is that the girl from Winslow? With the barrettes?"
  
  "Yup."
  
  "Offer still stands."
  
  Mr Callahan walked into class just as I was about to reply, and the noise dropped immediately. "Good morning. Following on from our last lesson, today we will be discussing the rise of parahumans and the effect it has had on affairs within the United States. I trust everyone has completed the homework."
  
  A couple of people looked uneasy at that, but I"d spent an hour putting together a brief timeline of important events- Behemoth"s first attack in 1992, the founding of the Slaughterhouse Nine, the founding of the Protectorate and the PRT, the construction of the Birdcage, and the NEPEA-5 bill. It was child"s play for me to know what to look for- the Butchers had lived through all of it, from multiple perspectives.
  
  "I remember when Behemoth first appeared," Needler mused. "Less than two weeks to Christmas, and then we turned on the news, and it was like the devil had crawled out of hell halfway around the world. For years after that, people would ask "Where were you when you first heard?""
  
  It made me feel old, looking around the room, at these kids who"d grown up in a world with heroes and villains and monsters as a fact of life instead of comic book concepts.
  
  "We will be discussing the most significant parahuman-related events that occurred within America. By the end of this lesson, I will expect each group to present a list of five events in descending order of importance. You may work in groups, but please keep conversation quiet and on topic. Feel free to ask me questions."
  
  "Ooh, you jinxed it," Rotter snickered as people started shifting their tables around, moving seats to be closer to their friends. Amy moved with a boy I vaguely recognised to a table by ours, and sat down, just as Madison slid into one of the other chairs with her back to me.
  
  "Crap," Anchorage exclaimed. "Double bitch jeopardy."
  
  I felt something inside my chest twist itself into a knot at the sight of Madison introducing herself to Amy, who seemed nonplussed at the sudden attention from a smallish girl, neat as a pin and cute as a button.
  
  I felt my knuckles itch as I heard Madison"s voice cheerily introduce herself, utterly ignoring me, like she hadn"t spent day after day clawing away at me, dripping poison in my ear-
  
  "So what"ve you got in your homework?" T asked, already delving into his bag, bringing out two sheets stapled together. "I had stuff like the Protectorate "s founding, the Elite, stuff like that."
  
  "Oh. I had pretty much the same stuff," I replied, bringing out my own homework, sneaking another glance across the aisle. Madison glanced over her shoulder at me, and gave a little wave. I clenched my knuckles so hard they cracked.
  
  "One slap wouldn"t be so bad," Quarrel suggested.
  
  "Hey, can I sit with you guys?" An Asian boy gestured to one of the other chairs. Turning my head back felt like I was dragging it through mud, but I managed to turn back to our table. T was spreading our sheets out side by side and copying notes onto a fresh piece of paper.
  
  "Yeah, sure," T said distractedly, waving him over with a quick glance. "Oh, Taylor, this is Koichi. Koichi, Taylor."
  
  "S"up?" The other boy said neutrally. I gave him a nod as he sat down, vaguely eyeing his flat-top hairdo.
  
  I heard something creak to my left, and then brown, glossy hair swooped into my vision. "Hey, sorry, can I borrow a pencil?" Madison asked chirpily, eyes sparkling with humour. "I ran out." She was leaning back in her chair, dangling across the aisle with her head almost touching the surface of my desk.
  
  "Oh my fucking god, white girl wants to die," Anchorage exclaimed. I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying anything, and tasted warm copper as my teeth drew blood. My hands clenched on the table hard enough to make the wood creak.
  
  "I"ve got a pencil," Amy said quickly, reaching forward with a 2B in hand. "Here."
  
  Madison looked away from me. "Oh. Okay," she said in a disappointed tone, swinging her chair back onto all four legs. "Thanks."
  
  "How come you didn"t ask us first?" I heard the boy at their table ask.
  
  "Huh. That was convenient," Tock said, surprised.
  
  T waved his hand in front of my face. "Taylor? You alright?"
  
  I swallowed the blood in my mouth and ran a tongue over my teeth before I opened my mouth. "Yeah. So what did you guys have?" I determinedly focused on them, not allowing my eyes to look even a little bit to the left.
  
  Koichi and T shared a weird glance for a second before T shrugged and tapped the central sheet. "So we"ve got a lot of stuff that overlaps, really big things like the Protectorate, NEPEA-5, the Endbringer fights, all that stuff."
  
  "Yeah, I wasn"t sure about putting the Endbringers on mine," Koichi admitted. "I mean, nobody knows if they"re connected to capes, or if they are capes, or if some crazy cape created them by accident."
  
  "Maybe they"re what happens when raw powers gain intelligence and assume physical form," T suggested. "But tons of heroes go to Endbringer fights, so it has an effect on capes."
  
  "An effect on capes, yeah. But we"re supposed to be talking about the effect capes have on society." Koichi leaned forward on his elbows, eyes brightening. "So should we count it?"
  
  "Oh, this guy"s going to be fun," Firecracker grumbled sarcastically. "Goddamn debate team material here."
  
  "However, he makes a good point," Muramasa said thoughtfully. "The origins of the Endbringers are one of the great secrets of the world, almost certainly connected to parahuman powers in some way. What else could account for such terrible power?"
  
  "I think we can include them," I decided, swayed by Muramasa"s comment. "We could take it one degree of separation, talk about the effect of capes reacting to the Endbringers. Stuff like the Endbringer truce."
  
  "Works for me," T said, scribbling it down. "What else have we got?"
  
  "Professor Haywire?" Koichi asked. "I mean, the Aleph portal"s pretty frigging significant."
  
  I stared at him for a long moment- then turned my hand palm up on the table and swung it up into my forehead with a loud smack.
  
  "How the hell did we forget Haywire?" Butcher bellowed at the rest. "The craziest Tinker of all time, and we forgot him!"
  
  "To be fair, String Theory did threaten to blow up the moon," Tactical pointed out.
  
  "Knock it out of orbit," Nemean corrected.
  
  "Pardon?"
  
  "She said she"d knock it out of orbit. Not blow it up."
  
  "Whatever;" Stoneknapper cut in, "point is, Butcher"s right-"
  
  "Rare sentence," Flinch sniped.
  
  "-we should have remembered Haywire. All the Aleph films we"ve seen over the years..."
  
  "I completely forgot Haywire," I admitted, lowering my hand.
  
  T snapped his fingers. "Shit, I did too."
  
  Koichi looked at us like we"d just said the Pope was Jewish. "Seriously? How do you forget the guy who punched a hole in the universe?"
  
  Professor Haywire was one of the most famous Tinkers to have ever walked the earth, and an inspiration for villains everywhere. His mundane operations had consisted of himself and a gang of power-suited minions raiding targets for whatever high-end materials he needed for his next project, which admittedly wasn"t too different from a lot of villainous Tinkers.
  
  What had made him special was his specialisation- that allowed him to create bullets that phased past any obstacle to hit their target, or temporarily shunt objects into a different dimension. There"d been a shock when he"d hit someone with one of the latter while in a skyscraper. The dimension the poor lab assistant had wound up in didn"t have a corresponding building, so he"d come back into Earth Bet fifty stories lower and spread across several square feet.
  
  Haywire was the only known interdimensional Tinker, and it was because of him that we knew multiverse theory was entirely accurate. Radio signals originating from another version of Earth had rocked the world back in 1987, and made Haywire a household name. A lot of the good music and films came from Earth Aleph now, since their celebrity scene had never suffered from Endbringer casualties or super-powered stalkers.
  
  "Okay, so we definitely need him," T said, scribbling that down. "So, Protectorate founding, Haywire, NEPEA-5, I guess Behemoth attacking New York?"
  
  A squeaky laugh from the next table over jarred me out of my thoughtful mood. My jaw clenched hard while I slowly breathed in through my nose and tried to regulate myself.
  
  "You know she needs a beating," Butcher said. "After all the shit she did, she"s got it coming-"
  
  I shoved him down into the dark and gripped the edge of the table, focusing on the shape that Stoneknapper"s power sketched out in my mind. I could see that someone had scratched letters under the rim on the other side.
  
  When I focused hard, I realised I could read the badly spelled profanity entirely through the power-sense. Whoever Jenny Hart was, she"d really got on someone"s bad side.
  
  "Should we say something about the Tinker tech boom?" Koichi asked, pushing a printout across the table. I refocused on the conversation, feeling a bit more centred.
  
  "I mean, that wasn"t really a single event," I pointed out. "If there was one particular bit of tech we could pin down, yeah, but not all of them."
  
  "Sure was nice to get some better computers though," Dirty Rotter pointed out. "Felt like we were living in the future for a bit."
  
  "I"m amazed you didn"t turn that into a joke about internet porn," Needler said snippily.
  
  Rotter chuckled; a gurgling, oily sound like a clogged sink.
  
  "And Taylor"s got- the Slaughterhouse Nine?" T gave me a side-eyed look. "That"s dark."
  
  I shrugged awkwardly. "I know it"s morbid, but it"s significant. Horribly, horribly significant." I let go of the table"s edge again and folded my hands together with a certain amount of awkwardness.
  
  Koichi pulled a face. "Yeeeah, I guess that"s true. Lemme see." T slid my sheets across for him, and he picked them up to glance at them over. "Wait, Jack Slash didn"t start the Nine?"
  
  "He didn"t?" T looked up from writing.
  
  "It"s still so strange to me that kids don"t know that," Vladimir said. "You"d think they"d look this sort of thing up."
  
  "Not every kid"s a disturbed whackjob like us," Quarrel replied. "You Google the Slaughterhouse Nine, your parents sit you down for a talk, or send you to a therapist."
  
  "No, it was a guy called King- then Jack killed him and took over." I had to fight to keep the derisive tone out of my voice. Back in the day, the Butchers had tried to make a comment to Jack about how he was so unoriginal that he couldn"t even start his own gang. They hadn"t finished the sentence before he"d set Crimson on them.
  
  "Yeah, Taylor"s right, that"s definitely a big event. We"ll put that in."
  
  The lesson continued like that for a while- Koichi turned out to actually be trying for the debate team next year, and he was happiest when he was arguing some minor detail with us. T put forward a bunch of suggestions to include, like parahumans in TV and films; unfortunately, while I agreed with him that Weld"s onscreen kiss was ground-breaking, I had to dispute its importance on a national scale.
  
  Still, the guys were both easy to talk to, and we quickly hammered out a decent list of events, along with our justifications for choosing them. Even the Butchers were kind of interested in the project, since they"d collectively lived through all of it; they remembered the voices on the radio discussing it, the fluctuations in the stock market- even the stand-up comedians who"d worked it into their routines.
  
  The one problem was that I could still hear Madison"s obnoxiously chirpy voice not three feet from me as she prattled on to Amy and whoever the boy at their table was. Even as I tried to focus on the other sounds around me, every swish of her hair sent a waft of her shampoo into my nose, and looking away from her just made me feel like she was doing something when I wasn"t looking.
  
  I knew she had to be doing something- the way she"d acted on Monday was suspicious enough, but there had to be a reason why she"d chosen to sit right across from me. She kept tilting her chair back, stretching her arms above her head, sweeping her hair back over her shoulders, constantly edging into my personal space. Nothing that I could say was intentional, to anyone that didn"t know about her and me.
  
  Mr Callahan had just given us a five-minute warning before we would have to start giving our presentations when Madison made her move. She put her hands above her head again, this time with an exaggerated sigh, straining backward until she was stretched across the aisle again. This time, the 2B pencil she held poked into my shoulder, eraser first. And then it poked me again, and again, and again, while I gritted my teeth and focused on the page in front of me.
  
  "You can"t keep ignoring the problem," Flinch told me. "If you let her get you seriously riled up, you could really lose control. It"d be better to nip this in the bud."
  
  "Mmm. I remember when I was in school, everybody told me to ignore the assholes "cuz they were just trying to get a reaction." Anchorage snorted. "Fat fucking loada good that did."
  
  "Exactly," Flinch agreed. "Now you can stop her before she builds up any momentum. The teachers here seem a lot m-more on the ball."
  
  Two sets of urges warred inside me. My old Winslow survival strategy would be to turtle up, curl in on myself and wait for them to get tired, then go home and write it in my journal. The Butcher"s instincts were to deal out either a blistering insult or offhand physical force. I had to push down a couple of the Butchers to lower my emotions a bit before I could unclench my jaw and turn my head toward Madison as her pencil poked me again.
  
  "Stop. Doing. That." I forced out. Past Madison I could see Amy watching us with a horrified expression, already halfway out of her seat. I took a deep breath and slowly nodded at her, hoping she got the message.
  
  After a second, Amy sat back down, though still looking uneasy. I refocused on Madison, who was looking at me upside-down with a look of practiced innocence.
  
  "Stop what?" she asked, as if butter wouldn"t melt in her mouth. "I"m just stretching my shoulders a little bit. They get so stiff in cold weather." She stretched extravagantly again, prodding me with the eraser end again.
  
  "Stop poking me, Madison."
  
  "Poking you? Am I doing that?"
  
  Prod. Prod. Prod.
  
  Prod.
  
  I sucked in a sharp breath through my nose, then snatched the pencil out of her hands with my right. Before she could do anything in response other than a look of surprise, I shoved my left hand under the back of her chair and shoved upward.
  
  Madison"s chair rocked back onto all four legs with a loud clatter. Madison herself was thrown forward, catching herself on the table edge with her hands. She quickly scraped the hair out of her eyes and stuck her hand up with a plaintive wail. "Mr Callahan!"
  
  "Oh you"ve gotta be fucking kidding me," Firecracker groaned.
  
  The man himself looked up from the corner and made a beeline for us with a clear frown. "Miss- Clements," he said, glancing at all of us. "I heard a ruckus."
  
  "Could you describe the ruckus, sir?" Tock quoted in his best Breakfast Club impression.
  
  "Well, see, a naked blonde walks into a bar-" Dirty Rotter began, before I pushed him down.
  
  "Mr Callahan, Taylor tried to knock me out of my seat!" Madison whined.
  
  I"d barely parted my lips to start arguing and insisting and struggling to make the teacher believe that I was the victim and that I needed help, when three overlapping voices all started talking at once.
  
  "Sir, Madison was messing-"
  
  "Taylor asked her-"
  
  "That"s a load of-"
  
  Mr Callahan chopped his hand through the air. "Quiet, please."
  
  Amy, T and Koichi all subsided; the boys glanced at each other with surprised looks, while Amy shot a worried glance at me. I managed a quick nod through the squirming feeling in my stomach.
  
  "Miss Dallon, what did you see?" I didn"t miss how Madison suddenly stiffened in her chair upon hearing Amy"s surname.
  
  "Ooh, being a brat in front of the popular girl. Bad move there," Vladimir gloated.
  
  "Madison was poking her with a pencil, and then she asked her to stop, and when Madison kept doing it, she took the pencil off her and pushed her chair back up," Amy explained in one big nervous rush.
  
  "Mr Callahan-" Madison began.
  
  "Not yet, Miss Clements. Mr Hirose, can you confirm this?"
  
  "Yessir," Koichi nodded. "She," he pointed at Madison, "spent the whole lesson leaning across and stretching out and stuff, and then she started jabbing Taylor with that pencil."
  
  "She could have hurt me!" Madison said. "What if I"d broken my neck when she pushed me?"
  
  "I really doubt you could have broken your neck by falling out of your chair, Miss Clements." Mr Callahan rubbed at his eyes for a second before dropping his hand. "In future, if one of your classmates tells you to stop doing something, be polite and listen to them.
  
  "Miss Hebert," he turned to me, "please let me know if someone is being aggravating to you before pushing them away. Understood?"
  
  "Yeah. I mean, yes, Mr Callahan."
  
  "Kinda pathetic that this is more than the Winslow teachers did," Stoneknapper drawled.
  
  "Yep," I said distantly, still feeling off-balance. This was what I"d wanted all through Winslow- for the teachers to check, for people to speak up for me- but it felt... disorientating.
  
  "Can I get my pencil back?" Madison asked, making grabby hands toward me. I glared at her for a moment, then past her to Amy.
  
  "Catch."
  
  Amy fumbled the pencil in both hands as it arced over Madison and down to her. Mr Callahan turned toward me with a frown, but I was already speaking.
  
  "It"s Amy"s pencil, Madison was just borrowing it."
  
  Mr Callahan"s expression cleared. "Ah. Very well." Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked back to the front.
  
  Madison huffed and turned away from me, and I turned back to the guys. "Thanks," I muttered quietly.
  
  "No problem," T said, holding his fist out. I bumped mine against it with a sudden rush of gratitude.
  
  "So what"s the deal with pint-size?" Koichi asked. "You got history or something?"
  
  "All the way back to the Dark Ages," I grumbled. "I don"t wanna talk about it. Who"s doing the presentation?"
  
  
  
  Koichi read out our conclusion with a clear, even voice that got a couple of claps from Mr Callahan once he"d finished. There had been a few cringes when he got to the Nine, but our list was pretty well received.
  
  Not that it mattered much- there was no cheap snack prize for the best project like there would have been at Winslow. It actually took a lot of pressure off, even though I"d never once cared about winning a candy bar for putting together a better argument on political repercussions overseas.
  
  "I"m proud of you, Taylor," Flinch said sincerely. "You kept your co- cool throughout and didn"t lose control. I know it wasn"t easy."
  
  "Thanks Flinch," I said as the last group sent their guy up to read their list.
  
  Once everyone was done, Mr Callahan assigned us homework- to write one page on a societal improvement as a direct result of capes. He"d specifically ruled out any villain arrests, which removed most of the Butcher"s suggestions in one fell swoop.
  
  "Interesting question," Tactical admitted. "How do powers make the world better besides beating each other up?"
  
  "Ah, quit getting all philosophical," Bearskin grunted. "Since when do any of us care about making the world a better place?"
  
  The argument struck a chord with me. Almost everything capes did involved fighting each other, heroes against villains and villains against everyone. To be fair, ever since Sphere had lost his mind to the Simurgh, massive world-saving projects were a lot less commonplace, but it was still something to think about.
  
  True, the gangs in Brockton Bay were a serious enough problem for me to devote most of my time to, but if I wanted to use my powers for good in a way that didn"t give the Butchers room to influence me, finding something non-violent to do might not be such a bad idea.
  
  "Oh jeez, I"m such a dummy." Madison"s voice intruded on my thoughts again like a hacksaw against a violin. "I had a pencil the whole time. Dumb thing got stuck in my bag."
  
  "Knock it off, Madison," Amy said tiredly, catching my gaze and rolling her eyes theatrically. I rolled mine right back.
  
  "What, it"s cute. See, it"s got a little topper on it." Madison waved the star-ended pencil back and forth.
  
  "How old is she again?" Nemean asked as I put the last of my stuff in my bag and zipped it up. I started for the door, only for Madison to step into my path.
  
  "Hey, Taylor, I"m really sorry for being annoying earlier," Madison said sweetly, waving the pencil back and forth in front of my face. "You can have this pencil if you want, like an apology."
  
  I made to step around her, but she moved in front of me again. "Let me go, Madison," I managed, shoving my hands into my pockets so nobody would see them curling into fists.
  
  "Gee, Taylor, just say if you want the pencil or not. Just a simple yes or no. Yes or no. Yes or no. Yes or no," Madison repeated, waving the pencil pack and forth, pink star topper bobbing like a metronome.
  
  "Holy crap, this is a master class on being a little bitch," Quarrel marvelled.
  
  "Madison," I growled, my top lip curling back to show my teeth, "I"ll go through you if you don"t move." Bloodsight flickered in my eyes for a second, showing her as a human-shaped bag of rich red blood, heart and brain and lungs all outlined by thousands of tiny little lines. I could have just reached in and pulled something out.
  
  "Awwwwww," Madison pouted, "that"s not very-"
  
  My hand lashed out, grabbing the stupid pencil out of her hands with crushing force and bringing it to my mouth. The silly little pink star went past my teeth, and then I clamped down and yanked on the pencil with my hand. The end snapped off with a celery-stalk crack, and I spat the lump of plastic and wood out.
  
  The star bounced off Madison"s little button nose and clattered to the floor, while I jammed the rest into my pocket. Madison blinked slowly, like her mind couldn"t process what had just happened.
  
  I shouldered past her without another word, storming out into the hallway in a fuming temper.
  
  4.5
  Early Thursday 10th February, The Docks
  
  Once I was several blocks away from the lair, I pulled my phone out of the Faraday cage compartment I"d hastily created, reinserted the battery, and turned it on again, slotting the SIM card in.
  
  Six missed calls and a dozen texts, all from an unknown number. The same as when I"d checked it a few hours ago.
  
  I quickly checked all around me; with bloodsight, with sweeps of insects, even the weird spatial awareness of Firecracker"s teleporting- like a stronger version of sensing someone standing right behind you. Once I was sure I was alone on the roof of the dilapidated apartment building, I hit call.
  
  The call was picked up in a couple of seconds. "About time you answered."
  
  "Panacea?" I was so relieved my knees almost gave out. When I"d first checked my phone, I"d assumed the worst case scenario; I"d thought somebody had found me out, had been spying on me or hacked my phone.
  
  "At least it"s just her," Tactical agreed. "Someone with blackmail would have been a bitch to deal with."
  
  "How did you even get this number?" I managed, moving to the rim of the roof to sit down.
  
  Panacea made a snorting sound. "I asked Vicky, said I wanted to check in on you after the weekend. Now, I need to talk to you about World Issues."
  
  "Pompous bitch," Firecracker griped.
  
  "You do mean the class, right? You didn"t just fill up my inbox to pick my brain on the European stock market?" Rotter snickered at my flippant remark. Truthfully, I was a little impressed with myself too.
  
  "Don"t be cute. I want to know why you almost attacked that girl today."
  
  "I didn"t attack her," I retorted. "I just... got angry." After a moment I elaborated. "She transferred from Winslow too. We"ve got history."
  
  The phone was quiet for a long couple of moments. "When you say history," Panacea asked slowly, "you mean she was... harassing you?"
  
  I sighed. "Pretty much. Loads of petty shit, but it never stopped. And some bigger stuff mixed in. Seems like she"s trying to start it up again."
  
  I knew I could have explained it in more detail than that- could have listed off all the stuff spilled on me or dumped in my bag. All the homework stolen, all the books ruined. All the times that Madison and her friends cornered me and joked about how I was selling myself to drug dealers for crack.
  
  There was a rustling from the phone, going back-and-forth, back-and-forth. "I think she"s rubbing her eyes or something," Vladimir volunteered.
  
  "Okay," Panacea said at last. "Okay. You need to stay away from her. Forever."
  
  "Wow, gee, never would"ve thought of that," Anchorage snarked.
  
  "I"m trying to," I said irritably. "I already transferred to a whole other school, what do you want from me?"
  
  "Fuck, I don"t know." Panacea paused again. When I strained my ears I could make out noises in the background- other voices, too muffled to make out.
  
  "Okay," Panacea started, "have you told the teachers?"
  
  "Not yet," I admitted. "I was too pissed to stick around after class, and I went straight home after school."
  
  "Okay, talk to them, say whatever you have to. I don"t want you losing your temper anywhere where there"s loads of other kids around to get caught in the crossfire."
  
  "Do you seriously think I"d start randomly hurting people if I lost my temper?" I felt my temper start to rise yet again. "Thanks a fucking lot!"
  
  "Except that"s not true, is it?" Butcher said silkily. I rammed him down with a snarl.
  
  "Tell me you weren"t thinking of hitting her," Panacea snapped. "Tell me you weren"t thinking of using your powers, or just a little too much strength for a skinny teenage to have-"
  
  I pushed off the ledge so hard my feet left the ground, spinning around to swing my foot into the bricks with a shout. Fragments and dust flew from the edge with a thunderous shattering noise.
  
  I forced myself not to clamp down on the phone, keeping my fingers locked into place so that I wouldn"t crush it so hard that plastic and circuitry would ooze through my fingers like dough. It was a problem most of the Butchers had experienced once or twice while they got used to all the extra strength, all the sudden anger and aggression. My breath hissed through my teeth; my jaw was clenched so hard I felt my teeth strain under the pressure.
  
  "Taylor! Calm down!" Flinch tried to radiate soothing calm into the mindspace. "Take deep breaths, push a couple of us down if you have to."
  
  "Or you could just keep proving her right," Tock Tick said. The sarcasm in his tone faltered halfway through, and I could feel the real concern in there.
  
  I shoved down the worst offenders while I stumbled over to the ledge again, laying my free hand on the broken surface to let Stoneknapper"s fizzing power out, scooping up handfuls of chips and shards to pack them onto the hole like wet clay. Brick and cement swirled together in a nonsensical pattern, nothing like the grid of reddish oblongs in the rest of the wall, but I didn"t have it in me to try and slowly strain out the different materials just then.
  
  Panacea"s voice was coming from the phone. It took a moment for the words to register.
  
  "Elpis, what the hell was that noise just now?" She said it cautiously, not afraid, but like she was sure she was going to hear something unpleasant.
  
  "I-" I cleared my throat, "I kicked a wall. It"s fixed now, nobody saw."
  
  Nemean made a concerned croon, laced with pity. "Taylor..."
  
  There was a rustling noise from the phone. "Elpis. I don"t- I don"t have any idea what to do here. I can"t just leave you walking around like a bomb with a hair trigger. You"re one bad moment away from ripping someone"s head off."
  
  I swallowed thickly. "I know. I hate it." The words hurt to say, like they were fishhooks being dragged out of my throat, biting deeper into me as I pulled at them. "They turned me into this and- and I can"t do anything."
  
  Nobody said anything for a while. I heard sirens off in the distance, and a stray cat skulking around in the alleyway below, but nothing else. I at least made the cat"s fleas jump off and file into a puddle as it left my range.
  
  Panacea eventually sighed. "Look, just... talk to the teachers. Tell them what she did. Stay away from her; hell, come to me if you feel like you"re going to lose it."
  
  I let the fizz out into a brick, moulded a rose into the surface, wiped it clean, made an elephant, wiped it clean again. "I can do most of that. I can tell them a lot of what she did." I slumped over, resting my elbows on the ledge. "I can"t tell them the worst though. Anybody who knows about Trigger events could put it together and figure me out."
  
  "Tell them the rest then. Get them to keep you away from her. "
  
  I moulded some kanji into the brick. Angry, powerless, revenge. Smoothed it out again- too smooth. I added some pits and pockmarks to the surface.
  
  "Okay." I pushed myself up, straightened my spine. "I"ll do that."
  
  "Good."
  
  "You"re doing good, kid," Stoneknapper said. It wasn"t surprising that he was understanding of the frustration- wanting to lash out even though it would just make things worse. Morning Glory had heaped plenty of abuse on him before he"d finally triggered and started pushing back.
  
  "Can we talk about something else?" I asked, seeking a distraction. "What are you up to right now?"
  
  Panacea clucked her tongue. "Healing. There"s always something." She sounded subdued. "Just reconnected someone"s spine, revived her legs. She"ll be out of the wheelchair inside of a week after some physical therapy."
  
  I checked the helmet clock. 2:13am. I wondered if I should bring that up.
  
  "That"s beautiful," I said instead, and I actually meant it. "I wish I could do stuff like that."
  
  "Someone with a power like that would never have ended up with us," Muramasa pointed out.
  
  Firecracker blew a raspberry at him. "Buzzkill."
  
  Panacea grunted. "If you"re feeling better, I"ve still got patients to see."
  
  "Right. Good night then."
  
  The call dropped without another word. I tucked the phone back into my belt and headed across to the street where I"d parked my bike, jerking my chin to bring my jawguard back up.. It only took a second to rappel down the side of the building, right into the seat, and drive off at a slow pace.
  
  The whole point of me going out tonight had been to find something or someone to take my frustration out on, even just a couple more statues. The panic of the phone and the subsequent conversation had taken away my frustration, but it had also dredged up a melancholy feeling,
  
  The old problem with parahumans was the irony of powers. Like a monkey"s paw, you got what you wanted or needed, but in the most unhelpful way possible.
  
  The Butcher"s research hadn"t covered Master Triggers much, but the current theory was something to do with emotional isolation or feeling a lack of control in everyday life. I"d been alone, beset by hundreds of small abuses. Now I was never alone, commanding millions of little bugs.
  
  Plus fourteen seasoned capes in my head.
  
  A new school, some friends, the beginnings of a successful hero career- and yet I couldn"t stand up to one girl, couldn"t let anyone know about the worst she"d done to me. Not without giving myself more problems.
  
  I drove along the streets, seeing very few signs of life. A couple of tired-looking women walking together down the sidewalk, a man huddled in a doorway. I was going at just the right speed that I could process the new bugs that came into my range and move them around a little to confirm the impressions I got before they were left behind.
  
  I picked up on something massive moving around just as the bike passed the turning.
  
  "Shit, finally some action!" Bearskin crowed. I threw the bike into a U-turn, twisting the chassis so the wheels were angled separately. It left a streak of rubber on the road, but I was pointed back in the right direction in about a second.
  
  I gunned the engine, twisted the bike around in another sharp turn and threaded it between two buildings, barely avoiding a pile of trash bags.
  
  A big humanoid was tromping about the empty loading dock, a man under each arm. Pale moonlight and sodium-yellow streetlight gleamed off crumpled metal in the shape of a giant. The top of it turned to face me with a "face" like a car accident.
  
  "That better not be Mush again," Nemean growled as I slammed on the brakes. The sudden stop jolted me forward, and I followed through with the motion, vaulting over the handlebars in a front flip to land, drawing my one sword with a flourish. There was a slight whirring sound behind me as the bike automatically deployed its stand from the underside.
  
  "Identify yourself," I called, settling into a stance. I let bloodvision seep in, highlighting the bodies in red- the two bruised men, a third slumped against a wall, and a surprisingly small figure inside the metal. Male, short, possibly young.
  
  Definitely not Mush. Someone new then.
  
  Metal creaked and groaned as the giant slowly lowered the men to the ground. Both of them were Asian, with green bandannas. The one on my left had it around his bicep- the right had it around his forehead.
  
  "Don"t be stupid," the metal said. The voice was distorted by echoes, deepened and flattened. If I couldn"t see the child"s frame inside, I could have thought this was a man.
  
  "A child wrapped in metal, pretending to be bigger," Needler mused.
  
  "You could just insult me to my face," I snarked.
  
  Needler paused. "That wasn"t meant as a shot at you," she said eventually.
  
  I lowered the sword a bit. "Okay. Hero or villain?"
  
  The giant raised its hands and balled them up, with dull creaks as the metal was twisted further. "Hero. You?"
  
  I flipped the sword around and sheathed it again. "Hero. I"m Elpis."
  
  The giant"s hands suddenly unclenched, with another set of creaks. "Oh. Oh holy shit, this is-" he lifted one hand to his head with a dull clank- inside the shell I saw his actual body do the same, rubbing the back of his head. "This is so nuts, I"ve been hearing about you on the news for ages, and now you"re here-"
  
  He took a step toward me, and narrowly missed Forehead Bandanna. The guy started swearing at him in what I thought might be Mandarin.
  
  "Shit, sorry," the giant backed up, letting his hands flop down by his sides.
  
  "You"ve heard of me?" I asked, dumbfounded. The head nodded.
  
  "Yeah, totally. I mean, you never hear about solo heroes managing major arrests or anything, and you basically helped get rid of two gangs in one night!"
  
  "Fuckin" "ell, he"s like a bloody puppy," Rotter said. "Better start talking before he wets himself."
  
  "Honestly, I spent weeks wearing the Merchants down. Plus I had Spitfire backing me up, and the Protectorate did a lot of the work with the Teeth."
  
  "Yeah, but still! I"ve been doing this for months and I haven"t even met any other capes yet! I"ve only found guys like this." He pointed down at the two ABB guys with clumpy fingers made of crushed drink cans.
  
  "Hang on," I said, realising something, "you still haven"t told me your name."
  
  The giant came to a halt, then slowly slumped down a bit, shoulders hunching in. "Right. Sorry. Got carried away. My name"s Konnigit."
  
  "Why does that sound familiar?" Bearskin wondered.
  
  "Oh shit, I remember," Quarrel said, "it"s because his name came up, and somebody said it sounded like the N-word, and you were glad somebody else said it."
  
  "Konnigit. Konnnnnnnigit. Kerniggit." Rotter rolled the name around in his mouth like a hard candy. "Something something stupid kerniggit-ss- Fuck, I got it, it"s bloody Monty Python."
  
  I blinked. "Like "your mother was a hamster"? Weird choice for a name."
  
   "Hey, you got the reference," he pointed out.
  
  "Does anyone else?"
  
  Konnigit shrugged. "Like I said, I haven"t met other capes before. And I don"t usually make small talk with the guys I catch moving drugs." He jabbed a finger down at Bicep Bandanna to illustrate his point. I noticed that there was a pile of plastic baggies off to the side filled with various powders. I could make out marijuana, cocaine, and even what looked like heroin.
  
  "Well, I guess it"s your choice." I gestured to the gangsters. "Want any help with these guys?"
  
  "Ooh!" Firecracker said suddenly, "New minion! Taylor, you gotta recruit this guy!"
  
  "You want to recruit a guy who named himself after a Monty Python reference?" Tock Tick asked.
  
  "And not even a good one," Rotter complained. "Why not call yourself the Black Knight or something?"
  
  I stepped forward to lift Bicep Bandanna off the ground, ignoring the Butchers as they dissolved into cries of "Tis but a scratch!" or "Ni!". Bicep grumbled and slouched, but he didn"t put up any resistance as I zip-tied his wrists behind his back.
  
  Konnigit turned and tromped over to the third man, while I secured Forehead Bandanna. With his back exposed, I could see his armour had flattened oil barrels, an old bed frame, and at least half of a car chassis. I meant to ask him how something about how he"d assembled it, maybe lead into asking how his power worked, but that slipped my mind when I saw the state the third man was in.
  
  "Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ," I exclaimed, "What the hell did you do to him?" Just a cursory glance showed bruises all over and bloodsight let me see that they trailed across his entire body, the skin broken in a few places; plus a hairline crack in one rib, and more blood pooling in his kidneys.
  
  "Oof," Vladimir winced, "Somebody"s gonna be pissing blood tonight."
  
  "He had a gun," Konnigit protested. "I hit him, he went down, that was it."
  
  "Hit him with what? A truck?" I ran my fingertips over the man, feather-light, searching for any more fractures or serious injuries. Needler"s Thinker power was buzzing madly, pointing out every existing injury as a weak point- luckily, I could tell from the pitch of the buzzing that there was nothing that wouldn"t heal.
  
  "Okay, lay him down," I instructed. "Carefully." He followed my directions with only a little grumbling.
  
  When I"d finished calling the police to pick the guys up, Konnigit shifted his weight restlessly. "So, uh," he asked, "Any chance we could team up?"
  
  "Yes! We need a big smashy guy!" Firecracker whooped.
  
  Stoneknapper pulled a face. "Only if we can do something about his costume. Let"s not be associated with a walking scrapheap."
  
  Muramasa nodded. "He would need a weapon as well. A sword may not suit him, but perhaps a hammer, or an axe. Something with heft."
  
  "You don"t want to give someone a sword? Who are you and what"ve you done with "masa?" Anchorage cackled at her own joke.
  
  I cut through Muramasa"s extended retort with an exasperated pulse. "I"m not recruiting the guy until I"m sure he won"t kill someone by accident, let alone give him a weapon."
  
  I pointed a finger to the other side of the square. "Let"s not talk shop in front of them. And don"t think I won"t catch you if you try to run," I added to the ABB guys.
  
  Bicep grumbled something I didn"t understand, but they made no other moves otherwise. With one more glance, I led Konnigit over to the opposite side, leaning one shoulder against the wall.
  
  "What exactly do you want to get out of us working together?"
  
  Konnigit shrugged- something in his shoulder caught on another piece and made a loud scraping noise. "I think I"m ready to move up to the big leagues," he said. "I"ve been going after street level guys for ages, and it"s not really changing anything."
  
  I chewed my lip for a moment. "I get that. Just understand one thing- if you get the attention of the heavy hitters, they"re going to remember you. It"ll be hard to back off from this once you"re in."
  
  "Thanks for the warning, but I want this."
  
  "Flinch? Thoughts?"
  
  Flinch hummed. "I think you should ta-ta- damnit- TAKE him on. If you"re worried about him going too far, setting him straight now would be better than just leaving him to make a mistake."
  
  "And a walking tank would be useful as well," Tactical added, ever the pragmatist.
  
  "Okay," I said aloud, "I can bring you along on a few missions if you want. But," I added as he shifted, "There"s going to be a couple of rules. First, we"re going to get you some training, make sure you can handle yourself against other capes.
  
  "Second, we"re going to work on how you fight normals." I pointed back to the ABB members and lowered my voice. "You"re a big guy. If you go too far, you could do a lot worse than bruises. That guy"s probably going to be passing blood as it is."
  
  Even before Quarrel shouted "HYPOCRITE," at the top of her mental lungs, I felt like a liar. I had far more experience than Konnigit, but the anger I"d felt toward Madison in class still lay on my mind like a hot brick. That wasn"t even touching on the gang members I"d used force on, that one guy I"d bounced of the floor on my first night.
  
  I wanted to tell myself that I had reasons for acting like that, feeling like that, but the Butchers were eager to call bullshit on any self-delusions I tried to bring up. I just had to admit that I wasn"t entirely practicing what I was preaching.
  
  "Come on," Konnigit protested, "They"re the bad guys-"
  
  "Yes," I cut him off as the thought formed, "And we"re the good guys. But good is a thing you do, not just a thing you are. We have to be better than them."
  
  "Which is why we kept winning, baby! Being an arsehole works!" Rotter"s cackle dopplered away as I pushed him down.
  
  I wasn"t sure where I"d heard "Good is a thing you do" from; maybe Mom, or from a book; maybe I was misremembering some Butcher memories. Whatever the case, it seemed pretty relevant right now.
  
  "I know what I"m doing," Konnigit grumbled, folding his arms.
  
  "Okay. I won"t nag. Still, some group training would be good for you, before you really hit the streets."
  
  "Alright."
  
  "I can give you my number," I said, pulling it out for the second time tonight, "I"m up most nights, so just call me whenever."
  
  "Can you write it down?" Konnigit asked. "I can"t really carry my phone inside this. I tried with a spare and it just fried it."
  
  I gave him a look from head to toe, then again with bloodsight, and something about the difference between his body and his armour, the hollow sound of his footsteps and the echo around his voice, clued me in.
  
  "Magnetism?" I asked, turning it over in my mind. Stoneknapper perked up and started theorising away.
  
  "Sort of a Brute/Changer, but it"s not his body that"s changing, he"s forming a shell around himself. Maybe Striker? And does it strengthen the armour when he applies it?"
  
  "Yeah. Or something like it anyway. It works on metals that aren"t magnetic though. I"ve got loads of copper wire in the hands." He held one up and waggled the fingers for emphasis.
  
  "Interesting. Would you be interested in doing some experiments with me? Might be good for figuring out some tricks with your power."
  
  The pause in the conversation made me feel like Konnigit had just blinked. "Uh, no, yeah, that sounds great. I"d love that."
  
  "Cool." I switched the phone for a notepad and scratched the number out, just as the perimeter of insects was disrupted. I landed a couple of midges on the bodywork of the car as it slowed to a halt near the mouth of the alley I"d come through.
  
  "Right, let"s go get these guys." I handed Konnigit the note and crossed to the captives. Bicep was rocking from side to side, apparently trying to get some feeling back in his legs.
  
  "I remember that when I was a kid," Needler mentioned. "My parents would have me sit down for prayers, and I"d always squirm because my legs started falling asleep."
  
  "I remember feeling my ass go numb during Christmas service," Tactical said. "Every year, I"d try to find some kind of clothes that"d help, and nothing ever did."
  
  Konnigit took the unconscious man, who stirred a bit as he was picked up, to my relief. I simply hauled Bicep and Bandanna to their feet and marched them along, past the bike and down the alleyway.
  
  The two cops waiting next to the cruiser perked up at the sight. "God, I love picking up hero arrests," the taller one drawled, reaching for Bicep.
  
  "Hey, little help?" Konnigit called from the other end. "Your bike"s in the way."
  
  "This could be a problem with recruiting him," Nemean admitted as I wheeled the bike out backwards. Konnigit was still big enough that he was forced to shuffle sideways, cradling the last man.
  
  The cops" jaws dropped as more and more of Konnigit followed me out, like some sort of party trick. When he was fully clear, taking up more than the sidewalk, one of them found his voice. "Who the hell"re you?"
  
  There was a creak of metal as Konnigit straightened up to his full nine feet of height. "I," he boomed, "am Konnigit."
  
  "So what th" hell does that mean?" The other cop eventually asked.
  
  "He"s your problem now," Firecracker giggled as Konnigit slumped over again.
  
  4.6
  Friday 11th February, Arcadia High School
  
  "Ferrous," Tactical suggested.
  
  "Ironmonger," Stoneknapper said.
  
  "How about Scrapheap?" Dirty Rotter offered.
  
  "Salvage, Salvager, Junkyard, Junker, Wreckage," Anchorage rattled her ideas off in one long stream of critique. I added them to the list I was making on a sheet of scrap paper while Mrs Williams wittered on about the symbolism in Of Mice And Men.
  
  After the long and pained explanation of Konnigit"s name to the cops on Wednesday/Thursday night, he"d admitted that a greater career might need a name that was easier to grasp. Still, considering he"d thought of the first name by himself, I"d privately decided to come up with some suggestions.
  
  "Arguably the most important theme in the book is one of loneliness and isolation. Can anyone give me an example of how this is shown in the text- Taylor?"
  
  Firecracker swore vigorously inside my head at that. Mrs Williams was a decent teacher, but her habit of calling on people whether or not they had their hand up did not endear her to me. Logically I knew I was more sensitive to it after the useless staff of Winslow, but it made my teeth grind nonetheless.
  
  "The name of the nearby town, Soledad. It means "solitude" in Spanish."
  
  "This feels like picking on the introverts if you ask me," Flinch griped in disgruntled Spanish.
  
  "Very good," Mrs Williams said, thankfully turning away from me. "Anyone else?"
  
  "Oh, now she asks people," Firecracker growled. "Dried-up raisin-faced dust-for-blood rotten-boned mummified bitch!"
  
  Muramasa cocked an eyebrow. "Since when did you hold back on profanity?"
  
  Firecracker shrugged. "I kinda wanted to see how rude I could get without it. Like training with weights on, y"know? Then you take "em off and BOOM!"
  
  I hid a smile at the image they conjured together of Firecracker doing a martial arts routine with swears mixed into every move, glancing at the clock. Only a few minutes to lunch.
  
  "Now, since it"s almost the end," Mrs Williams said, "Homework. I want- yes, I know, it"s a Friday," she said over a couple of groans, "I want a page from each of you on moments in Of Mice And Men where the theme of loneliness is felt most strongly. I"ll collect them on Tuesday- ten-point font if typed, no double spacing."
  
  "Doesn"t sound too hard," Needler shrugged. "We can probably do that in a couple hours. I think I did something like that when I was in high school."
  
  "One of the benefits of analysing the classics is that everybody else has already done it," I agreed while I wrote it into my homework diary and slipped the list into my pocket. The bell rang a second later, prompting a storm of scraping chairs and clattering tables as everyone bolted for the cafeteria.
  
  I took my time, feeling a lightness in my step as I went.
  
  The weekend was almost here, and it had more appeal to me than just escaping school. The sleepover at Stacey"s house was tonight, and then on Sunday I"d be meeting with Spitfire and Konnigit for some talk and training.
  
  Spitfire hadn"t seemed too happy over the phone that I was bringing in someone new, but I"d assured her that he wouldn"t be joining us if she wasn"t okay with it. She"d at least agreed to reserve judgement until then.
  
  TGIF was the mood in the room as I joined the lunch queue. I could see people a little more closely grouped than usual, probably making plans for the weekend. A glance over at the popular kid"s table showed Glory Girl slipping into a seat next to her boyfriend, playfully kissing his cheek. Panacea sat next to her a second later, digging into her food without looking up.
  
  The Butchers had the usual argument for food out of the way by the time I reached the serving trays- Spaghetti Bolognese with garlic bread and a slightly wilted salad, plus a serving of strawberry jello. Then I just had to weave my way through the crowds to the usual table.
  
  "Hey Taylor," T said as I sat down. "Anything funny happen?"
  
  "Not especially. I"m just waiting on the weekend."
  
  "Uurgh, small talk," Nemean groaned.
  
  "I get that," T said, taking a bite of mashed potatoes. "I"ve actually got some fun stuff planned for once, just as soon as I pretend to pay attention for one more hour."
  
  "Yeah? What kind of stuff?"
  
  "Video games mostly. I"m close to levelling up, just as soon as I get through a couple of tutorials."
  
  "Neat. I"m mostly just going to hang out at home on the weekend. Maybe get through some books."
  
  "Ooh, let me know if there"s anything good," Frankie exclaimed, setting down next to me. "I keep meaning to get some reading done, but I can"t find anything that looks good."
  
  "No problem. So what"s the plan for tonight, anyway? Snacks, movies, games?"
  
  "Painting yer nails and talking about boys?" Rotter leered. I gave him a warning shove.
  
  "Movies and junk food for sure," Frankie said, tearing into some garlic bread. "I brought some DVDs from home to pick from. Plus some makeup and stuff we can share out. Actually," she pointed across the table, "It"s a shame we couldn"t invite you, T. Could give you some tips."
  
  T snorted around a mouthful of peas. "I"d have to be gayer than Legend for my parents to let me spend all night at a slumber party with three girls. And despite what the eyeshadow makes them think, I"m still straight."
  
  "I wish I could"ve got away with wearing makeup back in my day," Vlad said nostalgically. "I think I would"ve looked good in guyliner or whatever they call it."
  
  "Maybe you should try some out, Taylor," Needler suggested. "The girls could help you with finding things for your complexion. I"d offer to help, but..." She indicated her own Indonesian features.
  
  I considered it for a moment. "Maybe. I"ll get back to you on that."
  
  "Oh. Okay." Frankie popped some bread into her mouth and chewed for a moment. "Are your folks being..." She waved a hand around vaguely, "Difficult?"
  
  T shrugged uncaringly. "Nah. I think they"re just having trouble getting their heads around it. Mom left some pamphlets lying around about transgender teens and stuff like that, but I"m gonna try and head that off."
  
  "Not to dismiss your problems or anything, T," I said, "but it"s kind of a relief that your biggest problem with your parents is that they"re being overly supportive."
  
  T snorted. "Yeah, they"ve got the spirit."
  
  The conversation drifted as Stacey and Callum arrived, and wound its way through tonight"s sleepover, the upcoming basketball game against Clarendon High, and whether the Deathworlder novels were overrated.
  
  Eventually T finished his pudding and stood up. "Right," he said brusquely, "I"m gonna waste some time on the computers. See you around."
  
  "Bye," Stacey managed as he quickly walked off. "That was weird, right?" she asked the rest of us.
  
  "Maybe he"s meeting someone?" Tock Tick suggested.
  
  "Dunno. I can never get a read on him," Bearskin admitted.
  
  Callum shrugged. "Hey, it"s T. He"s always acting too cool to give a shit."
  
  "Apathy- all the popular kids are doing it," Frankie said.
  
  "Well, it"s not really our business," I pointed out. "We"ve all got shit we don"t want to talk about, right?"
  
  "Laying it on a little thick there," Quarrel said.
  
  Stacey gave me a look I couldn"t quite interpret. "I guess."
  
  "What"s that all about?" Stoneknapper wondered.
  
  "Guys, give me a subject change," I ordered, feeling uncomfortable at Stacey"s gaze.
  
  Firecracker perked up. "Ooh! If you ever got a tattoo, what would it be?"
  ------------------
  
  "Coach, can I talk to you a second?"
  
  Coach Pelt glanced up from his clipboard, then glanced down at me from his noticeably taller frame. "Sure, Hebert. What"s up?"
  
  "You"ve got this," Flinch said reassuringly.
  
  "There"s a girl I used to know at Winslow," I managed. "She used to wind me up all the time, and I think she might keep doing it now she"s here."
  
  Coach Pelt"s monobrow wrinkled disapprovingly. "Is she in this class?" he asked, already glancing around at the other girls in the sports hall, gathered into their teams to talk tactics, or just talk in general.
  
  I pointed to where Madison was chatting with a bunch of other vaguely pretty girls, her back to me. "Madison Clements. With the blue barrettes."
  
  "Hmmph. Well, if she tries anything else, you let me know right away, alright? I"ll keep an eye on things for now."
  
  "Right. Uh, thanks." It felt weird to say that to a teacher and actually mean it. Something felt off about his look of concern, without any tone of helplessness or apathy like I was used to.
  
  "Man," Vladimir said, "Those girls messed you up but good, huh?"
  
  "Screw off," I replied, jogging back to the middle of the room. "At least I"m aware of it."
  
  Today"s class was divided into eight teams of four, rotating around to play everyone against each other as the period went on. I didn"t know two of the girls I"d been teamed with.
  
  However, because the universe apparently had a sense of humour centred on me, Amy Dallon was the forth member of our team, currently stretching out her hamstrings as I returned. I"d almost bitten through my tongue when she"d been picked for the group.
  
  "You gonna be alright?" she asked me quietly. "You look really on edge."
  
  I managed to not look at Madison again. "I"ll handle it."
  
  Coach Pelt blew his whistle, and the games kicked off.
  
  After the first few minutes, I managed to completely forget about Madison. I"d technically never played basketball in my life, but the Butcher memories were guiding me through it again. Of course, my body didn"t match any of those memories, so it took me a while to find a rhythm.
  
  "Pass! Pass, damn it!" Anchorage bawled. I quickly flicked the ball overhead to Janet, our team captain- she caught it and made a run for the basket.
  
  The real surprise was Amy. None of us had expected her to be athletic, but she was surprisingly competent at it, managing some decent footwork to weave around the other players.
  
  After five minutes, each team moved around one space to play new opponents. We were about halfway through the period when I found a minute to speak to Amy as we were moving across.
  
  "You"re pretty good at this. Never figured you for the sporty type."
  
  Amy snorted. "I"m not. Vicky is. I just spent a couple of years being dragged into helping her practice at home."
  
  "Yeah, that tracks," Bearskin admitted. "I was the same with baseball. Donnie was always going on about going pro."
  
  We were actually doing pretty well in score. Even holding back, I was still fast and tall enough to have an edge, and Amy could easily dodge around the opposition. Janet and Sadie were both alright as well.
  
  It was the second to last game when I ended up facing Madison"s team. I knew it was coming- after all, I"d worked it out beforehand. That didn"t mean I liked it.
  
  Madison gave a little finger-wave at me as her team formed up. Rotter sneered. "Kinda reminds me of a chihuahua. She"s got no idea how small she really is compared to everyone else." He conjured up the image of a little yappy dog with blue barrettes, barking at a bulldog in glasses.
  
  "Oh, very fucking funny," I groused.
  
  Nemean snorted. "We"d be bigger than that."
  
  "Yeah?" Rotter considered. "How about this then?" This time the image had Madison-dog facing off against a multiheaded beast, with my head in the middle gnashing teeth like daggers.
  
  Nemean approved. "Better."
  
  The whistle blew before I could think of a comeback. Janet dived for the ball set on the centre line like a dodgeball, and hurled it back towards Amy before the other team could crash into her.
  
  Amy started forward to the right, while I went left. A few seconds later, Madison came up alongside me, bouncing around me with her arms thrown wide.
  
  "You"re not getting past me!" she said in a cheery voice that made me want to dig my fingers into her skull. I kept my eyes off her and gritted my teeth as I tried to accelerate past her. Amy quickly tossed the ball to me in an overhead pass that I managed to catch by the tips of my fingers.
  
  Madison immediately stepped in front of me, jumping at the ball. I spun on the spot, pulling the ball in toward me, and dodged around Madison, gym shoes squeaking on the floor.
  
  Madison squealed and toppled sideways onto the ground dramatically. I noticed how she did it in a way that wouldn"t actually hurt. "Foul!" she said indignantly. "Foul!"
  
  "Oh, so that"s her game," Needler realised. "Trying to play the victim."
  
  Butcher laughed unpleasantly. "If she"s gonna get you in trouble anyway, you should go for broke. In for a penny and all that." I quickly shoved him down before he could say anything else.
  
  "Woah, Madison, you okay?" One of the other girls said, stopping and running back to her. I slowed to a halt to watch as Madison climbed to her feet with a sniffle.
  
  "I think so. But it hurts," she whined childishly, rubbing at her side.
  
  Before I could do more than grit my teeth, Amy jogged over and quickly laid a hand on her arm. "You"re fine," she pronounced after a second. "In fact, you shouldn"t be feeling any pain at all. Play on," she called, "Somebody say one, two, three, go!"
  
  "Onetwothreego!" I yelled, charging forward, dribbling madly as I made a break for the hoop. I hadn"t had the chance to really get angry, but there was an undercurrent of frustration to my mood that made it hard to remember to hold back.
  
  An opponent jumped in to block me- I stopped on a dime, passed to Janet as she was approaching, dipped under the opponent"s arm and carried on. Janet got stopped at the three point line, and hurled the ball at me as I reached the hoop.
  
  "Come on!" Anchorage yelled as I caught the ball. I was too exhilarated to stop and think, caught up in anger and relief and the sheer joy of movement. My legs exploded into a jump that I only managed to pull at the last second, taking me a foot off the ground to let me slam the ball down.
  
  "Yeah!" I whooped, dropping to the ground along with the ball. "First blood to me!"
  
  "That"s what I"m motherfucking talking about!" Anchorage cheered as I threw my hands up. "Who says white girls can"t jump?"
  
  "Aw man, look at her face!" Tock Tick laughed as he spotted Madison. "Looks like a constipated chipmunk!"
  
  Sure enough, Madison was glaring at me with her cheeks puffed out and reddened with emotion. I choked back a laugh and high-fived Janet"s outstretched hand.
  
  "Nice stuff, Taylor," she praised, picking the ball up. "Keep that up and we can smash these guys."
  
  "Hey, hang on a sec," The other team captain objected. "Are we really gonna count that? You guys didn"t give us a chance to get ready, and that was after Madison got knocked over."
  
  "Fell over," Amy corrected harshly. "She"s got literally no signs of being touched in the last few minutes. If you"re going to try and fake an injury, maybe don"t do it when I"m around."
  
  Madison glanced from me to Amy, and then stamped her foot and stormed off back to her team"s side.
  
  "Did she just stamp her foot?" Muramasa said incredulously. "I didn"t think girls actually did that."
  
  Quarrel snorted. "I know you just shut Butcher up for saying this, but that girl needs an actual slap."
  
  "Don"t tempt me," I said absently as I took my position at the front of our side. Amy fell in behind me for defence.
  
  I glanced back at her. "Thanks. For backing me up there."
  
  Amy gave me a weird look. "I just told the truth."
  
  "Yup."
  
  "Alright," The other team"s captain called, "Starting now, ready or not- Onetwothreego!"
  -------------
  
  Madison"s team had lost three-nothing, Janet scoring the other two points. I had stayed in the background after my shot, trying to downplay my sudden burst of athleticism.
  
  A side benefit of that was that Madison had been unable to get close to me as I kept my distance from the action, her captain reminding her to stay on defence instead of going after me. I wasn"t sure how much of that was strategy and how much of it keeping Madison from making another attempt at faking.
  
  I"d spun through the shower as quickly as possible, frantically scrubbing my hair with my eyes shut to avoid revealing anything to the Butchers. Not that they were complaining too hard- they might have been violent to the core, but they at least had the decency not to try and perv on underage girls.
  
  In the same way, I was keeping my eyes on my locker in front of me as I finished putting my clothes on. Stacey was next to me, chattering away about her games had gone, providing a much-needed distraction from my thoughts.
  
  "-and I swear to god, it didn"t even touch the sides! I"ve never been so proud of myself. I kinda want to see if I can do that again sometime, but I"d probably just end up shooting a couple dozen tries and then giving up."
  
  "Mm," I said noncommittally, buttoning up my blouse. "I guess it might lose its shine if you could do it all the time."
  
  Stacey paused in the act of pulling up a sock. "Maybe," she allowed.
  
  I felt someone come up behind me before I heard them clear their throat. It wasn"t danger sense; this came from Firecracker- the vague spatial awareness that let her teleport short distances without worrying about ending up in a wall.
  
  "Oh, here we go," Stoneknapper groaned.
  
  Firecracker made knuckle-popping sounds. "Okay, Taylor, this is your time to shine. You"ve got loads of witnesses, if she starts shit, you can finish it."
  
  "Knock it off," Nemean growled at her.
  
  "What? It"s a good idea! Establish dominance and all that."
  
  "We"re in a school, not prison," Tactical pointed out.
  
  Firecracker smirked at the obvious setup. "There"s a difference?"
  
  "She"s not worth the energy," Nemean said. "If you have to hit her, just do it once. No need to draw it out."
  
  "You"re not helping me," I ground out.
  
  Another throat-clearing noise, more insistent this time. I rolled my shoulders a bit to settle my blouse and turned around. "What do you want, Madison?"
  
  Madison pouted, looking even younger in a sunny yellow top and a denim skirt. ("In February?" Needler asked.) "No reason to be like that. I just wanted to talk. No need to get angry."
  
  "I"ve got plenty of reasons. Also plenty of needs, like you away from me."
  
  Madison backed up a step, adopting a spooked expression. "Alright, alright," she said, holding her hands up. "I just wanted to ask if we could draw a line under things. You know, make a fresh start."
  
  I forced my jaw to unclench. "I don"t want any kind of start from you, Madison. I want an end. Just leave me alone before I lose my temper."
  
  "Come on, Taylor, I"m trying to reach out here. Can"t you meet me halfway?" Madison"s expression was convincingly earnest, but I saw her eyes flick over to where a couple of her teammates and similar girls were unsubtly watching us.
  
  In a split second, Madison"s plan became clear to me. She wanted to frame herself as the innocent one, reaching out in a way she knew I"d never accept. People wouldn"t see all the insults and pranks and petty torments she"d heaped on me- they"d see the little girl trying to reach out and make amends.
  
  I could see in Madison"s eyes that she was expecting me to say no- to raise my voice at her, even lash out physically. The second I did that, I"d be painted as the bad guy, and no matter how I tried to explain things, Madison would seem like the victim.
  
  The obvious move would be to call her bluff. Take her hand, say some pleasantries, force her to commit to her act of being a decent human being. Maybe she"d give up on trying to provoke me, move on to something else.
  
  I couldn"t make my hands move. I couldn"t unclench them from where they"d curled into fists at my sides.
  
  Madison wouldn"t have to do anything specific to get at me. She just had to exist near me, talk near me, breathe near me; and I"d be thinking of Winslow again. Her very existence was a provocation to me.
  
  I couldn"t try to wait her out. I"d spent over a year hoping for the Bitch Trio to grow bored, move on to someone else if I just didn"t give them a reaction, and it hadn"t worked. Letting the enemy take initiative only ever favoured them.
  
  And above all else, even if it would hurt me in the long run, even if it wasn"t the smart, rational move, I refused to back down to her. I would rather struggle than give her an inch. Pushing back right now would let her win, but backing down and playing along would do that too.
  
  In the end, I chose to do what the Butchers had always done in the face of certain defeat. Choose the way that hurt the enemy more, out of sheer bloody-minded spite.
  
  "No," I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. "I"m not going to pretend you aren"t a petty little bitch who gets off on messing with people, and I"m not going to act like you never messed with me. If you want things to be different, you can do what you never did before and leave me the fuck alone."
  
  Madison"s hurt expression was just a little too slow to be genuine. "God, this is what I get for trying to be nice," she said, taking a step back.
  
  I glared at her. "Go play in traffic for all I care. Just do it away from me." I turned back to my locker and grabbed my sneakers with sharp movements, jamming them onto my feet and kneeling to knot the laces with stiff fingers.
  
  I couldn"t keep myself from tracking Madison with my hearing as she moved back to her friends, shoes squeaking on the rubber mats over the tiles.
  
  "God, what was her problem?" somebody asked. I didn"t recognise her voice.
  
  Madison sighed. "Oh, I don"t know. We used to try joking around back at Winslow, and she always took it super personal. After that she held a grudge, and she wouldn"t listen to a thing we tried to say. She wouldn"t even let us apologise."
  
  I had to let go of my laces before I tore through them. The blatant deception of it felt like acid down my throat.
  
  "You"re in control, Taylor," Flinch said smoothly. "She"s trying to get a rise out of you; just block it out."
  
  "Well, you made the effort, Mads," another girl said as I finished my laces and straightened up. I forced my jaw to unclench again and settled into breathing exercises.
  
  "Yeah, I guess." Madison"s scent wafted across the aisle, like she"d tossed her hair or something. "Not my fault some people can"t take a joke."
  
  My fists clenched so hard that the knuckles pop. My fingernails started to dig into my palms as they began to lengthen into claws; my jaw itched as my secondary teeth started growing.
  
  "A fucking joke?" I hissed to myself.
  
  "Yeah, a joke." Madison"s footsteps were like drumbeats in my ears as I felt her move back toward me. "We were just having fun, doing a little teasing, but you made such a big deal out of it. I don"t get-"
  
  Madison"s cheeks were warm under my fingers. I squeezed down hard as I shoved her back into the wall of lockers, pressing until I could feel the teeth behind them. My claws grew another millimetre as I leaned in close, my breath rattling in my throat.
  
  "You spat on me, Madison!" I bellowed as bloodsight flickered in my vision, showing me every blood vessel in her head, down to the capillaries in her eyeballs. "You remember that? Or was that just another day for you?"
  
  Madison squealed through her lips, batting at my arm desperately. I just pushed harder, too angry to even feel it. All I could feel was my pulse pounding in my ears, and her pulse under my fingertips.
  
  "You threw my bag in the toilet. You stole my books. You shredded my homework. Glue on my seat, juice in my hair, pencil shavings dumped on me every god. Damn. Day!"
  
  Someone was pulling at my shoulders now, trying to yank me away. I just turned one foot sideways and lowered my stance a little, letting a low centre of gravity and the soles of my shoes do the work. Basic fighting stance.
  
  "You don"t get to act innocent! You don"t get to pretend you didn"t know what you were doing! It wasn"t harmless when you sent me emails telling me to eat glass, it wasn"t funny when you said I was too ugly for a blind man, it sure as fuck wasn"t friendly when you bitches made every day hell!"
  
  A hand grabbed my other wrist, and suddenly both my arms went limp. I snapped my head around with a growl- to Panacea, who glared right back at me with only a little bit of fear. "Enough," she said quietly.
  
  The Butchers dopplered away as I pushed them down, one at a time, taking breaths deep enough to strain my ribs. My anger went with them, piecemeal, until I was able to force my claws back into fingernails and untense my fingers. Panacea still kept a hold on my wrist.
  
  Madison had slid down against the lockers to the ground, legs splayed out under her, one of her pretty friends next to her. She was rubbing at her reddened cheeks with genuine fear on her face. When I breathed deep, I realised I could smell it, a savoury, acrid smell underneath her fruity shampoo.
  
  The whole locker room was quiet. The other girls were watching silently, some of them halfway dressed, too caught up in the drama to move.
  
  "I"m done taking your shit, Madison," I said at last. "If you try anything on me again, or anybody else in this school, and I hear about it, I"m not going to bother with insults, or teasing, or pranks. I won"t even give you a warning. I"ll just beat you until you piss blood."
  
  I took a step back, and my arm moved at my thought again when Panacea let go. I didn"t meet anyone"s eyes as I grabbed my bag and stomped out of the locker room.
  
  4.7
  Friday 11th February
  
  Stacey had stopped trying to ask me about Madison when her mom had turned up to drive us. Over the course of the car ride, and a couple of oven pizzas for the three of us to eat, she and Frankie had let the subject lie.
  
  Instead, we sprawled on her family"s couch, watching whatever was on TV. TGIF with Janet Dane was just getting through the opening credits when the phone rang in the kitchen.
  
  "I think I recognise that man on the left," Muramasa said as Janet started greeting her audience with a sunny smile.
  
  "Boring suit, looks tired- five bucks says he works for the government," Vladimir said.
  
  A moment later, Janet introduced him as Deputy Director Clyborne of the New York PRT.
  
  "Called it."
  
  "Taylor?" Stacey"s dad popped his head around the door, a frown on his otherwise pleasant face. "Your dad"s calling."
  
  I was aware of the girls very deliberately not looking at me as I set my plate aside, two slices of pepperoni and mushroom left, and walked into the kitchen to take the corded phone from Mr Walker. He quickly left the room with a muttered excuse, and I put the headset to my ear.
  
  "Dad?"
  
  "Taylor. How"s the sleepover going?"
  
  "Right now it"s just TV dinner. It"s nice."
  
  "God, not this crap again," Butcher complained. "Blah blah blah-" His voice trailed off into the dark. I was starting to wonder if he was trying to get pushed down for some reason.
  
  "Right." Dad paused for a moment, then sighed. "There was a message from Arcadia. They said something about you and another girl."
  
  "Sounds like he already knows," Anchorage countered. "It"s like with cops- they try to get you to talk yourself into a hole. Just say nothing."
  
  "He"s not a cop, he"s my dad." Still, it took me a second to think of what to say, and another second to actually get it out. "It was one of the girls from Winslow."
  
  I heard Dad"s intake of breath, sudden and loud enough it almost whistled down the line.
  
  "She was just being annoying a couple of times. And then she... She acted like she wanted to apologise, and I told her to leave me alone. Even if she was lying, I know I should"ve tried-"
  
  "No," Dad cut in loudly. "No, you don"t ever have to do that. You don"t have to take a fake apology from someone, ever. Even if she was being honest, you"re not obligated to forgive someone who hurt you, no matter how they feel."
  
  I blinked, momentarily wrong-footed by Dad"s outburst.
  
  Quarrel"s emotions echoed mine in a way they almost never had. "Well shit," she admitted, "that"s decent parenting."
  
  Dad"s breathing sounded a little heavier. His next words were a little hardened, that too-controlled way of speaking he had when he was just keeping his temper in check.
  
  "Can you tell me what happened next? There wasn"t really a lot of detail. They just called it an "altercation"." I could hear the quote marks in that sentence, slotted into place like Tetris blocks of pure sarcasm.
  
  "She said something about how all her stuff was just jokes and stuff, and I got mad, and then I shoved her against the wall and yelled at her."
  
  Dad sighed deeply. The phone line made it sound like crinkling sandpaper. Then he chuckled bitterly. "Guess you got my temper after all," he said, with a little sadness.
  
  "See? It"s not just us," Bearskin pointed out. "You can get angry all on your own."
  
  Despite the poor phrasing, I understood he meant it as a comfort. Under all the Butcher influence, I had my own emotions, even the negative ones.
  
  "Thanks," I admitted.
  
  "Listen, Taylor, I don"t want you getting harassed by this girl again. I"ll talk to the school if you want, we can figure something out. If they"ve really got the Wards going to Arcadia, they should have higher standards than this."
  
  "Thanks Dad," I said quietly. A stray memory came to me. "Uh, I kind of threatened her a little about coming near me again. I don"t know if that"s going to get me in trouble?"
  
  Dad paused. "I think," he said reluctantly, "that if this problem doesn"t get any better, that"s up to you. I"m not saying you should hit her," he added hastily, "but she needs to face consequences. If she pushes you to the breaking point, she"s got some of the blame for what happens next."
  
  I swallowed past the lumpy feeling in my throat. "I don"t know how much I meant it," I confessed. "Is that weird?"
  
  "No, no," Dad soothed. "Taylor, you have every right to be angry after all that." He stopped a moment, then chuckled. "God, you really are my kid."
  
  "The glasses weren"t a clue?" I joked weakly.
  
  "Har har."
  
  Neither of us said anything for a long while. I just leaned against the wall and listened to his breathing, feeling like I had when I was younger and Dad had carried me in from the car, half-asleep from the back seat; tired and foggy-headed, but safe and warm.
  
  "Well, I should let you get back to your night. Don"t stay up too late, okay? Have fun with your friends."
  
  "Okay Dad. You"re not gonna be bored without me?"
  
  "I"ll probably take the chance to watch some boring movie aimed at dads that you wouldn"t ever like," Dad said with a smile in his voice.
  
  I huffed a laugh. "Yeah, okay. Love you, Dad. And, you know, thanks. For being on my side."
  
  "Oh, Taylor," Dad said softly, "I"m your father. I"ll always be on your side."
  
  I swallowed again. The lump in my throat was more like a slab. "G"night, Dad."
  
  "Goodnight, Taylor. Love you too."
  
  I hung up the phone carefully in its cradle on the wall. The Butchers were tactful enough not to say anything while I scrubbed at my eyes with the heel of my hand, before going back into the living room.
  -----------------------------
  
  Stacey held her fingertips up to the light and blew on them gently. "Nice," she said approvingly. "Think I"ll keep these for a while."
  
  "See?" Firecracker said. "Gold works with anything."
  
  "Want me to do yours, Taylor?" Frankie offered. "I think mine are dry now." She wiggled her dark green fingernails around for emphasis.
  
  "Sure," I said with a shrug, putting the little bottle aside and holding my hands out, palm down, over the paper towels Stacey had put in the middle of the rug to catch any drips.
  
  "Ohey-dokey." Frankie rifled through the dark wooden box that Frankie had produced all her makeup from. "What colour do you want?"
  
  "Black works with anything," Needler pointed out. Firecracker snorted.
  
  "God, could you be more basic? I say go loud, go for gold!"
  
  Stoneknapper hemmed indecisively. "Little ostentatious for Taylor"s style, maybe? No offence," he added.
  
  "None taken. I don"t think glittery gold is my thing."
  
  "Purple," Nemean said simply.
  
  I paused, peering at the little bottle she directed me to. It did look nice. "That purple one," I told Frankie, pointing it out with a finger.
  
  "Got it. Hold "em out."
  
  "Here, get us another taste before you have to hold your hands still," Rotter insisted.
  
  "One sec." I quickly took a swig of my cola and a bite of Caramel Helix before I held my hands out again. "Go f"r it," I managed around my mouthful, taking another look around the crowded room.
  
  Stacey"s room wasn"t the largest, but it was certainly cozy. When we actually got around to sleeping, Frankie and I would barely have enough room for both sleeping bags, but the posters on the walls, the fairy lights strung up near the ceiling, and the stuffed animals and tchotchkes on the shelves definitely gave plenty to look at.
  
  "Hey Stacey?" I nodded at the fist-sized conch shell on the top shelf. "What"s the deal with the shell up there?"
  
  Stacey looked up from where she was fastidiously sipping her lemonade without using her fingertips. "Oh, that"s from my Aunt Elaine. She sent me that when she moved out to California. It"s pretty, right?"
  
  "Better than the stuff we get on the beach here," Frankie agreed, gently taking my right hand to start painting my nails.
  
  "Yeah. Brockton"s beach, you get needles and bodies." Vladimir pulled a face.
  
  Stoneknapper was thinking of something else. "Hey, can we get some shells sometime? I could do some cool stuff with those."
  
  "What is this, the souvenir shop? We"ve got more important things to get," Tactical groused.
  
  "Oh, take the stick outta your ass," Tock retorted. "Not that he isn"t wrong," he added. "We could really use some more magnets. And if we"re bringing that kid in, we"re gonna need to beef up the suspension on the chariot."
  
  "I"ll handle it later, Tock. Not a lot I can do right now." I wordlessly indicated Frankie"s grip on my palm as she carefully covered my pinkie nail with polish.
  
  "Okay, and other hand," she said, dipping the brush again. I held up my left hand for her while I started blowing on my right nails.
  
  "Hey Taylor?" Stacey said, in a casual tone that immediately set me on edge, "Can I ask you something?"
  
  "You don"t have to if you don"t want to," Flinch reassured me quickly. "You can just enjoy the night."
  
  "Thanks Flinch." I sighed aloud. "But I can"t dodge this forever."
  
  I looked up from my nails to meet her eye. "It"s about Madison, isn"t it?"
  
  Stacey hissed between her teeth. "Yeah," she admitted. "I"m just being nosey, but..."
  
  "No, it"s okay. It was kind of a lot." I glanced back at my hand. "Although it"s interesting that you waited until I was in your room with my hands pinned before you asked me."
  
  Rotter burst out laughing.
  
  Frankie glanced from my nails to my face, then to Stacey"s stricken expression, then back to my nails. "Oh shit, we did do that."
  
  Stacey had the good grace to wince. "Sorry. I didn"t think..."
  
  "It"s okay," I said again, willing away the inner-ear feeling of Firecracker"s teleportation ready to use.
  
  Frankie drew the brush down my ring fingernail. "I mean, you did say you"d probably go after her if she kept trying shit, so that"s a thing."
  
  "Have to keep to your word," Nemean agreed.
  
  "Do you want us to help? Like, backing you up with the teachers?"
  
  I mulled over Stacey"s offer. "I"ll see how it goes. I did tell some of the teachers, so they might be on the ball about this." It was still hard to say that and believe it, but Arcadia had been exceeding my expectations on that score.
  
  Frankie finished up my left pinkie and capped the bottle again. "What I don"t get is why she did it. Or why she"s still doing it."
  
  I shrugged. "People don"t need a good reason to hurt each other. But if I had to guess, at Winslow it was to get in with the cool kids. After that, it might"ve just been habit. Or she wanted to get me to make myself look bad before I could tell everyone what a petty little bitch she is." I brought my left hand up to my face to blow on the nails.
  
  "Hmm."
  
  Needler focused on Stacey out of the corner of my vision. "That sounded like a very loaded noise," she said suspiciously.
  
  "What"s "hmm"?" I asked.
  
  Stacey fiddled with her drink for a second. "Okay, really personal question," she admitted, setting her drink down. "Like, you don"t have to answer, you can tell me off if you want-"
  
  "Stacey," I cut her off wearily. "Just say it."
  
  "Right." Stacey cleared her throat. "Are you... maybe... gay?"
  
  Anchorage started snickering. That developed into a chuckle, which became a guffaw; and that became a rib-clutching belly laugh as Firecracker, Dirty Rotter, Vladimir and Quarrel joined in with her.
  
  Their mirth bled into me too fast for me to hold in the laugh. "Hah! Are you serious?"
  
  Stacey shrugged embarrassedly. "I just thought- I mean, Winslow"s got kind of a reputation for lots of gangs. I don"t know if Madison"s a sympathiser or something, but..."
  
  "Gay girl in a school full of Nazis gets bullied." Tactical nodded. "I can see the logic."
  
  I shook my head. "Much as I loathe Madison, I doubt she"s racist. She wouldn"t have been hanging out with Sophia- who"s black," I clarified. "More to the point," I gestured to myself, "-where were you getting a lesbian vibe from?"
  
  Stacey and Frankie exchanged glances. "I mean, this is literally the first time I"ve seen you wear makeup," Frankie said cautiously.
  
  "You keep your fingernails short," Stacey added.
  
  I raised an eyebrow. "Aren"t we a little young for that?"
  
  Stacey squeaked and waved her hands. "Not like that!"
  
  Rotter didn"t even have to say anything for me to feel his lecherous amusement at that. It wasn"t as if I could tell them that I didn"t want people seeing how my nails would taper to points if I grew them out.
  
  "You"re in ridiculously good shape," Frankie continued, ignoring Stacey"s mortification. "And you"ve never mentioned dating anyone. At all."
  
  I shrugged awkwardly. "Being the lowest on the pecking order tends to kill your vanity. Nobody wanted to date the outcast."
  
  Stacey winced. "Okay, that"s fair. One other thing though." She pointed at me. "You never look at anyone in the locker room."
  
  Firecracker pulled a face. "I think she"s got the meaning of "gay" mixed up."
  
  "Stacey, that"s like the opposite of being a lesbian."
  
  "No, what I mean is, you avoid looking at anyone. Like, if I see someone else getting changed, I"m just like "Oh, she"s getting changed, no biggie". You keep your eyes off people like your life depends on it. Like you don"t want to creep on them."
  
  Anchorage huffed in surprise. "Damn, she"s good."
  
  There wasn"t really any way for me to refute that. "No, I just don"t want the fourteen people inside my mind to catch a glimpse of teenage boobs".
  
  "I don"t know," I said lamely. "It just seemed rude to stare."
  
  Stacey gave me an appraising look. "Okay," she said at length, "but maybe think about it? It might help you."
  
  I slumped a little. "Fine."
  
  "And whatever you figure out, we"re your friends, okay?"
  
  "I suppose it is trusting of them to invite you even if they do believe you are a lesbian," Muramasa admitted.
  
  "C"mon, it happens to all of us," Firecracker wheedled. "I mean, it was weird when it happened to me, but it"s a whole new world of possibilities-"
  
  I shoved her into the dark with a vindictive growl.
  
  Frankie cleared her throat noisily. "I think we"ve had enough of this for tonight. Who wants a movie?"
  -------------------------
  
  The coin toss had selected horror, so it took a while for the girls to actually fall asleep after Hack/Slash 2, what with all the fake blood and over-the-top gore being splattered around.
  
  "Crappy special effects," Butcher complained. "Head wounds don"t bleed like that!"
  
  "Oh my god, we know!" Vladimir yelled. "Now will you stop going on about it?"
  
  "Knock it off, guys," I ordered. "There"s better ways to pass the time."
  
  "Like what?" Tock Tick asked. "We can"t really do anything without waking them up." He indicated Frankie, who was snoring lightly inside her sleeping bag, and Stacey, who was curled into a ball under her thick patchwork comforter.
  
  "We can see what Stacey"s got on her bookshelf." Between the moonlight and the fairy lights, my night vision was good enough to pick out even small print.
  
  Quarrel yawned theatrically. "Boring. You should"ve packed a costume or something. We could"ve snuck out and found some action."
  
  I rolled my eyes. "I can"t fit a suit of armour into an overnight bag."
  
  "Well, if you"d made that autopilot function like I said, we could"ve just called the chariot over." Tock folded his arms sulkily.
  
  "I didn"t need an autopilot. And besides, you know I can"t make good enough sensors for that yet."
  
  "Well, we need an autopilot now. Point to me."
  
  "You don"t need armour," Nemean said frustratedly. "Just cover your face and don"t use the flashy stuff. Brutes are common."
  
  I gritted my teeth. "No. I"m staying in tonight. No patrolling, no fighting. There"s some books none of us have read yet, and we"re reading one."
  
  "Much as I would prefer solitude," Muramasa admitted, "Some activity would be good. You have your own frustrations to air."
  
  I fumed silently for a minute. The Butchers took the hint and quieted down, muttering to each other while I thought.
  
  "Half an hour," I said eventually. "After that, we come back here for a book. Deal?"
  
  "Deal," was the consensus.
  
  The floor creaked slightly under my feet as I raided Stacey"s closet for a headscarf to cover my face and hair, but neither of my friends stirred. With jacket and shoes on, all I had to do was step over Stacey, gingerly slide the window open, and drop to the ground.
  
  
  About 25 minutes of wandering later, I was two streets over, and thoroughly bored. At Stoneknapper"s suggestion, I"d taken a couple of glass bottles out of the recycling boxes set out in front of the houses and moulded them into little bands and studs all over my body. A few little details would let people draw their own conclusions about my powers, hopefully in the wrong direction.
  
  My hands were covered with overlapping segments of bottle green glass that ironically reminded me of beetle shells, and a single slab of clear glass covered my eyes like a visor, since I hadn"t been willing to bring my glasses with me. It took a lot of fussing to mould them into something that corrected my eyesight, and things were still a little unfocused, but they did the job.
  
  "See?" I glanced down at the wristwatch I"d put together weeks ago with Tock Tick"s power. "Nothing at all. We"re in the wrong area for anything to be going down."
  
  "This is nice though, right?" Stoneknapper guided me into engraving some designs on the green glass around my bicep. "Peace and quiet."
  
  "I guess." I glanced up and down the street, using bloodsight to see into houses. Nothing but dozens of horizontal figures from the first floor up, none of them moving more than occasionally twitching or turning over. The bugs in my range weren"t picking up on any movement bigger than a rat either.
  
  I turned back in the direction of Stacey"s house. "Right, I"m heading-"
  
  Worms in the ground registered a weight on the ground above them. When I turned my head, new silhouettes blossomed into sight across the street. They seemed to be climbing over the fence of a house with blue walls.
  
  "Trouble," Flinch said unnecessarily.
  
  Without a word I jogged across the road, staying centred to the house so the strangers wouldn"t see me around the sides. I moved some bugs across to them as well- a few ants, a couple of moths, some beetles.
  
  The man in the lead moved his arms like he was taking something out of his jacket, and bent down with one hand out to close his hand.
  
  "Wire cutters," Tactical guessed. "They"re taking out the alarm."
  
  I cursed the fact that I didn"t have my work phone with me. I could have called the police by now. At best I could alert the family inside before the intruders got in.
  
  The flowerbeds by the front window had little pebbles scattered through them. I grabbed a couple in one hand and started tossing them at the window where two adult silhouettes were sleeping. They made a rapid clack-clack-clack as they bounced off the glass. The man stirred in bed and raised a hand to rub at his face.
  
  The silhouettes at the back all jerked at the same time- "Shit, they heard!" Vladimir shouted- and scrambled for a spot further along. The one in the lead raised a foot and kicked, and I heard the sound of splintering wood as the back door was kicked in.
  
  No time for subtlety. I sprinted around the side of the house, dropping to all fours to take the corner at speed, skidding on the wet grass as I came around the back. The silhouettes were already inside and thundering up the stairs. The family was waking up- the man had grabbed something in his hand. Hopefully a phone.
  
  One of the silhouettes ripped a bedroom door open. I heard a high-pitched scream. A child.
  
  "No," Nemean gasped. I didn"t bother with the stairs- I just leapt for the landing, vaulted the banister, kicked off the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, and slammed into the heavy-set man with an elbow strike.
  
  His shoulder blade broke under the impact, and he screamed as he hit the floor, the crowbar in his right clunking to the carpet. The child screamed again as I looked up- a little girl with her hair in twin buns, clutching her blanket to her.
  
  "It"s okay," I said hastily, "I"m a hero." I glanced down at the man under me, and noticed his jacket sleeve. Specifically, the patch on the shoulder with three E"s.
  
  "Oh Jesus," Bearskin managed. "It"s a blooding."
  
  Butcher exploded. "MOTHERFUCKERS!"
  
  The anger filled me like molten steel. I slapped the man in the ear, hard enough to burst his eardrum, and dove back out the door.
  
  Two more were on the landing, both in dark clothing and holding blunt objects. I chose to go high; I jumped and grabbed the exposed beams in the ceiling- one of Nemean"s moves, to use her grip to manoeuvre.
  
  I didn"t have her claws, but a fizzing touch morphed the glass on my fingertips into sharp little blades that sank into the wood, holding me up while I swung a kick into the first man"s head. He hit the banister and smashed through it, falling to the ground floor with a yell.
  
  The second man backpedalled all the way to the end of the landing, dropping his crowbar to fumble in his back pocket. I dropped and powered forward, grabbing his wrist before he could get the pistol up, slamming it into the wall. Something gave way under my grip- I headbutted him before he could scream, and he slumped to the ground instantly.
  
  Two in the room on the left, one in the room on the right- same count for family and intruders. I didn"t have time to deal with both.
  
  "Throw it!" Quarrel shouted. I kicked the crowbar into my hand; Quarrel"s power formed a path, like a tunnel through the air, sized just right for the crowbar. I hurled it overarm, not even looking back as it hit the elbow of the man in there.
  
  The crunch of broken bone was lost under his scream, but I was already into the master bedroom. The couple in there were holding each other in terror, the husband shielding his wife as much as he could.
  
  The man across the room took priority- he swung the shotgun toward me as he saw me enter the room. Tactical"s power analysed it on sight- A Mossberg 500, wooden stock and after-market modifications.
  
  Too slow. I came in low, grabbed the barrel, twisted- he lost his grip. Then I spun on the ball of my foot, cocked my other leg, and fired a kick into his chest. He hit the wall and bounced back from the force of it, face-first into the stock of the gun. His nose burst into a bloody mess as he toppled.
  
  I tossed the Mossberg to the husband just as danger sense flared- a dim flare, not something serious. The fifth man had pulled out a fire axe of all things and swung for my head.
  
  I grabbed it just under the handle- there was an almost musical clink as it hit the glass segments over my palm. I tugged on it, then swung myself around- my right hand kept the axe head where it was, while my left came around as I spun to backhand the fifth man in the face.
  
  He fell, blood streaming from his mouth as he dropped to his knees. I let the axe slide down a bit until I was holding it halfway down the handle, waiting for him.
  
  There was a crashing sound across the landing. I checked with bloodsight- the woman on the bed had just broken something over the head of the E88 man.
  
  "Good," Needler said spitefully.
  
  Fifth Man came up again, heedless of the Mossberg now pointed at him by the trembling husband. He pulled a switchblade with his left, and a full machete with his right. "Come on!" he bellowed.
  
  I tossed the axe aside and snarled. Not the frustrated grumble of a normal person- this was the idling-engine noise I"d been able to make ever since Nemean"s power had roughened my vocal cords.
  
  I strode forward. Fifth Man swung overhead with the machete, while the switchblade came around for my stomach.
  
  I countered with Needler"s silat- slapped the machete aside, slammed my palm into the knife hand, then brought my elbow to his sternum, hard enough to feel something fracture. He staggered back, retching in pain, and brought the machete around in a wild strike.
  
  I caught it in my right palm, yanked it toward me, and then raised my left arm and slammed my elbow down on the blade, snapping it like a twig.
  
  Fifth Man jabbed desperately with the pathetic stump of the machete. I slapped it away dismissively, dug both hands into his collar, then lifted him off the floor and spun into a throw. He went out the door, over the broken balcony, hit the wall with a muffled thump, and dropped down to land on the second man. They gave twin groans at the impact, so at least they weren"t dead yet.
  
  Danger sense flared again, behind me. I turned to see the business end of the Mossberg unsteadily pointed at me.
  
  "Who are you?" The husband demanded shrilly.
  
  I let my breath rattle out of me, taking some anger with it, letting go of the reflex that wanted me to pulp him for daring to point a weapon at me.
  
  I slowly raised my hands, palms shiny with glass. "A hero," I said clearly.
  
  The couple stared at me for a long moment- then the little girl"s voice echoed across the landing. "Mommy? Daddy?" She sounded like she was on the verge of hysteria.
  
  The husband started, glancing past me to the door. I took the chance to step back, out of their room and across the landing.
  
  The third bedroom had a very angry-looking elderly woman standing over a man with an arm that had developed an extra bend. Shards of pottery and a lampshade were scattered around his head.
  
  "Who the hell are you?" the woman demanded, brandishing the crowbar. "You with these sons"a"bitches?"
  
  "Damn. Gram-gram got skills." Anchorage gave her a slow clap.
  
  "No ma"am," I answered, bending down to grab the man"s ankle. "I"ll handle these guys. I think the little girl needs someone to calm her down though."
  
  "Yetty?" The woman pushed past me towards the girl"s room without a second thought, almost beating the husband to Yetty"s room. I followed her out, jumping down to the ground floor just as Banister Guy was trying to struggle out from under his friend.
  
  "Don"t," I growled.
  
  While the family held each other and cried and started turning lights on and calling the police, I dragged all the men into the living room and checked to make sure they wouldn"t die of anything. Then I stood over them and pushed Stoneknapper"s fizzing into the glass armour, forming spikes and barbs on every segment of my hands.
  
  "Now," I said, my voice still roughened by Nemean"s changes, "you boys are going to tell me about E88"s operations, or I"m going to get creative." I held up one fist for emphasis.
  
  "Do not make threats you are not willing to carry out," Muramasa growled. "I would break a few fingers first, to demonstrate your will."
  
  Mr Shotgun spat at me, full of blood from his pancaked nose. "No dice, bitch," he sneered. "You think I ain"t been held by heroes before? You shits"re all too soft to do what needs doing. That little niglet"s gonna grow up and be a stain on the world just like its parents because you stopped us."
  
  "We could just take them out back and beat them until they stop moving," Bearskin offered, thoughts full of disgust at them, at his past self for believing like them, and disgust for the poison they spouted.
  
  I was aware of the family listening around the corner while the mother called the police. The father was still holding the shotgun, and the grandmother had a firm grip on the crowbar. Yetty was clutching at her mother"s dressing gown.
  
  She was probably going to remember this night for the rest of her life. The thought of that fuelled my temper, made it flare. I reached down and grabbed Mr Shotgun, wrapping my hand around his face. He shouted muffled profanity as I lifted him up past shoulder level.
  
  I let him dangle and thrash in my grip for a second before I looked down at the rest. Banister was looking particularly squirmy.
  
  "Anybody else want to mouth off?" I demanded, pushing spikes out of the band on my bicep.
  
  Banister cracked. "We can"t tell you," he blurted. "The capes"ll have us by the balls if we talk."
  
  Machete rammed an elbow into Banister"s side. "Shut your yap, Mikey! This was supposed to be your night!"
  
  I knelt down, still holding Mr Shotgun up. "Who are you more scared of right now?" I rasped theatrically. "Them? Or me?"
  
  "That"s it," Anchorage urged. "I figure this guy"s a few words from crapping himself."
  
  Mikey swallowed. "Th-them?" he quavered.
  
  I waited a moment for the tension to build, then cocked my head at him. "We"re going to have to work on that."
  
  By the time the police had arrived, I"d dragged them all into the kitchen one at a time and tried playing Good Cop. Most of them were hardened enough that they didn"t say anything, but Mikey and the man with the extra elbow had meekly offered up some information about meeting places and gatherings.
  
  They"d also explained how the Empire"s leadership was making noises about expanding now that the Teeth were gone and recruitment was starting to go up again.
  
  "Oh, those shits are going to suffer," Butcher snarled. I couldn"t bring myself to disagree.
  
  I"d made a show of grousing about how they refused to talk when I dragged them back to their buddies, though. Informants were a useful resource.
  
  The police took one look at the state of them and called for an ambulance, which dragged everything out longer. While we were waiting for them, Flinch urged me to talk to the family.
  
  The husband had by now handed over the shotgun, and was cradling Yetty in his lap, one arm around his wife. The grandmother had flatly refused to hand over the crowbar, and it still lay across her lap while she sat in an overstuffed armchair with a haunted look.
  
  Their heads all whipped around when I cleared my throat. "Oh," the husband said, staring at me from where I leaned against the living room"s doorframe. "Uh, come in?"
  
  "Thanks." I walked in slowly, keeping my hands by my sides as I crossed to the middle of the carpet and sat down, folding my legs under me. "Stupid question to ask, but- How are you holding up?"
  
  The mother held Yetty a little tighter, and the grandmother"s grip tightened on the crowbar. The husband looked at his daughter and sighed.
  
  "Honestly, I don"t think it"s really sunk in yet."
  
  I grimaced. This wasn"t the sort of thing anybody really wanted to expect to happen to them.
  
  Yetty"s eyes focused on my hands as I placed them in my lap. I"d smoothed all the spikes off, so now they gleamed like dull beetle shells again. "Why"re your hands shiny?" she mumbled drowsily.
  
  Her mother shushed her quickly with a nervous glance at me, but I just held one hand up and turned it around to watch the light play over my fingers. "It"s glass. I can sort of," I fumbled, then thought of Konnigit, "sort of wrap stuff around myself. Makes me stronger, tougher."
  
  "Oh." Yetty wriggled deeper into her parents arms. "S"pretty."
  
  Something about her caught my eye- she was wearing a different coloured nightie than before. It took me a second to think of a reason why.
  
  "Poor kid," Rotter sighed. "Probably wet the bed a lot after all this."
  
  Nemean crooned wordlessly, full of the oddly maternal sympathy she felt around frightened children.
  
  "Thank you," the mother tried. "For stopping them, I mean."
  
  I shrugged awkwardly. "No problem. I just wish I could"ve stopped them from getting inside."
  
  "So, what do we call you?" the husband asked cautiously.
  
  I winced behind the scarf. "I... don"t actually have one yet," I invented quickly. "All the good ones are taken."
  
  The mother made a somewhat forced smile. "Maybe we could help? Yetty?" she asked her daughter. "Can you think of any fun names?"
  
  Yetty squirmed deeper into her mother"s arms without a word.
  
  "Sorry," the mother said awkwardly. "It"s just..." she trailed off. I shook my head.
  
  "It"s okay. It"s been a rough night for everyone." Even if the thought of a small child recoiling from me left a twinge in my heart.
  
  I missed my armour. Polished steel went a long way towards a heroic image. Without it, I was a nightmare in dark cloth and glass.
  
  Nobody said anything for a long moment. The silence dragged out, filled with awkwardness and lingering fear on their part, and guilt on mine.
  
  "Hey," Stoneknapper nudged me. "If you"re claiming my power for this, why not give her something?"
  
  I considered. "Hey, Yetty?" I asked gently.
  
  "Mm?"
  
  "What"s your favourite animal?"
  
  The parents exchanged confused looks, and the grandmother stirred in her armchair again, leaning forward. Yetty peeked her head back out and blinked at me owlishly.
  
  "Plat-er-pus," she said, carefully sounding out the syllables.
  
  I turned my hand palm down. "Nice. I always thought armadillos were cool, myself." Stoneknapper"s fizz bled into the glass on the back of my hand, pushing some of the material out into a hollow bubble.
  
  I moulded the front into a wide, flat shape, turned up at the edges. The back end became a flattened tail, and then four limbs were drawn out of the main body, ending in webbed feet. A little shaping of the head, little dimples for eyes; after a few more tweaks, a passable platypus rested on my palm, moulded in green glass.
  
  "Not bad," Stoneknapper admitted.
  
  I gingerly held the figure out with both hands. "For you."
  
  Yetty"s eyes brightened immediately- her mother had to adjust her grip as Yetty flung herself forward to grab the little glass platypus, so she didn"t topple off the sofa.
  
  The husband glanced from me to Yetty with a soft look. "Yetty, when someone gives you something...?" he prompted gently.
  
  "Thank you," Yetty answered absently, preoccupied with turning the platypus over in her hands.
  
  Flinch sighed with a sort of wistful optimism. "Well done, Taylor," he congratulated me.
  
  "No problem," I said, inside and out. I uncrossed my legs and pushed myself up. "I"ll take a crack at fixing your stairs up too, and then I"m gonna head off."
  
  "Oh," the mother said, surprised. "Okay. What are you going to do now?"
  
  "The police probably want to ask me questions," I said, rolling my head on my shoulders. "After that-" I ran a hand over the pocket where I"d stashed Mr Shotgun"s car keys, "-I"m going to go and kick some ass."
  
  Yetty chose that moment to look up from her new toy. "What"s ass?" she said innocently.
  
  "Whoops!" Rotter said cheerfully as the parents shot me a dirty look.
  
  4.8
  Saturday 12th February, early hours
  
  Mr Shotgun"s car was a slightly rusty muscle car parked a few streets away. If you didn"t notice the subtle Black Sun symbol on the rear fender, I wouldn"t have guessed that a white supremacist had been driving it.
  
  The car was otherwise clean- no drugs, no weapons, no convenient notes on Empire contacts or locations, not even any stray cash. There was just a couple of metal CDs, a pair of cheap sunglasses, and a packet of mints. He had said he"d been held by heroes before- that implied a veteran"s experience.
  
  I still took the time to move it and park it about halfway between my lair and Stacey"s house, hiding the key inside the driver side wheel well with Stoneknapper"s power. I"d pick it up later and strip it down for parts.
  
  "For fuck"s sake, he"s not the priority anymore," Butcher snapped as I made my way back to Stacey"s. I was close to the edge of the nicer residential district now, but the buildings were still tall enough for me to jump from roof to roof for speed.
  
  Tactical was unmoved. "This wasn"t a good night, I"ll be the first to admit that-"
  
  "Easy for you to say, white boy," Anchorage sneered.
  
  Tactical hissed. "-but," he emphasised, "Coil is still an unknown quantity. We know the Empire"s capes, we know their trade. They"re mainly a threat because of numbers; Coil is the devil we don"t know. He"s probably some kind of Thinker-"
  
  "Oh, and of course the Thinker"s the biggest threat, la-di-fucking dah, what a surprise." Quarrel sneered at him. "You"re so fucking full of yourself."
  
  "We have no idea what his power is!" Tactical erupted. "All we know is that he"s got lots of heavily armed mercenaries on the payroll. That means he"s got serious cashflow and ambition."
  
  "Tac, I get what you"re saying," Tock said cautiously, "but we"re really not the people to decide this, y"know?"
  
  I mentally cleared my throat, and the Butchers subsided into an uneasy silence. I organised my thoughts while I leapt another gap, then slowed to a walk as I realised I was out of tall buildings.
  
  Tonight had shaken me to my core. This little walk had been a way to get some fresh air and shut the Butchers up. Instead, I"d been slapped in the face by the hidden current of violence buried in Brockton Bay.
  
  I"d grievously injured all five of the men, and I couldn"t bring myself to feel more than a sense of grim satisfaction. I"d left behind clues that a particularly sharp-eyed investigator might be able to interpret as signs of the Butcher, and there was a lot less concern for that than I had expected to feel.
  
  I"d scared the family almost as much as the intruders when I"d burst in, and that left an ache in my chest.
  
  I knew Brockton Bay was not a good city, but I hadn"t ever had the worst of it shoved in front of my eyes like that. I now had a memory of my own as violent as some of the Butchers.
  
  Tactical was right about my plan. But I couldn"t turn away from this.
  
  "What happened tonight was disturbing," I began, turning around to start sliding down a drainpipe. "I can"t allow the Empire to keep doing that shit, so we are going to step things up against them."
  
  "Fucking yeah!" Butcher bellowed. "Let"s start cracking skulls!"
  
  "However!" I waited for them to be quiet again before I resumed talking, "Tactical does have a point. We still don"t know how Coil"s managed to keep territory without any capes or visible powers of his own. We"re a pretty good example of how useful unseen powers can be.
  
  "So," I continued as my feet reached the ground, "We"ll divide things up. We were always going to have to be subtle against Coil, so we"ll make a lot of noise about taking the fight to the Empire. And maybe two-thirds of the time, that"s what we"ll really be doing, putting boots to asses.
  
  "The other third of the time, we"ll go stealthy, scope out his territory, maybe even use disposable personas like this," I indicated my bottle-green hands, "and once we"ve got the measure of him, we"ll hit him from an angle he"s not expecting. But our open fight against the Empire will be a smokescreen for our covert war against him. Okay?"
  
  There was some grumbling and muttering for a minute or so while I started stripping the glass off and dumping it into a recycling bin.
  
  "It works for me," Needler said eventually. "Should we throw in some attacks against the ABB for good measure?"
  
  I moulded the glass from one hand back into a bottle shape. "Maybe not," I admitted. "I"ll be dividing my time as it is. Besides, Lung and Oni Lee don"t sound like something I"m ready to handle just yet."
  
  "Then forge a new sword, and train your men," Muramasa said imperiously. "All empires fall in time."
  
  "Sweet mother of fuck, how do you take yourself so seriously?" Rotter asked. "Boggles the bloody mind."
  
  "He"s got the right idea though," Tock admitted. I nodded in agreement as I started jogging down the street. "We"ve got the flail, the air cannon, and one sword. We"re gonna need more shit if we"re going up against fifteen high-end motherfuckers."
  
  "Thirteen," Bearskin pointed out. "Purity"s out, Stormtiger"s still locked up. And I wouldn"t call Cricket or Alabaster high-end. Or Victor, if you split him from Othala and hit him at range."
  
  "There"s two ifs in that sentence, big guy," Vladimir pointed out. "Besides, the air cannon"s not too good at keeping people down. All that work for something heavier and less deadly than a shotgun."
  
  "Hey, it"s a perfectly good piece of equipment," Tock defended sulkily. "Even more considering how it"s not my usual style. I mean, it put Skidmark on his ass, right?"
  
  "True," I acknowledged as the houses passed us by. Tock Tick"s power had been very energetic for a while after I"d first put together the shock batons and the launcher. Building something inspired by a half-analysed power, that relied on non-solid projectiles and a good deal more electronics than usual, should have been an uphill struggle. Instead the designs had come to me relatively easily.
  
  I could almost imagine the power responding more readily in response to activity after a long lack of use, like an animal responding to a treat. Still, trying to anthropomorphise whatever the source of powers was seemed like a dumb idea.
  
  "Still, we"re probably going to see the lesser capes first, so we need to think of countermeasures. That"s Cricket, Alabaster, Victor, Othala, Rune, Crusader, and Fenja and/or Menja. Maybe Night and Fog too. Thoughts?"
  
  "Some better long range options," Quarrel suggested immediately. "Half their shit only works close up."
  
  Bearskin shuddered. "If you"re up against Night and Fog, you definitely want long range. Those two freak me the fuck out."
  
  "Eugh." Firecracker gagged at the images Bearskin brought up. "Yeah, that"s nasty. Maybe get some bigger booms- half these fuckers can take it, especially the twins."
  
  I pulled a face as I turned onto Stacey"s street. "I don"t know if I want to toss around explosives too much," I said.
  
  "The really tough guys won"t be killed by them," Nemean pointed out.
  
  Flinch spoke up next. "Make some heavy restraints. More of those cuffs that attach to walls. That way they won"t be able to run away after you catch them."
  
  "Ooh! How about you make some heavier stuff for the launcher?" Stoneknapper suggested. "Do some chain nets to really hold them down."
  
  I thought the suggestions over as I slowed to a walk next to Stacey"s house. It was a simple matter to hop the fence and go around the back, and bloodsight confirmed that everyone was still asleep.
  
  Stacey"s house didn"t have one of those convenient ivy planter frames going up the walls that all the teens in movies used to climb up and down, so I had to settle for a massive leap to catch the rim of the bathroom windowsill, then haul myself up by my fingertips.
  
  The window was locked, so I had to use Stoneknapper"s power to open a hole in the glass, then stick my hand through to unlatch it. Once I"d folded myself through, I shut and locked the window again, and reformed the glass pane. It seemed a little off in the middle, but after a minute of fiddling I just let it lie.
  
  Turning on the light revealed a problem I"d forgotten about. There were specks of blood on my sleeves, and grass stains on my jeans.
  
  "Seltzer water and lemon for blood," Vladimir offered. "Hydrogen peroxide, or white vinegar. Just not both together, that shit"s toxic."
  
  I opened the cabinet above the sink, and the very first thing my eyes landed on was a Tide pen.
  
  "Or that," he conceded. I grabbed the pen and started scrubbing at the bigger spots on the sleeves.
  
  It took a long while to get the stains out, and I scrubbed the jeans in the sink as best as I could. My watch said 5:03am when I decided it was good enough for government work and stepped out of the bathroom, crossing the hall to Stacey"s room.
  
  Neither of the girls stirred as I gingerly stepped over Frankie. They didn"t seem to have woken up in the night- although I was amused to see that Stacey had managed to wriggle around so much that her head was almost hanging off the side of the bed.
  
  "Okay, we"ve got time to kill," Firecracker pointed out as I slid back into my sleeping bag, "What"s there to read?"
  ---------------
  
  I laced my fingers together and stretched my arms up toward the ceiling until all my knuckles popped. Rolling my shoulders and leaning back further got a few satisfying pops out of my spine too.
  
  "Seriously?" Frankie asked tiredly. "Right in front of my cereal?"
  
  I met her gaze, then gave my neck a sharp twist to the side. Frankie flinched at the pop for a second, before slumping back down, elbows on the table.
  
  "Come on, Taylor, don"t be gross." Stacey didn"t even look up from pouring milk onto her Froot Loops.
  
  "Fine." I flopped into a chair and grabbed a bowl. "I meant to ask, can I borrow Strata for the weekend? I just got to a good part."
  
  "Just bring it back on Monday."
  
  "You"re unnatural; you know that, right?" Frankie shovelled another spoonful of cereal into her mouth. "S"um"er pah"ies ah fuh s"eep"ih eh."
  
  "Can you say that again? In English?" I asked.
  
  Frankie finished her mouthful. "Slumber parties are for staying up late and sleeping in. I don"t get how you can get up at 7 and be functional."
  
  I shrugged as I poured my own cereal. "Early rising runs in the family."
  
  "Lucky," Stacey says, giving me the side-eye.
  
  "We could"ve made pancakes," Anchorage whined as I added milk.
  
  "Yeah, and then you"d bitch about me washing up after," I pointed out. "Plus, raiding the fridge and making pancakes from scratch would be pushing things a bit."
  
  "Is that in a "rude guest" way, or a "suspiciously alert in the mornings" kind of way?" Vladimir asked.
  
  I took a bite of Froot Loops contemplatively. "I guess a bit of both."
  
  I carefully didn"t look up at the sound of shuffling footsteps as Stacey"s mom came into the kitchen, more fluffy pink bathrobe than woman. "Morning, girls," she said distractedly, preoccupied with something on her phone.
  
  "Morning, Mom."
  
  "Morning, Mrs Henderson."
  
  Mr Henderson came down a few minutes later in pyjamas. I had to bite down on my spoon to keep from giggling when Firecracker made a joke about the sun shining off his forehead.
  
  Blissfully unaware of the mockery, he wrapped his arms around his wife from behind her and peered over her shoulder at the phone screen. "Jesus," he breathed.
  
  The three of us looked up at his exclamation. "Dad?" Stacey asked.
  
  The Hendersons exchanged glances and a quick, hissed argument that was still loud enough for my hearing to catch most of; "-don"t want to scare them-", "-need to know-"; before Mrs Henderson looked down at her phone again and scrolled a bit.
  
  "There was a break-in last night," she said flatly, with a sort of deliberate calm that the Butchers recognised; used when trying to talk about something very disturbing without losing your composure. "At the Mitchells."
  
  "Shit," Butcher blurted.
  
  I pushed down Butcher, Anchorage and Bearskin the moment I recognised the surname, and forced myself to slowly put my spoon down. "Are they alright?" I asked, like I didn"t know the answer already; physically, yes; emotionally, no.
  
  "Some new hero was there," Mrs Henderson said, "Got there just in time, beat the guys senseless."
  
  "See? You did good, Taylor," Flinch said.
  
  "Kind of a lot for some burglars, isn"t it?" Frankie asked.
  
  Mrs Henderson shook her head. "They weren"t there to steal anything," she said, in that flat tone again. "It was an Empire attack."
  
  Frankie shrunk in on herself, even though it was a simple statement of fact. "Oh."
  
  "Dumbass," Quarrel said wearily.
  
  "She didn"t know," Nemean defended.
  
  Mr Henderson breathed out, too controlled to be a sigh, and pulled his wife a little closer. "Well, they dodged a bullet. Better than the alternative."
  
  "Is there anything about the hero?" Stacey asked tentatively. Mrs Henderson looked down at her phone again.
  
  "Something about covering herself in glass and shaping it. She made their daughter a little glass platypus after- well, everything."
  
  "Artsy, good with kids, beats up Nazis," Stacey counted the points off on her fingers. "Shame it"s not a guy."
  
  It took a moment for the meaning to sink into my head, and then I quickly stuffed another spoonful of cereal into my mouth before my head could explode.
  
  Firecracker and Rotter giggled incessantly at my discomfort- I shoved her down too and focused on not letting the blush creep up my face.
  
  "Sorry to bring the mood down," Mrs Henderson apologised, while I crushed the head of the spoon between my back teeth. "It"s just... It rattled me, I suppose."
  
  "It"s okay, Mom," Stacey said. "At least we know there"s another hero out there, right?"
  
  Flinch wordlessly nudged me at that. Even though Stacey couldn"t possibly know, I still felt a rush of warmth at her words.
  
  Mr Henderson cleared his throat. "Change of subject," he declared, glancing at me and Frankie. "Did you girls sort out getting picked up with your parents, or do you want me to drop you off?"
  
  "Dad"s coming to get me," I answered around my spoon, using Stoneknapper"s fizz to reshape it so it wouldn"t have teeth marks before I brought it out.
  
  "Grandma"s coming by, she said 11," Frankie chimed in. "She doesn"t usually get up early on weekends."
  
  "That"s fine."
  
  Breakfast dissolved into small talk while we finished our cereal, and the spectre of violence gradually faded from the room as normality reasserted itself.
  
  I reached down to gingerly pull up the Butchers I"d suppressed, with some profanity from Butcher that was more habit that actual anger.
  
  "So we"re still fucking up the Empire, right?" Anchorage asked. I spared a glance at the lingering tension in the Hendersons, their stance, the exhaustion in their eyes.
  
  "Oh, definitely."
  
  Interlude 4
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Saturday 12th February, The Trainyards
  
  "He"s been showing up since last Thursday," the old man said, wiping his hands with an oily rag. Rather than clean his hands, it just spread axle grease and engine oil all around in increasingly smeared patterns, but he seemed too nervous to notice.
  
  He glanced through the window of his little office hut, to the mounds of scrap metal that formed a horizon against the setting sun. The dying rays glinted off stacks of flattened cars, a few damaged motorbikes and scooters, and what looked like most of a truck cab with a hole in the hood, blobby streaks of metal around the edge like something hot had liquified the panel.
  
  "Guy just walks through the gates, grabs whatever out of the piles, walks off. Not every night, y"know, but enough to get used to it."
  
  Faultline nodded. "I understand."
  
  The junkyard man shook his head mournfully, then suddenly chucked the rag into a bin in the corner with surprising accuracy. "I tried to scare him off myself, y"know? Got a rifle out, made like I was gonna use it? He just grabbed the damn thing and-", he gestured with his hands, "-squished it.
  
  "An" when I called the cops, they just laughed. "cause it ain"t stealing if it"s junk, right? Even if it"s some steam-powered asshole big enough to leave footprints an inch deep, coming in an" tossing shit all over the place."
  
  Faultline nodded. "That does seem like a failing on their part."
  
  "Damn right." The man leaned back in his chair and rubbed his stubbly chin, not caring or noticing that he smeared yellowish grease and black oil there. "I hope you guys can do something, "cause I"m at the end of my damn rope."
  
  "We"ll try." Faultline got to her feet, the skirt of her dress rippling around her knees. She pulled out a few bills from one of many pockets and placed them on his desk, holding them there with two fingers. "Thank you for calling us. If you could give us some time alone with him to talk, we"d appreciate that."
  
  The man nodded cautiously. "Sure, I can do that."
  
  Faultline nodded and withdrew her hand, making her way to the door.
  
  She was halfway down the steps of his office hut when she heard his shout of gleeful surprise. He must have just checked the denominations on the bills.
  
  A little money always helped to move things smoothly. They might be here again some day.
  
  Newter hopped off the wall to the ground as she came down, so his feet touched the ground at the same time as hers. There was a contrast there- she wore steel-toed cowboy boots, tough and hard-wearing, yet free of tight straps or fastenings. Apparently they"d been made that way so that someone who fell out of the saddle would simply slip out of the boot instead of being dragged along by the stirrup. Faultline wore them for similar reasons.
  
  Newter just wore footwraps, matching the handwraps around his palms, leaving fingers and toes free. His only other equipment was a pair of loose basketball shorts and a messenger bag slung over his back.
  
  Of course, Newter had very different powers to her.
  
  "Anything we need to know, boss?" he asked, stretching his arms extravagantly, though perpendicular to her, so he wasn"t coming any closer. No need to risk accidents.
  
  "He"s come by here several times, so he might have built himself something new. Plus he"s not intimidated by guns, it seems."
  
  "He"s that tough?" Newter raised an eyebrow, hands on his hips.
  
  "Or that confident."
  
  Newter nodded. "Right. Pride before a fall, all that."
  
  "Maybe." Faultline started toward the other half of the team. "But we"re not trying to make him fall."
  
  Newter fell into step behind her. "I"ll just be my usual charming self then."
  
  Faultline fought back an amused smirk behind her mask.
  
  Gregor the Snail was standing at an opening to the maze of stacks, obscured by shadows. It was his habit to stand somewhere unobtrusive. For a while Faultline had thought he was self-conscious- trying to take up less space than his obese frame did by default, hidden inside an XXL sweatshirt. Maybe there was an element of that, but Gregor had worked as a bouncer before she"d recruited him, and he"d made a habit of standing out of sight, ready to move in, to intervene.
  
  Labyrinth stood in his shadow, hidden away in the hood of her green robe, distractedly picking at the maze patterns on the sleeve. The ground around her was sprouting little tufts of grass from sandy soil, nothing like the gravel of the rest of the lot. She looked up as Faultline and Newter approached though, with focused eyes. Today had been a good day for her so far- hopefully that would hold. They"d only decided this tonight because the intel had lined up with her state of mind.
  
  "He"s still in here somewhere," Faultline said without preamble. "I"ll take point. Gregor, you and Labyrinth follow a few turns behind me for backup. Newter, you go high. Remember, no aggressive moves unless I give the signal."
  
  "Got it," Newter said, already climbing a stack of cars, his hands and feet easily clinging to the metal. In seconds he was at the top, only visible by the end of his tail poking over the edge.
  
  "Understood," Gregor rumbled, deep voice made more intimidating by his vaguely Eastern Europe accent. He pulled his hands free of his pockets and rubbed one with the other, making a rasping sound as the hard growths rasped against his skin.
  
  Labyrinth nodded slowly, a few strands of platinum blonde hair falling out of her hood to frame her maze-mask. "Okay," she said eventually.
  
  "Are you still with us?" Faultline asked. "We can always come back."
  
  Labyrinth shook her head, a quicker response than before. There was a sudden rush of saltwater scent that quickly faded. "I"m here," she said. "He could be a new friend."
  
  Faultline felt a stirring of pride. Labyrinth was deeply afflicted with the enormity of her parahuman ability, and the ongoing search for some method to help her regulate her lucidity was so far fruitless. Seeing her visibly pull herself out of her little worlds was quite heartwarming to see.
  
  "Alright then. Let"s go."
  
  They made their way deeper into the stacks, passing through different piles of materials. Rusty bicycles, steel bedframes, bits of girder and scrapped air conditioner units.
  
  As they walked, Faultline checked through all her equipment again. She was carrying more than the other three members put together- upper arms, forearms and thighs all held belts to carry knives, lockpicks, climbing tools, sticks of chalk, a mirror, a magnifying glass, iron wire, and various pre-prepared hypodermic needles.
  
  The semiautomatic on her left hip was fully loaded, with a spare magazine in the holster. Just because one inexperienced man with a rifle hadn"t scared their target didn"t mean bullets wouldn"t come in handy, in the worst case scenario.
  
  For that matter, she"d occasionally made some creative use of the flare gun on her right hip. Even people who could bend steel and crush brick would be stymied by a sudden blinding light.
  
  The wide flowing sleeves and stylised dress hid all of it from view- and even if someone tried to grab at the fabric, the buckles fastening them would come undone, working on the same principle as the cowboy boots.
  
  Of course, that was all for the worst case scenario. In the best case scenario, all that she would need was diplomacy.
  
  A muffled crash brought their progress to a halt- Faultline held up a fist, then slowly crept to the corner and pulled the mirror from its place on her left bicep. A small handle was attached to the bottom with a stiff hinge; she extended the handle, adjusted the angle, and then carefully poked the mirror around the corner.
  
  The mirror"s surface showed a humanoid figure that looked like it was formed entirely out of rusty metal. Great pillars of legs led up to a thick torso, with a large tank on the back and the exhaust pipes of a truck poking over the shoulders. A kilt of license plates swung from his hips, like a scrapyard legionnaire. Oversized hands worked away at the end of thick arms as he pawed through the guts of a flatbed truck.
  
  That all matched the description of Trainwreck. By all accounts, he was a low-level supervillain who"d shown up a few weeks back and immediately engaged in various petty crimes.
  
  Despite going around in an eight foot tall suit of power armour, Trainwreck had managed to fly under the radar. Certainly, the other factions had been preoccupied with greater events.
  
  Faultline pulled the mirror back, taking a moment to glance at herself in it, and make sure her mask was on straight- a welder"s mask, with a stylised crack in place of a visor to see out of. Then she stuck the mirror back out again, quickly knelt down, and grabbed a large rusty bolt off the ground.
  
  Once she"d signalled Gregor and Labyrinth, and Newter had waved a salute from the other side of the path, she tossed the bolt across the way. It bounced off a girder with a clang like a bell.
  
  Trainwreck immediately spun around, surprisingly agile for his mass. Thick steam and thin black smoke burst from the exhaust pipes as he pulled himself out of the engine, shook some loose wires off his fingers, and settled into what looking like an amateur fighting stance.
  
  "Who"s there?" he bellowed. His face poked out of his armour, incongruously small compared to the rest of him, with round cheeks pockmarked with acne scars. His eyes and upper face were covered with a metal plate, and a greasy ponytail poked out of the top. His teeth were surprisingly clean, even bared in a harsh snarl as they were.
  
  Faultline considered as she pulled the mirror back, folded it up and slipped it back into its strap. Trainwreck"s face didn"t really give any further weight to her hypothesis, but it didn"t disprove it yet either.
  
  Regardless, it was time to begin. She stuck an arm around the corner and quickly waved her hand. "I"m not here to fight," she called clearly. "I just want to talk to you."
  
  There was a small pause. "No tricks," Trainwreck finally called back.
  
  "No tricks." Faultline slowly stepped around the corner, keeping her hands in plain view, palms open in front of her. Ten feet of distance wouldn"t be enough to seem non-threatening in this case.
  
  Trainwreck looked her up and down for a second, before his mouth went from a snarl to a downturned frown. Not much, but not outright hostile now.
  
  "Talk," he said brusquely, keeping his massive fists up.
  
  Faultline took one slow step forward. "My name is Faultline. I"m the leader of a team of mercenaries based in this city. Possibly you"ve heard of us."
  
  "Nope."
  
  Faultline shrugged. "That"s fine. But we heard about someone moving around in the Trainyards, and we decided to come and check it out."
  
  Trainwreck immediately looked up at the tops of the stacks. "Where"s the rest of them?" he demanded.
  
  Faultline privately gave him a point for picking up on that. On the other hand, he"d taken his eyes off the person in front of him in search of someone who might not be present.
  
  He wouldn"t notice Newter anyway. The younger boy was at the top of the stack to Faultline"s left, Trainwreck"s right, and he"d flattened himself against the surface when Faultline had signalled.
  
  "The rest of the group is waiting some distance away. We didn"t want to seem threatening," Faultline explained.
  
  Trainwreck returned his gaze to her. "So if you"re not here to fight, then why?"
  
  "We came to see if you would like to join us."
  
  Trainwreck"s fists twitched, and Faultline had to strangle the flinch before it could show itself. Judging from the slack on Trainwreck"s jaw, the movement was one of surprise anyway.
  
  "What do you guys do?" he asked after a moment.
  
  "We"re freelance," Faultline said steadily, lowering her hands slightly. "We take contracts from various people, usually villains. Sometimes it"s retrieving stolen goods, sometimes it"s gathering information. Sometimes we"re paid to fight- other villains, sometimes heroes.
  
  "We charge well for our services and split the money between us, and we avoid contracts that would require killing or extensive damage. It"s a well-paid occupation, with plenty of travel. Perhaps you"d be interested."
  
  Trainwreck"s fists drooped toward the ground. One side of his jaw worked up and down, like he was chewing on his cheek.
  
  "This seems too good to be true," he said eventually. "There"s gotta be a catch. Like I can"t leave once I join."
  
  "You"d be free to leave if you changed your mind," Faultline said swiftly. "Although we do require two weeks" notice if possible."
  
  Trainwreck gave her a long look. She had the impression that he was glaring at her behind the metal plate protecting his upper face.
  
  Then he took two massive steps forward, and was suddenly looming over Faultline, blocking out the sun. This close, she could hear the faint thrumming of whatever engine or motor powered his armour.
  
  "And what if you change your minds?" he growled.
  
  Faultline kept her hands very still. If he did try anything, she could duck between his legs, get behind him, sever a few pieces of his armour, or even entire limbs, and call to the boys for backup. But she still wanted to try and make this work.
  
  "I"m not sure what you mean." Her voice was perfectly even, she knew that. She"d kept her nerve in far worse situations than this, with more dangerous people. Besides, Trainwreck was hilariously vulnerable to her.
  
  Trainwreck"s lip curled, showing those small white teeth again. "How do I know," he said, voice dripping with disdain, "that you"re not going to change your mind about recruiting me?"
  
  "Why do you think we might change our minds about you?"
  
  Trainwreck huffed through his nose. "People don"t like to see a freak. Unless it"s to laugh at."
  
  Faultline kept the satisfaction down for the moment. It wouldn"t do to seem smug right now.
  
  "If you"ll give me a second, I"ll call one of my team members over here. Then you can see that there won"t be a problem."
  
  Trainwreck said nothing for a moment. This close, she could just make out small eyes behind the mask, shadowed by the light behind him.
  
  "Fine," he said abruptly, stepping back again, fists raised. "Don"t try anything."
  
  Faultline nodded and turned her head slightly. "Gregor," she called clearly, "could you come over here? Potential recruit wants to meet you."
  
  Gregor waited a moment to start walking toward the corner of the junction, to let Trainwreck think he"d been further away. He came around the corner slowly, with his hands raised. As he came to stand next to Faultline, he raised them to his hood and drew it back.
  
  Gregor"s head was devoid of all hair, even eyebrows or eyelashes. His skin was pale as a ghost, and the spectral comparison only furthered with its translucency- literally; the shadow of Gregor"s skull was visible beneath his face, where it wasn"t obscured by the small, hard growths scattered across his skin, each with a distinct spiral pattern to them, like a snail shell.
  
  Trainwreck"s fists flopped to his sides with a faint clang. The exposed half of his face clearly showed he was utterly poleaxed.
  
  "Are you similarly... peculiar, in appearance?" Gregor asked, in his deep, precise tones.
  
  Trainwreck nodded jerkily. "Yeah. Yeah, I don"t... I heard there were others, but..."
  
  "It is one thing to hear, and another to see. I understand."
  
  Trainwreck tore his gaze from Gregor to look at Faultline. "Is the whole team like- like me and him?"
  
  "No," Faultline answered, "but we have one more member with a similar condition, and one with her own issues." She waited a moment to let that sink in. "Would you like to meet them?"
  
  "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
  
  "Labyrinth? Could you come here?"
  
  Labyrinth shuffled around the corner, faster than Gregor had. She stopped on Faultline"s other side, and the ground under her feet quickly began to transform, from oil-stained gravel to coastline grass, speckled with tiny purple flowers. She waved a hand cheerfully, sending a waft of fresh seaside smell across.
  
  That was another encouraging sign. Faultline had learned to recognise some of the pocket worlds that Labyrinth accessed, and the little flowers were something she often came back to when she was feeling particularly upbeat. There was also a massive temple she"d learned to aim herself at, but that was more a case of hard-won triumph.
  
  Much better than her worst days though, when she got lost in her uncountable pocket worlds and bad memories. Nobody liked it when Labyrinth remembered the asylum and brought it into reality.
  
  Trainwreck glanced down at the flowers and sand for a moment. "Who"s the last guy?" he asked finally.
  
  Faultline cupped a hand to her mouth and shouted behind her. "Newter!"
  
  Newter understood her meaning. Without making any noise she could hear, he slipped from his perch to Trainwreck"s right and climbed around to come over the wall behind Faultline in an excellent bit of misdirection.
  
  He even made a show of it, leaping off the top of the fall in a front flip to land on all fours, with his tail arched over himself so the tip dangled in front of his face. When he straightened up, he slung the tail over his shoulder, crossing over the strap of his bag to point to the symbol just above his heart- like a stylised U, or the Greek Omega symbol.
  
  "Evening," Newter said pleasantly, lacing his fingers together and stretching his arms out. Muscles moved beneath traffic-cone orange skin as he rolled his shoulders and strolled over to stand beside Labyrinth, idly scrubbing a hand through his blonde hair.
  
  Trainwreck looked a little awed to see all four of them lined up together. After a second, his gaze returned to Newter, focused on his chest.
  
  "You guys both got tattoos like that?" he asked, nodding from Newter to Gregor.
  
  "Yes." Gregor unzipped his sweatshirt and shrugged out of one arm, then rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to show the tattoo on his arm; the same symbol as on Newter.
  
  "Do you have one as well?" Faultline asked, trying for a gentle tone.
  
  Trainwreck shrugged, with a faint rasp of metal as his massive shoulders rose and fell. "Yeah. Can"t really show it though."
  
  "Right, because of the armour," Newter nodded.
  
  Trainwreck cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Yeah, that too."
  
  There was a long moment where nobody said anything, until Newter"s rectangular pupils suddenly blew wide in realisation. "Wait," he said, "wait, wait, wait. Dude, is yours on your-?"
  
  "Newter," Faultline said warningly.
  
  "Right, right." Newter stuck his hands in his pockets, but a smirk still played around his lips.
  
  "The polite term for people like us is "Case 53"," Gregor explained as he slipped his sweatshirt back on. "We all share common ground- a mark of this symbol, and retrograde amnesia; a total lack of prior memory, in simple terms. Most of us are also noticeably different from other powered humans." He gestured to his face without expression.
  
  Trainwreck pulled a face. "And nobody knows what happened to us? Where we come from, or why?"
  
  "One of the great mysteries of the age," Faultline admitted, spreading her hands. "However," she added, "last year, Gregor and I struck a deal- a portion of his earnings, in exchange for using them to look for answers. We"ve only found rumours and ghost stories so far, but there seems to be a pattern forming."
  
  Trainwreck put his oversized hands on his hips. Even with his enormous suit of armour, they were disproportionate to the rest of him.
  
  "And if I join you, take the same deal, we"ll maybe find some answers?"
  
  "I certainly intend to," Faultline agreed.
  
  "We could probably get a hell of a lot more done with you on our team, big guy," Newter added. "Bigger jobs equals more money, equals more resources, equals faster answers."
  
  Trainwreck raised one hand to his jaw and rubbed a metal finger the size of a salami along the stubble growing there. He turned away for a moment and paced back to the flatbed truck, resting his hands on the hood, head bowed in thought.
  
  Faultline kept her mouth shut, and gestured quickly when Newter looked like he was about to talk. Trainwreck seemed like he could be highly effective in the right place, but from what little she could glean of his personality, he would need a light touch until she"d earned his respect. For now, best to let him think.
  
  Abruptly, Trainwreck straightened up, turned, and walked back to them, stopping so he wasn"t looming into Faultline"s personal space again. "Okay," he said, "I"m in. But," he held up a hand, "I"m gonna need some things. Mostly for the suit. Tools, metal, stuff like that."
  
  "We have connections with a Tinker group called Toybox, and the people that supply them. We can get you what you need."
  
  "Right." Trainwreck hesitated. "I"m gonna need some personal stuff as well. For where I"m staying. Room for the suit."
  
  "We can find a space for you to store the armour-"
  
  Trainwreck was already shaking his head. "No. No, I mean I need enough room to move around in the suit. I..." he swallowed, "I need the suit to move around, I mean."
  
  Gregor glanced at Faultline. She very carefully did not return it. Now was not the time to show any reaction to Trainwreck"s condition.
  
  Once again, Newter plunged right into awkward territory-
  
  "I don"t get it," he said artlessly.
  
  Trainwreck glared at him. "I don"t have regular limbs, asshole!"
  
  -and stepped on a conversational landmine.
  
  Newter"s orange skin blanched. "Oh. Shit, man, I"m sorry-"
  
  "Whatever," Trainwreck cut him off, turning to Faultline. "Can you do that?" he demanded.
  
  "We can figure out accommodations," Faultline said simply. "For now, would you like to come back to our base? We"ve got a truck waiting just outside the gate."
  
  "Better be a big one," Trainwreck grumbled.
  
  Faultline started toward the entrance, Newter and Gregor following behind her, Labyrinth, trotting to catch up and walk beside her. The seaside smell faded quickly.
  
  A second later, Trainwreck began to follow them, with surprisingly quiet footsteps that nonetheless reverberated through the ground.
  
  As they reached the end of the stacks, Trainwreck spoke up. "If I"d been less friendly, and we"d had a fight," he asked in a conspicuously casual tone, "what was your plan for handling me? Just out of curiosity."
  
  Faultline glanced at him- and then quickly strode over to a minivan up on bricks. The glass had been removed, the seats had been pried out, the engine, wiring and lights were missing. Just an empty metal shell.
  
  Perfect for a demonstration.
  
  Faultline rested the tip of one finger against the edge of the roof, felt her power magnifying around the point of contact.
  
  Her power worked best with multiple points of contact. Fingers, toes, and the tip of her nose on one memorable occasion. But to really sell the impression, one finger would do.
  
  She swiped the fingertip down along the body of the car, bending at the waist to reach to the bottom. Pushing hard on her power let it extend several feet inside an object, drawing a line right through the car.
  
  A fissure appeared across the car, from side to side, with a cloud of metal dust and filings drifting out of the gap. The two halves toppled into each other, unbalanced, and then collapsed to the ground in a thunderous clatter.
  
  When she turned back, the crew had a variety of expressions. Gregor was putting his hood back up with a quick nod. Labyrinth was inscrutable behind her mask, but the way she bounced on the balls of her feet excitedly said enough. Newter just rolled his eyes with a smirk.
  
  Trainwreck slowly closed his jaw. "Damn," he managed.
  
  Faultline headed for the gates without another word.
  
  As she fished in her pocket for the key to the truck, the rest of the crew caught up to her. "Uh, this is kinda awkward," Trainwreck admitted, "but I don"t think I actually said my name."
  
  "Trainwreck, right?" Faultline asked, opening the driver"s door and sliding in. She shut it after her, buckled herself in, then looked out the window at Trainwreck"s surprised expression.
  
  "I do my research," she explained, starting the engine.
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  And with this chapter, I've now caught up to my main posting!
  
  Faultline is a very interesting character to me- her power is fairly weak by Worm standards, but preparation and sheer competence makes it go a long way.
  
  Trainwreck is even more so because of how little he's explored in canon- he's the only Case 53 Tinker ever mentioned, and his mutations put him in a unique position. His face is perfectly human, but he doesn't have limbs in the conventional sense, which means it is both much easier and much more difficult for him to seem baseline human.
  
  Lastly, on SpaceBattles, a wonderful person by the name of Metaphorical Grapevine created this awesome bit of art!
  https://forums.spacebattles. c o m/threads/here-comes-the-new-boss-nothing-like-the-old-boss-worm-au.853195/post-76312781
  
  5.1
  Chapter Notes
  
  So this will be the first chapter I've posted on Spacebattles and AO3 on the same day. Hurrah for synchronicity!
  
  Sunday 13th February, The Boat Graveyard
  
  
  
  "Uuuuuh... Okay, I got one, I got one. Tic-Tacs have only one and a half calories."
  
  I briefly glanced from the road to Spitfire, raising an eyebrow. "Really? Why, that"s fascinating." I cranked the eyebrow a little higher.
  
  Spitfire snickered helplessly and drummed her hands on her lap, flopping back into the passenger seat again.
  
  "She"s easily entertained," Needler said derisively.
  
  Firecracker blew a raspberry. "Ah, screw off, Stitch Bitch. It"s funny."
  
  I checked the streets we were passing, then turned onto the road I"d arranged to meet Konnigit at.
  
  Well, not exactly the road itself. A stretch of beach sandwiched between two ships that were each several times larger than my house.
  
  "Breaks yer fuckin heart, eh?" Rotter sighed as the rusted hulks loomed larger and larger on the horizon.
  
  The Teeth hadn"t been around for the collapse of Brockton Bay"s shipping industry, already scrambling to rebuild in Boston after the Nine had decimated them. I didn"t have any memories from them about the riots of the dockworkers, or the deliberate sinking of an entire container ship.
  
  Still, there were 47 ships, some bigger than the skyscrapers downtown, and all of them were rusted derelicts- at least half had taken on water by now.
  
  It was a massive reminder that the Bay was not the same city they"d left.
  
  I stopped us at the point where the road dipped down to the sand and parked the chariot. Spitfire squinted through the windscreen.
  
  "Wait," she asked incredulously, "is that him?"
  
  Sure enough, Konnigit was standing on the sand, idly swinging what looked like half a tree trunk in his hands as if it were a baseball bat, leaves, branches and most of the bark peeled off. When I opened my door and whistled, he looked up, then started lumbering toward us. His feet sank inches into the sand with every step, but it didn"t seem to hinder him at all.
  
  In the daylight, it was easier to see how crude his armour was. Rusty in places, dented and scraped, lots of asymmetry. Flattened barrels, bits of car, lengths of chain.
  
  "God, it looks horrific," Stoneknapper said. "You"d better give this kid the full treatment, because I can"t stand to look at him."
  
  "First Spitfire, now him? When the fuck did we turn into Emergency Makeover?" Anchorage asked.
  
  By contrast, Spitfire was in a fresh extra costume Parian had made at commission price, while shyly talking about some of the new business she"d been enjoying thanks to word of mouth from the Dallon sisters and their upper-crust social circle. The fabric was as bright orange as the first, but a little more finely woven, and the flame patterns were a little more elaborate.
  
  I"d upgraded her extinguisher frame as well- a flexible column now ran down the inside of the back, moulded over her spine to held provide extra lifting power, and the forearm sections could now fold out of the way until needed.
  
  I was looking my best as well- my armour was fully cleaned and polished, the stripes down my arms were re-touched, and so was the amphora symbol on my breastplate.
  
  The biggest change was the defensive modification I"d been working on. I shrugged my shoulders once I was clear of the chariot, and the wide flexible reel along my shoulders whirred softly as it unfurled a five-by-two foot rectangle of thick blue fabric that brushed the ground as I moved. The amphora symbol was in the centre of it as well.
  
  Of course, I could admit, even with the steel wire and cable innards, and the locking mechanism that could stiffen the cape into a rigid shield, some part of me was still thrilled at getting to wear an actual cape like Alexandria or Rime.
  
  "An actual fucking cape," Butcher groused. "God, you"re pathetic. We"re not some little kid playing dress-up, for fuck"s sake."
  
  "Shut up, Butcher," Flinch retorted, "Nobody asked you."
  
  I shut the door behind me and nodded as Konnigit came up the ramp. "Good to see you again, Konnigit. This is Spitfire," I gestured across to her side, then realised she was blatantly looking him up and down with an unimpressed look.
  
  "Nice suit," she said unconvincingly.
  
  Konnigit"s shoulders slumped a little, with a faint scraping noise. "Yeah, yeah, get it all out of your system," he grumbled in that metallic, echoing voice. "Not like the rest of us can have a Tinker friend building stuff for us. Cool cape by the way," he added a second later.
  
  "And you didn"t really have a costume yourself until I helped you," I pointed out to Spitfire, raising an eyebrow again.
  
  Spitfire smiled a little, then sighed. "Fine, whatever." She threw her hands up. "Sorry. Me Spitfire, you Konnigit. How-de-doo."
  
  "I"m actually thinking about changing the name," Konnigit admitted, absently running one palm down the length of the club in a way that scraped little pieces off it. "Kinda hoped you ladies could help me with that."
  
  "Handlin" his wood," Rotter snickered. I was jaded enough I only shoved him a little bit.
  
  "So he"s not a total moron," Quarrel allowed.
  
  Bearskin shrugged. "Depends on what he picks next."
  
  "Well, before that, I think we should try testing your power a bit," I said, opening the gear hatch at the back of the chariot. "I brought some stuff that could figure out what you can really do. You might find some neat trick you"ll want to use a lot, and then you might want a name that reflects that."
  
  I pulled out a few containers filled with ball bearings of assorted metals- iron, tin, copper, aluminium, and steel. Lengths of wire on reels, a few baggies of metal powders, and one large bag that I set on the ground next to the back tyres.
  
  "First, mind if I take a closer look?" I asked, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
  
  Konnigit shrugged, lifting his arms to shoulder level with another scraping noise. I stepped in close and began circling around him, occasionally patting parts of the armour to casual get a feel of the structure through Stoneknapper"s fizz.
  
  Through that lens, his armour was kind of a mess. So many bits of different metals, all crushed and compacted into place around each other in such a way that the joints were more like fault lines in compacted rock.
  
  Mostly it was iron and steel, but I could feel copper wiring in the hands and fingers, wrapping around and through the palms and those crushed-can fingers. As I"d suspected.
  
  "Maybe the ductility of copper makes it better suited for transmitting his power through, for fine control? It could be acting like a nervous system," Tock Tick reasoned.
  
  I tapped against his side as I finished my circle. "Do you get sensory feedback when I do that?"
  
  Konnigit shrugged yet again. "I mean, I can tell it"s there through my power, but I can"t really "feel" it, y"know?"
  
  I rapped his leg with my knuckles, then swung the back of my hand into his "stomach". "Still nothing?"
  
  "Not a damn thing. Some guy got me with a shotgun once, and I felt my armour shake from it, plus my ears hurt, but no pain."
  
  "So he can take a shotgun at least," Nemean approved.
  
  I hummed agreement. "He might be even better once we"ve taken a crack at him."
  
  "Okay. Just going to take a sample." I produced a small scraper from a tool compartment on my belt and placed the sharp hook of it against part of the car chassis that made up the frame of his torso. Carving a bit off turned out to be a lot harder than it should have. Probably his power was reinforcing it.
  
  Spitfire leant against the hood of the chariot and whistled tunelessly while I struggled to shave a sliver off and tip it into a sample bottle. All of a sudden, she straightened up and snapped her fingers.
  
  "Hey Elpis, I got one," she said triumphantly. "You know platypuses, right? Well, did you know the males have big poison spurs on their back feet?"
  
  Several of the Butchers had already heard that, but I made a point of raising both my eyebrows in mock astonishment. "Wow. Those little buggers are full of surprises."
  
  Konnigit shrugged. "Think I heard that- wait a second." He leaned down, folding himself almost in half to look me in the face. "When did you get eyebrows?" he asked incredulously, staring at the flexible strips of metal over the eyeholes of my helmet, that moved to match my eyebrows under the mask.
  
  I raised one eyebrow, then the other. Dropped them, raised them, bounced them around, then rolled them like a two-man Mexican wave.
  
  Rotter was killing himself laughing. "Now he sees it! Now he sees it! Hahahahaaa!"
  
  "This is childish," Tactical grunted. "There"s no reason for us to have these-"
  
  "Tac, we all know you"re just sulking because we got the idea from Accord. Quit grumbling," Vladimir snapped.
  
  Accord. One of the heavyweight players of Boston, ever since the Boston Games in 2007. A lot of the current powers had established themselves then- Blastgerm in particular with dozens of fake capes and a one-off mega-monster. Dark Society, The Four, Morning Glory.
  
  Accord had been on a team called Clockwork Dogs, no reputation to speak of, but he"d claimed territory and held it, kept things quiet and orderly even while he devised ways to generate ridiculous amounts of money, or have people die by intricate deathtraps.
  
  In a way, he was the polar opposite of Butcher. Where most had been physically imposing, armed and armoured, strewn with bones and blades, Accord was barely five feet, hair slicked back constantly, and always dressed in a white three piece suit. He had his enforcers, his Ambassadors, dress similarly, though the women wore extravagant dresses. The only signs that Accord wasn"t just some eccentric business man who hadn"t drunk enough milk as a child was his cane, artfully concealing a folding sword blade, and his elaborate wood and silver mask, so intricate that the individual pieces moved with his expression- frowns, smiles, and of course, raised eyebrows.
  
  I bounced mine once more. "Like them? I thought they"d make me more expressive, approachable."
  
  Konnigit stared at me for a long moment, then slowly started giggling hysterically, stumbling over to the chariot and Spitfire. Pointing a finger at me, he sputtered "She"s got eyebrows!"
  
  "I know, right?" Spitfire answered gleefully.
  
  I cleared my throat. "Glad you two are enjoying this, but we"ve got work to do." I hefted a bag of steel ball bearings. "Come on big guy, let"s see what we"re working with."
  
  The "hand" turned at the wrist, clenched its fingers with a faint rattle, opened them again.
  
  I tapped a few areas where the ball bearings had been crushed together to better conform to overall shape. "So your power compresses metal into a roughly human silhouette, and more mass gives you more power." I prodded a length of cable that was wound through and around like connective tissue. "And flexible metal responds better, at the expense of power."
  
  "Yeah, that"s why I packed on the weight," Konnigit said, still flexing his test hand. "I mean, I could just have enough to cover myself, but I can do more like this."
  
  "Sort of a Changer power," Stoneknapper said contemplatively. "Wonder what the limits are."
  
  "How far can you change it?" I asked, poking the hand with my pen. "Can you sprout spikes, form shields? Maybe form a whole new set of limbs?"
  
  "Extra arms was the first thing I tried. Doesn"t work- I have to be person-shaped. I can make myself taller or shorter though."
  
  "So what about stretching your arms and legs out?" Spitfire suggested from the hood of the chariot. She"d gradually gone from leaning to sitting to sunbathing as the tests had gone on, although there wasn"t much sunlight on a February morning.
  
  "Only if I make everything else bigger too, add more mass."
  
  "What if you hollow yourself out?" I asked. "Take some mass from your inner layers, shift it all into a hollow shell. Same mass, more size."
  
  "And less thickness," Konnigit pointed out. Still, there was a thoughtful tone to his voice. He took a step back and went still for a second. Parts of his armour shuffled and moved over each other as he ballooned out, torso inflating into a barrel chest, swiftly followed by the legs doubling in thickness and gaining an extra half of their original length. The arms were last, and got similar proportions, even the ball-bearing hand. He must have stood three feet taller.
  
  "Looks like the Michelin man," Firecracker said.
  
  "Imagine the sight of him in battle," Muramasa said. "The fools would run screaming."
  
  I rapped my knuckles against his front with a hollow knocking. "So you can do that."
  
  "Doesn"t feel useful," Konnigit said, more echo to his voice. "Not unless I suddenly need to reach a bit higher."
  
  "Try moving around a bit," I suggested.
  
  Konnigit obediently walked up and down a few steps, covering more ground in one step than three at his old size. The club in his other hand looked more like a wooden spoon compared to the size of him.
  
  "Do you feel any stronger? More coordinated?"
  
  "It"s about the same. It does feel less- clumped up though."
  
  "We can do some more with that later. Change back for now- I think it"s time for a talk."
  
  Konnigit began collapsing back into himself again, while Spitfire hauled herself up, holding her arms out in front of herself. "I live," she said in an overly deep voice.
  
  "Okay, Frankenspit," I said. "Just remember- fire bad."
  
  Once both were facing me and paying attention, I organised my thoughts and started.
  
  "I"m going after E88. Not just like I did with the Merchants- those guys were easy to handle. Empire guys won"t talk as easily, they"ll know how to fight, and they won"t be halfway stoned at any given time.
  
  "And that"s not counting their capes. Every last one is better than any of the Merchant"s capes. I"m going to have to upgrade my gear, give you guys upgrades, and train you."
  
  "Fuck yeah," Anchorage cooed. "Get a whole squad of itty-bitty Nazi killers."
  
  I took a deep breath for the next part.
  
  "I"m also going to be working more with the other heroes. Information sharing, trading resources, combined strikes. I can"t handle everything on my own, so I"m not going to."
  
  I paused that to let that sink in. Flinch took the chance to speak up. "You"re doing well," he praised warmly. "I did a lot more when I teamed up than when I was solo."
  
  "Thanks Flinch," I said quietly, with feeling. I tried sending the impression of a hug at him. The rush of warmth from him seemed to confirm it.
  
  "Where do we come in?" Spitfire asked quietly.
  
  I turned to her. "Not much. Maybe more when you"ve got a bit stronger, but for now, I"ll pull you in when I"ve got a proper target, like the Merchant party. Ideally you"d hang back, provide support while I take care of the Empire forces, then come in to help mop up. Especially if there"s things like drug shipments that your power can destroy."
  
  Spitfire drummed her fingers on her knees for a second, then nodded. "Okay. That works for me."
  
  "Thanks. As for you, Konnigit," I looked left and up to his crushed-metal mask, "I could use you in the thick of it. After some training. Fighting capes is a whole other ball game."
  
  "I reckon I"m a fast learner," Konnigit said, slapping the club into his ball-bearing hand with a rattling thump.
  
  "Arrogant," Needler sniffed.
  
  "Maybe. But a little hands-on experience is always better," I pointed out, heading around to the back of the chariot and opening the other equipment hatch. "So, I was thinking a sparring match." I pulled out the single-headed battle-axe I"d stashed there and cocked an eyebrow.
  
  "Oh, hell yes."
  
  Bearskin"s laugh was loud and lusty. Of all the Butchers, he"d favoured axes the most. "Let"s do this," he growled happily.
  
  "We"ll do this on the sand," I explained, shouldering the axe. "Five seconds pinned or first to call uncle, and try to avoid drawing blood. Sound good?"
  
  "Yup." Konnigit slapped the club into his hand again.
  
  "Spitfire? Mind refereeing for us?"
  
  Spitfire pushed herself so she slid off the hood to the ground. "Okay."
  
  Konnigit"s feet sank heavily into the sand again; the re-moulded tyre rubber I used for soles left marks as distinct as an autograph. As I walked, I flicked my jaw up, bringing the jaw guard up to fold out over my mouth and click into place. The eyebrows folded down and recessed into the helmet, and a visor of tempered glass set in a steel frame slotted down over my eyeholes, attaching to the jaw guard to seal my helmet entirely.
  
  When we were ten feet apart, with another five feet between our backs and the hulls of the ships, me with the axe held low, Konnigit with the club in a batter"s stance, Spitfire glanced from me to him and raised her voice.
  
  "Okay, so, go on three? Ready?" When we both nodded, she started counting. The Butchers were almost rattling around inside my head, so ready for this fight- a fresh new cape who hadn"t yet discovered their own tricks.
  
  "One- Two- Three!"
  
  I exploded forward, holding the axe just under the head for ease as I ran. Konnigit came to meet me with lumbering steps, changing his grip to swing from low to high.
  
  "Move," Tactical said needlessly. I spun out of the way of the swipe, cape flaring out behind me as I let the axe handle slid through my grip until I held it by the end, so I could bury it in Konnigit"s knee.
  
  With bloodsight, I knew Konnigit"s real body was safely curled up inside the chest cavity, suspended by whatever power let him control the metal. So I felt no guilt about yanking the trigger on the axe.
  
  Different weapon shapes made for different effects. The resonance-cutter tech required thinner blades like knives, something that could vibrate at the right frequency- even swords were a stretch. The retractable edges of my swords had actually helped with that- much easier to channel the vibrations through those fine strips of metal.
  
  However, while I couldn"t use the resonance to increase the axe"s cutting power, I could adjust it so that, when I planted the axe in something and activated it, the resulting vibration would ripple out from the edges of the blade.
  
  The cut I"d made cracked wider and peeled open like a flower, bits of metal vibrating and shaking themselves free as the entire leg shook. I yanked the axe free, the blade still humming, and let go off the trigger as Konnigit stumbled.
  
  "Oh, that"s fantastic," Tock Tick said admiringly.
  
  To give Konnigit credit, he didn"t slow for long. The metal quickly bent back into place, strips curling around each other like stitches. He straightened up again and lifted the club.
  
  I came in slowly this time, almost walking, watching his blood silhouette. He didn"t need to move his body to move his metal, but I was looking for some tell.
  
  There- his shoulders twitched as the bat swung, in tune with the dull flare of danger sense. I hopped back, then forward as the swing went past, using both hands on the axe to slam the handle against the bat, pinning it against his body while the axe head slowly bit into his right shoulder.
  
  "Don"t forget about his left," Anchorage warned. Sure enough, Konnigit"s left arm was coming around to try and grasp at me. I disengaged again, ducked his next wild swing, then jabbed him in the chest with the head of the axe.
  
  It was like poking a boulder- no reaction. Konnigit just grabbed at the axe, forcing me to pull back before he could get a grip, then bringing the axe up to parry his next few swipes. On the third one I managed to angle it to shave a chunk off the side of his club.
  
  "Enough pageantry," Muramasa stated. "Finish this."
  
  At the next swing, I brought the axe up and around, burying the edge into the club. Pumping the trigger cracked and splintered the club up and down its length; then I twisted the axe in my hands, and the club broke into two ragged-ended pieces and a cloud of splinters.
  
  Konnigit regarded his broken weapon for a second, then tossed it aside and came at me with swings of his massive arms. I circled to the left, putting my back to Spitfire, before swinging the axe like a golf club, pumping the trigger so the vibration sent a huge cloud of sand spraying at Konnigit.
  
  As he staggered back, hands over the eyeholes of his helmet, I rolled my shoulders to detach my cape, whipping it about like a matador before flipping the control strip on top into my hand. I twisted the timer dial, then hit a switch and ran forward, whipping the cape so it wrapped around his head and hands. I had enough time to tuck the ends under his hands before the timer ran out.
  
  Konnigit immediately started tried to pull his hands away from his face, but the cable weave had locked into place, turning rigid, and he didn"t have the leverage to tear it.
  
  Meanwhile, I had the time to line up the axe, pump the trigger, and slam it into his shoulder this time. The cut went deep, widened by the vibrations, but began closing as soon as I pulled the axe out.
  
  I circled around to behind him and swung again, cleaving through it from the other side. Konnigit"s entire arm detached, slipping out of the cape to hit the sand.
  
  I kicked the collection of scrap and rebar away, noting how it was already coming undone without his power, and pulled the cape off him.
  
  "Want to call it there?"
  
  Konnigit came out swinging with his left, flaring danger sense. I ducked the punch and dragged the axe along his side, making a shallow cut. He spun back with a yell, making a clumsy kick at me.
  
  I backstepped, giving ground to his punches, watching distractedly as spare scrap moved from his body to his shoulder, slowly forming a new arm. It was halfway to the elbow when Konnigit overextended on a haymaker and left himself wide open.
  
  The axe slammed into the side of his knee, exploding the metal away. I yanked it out immediately, ducked his return swing, tossed my cape in his face, then spun on the ball of my foot to hammer the axe into the other side of the knee.
  
  The two cuts met in the middle, severing his leg completely. Before he could try to reattach it, I dropkicked him in the chest, sending him toppling back onto the sand.
  
  When Konnigit finally pulled the cape off his face, he was greeted by the sight of me, holding the axe to the base of his helmet.
  
  "Enough?" I asked again.
  
  Konnigit hesitated for a long moment, then let his remaining arm drop.
  
  "Match goes to Elpis," Spitfire called unnecessarily.
  
  "Good fight," Nemean grunted.
  
  "C"mon, let me help you up." It took a lot of hauling before we could get Konnigit back up, though it got easier once I fit his leg to the stump and let him reattach it.
  
  "Can"t believe I lost so fast," Konnigit grumbled.
  
  "Don"t be too hard on yourself. This was your first fight. Now you know what not to do."
  
  "I guess... Can I get my arm back?"
  
  I held up a finger. "Wait one second first." I jogged over to the chariot and picked up the one unopened bag, checking its contents as I walked back.
  
  "Okay, hold your right shoulder out," I instructed. Konnigit did as I asked with a bemused air, and I pushed the segmented metal onto the stump.
  
  I could see the moment Konnigit used his power on it- the segments stacked inside each other telescoped out and locked together, spreading up the shoulder, and down and out, forming the forearm, wrist, palm and fingers.
  
  Konnigit raised his shiny new arm and moved the new fingers with a whistle.
  
  "Goddamn did we do good work on that," Stoneknapper said admiringly.
  
  "Thanks," Konnigit said, turning the hand over and watching the light reflect off it.
  
  "No problem. With enough testing, I figure I can build you a whole suit optimised for your power."
  
  Konnigit perked up. "Seriously? Nice!"
  
  "Yeah, maybe it"ll make you move faster so you don"t get your ass kicked so easy," Spitfire jeered.
  
  "Don"t laugh," I replied, "you"re next."
  
  "...crap."
  
  5.2
  Monday February 14th, Arcadia High School
  
  Dad insisted on driving me to school on Monday. The administration had decided against hauling either of us in for a discussion about my changing room explosion, but Dad was still worried about me.
  
  He did have good reason, admittedly, but after spending all of Saturday watching a Mel Brooks movie marathon together for some father-daughter time, it felt a little stifling.
  
  Dad stopped just behind a bus that was parked across the street from Arcadia, schoolkids getting off in a steady stream, chattering away, breath fogging in the February chill.
  
  "Got everything you need?" he asked awkwardly.
  
  I nodded. "Yup."
  
  "Oh god, awkward family conversation incoming," Firecracker groaned.
  
  "Fuck off."
  
  Dad kneaded the steering wheel between his fingers for a second. "Listen, Taylor... I know we haven"t really... talked, as much as we should"ve, after... after your mom... passed."
  
  I felt the old sadness swell up inside me at the thought. Two years, and it still hurt to remember the moment when I"d got the call from Dad saying there"d been an accident.
  
  Flinch wordlessly radiated concern and compassion to me. Muramasa gave a grudging sense of support as well- he knew all about trouble with parents.
  
  Dad took a deep breath and met my eyes. "But I don"t want us to be like that. So, if anything else happens at school, I want you to tell me, okay? And I"ll try to help."
  
  I just nodded, feeling choked up. Dad leaned across and slung an arm around my shoulders in an awkward semi-hug. "I love you, Little Owl."
  
  That brough the tears. Mom had called me that when I was little, when I"d first had to get glasses and worried about how they made my eyes look big. She had sat down with me and told me it let people see my pretty eyes more easily, and that big eyes made me look smart. "Like a wise little owl", she"d said, and the nickname had stuck.
  
  Nemean roused at that. "Cry," she said frankly. "Let it out."
  
  After a moment of burrowing my face into Dad"s shoulder, I managed to pull myself together and take my glasses off to wipe away the tears. Dad wordlessly passed me a handkerchief, and I used it to wipe the fog off my glasses, then dry my eyes.
  
  Anchorage cleared her throat uncomfortably. "You good? Only this is more awkward than my junior high dance."
  
  "I"m afraid to ask, so I"ll just say yes." I passed the handkerchief back to Dad and put my glasses back on, fiddling with them a bit to settle them on my nose.
  
  Dad tucked the handkerchief back into his jacket pocket. "Well, have a good day," he managed. Something seemed to occur to him, as he added "Maybe something nice will happen today. Valentine"s card, maybe?" He nudged my shoulder encouragingly.
  
  "Oh my god, it is!" Rotter laughed. "Love is in the air- sha-la-la-la-la-lah!"
  
  Stoneknapper groaned. "Oh man, I remember how hard it was to send cards to girls. Thought I was going to have a heart attack."
  
  "Coward," Quarrel snorted.
  
  "Bite me, Cupid," Stoneknapper retorted, forming a picture of Quarrel dressed up like a cherub with a quiver of heart-tipped arrows.
  
  I giggled hysterically at the thought, even with Quarrel"s flare of rage and profanity at the insult. "Da-aad," I groaned through the laughter, "Don"t say that! Aren"t you supposed to tell me to stay away from all those grubby teenage boys? Get me to think about becoming a nun or something?"
  
  Dad guffawed loudly, and for a second, he looked years younger. "God no! How else am I going to get the chance to intimidate your first boyfriend? To just "happen" to be sharpening the kitchen knives when you bring someone around?"
  
  I laughed again. "You"re evil," I giggled, "you are an evil, twisted man."
  
  "Mwa-ha-ha," Dad droned. We both dissolved into giggles again.
  
  "Ah, you two are nuts," Tock Tick said fondly. "I remember picking up my prom date. Her dad checked my wallet for condoms, showed me his gun collection. I was so scared I could barely put the corsage on her."
  
  "No fooling?" Bearskin asked. "I never got any of that."
  
  "Hang on a second, guys," I pleaded. "I need a straight face for this."
  
  Dad and I finally caught our breath, and I grabbed my bag by the strap. "Okay, I should actually go. Are you picking me up later, or do I get the bus?"
  
  "I"ll probably need to take a little longer at work," Dad apologised. "I"ll be back in time for dinner though."
  
  "Alright." I popped my door and swung my bag onto my shoulder. "See you at dinner."
  
  "Have a good day," Dad called as I shut the door and jogged across the street. Plenty of other kids were sitting on the low wall that ran around the outside of Arcadia, or leaning against the wall in groups. A quick check with bloodsight didn"t show anything different going on.
  
  As I made it to the front doors, that idea swiftly went out the window.
  
  "Jesus fucking Christ, it"s like somebody gutted a Care Bear," Butcher said in a tone of wondering disgust.
  
  A cheap paper banner strung over the main hall proclaimed "Happy Valentines Day" in lurid pink letters. Pink paper hearts were tacked to the corners of every notice board, and paper chains were strung along the walls, also in pink. Apparently, the Arcadia administration took Valentines very seriously.
  
  I suddenly wished I"d gone for one of my more concealing hoodies today; something that would let me fade into the background a little better. But, full of spite at the thought of encountering Madison again, I"d put some effort into my appearance for once. I was wearing that sunny yellow hoodie I hadn"t got around to wearing yet, and some little silver stud earrings that hadn"t seen the light of day in over a year.
  
  For good reason- earrings had been a hazard to wear at Winslow. At best, Emma would have someone hold me down while she took them off me. At worst, Sophia would try to yank on them, and had been delighted the one time she"d drawn blood.
  
  I was drawing a little attention as I walked down the hall. Noticeably more than I"d expected. I saw a group of girls glance at me, then hurriedly turn away when they saw me looking back.
  
  "You did threaten to beat Madison to death in front of an entire class," Vladimir pointed out. "Gossip"s probably got people thinking you"re crazy."
  
  "Which is true," Firecracker snickered.
  
  Muramasa sighed wearily. "Yes, we know, we are hearing voices in our heads. You have been making that joke for over a decade. Will you ever get tired of it?"
  
  Firecracker shrugged. "No."
  
  Surprisingly enough, Callum was the one in the friend group most keyed into the school"s gossip network. After my outburst, people had been messaging and texting back and forth over the weekend, trying to figure out what happened.
  
  A few people had come out in support of Madison, including Jason, who"d jumped at the chance to spread the story of how I"d totally attacked him on my first day. Others had given garbled accounts of what I"d actually said, and that had stirred things up further.
  
  "The really strange thing though," Callum had said during History, leaning across the table conspiratorially, "is that this all got to Vicky Dallon. And when they mentioned Madison by name, she said "No comment" and just refused to say anything else."
  
  "Maybe she"s just staying out of a fight between a couple of sophomores," Frankie had pointed out. Something about that hadn"t rung true to me, but after debating it with the Butchers, I"d dismissed it.
  
  The good news was that I hadn"t seen hide nor hair of Madison all day- we didn"t share any classes on Mondays, so I didn"t have to worry about controlling my temper just yet.
  
  Unfortunately, there were enough people who had the impression that I was some hyper-aggressive delinquent that others followed the trend. If a few people moved out of my way with wary looks, the rest of the crowd would follow the pattern. When some of the more primped girls deliberately sat away from me, the hangers-on followed suit.
  
  By the time lunch had rolled around, I didn"t have the patience to deal with any more of it, so I quickly wolfed down my lunch and made for the library, seeking the quiet.
  
  As per the trend, Arcadia had a nicer library than Winslow. Not that Winslow"s library was a dump- but the carpets were a little thicker, the lights a bit brighter, the chairs less worn. Bearskin had the choice for now, so I found my way to Non-Fiction and browsed until I found a book about the history of American baseball.
  
  It was actually oddly engrossing to read about how the ball had progressed to the modern standard, the minutia of acceptable materials for bats, and facts about some of the great names, like how Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep cool. It was diverting enough that I took a little too long to notice the paralysed spider entering the library via someone"s pocket.
  
  "What in God"s name does she want?" Needler hissed as the pocket spider made its way through the stacks, going up and down the rows in what Tactical"s Thinker power quickly analysed as an amateur search pattern.
  
  I determinedly read my way through a chapter on the beginnings of women"s baseball as the spider came down the aisle, not looking up even when I heard shuffling footsteps approaching.
  
  After a few more pages, our combined curiosity was enough for me to hazard a quick glance. Panacea was indeed browsing the shelves ahead and to the right of the comfortable chair I"d flopped into, and the sheer amount of forced nonchalance in her movements wouldn"t have fooled a ten year old.
  
  "God, this is painful to watch," Tactical grumbled. "Might as well bite the bullet and see what she wants."
  
  I was a little surprised that Tactical was suggesting talking to her, considering how virulently he"d opposed and connection to her. Then again, he"d been pragmatic enough to immediately capitulate when his plan to assassinate Bearskin without incident had fallen through; Tactical knew when to go along with the inevitable.
  
  I slipped a scrap of paper into the book to mark my place, set it down on the table next to my chair, and hauled myself out of the chair and next to Panacea in two long strides.
  
  "What do you want?" I murmured, not turning my head toward her.
  
  Panacea abandoned all pretence of subtlety, jamming her book back onto the shelf and turning to face me. "One more talk about Madison," she said in a low voice.
  
  "Fuck me rigid, she"s worse than a bloody parole officer," Dirty Rotter groaned. ""cept we can"t just bribe her to look the other way."
  
  Flinch ignored Rotter and spoke directly to me. "If she thought it was bad, she would have called you over the weekend," he pointed out sensibly. "I don"t think you have anything to worry about."
  
  I nodded absently. "Okay," I said out loud. "Talk."
  
  Panacea"s face scrunched up a bit at that, but she pushed on. "You"re sure you"re feeling alright? Not going to do anything... rash?" A host of other, more explicit words hung in the air, unspoken but very present.
  
  I chewed my lip for a moment. "Probably not," I admitted, "and considering Madison"s staying away from me, I think I"ll be okay."
  
  Panacea wordlessly held out a hand. I sighed and slapped my palm into hers. "No, I"m not going to try to hunt Madison down and beat her to death," I monotoned. "Happy?"
  
  Panacea frowned even more. She had a great face for frowning- her blotchy freckles all squished up against each other, her eyebrows drew together until they almost touched, and her lower lip pooched out a bit like a fat pink slug. "I"ll take what I can get," she said snippily.
  
  "Fine," I sniped back, making to go back to my chair.
  
  "Hang on," Tactical said suddenly. "Ask her about the co-operation idea. We don"t have any contact details for New Wave after all."
  
  I paused for a moment. "Good point." "While I have you here," I said, turning back to Panacea, "could I float a couple of ideas past you?"
  
  Panacea"s expression turned wary. "Like what, exactly? Is it," she gestured vaguely, "you know, private?"
  
  "There"s nobody within twenty feet of us, we"re fine," I said dismissively. "I was thinking something like my team gathering information, and then passing it onto New Wave. Maybe some combined operations. Stuff like that."
  
  Panacea paused, eyes wide and lips slightly parted. "Whu... You want to work with us? Really?"
  
  "Oh yeah, she"s really taking this well." Anchorage couldn"t have sounded more sarcastic if she"d tried.
  
  "Yes, really," I insisted. "I"m scouting the city every other night or so, and I"ve got some tips on Empire operations, so I"m bound to find something important eventually; but I"m going to need backup if there"s more than a couple of capes there, and I don"t want to drop the kids in the deep end right away."
  
  Panacea blinked. "What do you mean, kids?"
  
  "You haven"t told her about Konnigit," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  "Oh yeah; I mean Spitfire, and another newbie I found. Decent kid, his power lets him form armour out of metal, but he hasn"t had any cape fights yet. Plus, he needs a decent name, but he"s getting around to that."
  
  Panacea fiddled with her fingers for a moment. I idly watched her- it was a common thing among Strikers, and some Blasters, to fiddle with their hands in moments of stress or indecision. Since their power would be mainly channelled through their hands, it was the equivalent of touching a holstered gun for security.
  
  After a second, Panacea laced her fingers together and leaned against the shelf, eyes turned to the ceiling with a distant, thoughtful look. "Okay," she admitted, "that might work. It"s not easy for us to track down larger groups, so that could- Wait," her gaze landed on me again, "How are you going to explain finding all this? You can"t exactly tell them about," she trailed off, then wiggled the fingers of one hand like a spider.
  
  "Christ, that might be the dumbest way of indicating it possible," Quarrel said. "Does she seriously not have the balls to just say it?"
  
  "We are still in a place with others around. I expect voices carry well in a hushed library," Muramasa pointed out.
  
  "Okay, but the hand thing is still dumb."
  
  I tuned out their conversation while I struggled to think of a decent explanation. "Tock, you got anything?"
  
  "Well, scanners and sensors were never really my strong suit," Tock Tick admitted. "That said, we do have a few options. Some sort of echolocation- I used those in my drones back in the day. Maybe a vehicle-mounted version of that to drive around and scan the area."
  
  "Would that work through walls?" I asked. "I might have to convince other Tinkers that the device would be capable of checking inside buildings."
  
  "If we point it at a thin wall, or a window. Maybe have a contact sensor to work through larger solids- though that"s not going to work for a vehicle."
  
  "Would it be easier to make one for the chariot and another for personal use, or have just one that we could swap out?" Tactical asked.
  
  "Definitely just the one- but it"d have to be big. Like, the size of a suitcase if we want any kind of accuracy from a moving vehicle."
  
  Nemean harrumphed warningly. "Panacea still needs an answer."
  
  I shook myself out of the conversation and refocused on her. The whole internal back-and-forth had only taken five seconds or so, but that was a long time to zone out during a conversation.
  
  "Long story short, I think I can build some kind of sonar. If I do a few sweeps in Empire territory, I can just look for buildings with a lot of activity in the night. Maybe plant a couple of bugs for long-term surveillance," I mused, the design for an automatic recording device forming in my mind. Some kind of hard storage, like engraving glass- it"d be the Tinker equivalent of vinyl records, very low-capacity and low-quality audio, but it would have the side-effect of being totally non-electronic, and therefore much harder to find.
  
  "It might be better to have something already in hand before approaching New Wave," Needler pointed out. "Search around, plant the bugs, and then contact them."
  
  "Good point." "It"ll take me a couple of days to Tinker and get some intel together. In the meantime, how would I get in touch? You can"t introduce me, and I didn"t think to ask Glory Girl or Shielder for their phone numbers."
  
  Panacea shrugged. "There"s a group page on PHO that you can contact, but it"s set up to filter out any messages that aren"t from verified cape accounts. Otherwise, you"d have to call one of the adults at work and apologise really hard for calling them at their civilian job to talk about hero work."
  
  "Guess I"d better get a verified account then." It was a strange thought to have. Parahumans Online was the biggest, arguably the best site to go to for anything about capes. International news, regional topics, discussion forums, and a wiki of capes.
  
  Most of the Butchers had made accounts for it at some point, and occasionally checked on them through whoever was the host at the time. Still, none of them had ever got a verified cape account. That required you to send in a picture or video of yourself, in costume, visibly demonstrating your powers. I wasn"t too sure how I"d do that. Maybe a short video of using my remaining sword to cut through something?
  
  "Axe would be more impressive," Bearskin insisted. "Smash through a log all at once."
  
  "Where"s the pizazz in that?" Anchorage snorted. "Do some tricks with the flail, that"ll get people looking."
  
  "Just lift something heavy in the suit," Firecracker said with a roll of her eyes.
  
  "Any other advice? Stuff that might impress the old timers?"
  
  That got a snort. "Maybe don"t mention how you got your money by robbing drug dealers."
  
  "Why?" I asked, confused. "I thought that was just how independents made their money."
  
  "That"s how vigilantes get their money," Panacea corrected with an insufferably condescending tone, like she was explaining something to a particularly dim-witted child. I tucked one hand into the other armpit, curled into a fist so I could let my fingernails lengthen into claws that poked at my palm.
  
  "If you want to get out of the legal grey area and be legit, you need a legal source of money." She started counting off on her fingers. "The Protectorate gets government money, and corporate capes get money from whatever business they"re being glorified mascots for. Independents either have a day job, get donations from the public, or they work something out with whatever area they patrol so they get a stipend in exchange for keeping the crime rates low."
  
  "What, like a friendly neighbourhood hero?" I asked, interested.
  
  "Fuckin" "ell, all that, for less money?" Dirty Rotter shook his head. "Thank fuck I never tried being a hero."
  
  "Pretty much. New Wave has jobs and donations, plus merchandise sales, so it works pretty well for us. Thing is, Vicky mentioned how you "scavenged"" she made air quotes with a roll of her eyes, "to Brandish, so she"s already got a pretty low opinion of you."
  
  "Wait, isn"t Brandish her mom?" Stoneknapper wondered. "Anyone else think it"s weird she"s calling her mom by name?"
  
  "Cape name, Knapper," Vladimir pointed out. "She"s probably just being professional."
  
  "Yeah, but she said Vicky, not Glory Girl," Quarrel countered.
  
  "If it"s so big a deal, why the hell didn"t your sister say anything when I was literally building myself a car in front of her? Hell, why didn"t Miss Militia say anything?" For a wild moment, I wondered if they were just trying to give the new girl enough rope to hang herself with.
  
  "Because vigilantes scavenging is too small-time to really bother with, and there is a little actual leeway for heroes to claim salvage or whatever. Especially Tinkers, considering how much stuff they need in order to build their tech." She paused for a moment, eyes off to the side as if thinking, then shrugged. "Probably doesn"t hurt that you"d just helped bring a villain in."
  
  "Besides, as smart as Vicky is, she"s more about the fights and the power geek stuff than she is about sweating the little details." Panacea shrugged yet again. "It might have just slipped her mind," she added with an air of exasperation.
  
  "Christ," Butcher said. "All this bullshit instead of just taking from fuckers nobody likes. Who the fuck are we offending if the Empire gets robbed, the Nazis?"
  
  "Alright, fine. I"ll see if I can figure something out. Guess I"ll have to scrounge junkyards for materials for a while. And give Spitfire a bigger cut," I added thoughtfully. "She"s the only one paying for a place to sleep."
  
  "We really need to do something for her," Flinch sighed. "I know we can"t show her the lair, but couldn"t we set something up for her? Find somewhere abandoned, install some utilities? It"d be a much more stable arrangement."
  
  "I"d have killed for something like that when I was her age," Firecracker added. "Or whatever her age is. Same bed every day, hot showers, room to dump my stuff instead of sitting on it." She trailed off into a sort of bitter nostalgia, and I decided to leave her alone.
  
  Panacea"s typical frown was softening at the edges, just a little. "Is she okay?"
  
  "She"s in a motel right now. It"s not going to be forever, obviously, but it"ll do for now. I asked, she seems cool with it."
  
  "Right." Panacea seemed sceptical, but didn"t press any further. "Anything else?"
  
  I shook my head. "Not really. So, if you don"t mind, I want to read some more of my book." I turned and walked back to the comfortable chair, flopped into it, and picked up the book again.
  
  After a moment, I felt the one immobile spider in my range, tucked away in a soft, dark space, move away from me.
  
  The Lair, The Docks
  
  I threaded the bicycle through the gap in the big doors, directing the ants on the miniscule trigger plate to move them closed again.
  
  As much as I could simply sprint my way from home to the lair in a reasonable time, people tended to notice someone in dark clothing running down the street like their house was on fire, even in the dead of night. Especially in the dead of night. I"d had people turn to watch me, shout after me, and at one point chase me. I"d ducked down an alleyway and taken to the rooftops to avoid the guy, but I hadn"t felt comfortable going to the lair until I"d tracked him for a few minutes, then altered my usual route to get to the lair.
  
  Therefore, the bike, which I"d originally rescued from a junkyard. I"d straightened the frame where it had been bent almost in half, reconnected the brake cables, and put new tyres on. Then I"d added multiple pulleys to the chain, and turned the gear system from simple toothed discs into something more like an optical illusion, that gave the kind of mechanical advantage that would make Archimedes come back to life just to wax rapturous over it.
  
  The end result was a bicycle that was built to work with superhuman strength and endurance. I could push it to 40 miles per hour with little effort, and fold it up to hide it behind a dumpster or inside a neighbour"s hedge, or just buried inside the concrete of the sidewalk by Stoneknapper"s power.
  
  Once I"d wheeled it over to the wall, it was time to work. Firecracker"s choice of music was unashamedly cheesy 90s pop music, so I started picking out materials and parts to the tune of "Hit Me Baby One More Time".
  
  "Oh baby baby, how was I supposed, to know," Firecracker sang, intentionally badly. I gave her a shove, more like a joking push on the shoulder than anything meaningful, while I tied my hair back, switched my glasses for goggles, and sat down at the work table.
  
  "Okay guys, how do we hurt the Empire best, assuming we get New Wave on board?" The sonar would require a massive range of frequencies- best to use multiple transmitters with their own ranges instead of trying to drag a single wide-range model out of Tock-Tick"s power. I lined up a couple of ingots of different materials and began drawing the first few pieces out with Stoneknapper"s fizzing touch.
  
  "We need to deny them resources," Tactical said immediately. "Targeting street level members won"t achieve much; we need to aim higher."
  
  "Drugs, smuggling, protection rackets, and prostitution," Bearskin listed. "Protection rackets are where most of the money is, but we"d have to round up every enforcer they had, and then they might just start sending capes instead. Taking out the drugs would be easier. Labs, stockpiles, distribution; maybe even disrupt the supply chain from out of town. That"d hit "em right in the wallet."
  
  "Solid plan." I twisted some wires together around a tiny magnet; I"d broken it off a large one out of a children"s science kit from home. "We can"t just afford to slowly bleed them out though- they might lash out, or Kaiser might call in extra muscle. Ideally we need something to stagger them as well."
  
  Muramasa hmmed thoughtfully. "Weapon stores, perhaps? Their foot soldiers would be far less dangerous without guns."
  
  "Do you have any idea how many gun stores there are in this city?" Needler asked while I snapped on a pair of latex gloves and started cleaning the components with a chemical wipe- at this level, skin oils could impede performance. Each cleaned part was handed to a waldo, gently gripped while I started on the wiring- splicing, twisting, bundling together.
  
  "They probably gotta send out for the high-end shit though, right?" Anchorage gestured vaguely but widely. "Way easier to smack "em down if all they"ve got are itty bitty pistols instead of assault rifles."
  
  "So drugs to cost them money, guns to disarm them. Anything else?" I started on the housing for the transmitters. It would need to be capable of shuffling the transmitters around, using various combinations of frequencies to properly scan a building. Lots of hinges and rails involved.
  
  "Crash their parties," Butcher growled. "Hit their rallies, hit their "moots", make "em scared to go out of the house. Fill some boots with spineless whitey piss."
  
  I paused with a custom screwdriver in hand. I didn"t agree with Butcher"s idea of killing people and putting the bodies on display as a warning, but something to remind the Empire Eighty Eight to keep their heads down wouldn"t hurt.
  
  "We don"t have the materials to finish this off tonight," Tock Tick broke in, indicating the complicated system of interchangeable transmitters that so far looked like a bastardised speaker system crossed with an umbrella. I was forced to agree- the transmitters weren"t difficult to make with my power: but building the receivers, and the technology required to interpret the signals into usable data and display that in a way I could understand, would require actual electronics- which was a major weakness of Tock"s power.
  
   "I"ll take it as far as I can," I said, slotting another transmitter onto the framework. "Maybe finish a couple of listening devices-"
  
  "Bugs," Rotter snickered. I rolled my eyes and pushed him into the dark as he cackled.
  
  "Listening devices," I emphasised, "and then go and find somewhere to plant them. As for the rest of the night-"
  
  Bearskin started to chuckle, low and horrible. "Time to put the axe to use," he rumbled.
  
  I nodded as the waldos held up the sonar system and turned it over so I could start working on the base. "Exactly."
  
  5.3
  Wednesday 16th February, Downtown
  
  I steadily drew my sword, letting the faint rasp of blade on sheath be heard at the very edge of hearing.
  
  Then I lunged- the first swing opened a wooden dummy from shoulder to hip, and the follow-up took its head off.
  
  I didn"t pause there- I stabbed deep into the second dummy"s torso, then yanked it out, hard enough to topple it forward. I skipped aside and brought an overhead blow down on the third dummy, slicing it in two from head to toe.
  
  I shoved the sword back into the sheath, cocked a fist back, and punched the wooden door in front of me; it cracked from top to bottom and side to side, and I shouldered my way through the wreckage.
  
  Three more targets stood in front of me, shaped to look like gunmen. I pulled the air cannon from its place at the small of my back, the stock swinging out and unfolding with a flick of my wrist. The rest was automatic- Shoot the left target with a blast of air, haul the forward handle toward myself to recharge the air intake, shoot the right target, then toggle the switch on the main trigger and hit the centre target with a net round that wrapped it up like a swaddled baby.
  
  Lastly, I turned toward the camera, loosely holding the air cannon, barrel pointed at the ground. The helmet opened up at my touch, retracting the visor and jaw guard so my mask and bare mouth were clear to see. "My name is Elpis," I said clearly, "and this is my verification video for Parahumans Online."
  
  The video ended there, and I looked across at Spitfire. "You think it"ll do?"
  
  Spitfire wobbled her head from side to side. "Probably? I mean, I"d believe that was Tinker stuff, but I"ve seen special effects in movies that did that stuff too."
  
  "Told you the axe would"ve been better," Bearskin griped.
  
  "You just won"t let it go, will you?" Vladimir said.
  
  I chewed my lip a bit. "Well, it"s probably good enough to try, at least." I drew a circle on the phone screen to bring up the radial menu, then tapped the browser icon. It was already on the PHO page to submit a verification video, so all I had to do was tap the "Okay" button.
  
  "And now we wait," I said, putting the phone back into its padded and reinforced compartment on my belt.
  
  "Does it count as extra boring if we"re waiting on two things at once?" Spitfire asked, taking a big gulp of soda.
  
  "They"ll be here. Five more minutes at most." I glanced over my shoulder, down at the street below. Not many people out and about on a Wednesday afternoon, but I was still surprised that nobody had noticed us having a picnic on the roof, especially with me sitting on the edge, cape hanging from my shoulders like a flag.
  
  Still, most people were at work right now. I was only out on the town because of a free period, and I"d still have to get home before Dad, or face awkward questions.
  
  "Sheep don"t look up," Butcher rumbled. I didn"t bother to hide my disdain at the sentiment.
  
  "Guess I should finish this," Spitfire replied, holding up the candy bar in her other hand and taking a massive bite out of it.
  
  "I"m certain that we"ll need to give that girl the Heimlich manoeuvre one day," Needler said distastefully.
  
  "Do any of us actually know how to do that?" Anchorage asked. "I mean, I know you put both hands in a fist and-" She vigorously pictured the resulting move.
  
  "We sh-sh- shit-fuck! We should learn the right way," Flinch said. "Otherwise, we might hurt someone."
  
  "Yeah. No offence to you guys, but your first aid is kind of spotty," I pointed out as I pulled another chocolate out of the packet and popped it onto my tongue, letting it melt a bit before chewing. Hazelnut praline.
  
  One truly positive thing the Butchers had impressed upon me was to enjoy things. Limited to the agency of whoever owned the current body, they luxuriated in all manner of vice, hedonistic in the smallest things. Therefore, I let my eyes droop shut as I rolled the chocolate around in my mouth, the flavours spreading over my tongue like oil on water.
  
  Another positive there- Nemean"s taste buds. They were mostly geared to savoury food, especially meat, but I could still get a lot more detail out of sweets. The complex interplay of bitter dark chocolate and sweet nutty praline...
  
  The deep rumble of a big engine caught my ears, slowing down as it came down the street. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw a camouflage-clad figure straddling an over-engineered motorbike. A smaller figure in red and gold was behind her, arms firmly around her waist.
  
  "Well, swap out the chocs for some crumpet," Rotter began. I rammed him into the darkness when I grasped the full meaning of "crumpet" and started gathering up the drink cans and sandwich cans with a little more force than necessary.
  
  "Better finish up," I told Spitfire. She gave me a thumbs up, unable to speak with the last of the chocolate bar stuffed in her mouth, and flicked the wrapper into the bag for our waste.
  
  Miss Militia had just put the kickstand down and let the Ward hop off first when Spitfire and I stepped off the roof, the grappler cable reeling out as I walked us down the wall to the pavement. People on both sides of the road stopped to gawk as I set us on the ground and released the grapple, letting it flick back into the launcher and fold back into my armour.
  
  Miss Militia raised a hand in greeting, her power in the form of a knife strapped to her thigh. "Elpis. You"re looking well." She glanced at my shoulders and added "I like the cape."
  
  I swept it out with one hand, letting it sway behind me dramatically. "Thanks. I like it too."
  
  Spitfire quickly gulped the last of her soda and dropped the can into the waste bag. "Hi again."
  
  Miss Militia"s eyes smiled above her scarf. "It"s good to see you too, Spitfire. Keeping well?"
  
  Spitfire stretched, the power frame folding up at the shoulders to let her arms move. "Pretty good," she conceded.
  
  "Come onnn," Tock Tick said insistently.
  
  I turned to the boy standing just a little behind Miss Militia, shifting his weight from one foot to another with nervous energy. He was about Spitfire"s height, which meant I would have had a couple of inches on him even without my "power" armour. For himself, a red and gold armoured suit, too slim to have any mechanisms to it, with a large red visor over his eyes. Pale brown hair fluffed up out of the top like he"d just rolled out of bed. "And you must be Kid Win. Nice to meet another Tinker." I stuck a hand out.
  
  Kid Win"s palm met mine so quickly there was a clap, and then he was pumping it up and down enthusiastically. "Likewise! I mean, I"ve heard so much stuff about you, and I really wanted to talk with another Tinker- I heard you built an air cannon and I have soooo many questions-"
  
  "Okay, wow," Firecracker said. "How much sugar do they let this kid have?"
  
  Stoneknapper snorted. "Too much."
  
  "Hey, I"ve got questions too," I answered, a salvo of enthusiasm to match his. "The hoverboard, and the pistols? Cool as hell."
  
  "Is it always like this?" Spitfire stage-whispered to Miss Militia, who shook her head with a rueful snort.
  
  "No. Sometimes it"s worse." She clapped her hands to get our attention, very no-nonsense. "I"m sure you"d love to compare notes, but you can do that at our next stop. Let"s put a pin in it for now."
  
  "Right." Kid Win dropped my hand with an abashed expression. "Sorry."
  
  I nudged him with my elbow. "You ionise the outer layer of air to increase cohesion," I stage-whispered, "and use a micro-etched rifling pattern inside the barrel."
  
  When Miss Militia gave me a look, I simply raised an eyebrow innocently.
  
  That got a stranger look. "When did you get eyebrows?"
  
  The Protectorate did regular bike patrols of the city, usually in the afternoons and evenings. Often they"d have a Ward ride along for shared experience in a supervised environment.
  
  There were also foot patrols through a designated area, mainly for the PR, a constant meet and greet. Mover powers would be used for wide-range patrols, like Velocity"s super-speed and Dauntless" flight, or more recently, Gargoyle"s personal gravity manipulation. A few times a week, a hero would accompany a police car as they patrolled their beat.
  
  Miss Militia explained all of this so casually and easily that it took all of us a few seconds to realise she was running a subtle recruitment pitch- explaining the typical duties of a Protectorate hero.
  
  "Clever," Tactical said admiringly.
  
  Quarrel snorted. "Yeah, but the twig already said no. A lot. Now they"re just beating a dead horse."
  
  The bike patrol route had scheduled stops along the way, to check out hot spots, or engage with the public, or just shake some life back into legs and buttocks that had gone numb. Miss Militia had set things up so we had this rest stop only 15 minutes after we met up.
  
  When setting this meeting up, I"d questioned why I didn"t just drive to meet them at their rest stop, and learned that heroes kept that sort of thing secret, even from allies, to avoid ambushes. I"d dropped the topic after that.
  
  The parking structure we"d stopped at the top of had a magnificent view of Downtown and the nicer residential areas- the Towers. I knew that the upper-middle class people lived there, apparently including the New Wave families.
  
  "We are not here for the view," Muramasa pointed out, interrupting my thoughts. "Unless you wish to view what will be conquered."
  
  The four of us were in the space between the chariot and Miss Militia"s overpowered bike. While I talked with Miss Militia, Kid Win had started chatting with Spitfire, unfolding his signature hoverboard from its place on its back and standing on it to demonstrate. He still shot the occasional glance at me though, clearly eager to get some Tinker speak in.
  
  For now, Miss Militia was nodding along as I laid out my plans to scan through Empire territory and share the results with the other heroes. "It sounds like a good idea," she said during a break in my flow. "But have you considered how the Empire will react?"
  
  "Escalation, probably," I admitted. "If they"re losing money and men, they"ll probably start sending their capes to guard their operations, or try to ambush us. It"s going to be an uphill struggle."
  
  "We can take them," Nemean said dismissively.
  
  Miss Militia nodded. "Right. We"ll need to do this without driving them to desperate measures. You might also have to deal with less resources if they close ranks- I"ve seen gangs torch money rather than let it fall into enemy hands."
  
  "Which is why I wanted to talk to you about something else," I went on. "I want to set up a more official revenue stream- the spoils of war are probably going to dry up soon, plus I could sort out somewhere more permanent for Spitfire to stay. Are there any resources for stuff like that?"
  
  "Of course," Miss Militia said readily. "The PRT can help set up bank accounts and investments for independents- since most banks aren"t equipped to deal with secret identities.
  
  "Also, since you"re a Tinker, we might have some work for you- providing equipment and maintaining it. The money for that is quite good."
  
  "Well, shit, that was easy," Anchorage said, surprised.
  
  I leaned against the side of the chariot. "You guys have Armsmaster though," I pointed out, a little puzzled. "His tech is probably leagues ahead of mine."
  
  "I know that"s true, but I still want to dispute it," Tock Tick grumbled.
  
  Vladimir laughed. "Oh hush, Tock. Pouting doesn"t suit you."
  
  "I am not," Tock insisted, "pouting."
  
  "We don"t always need top-tier tech, so long as it does the job; and your speciality might be better suited for some projects than his. Besides," Miss Militia shrugged one shoulder, "Armsmaster is a Protectorate team leader, and he has his own equipment to maintain. It"s a matter of time and convenience."
  
  "That makes sense," I admitted.
  
  "As for future work," she nodded to the younger two; Spitfire was now standing uneasily on Kid Win"s hoverboard, six inches off the ground and perfectly stable, while Kid himself stood by with an encouraging look: "would you two be available for more shared patrols, together or individually?"
  
  "Some," I admitted, "but I do most of my work at night. I"m not always going to be available in the day. No idea what"s going on with Konnigit..."
  
  Above the stars-and-stripes scarf, Miss Militia"s eyes narrowed. "That"s the name of your new member?" she said sharply.
  
  Spitfire glanced up from the board, arms spread out like a tightrope walker despite the board being steady as a rock. "Yeah. It"s a Monty Python thing."
  
  "I"m aware that his name is a Monty Python reference. I"m more concerned about the level of force he"s reported to use. Apparently he once jumped several Empire members by grabbing one of them and using him to beat the others."
  
  "Grievous harm with a body," Needler said dryly.
  
  I bit my tongue to keep myself from snickering at that comment. The Butchers were not so restrained.
  
  "That"s... a lot," Kid Win said. "Although, hitting a person with another person probably does less damage than a Brute just straight-up hitting them."
  
  "That is absolutely not the point," Miss Militia replied. Kid Win awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck.
  
  I cleared my throat, shoving a couple of Butchers who were still guffawing. "I get it. He screwed up. But he hasn"t passed the point of no return- he"s nowhere near that. And I think he can get better with some guidance." I shrugged awkwardly. "Everyone needs help sooner or later."
  
  Something in Miss Militia"s expression softened a little. There was a look in her eyes, what I would have said was wistful. She nodded slowly.
  
  "Alright," she said, "I"ll pass it up the chain. One thing to consider though- if you"re spending your nights scanning Empire territory by yourself, you could make an easy target for them."
  
  "And you don"t want to give yourself away, blah blah blah," Firecracker said.
  
  Bearskin pulled a face. "Personally, I"d rather not have to share a head with anybody from the Empire. That"s just not going to be fun for anyone."
  
  "Damn straight," Butcher growled. "But we sure as shit ain"t running."
  
  "Good point," I said. "All of you," I added.
  
  I pulled the air cannon off my belt, unfolded it, and held it out to Kid Win. "In the interest of not getting my head kicked in by white supremacist villains," I said to his slack-jawed face, "care to trade notes?"
  
  Midnight, Wednesday 16th February
  
  Miss Militia had been gracious enough to summon a riot shield with her power for Kid Win and I to test each other"s weapons on. He couldn"t cock the charging handle of the air cannon by himself, and I couldn"t fit my gauntlets into the triggers of his spark pistols, but we"d had a roaring good time emptying the guns into the improvised target.
  
  It turned out that Kid Win hadn"t actually figured out his speciality yet- the particular theme unique to every Tinker, from missiles to gravity manipulation to glue. He had a suspicion that his power might be in making energy-based guns, though Tock Tick felt it was something more broad, considering the hoverboard.
  
  Nonetheless, we"d swapped notes, and even taken our weapons apart to show the innards- a much more involved process for me than him. A long look at Kid Win"s spark pistols had given me some insight on how to finish off the scanner, and some ways to improve my existing tech. An excellent idea for making the new twin swords was bubbling away in my mind, begging for attention.
  
  Before all that, though, I needed materials. And until the Empire started to turtle up, I still had a guilt-free source to use.
  
  I was currently lurking on a rooftop, watching a building across the street. From the outside, there wasn"t much to it- just another shabby house, two stories, grimy windows and an unkempt lawn. Several of the Butchers had grown up in houses like this.
  
  I probably wouldn"t have known about it either, if I hadn"t felt a couple of cockroaches get stepped on in an alleyway.
  
  A couple of guys had broken into an electronics store through the back door and were loading TVs and appliances into a van when I found them. I"d had to wrangle the Butchers into submission, and fight my own impulse to jump them, but flies inside the men"s jackets, mosquitoes on their balaclavas, and a spider inside a DVD player box had let me follow them at a distance in the chariot, engine muffled and lights off.
  
  To this crappy house, where they"d pulled around to the back and started unloading boxes, with the help of three other guys who"d come out from inside. Wifebeaters and stained jeans abounded.
  
  More spiders inside had wandered through the house, running their legs over various cardboard boxes crammed into the ground floor rooms and the basement. There was barely any room for the men to sit down and put on the TV once they were finished.
  
  "Bingo," Stoneknapper said. "All that stuff must be worth a fortune. Lots of cool shit you can build with all that, eh Tocky?"
  
  "You bet your ass," Tock said greedily.
  
  Flinch gave off a pulse of disapproval. "We aren"t taking all of it," he snapped.
  
  "We aren"t?" Nemean asked in a puzzled voice, as I gingerly parked the chariot on the driveway. The curtains were all drawn, and the TV was loud enough to hear from outside, but I didn"t want to tip them off early.
  
  "At least some of this stuff can go back to where it came," I pointed out. "I can call the cops about the robbery we saw, at least."
  
  Before the Butchers could start really complaining, I added "We"re definitely taking their stuff though. The TV should be good for parts."
  
  "Woo! Guilt-free robbery!" Quarrel cheered.
  
  Anchorage laughed, loud and hearty. "Honey, if you"re doing it right, that"s all robbery."
  
  "So what"s the play?" Tactical asked as I hopped from the chariot"s hood to the roof of the garage and walked up to the peak of the house. "We might fit down the chimney; give them a late Christmas present."
  
  Firecracker boggled at him- there was no better word for it. "Was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?!"
  
   I pushed aside the multiple mental images of me dressed as Santa Claus shouting "Ho ho ho, motherfuckers!", Santa Claus writing ALL NAZIS on the Naughty List, and various bits from The Night Santa Went Crazy. "Let"s take our time with this," I said, walking across to where a window had been left open.
  
  Once I"d swung myself inside, I took a moment to search the room, and the other rooms on the top floor. All bedrooms and a bathroom- all clearly occupied by careless 20-something men. Baggies of weed, porn magazines, crooked posters.
  
  I did take the two laptops I found, plus a CD player and stereo system. I expected to feel at least a twinge of guilt about it, but nothing came.
  
  Once the first floor was cleared, I padded down the stairs, feet on the edges of the stairs to avoid creaks. The padded, noise-absorbent soles of my boots helped as well.
  
  "Told you those would be useful," Nemean said.
  
  The microwave from the kitchen, plus the toaster, blender and electric kettle were also claimed as spoils, sneaked out the back door with catlike tread.
  
  The only room left was the living room. Four guys squashed onto a couch, watching a very unrealistic action movie.
  
  There were five guys total unloading the goods when I watched.
  
  Bloodsight came quickly, marking the men as pulsing red figures through the walls. The fifth man was in the bathroom, washing his hands, then opening the door-
  
  For a second that was the scene: a skinny guy with a bad attempt at a goatee and a golden swastika hanging from a chain at his neck; staring at me, in full armour, not three feet from him.
  
  I lunged, too late to stop him from shouting something. My fist hit him in the gut and he doubled over; then his friends barrelled around the corner and things got complicated.
  
  One guy had a gun tucked down the front of his jeans- astonishingly stupid. I actually hesitated to attack him until he"d drawn the gun, for fear he might accidentally shoot his own crotch off. The second it was free, though, I grabbed the bathroom guy and threw him into the rest.
  
  While I grabbed the idiot"s gun and cleared the chamber, a fat guy struggled to his feet and swung a punch. I idly swung away from it, then popped him in the nose. He went down with a crunch of bone and a fittingly piggish squeal.
  
  The others were simply shocked unconscious with jabs of my sword. All the fun had gone out of the fight.
  
  "Bollocks," Rotter cursed. "I was looking forward to that whole "pick-"em-off-one-by-one" lark. Could"ve made our own horror movie out of it."
  
  "Mm. This is why you check the bathrooms," Vladimir said. "Never know when some guy"s going to pop up trying to be brave."
  
  Early hours, Thursday 17th February, Downtown
  
  My work as Elpis was done for now, with a call to the police and a load of appliances taken back to the lair. Realistically, one of the laptops and the CD player would be enough to finish the scanner- the rest would just make the lair more comfortable.
  
  However, I still had things to do tonight- just not as Elpis.
  
  Coil"s operations were hard to find- he kept a large chunk of downtown under his thumb with protection rackets and dealing drugs, but his organisation seemed to be entirely professional. No street-level idiots going around flashing their money, no desperate teenagers suffering an initiation, no wild keggers to drum up support. Just hardened men armed to the teeth. Even the dealers in street clothes walked like they had body armour.
  
  It was therefore a lot harder to pick them out on the street. I wasted two hours hopping from roof to roof downtown before I found a pair of men in bulky jackets walking down the road.
  
  "Standard undercover thug look," Needler said. "Heavy boots, thick jackets, no brand labels. Such a lack of imagination."
  
  Muramasa snorted. "I doubt we can throw stones," he said. "Considering we are dressed as a standard amateur cape."
  
  I rolled my eyes, but didn"t deny the point. I"d shed the armour and the undersuit for a black turtleneck, jeans and tennis shoes, plus a scarf and goggles to cover my face, and a Yankees baseball cap. I blended in well with the night, and looked nothing like Elpis.
  
  The men below kept to the shadows as well, enough that I had to use bloodsight to keep track of them. A few bugs hanging on their clothes helped as well.
  
  They didn"t seem to be doing anything though- just weaving their way through the empty streets on foot. One smoked a cigarette, and they occasionally made some remark or other, but they otherwise stayed quiet as they made their rounds.
  
  After 20 minutes, I slipped earphones in so the Butchers could listen to music. Stoneknapper was being experimental, so I had my first introduction to the genre of electroswing, which was surprisingly catchy.
  
  After a full hour, I was almost ready to admit defeat. These guys were giving me nothing. If it weren"t for the fly I"d slipped into one"s jacket to land on his holster, I would have assumed they were just a couple of late-night walkers instead of goons on a supervillain"s payroll.
  
  "Stick it out," Tactical said. "Nobody ever said stakeouts were fun."
  
  "We"re not getting anything out of this," Bearskin complained. "We don"t even know if these bastards are Coil"s, of if they"re just looking for someone to mug."
  
  I chewed my lip for a bit. "30 minutes, then we call it a night and get something to eat," I said. "Any objections, or better ideas?"
  
  There was the usual amount of bitching and moaning, but no real objections. I took a running leap to get to the next rooftop, keeping the red silhouettes of the two men in sight.
  
  Just under 20 minutes later, the duo paused, checked their watches, and broke from their endless circling pattern, heading north. I waited for a few seconds, then followed from above, palming a spyglass and one of the weapons I"d brought with me.
  
  Their path led to a red brick apartment building- specifically, around to the side, and down a set of steps. One of them pulled out a radio and spoke into it, then gave what looked like a complicated knock.
  
  The door was opened at once. The brief glimpse I got showed thick metal behind the wooden exterior. The men went in, and the door closed.
  
  "No light from inside," Tactical noted. "They either have the lights off, or they"re paranoid enough to consider people looking around at this hour."
  
  I slipped down to street level and switched to bloodsight. Besides the two men I"d been following, now shedding their jackets, there were six other men in there. A couple were laid out and presumably asleep, one was eating, and two were playing cards.
  
  "It"s a safe house," Quarrel said. "These guys know what they"re doing."
  
  I ducked back into the alleyway I"d come down in, and sent in my bugs. A few ants, some moths, maybe a dozen spiders. Nothing noticeable unless seen all together.
  
  The safe house was suspiciously light on insects, and I soon found out why- ants crawling in through the crevices soon encountered powder that burned them, suffocated them. I felt them die, one at a time.
  
  The soldiers hadn"t put any insect poison in the air vent, but they"d put a bug zapper just to the side of it, that managed to catch the first spider I sent in. I had to very carefully guide the second spider to slip through and run across the ceiling.
  
  "Man, these guys are paranoid," Anchorage said disbelievingly.
  
  Tock Tick snorted. "It"s not paranoia if they really are out to get you."
  
  "And we are out to get them, so fair"s fair." Stoneknapper clicked his tongue. "Kinda worrying though, if Coil"s supposed to be a Thinker."
  
  Outside, I had insects slowly crawl over every inch of the alleyway entrance, before I was relatively certain that there were no cameras around. A quick jog across the street, a short scramble up the wall opposite, and then I pulled out the film camera I"d bought specially.
  
  Stonekanpper"s fizzing touch opened the wall up into a little crevice, just big enough to hide the camera; then I closed it up again, leaving a little hole for the lens and the motion sensor I"d attached. The camera would take a picture every time that door opened.
  
  "And now we wait," I said, slipping away. This would have to be a slow, deliberate operation. Coil never took the field, which suggested his power didn"t have direct combat value. Maybe he was a Tinker, but the Butchers felt he was either some sort of Master to keep all those mercenaries around, or a Thinker- and those were always a bitch to fight.
  
  Regardless, the strategy was simple. Gather information, wait for him to let his guard down, and then hit him from an unexpected angle.
  
  "Should be fun," Rotter said. "Meantime, who"s for Chinese?"
  
  5.4
  Saturday 19th February, The Docks
  
  Spitfire slid into the passenger seat, phone in hand.
  
  "You should have a stereo in this thing," she said without preamble. "If you can have that whole mess on the roof, you should be able to play tunes in here."
  
  "Fuck sake," Tock Tick rolled his eyes, "There"s no pleasing some people."
  
  I indicated the newly installed back seat. "I"ve had other things to put in." Spitfire followed my thumb to the leather couch seat I"d taken out of Mr Shotgun"s muscle car.
  
  Very little of it was visible, what with Konnigit hunched almost double in the middle, wearing about a third of his old junk armour, and a sack of metal on either side of him. He raised one hand, now the polished gauntlets I"d forged for him, and waved a little. "Hi."
  
  Besides enlarging the chassis once again, I"d also had to beef up the suspension on the chariot. Gutting the skinhead car had provided parts, but I"d also had to custom-forge a few parts to get something that could keep all that metal from making the rear fender drag on the ground.
  
  "I suppose that"s life," Needler said with a smile. "You start off with a small, sporty number to zip around town, and then the kids come along and you"re stuck with a people carrier."
  
  I conceded the point with a mental laugh.
  
  "Heya." Spitfire belted herself in as I pulled off from the curb, craning her neck to look back at Konnigit. "So you picked out a new name, or do I just keep calling you Konnnnnnnnigit?" She rolled the N with an appropriately outrageous French accent.
  
  Konnigit"s laughter had a metal echo to it inside his helmet. "I"ll tell you my new name when we get there. I want it to be a surprise."
  
  "Let"s hope it"s not something worse," Dirty Rotter said.
  
  "Come on, man, we"re meeting up with all of New Wave at once," Spitfire wheedled. "I"m getting enough surprises in one day. Don"t make me have to deal with more."
  
  Konnigit made a zipping motion in front of his helmet. "Nope. You can always try and figure it out from the new stuff Elpis made for me." One hand delved into a sack and came out with a pile of plum-sized steel balls.
  
  Several of the Butchers sniggered at the obvious joke while I took an unnecessary turn, just in case of pursuit. A quick glance at Spitfire showed her pulling a face. "I don"t think I can say it."
  
  "Hur hur hur," Bearskin laughed flatly.
  
  Konnigit tipped the balls back into the sack. "Very funny." He pulled out a larger piece of metal, some of the new armour- a shoulder pauldron, with a horn-like protrusion, flat along the top. I knew that the other sack had its twin, with a blocky, square part.
  
  The idea, as Konnigit had explained, was to make his shoulders look like two halves of an anvil.
  
  "That"s gonna look so good when it"s all on," Anchorage said.
  
  Spitfire hummed through her lips. "Iron... Rhino?" she said at last.
  
  Konnigit dropped the pauldron back into the sack with a big more force than before. "No."
  
  "No need to sound so fussy," I commented, indicating to the wide-eyed sedan driver behind me before turning again. "I made your new armour, and I still don"t know what your new name is."
  
  Konnigit folded his arms and looked away. Hunched over with his helmet almost to his knees, it just made him look like an oversized metal toddler having a sulk.
  
  Spitfire looked from him to me, shrugged, and settled back into her seat. "So why"re we meeting these guys out in the shitty part of town?"
  
  "That"s where all the fun happens," Firecracker said.
  
  "Same reason we met up in the Boat Graveyard last time," I replied. "New Wave does power training around there too- lots of empty space, nothing valuable around to damage. Not like we can ask them to let us trash their place in a sparring match."
  
  "Plus Konnigit wouldn"t fit through their door," Nemean pointed out.
  
  "That too," I admitted. Out loud, I said "It"s going to be another ten minutes. You guys want a snack or anything?" I flipped open the compartment between the front seats and tapped one of the soda cans stashed in there.
  
  Spitfire grabbed a Sprite, and passed a Dr Pepper back to Konnigit at his request. As I glanced in the rear-view mirror, he simply detached part of his helmet and inserted the whole can into the hollow space of his armour. There came a pop-hiss, and then slurping sounds from within.
  
  Spitfire sipped hers more quietly for a few minutes as I threaded the chariot through sparse traffic. Once she"d finished it, she dropped the empty can into the compartment and fiddled with her fingers for a bit. "Hey Elpis?" She asked eventually, hesitantly.
  
  "Oh crap, here we go," Quarrel sighed. "Emotions and mush."
  
  I spared a second to glance at her. "Yeah?" I answered, bouncing my eyebrows.
  
  That drew a small smile from her, but it disappeared just as fast. "How long have we know each other?"
  
  "Um. Three weeks tomorrow."
  
  "Feels like a lot longer."
  
  I shrugged, eyes on the road. "To be fair, we"ve done a decent amount of stuff in that time."
  
  "Yeah. Just... I don"t really know anything about you."
  
  Flinch was all paternal concern in my head. "She"s right. I know you want to spare her any knowledge that might put her in danger, but I think it"s past time for a gesture of trust from you. A first name basis, at least."
  
  I balked at the suggestion. "That"ll be dangerous knowledge when I get outed! I don"t really have good options right now."
  
  "If you want her to fight beside you, you must fight beside her in turn. You cannot ask for loyalty without giving it." Muramasa gave his opinion with all the pomp of a sage coming down from the temple to lecture the townsfolk.
  
  I still hesitated. I did like Spitfire- and that was part of the reason I didn"t want to bring her into secrets that people would kill to know. Konnigit was still new to me, but he certainly wasn"t as tough as he thought he was.
  
  "Minor details wouldn"t hurt, right?" I asked.
  
  "Hell, even a face isn"t too much to go on," Vladimir pointed out. "350,000 people in town, that"s plenty of room to blend."
  
  I chewed my lip and tapped the steering wheel for a long moment. "What do you want to know?" I asked eventually.
  
  Spitfire perked up. "I mean, I"m not asking for an unmasking-"
  
  "Rhyme on a dime," Anchorage chimed in.
  
  "-but, like, what you do for fun, where you go when you"re not busting bad guys, stuff like that."
  
  Konnigit cleared his throat from behind us. "I was actually wondering," he began, "how you managed to make all your stuff without people seeing. Have you got a private workshop or something?"
  
  "Sort of. I couldn"t exactly park this thing in front of my house." I tapped the dashboard demonstratively.
  
  "A Tinker workshop," Spitfire said, awed. "Could I see it?"
  
  "I"d have to clean up first," I evaded. "Re-align some of the booby traps, and all that." I"d also have to hide the improvised terrariums full of bugs, the more personalised decorations carved into the walls, the practice dummies shaped like America"s Most Wanted...
  
  "We could always make a basement," Stoneknapper suggested. "Just dig under the floor, put in a few buttresses for support; you could hide a tank down there."
  
  Needler snorted. "By hand? That would take weeks. It"d be like trying to empty a swimming pool with a bucket."
  
  Tock Tick cleared his throat. "May I remind you both that I"ve made tunnelling machines before? As long as we keep an eye on it and find somewhere to dump the spoil, digging out a basement shouldn"t be a chore."
  
  I entertained the idea of a secret cave beneath my secret lair to house my even more secret weapon caches and stores of funds; maybe even a tunnel for discreet entrance and exit.
  
  At the thought of cape home improvement, Flinch pointedly steered me back to the external conversation. "That reminds me, though. Do you want me to sort out a more permanent place for you? I was thinking of sorting out a safe-house. It could be a good place for you to stay if you want."
  
  Spitfire"s eyes were faintly visible behind her welder"s-goggle lenses, and wide as dollar coins. "Really? I mean yeah, that"d be great."
  
  "Fantastic. So," I steered the conversation back to the earlier topic, "what kind of stuff do you think you"re going to fill your room with? Games? Books? Boy band posters?"
  
  Spitfire shrank into her seat. "God, don"t even joke. Probably comic books, I guess. I like fantasy stuff most, but not like elves and dwarves. Have you ever heard of Ship Bones?"
  
  Konnigit leaned forward a little until his head was level with ours. "The ghost pirates comic? I just started reading that. No spoilers."
  
  "Yeah, but it"s not just ghosts, it"s necromancy and dark magic and stuff like that," Spitfire explained. "Super creepy vibe to it."
  
  "Oh, we have got to try that," Vladimir insisted.
  
  "How about you, Elpis?" Konnigit asked guilelessly. "What kind of stuff do you read?"
  
  I shrugged. "Depends on my mood. A lot of classic novels, but also thrillers and spy stuff. Sometimes a bit of fantasy or sci-fi too," I added, with a wink that lost a lot from behind a silver lens.
  
  "Plenty of music too. Old school rock and pop, bits of rap, bits of metal. I was thinking about getting back into playing the guitar."
  
  "You play guitar?" Spitfire asked as I spun the wheel. I waited until I"d finished the turn before asking.
  
  "I used to. I fell out of practice a while ago, but I"ve thought about getting a new six-string and shaking the rust off for a while now."
  
  "You kind of sounded like a song lyric just then," Konnigit pointed out. "Get a new six-string/shake the rust off," he sang off-key.
  
  "Just make sure you put some decent money towards it," Tactical insisted. "Anything under $300 is usually crap."
  
  "Fair enough," I said to both conversations. "And you, Konnigit?"
  
  "Lot of TV," he answered readily. "Besides that, usually video games. First-person shooters and stuff, but they have to have a gimmick to it. Stuff like the Medal of Honour games don"t do it for me."
  
  Somehow that didn"t surprise me. TV and violent video games were an easy way to get a thrill, and Konnigit gave the impression of fighting criminals more for jollies than some noble cause.
  
  "Gotta get the adrenaline somehow," Firecracker said.
  
  "And we still need a gaming system," Stoneknapper said. "Your house is seriously lacking in entertainment."
  
  "Yeah, yeah, I"ll put it on the list." I checked the streets we were passing, then made one last turn into a deserted parking lot on the edge of the Boat Graveyard, a stone"s throw from the ocean and next to an office building with most of the windows boarded up. The ones that weren"t were smashed open, and the interior looked utterly trashed. Probably homeless people or bored teenagers had used the place as a spot to hang out.
  
  I pulled a small tab on the dashboard. The scanner screen slid out and flipped up, booting up to display the view of the completed scanner. Right now, it was aimed straight ahead, giving a grainy white-on-black view of the lot and buildings.
  
  The salient detail was the eight human figures at the back of the office roof, just out of regular sight. I focused in on the familiar paralysed spider of Panacea"s, checked with bloodsight to confirm, then gestured to the screen. "They"re already here, waiting on us. Probably a power move or something. Act like you don"t know when you get out."
  
  "Holy Mary, this feels like the worst idea," Tactical groused. "Three ground-bound capes against all of New Wave."
  
  "Tac, we"re not against them."
  
  His answer was a laconic shrug and "Old habits."
  
  Handbrake on, engine off, and I slipped out of the car, Spitfire on the other side. Konnigit waited until I"d slid the seat forward, before he compacted himself and squeezed his bulk through the door. The chariot rocked slightly as he stepped out.
  
  While Konnigit reached back in for his bags, Spitfire made a show of looking around. "So where the heck are they?" she asked loudly.
  
  I rolled my shoulders to let the cape unroll itself from the reel across my upper back and down to my heels. "Not sure," I said in an equally easy-to-overhear voice. "Half of them are fliers, maybe they"re coming from the air." I discreetly moved a couple of bugs around for practice.
  
  A couple of ants felt the disturbance as someone walked across the roof, consistent with a faint rattle on the edge of my hearing.
  
  I looked up just in time to see two people jump off the roof and drop three stories.
  
  Manpower hit the ground with the insolent ease of a Brute, a cloud of dust lingering at his feet as he straightened up to his full athletic seven feet, brushing a hand over his short blonde hair, now going grey at the temples. It was combed back in a style so rigid I briefly wondered how many styling products he used.
  
  The glowing orb across from him bounced off the ground and exploded out into an athletic woman, who landed on the balls of her feet. Unlike Manpower"s yellow thunderbolt motif, Brandish"s suit was trimmed in orange, with a crossed-blades symbol across her chest. Her expression was wary as she straightened up, a slight wrinkle between her eyebrows.
  
  "Wonder if she"s still got that stick up her arse," Dirty Rotter said.
  
  A line of blue forcefields extended down into a floating staircase. Flashbang came down the steps briskly, the only one wearing a helmet and armour panels. They were green, textured to resemble a grenade"s shell, and his breastplate had a yellow-green bomb symbol, in the act of exploding.
  
  Panacea followed at his feels, a bit slower, almost hidden inside her robes. Her red scarf was tucked up around the bottom half of her face, and she didn"t look at me as she reached ground level behind her father.
  
  The fliers crested the lip of the roof and spread out and down. Glory Girl drifted down until she was hovering just above and behind her father in the middle, just over her sister"s head, cape billowing slightly in the breeze.
  
  The Pelhams spread themselves out- Lady Photon in the middle, with a tiara on her head and an indigo starburst on her chest; Laserdream as the one member I had no direct or indirect experience with, floating behind her father, with her mother"s heart-shaped face and full lips, red arrows crossing her chest from left shoulder to right hip; and Shielder hovering behind Brandish, his hair even more vibrantly blue than when I"d first seen him, styled into a spiky mess. Even with the visor covering his eyes, he looked nervous.
  
  Something about the formation and the serious expressions pulled at old memories and instincts, and not in a way that comforted any of us.
  
  Three years after the Brockton Bay Brigade had somehow brought in Marquis, and used the subsequent media circus to unmask and rebrand as New Wave, Tactical had ruled as Butcher 10, and had been talked around to the idea of expanding back into Brockton Bay.
  
  New Wave had rallied alongside the Protectorate to help push back. Seeing them fight in sync, the Butchers had reluctantly admitted their strength as a team. Serious firepower, but also coordination. Every time the Teeth had pressed at an opening, a laser, a forcefield, or an energy bomb would pop up in their face. And if they went for the ranged fighters, the melee heroes would get in their way. The Teeth had been forced to admit defeat on that side, and Empire Eighty Eight"s staunch resistance on the other end had repelled the Teeth completely.
  
  Still, from those battles, Tactical"s power had noted and stored their patterns, their individual strengths and weaknesses, and how they worked in smaller groups, even as the Teeth had been forced to retreat. Now, I could see it again.
  
  "It"s a fucking setup!" Butcher was apoplectic. "Fucking shits can"t follow their own goddamn rules!" He jabbed his attention toward Panacea. "The bitch sold us out!"
  
  The Butchers exploded into argument, shouting, furious ranting. I had to push half of them down just to think straight, but a few points came across- lured out here, away from civilians or valuable property, with nothing but a couple of rookies for backup.
  
  I spared a dirty glance to Panacea, what little of her I could see behind Flashbang, even as I slowly moved my hand toward my mace. Earlier today I"d cursed that my swords back at the lair were still in the process of being upgraded; I"d been frustrated that I wouldn"t be able to show them off. Now I really wished I had all of my weapons with me.
  
  "Start with Photon," Tactical whispered. "Get her kids out of the way next. Use bugs to screen yourself, obstruct lines of sight-"
  
  "Hi Elpis!" Glory Girl called, waving merrily with both hands. I stopped, poleaxed by the sudden burst of charm. Shielder waved too, shyly and one-handed, before awkwardly dropping his arm back to his side.
  
  They and the other fliers drifted to the ground, and the formation broke down, muddled up as New Wave ambled forward at various paces; Lady Photon taking point as the team"s leader, Brandish at her left, Glory Girl almost skipping along at the other side.
  
  "It"s good to meet you all at last," Lady Photon said as she stopped two paces from me. I absently noted that she was still in good shape eight years after the last memories of her, even if her crow"s feet had grown deeper. "The kids speak highly of you." She held out her hand. "Sarah Pelham, though you probably already know that."
  
  I gritted my teeth and shoved down a few more Butchers to lower my combined feelings of relief and deep frustration with myself. I"d almost jumped the gun and attacked an entire hero team out of lingering paranoia. I forced myself to move my hand away from the mace and relax my posture.
  
  "Fucking hell that was close," Tock Tick breathed out.
  
  I clasped Lady Photon"s hand with my own, watching her face carefully. If she had any inkling that I was Butcher XV, then she officially had the best poker face ever, to shake hands with a Brute with multiple Striker powers.
  
  Finally assured that I was in the clear, I opened my faceplate, visor recessing and jawguard folding down. "Elpis. This is Spitfire and-" I stalled as I realised the obvious problem.
  
  Anchorage was master of the quick comeback though, and I parroted her advice quickly; "-the hero formerly known as Konnigit, who"s about to introduce himself."
  
  His response was to pull the larger armour pieces out of the bag and quickly slap them on himself, then tilt his helmet back, and pour the two sacks of fat ball bearings down his neck. As I watched, his mass shuffled and rippled, wires wrapping around the attachment points of the armour plates, while the ball bearings floated up to the surface, mixed in with the scrap as he swelled.
  
  His shoulders were now a gleaming anvil, and his hide was a collage of shine and rust. His last move was to pull his crumpled helmet clean off and toss it to one side, leaving him briefly headless, then produce the helmet I"d made for him from behind his back; wide, round and low, shaped more like a tank turret than a head. He brought it to his shoulders and settled it on his "neck", his real body bobbing up to align with the eyeholes.
  
  Through the narrow eyeslit and past the grilled mouthguard, he spoke. "Konnigit is no more," he boomed, the hollow suit lending him an echo. "Now and forevermore; I am Ironclad!"
  
  Manpower laughed delightedly and clapped a few times. "Now that"s an introduction!" he cheered, putting a hand out. "Neil Pelham, good to meet you!"
  
  "Goddamn, I forgot just how deep his voice was." Vladimir shivered. "Oh, to climb that mountain..."
  
  I shoved Vladimir down as I felt the blush rise from his lewd thoughts of Manpower"s muscular frame, just in time to see Konnigit- no, Ironclad now- and Manpower shake hands with a faint groan of metal as they tried to outgrip each other.
  
  When they finally let go, I could see the faint dents in Ironclad"s gauntlet for a second, before he flexed his hand and popped the dents out with his power.
  
  Glory Girl had drifted over to peer with naked interest at Spitfire"s costume. "You actually made orange work," she said, in a wondering tone of voice. "The flame patterns are really well done, too."
  
  "Parian does good work," Spitfire said, but her back straightened a little nonetheless. "You look good too- first time I"ve seen you in costume and all."
  
  "Thanks!" Glory Girl flicked a lock of platinum-blonde hair back over her shoulder and absently tweaked her spiky tiara slightly.
  
  Lady Photon cleared her throat, and I turned back toward her. "So, now that we"re all here, would you mind explaining what you have planned? Your message sounded promising, but not very detailed."
  
  Brandish stepped a bit closer at that, eyes sharp in her face. Manpower broke away from his conversation with Kon- Ironclad- to amble over as well.
  
  "You"ve g-got this," Flinch said reassuringly, although his stutter flaring up betrayed his own nerves.
  
  "I"m going after the Empire," I started, "not just patrolling around their territory, but finding their operations and crushing them, hard and fast enough that they won"t be able to push back."
  
  I indicated the chariot with a sweep of my arm, one finger pointed to the jumbled bundle of sonar dishes on the front. "I can use this scanner to search through their territory, look for buildings with suspicious activity and scope them out. A stakeout or two to confirm, and then I can bust them."
  
  The general mood was interest- Flashbang was nodding along agreeably.
  
  Laserdream cut in, hovering two feet off the ground to rest an elbow on Manpower"s shoulder, while her other hand rested on her hip. "I like white supremacists getting beaten up as much as the next girl," she said, "and the next girl is Vicky-"
  
  "Damn right."
  
  "-but I can feel there"s a catch coming."
  
  "Little smartass," Needler said, not unkindly.
  
  I nodded. "Even with Spitfire and Ironclad, I"m limited in how much I can do at once. They both need some more training before I set them against the Empire, anyway."
  
  "Which is where we come in," Lady Photon finished.
  
  "Pretty much. I"m offering an alliance- I"ll provide the intel, maybe some disposable bits of Tinkertech, and New Wave helps disrupt Empire operations."
  
  The adults traded glances, a few raised eyebrows and significant nods, before Lady Photon met my gaze again. "That all sounds reasonable. We"d be happy to work with you all."
  
  "So this is how it starts," Bearskin said. "Those poor sons of bitches aren"t going to know what hit them."
  
  Quarrel picked up on the undertone of pity and sadness in Bearskin"s voice. "Are you actually feeling sorry for your old pals?" she asked harshly.
  
  "No! They"ve got it coming, I know that. It"s just..." He trailed off with a sigh. "If I hadn"t inherited, I"d have gone on being the same brainless bastard I was back then. It"s like, that could have been me, y"know?"
  
  "And there but for the grace of God go I," I quoted.
  
  I tried not to let the mix of emotions spread into my voice. "All that is going to take time, though; I"ll have to survey Empire territory, confirm and monitor locations, make a plan of attack, et cetera. It"ll probably be at least a few days before I can get you something- longer if you want multiple locations to hit at once.
  
  "In the meantime," I nodded to my teammates, "These two could use some more training, preferably against different powers. It"d help for us to all be in sync when we"re working together."
  
  Glory Girl clasped her hands together and made puppy-dog eyes at the adults. "Please say yes," she said in a stage-whisper. "I really want to see Spitfire"s power."
  
  "Glory Girl, let"s be more professional," Brandish said severely. "That said," she looked over the three of us, "some group training would be a good idea. We want to make sure everyone knows what they"re doing."
  
  Dirty Rotter snorted. "Yup, still got the stick up her arse."
  
  "Guess Glory Girl got her funny bones from her dad," Anchorage added.
  
  "Fine by me," Flashbang spoke up. "It"s been a while since we"ve trained with anyone new- it"ll be good to shake things up."
  
  "Any objections?" Lady Photon glanced around, then nodded. "Alright, let"s get to it."
  
  Ironclad pounded a fist into his palm with a crash of metal. "In that case, I call dibs on Manpower. I want to know what it"s like to fight somebody as strong as me."
  
  Manpower shook his head slowly. "Oh, Ironclad," he said teasingly, "you still won"t know what that"s like." A broad smile split his face. "Last one on the sand"s a rotten egg!"
  
  A massive leap sent Manpower bounding off toward the beach- Ironclad hastily pushed past us and pounded after him, rapidly stretching his body out to lengthen his stride.
  
  Lady Photon glanced at me with a commiserating look. I raised an eyebrow and pursed my lips. "Guys, amirite?"
  
  "Guess we better get over there before they start slugging each other." Laserdream took off after them; Glory Girl quickly linked her arm with Spitfire"s and pulled her along, peppering her with questions about her powers. The other adults followed at a more sedate pace.
  
  That left me next to the chariot with Shielder and Panacea, neither of whom had said anything yet. Shielder was a few inches off the ground, around eye level with me, while Panacea was steadily avoiding my gaze.
  
  Tactical spoke up. "Before you say anything to her, remember the last time you saw her in costume was at the hospital. Go from there."
  
  Solid advice- although I got the feeling that keeping track of what I knew as Elpis and what I knew as Taylor Hebert, what overlapped and what didn"t, was going to lose its novelty very quickly.
  
  "Panacea."
  
  One word made her jump and flick her eyes to my face, a full circle of white around the brown irises. "Yes?" she managed.
  
  "Heart of a lion, this one," Firecracker snarked. "Where"s all that stuck-up bitch attitude from before?"
  
  I inclined my head toward her. "I wanted to apologise for how we left things in the hospital. I was out of line, and I"m sorry for it."
  
  To give her credit, Panacea seemed to understand what I was doing pretty quickly. "No, it"s fine. I shouldn"t have been poking at personal issues like that." Out of the corner of my eye I saw Shielder"s face twist with confusion.
  
  "Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that. How about we just draw a line under it and go forward?" I cocked an eyebrow questioningly.
  
  Panacea started to nod, then did a double-take. "Did you put eyebrows on your helmet?" she asked accusingly.
  
  I waggled both up and down as I explained. "I wanted to be more expressive without having to open the helmet too much, so these seemed like a fun idea."
  
  "They, uh, they look fun," Shielder managed. "And I like your cape. Yeah."
  
  "Yeeurgh," Stoneknapper said. "This is always the problem with kids- you remember how stupid they are, and then you remember how stupid you must have been."
  
  Nemean hissed warningly. "Hush."
  
  "Glad you like it," I said, fumbling for a response. "You look good too. New haircut?"
  
  Shielder swept his palm over his stiff blue hairdo, all swept-back spikes like the crest of some tropical bird. "No, I just- thought I"d try a new style."
  
  "Fair." I indicated the beach, where Ironclad and Manpower were squaring up to each other on the sand. "So, who do you think"s going to win?"
  
  "Dad"s got this in the bag." Shielder glanced across at me as the three of us started toward the crowd. "Uh, no offense."
  
  "None taken. I think Ironclad needs a couple more losses to learn from."
  
  Amy"s nose wrinkled. "Seems a little harsh."
  
  I shrugged, taking a spot next to Spitfire. "Overconfidence is a good way to get your ass handed to you."
  
  "Certainly, we should know that lesson very well," Muramasa grunted.
  
  Brandish looked up as I said that. "She"s right. It"s better to learn in training and use it in the field. We"ll make sure to give you three plenty of tips."
  
  "Smug bitch," Butcher snarled. I gave him a warning shove, but I found myself agreeing. Brandish"s expression and tone were both condescending enough to rub me the wrong way.
  
  "Thanks," I said flatly. "I"d be happy to offer advice in return. For one thing, if you"re meeting up with a new hero group, maybe don"t show up in an attack formation."
  
  Every head present turned to look at me with varying levels of surprise.
  
  "The fuck?" Spitfire twisted out of Glory Girl"s grip and backed up a few steps. "An attack formation, seriously?"
  
  "How"d you know it was an attack formation?" Laserdream blurted. Shielder elbowed her in the ribs.
  
  "Yes, Taylor, how did you know that?" Quarrel asked in honeyed tones.
  
  I winced as I realised I"d all but accused New Wave of showing up ready for a fight; and diplomatic speeches were not a strength of any of the Butchers.
  
  "You"re on your own for this one, kid," Anchorage snickered.
  
  Unable to think of any easy way out of this, I began explaining my reasoning to the group, indicating people with a finger.
  
  "Flashbang front and centre, clear lines of sight and attack for his grenades. Manpower and Brandish flanking him for a pincer movement on the ground.
  
  "Fliers high and spaced out for ranged attack and defense- Laserdream behind Manpower for extra attack, Shielder behind Brandish for extra defence, Lady Photon in the middle as the balanced option, and Glory Girl positioned to fly into melee range."
  
  I glanced over at Amy"s nervous face and added "And all of this centred around Panacea, so she"s both well defended and able to reach anyone quickly for healing."
  
  Brandish looked like she"d just bitten a lemon; Laserdream"s mouth was slightly open. Flashbang blinked, glanced at his family, then gave me a decisive nod. "Spot on," he admitted, without a hint of embarrassment.
  
  "You worked all that out just by looking?" Shielder looked more awestruck than anything else.
  
  I shrugged. "It"s how I would have done it. And it"s how you did it," I added, unable to keep the accusing tone out of my voice.
  
  That was fairly true- the Teeth had long compensated for their relative lack of firepower by specialising in either surprise attacks or battle formations, especially after Tactical had inherited. Usually Spree would send out his clone mob to bog down the enemy, while ranged attacks wore them down. Once the enemy got close, then the melee would begin, usually with Butcher wading through it with gleeful ease.
  
  "Okay, okay." Lady Photon raised her hands calmingly. "You"re annoyed. That"s fair. We use formations like that in publicity events- we used it here because we"ve practiced it often and it looks good, not because we didn"t trust you. I"m sorry if we made you think that."
  
  I bit my tongue for a long second, then tipped my head back and breathed out, out, out, imagining it as red smoke. After a couple of seconds, I brought my head down again. "Alright," I said. "I suppose I over-reacted on my end. I"ve just..." I searched for the right way to say it.
  
  "Been on edge?" Lady Photon offered.
  
  I nodded. "Yeah."
  
  "Okay, but working out our formation that fast? Awesome." Glory Girl cocked her head. "Do you think you could help us come up with some more?"
  
  "I"d be happy to."
  
  "Hey!"
  
  The group looked out at Manpower and Ironclad, who were both still standing on the sand, watching the conversation.
  
  Ironclad flopped his arms out from his sides in a "come on" sort of gesture. "Can we start fighting or what?"
  
  5.5
  Saturday 19th February, The Boat Graveyard
  
  Manpower"s fist slammed into Ironclad"s midsection, right between the armour plates, and buried itself up to the wrist in the scrap metal of his body.
  
  Rather than try to pull him out, Ironclad"s body compacted in on itself, tightening the hold on Manpower"s hand as Ironclad raised a fist and swung right back at him.
  
  "So that"s why he left that gap in the plates," Stoneknapper marvelled as Ironclad"s hammer-blow knocked Manpower"s head to the side. "Smart kid."
  
  Manpower seemed barely shaken by the hit- digging his heels into the sand, he threw his whole body backward, ripping his fist free in a shower of sparks.
  
  "Huh."
  
  I turned to look at Lady Photon. "What?"
  
  Lady Photon nodded toward the fight without looking at me. "I"ve seen that before, when Neil"s field scrapes against forcefields and such. The interaction makes his shield spark."
  
  "Neat," I said, turning back to watch as Ironclad stomped forward, feet sinking into the sand. The Butchers had seen it back in the day themselves, but it was still interesting to see.
  
  Manpower came at him more cautiously this time, fists raised in a boxer"s stance. He ducked Ironclad"s first swipe and hammered a trio of jabs into his sternum. The impacts dented the plate inward with ear-splitting clangs, forcing Ironclad back several steps. Next to me, Laserdream winced at the noise.
  
  "There we go," Bearskin said. "Now he"s getting serious."
  
  Ironclad tried to back up further for some breathing room, but Manpower pursued, not giving him a second; slipping past Ironclad"s guard to slam a haymaker into his ribs that shook his whole body.
  
  Ironclad staggered- then a kick to his knee folded his leg like paper. He threw a wild punch at Manpower- expanding his armour at the same time, so his arm telescoped out like it was on a spring.
  
  His fist clipped Manpower"s jaw, sending the older man flying back, almost to the ship"s hull serving as the wall of the sparring grounds. He rolled expertly upon landing, turning an uncontrolled tumble into a ready crouch.
  
  Nemean grunted approvingly. "Nice."
  
  Ironclad strode toward him, stretched out to a ten-foot stick figure that brought a fist down at Manpower. Manpower quickly stepped to the side and pulled a fist back- but as the blow came down, Ironclad pulled himself down into his usual form, and Manpower"s swipe only hit empty air, leaving him off-balance as Ironclad bore down on him like a steam train.
  
  "A feint," Needler said approvingly. "Did we teach him that?"
  
  Quarrel snorted. "Pretty sure we didn"t."
  
  The two Brutes collided hard, immediately grappling at one another. Like this, Ironclad"s greater weight helped, but his reach was worse than useless. Manpower got a grip on one of his gauntlets and wrapped his free arm around Ironclad"s wrist.
  
  "Let me know if this hurts," he grunted, throwing himself into a movement meant to take Ironclad"s whole hand off.
  
  It did come off- too easily. Ironclad"s punch was already in motion when realisation crossed Manpower"s face, before the impact knocked him back into the hull behind him.
  
  "Sacrificing a limb. Very clever use of his power," Muramasa praised, as Ironclad picked up the hand and a couple of ball bearings that had come loose, smushing them all back on to his wrist.
  
  Glory Girl barely stifled a laugh- Manpower was pulling himself free of the dent he"d left in the ship"s hull, but because of how he"d hit, he was having some trouble pulling his backside free.
  
  Firecracker broke down into helpless laughter at the sight of Manpower pushing at the wall he was stuck in, impotently wiggling around in the crater. "Butt," she managed, before dissolving into snickers again.
  
  "Need some help?" Ironclad called, clearly on the edge of giggles.
  
  Manpower rolled his eyes and pressed both hands and feet against the hull. One massive heave popped him free onto the sand. "Laugh it up," he said, dusting himself off.
  
  Ironclad shrugged and put his fists up again- still keeping his hands too far apart. I"d have to break him out of that habit soon enough.
  
  Manpower broke into a run, coming at Ironclad with his head lowered like a charging bull. Ironclad quickly stretched himself out again, parts rolling over each other to re-arrange into that stick figure again; one step was enough to get him out of Manpower"s path.
  
  The extended form left him ungainly though; harder to manoeuvre. Manpower skidded around on the sand with a crackle of sparks as he exerted himself, rocketing back toward Ironclad"s ankle in a flying tackle.
  
  "Ah crap," Dirty Rotter grumbled, as the leg bent under the impact, knocking Ironclad off balance. Manpower wrapped both arms around the leg and twisted the whole foot off, tossing it away behind him as it began to fall apart without Ironclad"s power keeping it together.
  
  "Ironclad"ll lose," I predicted, as Manpower leapt on Ironclad"s stretched body, ripping great chunks off with his bare grip, handfuls of ball bearings thrown out in every direction. "His weakness is exposed now."
  
  As if to prove my point, Ironclad"s voice called out "I give! I give!"
  
  Manpower paused with an armour plate in his hand, then dropped it back onto Ironclad"s chest. "Alright. Good fight, kid," he said, extending a hand.
  
  Ironclad held out his one remaining hand and let Manpower pull his torso upright, then shuffled himself around to look at the rest of his armour, scattered across the sand. His helmet turned to look at his opponent. "Little help?"
  
  I sighed and stepped onto the sand, bending down to gather up a few bits of rebar that had landed close to us. A few ball bearings were mixed in as well.
  
  "If we have to do this every time he gets his ass kicked, you"d better start training him harder," Vladimir said as we gathered up Ironclad"s parts and tossed them to him to re-integrate into his body. It took less than a minute, but the Butchers complained about the boredom.
  
  Ironclad carefully got to his feet, pieces shuffling back into place, then shook himself like a wet dog. Fine sand poured out of a dozen gaps in his armour for a second.
  
  "You alright?" I asked. Ironclad dusted a bit more sand off his arm, then nodded.
  
  "I think so," he said, starting back to the edge of the beach. "Kinda wish I"d done better, though."
  
  "Hey, don"t beat yourself up," Manpower said, falling into step next to him. "Nobody wins them all. Besides, I"ve been doing this for years- I could write a book on all the stuff I"ve picked up."
  
  Lady Photon clapped her hands as we got close. "Alright," she said briskly, "Does anyone want to comment on the fight we just saw?"
  
  "About as coordinated as a couple of drunken elephants," Tactical said disparagingly. I gave him a warning shove as Spitfire spoke up.
  
  "That grow and shrink trick was pretty cool- you got a couple good hits in."
  
  Manpower chuckled good-naturedly. "I"ll say," he agreed, rubbing his jaw.
  
  "Are you sure you"re okay, Uncle Neil?" Panacea said, pushing her sleeve up slightly. "I can check you out if you want."
  
  Manpower waved her offer off. "I"m fine, Amy girl. Appreciate it though."
  
  I relayed Muramasa"s words- "Releasing your hand was a clever move. That is how you got your second blow in, after all."
  
  Ironclad"s face was well hidden, but the way he straightened up slightly was pretty expressive. "Thanks," he said happily.
  
  "It was good," Brandish agreed. "Although you ought to practice some way of fighting back when your metal is being taken away. You were helpless once Neil started pulling pieces off."
  
  "I think I took having my limbs pulled off better than most would," Ironclad said jokingly.
  
  Brandish"s lips twitched upward. "I"ll give you that."
  
  "Okay, but catching the punch in his guts like that was a pretty boss move," Anchorage enthused. When I repeated it out loud, Glory Girl nodded enthusiastically.
  
  "Yeah! You"ve got to use that sort of trick more. You"re not fighting with a flesh-and-blood body, so you need to use that to your advantage."
  
   "Honestly, I used up all the tricks I could think of in this fight," Ironclad admitted. "Not sure what else I can do."
  
  "Now that"s quitter talk," Glory Girl said. "We"ll come up with some more, just you wait."
  
  "Alright," Lady Photon said. "Does anyone else have anything to say?" When nobody spoke up, she nodded. "Okay then. Who wants the next match?"
  
  I glanced at Spitfire, in between Glory Girl and Laserdream. "Spit, you want the next one?"
  
  Spitfire hissed between her teeth. "Can I get the one after?" she asked.
  
  "No problem." I rolled my head from side to side to loosen up, and started cracking my knuckles through my gauntlets. "Guess I"m up then."
  
  "All-fucking-righty then!" Butcher bellowed. "Let"s crack some skulls!" I rolled my eyes under the mask and pushed him a little- not enough to silence him, but his emotions weren"t bleeding into mine so much.
  
  "So, who wants to rumble?" I asked, looking over the group. My options weren"t very good- Brandish"s energy weapons would cut through anything I"d built, and the Pelhams all had flight and lasers to out-range me. Glory Girl would have to get in close, but she was almost certainly stronger than me.
  
  I started discreetly moving some insects to burrow under the top layer of sand in a grid pattern. Hopefully I"d be able to use them like pressure sensors to maintain awareness in the fight.
  
  "Ah, it"s the hard fights that get fun," Vladimir said encouragingly. "I bet you"ll come up with something fun."
  
  Shielder cleared his throat. "I"ll do it," he said quickly, raising his hand for a second before letting it fall to his side. "I"ll go."
  
  Laserdream patted his shoulder encouragingly. "Atta boy, Eric," she praised.
  
  Manpower snapped his fingers. "Right, Elpis, you wouldn"t know- we have a couple of ground rules for sparring here. No serious injuries, obviously- but also, fliers stay below the top of these ships." He indicated the ships bracketing the patch of sand on either side.
  
  "Well, shit, that ought to make things easier," Bearskin said.
  
  "How come I didn"t need to hear this?" Ironclad asked. Manpower glanced at him, then rapped his knuckles against Ironclad"s front.
  
  "Because we"re both ground-bound Brutes, and you"re particularly well-protected."
  
  I nodded. "I got it. Anything else?"
  
  "No head shots." I flicked my gaze to Panacea, who had a mulish look on her face. "I can"t do brains, so absolutely avoid concussions or anything."
  
  "Not like we would have done that anyway," Nemean said, vaguely offended.
  
  Flinch radiated cautious agreement. "I"m with you. Still, she d-doesn"t trust us all the way. Probably never will."
  
  "Duly noted," I said, making an effort to keep the snide tone out of my voice.
  
  Shielder and I made our way to the sand, ten feet apart, and in Shielder"s case, a foot above the ground. The sand was finer here than where I"d sparred with Spitfire and Ironclad last week- I"d have to watch my footing.
  
  Shielder swallowed heavily as we stopped and turned to face each other. He looked a lot less confident now.
  
  "You"ve got this, Eric," Manpower called encouragingly from where he stood with an arm around his wife"s waist.
  
  Dirty Rotter cleared his throat officiously. "Ahem. You are now thinking about being in a naked sandwich with them. Have fun with that." I slammed him into the dark, simultaneously closing my helmet so nobody could see the blush blooming across my face.
  
  "Kick his ass, boss!" Spitfire called loudly. Laserdream swatted her shoulder with an irate look.
  
  "Fighters ready," Lady Photon called, glancing from Shielder to me. I flexed my fingers at my side, feeling like a gunfighter in the Wild West. "Three.. Two... One... Fight!"
  
  Shielder immediately snapped a shield into place in front of himself, cupping his hands together to charge a laser in his palms, a blue glow brightening there.
  
  I was already halfway across the gap between us, right hand going across to my axe, while my left pulled at my cape.
  
  Shielder brought his hands up, pointed straight at me as the forcefield moved to the side. I quickly threw myself sideways, skidding across the sand as the laser cut through the air, and came up with the axe in my right, and the cape in my left. I hit the switch on the top strip and felt it stiffen and curve outward. Two straps on the inside face loosened and pushed outward- I slipped my left arm through one and gripped the second.
  
  Axe in my right hand, wall shield on my left, I advanced on Shielder.
  
  His laser had gouged a deep, straight line across the sand, and I could see that the layer of sand underneath was visibly darker and wetter, with no signs of sudden heat. Lady Photon"s lasers could ignite flames with enough force, so it seemed like Shielder"s lasers leant more toward kinetic force than heat.
  
  "Excellent," Tock Tick grinned. As Shielder leaned around his shield and fired another blast, I raised the shield, ducked my head, and planted my feet.
  
  The force of the strike still hit me like a hammer. My shield flexed like bamboo, but didn"t break. When I raised my head and peered around to check, the fabric was unmarked but for a few small wrinkles.
  
  "So that works," I muttered, raising the shield again. Shielder"s expression was almost comically dismayed.
  
  I charged toward him, keeping my shield up as he fired a couple of quick shots. When I got close, he started backing away, throwing out more forcefields in my path to slow me down.
  
  "And test number two," Tock began as I pulled the axe trigger and swung it down into the forcefield in front of me. The axe hit- and glanced right off with a loud buzz as the oscillation ran up against something it couldn"t disrupt.
  
  "Come on!" Bearskin bellowed. I swung again with a grunt of effort, and the axe bounced off again, but on the third strike the forcefield broke, disappearing into nothing.
  
  Danger sense flared- I"d been so focused on breaking through I"d forgotten about the other side. Shielder was waiting for me, with his hands cupped together in a stance similar to a batter at the plate.
  
  "Crap," Stoneknapper said succinctly.
  
  I hauled my shield up as Shielder fired, strafing from hip to shoulder. The start of the laser blazed across my middle before splashing over my shield, far stronger than before.
  
  The force threw me off my feet this time- not injured in the least, but knocked back. I managed to bring my shield up again to catch Shielder"s weaker follow-up lasers, and push back to my feet.
  
  "Now then," Needler said impatiently, "You"ve let the boy get the first hit in, so how about turning your brain on? Hmm?"
  
  "Really feeling the supportive attitude, Needler," I sniped back as I walked myself backward. Shielder pressed forward, drifting across the sand, while his two forcefields slid forward and turned 90 degrees so they flanked me on either side.
  
  "Watch for the crusher move," Firecracker warned. Sure enough, danger sense pulsed weakly as the forcefields began to close in on me like a car compacter. I hopped backward, and they moved with me, still getting closer, boxing me in.
  
  I decided to trade defence for mobility; quickly re-setting my shield to its cape mode and clipping it back to my shoulders while I holstered the axe. Then I took a run at the furthest forcefield, jumped, and kicked off it in mid-air towards its twin. Its smooth surface gave little traction, but I still managed to push off and up, flinging a hand out to grab the top of the forcefield.
  
  A laser caught me on the side of the leg- when I turned my head, Shielder was taking aim with his right arm, left hand steadying it at the elbow.
  
  "Better hurry up before he makes a shot that counts," Anchorage said. I threw my other hand up and hauled myself up as the forcefields kept moving together. I just managed to swing my legs over before the walls came together.
  
  I hopped down toward the ground- and for a second I was caught in midair- before the clips at my shoulders detached and I dropped to the ground. When I glanced back, my cape was caught in between the two forcefields.
  
  Damn.
  
  "Woo!" Laserdream waved a fist in the air. "C"mon Eric, you"ve got her on the ropes!"
  
  "The fuck?" Quarrel demanded. "Oh, it is on!"
  
  "Hey Shielder?" I called, reaching around to the small of my back.
  
  Shielder already had another forcefield up in front of him, and two more extending out from that to cover his sides. "Yeah?" he asked cautiously.
  
  I brought the air cannon around, flicking my wrist to unfold the stock. "Nothing personal," I said, firing at him.
  
  The air blast splashed right off the forcefield, kicking up sand at the base. I moved before the sand started falling, sprinting forward in a random zig-zag Tactical had introduced for firefights.
  
  I cranked the forward grip to "reload" the cannon and loosed a couple more shots, but Shielder didn"t fire back, opting to throw up more forcefields behind him, forming a hexagon around himself.
  
  "He can"t shoot through his forcefields," I realised, pulling the cannon down and firing at the sand in front of me.
  
  The sand exploded into a concealing cloud of dust. I fired off a shot to either side as it bloomed, forming a wall of dust in front of me for a second.
  
  "Good job," Tactical said. "Now how the hell"re you going to get in there?"
  
  I unholstered the axe and pulled the trigger, setting it buzzing again. Ducking low and spinning in a circle, I dragged it through the sand. The oscillations ripped through the sand like an explosion, sending a great cloud fountaining out in every direction. I sealed the vents in my helmet as the world around me became a sandstorm.
  
  With bloodsight up, Shielder was a floating red silhouette, peering intently at where he thought I was. I quickly took a few steps to the right, then fired off to the left.
  
  Shielder"s head turned toward the new dust cloud. "Rookie mistake," Stoneknapper said disparagingly.
  
  "That"s the point of training," Nemean rumbled. "Make mistakes somewhere they won"t get you killed."
  
  I threw myself out of the cloud in the opposite direction, slamming the axe into the forcefield in front of me. Shielder turned to see me land a roundhouse kick against it as well, and then one more slash of the axe that cut through it, destroying the forcefield.
  
  I raised the air cannon and fired at his legs, knocking them out from under him. He caught himself with flight and flew straight up as I made a grab at him. I quickly stepped back from the forcefields before he tried to trap me again.
  
  Shielder pointed both hands at me and started alternating laser shots at me. I ducked behind one of the forcefields for cover, but he simply dismissed it, and the others, and kept firing, clipping my shoulder with one before I started moving to dodge.
  
  I tucked the axe against the crank handle and hauled back on it, relishing the "ka-chunk" noise it made, then aimed a shot at Shielder. He raised a forcefield with a flick of his wrist to block the air blast.
  
  I re-cocked the air cannon and tried again, but it simply splashed against the forcefield with a ripple of air. Shielder dismissed it again and opened fire again, walking his shots straight toward me.
  
  "Showing off," Vladimir snorted.
  
  Firecracker rolled her eyes. "So can we," she retorted, sending me a mental image. "Trust me, it"ll look badass," she said to me.
  
  I holstered the axe and racked the cannon back onto my waist, then backflipped out of the way of the next shots. As Shielder adjusted his aim and tracked my path, I continued the motion, chaining backflips together as he chased after me, blue lasers cutting holes in the sand.
  
  Off on the sidelines, I heard Spitfire whoop with delight. It wasn"t something that would have worked outside of a sparring match, against a serious opponent, but it worked here, and I looked good doing it.
  
  I reached my target- the cape, crumpled on the beach. My hands landed on it as I made one more flip, and I grabbed it, pulling it with me as I flipped back to my feet. I twirled the cape like a matador and snapped it out into shield mode again, letting the next lasers hammer against it.
  
  Shielder"s barrage stopped, but I was certain he was charging a stronger laser. Instead of waiting for it, I bulled forward, drawing the air cannon again with my right.
  
  Shielder saw the motion and summoned another forcefield, but I wasn"t aiming at him; the air cannon was just a distraction. I twitched my fingers, letting the grappler unfold itself from my forearm. Another twitch, and the grappler fired, trailing cable right past him to smack high into the hull of the ship 50 feet behind him.
  
  "We"re definitely going to have to replace the drill bit after this," Tock Tick noted as I kept running, now firing the air cannon into the sand so I was engulfed by a cloud of dust. I skidded to a halt inside and jumped to the left, dropping the shield to take the air cannon in my left as lasers punched through the sand cloud.
  
  That momentary lapse was all I needed. I turned around, rotating the grappler so the second launcher was facing forward, and fired that into the other ship"s hull, high above the crater left by Manpower"s ass. A quick hand motion had both lines start reeling in, pulling them taut, and pulling me up with them, out of the sand cloud to hang ten feet in the air, right next to a very stunned Shielder.
  
  I couldn"t resist. "Hi," I said, raising the cannon to his stomach.
  
  I had it set to low, not like the powerful shots that had kicked up sand all over the place. Nevertheless, the blast had enough kick to knock him back through the air, rapidly losing height.
  
  Flinch hissed. "That"s got to hurt," he said sympathetically, watching Shielder clutch at his gut.
  
  "Oh for fuck"s sake," Firecracker complained. "So what if the kid got a boo-boo?
  
  "Shut it, "Cracker," I retorted, giving her a hefty shove, even as I cocked the cannon against my right arm and aimed again, selecting a net grenade from the under-barrel. It hit Shielder in the chest and burst open to wrap around him, trussing him up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
  
  Shielder struggled inside the net as I dropped back to the ground and ran toward him, leaping high to grab his foot and yank him down. His face was red as it drew level with mine, but he stopped struggling once I bumped the cannon against his chest.
  
  There was a long, tense moment, before Shielder"s head slumped onto his chest. "I give," he muttered sulkily.
  
  "Woo!" Spitfire yelled, snapping me out of my focus. I"d almost forgotten that New Wave and the kids were watching the whole thing. The expressions varied from Spitfire"s glee through Manpower"s bemusement to Brandish"s excellent poker face.
  
  I quickly grabbed the handle that had folded out of the net grenade and pressed the tip of my middle finger into a specially shaped indent. The net relaxed at the touch, falling off Shielder in a heap of steel cable and silk threads. "Are you alright?" I asked Shielder, folding the air cannon up and returning it to the small of my back; flicking my jaw opened my helmet again as well.
  
  Shielder rubbed at his belly with a wince. "Yeah, I"ll be fine. Feels like I got hit by a dodgeball is all."
  
  Lady Photon drifted over to tussle his hair fondly. "You did really well, Eric," she said warmly.
  
  "Hell yeah," Laserdream agreed, feet leaving the ground in her excitement. "You"re getting way faster with your shields!"
  
  Brandish cleared her throat. "Should we talk about the match?" she asked, in a mild tone of voice.
  
  Shielder dropped a bit as he moved back to the tarmac, feet brushing the ground. "I lost," he admitted miserably. The stooped shoulders and wavering voice tugged at sad memories of Winslow for me, and I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for him.
  
  "Hey," I said, nudging my shoulder with his, "you got some good hits in. I had to work for this one."
  
  "Yeah, don"t beat yourself up," Ironclad said. "Elpis cut one of my arms off last time we sparred."
  
  Shielder looked up, cheeks still flushed. "Really?"
  
  "Yup." Ironclad flexed his right arm in demonstration. ""twas but a scratch."
  
  Bearskin"s groan inside my head was long and heartfelt.
  
  "There was something I wanted to ask though," I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. "Shielder, can you shoot through your forcefields?"
  
  He snorted, pulling his visor off. "You figured that out, huh?" Underneath the visor his eyes were bright blue, but exhausted. "No, I can"t. It was one of the first things I tried."
  
  "I was wondering why you didn"t just bubble yourself and fire at me through that." I outlined a shape in the air with my hands. "Have you tried making a forcefield with a hole in the middle to shoot through?"
  
  Shielder shrugged. "I"ve tried, and it feels like it should be possible, but the field won"t form right. Either it comes out solid, or it doesn"t come out at all."
  
  "Mm. Well, what about two fields with a gap between them?"
  
  Shielder paused for a second, with a distant look in his eyes. Then he waved a hand, and two rectangular blue forcefields appeared in front of him, with an inch"s gap between them.
  
  "Instant sniper nest," Quarrel noted. "If he gets the hang of that, he"ll be a lot tougher to beat."
  
  Rotter gave me a grumpy feeling. "I"m starting to get why Tac"s always so pissed about you talkin" with the enemy," he griped.
  
  Manpower reached out a hand and prodded at the fields with a finger. "Now that is clever," he admitted. "How come we never thought of this?" he asked his wife.
  
  "To be fair," Lady Photon admitted, "Eric"s the only one who can move his shields around. It"ll work better for him. Still," she cupped her chin thoughtfully, "It"s definitely something we should try."
  
  "Agreed," Brandish said. "Any other suggestions?"
  
  Flashbang cleared his throat. "Using your forcefields to try and trap Elpis was a good idea. You might have better luck if you form the forcefields closer to her, instead of moving them after her."
  
  "Yeah, I wondered why you didn"t just put Elpis in a bubble and call it a day," Spitfire said.
  
  "I can"t make my shields appear too close to people," Shielder said defensively. "They need, like, a foot of clearance."
  
  "Still foolish," Muramasa said. "The boy could have trapped us within a box if he had thought more quickly."
  
  "Something to practice later," Laserdream said. "As for you, Elpis," she added, fixing me with a piercing look, "where do you think you went wrong?"
  
  "Crystal, we"re supposed to offer feedback, not ask for self-criticism," Lady Photon said warningly.
  
  "Pretty sure she"s pissed at you for whaling on her little bro," Anchorage said teasingly. I stole a second glance at Shielder. He was standing straight, but his shoulders were slightly hunched, and without the visor he looked younger, more vulnerable.
  
  "Oh for goodness" sake," Needler said exasperatedly. "It was a sparring match, you"re supposed to come out of it with bruises! Stop agonising over the fight and talk. You can apologise to the boy later if you"re really that bothered."
  
  "Well," I said out loud, with an internal glare at Needler, "I probably should have pulled the air cannon first thing. Trying to smash my way through all those forcefields wasn"t my smartest move."
  
  "And when you did get through one, Eric had a charged-up laser with your name on it," Glory Girl pointed out with a smile.
  
  "Knocked me on my ass," I admitted shamelessly.
  
  "The backflips were just showing off," Panacea said sullenly.
  
  Butcher snarled. "Bitch."
  
  "She"s not wrong though," Tactical admitted. "Going that in a real fight would get you shot a dozen times if that kid wasn"t such a bad shot."
  
  "True," I said to all three of them. "I was feeling cocky."
  
  "Anything else?" Manpower asked the group.
  
  Ironclad raised a hand. "I just wanted to say that the whole cape-into-a-shield thing was really cool."
  
  "Oh, hell yeah," Spitfire agreed. "Glad I finally got to see it."
  
  "Good to know people have taste," Tock said.
  
  "Any suggestions for improvement?" Brandish asked pointedly. "No?" After waiting a moment, she nodded. "The next match then."
  
  I laid a palm on Spitfire"s back and coaxed her forward. "You"re up."
  
  "Yes!" Firecracker exulted. "Time for some cooking!"
  
  Spitfire winced slightly. "Uh, so who am I fighting?"
  
  Flashbang stepped forward. "I"ll take this one. I think I can show you a few tricks."
  
  "Right." Spitfire fiddled with her fingers. "It"s just, my power sets shit on fire. I don"t want to hurt someone by accident-"
  
  "Hey." Flashbang laid a hand on her shoulder. "I"ve been doing this for longer than you"ve lived, and we"ve got the best healer on the East Coast on standby," he said, indicating Panacea with his free hand. "I"ll be fine."
  
  Spitfire swallowed and nodded. "Okay."
  
  "We need to help her toughen up a bit," Vladimir noted.
  
  Nemean gave him a warning growl. "Leave her alone."
  
  "Let"s get your frame powered up first," I said, stepping over to her and opening the engine canister on her front. Spitfire obediently hawked a loogie inside and folded the gauntlets down onto her forearms as the engine began to warm up. I gave her a pat on the shoulder as she folded the gauntlets down over her hands.
  
  Flashbang walked out onto the sand with an easy gait; Spitfire followed him after a second to grip the triggers in her hands.
  
  Facing each other down on the sand, I was struck by the difference between them. Flashbang must have had fifty pounds on her, and over a decade"s experience; he stood with feet planted and shoulders set, while Spitfire was coiled into a boxer"s stance like I"d taught her, arms lower to aim the hoses on her arms better.
  
  "Give him hell, Spitfire," I called.
  
  Glory Girl glanced at me, then cupped her hands around her mouth. "Go easy on her, Dad."
  
  "My money"s still on Flashbang though," Stoneknapper admitted. "He"s got versatility, he"s got trick shots, and he"s got years under his belt. Spitfire"s still green as grass."
  
  Flinch made a disgruntled noise, but grudgingly conceded the point. "She could do something with the extinguishers," he suggested, "But yes. She is too gentle for her power, really."
  
  "I mean, she could just set the whole beach on fire," Quarrel suggested. "She can swim through that shit while the middle-aged spread gets flame-broiled."
  
  I rolled my eyes under my helmet as I squeezed myself between Panacea and Laserdream. Shielder trotted over from next to Brandish to join us.
  
  "Flashbang"s grenades probably wouldn"t bounce on the sand, though," I pointed out. "The only place he can bounce them off is the ships. No trick shots here."
  
  "Quick question before we start," Flashbang asked, rolling his shoulders. "Are you fireproof? Do you know?"
  
  Spitfire started a little. "Yeah. Hell of a thing to find out. Why?"
  
  Flashbang shrugged. "Just checking. I mean, I"m immune to my grenades. Means I don"t have to worry about you getting burned."
  
  "Alright."
  
  Lady Photon rose off the ground a little. "Fighters ready," she called. "Three... Two... One... Fight!"
  
  Flashbang immediately created a grenade in each hand, swelling up out of nothing into fist-sized spheres with a mother-of-pearl sheen. He lobbed one as Spitfire ran forward and left.
  
  I"d made sure to teach her not to hit stronger opponents head-on. Find a weak point, a blind spot, and exploit the hell out of it.
  
  Still, Flashbang"s power required a lot of prediction- where someone would run, how they"d dodge. Spitfire managed to change direction at the last second before the grenade landed and throw herself away, which meant the explosion and plume of sand only rolled her across the sand instead of tossing her through the air like Tactical had seen it do. I felt bugs in the sand get thrown through the air, no sensation of heat as they died. One of Flashbang"s concussive grenades.
  
  The wind was coming from offshore- Panacea pulled her scarf up around her mouth as some of the sand blew toward us. Shielder slipped his visor back on.
  
  Spitfire was left on her back. Rather than waste time rolling over, she dragged her head back through the sand, held her arms out, and squeezed both triggers, sending twin jets of water at Flashbang. One streaked across his face for a second, and he backed away, sputtering.
  
  "Ha!" Rotter cackled.
  
  Tactical hummed. "Lucky shot."
  
  Spitfire rolled over and pushed to her feet, the power frame sending her from horizontal to vertical in one great push. She staggered for a second, then charged forward, firing another jet from her right arm.
  
  Flashbang wiped his face clear and lobbed another grenade, which Spitfire ducked around, but he simply scattered a dozen little ones in front of him, forcing her to draw up short as they formed a line of little pops, more sand fountaining out of the beach.
  
  A big grenade punched right through that and hit Spitfire in the chest. The explosion was muffled, no flame or smoke to impede the sight of Spitfire sailing backward a good five feet before she hit the ground and slid to a stop, groaning.
  
  Bearskin hissed through his teeth. "That"s gonna sting."
  
  "Sand in your everywhere," Anchorage agreed.
  
  "Come on, Spit!" I only realised I"d shouted after the fact. "Claim some ground!"
  
  Panacea shot me a confused look, but I only saw that out of the corner of my eye. Spitfire was my focus as she gritted her teeth and pushed herself up.
  
  Flashbang hunkered down slightly with an egg-sized grenade in his palm. He tossed it underhand, like a bowling ball, letting it roll across the sand toward Spitfire as she got to her hands and knees.
  
  "She doesn"t have the spine," Butcher said contemptuously. "Damn kid doesn"t have any idea-"
  
  Spitfire"s head snapped around; her mouth dropped open, and she vomited a wide stream of clear liquid ten feet forward, right onto the grenade.
  
  Whether it was the heat or the pressure, I wasn"t sure, but I saw the liquid ignite into a blazing patch of fire so hot that I felt the heat from 30 feet away, followed by a fountain of flame in the middle of it as the grenade exploded in the centre.
  
  I felt it even closer as every bug under the fire and within three feet of it instantly shrivel and die under the ferocious heat. I barely had time to register it- they simply stopped existing to me as the fire ripped through the ground.
  
  "Holy crap," Glory Girl exclaimed, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
  
  "Language," Brandish said automatically, but her expression was just as gobsmacked as her daughter.
  
  "So Butcher," Firecracker asked smugly, "You were saying something?"
  
  Spitfire got to her feet, while Flashbang stared at the long patch of hellish flames stretching out in front of him; then he shook himself and formed grenades in his hands again, tossing them one after another into the sand near the edge of the flames. He timed them perfectly- the grenades exploded all at once, showering the fire in a layer of sand, dampening some of the flames.
  
  Spitfire levelled her arms at him and hauled on the triggers- both hoses shot a hard stream of water into his chest, enough to sting and disorientate. As Flashbang brought his arms up to fend the water off, Spitfire opened her mouth again and hosed almost the whole width of the beach with a thick stream, turning it into a scorching trench too intense for a shower of sand to stifle.
  
  Needler slowly nodded. "There"s potential there," she said in her too-reserved tone that she used when she was trying not to show how excited she really was.
  
  Flashbang had backed far away from the fire as it grew; the flames were now flickering a good four feet high, utterly smokeless, but with enough heat distortion that I doubted he could have seen clearly through them.
  
  It must have been a shock to him when Spitfire took a running start and cleared the foot-wide patch of flames in a daring leap right through the flames, landing in a dramatic crouch on the other side, lightly scorched. Twin jets of water slammed into his chest again, and this time Spitfire charged forward as she sprayed him, hitting him with a flying tackle that bore him to the ground.
  
  Flashbang did his best, but Spitfire"s power frame put them on equal footing, and the scuffle ended when she pointed a hose at his chest and shouted "Say uncle!"
  
  Flashbang froze, and then let his hands flop onto the ground. "Uncle," he said clearly. "You win."
  
  I stepped back and around the others to jog across the sand toward the pair while everyone else was closing their mouths. "Way to go, Spitfire!" I cheered, offering a hand to haul first her, then Flashbang up.
  
  Spitfire smiled bashfully. "Thanks." She glanced back at the still-burning strip, and her mouth twisted in embarrassment. "I really overdid it, huh?" She added in a small voice.
  
  Flashbang patted her on the shoulder reassuringly as we started back toward the group. "That"s why we practice out here. Nothing important to worry about. Besides," he added ruefully, "Lord knows I blew up a few things when I was starting out."
  
  "I"m proud of you, Spit," I said, nudging her lightly. "Only thing bothering me right now is that I didn"t think to bring marshmallows."
  
  "Forget marshmallows," Nemean said hungrily. "Next time we bring a whole side of pork and try roasting that."
  
  Lady Photon looked from the fire to us as we came back, then the fire, and back again. "Okay," she said at last, "I think now"s as good a time as any to break for lunch. We can rest a bit before any more sparring, analyse the fight while we eat."
  
  "We"ll have to wait for the fire to go out before we do anything else," Brandish added bluntly. Spitfire"s shoulders hunched a bit at that.
  
  "Fine by me," Flashbang interjected, rolling one shoulder. "I could do with a breather."
  
  "We brought some food in the chariot," I said, jerking a thumb back toward where we"d parked. "I can go get it out."
  
  "We"ve got some stuff too," Manpower said. "Need to cook it first though."
  
  "Gee," Glory Girl said, resting her elbow on his shoulder, "If only we had a useful source of heat somewhere nearby. Where, oh where, could we find something like that?"
  
  5.6
  Saturday 19th February, The Boat Graveyard
  
  Manpower pulled a foil-wrapped package out of the picnic bag New Wave had brought them, and peeled some of the foil away. Bits of meat and vegetable were packed onto thin skewers.
  
  "Laser-seared kebabs," he said cheerily. "Nothing quite like "em."
  
  Nemean practically sat up and drooled as the scent of juicy chicken and peppers wafted across. "That smells really good."
  
  "You guys cook with lasers?" Ironclad asked incredulously, looking up from where he was fiddling with the drinks cooler he"d hauled out of the chariot.
  
  "Old family recipe," Laserdream confirmed, delving into the picnic bag herself and emerging with another foil package- thin strips of steak this time.
  
  "Man, they really don"t have any separation in their lives, huh?" Vladimir snorted. "Though I guess we can"t talk."
  
  "So, uh, what do you guys have?" Panacea asked awkwardly. Her hood was pushed back now, letting her mass of mousy brown frizz spill out across her shoulders, and her scarf pulled down from her face. It made her look younger, more vulnerable.
  
  I flipped open the other storage compartment and got out the other cooler. "Mostly sandwiches. Bit of salad, and some little fruit pies for dessert."
  
  The flames on the sand were still burning brightly, and New Wave had brought cooking utensils with them. All we had to do was load the meat onto forcefields set over the fire, then watch them slowly sizzle and cook to perfection.
  
  After a few minutes of cooking and passing out drinks, we spread out in a rough circle in the middle of the parking lot, the coolers and bags in the centre. I"d made way more food than I thought we"d need, because the Butchers always preferred multiple options, and now I was sat on the ground with my back to the beach, gauntlets discarded next to me, with a hot kebab, a sandwich, some salad, and a can of root beer, because Flinch had been in line to pick.
  
  Spitfire pulled her sandwich apart experimentally. "Anybody want to trade? I got ham and cheese." She waved it back and forth from her perch on top of the hood of the chariot.
  
  "Trade you a kebab," Laserdream offered, unfolding from her mid-air seating position to drift over. The girls quickly swapped foods and repositioned, Spitfire gnawing on the kebab with a look of bliss.
  
  I tried the first bite of mine- hot, juicy chicken, just crisp enough on the outside, with smoky grilled peppers alongside it. A trickle of grease ran down my lips as I chewed thoroughly.
  
  "Oh god damn, that"s great," Bearskin moaned. I was so caught up in the Butchers echoing my own enjoyment that I almost missed the conversation.
  
  "So what"s wrong with ham and cheese?" Lady Photon asked, perched on a forcefield "bench" next to her sister.
  
  Spitfire swallowed her mouthful of well-done with a shrug. "I just don"t like them at the same time. One or the other, just not both."
  
  "Fair enough," Photon conceded. "I remember when Crystal went vegetarian, two years back."
  
  "We all remember that," Shielder said, rolling his eyes, his visor tucked under his own forcefield seat. He bit into his kebab and added "Fee waf fo htuck-ub abut ih."
  
  "Eric, nobody here speaks piggy," Lady Photon said scoldingly. "Finish your mouthful first."
  
  Shielder rolled his eyes even more, but complied. "She was soooo stuck-up about it. Mother Dearest," he added sarcastically, affecting a stuffy British accent.
  
  Dirty Rotter cackled. "Mouthy little bugger," he said approvingly.
  
  "I wasn"t that bad," Laserdream protested.
  
  "You so were. You always turned your head away from whatever we ate, you read all the labels on stuff when we went shopping, and you"d always bust out facts about what happens in meat processing plants when I was just trying to eat my meatloaf."
  
  "Oh, knock it off, Eric," Panacea groaned, not looking up from her BLT as she shifted around; unlike the rest of New Wave, she had opted to sit on the ground instead of using a forcefield. "That"s half my fault anyway."
  
  "Say what now?" Anchorage asked.
  
  "How does that work?" I asked, genuinely puzzled.
  
  Amy shrugged. "I was just starting out volunteering at the hospital, and Crystal came to pick me up while I was sorting out this car crash victim. Lots of intestine."
  
  I voiced Tock Tick"s comment. "Let me guess, dinner that night was sausages?"
  
  Panacea shrugged. "No idea. But Crystal went veggie right after that, so I tried to help her out with recipes and stuff. I was dealing with a lot of blood and stuff as well, and I could feel how it"d be kind of off-putting."
  
  "Bet she"s really desensitized now though," Firecracker pointed out. "She"s had her powers a couple of years; I bet she"s like those detectives on TV that don"t stop eating their sandwich even when they"re inspecting the corpse."
  
  "What"s so special about that?" Stoneknapper asked. "We do that all the time."
  
  "Okay!" Laserdream slashed her hand through the air, looking distinctly unsettled. "You"re right, that"s part of what put me off meat for a while, now can we please change the subject?"
  
  "I remember when we were really small," Glory Girl said, talking to her sister over her cousin"s words, "and we were out of town for something. We went to- what was it, Patty"s Patties? And you got all upset because there were all those decorations of cartoon animals getting chopped up-"
  
  "Oh shit, I remember those," Quarrel said. "They did chicken pieces shaped like roosters too."
  
  "Don"t you have any other childhood memories of me?" Amy asked. "It can"t be me learning to ride a bike, it"s always got to be the burgers-"
  
  "Guys!" Laserdream wailed.
  
  "Alright, that"s enough, girls," Flashbang said authoritatively. He and Manpower were sat together on one of Shielder"s forcefields- the only ones strong enough to take their combined, well-muscled weight. "Change of subject?"
  
  Brandish cleared her throat primly. "How, exactly, did you all meet?" she asked, eyes passing over Ironclad, who was sitting with legs splayed out in front of him, occasionally putting food in his helmet so his real body could grab it; over Spitfire, splayed out on the front of the chariot, slowly dangling a strip of steak into her mouth, one bite at a time; to me, cross-legged on the ground, a dab of grease at the corner of my mouth.
  
  I felt a brief jolt of embarrassment at the three of us, compared to the neat, matching uniforms of New Wave.
  
  "Piss on that," Butcher snapped. "Grow some balls-"
  
  I pushed him down, but Muramasa had similar sentiments, if more politely articulated. "You should not be embarrassed. Shame is only for truly despicable acts. Enjoying a meal is certainly not."
  
  I set my kebab aside and tried for a level voice. "Spitfire and I met first, when I was on patrol. A couple of Empire guys were giving her grief, so I tied them up for the police and took her out for a sandwich. We decided we could help each other, and we partnered up."
  
  "I mean, you helped me more," Spitfire pointed out, sitting up to sip her cola. "Now I"ve got a costume and the most kick-ass fire extinguishers on the planet."
  
  I searched for an honest compliment, and settled on half of one. "Hey, if you hadn"t been there when we hit the Merchants, I"d have got my ass kicked even worse. And I probably wouldn"t have got to the hospital as fast. I was lucky to have you there."
  
  Spitfire slurped her drink for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Yeah."
  
  I wasn"t really sure what to make of that.
  
  "Kinda the same with me," Ironclad said, metal arm sliding a fresh drink can down his helmet. The crack-hiss of him opening it echoed inside his armour. "I"d found some ABB guys selling drugs, and then Elpis zipped in on her bike, did a freaking front flip off the handlebars, and pulled a sword. Coolest shit I"ve ever seen."
  
  Shielder glanced at me, comically wide-eyed. Flashbang barked a laugh and toasted me with his drink.
  
  "You were going to ask about funding," Tactical reminded me.
  
  Vladimir blew a raspberry. "Killjoy."
  
  "Actually, Brandish, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while we"re here. Stuff about funding, image, that sort of thing."
  
  Brandish perked up at that. "Of course. What do you need to know?"
  
  The conversation split in two around there- Brandish and I wound up talking shop about possible funding, negotiating, interacting with the public, and a dozen other things neither I nor the Butchers had ever considered about being a hero. Lady Photon and Manpower chipped in occasionally with their own advice and tips.
  
  "It was never this complicated for me," Flinch said as Brandish walked me through the basics of setting up a cape bank account that could accept anonymous pay-ins. "I just went out at night, looking for trouble."
  
  Needler snorted. "I used to do that too, but it usually ended very differently." The nostalgia was tinged with bitterness- there weren"t a lot of gay bars in Brockton Bay anymore, not since the Empire had grown in strength and reach enough to cover a fair chunk of the city.
  
  The rest of the group had fallen into more casual conversation- Laserdream was regaling them with a story involving her, Triumph, and a villain who had since left the Empire, Bloody Bill.
  
  "So Triumph hit him with another shout, and that backed him into a forcefield I"d set about here-" Laserdream briefly dipped in the air to gesture at about ankle height, "- and he flipped all the way over and landed on his face- wham!" She clapped her hands together for emphasis.
  
  "And the guy was still trying to get back up! So, I charged up the biggest laser I could, slapped a couple of forcefields over his elbows and legs to keep him pinned, and then blasted him right in the back. The guy held up for so long I thought I was gonna run out of energy, but he finally stopped struggling."
  
  "He left a dent in the asphalt," Manpower chuckled. "I was so proud when I saw the pictures in the paper."
  
  "Yeah, that was a rush," Laserdream admitted. She frowned a little and added, "A little too much of a rush. I kissed Triumph right after that."
  
  Spitfire sat up suddenly. "Wait, what?"
  
  "I know, I know, it was dumb. But we"d just come off a fight, I was excited, the moment seemed right..." She trailed off and sipped her drink. "Turns out he was seeing someone else. He was really nice about it though. I actually went on a double date with them and this other guy I was dating for a while."
  
  "Does that happen a lot?" Shielder asked. "The whole after-action kiss thing? I thought that was only in the movies." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his gaze briefly flicked to me. Something clicked in my mind with awful certainty.
  
  "Oh for fuck"s sake," Anchorage groaned. "Do we really have to deal with this now?"
  
  "He"s just a kid," Bearskin said. "At that age, you get crushes on every girl around. He"ll snap out of it."
  
  Quarrel groaned. "He"d better. I"d rather slit my wrists than have to sit through the twig having that conversation."
  
  "See, there"s a slight problem with that," Rotter said in a smarmy voice.
  
  "He"s just a kid," Bearskin insisted.
  
  "How long did it take for you guys to tell- well, I guess it was him telling you his secret identity?" Spitfire shuffled forward on the hood, perched attentively.
  
  Laserdream shrugged. "Pretty sure he"d already told me before that. That"s half the reason I kissed him- he"s handsome under that helmet."
  
  "Huh."
  
  Flashbang glanced between Spitfire and me; his mouth formed an "o" of sudden understanding. "Have you two not unmasked to each other yet?" he asked gently.
  
  "Not yet," Spitfire said defensively, hunching her shoulders. I twisted my fingers together, trying to think of something to say.
  
  "Ah hell," Firecracker muttered. "What, now we"re hurting her feelings? She just said she didn"t need an unmasking!"
  
  Glancing about for anything other than Flashbang"s pitying expression or Spitfire"s defensive posture, I caught Amy"s eyes. There was no judgement there- she knew, after all. She held my gaze for a second, then turned toward the others.
  
  "We"ve kind of got a different point of view about secret identities, though," she pointed out. I felt a sudden surge of gratitude for her as she continued "I don"t know what it"s like for other independents, but I"d guess it takes a while to get to that point."
  
  "Your father and I unmasked to each other right after we met," Brandish commented blithely. "And that was long before we ever thought of the New Wave movement."
  
  "How is she not doing this on purpose?" Tock Tick demanded.
  
  Amy winced and shot me an apologetic look. I gave her a nod for trying anyway.
  
  "We"ve only recently talked about making the team-up a long-term thing," I said, "but I"m all for it. I might be able to expand my workshop into a headquarters for all three of us. If you guys are cool with that," I added quickly.
  
  "Hell yeah." Ironclad tossed his empty drink can out through his helmet- I caught a glimpse of a pale hand for a second. "Hanging out in a Tinker workshop would rock. And we could have a firepole leading down to the chariot, stuff like that."
  
  "There isn"t a firepole in the world that could hold your weight," I pointed out.
  
  Ironclad clapped a hand to his chest. "Ow. Harsh."
  
  Spitfire giggled a little. "Yeah, I kind of thought secret identities were more of a thing when you"re in it for the long haul. I can wait."
  
  Flashbang nodded. "Fair enough." He crumpled his paper napkin around the kebab skewer he"d been gnawing on, and tossed both into the garbage bag. "The fire"s all out, I think," he added with a glance over his shoulder. "Anyone up for another round?"
  
  "Definitely," Nemean called out.
  
  Vladimir hummed neutrally. "Can we finish the sandwich first?"
  
  "Give me five minutes," I said.
  
  A bit more than five minutes later, we were lined up on the edge of the sand again as Ironclad and Manpower turned the sand over. I took the opportunity to have more insects burrow under the sand again, forming a grid pattern under the surface.
  
  "I wouldn"t be surprised if we found glass in here," Manpower said, kicking fresh sand over the darkened strip where Spitfire"s power had raged. "It sure felt hot enough."
  
  "I wasn"t going that hot," Spitfire protested. "Not for a sparring match."
  
  "Yeah, you need about 1700 degrees Celsius to melt sand," I pointed out. "No way Spitfire could make that without going all-out."
  
  "Get some of that before we leave," Stoneknapper said. "We could do some great stuff with rough glass."
  
  "So, who am I fighting this time?" Ironclad asked, dragged his fingers through the beach. "I"m good with whatever."
  
  Brandish rolled her shoulders. "I"ll do it."
  
  Muramasa nodded. "It will be interesting to see how her skill has changed since Tactical"s time."
  
  "True," Flinch agreed. "Ironclad"s going to lose this one though."
  
  "Oh, certainly."
  
  Lady Photon caught Brandish"s shoulder as she went to step forward. I heard her say something like "go easy on him" before letting go.
  
  Brandish flicked through a selection of weapons as she walked across the sand- knives, a sword, an axe, all appearing in her hands, made of searingly bright orange energy. I knew from the memories that any of those weapons could cut through just about anything with zero resistance. She"d destroyed one of Tactical"s favourite weapons when the Teeth had attempted their return, years ago; an oversized sniper rifle with a glaive attached to the barrel, as a weird hybrid weapon made possible by Tactical"s knowledge of weapons, Stoneknapper"s matter-shaping, a little of Tock-Tick"s Tinkering, and the strength needed to wield such an ungainly weapon.
  
  Ironclad simply clapped his hands together, producing a loud clashing sound. "Let"s rock."
  
  "Before we begin, let me be clear," Brandish said. She pointed to his torso; "Your physical body is in the middle?"
  
  "Yeah? You"ve seen me eating."
  
  "Just checking. I don"t want to hurt you by accident."
  
  "Come on, hurry up," Anchorage groaned. Then she laughed and added "Chop chop."
  
  I leaned closer to Amy and murmured sotto voce, "You can re-attach limbs, right?"
  
  "It"s not going to get that bad," she said snippily.
  
  "But you can, right?" Spitfire eyed Brandish with some concern.
  
  Lady Photon lifted off the ground a couple of inches. "Fighters ready," she called clearly. "Three... two... one... GO!"
  
  Ironclad immediately stretched himself out, long arms swinging out like hammers at Brandish, hands open and flat for the mother of all slaps.
  
  Brandish chose to leap into his reach, past his hands. In mid-air, her body collapsed into an orange-yellow ball of light, maybe the size of a football, that bounced as it hit the sand with a little glimmer of sparks, rolling right between Ironclad"s legs.
  
  Ironclad had learned from his first match, though. He threw himself into a forward roll just before Brandish exploded back into her human form, tumbling over the sand and twisting to face her.
  
  "All that just to change places," Needler snorted, as Brandish and Ironclad stared each other down from their swapped positions.
  
  Brandish moved first again- creating an axe in her hands, with a wedge-shaped head wider at the top, and starting toward Ironclad; he pulled his armour close to himself and raised his fists in a guard.
  
  The axe swiped across his raised arms, leaving a line burned into the metal. Ironclad fell back with a hiss, kicking sand at her. Brandish dismissed the axe and summoned a pair of weapons, more like massive fans, not as intense as her usual weapons. More- diffused, I thought.
  
  Dirty Rotter summoned an image of Brandish in a skimpy dancing outfit, swaying back and forth with a massive pair of feather fans instead. I shoved him into the dark next to Butcher and bit my tongue.
  
  Brandish began swinging the fans at Ironclad, the edges slashing against his metal. Where they made contact, they left burn marks, lighter than the axe had made. Ironclad caught most of the blows on his arms, leaving the armour there scorched and discoloured.
  
  Ironclad dropped low, one leg out, and swept it out in front of him. Brandish leaped back, dismissing the fans as the foot scythed through the sand below her.
  
  "Not bad," Bearskin admitted. "He"s learned a bit. Needs to stop taking hits that easily though."
  
  As Ironclad got back to his feet, Brandish summoned a pair of knives in her hands, glowing intensely. Ironclad approached this time, and she let him, stepping to the side and collapsing into her sphere form, then popping back out as he tried to stop, raking the knives across the side of his leg.
  
  Tactical compared her crouch against her standing position and nodded. "So she can change her position while she"s in sphere form. Useful."
  
  "Go Mom!" Glory Girl whooped, waving a fist in the air. Flashbang smiled next to her as Brandish did a forward roll, switched forms mid-way, and came out facing her opponent again.
  
  Ironclad had come to a halt, looking down at his leg. Metal parts visibly shuffled over one another, the damaged pieces receding into the mass while fresh ones came forward. In seconds, the cuts weren"t visible.
  
  "Niiiice," Firecracker drawled as Ironclad brought his fists up. "Real Terminator 2 vibe there."
  
  Brandish dismissed the knives and created a short sword instead, gripping it with both hands. Ironclad nodded to her, then charged. As he moved, he flicked one hand at her- I saw a dozen of the ball bearings I"d made for him fly from his hand.
  
  "There we go. That"s creative," Vladimir said approvingly.
  
  Brandish reflexively dropped into her sphere form, and Ironclad seized the opportunity, stretching into his extended form as he swung a foot at her.
  
  The kick connected perfectly- the Brandish-ball soared high and long overhead, before smacking into the top of the ship at the end of the beach with a ringing clang and bouncing off with comical symmetry, following a near-identical arc back toward Ironclad.
  
  Quarrel was killing herself laughing. "Oh my fucking ga-ha-ha-had! I haven"t seen a kick like that since last Thanksgiving! She just went- woop!"
  
  Her laughter was contagious enough that I snickered a little as well. Amy shot me a sour look. I shrugged at her, and she turned away with a scoff.
  
  As the Brandish-ball came in for a landing, she suddenly changed back- for a second, she was spread-eagled in the air, a sword in either hand. Ironclad backpedaled furiously as she dived at him-
  
  -only for her to collapse into her ball form again, rolling to a stop on the sand. Ironclad realised his mistake and came at her again, but this time Brandish popped up, twisted away from the kick, and used both swords to cut his leg off as it swung past her.
  
  The severed foot went flying with the force of the kick, falling apart as it left Ironclad"s power effect. Ironclad himself hopped backward desperately, wobbling on his remaining foot as he rushed to shift metal to his shortened leg.
  
  Brandish didn"t wait for him- another swing took his second leg out, and he hit the sand with a thump, even as he tried re-absorbing the metal on the way down, and immediately started hauling himself away from Brandish on his arms.
  
  Brandish simply strode after him, absently swapping her swords for a two-hander to slice through Ironclad"s leg again when he tried to kick at her, then nimbly hopped onto his chest and pointed the tip of her blade at his chest.
  
  Ironclad hesitated for a second, then slumped back onto the sand with a sigh. "Crap," he said succinctly.
  
  Flashbang started clapping loudly. "Great stuff, Carol!" he called cheerfully. Glory Girl simply jumped into the air and whooped.
  
  "Well, we saw it coming," Muramasa sighed. "I suppose there is no shame in losing to a worthy opponent."
  
  "Yeah, but now we need to start putting Humpty Dumpty together again," Tock Tick groused as I stepped onto the sand.
  
  "Let"s go," I said, motioning with one hand. "All the king"s horses, all the king"s men, yadda yadda."
  
  Glory Girl obligingly flew off to Ironclad"s foot, while I went for his leg. Brandish had stepped off him by the time we brought the pieces over, and Ironclad had levered himself onto one elbow.
  
  The other arm was pressed to his forehead with an overly-dramatic air. "Oh, cruel irony," he drawled; "And I was to perform onstage in The Nutcracker! It was to be my star role! My life"s work! Now I"ll never dance again-"
  
  "Stop milking it, Ironclad, your legs are right here," I said, dumping the pieces on top of him.
  
  "Hey now, don"t stop him just when it was getting good," Anchorage complained.
  
  Glory Girl dropped the foot next to him, and he shifted a leg to connect to it, shuffling the parts together to reform his body. In a few seconds, Glory Girl took his outstretched hand and hauled him to his feet with ease.
  
  Ironclad bounced on his feet a few times, sinking deep into the sand, then sighed cheerfully. "That was fun."
  
  "It sure was fun to watch," Glory Girl agreed, dropping back to the ground to walk back to the group with us.
  
  "Okay," Spitfire said when we got close, "Ironclad"s got a problem with losing limbs. You gotta work on that, big guy."
  
  "I"d like to see you look this good with both your legs off," Ironclad countered, shaking the sand out of his feet.
  
  "She"s right," Brandish said. "You need to work on your defence, and learn to evade if an attack is too strong for you to take."
  
  "Sense of humour: missing, presumed dead," Stoneknapper snarked.
  
  "Brandish has a point," I said. "You can take a hit, but you don"t want to rely on that too much. It doesn"t end well."
  
  Ironclad sighed. "Yeah, alright. On another topic, what did everyone think of my shotgun move?" He flicked his wrist, and a couple of iron balls popped off his wrist and into his cupped palm.
  
  "Now that was good," Manpower admitted. "It probably won"t be more than a distraction to a lot of people, but that still has its advantages."
  
  Spitfire suddenly snapped her fingers. "Idea! What if Elpis made you some weapons you could keep mixed in with the rest of your metal? Then you could just pull a sword out of your leg whenever you need it."
  
  Needler rolled the idea around. "Interesting," she admitted. "It would be hard to fit a sword sized for him, though. Knives maybe, or some sort of club."
  
  "Arms made of knives," Vladimir whistled. "Bet you wish you"d had someone like him back in the day, huh Indah? You could have had someone carry your ridiculous number of blades for you."
  
  While they started bickering, Ironclad pressed his hands together and leaned in- I could just make out puppy-dog eyes inside his helmet. "Please? That"d be so cool."
  
  "I"ll consider it," I said, "but I"m not giving you two edged weapons for a long while. That"s an accident waiting to happen."
  
  Shielder cleared his throat. "I thought repairing yourself during the fight was pretty cool. I know we just said you don"t need to keep taking hits, but it"s kinda impressive that you can."
  
  "Thanks man."
  
  "Does anyone have any advice for Brandish?" Lady Photon asked. Brandish folded her arms and said nothing.
  
  "I thought you maybe could have just ducked under Ironclad throwing that stuff at you," Laserdream volunteered. "Other than that, it was pretty solid."
  
  Brandish nodded. "I understand. I thought it"d be better to play it safe instead of risking a stray hit." Her voice was level as she said that, but I noticed her fingers digging into her arms at the same time.
  
  "Following on from that," I said, "I wanted to ask about your move when you were dropping down. Was that just an intimidation tactic, or was that to change your trajectory, or both?"
  
  Brandish"s expression relaxed minutely at my question- the set of her eyes was slightly bemused, but not defensive. "A bit of both. It"s a good way to slow myself down when I"m being thrown in my sphere form- I quickly flicker forms-"
  
  "-and the air resistance kicks in," I completed. "Plus your opponent sees you flying at them with swords in hand, so that throws them off."
  
  "Exactly." Brandish unfolded her arms and set them on her hips instead, looking faintly pleased.
  
  "I think that about covers it," Flashbang said. "Next round, anyone?"
  
  "About time for another go," Bearskin grunted as I stuck my hand up. "Who"ve we got left?"
  
  Nemean hummed thoughtfully. "Photon, Laserdream, or Glory Girl. All bad matches for us."
  
  True to Nemean"s words, Glory Girl"s hand shot up to match mine. "Let"s do this!"
  
  Of to the side, I saw Panacea"s expression tighten into a strained poker face. One hand slipped into her pocket, and the frozen spider felt her fingertip brush it.
  
  An obvious hint. "Okay," I said aloud, "but let"s both hold back a bit. I know you"re tough, and I"ve got my armour, but this thing"s a pain to repair."
  
  "Sure, sure," Glory Girl said distractedly, adjusting her tiara as she drifted forward to take her place on the beach. I followed after her, swapping a few things around on my belt as I went.
  
  I stared Glory Girl down as we found our spots, ten feet apart. Her feet were firmly on the sand, at least to start, and her thin white cape flapped slightly from the breeze coming off the ocean. She smiled widely at me, showing neat white teeth.
  
  "Alexandria package, supposedly invulnerable- and here we are, fighting without teleport or any tricks." Tactical grumbled insistently, but by this point I knew he did that more out of habit than actual emotion.
  
  "I wouldn"t say that," I replied, letting my hands settle around my hips, hovering over the flail that I"d shifted to my right hip. "We"ve still got plenty of tricks."
  
  Lady Photon looked from me to Glory Girl, then nodded sharply and pushed off the ground a few feet. "Fighters ready," she called, raising a hand in the air. I jerked my chin to shut my helmet, visor and jawguard meeting in the middle with a muffled clang.
  
  "Three... Two... One..." Lady photon chopped her hand down through the air. "Fight!"
  
  Glory Girl came at me like a rocket before the echo had faded, fists held out in a classic pose. Some wondering part of me wondered what her top flight speed was, and her acceleration, even as I threw myself into a side roll to dodge her charge.
  
  In an impressive display of manoeuvrability, Glory Girl flicked herself from horizontal to vertical and through a 90 degree turn in less than a second, fast enough that her cape snapped out behind her, framing her as she threw a haymaker.
  
  I swung my flail to knock her fist aside, manipulating the weapon"s triggers with fingers and thumb. It deflected the blow, but it also told me something else.
  
  Glory Girl was much stronger than me. What also unsettled me was the magnetic pull of Needler"s Thinker power, drawing me in to her weak points.
  
  Except there were no specific weak points to Glory Girl- not old injuries and scars, not loose joints ripe for dislocating, not nerve clusters- not even obvious targets like eyes and ears. I"d read how her forcefield wrapped around her from head to toe, making her invulnerable, and I"d assumed there was a lie to it, as was the case with most public descriptions of powers, if the cape was smart.
  
  Up close like this, it seemed all too truthful.
  
  She followed the haymaker with a series of jabs toward my chest. I knocked some aside with the flail and deflected others with my free hand and elbow, giving ground all the while. Glory Girl pressed in close, using flight to advance and keep her momentum.
  
  "Come on, stop letting her box you in!" Firecracker snapped. "Hit her already!"
  
  Firecracker was right- I couldn"t just keep taking hits. I leapt backward, my fingers ready on the triggers- and when Glory Girl came in with another punch, I caught it right on the flail head.
  
  Since I"d unlocked the flail head from the handle, the effect was to knock the cantaloupe sized ball clean off, trailing a length of cable. As it did, I flicked my wrist, and turned the ball"s movement into a swing that went down, around, and up under Glory Girl"s guard to hit her in the stomach.
  
  That got a huff of surprise from her, but no indication of pain. Her forcefield was as strong as ever too.
  
  Still, the impact had thrown her off her rhythm- and Spitfire"s shout of "Wooo! Get her, Elpis!" certainly cheered me on.
  
  "That"s what I"m talking about," Anchorage said approvingly as I backed away from Glory Girl, swapping the flail handle to my left hand and holding the cable in my right to swing the head in a slow circle.
  
  Glory Girl eyed the slowly swinging flail for a second, before returning her gaze to me. "Cheap shot," she said, but with a smile.
  
  "The best kind of shot," I quipped back, now moving the flail faster.
  
  Glory Girl nodded, then shot at me again, coming higher this time to swing a kick at my head. I swung the flail across my body, meeting her foot with the ball as I hit the first trigger.
  
  It wasn"t a trigger in the traditional sense- in its current iteration, it looked like a stud set in a tall triangle. The bottom two settings, side by side, were Bounce and Absorb. I"d been using Absorb in the fight to charge the flail"s kinetic capacitor by deflecting Glory Girl"s punches.
  
  Now, I flicked the stud to Pulse, low on the scale; which meant that when the flail hit Glory Girl"s foot, it let out a pulse of kinetic energy at the point of impact. The sound was a dull thump, and Glory Girl"s shout was more surprised than anything else when her foot was forced right back.
  
  Needler"s Thinker power went crazy, lighting Glory Girl up in a roughly typical pattern of nerve clusters, tendons and joints. It probably made sense that the sister of one of the best healers in the country would be clear of old injuries.
  
  I shook the thought out of my mind, because that was all secondary to the fact that I could feel through Glory Girl"s forcefield now. Strong enough impacts seemed to be the trick.
  
  "I thought so," Muramasa said smugly. "There can be no defence so perfect."
  
  Tock Tick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, everything bleeds, we know, shut up."
  
  Glory Girl hastily backed away and up as I advanced on her, hovering five feet off the ground, unknowingly out of reach of Needler"s weak point sense. I spun the flail head again, fast enough to blur, then flicked it up at her, paying cable out to give it reach.
  
  Glory Girl swooped to the side, letting the flail shoot past her, and dived back down, fists raised again- her body was all one impenetrable surface again, so her forcefield must have re-asserted itself. I yanked on the cable in my hand, flicking the weight-shift trigger so the flail head fell at an angle and came down on Glory Girl"s other side.
  
  Her hand lashed out to grab at the cable, but it was fine enough that she couldn"t stop its movement. I flicked the triggers again, and met the falling flail head with a kick that knocked it back up, into Glory Girl"s stomach again.
  
  The flail was set to Absorb, so it absorbed most of the impact itself, but it got another surprised "oof" from her. The cable slipped through her fingers, and I reeled it in to a more manageable length while she backed up a little more.
  
  I caught the flail head on my foot and started bouncing it, playing an impromptu game of hackysack with it while I kept my eyes on Glory Girl.
  
  "Oh, stop toying with her," Needler said. "Just beat her and have done with it."
  
  Stoneknapper shrugged. "Hey, there"s nothing wrong with having a little fun."
  
  Glory Girl seemed content to wait, so I took the initiative- flicking the flail to Bounce and hammering it with a kick that shot it towards her. She slid to the side in mid-air, turning to keep the flail in view as it passed.
  
  I yanked it back in again and turned the movement into a criss-crossing arc in front of me, widening it as I stepped forward until the flail scraped against the sand at its lowest, and grazed by Glory Girl at its highest.
  
  A few passes of that were enough to break her patience- she lashed out with a punch that caught the flail as it swung past her, knocking it away in an uncontrolled tumble. While I tried to regain control, she dived at me out of the sun.
  
  I looked up to see Glory Girl bearing down on me, a figure in white and gold, cape and hair streaming out behind her, haloed by the sun. She looked like an angel of battle- beautiful like a bullet, terrible as the ocean. I felt wonder and fear fill me in equal measure, flowing through to the Butchers and doubling back to me, flooding my mind to bursting with awestruck terror.
  
  I screamed and swung a fist at her face.
  
  Maybe I"d swung from her blind spot; or maybe she just hadn"t expected me to go on the attack like that. Whatever the case, my left fist crashed into Glory Girl"s jaw like a meteor. The force of it knocked her forcefield out again and spun her a little off course, so I saw her face in profile as she realised she was suddenly vulnerable, and within punching range.
  
  "Fucking get her!" Butcher roared, rising from the depths like a hungry shark, all teeth and bloodlust.
  
  The Butcher"s instincts were a welcome aid here; I raised the flail grip in my left hand, a reverse knife grip, and stabbed at Glory Girl"s face with the pommel spike on the end. She backed away, flight smoothly taking her back ten feet.
  
  "Don"t let her get away! Get after her before the forcefield resets!" Quarrel screeched.
  
  I charged after Glory Girl, reeling the flail head all the way in and cranking the Pulse setting to maximum. She veered away from my right hand grabbing for her face, looking to crush, to mangle, to drain blood and rot flesh, while I brought the flail around in an overhead strike.
  
   Her elbow rammed into my wrist, hard enough to dent the metal and knock my swing to the side. The flail head smacked into the sand, and discharged all the kinetic energy it had accumulated from blocking and deflecting Glory Girl"s punches throughout the fight.
  
  The explosion was immense- sand fountained ten feet into the air, insects underneath dying in an instant as the shockwave rippled through the sand. My vison was clouded with a sandstorm in miniature, hiding Glory Girl from me.
  
  I switched to bloodsight immediately, saw her silhouette backing away and circling around behind me. I snarled and went for the axe on my belt. The Butchers roared agreement, ordered me to fight, to hurt, to maim and mutilate and kill-
  
  "TAYLOR! SNAP OUT OF IT!" Flinch bellowed, struggling to be heard over the furious babble.
  
  I pushed a couple of Butchers down in order to hear him better- and felt the wondrous fear lessen. My head cleared a little, some of the fog fading, cluing me in to what was happening to me.
  
  I shoved down Butcher, Quarrel, Bearskin, Nemean and Needler; Firecracker was halfway down, right next to Anchorage. That was enough to dull things down, turn the world grey for me. I pulled on Flinch, on Tock Tick and Tactical, let their mindsets influence me.
  
  Glory Girl"s emotion aura was well documented- it induced strong feelings in the people around her, dependent on how hard she pushed it. People who were friendly to her would feel awe, while those against her would feel fear. With the Butchers" mixed opinions on everything, I"d received a massive dose of both- and their default response to fear like that was always more fight than flight.
  
  "Stop-" My voice came out raspy- my throat was a little torn up from the screaming, healing even now. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Stop the fight." I tossed my flail out onto the sand on impulse, and staggered backwards, out of the cloud. My feet banged against each other, and I was shaken enough that I didn"t fight the motion when I fell on my ass.
  
  I cradled my head in my hands and pushed more of the Butchers down as they raged at the lost opportunity to make me lose control, focusing on breathing exercises- clean air in, red smoke out.
  
  Clean air in, red smoke out. I noticed the shuffling footsteps marching toward me more through the bugs they stepped on than my hearing.
  
  When I looked up, Panacea was standing over me with a furious expression. "The fuck was that?" she demanded.
  
  With most of the Butchers down, it was hard to care about things. I preferred it that way right now- I didn"t feel quite so intensely horrified that I"d been honestly trying to kill Victoria Dallon.
  
  Still, a worm of regret and shame wriggled its way through my guts. "The aura," I managed. "The feelings- I felt so much. I was scared. I lashed out."
  
  Panacea"s expression shifted from anger to confusion, took a turn through comprehension, and then stopped at fearful. "How do you feel now?" She asked it in the same way someone with a snake on their chest would ask "Is this venomous?"
  
  With so few of the Butchers in the light, things felt heavy and meaningless. Flinch stayed close to me, a source of warmth, while Tock Tick and Tactical plied me with reason. That meant that the shame I felt was all my own.
  
  "Like hammered out shit," I eventually replied. I turned away from Panacea, and realised the rest of the group was on the sand by now- Spitfire and Ironclad were hovering a little way away from Panacea and me, and Shielder a bit further back. Flashbang and Brandish were next to Glory Girl, speaking quietly to her while occasionally casting looks back at me. The remaining Pelhams were somewhere in the middle, Laserdream wringing her hands.
  
  Spitfire hesitantly stepped toward me. "Elpis? Y"okay?"
  
  "Stupid question," Tactical grumbled, but nothing else.
  
  I grunted. "Not exactly. I feel like a sponge that soaked up a load of water, then got wrung out."
  
  Behind the kids, I saw New Wave now making their way over, worried expressions on their faces. I levered myself to my feet with a grunt- Ironclad stuck out a hand to help, and I took it gratefully to pull myself to my feet.
  
  "I think we need to talk about what just happened," Brandish began, arms folded and lips pursed.
  
  "It was me, I think," Glory Girl blurted. "My aura. I didn"t think it"d affect you like that though. Most people just freeze up, the only guy who really fought harder..." She trailed off with a wince.
  
  "Glory Girl"s aura," I confirmed. "I"d heard about it, but I didn"t think it would affect me that badly." The Butchers had faced emotional powers before- Bearskin was a particular example, considering he"d used his rage inducement power to accidentally inherit. Still, powers like that hadn"t affected them so deeply.
  
  The adults of New Wave traded glances for a second. "I think we should stop the training here," Lady Photon said gently. "We can take a break while you sort yourself out, and then..." she hesitated, "I think you and Vicky should stay apart from each other for a while. Until we can figure this out."
  
  "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right." I turned and started back to the chariot.
  
  After a second, Spitfire and Ironclad followed after me, her light footsteps almost drowned out by his thudding footfalls.
  
  "So..." Spitfire twiddled her fingers. "Do you , y"know, wanna talk about it?"
  
  I sighed. "I appreciate the offer. Spitfire. But I absolutely don"t."
  
  We said nothing else.
  
  5.7
  Saturday 19th February
  
  After a long talk, that I pointedly sat out of, the others decided to have one more match just to round off the day.
  
  Even so, it was clear that Spitfire and Laserdream were off their game- slower, cautious, not capitalising on openings. Laserdream fired weak lasers in short bursts, used her forcefields to block and occasionally try directing Spitfire, and her flight, though apparently fastest in New Wave, was used mainly to hover in place.
  
  Spitfire was withdrawn as well- she spat tiny, burning loogies, instead of the hose of liquid she"d used in her fight with Flashbang. Her framework saw more use- punching her way through the scarlet forcefields that popped up in her way, or firing at Laserdream with jets of water.
  
  I watched it all while I sat on the chariot"s hood, removing my armour piece by piece. Right now, it felt more like confinement than protection, and its weight on my body set me on edge. The weapons belt had been the first to go- I didn"t trust myself with weapons right now.
  
  "You had a bad reaction," Flinch said, "but that"s not the same as being a bad person. Emotion powers are always hard on us."
  
  Tactical nodded agreement. "Oh yeah. Anyway, you didn"t actually hurt the girl; no blood, no foul, right?"
  
  I was pretty far into the grey feelings with more than half the Butchers in the dark, so Tactical"s dismissive comment didn"t feel that aggravating. I still gave him the mental equivalent of a filthy look as I flicked the catches on my breastplate to unlock it, then grabbed at the seam and hauled upward.
  
  The front half swung up and out; the motion of the hinges drove an assortment of gears set into the backplate, allowing the linkages on the inside of the armour"s spinal column to unscrew themselves from the attachments that trailed down the back of my undersuit. As they came free one by one, I slipped the whole thing over my head and set it down next to me.
  
  On the beach, Laserdream was finishing up. She"d managed to block Spitfire in with forcefields long enough to hit her in the chest with a couple of weak lasers that hit more like a hard shove than an attack. It still sent Spitfire tripping over a small forcefield behind her ankles, sprawling onto the sand.
  
  Spitfire didn"t make an effort to get up. She just stuck one hand in the air and shouted "Okay! You win!"
  
  Laserdream nodded and dismissed the forcefields, then dropped onto the sand to offer her a hand up. I saw Spitfire shoot me a glance as she made it to her feet, and gave her a nod.
  
  New Wave and Ironclad brought the girls into their huddle with quiet congratulations and a few words of constructive criticism. They were only ten feet away, but I didn"t want to listen in right now.
  
  After Flashbang"s suggestion of using her flames to claim ground, and her extinguishers to clear paths for herself, Spitfire glanced over at me as I was pulling my helmet off; I was only wearing the undersuit now, like a silk wetsuit in dull grey, little metal connectors at the joints and my amphora symbol sloppily bleached onto the chest. My mask felt too light without the helmet over it.
  
  Lady Photon followed her gaze to me, and sighed heavily. "I suppose we should talk about the elephant in the room. Elpis?"
  
  I set the helmet down on the hood and stood up. "Yeah. I owe you guys an explanation. And I never actually apologised."
  
  The whole incident had shaken me to my core. I"d lost control of myself before, certainly; but those were issues of willpower, of my temper. Here, I"d been reduced to a storm of rage and instinct by a simple power interaction- and that scared me, because that wasn"t something that could be overcome by determination and self-reflection.
  
  Some part of me had tried to downplay the event as not my fault- a freak accident, instead of making a conscious choice to try and hurt Glory Girl. Not necessarily something to castigate myself over.
  
  But having the Butchers in my head meant that I saw their thoughts, and especially their thoughts on me. I couldn"t bullshit myself into thinking I was completely innocent here- I"d made the mistake of forgetting Glory Girl"s aura, and I"d lost myself in the anger and the fear.
  
  I"d attacked with killing intent, and it sickened me.
  
  I turned to Glory Girl. "I"m sorry," I said clearly. "I should have seen something like this happening, but I was getting cocky, and you almost got hurt."
  
  Glory Girl"s eyes dropped to her feet. "I probably should"ve brought my aura up at the start- not everybody"s okay with it."
  
  "Speaking of- how"re you holding up, Elpis?" Ironclad asked.
  
  I shrugged. "Holding it together. Not my finest moment, but I"ll deal."
  
  "Can you explain why you reacted like that?" Brandish cut in, not unkindly.
  
  "Mom," Glory Girl hissed. Spitfire shot Brandish a filthy look as well.
  
  "No, it"s fine." I paused, martialling my thoughts. "I"m not a peaceful person by nature," I admitted eventually. "Being calm and considerate... That doesn"t come easily. It"s something I"ve had to work at.
  
  "The truth is that there"s a lot of aspects of my personality that I"m not proud of. Anger, spite, arrogance; I"ve been trying to work past all of that, because I don"t like the person I am with all of that."
  
  I didn"t miss Panacea"s expression at that- a sudden look of comprehension, before she hastily schooled her face into her usual slight frown.
  
  New Wave exchanged various poleaxed looks with each other. "I never got that impression from you," Flashbang said quietly.
  
  "Thanks."
  
  "Can you tell us what was going through your head when the fight happened?" Brandish asked. The tone of her voice was a forceful reminder that she was a lawyer, and a good one at that.
  
  "I was feeling cocky- By all accounts, Glory Girl"s invulnerable, or as good as. I thought I could cut loose a bit without worrying about hurting her.
  
  "When the aura kicked in-" I swallowed past the lump in my throat and pressed on, "I went from confident to terrified. It was like having a god bearing down on me."
  
  Laserdream hesitantly raised a hand. "What?" I asked.
  
  "Okay, this is probably really out of line, but" Laserdream awkwardly gestured, "Was that- any of that- related to your trigger? Maybe that"s part of why you reacted so badly?" She was already cringing as she finished, like she was expecting an explosion of shouting. Spitfire certainly looked ready to start yelling on my behalf.
  
  I shook my head instead. The aura didn"t match my trigger event, or Tock Tick"s, and someone who understood Tinker triggers would probably figure that out. "No, but I"ve had crappy moments in my life besides my trigger.
  
  "Anyway; I was terrified, and I had a weapon in my hand. If there"s one thing life"s taught me, it"s that freezing up doesn"t help. So..." I abruptly realised I had no idea how to finish that sentence, so I closed my mouth and shrugged.
  
  "Fuck," Glory Girl managed. "Elpis, I"m so sorry." Flashbang stepped over to lay a hand on her shoulder.
  
  Lady Photon pinched the bridge of her nose wearily. "Alright," she said thickly, "there"s the explanation. So where do we go from here?"
  
  "I can still pass on information to New Wave if you want-"
  
  Manpower raised a hand. "I"m in favour of sticking to the alliance with Elpis and her team. Anyone else?"
  
  Laserdream and Shielder raised their hands: so did Flashbang. After a second, Lady Photon added hers, and Glory Girl lifted hers. Ironclad lifted a finger to show support, and Spitfire put her hand halfway up, probably because she didn"t get a vote with New Wave.
  
  Brandish kept her hands by her sides. "I"m fine with sharing information, but I"m not comfortable with my daughter working alongside someone who attacked her."
  
  "Mom, I"m fine with it," Glory Girl insisted. "We don"t need to take it out on Elpis."
  
  I caught Panacea"s eye and tilted my head quizzically. She winced and shrugged helplessly, hands in her pockets.
  
  "Guess you can"t blame her for that one," Tock Tick said philosophically.
  
  "Motion passes," Lady Photon said, turning to me. "Although I think we should sort things out so you and Victoria don"t have to be to close to each other for a while- at least until you"re confident you can handle it."
  
  I let the idea I"d been carefully avoiding float up to the forethought of my mind. "As a matter of fact, there"s something I"ve been thinking of."
  
  "Absolutely not," Tactical said. "Do you have any idea how insane you sound right now?"
  
  For once, Flinch was in agreement. "Taylor, you don"t need to do this. This will hurt you."
  
  "I know, Flinch. But I need to be sure." I took a deep breath. "Ironclad. I need you to hold my arms."
  
  Panacea got it first. "No, the fuck you are not!" she shouted, stomping forward past her shocked relatives to stick a finger under my nose. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
  
  "We can control the reaction this way," I pointed out, brushing her finger aside. "You can monitor me if it"s that big a deal to you."
  
  "And what happens if you have a bad reaction?" Panacea demanded. "What do we do then?"
  
  I indicated all of New Wave with a nod of my head. "You put me down," I said in a low voice. "After that... You know what to do."
  
  Panacea"s eyes searched my masked face for a second, before she took a step back. "Fuck me, you"re serious." She pursed her lips and tapped her foot for a moment, then sighed. "This is a really stupid idea," she muttered.
  
  "I"m not hearing a no," I pointed out. "And I need to try this. Ironclad, over here."
  
  "Sorry, what are we doing here?" Lady Photon asked as I motioned for Ironclad to stand behind me.
  
  "Best way to see if I can resist Glory Girl"s aura is to hit me with it again. I"ve already taken my gear off, so Ironclad just needs to hold me in place."
  
  "What?!" Spitfire shrieked.
  
  Flashbang took a step forward. "Hold on a second," he said urgently. "I think I get what you"re trying to do, but this seems way too extreme. There has to be an easier way."
  
  "Listen to him, Taylor," Flinch pleaded.
  
  "It"s either this, or wait until I get hit again by accident, when I"m not expecting it. So really, this is the easy way." I stuck my arms out behind me. "Ironclad."
  
  "Boss..." Ironclad hesitated, then folded his massive hands around my forearms.
  
  Glory Girl slowly stepped forward. "I really don"t want to put you through this again," she said quietly.
  
  "Don"t beat yourself up. This is my choice." I nodded to her, then to Panacea, who reluctantly pressed a hand against my bare cheek.
  
  "Okay," Glory Girl breathed out. "I"ll start low, okay? You say something the second it gets too much."
  
  I grunted an affirmative.
  
  "Fuck me, this is going to suck," Tock Tick winced.
  
  Glory Girl closed her eyes. For some reason I was expecting a visible effect- like a ripple of haze in the air, or a faint glimmer.
  
  Instead, I felt a tendril of dread worm its way through my mind- fear without a source, terror of absolutely nothing. I fought to keep my breathing even and my back straight.
  
  The fear intensified- I focused on Glory Girl, even though I wanted to twist around, to shake myself free, to find the source of this feeling and crush the life out of it.
  
  With the fear came the anger. The Butchers had lived in anger, like a frog lived in water. It was so much easier to deal with the world when you were angry- everything seemed so simple. It kept out sadness, guilt and grief, and made everything in front of you into an acceptable target.
  
  I clenched my fists as the anger made my arms tremble- my fingernails were extending, poking through the weave of my gloves to prickle my palms. I gritted my teeth as they began to lengthen, and felt the muscles in my jaw spasm. A drop of sweat rolled down my cheek and soaked into the fabric of my mask.
  
  The emotions grew stronger; my heart leapt in my chest and I jerked forward, a grunt escaping through clenched lips, before Ironclad"s grip brought me up short. I forced my arms straight and locked my elbows, grinding my feet into the asphalt, fighting my own muscles as they twitched.
  
  Tactical wanted a weapon, like a comfort- a gun, a knife, something to take the fear out of himself. Tock Tick was desperately running through blueprints and schematics like a mantra, trying to ground himself that way.
  
  Flinch was taking it the worst, curling himself into a ball, huddled up with memories of Angie and the girls, fighting tears of frustration. I felt my own eyes water in sympathy.
  
  Glory Girl was just standing there, eyes still shut, while she poured all this horror into my head. I shut mine before I could bring myself to lunge at her throat with predator"s teeth, and focused on what I knew was real- the ground under my feet, Ironclad"s hands clamped around my arms, Panacea"s soft hand on my cheek.
  
  I leaned into the touch and struggled to breathe through the burning of the anger- took a deep breathe and imagined the exhale as red smoke, emptying me out and leaving me hollow.
  
  The anger lessened a little- and fear rushed to fill the gap. My legs buckled, forcing my arms up behind me as my knees hit the asphalt. Distantly, I heard someone shout.
  
  Little scraps of memory ran through my head- a cop with a sneer on his face, hands to my throat; Anchorage"s throat, not mine- that wasn"t real.
  
  My wrists being crushed in a fierce grip as I thrashed and struggled to escape; No, that was Vladimir.
  
  On the ground, boots hammering into me as I curled into a ball; Bearskin"s memory- still not reality.
  
  I clenched my hands until the claws broke skin and focused on the heat of my blood. Bits of poetry came to me now-
  
  Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole-
  
  I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer-
  
  Merciful God, please take me away; I will close my eyes and my heart and become a stone-
  
  The fear stopped, all at once- and I was on my knees, clutching my head, sweating and gasping as every muscle seemed to unclench. It was like the sun rising, chasing away the cold and the dark.
  
  "Fuck!" Tactical barked, rounding on me. "Don"t. Ever. Do that again," he said threateningly.
  
  Panacea and Glory Girl were both crouched in front of me with worried looks. "Elpis?"
  
  I swallowed hard, took a few deep breaths. "Well," I managed, "That sucked."
  
  "Told you," Tock Tick spat.
  
  Spitfire pushed through New Wave, crowded around me, and stopped in front of me, hands raised. "Boss?" she asked.
  
  "Hey Spit. I"m-" I yelped as Ironclad"s hands slotted under my armpits and lifted me to my feet as easily as a kitten. I caught my balance and shot him a look. "A little warning next time," I said snippily.
  
  "That"s not quite as threatening without the eyebrows," Ironclad said in a subdued voice.
  
  "So you"re alright then? You"re not hurt?" Spitfire asked.
  
  "It"s all emotional, not physical," I promised, sniffing a bit as I realised my nose was running. In fact, I felt cleansed, like the fear had washed everything else away. "Not even a bruise-"
  
  Spitfire stepped smartly forward and threw herself into a fierce hug. I threw my arms up awkwardly as she wrapped herself around my middle, then hesitantly lowered them to rest on her shoulders.
  
  "Spitfire, I"m okay. I promise."
  
  Her only response was to lift one hand off my back and bang her fist into my shoulder.
  
  "I"m not sure what this proved," Brandish said, folding her arms. "It"s hard to tell how in control you are when you"re being held down." Lady Photon gave her a hard nudge in the ribs.
  
  "I was monitoring her body the whole time," Panacea cut in, "and she was fighting it the whole time. I think she"s proved her point. In the stupidest possible way," she added with a hard look at me.
  
  Brandish pursed her lips and said nothing.
  
  Lady Photon cleared her throat. "Alright," she said. "We"re willing to go forward with the alliance- information sharing, and co-operation in the field. Still, in future, I think we should keep you and Victoria separate on missions unless it"s really necessary."
  
  I nodded slowly. "That"s fair."
  
  Manpower laid a hand on his wife"s shoulder. "I think we"re done for the day," he said gently. "Give us a call when you"re ready to get started."
  
  "Will do."
  
  With a couple of nods and short farewells, New Wave headed off, Glory Girl giving me a lingering look as she followed her family away.
  
  Monday 21st February, Arcadia High School
  
  "I"m just saying," Vladimir hissed quietly, "It"s a little too on the nose, you know?"
  
  "That"s the bloody point," Rotter insisted. "Being subtle "s for pussies. Gotta let them know what you want."
  
  "Even if French makes things sound sexier, "voulez-vous coucher avec moi" isn"t flirting. It"s just straight up asking for sex."
  
  I didn"t bother to pay much attention to the argument- as long as they kept it quiet. The Butchers were walking on eggshells right now; I"d barely let Butcher up into the light in the last few days, and the others had quickly picked up on my reduced tolerance for bullshit right now.
  
  The other kids in the hallway were picking up on it too. Maybe it was the dark clothes I"d worn out of old habit, or the hunched shoulders and the frown. Whatever the case, as I came out of second period French, people who saw me got out of the way.
  
  I grunted some approximation of a greeting as I passed. Nobody returned it.
  
  Arcadia had a 20 minute gap between second and third period, just to break up the day a little. I didn"t think it"d be enough time to read more than a few pages of a book before my next class, so I headed outside, to the tables on the grass.
  
  The weather was finally starting to warm up, but that was relative- only seeing your breath in the air, rather than snow on the ground. Thick coats and hats dominated.
  
  My little knot of friends had found a table on the north side of the school, under an old chestnut tree. Despite crisp grass under my feet, Stacey still jumped when I flopped onto the bench next to her.
  
  "Jesus! Taylor, give me some warning next time?"
  
  "What, am I supposed to wear a bell around my neck?" I asked, pulling a snack bar out of my pocket and unwrapping it.
  
  Frankie grabbed an eraser to rub out the pencil scratch she"d accidentally struck across her drawing of- I turned my head slightly to look- a man being kicked in the groin by what looked like a hero with anvils for feet. "You could just say hi," she pointed out, painstakingly removing only the mistake from the page.
  
  "Mmh," I mumbled. "Cool drawing by the way."
  
  "Thanks."
  
  "Hey," Stoneknapper said tentatively, "maybe ask her for a copy of that? It looks pretty good to me."
  
  "I"ll think about it," I replied, glancing at the empty seats. "Guys not here?" I asked, taking a bite of granola and berries. I flexed my control over the insects in my range, most of which were inside buildings, where it was warm; although I could have slipped insects onto everyone in Arcadia to track them, I didn"t want to flex my powers too much at school.
  
  Stacey shrugged. "Haven"t seen them. I think Callum"s got Geography on Mondays."
  
  "T would probably say something about his secret rap career or whatever," Frankie snorted, going over the outline of the victim of her drawing.
  
  "So long as we get backstage passes for his concerts," I said absentmindedly, cramming the other half of the snack bar into my mouth.
  
  Stacey nudged me gently. "Hey. You alright?"
  
  "Bwrh?" I swallowed and tried again. "Huh?"
  
  "Magnificent response," Muramasa said quietly. I rounded on him, and he shut up.
  
  "You just seemed kinda out of it. Is it a Monday thing?"
  
  I shrugged. "A little bit. It"s kinda..." I trailed off. "Forget it," I muttered, slipping a hand against the side of the bench. Stoneknapper"s fizz spread through it- I could feel that the leg diagonally opposite from me had some cracks near the bottom, possibly made worse by the recent bad frosts. I considered whether it was worth fixing it right now, or bringing it up to someone later.
  
  "Is it your period?" Frankie asked, pulling out a sharpener.
  
  The bench leg twisted up like a corkscrew- luckily without changing in length. I hastily smoothed it out, incidentally sealing the crack, while I gawked at Frankie. "What?"
  
  She stuck her pencil into the sharpener and started twisting; a long strip of pencil shaving scrolled out onto the table. "Just wondered. Or is it something you just don"t want to talk about?"
  
  "Frankie," Stacey chided gently.
  
  Needler sighed. "Talk to them. It"s not as if we"re any help, and you need to stop moping."
  
  "Needler"s right," Nemean said. "This is why you made friends in the first place." She was less outspoken than usual- then again, despite her aggressive personality, she usually held back against children. Knowing that we"d almost bludgeoned Glory Girl to death was weighing on her as well.
  
  "Taylor," Tock Tick said softly, "When I started getting into the life, I pulled away from my civilian friends. And let me tell you, having nobody to talk to is a lousy position to be in. That"s how I got so far down the rabbit hole I tried getting rid of the Butcher. Look how that worked out."
  
  I bit my lip. To tell the truth, I didn"t want to be comforted right now. I didn"t feel like I deserved it, and I"d had so much practice at wallowing in misery and self-doubt that it was easy to fall back into old habits.
  
  "It"s okay, Taylor," Flinch said.
  
  I sighed and unclenched my jaw. Haltingly, I began to speak; "Have you guys ever... been in an argument, and you almost said something really bad? Like, the kind of thing that you can"t ever take back?"
  
  Frankie set her pencil down with slow deliberation; Stacey tucked her phone into her jacket.
  
  "I think I know what you mean," Stacey said quietly. "Not me personally, but Mom and Aunt Elaine have had screaming matches a couple of times, and I get the feeling some really personal stuff got said in there."
  
  "Was it your dad?" Frankie asked with sympathy.
  
  "The worst part is that it just came out of nowhere," I said, avoiding Frankie"s question. "One minute, I was fine: the next, I was almost at the point of no return."
  
  "Mm." Frankie closed her sketchbook and tucked it back into her bag. "I remember in grade school, I was friends with this one girl. And then we got in a big fight, and I said something about her pet rabbit that"d died a couple weeks back, and she went ballistic. Wouldn"t talk to me ever again. I tried to take it back, but she wasn"t having any of it. A great friendship, down the drain."
  
  She drummed her fingers on the table for a second. "What, exactly, is the part that bothers you?"
  
  I thought for a second. "I think it"s knowing that I can be that much of a bitch. That I"ve got the potential to be that horrible. And I didn"t know it until now, and it might happen again."
  
  Stacey laid a hand on my arm with a comforting squeeze.
  
  "Well," Frankie said at length, "I don"t know about the uncertainty of it, but here"s a thought." She slipped her pencil out of her sleeve and held it up. The graphite narrowed to a point as fine as a pin. "I could go up to someone and jam this pencil into something soft right now."
  
  "Jesus, Frankie!" Stacey said in disgust. I sat back in surprise.
  
  "Okay," Firecracker said eagerly, "Let"s see where this goes." I gritted my teeth and forced her back.
  
  "No, wait, hear me out- I have the potential to do that. That doesn"t mean that I will do it, or that I want to do it, or that I"d like doing it. And even if I think about it somehow, that could just be l"appel du vide."
  
  "Is that French?" I asked. "Because Mrs Howell definitely didn"t cover that."
  
  "Yeah, it means "the call of the void", Grandma loves the phrase. It"s supposed to be like when you"re standing somewhere high and you"ve got the urge to jump, or to touch a candle flame, or to shout a swear in a church."
  
  "I get it; thinking isn"t the same as doing." I felt irritated at Frankie"s reasoning. It was solid advice, certainly, but it didn"t reassure me, because I knew full well that I"d gone a lot further than thought.
  
  "Of course not. And that"s the thing- we"ve all got shitty thoughts inside us. All anyone can do is keep them from making an impact in real life."
  
  "If the irony was any denser here, we"d be able to make bricks out of it," Vladimir quipped.
  
  "Okay, but how am I supposed to put that into practice? What am I supposed to do when something"s pushing me to the edge?"
  
  "Avoid it," Stacey suggested. "Back away and get some space. Or find someone to help you."
  
  "You could carry one of those stress balls around," Frankie said half-jokingly. "Just squeeze that thing "til it pops. Or sign up for one of those anger room things."
  
  It wasn"t very funny, but I still snorted. "Mm. I feel like I should get healthier outlets." It made sense though- I"d kept my distance from Madison as much as I could, and finally got her to stay away. I could do that in the short term around Glory Girl, but I"d need to search for a solution in the long-term. Possibly I could build up a tolerance, or strengthen my self control.
  
  Stacey pulled her phone out again to check the time. "I gotta go- I"ve got Math next." She laid a hand on my shoulder as she got up. "I"ll see you at lunch- we can talk more then." Once I nodded, she slung her bag onto her shoulder and headed off.
  
  Frankie checked her watch. "I got time. Soooo... You still want to talk about this, or should I change the subject?"
  
  "Change it. Please."
  
  "Okay. Uhm... Best zombie films, what"s your opinion?"
  
  I huffed in surprise, but started reeling off a couple of films that I"d seen myself- or that the Butchers had. The idea appealed to them, since they were utterly certain they"d be the survivors in that scenario- individually or collectively; and the idea of looting and slaughtering without limit was essentially their everyday life turned up to eleven.
  
  It was as Frankie was animatedly talking about the symbolism of zombies as mob mentality that I decided that I needed a way to relieve some tension, but nowhere near as violent. Something low-stakes, to rebuild my sense of self-control in baby steps.
  
  And the Empire had no emotion manipulators in their ranks...
  
  "Hey guys," I asked internally, "Who wants to mess with the Nazis?"
  
  Anchorage chuckled horribly. "Always."
  
  5.8
  Early hours of Tuesday 22nd February, South Downtown
  
  Tinkering was expensive.
  
  Not a lot of people ever really understood that- the typical image most people had of Tinkers was of someone who could MacGyver a toaster and a Swiss Army knife into an energy pistol.
  
  And to be fair, there were probably Tinkers that could pull that off, if they sacrificed reliability and durability for a gun that would maybe give you a handful of shots.
  
  Of course, that assumed their speciality allowed them to make energy-based weaponry. They could just as easily be a drone Tinker, or a stealth Tinker, or even a bio-Tinker. By all accounts, Blasto had spent most of his money on glassware, bulk chemicals, fertiliser, and medical equipment.
  
  "And weed," Dirty Rotter pointed out as I pressed the sonic array"s contact sensor against the roof I was standing on.
  
  "That too," I admitted as I worked the controls.
  
  While I was genuinely searching for a public-facing source of income, that would still take a while to set up, and I"d rapidly burned through most of my money to build and upgrade my tech.
  
  I"d been lucky to begin with- the armour wasn"t strictly Tinkertech, other than the grapplers and the inner framework that joined it all together. And the chariot had been possible thanks to the masses of spare parts and tools I"d literally stumbled across.
  
  But between my weapons, Spitfire"s power-frame, upgrading the chariot, the sensor, and now my swords, I was running low on funds and materials.
  
  So tonight, I was listening in on an Empire safehouse I"d marked a while back. I"d install a listening device in a moment to record things long-term, but for now I was checking for anything I could use tonight for a quick cash grab.
  
  "Bleh, strategy," Firecracker groaned.
  
  "We"ve been over this," Tactical said patiently. "This place-"
  
  "-doesn"t have any money, I know," Firecracker grumbled. "Listen for a hot tip, find some guy and take his cash; I get that. I just miss being able to hit whatever we want."
  
  I pulled a face as I fine-tuned the sensor array, and gave Firecracker a shove. She grumbled again, but subsided.
  
  There were three men in the building, gathered together in the kitchen. I could see them with bloodsight and track them through the flies I"d crept onto unobtrusive spots- the heel of a boot, the hood of a sweater, even at the base of a very greasy ponytail.
  
  However, with the contact sensor translating the vibrations through layers of wood and insulation material, I was finally able to hear them. I clicked the switch and listened to the words coming out through the speaker.
  
  "-ord is they"re just waiting on Victor getting back to 100%."
  
  "Oh yeah. The guy"s dating Othala, right? Getting some of that sexual healing?"
  
  "That"s a black song, dumbass."
  
  "Shit. Bastards get everywhere."
  
  "I hear that."
  
  There was silence for a moment, the sound of glugging water and swallowing. I could feel Butcher seething at the edge of my mind at the thought of Nazis not being beaten senseless.
  
  There was a clunk as one of them set his drink down. "Well, it"ll be fucking good to get Stormtiger back in the cause at least."
  
  "What?!" Anchorage shrieked. I quickly adjusted a dial and double-checked that I was recording the conversation.
  
  "Son of a bitch, we got that guy, damnit! How the hell are they getting him out, he should be in prison by now!" Vladimir snarled.
  
  Bearskin frowned. "We haven"t heard anything about what the PRT did with him. Still, the Empire should"ve tried to break him out before now. It"s been a month."
  
  "Well, they were mostly chasing after us," Stoneknapper pointed out. "The Teeth, I mean. And Taylor"s been hitting them pretty hard."
  
  "Fucking Pretties," the ponytail guy sneered. I"d heard that unflattering nickname for the PRT before, but it was rare to hear it from the mouths of normals. "Bunch of queers led by a wetback."
  
  One of the other guys snorted. "How many of "em you reckon Stormtiger"ll cut up when he gets out?"
  
  I listened carefully for another couple of minutes, making careful note as the men let slip a few more details- the plan was to break Stormtiger out of the prison transport truck taking him upstate, and multiple capes would be part of the effort. Victor was chosen because his skill-siphoning power made him useful against unpowered opponents.
  
  All too soon, the conversation turned to reminiscing about getting in fights with minorities, or bragging about girls they"d bedded. At the ten minute mark, I installed a listening device the size of a cell phone just above the kitchen ceiling and slipped away, quiet as a whisper.
  
  "So what are we doing about that?" Nemean asked as I dropped into the chariot two blocks down. "We can"t let them get that prick out."
  
  "That"s the beauty of it," Tactical enthused. "We know when and where the Empire is going to show, and what for. And when they show, we"ll be there, ready and waiting."
  
  I grinned toothily as I started the engine. "Excellent suggestion, Tac."
  
  Late morning of Tuesday 22nd, Arcadia High School
  
  -Just got a tip about Empire. They"re going to try and break Stormtiger out. Figure we could set up for them.
  
  I sent the text to Spitfire and tucked my phone back into my bag. I"d tucked myself away into a little corner outside because I didn"t want my friends to see me with it, since I"d then have to explain why I"d suddenly acquired a cell phone. Worse, they might notice that all the text conversations were from people with hero names. It wasn"t like I could say Ironclad was a nickname for Dad.
  
  Still, thanks to scouting the place out with bugs during English, I knew that this place was completely abandoned. Not entirely unknown, judging by the discarded cigarette butts and minor graffiti on the wall.
  
  After a moment"s thought, I took out a marker and corrected the spelling on one particularly graphic line, and added a comma.
  
  "cough-Nerd-cough," Firecracker said. I rolled my eyes without pausing in writing.
  
  "Could we get some stencils?" Stoneknapper asked. "It"s not like anyone seems to give a shit about this bit."
  
  "Maybe," I answered, putting the marker away and moving out of the little nook. "As long as it"s not anything gross."
  
  "Nah. I was thinking something like a flaming skull puking a smaller skull, and other skulls flying all around. But tasteful, you know?"
  
  Needler rolled her eyes. "Stupid as that might be-"
  
  "Bitch."
  
  "-Go fuck yourself- you could try using that for your hero work. Maybe leave your mark at places you"ve hit the Empire, spread your reputation, that sort of thing."
  
  "Ah, yes," Muramasa said nostalgically. "I would carve our symbol into the walls with my swords after a battle, to mark our victory." For a moment, the Teeth"s symbol of a set of jagged fangs drifted up from him.
  
  Quarrel sighed. "I had this idea that after we got back into the Bay, I"d use Caroline to draw our symbol on the wall of the first place we torched."
  
  "Wait," Tock Tick interrupted, "You were going to draw it out with bullet holes? Like, full-on Zorro style?"
  
  "Yeah?"
  
  There was a moment of blessed silence inside my head as I made my way toward the usual outside table. Callum spotted me coming and briefly raised a hand.
  
  "Quarrel," Rotter said with none of his usual oozing lechery, "That might be the single most metal thing I"ve ever heard."
  
  Quarrel glowed with smug satisfaction.
  
  I didn"t get a chance to check my phone again until lunch. I ducked out of the flow of hungry students into a different hiding spot, and opened my texts.
  
  Ironclad hadn"t even read my message to him yet, but Spitfire had responded an hour ago.
  
  -want to help, dont want to get 2 close 2 88. i coild be distrction?
  
  -NW coming 2?
  
  I quickly tapped out a response, feeling a brief sense of cognitive dissonance at how easily I could text despite not growing up with a phone.
  
  -You won"t be too close to the action. I was thinking you and a few others could hit an Empire location while they"re trying to get Stormtiger.
  
  -Fight the battle on two fronts.
  
  -Yes, I"ll contact New Wave tonight, and the PRT too.
  
  The reply came back immediately.
  
  -cool. i can do that
  
  -did i ever tell u its weird u text with full stops and evrtyhing
  
  Firecracker snickered. "She"s got you there."
  
  -btw, Laserdream invted me 4 lunch. that OK?
  
  Flinch smiled softly. "That"s sweet. Nice to know the kids want to hang out with her."
  
  I smiled as I sent her an affirmative reply, then typed out a text to Miss Militia and tossed my phone back into my backpack.
  
  After school, I got off the bus a few stops early, lingering in an alleyway behind a pile of cardboard boxes as I made a call to Lady Photon and Miss Militia.
  
  "And you"re sure this information is accurate?" Miss Militia asked. I heard a papery rustle as she spoke- maybe I"d caught her while she was in her office?
  
  "Straight from the horse"s mouth. I can get you a copy of the recording I made if you want."
  
  "That would be excellent."
  
  Lady Photon cleared her throat. "When is Stormtiger being moved, exactly? I can get everyone organised to catch out the Empire." Her tone was professional, but slightly stilted. I couldn"t help but think there was some lingering emotion from Saturday.
  
  "We"re aiming for Sunday morning," Miss Militia admitted. "It"s usually a quiet period for gang activity and traffic; easier to get the truck out of the city without being noticed."
  
  "Wouldn"t it make more sense to just move him early, before the Empire can get ready?" Tactical pointed out. I frowned and repeated the question into the phone.
  
  Miss Militia hummed. "I"ll pass it up the chain, but catching another Empire cape might be seen as worth the gamble."
  
  I considered; it depended on which capes the Empire sent. If Kaiser himself showed up, trying to catch him would definitely be worth the bother- same with valuable members like Krieg or Othala.
  
  For someone low-level like Cricket or Alabaster, logically they shouldn"t be worth it- although I personally wanted both of them beaten.
  
  Butcher snorted derisively. "You"re looking at this all wrong. Best way to stab someone in the back is to have them look in the right direction."
  
  I paused as I realised what Butcher was trying to say. "That"s a thought..."
  
  "Come again?" Lady Photon asked.
  
  "I was just thinking; we"d need to have one or two heroes seen near the truck, to bait the Empire in, right? And then a second group to close in when the villains show up."
  
  "Good thinking," Miss Militia began, but I was still talking.
  
  "That means the Empire will have several of their capes away from their territory. They"ll be more vulnerable than usual. We could take advantage of that."
  
  There was a thoughtful pause on the line.
  
  "You"re suggesting we go after Empire holdings while they"re occupied trying to free Stormtiger." Lady Photon paused one more, and when she spoke again, I could hear the smile in her voice. "That sounds good to me."
  
  Needler hummed thoughtfully. "Decisions, decisions. Do we foil the escape attempt, or do we hit them somewhere undefended?"
  
  "I say we make sure that cat-looking fucker stays down," Anchorage voted. "We probably won"t get much loot while New Wave"s around anyway."
  
  "I appreciate the strategy, but I"m inclined to think the Empire would be hurt more by losing capes than other assets." There was another papery flick from Miss Militia as she added "Besides, they might try to cause distractions elsewhere in the city to draw us off, and we"ll need people on standby for that."
  
  "They might have capes guarding their assets, in which case two birds with one stone," I pointed out. "I get the point though. We can hash things out later."
  
  More paper shuffling. "Could the two of you come in some time to discuss this?"
  
  "I still need to get in touch with Ironclad, but I can do Thursday at 10." I frowned at a sudden spike of mirth- Vladimir was giggling madly. "Vlad, what the hell?" I asked.
  
  "Don"t you get it?" He cackled. "The PRT"s inviting us around to their place! Us!" He broke down in hysterical laughter again.
  
  I considered the absurdity of what he said; then I pressed a hand over my mouth to hold in a cackle as the other Butchers started laughing their heads off.
  
  Early hours of Thursday 24th February, The Lair
  
  One more raid on the Empire had got me the last of the money I needed, and a couple of easy purchases in cash had bought me some watch-quality quartz crystals, plus solder, wire, and an assortment of chemicals. Now, my project was nearly done.
  
  Layer the gears onto the axle like so; twist slightly to interlock with the oscillation drive chain. Connect the upper hook to the control cable, give it a test squeeze to flick it out, back in- touch of oil there, repeat- good. Place the panel over the mechanisms, and fix in place.
  
  With one final screw tightened, the second sword was finished. I pulled the waldo arms back and gently picked it up by the hilt.
  
  Still the size of a Roman gladius, but not quite the same shape. Now the tip curved inward on one side, like a clip-point knife, and the blade was wider overall. The whole thing was almost seamless, but if you looked closely, you could make out the places where the blade sections joined the spine on either side. I picked up the other sword that I"d finished earlier in my other hand and compared them. Virtually identical- that was the point, after all.
  
  I flicked the triggers quickly; the cutting edges popped out, then retracted; there was a brief crackle that confirmed the taser function. I tossed a length of wood in the air and split it in two pieces with a quick swing.
  
  Basic tests complete, I stepped away from the workbench, directing the waldos to clear away stray bits and pieces while I settled into a stance, and ran through some basic moves. Stab, slash, block; cut high, cut low, upward swing.
  
  The balance on the swords was a little different now- the blades were heavier now, moreso at the tip with the extra mechanisms; a lot of that was reinforcement to compensate for the weaknesses introduced by the blades being split into segments along their length.
  
  Still, that would work- I"d be a little slower, but with more power on the swing.
  
  "Magnificent," Muramasa intoned. "The Empire will suffer on the points of these blades."
  
  "I"m just glad we got the damn thing finished," Bearskin said. "I say we need some R&R."
  
  "Alright, alright. I guess I have been a little focused on these. Midnight snack run?"
  
  "Actual snacks or cash grab?" Stoneknapper asked. "Because I say both."
  
  I snorted as I slid the swords into their sheathes and strapped them back onto my armour.
  
  "I think just snacks. We can always go trawling for money later."
  
  "Marshmallows," Quarrel said immediately. "Get extra- we can have some for Spitfire to roast."
  
  "I want chocolate pretzels," Tock Tick chimed in.
  
  The other Butchers added their requests as I let my hair down from the bun I kept it in for Tinkering, slipped my hoodie over my head, grabbed the pedal bike and slipped out the door into the night, using a couple of ants on the switch to lock it behind me.
  
  The Docks were peaceful like this- they were always quiet, almost abandoned, but there were more people around here than you"d expect at first. Plenty of homeless people would shelter inside gutted warehouses and abandoned factories, curling up under whatever blankets they had to stay warm.
  
  I could sense some of them as I passed, by bloodsight or by the lice they had on them. I commanded the lice and parasites to detach and move away as they entered my range- only mostly out of compassion. I really didn"t need the mental feedback that came from pubic lice.
  
  My breath fogged in the air as I reached one of the all-night convenience stores I knew of, just inside the actual residential areas. The clerk inside didn"t look up from his book as I entered, hood up and scarf across my mouth.
  
  Nemean wanted jerky, Dirty Rotter wanted sour candy. Flinch liked salted peanuts, Needler wanted grapes. Butcher grumbled for beer, but I still didn"t have a fake ID yet.
  
  I bought some other stuff too; rice and pasta, things I could easily cook back at the lair to fill myself up after a long night out.
  
  "You should get a fridge," Nemean grunted.
  
  The clerk scanned things through half-heartedly, I paid without a word, and the door dinged as I left, biting into a candy bar along the way.
  
  "Someone remind me to check on Coil later," I said as I wheeled the bicycle through the door again and propped it against the wall.
  
  "I still can"t believe the guy doesn"t have any capes," Tactical said. "It should be so easy to get some stragglers. The guy"s got mercenaries by the dozen, so why no capes?"
  
  Firecracker shrugged. "Capes charge more?"
  
  I went to say something myself, but a buzzing rumble interrupted my train of thought. I"d left my phone on the workbench, and it was vibrating across the surface.
  
  I quickly swept it up before it could fall off the edge and drew my security pattern on the screen. What I saw there almost made me drop it anyway.
  
  - Automated PRT Endbringer Alert: Simurgh descending on Canberra, Australia. Any cape volunteers should report to their local PRT headquarters and request transportation. Do not reply to this number.
  
  The Butchers exploded inside my head as I stared numbly at the phone.
  
  The Endbringers. The absolute worst of the worst. Maybe the whole reason why villains and heroes abided by an uneasy truce instead of all-out warfare.
  
  Behemoth had showed up in 1992, and he"d been like the Devil, all black craggy hide and dozens of horns, rising from the earth with a roar, with fire and lightning, reducing cities to rubble and radiation. Needler had lost family when he"d hit Jakarta in 94.
  
  Leviathan came in 1996, hitting Oslo from the sea, a lizard-like monster that brought a storm with him. He"d submerged entire cities; hell, entire landmasses, with tidal waves that battered the land until it crumbled.
  
  As for the Simurgh- people had actually thought she was on our side, when she"d descended over Lausanne, two days after Christmas in 2002. People had called her a late Christmas angel, with her dozens of wings all over her. Experts had flown in to see her, and she"d seemed gentle, benign, even cooperative.
  
  Then she"d screamed, and everyone who heard her went mad.
  
  Other cities could be rebuilt, or the population moved. When the Simurgh hit, the city was walled off, its people quarantined; because they would act according to her plan, unknowingly moving down a path that would end in disaster.
  
  That was why people called her the Hopekiller.
  
  I felt a stab of bitter irony as I walked over to my armour and started pulling it off the stand, setting the pieces out on the table. I pulled my glasses off with one hand and set them next to the armour.
  
  "Fuck! Girl, no, you absolutely cannot go, I fucking forbid you-" I pushed Butcher down, and his red hot anger with him.
  
  "Taylor." Needler"s voice was gently desperate. "I want those things dead as much as the next woman. Believe me, I do. But this isn"t your fight."
  
  "Innocent people are going to die. I can"t turn my back on that," I said mentally, mouth occupied with a hair tie as I wrapped my hair into the tight bun I used in costume.
  
  Flinch gave the mental equivalent of a hug, wrapping me in feelings of warmth and fatherly affection. "I"m proud of you Taylor," he said softly.
  
  "B-but they"re right. You can"t do this."
  
  I stopped, my hair falling out of my grip as I realised what Flinch had just said. "What?"
  
  "If it were just you, you could go. If it was just me, I would go. But it"s all of us, and whoever comes after.
  
  "Think, Taylor. What happens if the Simurgh gets to us? What if the Butcher becomes a Simurgh bomb; An unkillable Simurgh bomb?
  
  "How will they stop us? How will they contain us? And how much damage could we, and everyone who kills us, do, in the worst case scenario?"
  
  I could see the future he described- a Butcher, every mind driven to new and horrible levels of snake-fuckingly crazy; guided by the hand of an Endbringer, adding the powers of those who stood against them. Unbound by even the slightest shred of humanity.
  
  My hands fell to my side as I flopped into the chair by the workbench. My stomach knotted itself with the frustration I felt, the sensation of being stuck, unable to do something.
  
  The Butchers" feelings of relief only threw that into sharper contrast. I buried my face in my hands and dug my nails into my forehead- they lengthened as I did, into sleek claws that pierced the skin in little prickles.
  
  "What the fuck do I do?" I asked of nobody in particular. "The Protectorate"s probably going off to fight. New Wave will probably send a few. And what the hell can I do back here?"
  
  The Butchers quieted down at my words, eyeing each other. Maybe they could sit around and eat snacks without a twinge of guilt, but I needed to do something myself. I had to try and be the good guy, because I was afraid of what I"d become if I stopped trying.
  
  Anchorage blew a raspberry to break the silence. "I know the villains are supposed to keep their heads down when the Truce is on, and that"s what we"d usually do. Or at least, we wouldn"t fuck with the heroes- still kicked the shit out of other gangs.
  
  "But I don"t trust the Nazis to pass up a chance to stab folks in the back. Could be we do a sweep through their territory, see if they"re up to something."
  
  I considered the idea; then I unclenched my fingers, letting the claws pop free of my forehead. I felt wetness there, and when I touched a hand to my forehead, it came away bloody.
  
  "Alright," I said aloud, pulling out a handkerchief to mop my face clean, "I"ll stay in town. And if the Empire puts one fucking toe out of line, I"ll crush them."
  
  The Butchers eagerly chimed in with relieved agreements before I continued "However!" I waited for them to quiet down before I said "However. The other two Endbringers- they"re fair game. When one of them hits, I"m going along."
  
  Dirty Rotter sneered. "Listen luv, you"re not gonna be calling the shots three months from now, you bet your-"
  
  "Anyone else?" I demanded, pushing Rotter as far down as he could go, and keeping the pressure on him just to put the point across.
  
  There were no further objections.
  
  I stripped off my outer clothes for the silk jumpsuit underneath, and put my hair up in the rock-hard bun that fit under my helmet. I pulled the mask on, tugging at the back so the little pouch at the back was centred on the bun, and fiddled with the lenses to get them aligned with my eyes, then the grips that went above and below my eyebrows.
  
  The armour pieces clamped on, one at a time; tiny screws spun themselves into the connectors on the undersuit, while more attachments linked the pieces together at the joints.
  
  Second-to-last, I pulled the overlapping plates up my neck and clipped them to the edge of my mask, then finally put my helmet over my head and locked it into place.
  
  I almost hoped the Empire was going to try something stupid. I really needed something to hit.
  
  5.9
  Thursday 24th February, Arcadia High School
  
  As it turned out, the Empire was smart enough to keep their heads down while the local heroes were at an Endbringer fight- the only person I saw who looked like he might be in the gang was a man with a terrible attempt at a beard talking to a prostitute who wasn"t even pretending to be attracted to him.
  
  The end result of the night was effectively nil. Not unusual- even criminals weren"t out and about every night of the week- but it left me feeling unresolved, frustrated.
  
  The only reason I didn"t stick out at school was because I was far from the only person in a bad mood. News of Canberra had made it into the morning news cycle, and even though Eidolon and Legend together had driven her off, there was no such thing as a victory against the Simurgh.
  
  Since I had second period free, I went to the library. I had English homework to finish off, and frankly I just wanted to be away from other people.
  
  So to speak.
  
  "They probably don"t taste that good," Vladimir said. "I mean, they"re basically giant rats, right? They hop around all day in a desert where every insect is venomous, and half the plants are toxic. I don"t believe they"d be worth it."
  
  Anchorage nodded thoughtfully. "True, I guess. But they"re still herbivores, and they"re definitely active. Lots of meat on the leg. And the tail."
  
  "We all know how much you like chasing tail," Bearskin said suggestively; with that slightly uncertain tone when he ventured a joke that might be misconstrued as a genuine insult.
  
  Anchorage burst out laughing. "Damn right! Leg in one hand, rump in the other!"
  
  "I feel like it"d be gamey," Nemean guessed. "They live on the go, in big groups, eating tough plants. Not fatty at all..."
  
  I paused in the middle of a sentence; the Butchers turned their attention to Nemean as she trailed off.
  
  "Neems?" Firecracker asked tentatively.
  
  Nemean shook herself with a curse in her strange native language. "It was close," she grumbled. "I felt something there."
  
  I quickly pulled out a notepad and added a note: Nem- Australia?
  
  After a moment"s thought I added: Research Aboriginal languages.
  
  Nemean having a memory was a rare thing, so she kept a list of them, trying to puzzle out greater meaning from them. Hot sun, the sea, a massive anthill- and a lullaby, sung softly. She always felt sad when she remembered it.
  
  I started packing up just as the bell rang, making my way out of the library, past the flood of people coming in to grab a computer before they were all taken. There were filters on Arcadia"s internet access to prevent games or pornography, but people still found things to do.
  
  I felt Panacea"s tracker-spider moving through the building, heading in my general direction. The spider itself was starting to wear out from lack of food and water- I"d have to mention it to her at some point.
  
  The spider suddenly turned a corner, bearing down on me. I spotted a cloud of brown frizz coming down the hallway.
  
  "I suppose you won"t have to wait," Needler said as Panacea approached. Her stride slowed as she passed, and she pointedly jerked her head at the door to outside.
  
  "What"s that all about?" Stoneknapper wondered. I shrugged my shoulders under the pretence of adjusting my backpack, and followed Panacea at a discreet distance, guiding a couple of fruit flies into her path to indicate the private nook I"d found.
  
  Sure enough, she was waiting there when I caught up, examining some of the more lurid graffiti. "I don"t even know what this one means," she said without preamble, pointing to a line that said something very uncomplimentary about a guy called Fred Smythe.
  
  I pulled a face at Dirty Rotter"s cackling explanation, even as I immediately forced him down. "Trust me, you"re better off. So," I asked, "What"s up?"
  
  Panacea turned to face me, resting her back against the wall. Like this, I could see that the circles under her eyes were a little darker than usual. "Sort of a check in," she admitted. "What with... you know."
  
  I pulled a piece of candy out of my bag and tossed it into my mouth, chewing forcefully. "Frustrated. Couldn"t go to the fight, couldn"t find any crime to stop last night. I felt useless."
  
  Panacea pushed off the wall. "Wait, you were going to show up to an Endbringer battle?"
  
  I tapped my forehead. "Got talked out of it. I"m already crazy, so I"ve got no business there."
  
  "Hold on," Panacea demanded. "They," she jabbed a finger at my forehead, "Talked you out of it? Why wouldn"t they want you to go take a massive risk and find someone new?"
  
  "At least she knows what we"re about," Quarrel noted.
  
  "That someone new could be a Simurgh bomb. Or it could happen to me. Worst case scenario, it might be that the feathery bitch could inherit herself, and then we"re all fucked."
  
  That got a round of shudders inside my head. "You don"t ever be on the same continent as her, alright?" Butcher growled.
  
  Amy had gone remarkably pale at my words. "Fuck," she breathed.
  
  "Yeah." I felt a little bad for dropping that mental image on her, so I pulled out another piece of candy- a chewy one. "Want one? You look like you need it."
  
  She hesitantly took the candy off me and unwrapped it. "Okay. So that"s horrifying." She popped the candy into her mouth and chewed silently for a minute.
  
  I pulled another piece out- chocolate this time- and tucked it into my cheek. "Do the heroes volunteer for a lot? I don"t really know how it goes."
  
  Amy shook her head. "Not all of them, and not always. I think Armsmaster and Miss Militia go for most, and Velocity does search and rescue a lot. They went this time; everyone else stayed behind."
  
  "Huh," Flinch said, surprised. "I thought there"d be more than that."
  
  I cracked the candy between my teeth and rolled the pieces around. "Does your family go to a lot?"
  
  "Not to any of them. Barely anybody goes to one, really."
  
  That answer gave me pause. I"d simply assumed that a team over a decade old would have attended. I crushed the pieces of candy in my molars, trying to parse the sudden burst of emotion I felt.
  
  "See? You don"t have to beat yourself up over not going," Tock Tick said reasonably. I nodded slowly, allowing the faint flicker of relief to ease the tension I"d been carrying in my shoulders since I"d got the text.
  
  Amy folded and refolded the candy wrapper in her hands. "I think we should change the subject."
  
  "Mm. Mind if we talk shop? I was supposed to meet with the Protectorate today, but..." I waved a hand in a vague manner.
  
  "Yeah, Aunt Sarah told us all about Sunday. Vicky"s pumped about getting to wreck something big for once."
  
  "Ask her to keep an eye on Spitfire for me," I requested. "She"s staying out of the big fight." Considering everything that had happened in rapid succession, I hoped I could keep it that way. Spitfire had texted me this morning, saying Kid Win had invited her to hang out on patrol, and I"d been glad to hear it. She needed more people to talk to than just me.
  
  "I"ll tell her." Amy folded the wrapper into an S absentmindedly. "It"s kind of sweet how you worry about her. Weird, but sweet."
  
  "There is no need to bring a child into the full battle," Muramasa harumphed. "Once she has accumulated age and experience, perhaps."
  
  "She"s just a kid," I echoed. "She doesn"t need to see the deep end of things just yet."
  
  Amy snorted. "It"s all deep end. Still sweet that you care about her."
  
  "Thanks."
  
  "Might wanna talk with her again before Sunday," Firecracker pointed out. "Kid worries about you, and she"ll need a clear head for wrecking shit."
  
  "I guess I should try to talk to her more," I admitted out loud. "I mean, really, I should have unmasked to her by now. I"ve just got no idea how to start the conversation."
  
  "I think you take your mask off and say your name," Amy said dryly.
  
  I rolled my eyes at her. "Yeah, but then what? What if she joins the dots and works out what I am, what I can do?" I ran a hand through my hair. "She"d never look at me the same again- assuming she didn"t just run for the hills."
  
  Amy scuffed the heel of her shoe against the ground instead of replying. I wasn"t sure what her expression was supposed to be, other than that her gaze was focused on something far away from the little graffiti-filled nook.
  
  When I checked my watch to see how long before I needed to get to class, she shook herself and looked up at me again. "So, what"s the plan?"
  
  Saturday 26th February, PRT Headquarters
  
  "So, what"s the plan?" Miss Militia asked me, tucking a straw up under her scarf to sip at her mug of coffee.
  
  "Now that"s just fucking bizarre," Dirty Rotter marvelled.
  
  The meeting room we were all in had a large wooden table in the middle of it, and right now it was covered with a map of the city, little markers placed here and there to indicate significant points. Somehow, I"d expected a more impressive setup, but my short walk through the PRT base had only revealed offices. I"d tasked the insects present with mapping the building out, but that was more out of habit than anything else.
  
  The only surprise was Spitfire"s current company- She"d tagged along with me to the PRTHQ and split off to meet more of the Wards. It was hard to figure out a person"s identity from the poor senses of my bugs, but I knew Vista and Kid Win kept their hair uncovered, Gallant wore full Tinker armour, and Shadow Stalker wore a hood and cloak. By process of elimination, the two figures with fabric masks that I"d slipped insects onto would have to be Aegis and Clockblocker.
  
  "That"s sweet," Flinch said, as the fly on Spitfire"s extinguisher frame felt her flop down onto something soft- a sofa. "You sh-sh-crapcrapcrap-SHOULD take her along more."
  
  I took a second to glance down and peer through the floors with bloodsight. The Wards quarters were located underground, at the very limit of bloodsight"s penetration, but I could make out one of the boys handing her a drink.
  
  "Yeah," I said to Flinch. Then I turned off bloodsight and returned my focus to the people in the room.
  
  Miss Militia was across the table from me, managing to affect an air of professionalism that even the plastic straw poking out from the bottom of her scarf couldn"t disrupt. Lady Photon was next to her as New Wave"s leader, dressed in civilian clothes- a cardigan over a blouse and sensible jeans.
  
  On my side of the table was a burly man in PRT trooper armour, all chainmail and Kevlar. He"d been introduced to me as Squad Captain Nolan, and his face when he"d taken his helmet off was of someone who"d taken plenty of hits, but had only ever lost a couple of fights in his life.
  
  And at the head of the table was the leader of the local Protectorate, six feet and change of gleaming blue and silver Tinker armour that was far ahead of anything Tock Tick"s power had ever made- Armsmaster.
  
  Even the Butchers were impressed by the guy- when posters of the Protectorate"s greatest heroes were put up, posed in that classic V formation, Armsmaster would be somewhere in the wings, his signature halberd by his side, bearded jaw set in heroic determination.
  
  Right now, his weapon was folded up and attached to his back- at least I assumed the metal poles on his back were that, and not some other device. I remembered reading somewhere that the halberd could cut through steel like butter, had plasma injectors for anything tougher, an EMP projector to short out electronics, a grappling hook, collapsible restraints, and a ton of other stuff all packed in.
  
  I felt Anchorage trying to tug my gaze lower. "Wonder what other kind of pole he"s got stashed away-"
  
  I forced her down quickly, but Firecracker was ready with a jibe of her own. "Wonder how that beard feels? Guy keeps himself that well-trimmed, you wonder what else he shaves."
  
  I forced the two down together and focused on the map, trying to ignore the burning in my cheeks. "I"m thinking we have a token force guarding the van," I began, pointing to the little plastic truck on the map that I was pretty sure was from a board game.
  
  "Focus," Tactical chided, his power whirring away with tactics and known abilities of each faction.
  
  I cleared my throat. "A small force to make the Empire think we"re trying to stealth this. One or two heroes, probably from the Protectorate so they don"t realise the rest of us are in on it."
  
  Lady Photon nodded. "Sounds good. We can keep from tipping them off."
  
  "My guys"ll be following in another van," Captain Nolan said. "Standard procedure and all. We could hide a couple of you in there for a surprise- though I warn you now, you"d probably end up having to sit on somebody"s lap."
  
  "Much as I"m sure your men would appreciate that, I"ll pass," I said dryly, raising one metal eyebrow. That got a couple of snickers, including an amused huff from Armsmaster.
  
  "The second wave will need to have mobility," he pointed out, his expression smoothing out again. "Both to keep up with the vans and to jump in when the Empire hit."
  
  "I"ve got my bike, but I don"t know how close I"d be able to follow without the Empire noticing," I admitted.
  
  "I can follow from above," Lady Photon suggested. "I can carry someone with me if they"re not too heavy."
  
   "Brandish perhaps?" Miss Militia replied.
  
  "Now would be the perfect time to make a joke about her having a fat ass," Vladimir said slyly. I bit my tongue before the laugh could escape.
  
  "We need to think about the other groups as well," Armsmaster pointed out. "A few people to keep up the usual patrols, and a few more for the counter-assault." He tapped one of the little tokens over the Empire storehouses I"d told the heroes about.
  
  "I want to keep Spitfire and Ironclad out of the main fight, and their powers are well-suited to demolition; plus Spitfire could destroy any contraband there easily."
  
  "We"re willing to assist with the patrols as well as the assault," Lady Photon said. "That could free up more of the Protectorate."
  
  Armsmaster nodded. "Appreciated. We"ll work that in."
  
  After a few minutes of discussion, we were able to sort everyone into groups for the plan. I would be part of the second wave, alongside Dauntless, Lady Photon, and Brandish.
  
  I ran the different plans through my mind, drawing on Tactical"s strategic power to concoct attacks, counter-attacks, combinations and manoeuvres.
  
  "Wait a damn minute," Tactical exclaimed, "We"re missing something here!"
  
  My eyes widened at his thoughts; I rapped my knuckles on the table for attention.
  
  "Yes?" Armsmaster asked.
  
  "I just realised, I completely forgot to ask- who are we going to end up fighting, specifically? I know Victor and Othala are showing up, but any idea who else?"
  
  Miss Militia pulled her straw free and set the mug on the table. "What do you know about Empire Eighty Eight"s capes?"
  
  "A: They"re a bunch of cunts, and B: They"re a bunch of cunts." Butcher didn"t seem to feel the need to say anything else.
  
  I shrugged. "Kaiser"s the leader- I know he can generate blades out of the surrounding area."
  
  I knew it very well, in fact. Kaiser had been a part of the Empire at a young age, the son and eventual heir of its founder, Allfather, and he"d tangled with the Butchers both as individuals and as a collective. He had a personal grudge against them- years ago, an E88 cape called Heith had gone down in a scuffle against the Teeth. It wasn"t until Bearskin had inherited that the Butchers had learned Heith was his wife.
  
  "Wouldn"t mind if Buckethead showed up tomorrow," Dirty Rotter said. "He"s overdue for getting a beating."
  
  "The heavy hitters- Krieg, Hookwolf-" I paused, feigning uncertainty. "I heard Purity"s left the Empire, but I"m not positive."
  
  "That"s what we"ve seen so far," Armsmaster allowed. "She still goes out and brutalises minorities- it"s just now she claims she"s trying to be a hero."
  
  Bearskin"s wince was deep and heartfelt. "She still believes the crap," he sighed.
  
  "You can"t blame yourself for what other people choose to do," Needler said simply, though not unkindly.
  
  "Met Cricket and Alabaster, saw Rune in action- then there"s Fenja and Menja, giant twins- and Crusader. He makes ghosts of himself or something."
  
  "Close enough. We think there"s a strong possibility that Hookwolf will show up- Stormtiger is one of his subordinates; Crusader"s ghosts can pass through inanimate objects, so he"s well-suited for bypassing security; and Rune would be their best bet for a quick escape.
  
  "As for Victor and Othala, he can drain skills from people, she can grant temporary powers. Engage him at range, take her out immediately."
  
  I nodded, impressed. That was almost exactly what Tactical"s power had come up with, bar the inclusion of one of the twins for extra muscle.
  
  "I think that covers everything. Any questions?" Armsmaster looked around the room at the four of us.
  
  Lady Photon shook her head. "I"ll go tell everyone the plan. Good luck, everyone." She slipped out the door, followed by Captain Nolan. Miss Militia picked up her mug and headed out as well.
  
  "Taylor, come oooonn," Tock Tick whined. I rolled my eyes, but cleared my throat as Armsmaster was turning to the door.
  
  "Yes?" He asked gruffly.
  
  "This isn"t related to the plan or anything, and feel free to say no, but-" I tapped the hilt of one of my swords. "-Could I get some advice while I"m here?"
  
  Armsmaster"s face split into a broad grin, all bright white teeth. "I"d be happy to," he said, walking back over. He seemed more relaxed all of a sudden, winding down a little from the stern leader persona he"d projected.
  
  I tugged the sword out with two fingers and presented it to him on my palms, feeling a little like an apprentice showing something to their teacher in hopes of approval.
  
  Armsmaster seemed to peer at it behind his black visor- absently, I noted the insignia on his chest, a silhouette of the v-shaped visor in blue, on a silver background. After an exchange of looks, he took the sword off me and turned it over in his hands.
  
  "Well-balanced," he commented, "although there"s a lot of weight toward the tip."
  
  "Gives more power on the swing." I pointed out the triggers for the taser function and the oscillation cutter.
  
  "What about this one?" he asked, pointing to the new switch I"d installed in the upgrade.
  
  "Extra mode I added in. I probably shouldn"t show it indoors."
  
  "Don"t be a chicken," Stoneknapper said.
  
  I did end up drawing the other sword and explaining the end result, even removing a couple of panels to point out a couple of mechanisms. The look of intrigue on Armsmaster"s face was well worth it; he offered a few ideas for how I could get more power out of the dynamos, or improve the weight/durability ratio.
  
  He even pulled his halberd off his back, unfolding it to its full six feet, and demonstrating some of the features to me. When he let me handle it for a second, Stoneknapper"s power went crazy, unable to keep up with the super-intricate workings of the tech. I had to force myself to give it back to him.
  
  After that, I wound up showing him the flail, and my disruptor axe, and talking about the ways I"d had to compromise in order to build them with the materials I had available.
  
  "I mean, I"d have used a denser material for the kinetic battery, but you can"t get a couple grams of osmium at the dollar store, you know?"
  
  "I understand. Even with the Protectorate"s resources, there"s still limits to what we can do- transport issues and such."
  
  "You"ve been talking for ages!" Nemean"s impatience finally tipped over into anger. "Leave and get us some food!"
  
  I gave her a shove, but the other Butchers started joining in with demands for something to eat- I wasn"t even that hungry, but they craved stimulation.
  
  I slipped my weapons back into their various holsters. "Anyway, I should probably get moving. I"ll see you tomorrow."
  
  Armsmaster nodded. "Alright. Best of luck."
  
  "Think Spitfire"ll be embarrassed if we go down to pick her up?" Firecracker asked in a teasing sort of way.
  
  Anchorage adopted a "whiney teenager" voice. "But Moooom!"
  
  I rolled my eyes as they laughed. Hopefully they"d be more serious tomorrow.
  
  Sunday 27th February, North Downtown
  
  "Oh yeah, this is really inconspicuous." Quarrel"s voice was thick with sarcasm. "Nobody pays attention to the chick in plate armour on the souped-up bike."
  
  As much as I hated to admit it, I couldn"t really be subtle in broad daylight. People turned their heads as I passed, other drivers slowed to look- once or twice I saw people take pictures.
  
  I was one street over from the convoy, and a little behind, working off the route Miss Militia had given me. I kept just enough space that the bugs I"d slipped inside the transport stayed within the edge of my range.
  
  Armsmaster was behind the truck carrying Stormtiger and a small mountain of containment foam, on one of the powerful pursuit bikes Protectorate heroes used for patrols. The Butchers and I had debated about slipping bugs onto him, before deciding against it.
  
  And behind him was a PRT truck full of troopers armed almost literally to the teeth, with Dauntless squeezed in with them.
  
  "This is going to be a mess," Flinch winced.
  
  Anchorage rolled her eyes. "Ah, cut the sadsack crap, will you? Empire shows up, the normals run, we beat the Nazis into the ground. Nice and easy."
  
  I leaned back on the bike a bit, stretching my shoulders. "I really hope so."
  
  I was at least confident that the action and danger would all be on our end. Spitfire, Ironclad and Glory Girl were waiting with Battery across town, ready to break into an unsuspecting Empire drug lab. Since a bunch of the Empire capes would be trying to break Stormtiger out, security should be lower everywhere else.
  
  The flies clinging to the truck chassis slowed to a halt- a red light maybe. I didn"t have anything like that near me, so I found a gap in the traffic and pulled over to the side of the road.
  
  I saw a little boy, hand in hand with his mother, goggling at me from underneath a woolly bobble hat. On impulse, I dropped my jawguard and waved to him, waggling the eyebrows. He gasped and waved back frantically.
  
  "Cute," Vladimir said, only somewhat sardonic. The PRT truck started moving again, and I slipped back into the flow of traffic as they picked up speed.
  
  A rattle of gunfire split through the air- people everywhere started diving for cover. The little boy"s mother immediately scooped him up and sprinted for the doorway of a shop. I slammed my helmet shut as I focused on the noise.
  
  "Looks like they"re playing our song!" Firecracker howled.
  
  I was already gunning the engine, head turned toward the direction the shots had come from- around the corner, near the convoy.
  
  Bloodsight showed me the scene around the corner as I threaded the bike through panicking traffic- I could see Stormtiger, seated in mid-air and struggling uselessly. The driver and guard in front of him were grabbing weapons.
  
  I could make out several silhouettes spread out ahead of the truck- maybe six men with their arms in position for handguns, crouching like they were taking cover. Non-powered Empire goons, most likely.
  
  "Not yet," Tactical cautioned me. "We want to get the Empire in the back first."
  
  As much as I wanted to dive in, I knew the plan- so as I made it past the last car that was frantically trying to reverse, I brought myself to a stop, and unslung the air cannon. They wouldn"t be able to see me with the corner of a building in the way, so I had the time to get ready. I also hit the switch to deploy the ramming frame, which clicked quietly as it unfolded itself over the front wheel.
  
  Another couple of shots rang out- I could see the arms of one Empire soldier jerk as he fired. The guards in the truck flinched, but didn"t panic- and now the second truck was pushing forward, disgorging a squad of burly troopers. One of them cocked his arms and curled a finger.
  
  The Empire goons hastily scattered as something hit the ground with a clang. To judge from how they started retching and clutching at their eyes, it was probably tear gas.
  
  Needler winced. "God, I don"t miss that shit. It always lingered on me, even with regeneration."
  
  I quietly slipped a few bugs through the haze- a few of them began to die from the gas, but I managed to get some flies and ants onto the troopers, so I could keep track of them.
  
  Someone tall ran out from behind the transport truck, right arm out as if holding a weapon. Armsmaster simply hurdled over one car and began taking the Empire soldiers apart with quick, neat movements. Jab, jab, swipe, spin, reverse-spin, jab, elbow.
  
  "Impressive," Muramasa admitted. "We must try to spar with him in future."
  
  "Yeah, but that was too easy." Bearskin gnawed at his lip. "The capes should have shown up by now."
  
  And as if summoned by his words, I saw, with my own eyes instead of bloodsight, a woman dressed in Nordic armour decorated with wing motifs step out of an alleyway, carrying a sword and shield. As I watched, she started walking toward the truck, and with every step she grew in size, until her footsteps made the ground tremble and the top of her closed-face helmet was twenty feet in the air.
  
  "You just had to fucking say it, didn"t you?" Rotter said to Bearskin.
  
  "So that"ll be Fenja, then?" Stoneknapper regarded her armour with a critical eye. "Shoddy work on the details."
  
  I got a better look at her as I turned the bike to slip through an alleyway, away from the trucks. The armour was mostly practical, but there was a lot more thigh and shoulder being shown than battle would usually allow.
  
  "Hey, I"m not complaining," Tock Tick remarked, gazing hungrily at the flashes of supple curves the outfit accentuated.
  
  Fenja came to a halt close to the truck and raised her shield. "Give us back Stormtiger, and we"ll let you go," she shouted. At that size, her voice echoed for hundreds of yards.
  
  Armsmaster"s voice came in reply. "Stormtiger is a convicted criminal being transported to prison. We will not be releasing him; and if you do not surrender or leave peacefully, we"ll take you in as well."
  
  Anchorage whistled. "Dude"s got stones," she said as I brought the bike around a corner, now parked in an alley behind Fenja. I could make out part of the scene by angling the rearview mirrors to see around the corner, and more through the corner with bloodsight.
  
  Fenja took a step back, and whistled sharply.
  
  From further back, a slab of rock rose over the roofs of the buildings. I could make out three figures on it- two girls and a man.
  
  A ring of spectres rose up to surround them- identical ghosts, transparent white, wearing plate armour and carrying a ten-foot spear.
  
  "Almost exactly what Armsmaster predicted," Vladimir said. "Rune, Othala, Victor, and Crusader."
  
  Bearskin frowned. "Looks like it."
  
  "We can do this the easy way," Fenja began.
  
  Armsmaster suddenly lifted his halberd and swung it in a circle above his head; the weapon gave off a deep thrumming noise, like a bullroarer.
  
  That was the signal- I slammed the throttle and shot out of the alleyway, leaning into a tight turn. Fenja glanced over her shoulder at the noise of the engine and started to move, but too slow to stop me from crashing my bike into her ankle.
  
  The ramming frame channelled the kinetic energy of the impact almost entirely away from the bike"s chassis. Instead, Fenja"s foot shot out from under her, and she toppled over backward with an undignified shriek, her shield smashing through the front of a store, sending debris all over the street.
  
  "Ha! Eat shit!" Firecracker crowed.
  
  I accelerated past Fenja and threw the bike into a skid, coming to a halt beside Armsmaster as she hit the ground, air cannon at the ready.
  
  With a crackle of lightning, Dauntless burst out of the second truck and rose into the air, all Grecian style armour and crackling white energy. Shield and spear at the ready, he shot over Fenja and toward the hovering slab.
  
  High above, Lady Photon dropped from altitude, carrying a yellow-orange orb in one hand and firing indigo lasers from the other. The slab quickly began to slide away from the attacks, while the Crusader ghosts moved to intercept.
  
  Watching them go, I stuck the air cannon back onto my belt. It didn"t have the range to help in that fight, and it"d barely tickle Fenja. Instead, I swung myself off the bike and drew my swords.
  
  Armsmaster glanced at me as the giant began struggling to her feet. "You ready for this?" he asked.
  
  I glanced back at the squad of troopers behind us, hefting grenade launchers and containment foam sprayers. Then I hit the third triggers on my swords.
  
  The central column of each sword extended outward, separating the segments on either side of the blade. The back segments rotated around and locked into position, forming a long single-edged blade.
  
  When I brought the two blades together, connectors inside the blade segments locked on to each other, aligning, intertwining, linking the mechanisms into a cohesive whole. The crossguards linked and extended outward, while the hilts split and recombined into a single extended grip.
  
  I rested the tip on the weapon on the tarmac- a massive greatsword wider than my hand and taller than my body. Where the hooked points of the shortswords had joined together, there was a small, oval gap at the tip.
  
  Butcher chuckled horribly. "This is gonna be fun."
  
  I tilted my head until my neck popped. "Let"s do this."
  
  5.10
  Chapter Notes
  
  Due to heavy complaints on Spacebattles, this chapter has been edited as of 26/10/2021. Check the thread on Spacebattles if you want to read the original version.
  
  Sunday 27th February, North Downtown
  
  Fenja got her feet under her again and hauled herself up, planting her shield on the roof of a store for extra support. I saw the concrete crack under her weight.
  
  Stoneknapper tsked as the curly frescos on the storefront crunched and broke. "Now that"s a damn shame."
  
  "Focus," Butcher growled. "We"ve got ass to kick."
  
  I gripped the hilt of my greatsword with both hands and tugged at it with Anchorage"s mass-manipulation power. I felt the weight of it flow into somewhere else, just out of reach. Then I pulled the sword up and around until the tip pointed at the sky, held in a guard on my right.
  
  Armsmaster glanced back at the PRT troopers spreading out into defensive positions behind us, using the cars as cover. "Watch out for any more surprises. They might have something else in reserve."
  
  One trooper- a captain, by the insignia- nodded. "Good luck. Bigger they are and all that."
  
  Vladimir scoffed. "Such a cliché."
  
  "It had to be said," Firecracker defended. "I mean, what else is there?"
  
  "All trees are felled at ground level?" Muramasa suggested.
  
  Dirty Rotter frowned. " "ere, you stole that from Pratchett!"
  
  I broke into a jog toward Fenja, then accelerated into a run as she brought her shield around. Armsmaster caught up with me a second later, pointing his halberd as the head split apart and reconfigured into a grappling hook.
  
  Fenja"s sword came up, around and down as we approached, slower than she"d have been at normal size, but still disconcertingly fast. Armsmaster and I dove in opposite directions as the sword smashed into the road, gouging a massive cut and throwing up debris.
  
  I turned the dive into a roll, coming up to spin into a wide slash at Fenja"s sword, oscillation at maximum, and Muramasa"s sharpening field coating my blade like fine polish.
  
  The tip scored across the flat of Fenja"s sword, making a horrible nails-on-chalkboard screech as it ground against the metal. When I completed the swing and returned to guard, I saw a pencil-thin line scratched into the metal, but no other damage.
  
  Needler cursed. "Well, if that"s the way it goes, then you"d better start drawing blood instead."
  
  Fenja tugged on the sword to pull it out of the tarmac, small pieces rattling down as she flicked them away. I slapped a few aside with the greatsword and charged in, heading for her right ankle and knee.
  
  Armsmaster took a different route- he raised his halberd high and fired the grappling hook head out on a length of fine cable. It latched onto the roof of the store Fenja had fallen against, and reeled him in quickly.
  
  Fenja backed up as we came at her from different levels, stabbing her sword down at me again. Danger sense flared as it came, letting me spin aside like a matador. My cape even flared out dramatically as I did.
  
  I didn"t stop to try and damage her sword this time- instead I went for her knee, and the bare skin between her shin guards and metal skirt.
  
  Fenja stepped back again, gaining plenty of ground, then pulled her right foot up and started stomping at the ground. I was forced to dodge and dive repeatedly as her foot smashed at the road, sending cracks through the surface and rattling the pieces with every impact.
  
  Tactical seethed at the situation. "God damn it, we are not a bloody cockroach!"
  
  Insects moved to my will- they flew from the alleyway behind Fenja, the crawling ones carried by the fliers. Only small things, flies and mites and fleas, that dropped onto the surface of her armoured boots and burrowed into the gaps between the plates.
  
  Fenja shouted a burst of profanity that echoed down the street- while I"d been harassing her lower half, Armsmaster had been attacking her torso, and was now dangling from her shield, feet braced against it as he dragged the head of his halberd through the iron rim.
  
  Fenja swept her sword down the face of her shield, forcing Armsmaster to break off by kicking into a backflip and landing on the roof in a three-point stance.
  
  Anchorage grunted in grudging approval. "Alright, that"s cool."
  
  Fenja"s foot was still stomping, but only distractedly. With the bugs inside her boots giving me awareness, I skipped past her next stomp, aiming for her left leg; the knee came up to just above my head.
  
  I burst into a leap that planted my foot against her greave, then used that to kick off into a spin toward her right leg, bringing the greatsword down on the front of her thigh.
  
  Even with the force behind the swing, even with the twin oscillators firing in sync, and even with Muramasa"s sharpening, there was resistance.
  
  For about half a second. Then the skin above the knee split open as the sword sank in, and hot blood oozed out, pouring to the ground as Fenja shrieked and stumbled.
  
  Nemean roared approval at the rich, metallic smell filling my nostrils. "Get in there!" she shouted as I landed in a crouch and flicked blood off my sword. "Before she recovers!"
  
  The blood shrank down as it hit the ground, separated from the spatial-warping that let Fenja and her sister grow to enormous size and withstand incredible force. There wasn"t actually that much- I"d avoided the major arteries, and the wound wasn"t proportionally deep. It just seemed worse in scale.
  
  Armsmaster took advantage of the opening first, rolling under Fenja"s shield and switching to his grappling hook again, quickly climbing up to her shoulder. The halberd reconfigured into a pronged setting I didn"t recognise, which he then jammed into the side of Fenja"s neck.
  
  Fenja shrieked and spasmed, the sword jittering in her hand as Armsmaster pushed the taser in harder. Her shield hand came up to paw desperately at her neck, but he simply slipped over her shoulder to hang off her back and continued shocking her.
  
  "Ooh," Tock Tick said suddenly: "Idea! Her size lets her reduce damage, right? But it doesn"t reduce sensation."
  
  I picked up on Tock Tick"s idea as Armsmaster was forced to drop lower down, now jabbing the taser into Fenja"s armpit- her shield arm bucked, smashing into the storefront once more.
  
  Flinch winced. "I hope they"ve got insurance."
  
  I reversed my grip on the greatsword and stabbed it into a crack in the ground, then pulled the air cannon from under my cape, unfolding the stock with a flick of my wrist.
  
  Quarrel"s power came to me as I lined up the sights on the eyehole of Fenja"s helmet- no easy task with her jerking about, trying to throw Armsmaster off.
  
  Losing patience, the giant villain turned around and slammed her back into the store. Armsmaster was forced to jump off onto the roof, then grapple down to the street as the entire front of the building collapsed in on itself.
  
  "Yeah, I think that building"s officially fucked," Stoneknapper admitted.
  
  Without Armsmaster shocking her, Fenja rallied- shaking herself all over and re-settling her grip on her sword as she turned toward us- giving me a clear shot.
  
  Quarrel"s power felt like an invisible length of tubing, extending from the barrel of the cannon to wherever I aimed. Inheriting it from Quarrel had weakened it: its movements were stiffer, slower, no longer able to twist itself into knots the way Quarrel had when she"d wanted to show off.
  
  But for a straight path from the cannon to Fenja"s helmet, it still did the job.
  
  "Open wide, bitch," Quarrel sneered as I pulled the trigger.
  
  The pepper round shot out, following just enough of an arc to seem natural as it flew right into the left eyehole- and burst into a cloud of stinging white dust. Fenja shrieked and clutched at her face, trying to reach under her helmet to pluck the canister out.
  
  "Nice shot," Armsmaster noted as he jogged closer. "Pepper spray?"
  
  "Mixed with chalk dust, yeah." I motioned to his halberd as I slipped the air cannon onto my back again. "Got anything in there that"ll keep her down, or are we going to have to "Gulliver"s Travels" her?"
  
  "I"ve been working on a Brute-rated tranquiliser, but at her current size, I"ll only have enough for one dose at best, and it"ll need to go directly into a blood vessel for best results."
  
  As he spoke, Fenja kicked a fire hydrant open and knelt to stick her face over the resulting spray of water, furiously scrubbing at her eye.
  
  "Break"s over," Firecracker warned.
  
  I flicked to bloodsight, showing everyone in my vision as throbbing red statues. Fenja"s arteries seemed the size of garden hoses.
  
  I pulled the sword from the road and held it high. "I"ll get you an opening," I said, breaking into a run.
  
  I got within ten feet of Fenja when she turned her head and swept her sword around in a low arc that almost scraped the road. I managed to leap over it and keep running.
  
  The sword came back around, closer and faster. This time I had to fling a hand out and flip myself over the swing, rolling as I landed and coming up in a crouch next to Fenja"s hand.
  
  "Do it!" Bearskin bellowed.
  
  The broken tarmac cracked further under my feet as I threw myself forward, flicking the oscillation high and spreading Muramasa"s sharpening across the sword, into a lunge that rammed the greatsword into the back of Fenja"s hand.
  
  Fenja"s yell was deafening to me; it was only because I"d thought ahead that I was able to push through it, to fling myself over her wrist and yank the flail from my belt. I didn"t need to charge it or swing it up to speed- I just brought it down on her radius with both hands.
  
  Something in her arm gave a quiet click, and Fenja yelled again, scrabbling back on hands and knees, blood oozing from her leg. Her sword dropped from her hand, and the greatsword was jostled out by her movements- the wound there was more serious than the leg, but I"d deliberately missed the bones.
  
  I approached her, slowing to pick the greatsword up as I came. The water from the hydrant was still spraying all over the street, and the blood had already washed off it. I could feel some insects drowning in the water too, and moved them to higher ground.
  
  "Fuuuuck," Tock Tick groaned. "We didn"t waterproof it, did we?"
  
  "It"s water resistant," I said, briefly struggling to handle a two-handed sword and a one-handed flail with two hands. After a moment of fumbling, I got the flail back onto my belt and hefted the sword"s displaced weight again.
  
  "All the seams," Tock fretted. "It"s going to get into the gears, it"ll mess with the lubricants- we"ll have to take the whole thing apart and check every piece."
  
  "Can we focus on the giant Nazi crawling away from us?" Vladimir demanded. "Christ and the saints, we have- ha ha- BIGGER problems!"
  
  "Fair point." I broke into a run again.
  
  Fenja pushed herself up to a crouch and swung the shield at me. I had to plant my sword into the ground to stop myself in time, and couldn"t quite get it out again in time to dodge her follow-up kick.
  
  Danger sense helped me hop aside, but she still clipped my side with enough force to send me flying with a crash of metal on metal. I hit the ground in an uncoordinated heap, feeling the world spinning around me.
  
  "I"m going to make you pay for my hand, bitch," Fenja growled, closing in on me in two massive strides. "And my eye, and my leg." I turned over to see her hefting the shield over her head, ready to bring it down on me.
  
  The Butchers couldn"t resist the chance to offer me a comeback. I picked Needler"s; "Don"t break out the calculator yet- I"ve still got more."
  
  Fenja snarled- I raised a hand and flexed my fingers. The grappling hook unfolded from my forearm and fired, and I hit the retract as she swung. The cable yanked me forward, still on my back- there was a horrible grinding noise as I scraped against broken tarmac, but it pulled me between her legs and past her as she slammed the shield into the road hard enough to leave a dent.
  
  I hastily got to my feet as Fenja rounded on me, swinging the shield again. I backed up again and again, parrying a few with the sword, but mostly retreating from the sheer force she was bringing to bear.
  
  Muramasa fumed as I gave ground. "You have openings. I know you can see them. Fight back!"
  
  I hopped back again, then rammed my sword into the cut Armsmaster"s halberd had left across the top of her shield. "I just need her to be a little more angry," I said, forcing the cut a little wider before Fenja yanked it away.
  
  The valkyrie villain roared and swung a haymaker with her shield arm- I jumped to meet it, forcing the sword deep into the wood and planting my feet against it. Flexing my toes activated the drill bits in my boots- they whined in protest as they struggled against the super-tough wood, but they managed to give me just enough purchase to hold on as Fenja started trying to shake me off.
  
  "Waahhoooo!" Rotter whooped as Fenja swung her arm back and forth, weighed down by my mass. "Haven"t felt like this since we rode one of Blasto"s beasties!"
  
  I grunted, more occupied with jabbing at Fenja"s right hand with the greatsword as she tried to grab at me.
  
  "You think you"re going to beat me like this?" She yelled angrily, spinning to face across the street- to face the row of buildings.
  
  I had a sudden image of a grape in a vise.
  
  "Wrecking the buildings of hard-working Americans doesn"t seem very in line with your creed," I shouted, jabbing at her shield arm. Fenja growled from behind her helmet, then suddenly thrust the flat of the shield at the ground.
  
  I pressed the sword to the cut in the shield and braced myself. When Fenja drove me into the ground, I pushed as hard as I could- the blade punched right through the shield, nearly reaching Fenja"s breastplate. She simply adjusted her stance and pushed harder.
  
  I tried to drag the blade through the shield, but it was slow going, and I could feel my muscles starting to tear with the amount of strain I was putting them through. I couldn"t keep this up forever.
  
  Luckily, I didn"t need forever. I just needed Fenja focused on me so the tall silhouette I saw with bloodsight could jab the long needle on the tip of his halberd into her thigh.
  
  "Gotcha!" Butcher roared.
  
  Fenja yelped and swung around, dragging me with her. Armsmaster managed to catch me as I finally lost my grip and fell into him, sending us both staggering.
  
  Fenja was staggering harder though- she took one step toward us, then another. At the third her leg gave out, and she slumped to her knees, then fell sideways with a slurred curse on her lips. The ground shook a little as she hit.
  
  Armsmaster offered a hand, and I took it gratefully, grunting as torn muscles and deep bruises made themselves known through painless stiffness.
  
  "Good job distracting her," Armsmaster praised, motioning to the troopers further down the street. Two of them quickly hustled forward with their bulky foam sprayers to grab the rapidly shrinking Fenja and spray her hands and feet. A few short squirts of the yellow-white liquid quickly expanded into fluffy foam gluing her into position; coupled with her returning to normal size, the effect was dramatic.
  
  I glanced up and down the road as the troopers hastily dragged Fenja over to Stormtiger"s transport truck. "We really wrecked this place," I admitted, feeling some loose tarmac shift under my feet.
  
  "Damage can be repaired," Armsmaster said dismissively. "What"s important is that we"ve secured a major win here."
  
  I nodded cautiously as we both headed back to the trucks. "I guess." I glanced across to where I"d last seen our reinforcements tackling the Empire"s reinforcements. "Wonder how they"re doing?"
  
  I heard crashing from off to the side, and then Dauntless shot out of an alleyway, backwards, pursued by a pair of floating dumpsters.
  
  That concrete slab I"d seen before floated up over the buildings. Rune was in front, her red and black robe flapping in the breeze. Othala was behind her, glancing about nervously. And standing stooped behind the girls was a man in full armour, with his arms around them and his ten-foot spear held protectively in front- Crusader.
  
  Lady Photon darted up after them, firing lasers at the slab, while half a dozen of Crusader"s ghostly projections chased after her at spearpoint. The villains ducked, and Crusader hunched over further. One of the lasers clipped him, but he didn"t even flinch.
  
  "What the fuck?" Anchorage demanded. "How the hell is he that tough?"
  
  "It must be Othala," Tactical cursed. "The bitch gave him invincibility!"
  
  Six more ghosts swooped overhead, toward the trucks and the troopers.
  
  "After them!" Armsmaster barked, breaking into a sprint. I followed immediately, swearing to myself. Crusader"s file described his ghosts as having a Manton limit, but inverted from the usual- they could only affect living matter. In practice that meant they could pass through walls and defences to strike at bare flesh- and that meant people would notice if a spear went right through my armour, only to be stopped by inhumanly tough skin.
  
  The fliers zipped back and forth over our heads, trading blows as we ran- Lady Photon"s forcefields couldn"t block the ghosts, but that also meant her attacks could pass through them, forcing Rune to use her increasingly battered dumpsters as shields.
  
  On the other side, Dauntless"s Arclance ripped through ghosts like soap bubbles at its touch, but his shield flared with each jab of their spears. I saw Crusader glance over his shoulder and give Dauntless the finger as they traded blows.
  
  "I thought you couldn"t damage his ghosts?" Armsmaster called out, pole-vaulting over the car blockade and landing on top of one of the trucks.
  
  Dauntless rammed through a couple of ghosts, dissipating them even as they stabbed at his shield. "New power aspect, I think!" He broke off to dodge as one of Rune"s dumpsters came at him like a comet.
  
  "Well shit, that"s neat," Stoneknapper said, surprised.
  
  I hopped over the car blockade and paused to look around. "Where"s Brandish and Victor?" I yelled.
  
  Rune"s dumpsters suddenly flipped over in mid-air, the lids swinging open. Purple forcefields flared to life, angled to direct the falling trash bags away from the troopers, even as Lady Photon fired a bright laser at the villains.
  
  Rune yelped and quickly spun the slab around- the laser splashed over Crusader"s broad back without doing any damage.
  
  "It"s not Victor!" Lady Photon yelled, climbing to try and get a clear shot. "Someone new- Stranger!"
  
  "Fuck!" Butcher snarled. "Nazis and Strangers- why"d it have to be both?"
  
  I directed bugs- they came from the alleyways, the rooftops, all the nooks and crannies- ironically, a lot of them were in the trash bags that had landed behind the trucks. I spread them out around the trucks and on the ground, drawing out a perimeter while I hefted my sword and looked around for trouble.
  
  Brandish burst out of a side-road, blazing swords in hand as she sprinted toward us. "Incoming!"
  
  There was a smash like broken glass, and the water all over the street, pouring from the gushing hydrant, turned to ice, radiating out from a point behind Brandish. I hopped onto one of the cars as it spread toward us- some of the troopers weren"t so lucky, and their boots were frozen in place. Dozens of bugs suffocated as they were encased in ice.
  
  I switched to bloodsight- there was no sign of anyone else on the road- just Brandish and Armsmaster, their breath fogging in front of them as the temperature dropped.
  
  Brandish didn"t miss a beat- she simply collapsed into her ball form, bounced free, and changed back, still sprinting. "Sarah! Staircase!"
  
  Several purple forcefields appeared parallel to the ground, running up and over the barricade- Brandish leapt onto the first one and powered up them into a magnificent leap that launched her right toward the floating slab. Rune quickly jerked to the side, but Brandish still managed to cut a sizzling chunk off the edge before she landed.
  
  Needler whistled. "What a woman."
  
  Armsmaster cast his head about, looking for the new Empire cape as his halberd"s head shifted into a different configuration and began to glow with heat. "There!" he barked suddenly, jumping off the truck. He skidded on the ice as he landed, turned it into a tumble, and came up in a lunge at a patch of empty air.
  
  A wall of ice erupted in front of him, stopping his halberd. A burly silhouette appeared in bloodsight, and when I peered around the wall, I could make out brown leather on the limbs, and chainmail on the torso, crossed with burn marks. A steel helmet covered the top half of the head, with decorative antlers moulded out of the metal, and a scraggly beard growing from the jaw.
  
  The new villain hopped around the wall and swung at Armsmaster with a handaxe formed out of clear ice- the Tinker blocked the blow easily and attacked in turn.
  
  Brandish dismissed her swords and ran to help. I thought to join in, but Crusader fired off a dozen more ghosts that began descending toward the trucks. Lady Photon hastily generated a forcefield over the roof of the transport as the slab dipped lower, and harried them with a volley of lasers.
  
  "Don"t let Rune get to the truck!" She shouted, circling around to try and hit the telekinetic.
  
  Crusader might have been providing the numbers for this fight, but Rune was the real threat of this breakout attempt. Fenja could have conceivably carried the truck, but that would have made her slow and vulnerable. All Rune had to do was lay a hand on it, and she could lift the whole thing into the air and out of our reach, prisoner and all.
  
  The troopers holstered and set aside various weapons as the ghosts approached. I stabbed my sword into the ground and cracked my knuckles. Since they were intangible to non-living matter, the ghosts couldn"t be harmed by weapons. This would have to be done hand-to-hand.
  
  The ring of ghosts set down on the ground and closed in, levelling their spears. I joined the troopers as Crusader"s projections advanced through tarmac and metal, rolling my shoulders to retract my cape.
  
  Danger sense flared behind me- I turned to see a Crusader ghost lunge with its spear. A trooper knocked it aside and grabbed the shaft, then kicked at the Crusader"s knee. The ghost stumbled, then threw a punch, and they dissolved into a brawl.
  
  A scream behind me- another trooper toppled over, and a Crusader rose out of the road beneath him, flicking blood off its spear.
  
  "Ambush!" Nemean roared. Two more troopers went down with wounds in foot and leg as transparent spears stabbed from below.
  
  A flare of danger sense- I jumped aside and grabbed the spear that was rising between my feet, then pulled. The Crusader ghost rose up to meet my descending heel on its visor. The blow staggered it, but it kept coming. I tugged on the spear again, then grabbed its arm, twisted, and rammed the heel of my palm into its locked elbow.
  
  There was no sound, but I still felt the meaty crunch as the arm broke. The Crusader spasmed, then vanished into nothing.
  
  In eerie unison, Crusader"s helmet, and the helmets of all his ghosts, turned to look at me.
  
  Flinch didn"t swear often, so his muttered "Oh crap," spelled out just how bad that was.
  
  The remaining ghosts rushed me at once, two at ground level, two rising into the air to strike from above, one sinking into the ground. I threw out bugs to track them and settled into a low stance.
  
  Deflect the spear from the left, dodge upper right, backstep from below. I grabbed that one, but the weapon dissolved into nothing as the ghost let go and reached for my throat.
  
  I borrowed one of Needler"s tricks- grabbed its hands and broke both its thumbs. It reeled back into its fellows and disappeared.
  
  I could feel the ghosts by the bugs they brushed against, just like I could track the other fights. Armsmaster was driving the ice Stranger back, melting his ice with quick jabs of his halberd- and Brandish had arrived now, adding to the pressure. Dauntless was destroying Crusader"s fresh clones almost as fast as the villain could make them, while Lady Photon unleashed a charged laser that cut through one of Rune"s dumpsters- both halves fell to the ground, inert.
  
  "We"re winning," Bearskin marvelled. "We"re really winning this."
  
  "Of course we are," Vladimir crowed.
  
  One of the troopers stomped on the back of a ghost"s knee- as it buckled, I lunged. Side-stepping a spear thrust got me inside the guard to slam a palm into the ghost"s chin, snapping its head back, then I followed danger sense to dodge another stab from behind.
  
  "Try this!" Muramasa shouted, picturing a move. I grabbed the spear and the arm holding it, then swung both into the reeling Crusader"s chest. There was a strange disconnect as the spear punched through ethereal armour and flesh without a sound- the ghost slumped and vanished.
  
  "So they"re vulnerable to their own weapons," I wondered. "Nice catch, Muramasa."
  
  A shadow passed over me- Rune"s rock swooped overhead, away from the trucks.
  
  "Yeah, that"s right, you better run!" Firecracker shouted.
  
  Anchorage gasped. "They"re heading for Armsmaster!"
  
  I dispatched another ghost with two kicks and a dislocated shoulder, then shouted "Incoming!"
  
  Armsmaster barely glanced before jumping out of the way as Rune"s slab came in low, almost scraping the street. Brandish collapsed into her ball form and bounced off- but as she sailed through the air the Stranger"s ice hammer met her in flight.
  
  The hammer shattered- and exploded into a spray of ice fragments that grew into a huge block of ice, trapping the Brandish ball inside. The villain let the ice block fall to the ground and sniggered horribly.
  
  "Fucking shit," Stoneknapper cursed. "We can"t break her out of ice. My power-"
  
  "We can just smash her out, moron!" Dirty Rotter said.
  
  Lady Photon must have thought the same- a purple laser hit the ice block, cracking it heavily.
  
  Rune, Othala and Crusader slid off the slab, which tilted up 90 degrees to form a shield. As Dauntless flew to flank from the side, there was a grinding rumble- then a large chunk of the broken road surface, half-covered in ice, rose into the air, carrying the villains on it. Fresh ghosts poured off Crusader, down through the ground and buildings to the side before Dauntless could destroy them with his Arclance.
  
  The first slab shot forward- Armsmaster was clipped by it and fell to the ground with a cry of pain. The two Crusaders left next to me grabbed at me, but I shoved them away and threw myself aside as the slab hit the barricade, hammering the cars aside. One of the few troopers standing was knocked off his feet, but managed to get up with a groan.
  
  "Don"t just stand there, take them out!" Tactical raged as I got to my feet. I considered my options- then I pulled my air cannon off the back of my belt and fired a pepper grenade.
  
  Rune saw it too late to move her new transport- the canister burst open right at her feet in a cloud of stinging white.
  
  "Hahahahahaaaa! Suck it, bitches!" Quarrel whooped, picturing every obscene gesture she could think of as Rune and Othala screamed and desperately scrubbed at their eyes. Crusader wrapped his arms around them and fired off more ghosts to harass the fliers as lasers and lightning blasted the platform without Rune"s defences.
  
  "Does this mean they"re Naz"s now?" Dirty Rotter asked as I dropped the cannon to block a punch from a Crusader, then knee it in the chest. "Get it? Because they don"t have "I"s!"
  
  Vladimir snorted. "Rotter, that is an atrocious pun, and I respect it."
  
  Something hit a couple of bugs down the road. I instinctively went to look, and the remaining ghost grazed my side with its spear in that split second. I caught the spear"s shaft, then brought my elbow down to break it like a twig, vanishing it. The Crusader backed away, allowing me to look for- absolutely nothing.
  
  The Stranger. I grabbed the ghost by the top of the head and twisted sharply. It disappeared instantly, but I was already pulling my sword out of the ground with one hand while I kicked the air cannon into my hand and fired another pepper grenade.
  
  A wall of ice formed in an instant, trapping the grenade. I saw the Stranger through the ice as a pair of axes formed in his hands- then he sprinted to the side, blurring out of sight as he picked up speed.
  
  "It"s tied to movement," Needler realised. "We just need to slow him down."
  
  A bug was crushed near me- I swung the greatsword one-handed, and heard a yelp as it clipped something. The Stranger re-appeared near me with a scratch across his chainmail, swinging his ice axes at me from high and low.
  
  "Don"t block them!" Flinch warned. I almost didn"t listen to him, but the sneer beneath the Stranger"s beard convinced me to dodge backward.
  
  "Those weapons break on impact! If he hits you, you"re trapped."
  
  "Guys? Ideas?" I asked as the Stranger swung at me again, cackling sadistically. I racked the cannon onto my back as I stepped back again, and half-handed the sword to parry his next swing. The axe chipped, and the chip expanded into a fist-sized lump that fell to the ground.
  
  The villain snarled and threw that axe at me- I ducked, and the axe hit the transport truck, erupting to encase the hood and front wheel.
  
  "Damnit, Jotunn!" Rune had an empty flask in hand and a wet face free of powder as she moved her rock back toward the truck. Her attack rock rose from where it rested against one of the barricade cars and headed back toward Dauntless to slam into his shield-bubble.
  
  "That"s his name? I don"t understand," Nemean said.
  
  Bearskin hummed. "That"s Norse legends, I think- the name for a race of ice giants."
  
  Jotunn came at me again, swinging the axe while he formed a spike in his other hand to stab at me with. I backed up again, and my back hit the transport truck.
  
  "Nowhere to run now," Jotunn snarled in a surprisingly nasal voice, closing in. I managed to intercept his swing and haul his axe to the side, but Jotunn stabbed his ice-pick at my sword, making it burst into a block of ice that pinned my weapon to the transport truck.
  
  I let go and backed away as Jotunn rounded on me with a sneer. "Whatcha gonna do now, bitch?"
  
  I switched to boxing, slapped his clumsy swing aside, and jabbed a punch into his face, right on the long nose-guard. Something broke, and he flew back with a yell of pain.
  
  "Fucking cunt! You broke my fucking nose!" His free hand went to his face, coming away with the blood gushing from his nostrils. The nose-guard was actually bent out of shape.
  
  "We"re gonna do that, you shit-sucking fascist fuck!" Butcher roared.
  
  I pressed the advantage, trapping his axe arm while I fired punches into his chest. His chainmail jangled as I targeted his sternum and floating ribs until I felt something crack, then swept his leg and brought my knee up into his forehead as he fell. Jotunn dropped to the icy ground as a whimpering heap.
  
  I pulled a knife from my belt to start hacking my sword free, keeping an eye on the aerial battle. The remaining villains were looking uneasy- Othala was keeping Crusader topped up with invincibility, and he was shielding the girls, but the slab they were on was being steadily chipped away as Dauntless and Lady Photon blasted more and more material off it.
  
  "We need to leave," I heard Crusader say through the crashes and crackles of the fight. Rune shook her head, but Crusader pointed something out. I turned to look as well.
  
  Armsmaster"s halberd glowed red-hot as it finished melting the ice around the Brandish ball. In a rush of orange light, Brandish transformed back and landed on her feet, forming a pair of axes with a grim expression. Armsmaster himself was favouring his side, but he still readied his halberd determinedly.
  
  I pulled my sword free at last, then jumped from the street to the hood of the transport truck, to the forcefield still covering its roof. Rune"s gaze was drawn to me, and I levelled the sword at her challengingly.
  
  Rune stared back at me across the gap for a second- then her hands dropped to her sides. The attack slab and remaining dumpster drew in close to her as shields.
  
  "No you don"t!" Lady Photon shouted, bringing her hands together in a nimbus of purple light.
  
  Crusader ghosts erupted from the buildings around us, and the ground beneath- two seized Jotunn from where he lay and bundled him onto the slab. More swarmed Lady Photon, Brandish and Armsmaster as they tried to close in- Dauntless was forced to clear them away with great swings of his Arclance.
  
  The Empire rose into the air and headed away from us at a fair clip of speed. I briefly thought of going after them, but I was tired from the fight- and I"d been lucky that none of Crusader"s ghosts had stabbed me through the armour and discovered my durability.
  
  "Perhaps, but I surely would have liked to see the fool"s face when he realised that," Vladimir chuckled heartily.
  
  Lady Photon had no such hesitation, powering after the retreating villains with a yell. They rapidly disappeared over the buildings.
  
  Dauntless looked down as Armsmaster and Brandish made their way across the ice. "Should I pursue, sir?"
  
  Armsmaster shook his head as he slipped past the now-wrecked cars. "No. We"ve held on to Stormtiger, and captured Fenja. A bird in the hand, etc."
  
  The forcefield under me suddenly vanished, dropping me a few inches onto the truck. I wavered briefly before I caught my balance. "Is everyone-" I thought to say hurt, then saw the bloodstains from the wounded troopers, and changed mid-sentence.
  
  "-Alive?" I finished weakly.
  
  One of the unharmed troopers looked up from where he was wrapping a leg wound on his buddy. "No fatalities, but we need medivac as soon as possible." I belatedly recognised the voice as that of Captain Nolan.
  
  Armsmaster nodded and raised a hand to his helmet as I hopped to the ground and held my sword in front of me, pressing the third triggers.
  
  There was a whirring sound and a couple of clicks, but the seams remained stubbornly closed. I tried again and heard something go ping.
  
  "Ah crap," Tock Tick groaned. "The fucking ice got into the sword- all that water must have frozen too."
  
   I groaned and lowered the sword. I didn"t actually have a sheathe for carrying this form around.
  
  After a second"s thought, I rolled my shoulders to unspool my cape, then took it off and wrapped it around the sword. A little fiddling with the controls on top and when I clipped it to my back again, the sword stayed secure, the hilt poking over my right shoulder.
  
  I looked up at a noise from up high- Lady Photon had come back with nothing but a dejected expression. "They got away," she said, drifting down to ground level.
  
  "We got one of them," Brandish pointed out. "And their new cape didn"t do them any favours." She sounded confident, but I noticed her fingers curl into a fist as she said it.
  
  "I"ll help shift the cars out of the way," I volunteered. "Then we can all get the hell out of here."
  
  Armsmaster"s voice cut across Captain Nolan"s response. "Console, repeat that please."
  
  A second later his jaw clenched. "Damnit." His head turned my way. "Team 2 needs backup- The Empire was ready for them."
  
  "Shit," Bearskin breathed.
  
  I felt something cold clench around my heart. Team 2 was Spitfire and Ironclad. I"d specifically set them up with a low-risk storehouse so they wouldn"t be in danger.
  
  My bike was on the other side of the car blockade. I leapt over the hood at a run and flung myself into the saddle, flicking the key out from its spring-loaded compartment on my wrist to jam it into the ignition.
  
  The second the engine turned over, I hit the throttle and peeled away from the scene, tyres rumbling over broken tarmac as I headed for my team.
  
  5.11
  Sunday 27th February, North Downtown
  
  Honking horns and barking brakes faded into the distance. I"d run my third red light, but I didn"t have the time to slow down.
  
  The greatsword banged against my shoulder- the improvised sheath held it to my back, but it bounced around with every swerve and turn- and there were many of them. I switched lanes and threaded around every car in front of me- at one point I even took the bike across an empty stretch of sidewalk for a few seconds. If it wasn"t for bloodsight and danger sense, I"d have almost certainly had an accident by now.
  
  As it was, I"d dipped so low on a couple of corners that I"d scraped some paint off the bike"s bodywork- and I didn"t care at all.
  
  I could redo the paint. I could repair the bike, or even rebuild it completely.
  
  But if I didn"t move fast enough, I wouldn"t be able to help my friends.
  
  "They"re both young and white, Kaiser wouldn"t want them badly hurt because of propaganda," Bearskin muttered uneasily.
  
  "Spitfire torched a couple of their places," Firecracker said bleakly. "They"re not going to be nice."
  
  I threw myself into a turn that shot me around a corner, onto a mercifully clear road. I had a clear shot towards the Empire facility I"d marked for Spitfire and Ironclad-
  
  And a clear view of the smoke beginning to billow from the building.
  
  I couldn"t get any more power out of the engine, but I still cranked the throttle until I felt something break. Cars were stopped a good distance away from the actual building, turning away down side streets. I slipped between the last few cars and reached for the hilt over my shoulder as I saw the figures fighting outside the smoking warehouse.
  
  "Oh, what are the fucking odds?" Anchorage demanded as we spotted the other giant Nazi woman of Brockton Bay.
  
  Menja looked like her sister in every respect- same wing-decorated armour, same closed helmet, same generous measurements. The only visible difference was that she carried a spear instead of sword and shield.
  
  Battery and Glory Girl were hammering away at her- Glory Girl swooping in from above, while Battery zipped back and forth in short bursts, the lines of her costume lighting up with energy as she stopped to charge.
  
  A second later, I saw the other villain present. Cricket was headed toward Battery, kamas in hand. As I approached, she slowed to look at me, and I saw a sword hilt poking over her shoulder- a familiar sword hilt.
  
  "Oh, that rancid bitch!" Tock Tick bellowed. "She kept it?!"
  
  I wanted to pay her back for stabbing me with my own weapon- but I didn"t have the time. I aimed the bike at Cricket, ramming frame already lowered; she leapt aside into a roll as I went past her and through Menja"s legs. The warehouse"s main doors were open, and I shot right through it.
  
  The floor inside was streaked with yellow flames, splashed irregularly over a couple of crates and piles of cardboard boxes. Smoke was filling the air, clouding my vision. I directed bugs to find ways in through the flames and map the area out for me.
  
  Still, bloodsight had never been blocked by anything but distance. I could see four scarlet figures in the building. Two were further in, one smaller and suspended off the ground- Ironclad. No visible injuries, so I could leave him for a moment.
  
  The other two were to my right- I threw the bike into a skidding stop and flipped myself off in one furious movement.
  
  I recognised the man that turned to face me- the PRT had a decent file on him. Red shirt, black slacks and breastplate, burnt in some places and wet in others. Besides the usual domino mask, he"d also slipped a small filter mask over his nose and mouth for the smoke.
  
  Victor: the Empire"s skill thief, agile and lethal, but most dangerous in how he drained the talents of his enemies during combat. Engaging him at close range might be-
  
  "Oh god," Flinch murmured. A second later, I processed what he"d seen before me.
  
  I hadn"t been able to parse why a blood silhouette was occupying the same space as a pile of intense flames. Curled into a ball, knees to chest, lay Spitfire. Lacking any other options, she"d set herself on fire to protect herself.
  
  Out of the corner of my eye, I realised Victor was holding a knife.
  
  The anger came to me like an eager pet, ready to be let off the leash. Only the experience of Glory Girl"s aura stopped me from teleporting straight to him to crush his bones into pulp.
  
  Instead, I grabbed the sword hilt over my right shoulder and wrenched it free. The cape came free of my shoulders as well, falling to the ground as I swung.
  
  Victor leapt backward, let himself tumble in a flawless backward roll and came up with the knife in the other hand, while his right pulled out a pistol.
  
  I snarled at him from within my helmet, grabbing the cape off the ground as I placed myself between him and Spitfire"s huddled form. He backed up warily and lowered the pistol.
  
  "That"s not going to save you," Nemean growled lowly.
  
  I quickly threw the cape over Spitfire, patting her all over to smother the flames. There was a terrible smell of scorched fabric, but the flames went out.
  
  Spitfire uncurled a fraction. "Boss?"
  
  "Spitfire," I said, keeping Victor in my field of vision as he began to circle, "I need you to run outside as fast as you can, okay? Get away from the fight, and get somewhere safe. I"ll handle everything else."
  
  "He did something to my head," Spitfire whispered. "I forgot things, and then I ran out of water-"
  
  "Don"t worry," I said quietly, hefting the sword, "I"ve got this."
  
  Spitfire was silent for a moment. Then: "My clothes burned off."
  
  I gingerly patted her shoulder: the extinguisher frame was still on her, though functionally useless by now. "Take the cape. Wrap yourself up. I"ll be right behind you."
  
  Spitfire pulled herself to her feet, bundling herself up until only her bare feet and a hint of densely freckled cheeks peeped out. I stood up and put myself between her and Victor, slipping several dozen venomous insects onto the outside of the cape as she got to her feet. They weren"t handling the heat well, but it was some kind of protection anyway.
  
  "Now to cut him into pieces," Muramasa hissed. I gave a wordless agreement, holding his sharpening power at the ready as Spitfire"s bare footsteps receded.
  
  Victor crossed his left arm to brace his pistol against it. I raised my sword and widened my stance a little.
  
  A massive crash echoed across the warehouse as Ironclad smashed his way through a couple of crates. Thanks to the insects I"d spread out on the intact parts of the building, I wasn"t distracted.
  
  But for a split second and a flicker of the eyes, Victor was.
  
  I brought the sword around, almost weightless in my grip. Victor backed up again, smoothly, as if he"d done it a thousand times.
  
  This time I pursued, moving into a lunge aimed at his chest. He spun to the side, bringing his knife up to meet the sword, more deflecting himself than my weapon.
  
  "Look out," Tactical warned; I saw Victor"s right hand come up, a neat little Beretta aimed at my head.
  
  I shoved against him with the sword, pushing off into a spinning slash that almost took his arm off before he dived back and hurdled an intact crate. My next blow split the crate in two- sacks of flour burst open and spilled, throwing up a cloud of white.
  
  Danger sense flared, and I dodged, but the bullet still glanced off my visor. A spiderweb of cracks spread over the left side of my vision, and I quickly rolled my eyes to check for any damage.
  
  Victor was already lining up another shot. I powered forward to intercept him, but something felt wrong when I lunged forward with the sword. My footwork felt off, unfamiliar. I"d done this plenty of times in practice, and the Butchers knew basically every shape of weapon that Stoneknapper"s power could make.
  
  So why didn"t it feel easy?
  
  "Fucking brain drain," Vladimir swore. "End this quickly, before he takes everything!"
  
  I came at Victor with a roar. He shot at me again, still giving ground. The bullets hit me in the temple and the shoulder, but I pushed through the impacts with ease to keep attacking. I could feel my skill dwindling now, slowly but surely, an insidious tickle in the brain, but even uncoordinated, my greatsword was a force of nature.
  
  The thief was running out of space as he double-tapped my chest to little effect- the wall was approaching behind him. His left hand put the knife away- and came out again with a short sword from his back, a thin point of dark metal.
  
  Stoneknapper sneered. "Pathetic."
  
  The sword jabbed once, twice, at my face. I batted it aside contemptuously, until Victor angled his sword around my crossguard and threw his weight into a disarming move.
  
  I let my sword fall from my hands and grabbed Victor"s pistol. One quick twist ripped the slide free and turned it into useless metal.
  
  Victor"s sword came for my neck, aimed at the overlapping plates that protected it. Needler"s silat came to me to slap it away and duck low, and I felt it slip away as Victor"s power took it.
  
  That last little act strained my self-control- the feeling of his power in my mind, stealing what I"d earned so he could pretend he was better by default. I could see the arrogant calm in his posture as he tossed the remains of his pistol aside and drew another dagger, and it infuriated me.
  
  Victor made a move to the left- then threw himself right, breaking into a sprint away from me.
  
  Past him, I saw Spitfire limping quickly out the door.
  
  "No you fucking don"t!" Butcher howled.
  
  I charged after him, roaring from the lowest depths of my lungs. After he"d hurt Spitfire like that, beaten her and frightened her into a flinching huddle, I was not letting him get away.
  
  "VICTOOOOORRRRR!" I bellowed, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. He stumbled for a moment, feet tangled up in each other.
  
  Victor"s theft felt similar, in a way- cloying and creeping over me. One of my powers had that feeling when I called on it- when I wanted to spread it over something and let it fall apart.
  
  I took one step forward and slammed my fist into his guts. Dirty Rotter"s power came to me like an eager dog; the impact was enough to dent Victor"s breastplate, but it was the oozing darkness splashing over his chest that did the real damage.
  
  Victor was knocked off his feet to land in an uncoordinated heap, vomiting all over himself. The tickle in my mind stopped at once, and my head cleared a little.
  
  Rotter cackled merrily. " "bout bloody time, girl! Didja think I"d settle for bits o" wood forever? Ah, that felt good! He"ll be puking his everything for a week, I"ll wager!"
  
  I gritted my teeth and shoved Rotter into the dark, then pulled the air cannon off my back as his laughter faded, setting it to secondary fire mode. Two net canisters hit Victor one after the other, layering him with tough nylon strands.
  
  I would have searched him for any more weapons first, but I had to assume he was playing possum to try and drain my skills more. I"d find another way to drag him out.
  
  "So where"s the other one?" Needler asked as I looked through the smoke. Ironclad"s metal was dimly visible, rapidly changing back and forth in size as he swung his fists at a dark figure. Every blow dented Ironclad"s body, and some bits of metal were knocked free by the larger hits.
  
  I turned the air cannon in that direction and fired a blast, but the figure didn"t seem affected. When I tried to get insects near the brawl, they encountered resistance, struggling to move or even breathe.
  
  "That"s just not fucking fair," Quarrel griped.
  
  There was one person in the Empire roster who fit that description.
  
  "Ironclad!" I bellowed, putting the cannon away. "Break off and get outside! We"ll fight them together!"
  
  Ironclad backed away from his opponent with elongated steps, but the man in the black leather coat leapt after him. Krieg shot through the air like a cannonball, and the impact smashed through Ironclad"s right arm.
  
  "Tag out!" I shouted, running back into the warehouse. Ironclad backed away, re-assembling his arm as Krieg rounded on him.
  
  I threw myself into a baseball slide, scooping up my greatsword as I went, and bounced back to my feet without losing speed. Krieg"s gas mask turned toward me as I closed in.
  
  I felt the resistance as I stepped closer- like I was running through a stiff wind, growing stronger as I approached. It tugged on my armour and my sword, forcing me to put more effort in to shift them.
  
  Ironclad and I swung simultaneously. I saw his arm slowing as it came in close, and heard the laboured breathing echoing from his helmet. I felt it too- this close to Krieg, even breathing was harder.
  
  Krieg casually slapped aside Ironclad"s fist- the metal burst like a dandelion, fragments scattering all over the floor. My greatsword followed, faster- but agonisingly slow compared to what I could do. It was like slogging through knee-deep mud.
  
  All Krieg had to do was take one step back from my downward strike, letting it bite into the floor.
  
  "Watch the foot!" Nemean snapped. Krieg was drawing his leg back.
  
  I yanked my greatsword back as his steel-toed boot scythed through the space it had been. I could feel the force behind the movement shaking the air.
  
  "Go!" I shouted, not taking my eyes off Krieg. "Grab Victor!"
  
  Ironclad took a step back, then stopped. I felt his gaze on the back of my neck.
  
  I tossed the sword to him. He almost fumbled the catch before he gripped the entire hilt in one massive hand.
  
  "I"ll want that back."
  
  Ironclad carefully slid the sword onto his back- I saw little strips of metal bend around it to hold it in place. "Good luck," he said, stepping back a few times before turning and running for the door.
  
  Krieg"s gas mask bobbed as he looked me up and down.
  
  "Brave of you, fraulein," He said in an affected German accent. "To send the boy away. You are so certain you can fight me?"
  
  Bearskin ground his teeth. "I forgot how much I hated this pretentious twat." Through him, I knew that Krieg"s accent was completely fake. He just used it in costume to fit his aesthetic.
  
  I pulled the flail from my belt, and wordlessly beckoned.
  
  Krieg cocked his head. A jab came without warning.
  
  Even with both hands on the flail, I barely parried the blow. The kinetic field strained my every movement, and the force of the punch sent a shock through my hands.
  
  Although, since I had the flail set to Absorb, it also charged the flail halfway with that one hit.
  
  Tock Tick cackled horribly. "I love this thing."
  
  "And now, what goes around..." Anchorage hinted heavily. I gave ground as Krieg pursued me, ready to switch to Pulse as soon as I had an opening. Bugs searched through the warehouse at my command, digging through the crates of merchandise for anything that might be useful.
  
  "We need to take this outside," Tactical disagreed. "We need backup to fight Krieg, and the heroes need help with the rest."
  
  The Butchers erupted into argument. Krieg was an old enemy of theirs- he"d been with the Empire since the first Butcher, and risen to become Kaiser"s lieutenant in that time. His form of telekinesis gave him a blend of defence and offence that they"d always struggled to break through, even with teleporting and pain blasts; and they wanted a chance to claim their pound of flesh.
  
   I considered their grudge as I backed up to a couple of crates- then rolled backwards over one and smashed the flail into it as I came up.
  
  The kinetic battery emptied all at once, and the crate burst apart- the sacks of flour inside ruptured and spread their contents through the air. As they hit Krieg"s field, the powder slowed to a crawl, but they still hung in the air as a thick cloud. Krieg"s power didn"t affect the fall of objects.
  
  I turned and sprinted for the door the instant Krieg"s sight was obscured, keeping the flail on hand in case. He"d be after me in an instant, and hitting someone when their back was turned was entirely his style.
  
  A crate sailed past me and smashed into a support beam, shattering under the impact. More crates flew through the air, none of them close to me as Krieg blindly lashed out.
  
  I was almost at the door when danger sense buzzed a warning behind me. I threw myself sideways, and one more wooden crate shot through where I"d been. I could make out a logo on the side- a bundle of wheat- before it flew out the door and smashed to pieces outside.
  
  When I glanced back, Krieg was approaching in great bounds, wiping the lenses of his mask clean. His entire front was covered in flour, but other than making him look ridiculous, it wasn"t affecting him.
  
  The other heroes were holding their own as I made it out onto the street: Glory Girl was swooping in and out to sling punches at Menja"s face, darting in and retreating quickly to avoid the massive spear as it spun and jabbed back and forth.
  
  At ground level, Battery and Cricket were dancing around each other. Battery had a clear advantage when charged up, but Cricket closed in on her whenever she stood still to recharge, turning their fight into stop-start lunges and retreats.
  
  Ironclad stood tall, holding Victor under one arm like a duffel bag. He held my greatsword out with the other hand, and I took it gratefully.
  
  Spitfire was huddled behind him, pulling the fabric of my cape all around her and across her face.
  
  "We need to get her out of here," Flinch said urgently. I wordlessly agreed as I pulled out my first aid kit. There was a little foil blanket folded up in there that I yanked free and shook out.
  
  "Get out of here and keep your head down," I ordered, holding the blanket out to her.
  
  Spitfire grabbed the blanket with her free hand and yanked it inside the cape, then raced off, fabric flapping around her knees.
  
  Krieg burst out of the door, black and white and bastard all over, aiming high at Glory Girl. She swooped away before he could get close, and when he reached the apex of his jump, he simply flicked his arms out and came to a halt. He turned himself toward us as he began to drift down toward the ground, folding his hands behind his back as his power slowed his fall.
  
  "Pretty high and mighty for a guy who looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy," Firecracker sneered.
  
  Menja took advantage of her free moment to level the spear at Ironclad and me, lunging forward and down. Ironclad burst into his elongated form, using the movement to fling himself aside while still holding Victor.
  
  I dodged the other way, then swung the greatsword back as the spear rammed into the ground. The edges were stuck in place and the oscillators were wearing out, but I was six layers of strength and 15 kinds of angry. The blade bit into the shaft just under the head, and dug deep as I threw my weight into it..
  
  "Follow through!" Muramasa yelled as I spread his sharpening across the sword. "Keep going! You can cut it!"
  
  Menja yanked on the blade- the movement almost took me off my feet. Past that, I saw Krieg drop the last few feet to the ground and make straight for Battery, who dodged back in a blue-grey blur. Cricket stepped aside to let her superior take over.
  
  Ironclad thundered over to me and wrapped his arms around the shaft of the spear. I saw his metal rearrange itself so that nails and spikes were poking out of the mass, digging into the spear for extra traction. Menja yanked on her end, but Ironclad planted his feet and barely moved.
  
  Stoneknapper whistled. "Now that"s a good idea. Reminds me of my old tricks."
  
  As I forced the blade deeper and deeper, Menja bellowed, and started to grow even larger. She"d been topping twenty feet before; in a few seconds she was standing at thirty feet. Ironclad"s arms were forced apart as the spear thickened, and another tug from her made him lose his grip; my greatsword was yanked free from the spear, and almost out of my hands.
  
  Glory Girl dive-bombed Menja with a right hook that sent the villain staggering. I slapped Ironclad on the shoulder. "Go get her!" I shouted, pointing as Menja flailed her arms to regain her balance.
  
  Ironclad broke into a run without a word, stretching out into a stick figure that crossed the distance in a few strides and swung a punch into Menja"s knee.
  
  The bugs that I"d planted on Victor felt a disturbance- sound and movement. I spun around to see Cricket cutting through the nets on Victor with her kamas.
  
  "Time for a rematch," Needler spat.
  
  Nemean snarled agreement. "We owe her for the hand."
  
  I planted the sword in the ground and pulled the air cannon. Cricket didn"t look around as I fired. She simply dodged and danced around every shot with ease as she cut the last few strands off Victor, then came at me.
  
  I swapped cannon for sword and swung out wide, still clumsy from Victor"s draining. Cricket flipped over the blade and flicked a kama out at my neck. I half-handed the sword and blocked her strike with the hilt, then threw my head forward for a headbutt.
  
  Cricket slipped backward, yanking on my sword with her kama to try and pull me off-balance. I yanked back harder, then shoved forward, forcing my greatsword toward her like a guillotine. She simply tucked herself under the sword and came up inside my reach.
  
  My movements were sloppy- Silat didn"t come to me as it had before. Instead, I dropped my sword and brought a knee up into her hip. Cricket staggered with a squawk, falling away from my wild haymaker.
  
  The other fights were similarly stalemated, as far as I could tell through the corners of my gaze and the senses of my bugs; Battery could get through most of Krieg"s kinetic field when charged up, but it left her with only a few seconds before she had to fall back and recharge. Ironclad and Glory Girl were landing good hits on Menja, but she still wasn"t going down.
  
  And worst of all, Victor was now hobbling across the edge of the street, unnoticed, holding his arms across his belly as he limped along.
  
  "We need something to shake things up," Quarrel snapped. "Get these guys off-guard."
  
  Just as I blocked a couple of slashes from Cricket that ruined the paint on my arms, something took Menja off-guard.
  
  A beam of purple light lanced out of the sky and smashed into the giantess"s breastplate, throwing her back like a hard punch would have at normal size. Ironclad followed up with a blow to the back of her ankle that helped her fall along the length of the street. Her spear smashed into an unfortunate parked car as she landed; the shaft snapped where I"d cut into it, and the head broke off, shrinking to normal size.
  
  Lady Photon hung in the air, already charging another powerful beam in her palms. Purple forcefields popped into being around her for defence.
  
  "Well," Quarrel admitted, "That works."
  
  Krieg uttered something filthy in German. None of the Butchers spoke German, but the intent was clear. "Fall back!"
  
  Menja scrambled to her feet, totalling another car as she stretched a hand out to Victor. Krieg leapt into the air and fell quickly, cutting across Glory Girl"s flight path as he went.
  
  Cricket twitched her head, and I felt motion sickness rise in me. She backed away and started to run.
  
  "No," Butcher growled. I lashed out and clamped a hand down on the sword hilt on her shoulder, tightening my grip even as my equilibrium and stomach both began to churn.
  
  "That"s mine," I said, dragging her back in. Cricket hooked a kama under the leather belt around her torso and cut through it, leaving me holding my old sword and struggling to stand as she sprinted away.
  
  Lady Photon unleashed another laser that hit Menja in the shoulder and knocked her back. In response, Menja stabbed her blunted spear into yet another car and flicked it into the air. Lady Photon was forced to throw up a couple of forcefields to stop it.
  
  Cricket hopped into Menja"s free hand and pulled Victor up after her, while Krieg simply leaped to the rooftops in a single bound. Lady Photon dropped forcefields and loosed a volley of lasers that cut through Krieg"s field with ease- the man was forced to dodge them with a chain of massive leaps as Menja started away from the fight.
  
  "Glory Girl! With me!" Lady Photon took off in pursuit, and Glory Girl followed after her without hesitation.
  
  Battery came to a halt beside us: The circuit lines in her suit dimmed from electric blue to grey.
  
  "Well," she said at last, watching the chase disappear into the urban jungle, "That was a lot."
  
  Later, PRT Headquarters
  
  The bench outside the PRT infirmary was not designed for comfort. A solid, blocky thing of thick metal bars, it was made more to support the weight of armoured troopers and heroes. Even through my armour, I could feel its unyielding surface.
  
  "A bit more padding in the suit wouldn"t go amiss," Tock Tick grumbled as I shifted position again.
  
  Anchorage snorted. "Could use some padding on the meatbag too. I miss my booty- none of you guys came close."
  
  Brandish was sat on the other end of the bench, and Glory Girl next to her, having lost the Empire villains in the chase. Flashbang had taken a couple of wounds on Team 3, so Amy was fixing him up along with the rest.
  
  Ironclad hadn"t tried to sit on the bench. He"d simply stood next to it and collapsed his suit down to float comfortably inside the hollow portion. I could hear him munching on some of the snacks I"d bought from the vending machine while I was waiting. I"d had a few myself, mostly by Stoneknapper"s tastes, but I was saving the rest.
  
  A couple of bugs around the corner felt heavy vibrations- footsteps. I heard them myself a second later, and looked up to see Armsmaster round the corner, still scuffed up from the fight. He was typing on a tablet even as he walked.
  
  "Hello." I saw his head move slightly to take in all four of us- he lingered for a second on the greatsword I"d leant up against the wall in absence of anywhere else to put it. "I"m sorry to bother you all, but I was hoping to get some accounts of today, if that"s possible."
  
  "Can it wait?" Glory Girl said tiredly. "Sir," she added a second later.
  
  Brandish glanced at her daughter. "We should get this out of the way now, while our memories are fresh." She didn"t sound like she was reprimanding Glory Girl exactly, but there was an air of patience there, like she"d said it a lot before.
  
  Vladimir hmmed. "That"s easy for her to say when she was at the same fight as the guy with a camera in his helmet."
  
  "How do you know he"s got a camera in his helmet?" Firecracker asked.
  
  "Because he"s a Tinker. Tracking devices and cameras, all the time."
  
  Whatever Glory Girl would have said was interrupted by the infirmary doors opening. I got to my feet and gathered the snacks in my hands as several troopers filed out, stripped of their armour and still wearing stained fatigues. One of them stepped to the side and did a couple of squats- I noticed the prominent bloodstain on the seat of his pants.
  
  "Shame to stab a butt like that," Stoneknapper commented like that. "One more reason to kick Crusader"s teeth in next time."
  
  Velocity and Flashbang came out next, the latter immediately making a beeline for his wife and daughter, who met him halfway in a hug. Velocity raised a hand to Armsmaster, who awkwardly waved back.
  
  Panacea schlepped out, hood down. Glory Girl zipped over and dragged her into the family hug, ignoring her squawk of protest.
  
  Finally, finally, Spitfire came out, dressed in some grey sweatpants and a t-shirt I"d seen in the giftshop, with Miss Militia striking a pose. Her face was covered by a simple white mask, leaving a lot of curly brown hair to spill over her shoulders. For the first time I realised she had freckles all over her hands and arms.
  
  I used bloodsight as I stepped around the Dallons, looking her up and down. Not so much as a scratch on her- Amy had done good work.
  
  Nemean heaved a sigh of relief. "She"s alright."
  
  " "course she"s alright" Rotter said bracingly, finally returned from the dark. "Got healed up good. Shame about her costume, but that"s life."
  
  I stopped in front of her and transferred the snacks to one arm so I could rest the other on her shoulder. "Hey." I hesitated a moment, then drew her into an awkward hug.
  
  Spitfire stood stiffly until I let go, arms folded across her chest. I realised she was still holding my cape, bundled up in her arms. "Oh. Want to trade?" I held up the snacks. "I got your favourites."
  
  Spitfire unfolded the cape until she was holding it by the corners. The silk was discoloured and scorched in irregular blotches, and in some places it was burnt right through, showing the woven cable underneath. I took it with my free hand and held the candy out to her.
  
  Spitfire picked a chocolate bar out of the pile and held it by the end of the wrapper, saying nothing for a long moment.
  
  "Her hands," Tactical realised. I focused, and saw Spitfire"s hands starting to shake. A second later she let out a sob. I dumped the candy and the cape on the bench and went to hug her properly.
  
  Both her hands landed on my armour and shoved me away. I was so surprised that I stumbled back a couple of steps.
  
  "Where the fuck were you?" Spitfire yelled, wrapping her arms around herself.
  
  "Spit..." I trailed off, lost for words.
  
  The Butchers had words, but they were as confused as I was.
  
  "Where the hell did that come from?" Quarrel asked.
  
  "Victor knocked her around and made her burn her clothes off- Of course she"s shaken!" Needler countered.
  
  Butcher spat. "Pathetic. The Teeth are tougher than that."
  
  "We"re n-not in the Teeth, you b-bastard," Flinch snapped. "And neither is Spitfire."
  
  I shoved Butcher down and took a step forward, palms out. "Spitfire, I was with the transport truck. I"m sorry I couldn"t get to you in time."
  
  "You keep doing this!" Spitfire wailed. "First you got stabbed and thrown onto the freeway. I had to call the ambulance and watch you bleeding, and you just shrugged it off like it was no big deal! Then you almost took her head off-" One finger stabbed out, and I twisted to see Glory Girl"s stricken expression: "-And fried your brain, and told me not to worry!
  
  "And now I get the shit kicked out of me, and I lost my clothes and my mask and I forgot how to fight and you just come up with some fucking chocolate like it"s going to be okay!" She kicked the chocolate bar that had been on the ground. It shot across the room and bounced off Armsmaster"s armoured shin.
  
  "Oh Christ," Bearskin winced. "This is bad."
  
  Ironclad pushed through the crowd to stand next to me, holding a hand out. "Spitfire, take a breath. I get you"re upset-"
  
  "Shut up!" Spitfire pointed a finger at him too. "You just got in on this to beat up Nazis! I needed someone to watch my back! I needed a place to stay, and people I could trust. And neither of you fuckers has even shown me your face!"
  
  The silence was deafening. For once even the Butchers were struck dumb. I just stood there, head filled with hot cotton, unable to think of anything to say.
  
  Spitfire wrapped her arms around herself again. "I can"t do this anymore." She took a step to the side and leaned around Ironclad"s bulk. "How do I join the Wards?"
  
  "What?" Ironclad burst out.
  
  "What?!" Firecracker shrieked.
  
  Armsmaster shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. "Spitfire, you"ve been through a very emotional incident, I"m not sure..."
  
  "How," Spitfire said, "Do I join. The Wards."
  
  Armsmaster turned his head to me for a moment. My faceplate was open, but I couldn"t have said what expression I was making just then. I didn"t even know what I was thinking.
  
  After a long moment, he took a deep breath and turned back to Spitfire. "We"d need your parent"s permission-"
  
  "They"re dead."
  
  Something cold dropped into my stomach. I hadn"t ever asked Spitfire about her family.
  
  "Oh, child," Muramasa murmured.
  
  Armsmaster paused. "Then we"d need to sort out a home for you. We do keep a list of foster families who are cleared to take care of a Ward."
  
  "What about the danger? The money? School and stuff?"
  
  Armsmaster stole another glance at me. "Perhaps we should continue this discussion somewhere else."
  
  Spitfire looked at me out of the corner of her eye. The mask covered her mouth, but the eyeholes were wider, and I could see something challenging there.
  
  Everything she"d said was running through my mind in an endless loop, and the Butchers had fallen into arguing with everybody else over every word.
  
  I knew I had good reason for not telling Spitfire my name yet, or unmasking. I knew that I couldn"t have reasonably known the Empire would respond so quickly to our assaults. I knew my own limits for injury and danger were great enough that she wouldn"t have to worry about me outside extreme circumstances.
  
  Except I hadn"t told her any of those reasons. However good my justifications, Spitfire had still got hurt because of me.
  
  The Butchers had had so many reasons for hurting people, and I even sympathised with some of them.
  
  But I was supposed to be better than that. And I hadn"t been.
  
  I took my cape off the bench, shook it out, and clipped it to my back, burns and all. "It"s up to you," I said. I couldn"t muster up any emotion for my words- I felt hollow, like someone had taken an ice-cream scoop to my insides and left me a cavernous space, echoing with Spitfire"s words.
  
  Spitfire looked at me for a long moment. Then she dropped her gaze and shouldered her way past Ironclad. He reached a hand out to her as she passed, but I grabbed his wrist.
  
  Armsmaster gestured with his tablet. "This way," he said quietly.
  
  The troopers, Velocity, and the Dallons all stood aside as they walked away, giving me a clear path to see Spitfire and Armsmaster move down the corridor.
  
  Just for a second, Spitfire glanced back at me as she turned the corner.
  
  Then she turned her head, and was gone.
  
  Interlude 5
  Sunday 27th February, South Downtown
  
  The spike hit Manpower right in the chest.
  
  The impact threw him backwards across the room, until he hit a wall and went straight through. A second later, he hit something else and finally came to a halt.
  
  Manpower hauled himself to his feet, quickly glancing around. He"d landed in a small ground floor office, strewn with loose papers from the filing cabinet he"d demolished on impact. An Eidolon bobblehead on the desk caught his eye for a split second.
  
  "This is a damn shitshow," Manpower mused, charging back through the hole in the wall and into the fray.
  
  Velocity zipped by, a red blur zig-zagging around obstacles. The shelving that stretched from end to end of the warehouse only gave visual cover, and even that was being removed as more spikes punched out of the ground to topple them over, clearing an area.
  
  Manpower grabbed one shelving unit as it teetered. His electromagnetic field held it fast and spread across its surface- a quick pulse sent a charge racing through it for good measure. Then he hurled the shelves back toward the centre of the chaos.
  
  More spikes erupted out of the floor, forming a barrier like the bars of a cell. The shelves crashed into the barrier and crumpled without hitting their target.
  
  Past the barrier, Kaiser nonchalantly brushed some dust of his shoulder, then folded his hands behind his back, as casually as if he was going for a Sunday morning stroll.
  
  A series of crashes mixed with the whirr and shriek of tortured metal came at Neil from the side. He turned just in time to see a mass of shifting blades bearing down on him.
  
  Manpower and Hookwolf had fought each other several times before. They knew a lot of each other"s tricks. So this time, when Hookwolf"s front paws shifted into massive, solid hooks, Manpower ducked low under the strike and seized Hookwolf"s Changer form around the middle.
  
  A thousand blades pressed against Manpower"s body- his field strained to keep all of them from cutting into his flesh. Still, there was just enough of a margin for him to pulse his field and send a charge through it, and into Hookwolf.
  
  Hookwolf definitely felt that, if his sudden bout of thrashing was any clue. Manpower grinned in triumph- then he took a step back and swivelled sharply to hurl Hookwolf at Kaiser"s barrier.
  
  It probably wasn"t very heroic for him to feel satisfaction at Kaiser"s unmanly yelp of shock as Hookwolf hit the barrier with a cacophony of nails-on-chalkboard screeching, but it was what it was.
  
  A glimpse of green caught his eye- Flashbang popped up from cover with an orb in either hand, hurling them one after the other at the villains. The first one hit Hookwolf, while the second bounced through the spike fence and landed a few feet from Kaiser. They both exploded at the same time.
  
  The first explosion tore through Hookwolf, sending fragments of metal across the warehouse. Manpower had to fight the urge to cover his face and turn away- his field handled the few pieces that hit him.
  
  Kaiser was too quick for the second- a dozen blades burst from the ground between him and the orb, shielding him as the blast went off. The metal was left blackened and bent, but Kaiser was unharmed, and stepped out to get a clear line of sight.
  
  Velocity came in from behind Kaiser in that moment, fists lashing out to pummel Kaiser"s helmet a dozen times in a second. When Kaiser summoned a huge blade out of the ground, Velocity simply skipped aside and kept on swinging.
  
  Flashbang took the opportunity to advance closer, slipping around and over obstacles with ease, while Manpower pushed his way forward as Hookwolf shifted his body so his feet were on the ground again.
  
  Flashbang tossed a couple of grenades in a way they"d practiced. Manpower leapt high, caught both, and spiked them both into Hookwolf"s side.
  
  The grenades were concussive- Manpower and Hookwolf were sent flying in opposite directions. This time Manpower managed to turn it into a roll and come up ready, while Hookwolf shredded cardboard boxes and wooden pallets as he crashed through them.
  
  Manpower grabbed one of the spikes in Kaiser"s barrier while the villains were distracted. Concentrating his field on his fingers, he dug into the metal and heaved upward. The spike came out of the floor reluctantly, a ten-foot-long metal post with a sharp point at one end and fragments of concrete at the other.
  
  Flashbang kept hurling more grenades at Hookwolf- explosives again, ripping hunks of metal off his form with each blast. Kaiser was summoning blades of every description out of the ground around him, and more spikes out of those, but Velocity kept slipping in and out to blur his hands against Kaiser"s overly-pointy helmet.
  
  Manpower hefted the spike and charged at Hookwolf just as Flashbang ducked back into cover. Good old Mark, never missing a cue.
  
  Hookwolf"s form was already filling in the gaps, but he still couldn"t move fast enough to stop Manpower from slamming the blunt end of the spike into him once, twice- and then flipping it around to ram it into him.
  
  Just as the spike came down, Hookwolf changed- his form collapsed into a puddle of blades, and the spike went through empty air. Before Manpower could adjust, Hookwolf surged upward, under his guard, and fell on him in a tidal wave of metal.
  
  Manpower desperately pulsed his field, sending thousands of volts through Hookwolf. All it did was make Hookwolf spasm and jolt as he assumed the shape of something like an octopus made of metal and hate, tentacles of blades jabbing at Manpower and coiling around his limbs.
  
  "A little help here!" Manpower bellowed, hoping Flashbang would get the message.
  
  Instead, there was a cry of pain that caught his attention even as he started stomping on Hookwolf"s centre- Flashbang was on the ground, clutching his knee. Alabaster swung a length of pipe down on him, and Flashbang yelled again.
  
  Manpower growled and headbutted Hookwolf in one of the deep pits that protected his eyes. The tentacles loosened for a minute, and Manpower managed to get one hand free just as Alabaster ran past him with a bottle in hand.
  
  Manpower fought against the grasping tendrils of metal as he stuck his thumb out and rammed it into Hookwolf"s eye sockets. Whirring blades stabbed at his thumb as he pushed it deeper, but he grimly threw his weight into it.
  
  All at once, Hookwolf"s grip on him loosened. Manpower ripped his left hand free and threw a punch into Hookwolf"s midsection, then braced both hands and a foot on him and shoved as hard as he could. The force threw them apart- shelving crumpled under Manpower"s shoulders, straining his field to protect him from the impact.
  
  Just as he was getting his bearings, there was a scream of agony. Manpower leapt to his feet and looked about wildly- his gaze landed on Flashbang, who was now rolling onto his front with a strained expression, then turned to-
  
  Velocity was on all fours in a puddle, staring back at his foot. A long blade had punched out of the floor and all the way through his foot. Alabaster shook a few drops of oil out of the empty bottle he was holding, then swung a kick into the speedster"s jaw. Velocity rocked sideways with another scream- the movement must have made his foot move against the blade.
  
  Manpower charged forward again, aiming for the gap in the barrier where he"d ripped out a spike. The gap was still too small for him to fit through, but maybe it"d be easier to widen.
  
  More blades burst out of the ground between them. Manpower slammed through the first set, struggled through the second, and then was brought to a halt by the third as other blades sprouted up around and behind him. Further blades branched off from them, growing around him, multiplying quickly to encase him in metal and deny him the leverage he needed to move.
  
  Through the cage around him, Manpower saw Hookwolf pull himself out of the wreckage and shake himself off, sending scraps all over. Flashbang prepared another grenade in his hand.
  
  "Enough." Kaiser"s voice echoed through the warehouse, made more metallic by all the blades scattered around. "We"re done here."
  
  Hookwolf"s form shifted and expanded in places, around the chest and jaw of the wolf. "There"s only one of "em left, lemme just-"
  
  "No." Kaiser"s tone brooked no argument. "This battle is over. They"ll send more soon. Besides," Manpower could hear the cruel smile in Kaiser"s voice, "Don"t you want to be there when Stormtiger comes back to us?"
  
  "In your dreams, buckethead," Manpower shouted at the wall of blades.
  
  Kaiser"s only reply was clanking footsteps fading into the distance.
  
  Evening, Sunday 27th February, Pelham Residence
  
  "And that was the end of it," Neil concluded, hiding a smile behind his coffee mug. Even with the downsides of the day, including Velocity"s foot and Mark"s leg, picturing Kaiser"s expression when he found out the Empire had lost Fenja in trying to rescue Stormtiger was deeply amusing.
  
  "I helped blast Neil free after Kaiser had left, then we pulled Velocity off the spike and carried him outside," Mark added. "Poor guy was barely holding it together."
  
  Victoria shrugged from the other end of the dining table. "At least he"s okay now." Next to her, Amy hummed an agreement without looking up from her second coffee of the evening.
  
  "Well," Sarah said, "We"ve come out on top today. The problem is that the Empire"s going to be out for blood after this. We"ll wait and see how they react, but I think we ought to ease off for a while and let things simmer down."
  
  Opposite Sarah, Carol set her mug down deliberately. "Actually, I thought we could try to maintain our momentum. If we hit the Empire again while they"re still reeling, we could push further into their territory. We might even bag a couple more of them." Neil didn"t miss the eager gleam in her eyes behind the smooth lawyer expression.
  
  Sarah was already shaking her head. "I considered that, but we only managed that today because we knew they were coming and coordinated with the other heroes. It"s not going to be easy to pull that off again. Plus they"ve got a new cape with a mix of powers, and we don"t know what else he might be able to do."
  
  "Still, some more intelligence from Elpis would let us know where to hit," Carol admitted with a hint of grudging respect. "A few more storehouses would bleed them dry."
  
  Down at the kid"s end of the table, Crystal rapped her knuckles on the surface to draw attention. "Are we sure Elpis is going to be up for it? I mean, she just had one of her teammates scream at her and quit. She might be feeling kind of... unstable."
  
  The conversation stalled for a moment before Flashbang cleared his throat. "We should check on her," he said quietly. "Offer her support. "
  
  Neil found himself nodding along. It wasn"t a surprise that Mark was suggesting it- the discussion after the beach training had gone back and forth on whether Elpis had some manner of clinical condition. Mark was most sympathetic of that- he"d been having a good streak in the last few months, remembering his meds and staying active, but his depression was always lurking in the background.
  
  Carol sighed heavily. "I suppose that"s true. We can give her a few days to find her balance before approaching her again."
  
  "We should talk to Ironclad too." Neil leaned forward a little to see Eric set his cocoa down. "I swapped numbers with him on the beach."
  
  Victoria nodded. "He was doing solo stuff before he met Elpis. Maybe he"d be okay with some more work."
  
  "He was friends with Spitfire too." Amy turned her The Mask mug around in her hands. "They"re all upset right now." She lifted her head, and Neil felt a little pang in his heart at how tired his younger niece looked. "They need time to think."
  
  "And we need time to rest," Sarah agreed. "There"s other villains out there; we don"t want to be caught off-guard."
  
  Neil laid his hand on hers- she flipped her hand over to squeeze his. "True. God knows we don"t want Lung sneaking up on us."
  
  "Mm." Sarah drained her mug. "Well, I think we"ve covered everything. You kids have school tomorrow," she added with a meaningful look at the kids.
  
  "I don"t have classes until the afternoon," Crystal pointed out.
  
  "Listen to your mother," Neil said, finishing his mug as well.
  
  Carol stood up and put both hands on the small of her back to stretch. Neil watched her arch her spine for a long second before grabbing the empty mugs to take to the sink.
  
  The dishwasher was fully loaded by the time the Dallons had grabbed their coats and said their goodbyes. "Come on girls," Carol said, chivvying them out the door, "School tomorrow."
  
  "Already dreading it," Amy grumbled loudly enough for Neil to catch from the kitchen.
  
  Carol said something else in a severe tone, but the door was already closing, and he couldn"t make it out.
  
  He heard soft footsteps behind him before a pair of slim arms wrapped around his middle. "Thanks for getting the mugs," Sarah murmured into his shirt.
  
  Neil twisted around to wrap an arm around her shoulders and press his face into the top of her head. "Love you," he said softly.
  
  "Love you too."
  
  The kids were heading up the stairs. Eric didn"t bother to use his legs, opting instead to drift a few inches above the steps. Neil quickly did the rounds downstairs- check the locks and deadbolt on the front door, check the back and side door, check all the windows. Make sure his family was safe.
  
  Once he was sure the house was secure, he followed after them, almost ducking his head on instinct before he remembered- they"d had a builder in back in November to raise the roof at the foot of the stairs, so he wouldn"t keep banging his head.
  
  It had been a quietly thoughtful thing from Sarah that had made him fall in love with her a little more.
  
  Crystal"s insistence on taking photos of "Dad"s Headbutt Hall Of Fame" before it was removed had been less thoughtful, but it still made him chuckle.
  
  Eric was hovering barefoot over his bed when Neil went to check on him, playing a game on his handheld. "Come on now," Neil said, hunching his shoulders slightly to lean against the doorframe. "As soon as you get a save point, turn that off."
  
  Eric nodded without looking up. "Yeah, yeah."
  
  "Right," Neil responded, certain that when he came back in a few minutes, Eric would still be playing. Instead of arguing, he turned to go and check on Crystal.
  
  "Dad?"
  
  Neil turned back. "Yeah?"
  
  Eric hit a button on his game and set it down, looking thoughtful. "I was thinking. About Elpis," he clarified.
  
  Neil braced himself. He felt a little embarrassed that his wife and daughter had noticed Eric"s blooming crush on Elpis before him, but he"d initially waved it off as a harmless phase- a crush on an older woman like most young boys got at some point.
  
  Now, with Elpis"s unknown past and violent temper, the thought was damned unsettling.
  
  "Do you think..." Eric tapped his thumbs together in that way he did when he was thinking. "Do you think I should give her Dr Harrigan"s number? Like, would she be offended?"
  
  Neil had to pause and mentally change gears. It definitely wasn"t what he"d dreaded Eric might say, but it was certainly out of left field.
  
  The more he thought about it, though, the more it sounded like a decent suggestion. Dr Harrigan was a decent fellow- he"d helped Eric a lot in dealing with his night terrors and anxiety. There were a couple of other therapists in the city that they"d considered, but Harrigan had some previous experience with capes, particularly young ones.
  
  "That"s definitely thoughtful," Neil said at last, "But I think you"d better wait a while. And think hard about how you say it- she might not get that you"re coming from a good place. Some people don"t like the idea of opening up like that."
  
  Carol was a pretty good example of that, for instance- even in their most private moments, she"d always been a little closed off, defensive. She"d always shot down any suggestion of counselling or therapy, throwing herself into one line of work or the other, as if to prove herself through effort and results. Honestly, Neil got it.
  
  Eric blew air out through his lips in something that wasn"t quite a sigh. "I guess," he admitted, flopping back onto his bed.
  
  "It"s a nice idea though," Neil said. "Maybe hang on to it- or you could ask Dr Harrigan if he knows any other therapists that might be better suited."
  
  "Yeah." Eric picked up his game again, hesitated a second, then turned it off and set it on the bedside table. "Night, Dad."
  
  "Goodnight, Eric." Neil pulled the door shut behind him and walked down the hall to Crystal"s room.
  
  As usual, it was a mess- clean and dirty clothing strewn about the place, books dumped wherever. Only the little china ornaments Crystal collected were on the shelves. Neil kicked a pile of sweaters onto a stack of textbooks as he stepped in. Crystal was lying stomach-down on the bed, kicking her legs in the air. Her laptop was resting on a crimson forcefield in front of her, off the foot of the bed.
  
  "So what"re you looking at?" Neil asked, hunkering down a little to peer at her screen. Crystal glanced over her shoulder at him, then turned the laptop slightly so he could see better. The gold and blue banner of Parahumans Online was spread across the top of the screen.
  
  "PHO. There"s already a thread up about today, so I"m reading the reviews."
  
  "Don"t put too much faith in what they say," Neil warned, sitting down on the edge carefully. The bed creaked under his extra weight.
  
  "Yeah, most of it is just people saying the Empire can suck it," Crystal admitted. "But look here." She tapped the screen with one pink fingernail. "There"s someone here who said they heard of Jotunn before. Ice constructs and a moving Stranger power, no other abilities demonstrated."
  
  "Huh." Neil peered at the comment, from someone called IgPayAtinLay. "I"ll phone the PRT in the morning- assuming they aren"t reading this themselves."
  
  "There was some PRT agent a few pages back, so, yeah, probably."
  
  "Hmm." Neil cast about for another topic for a moment, before giving up and lifting off the bed again. "Get some sleep, sweetheart," he said.
  
  "Kay," Crystal said distractedly, tapping a few keys. Neil closed the door anyway.
  
  Check the bathroom window, check the exercise room window. Latches secured. Safe.
  
  Finally, Neil slipped into the master bedroom. Sarah was already in bed, idly reading a novel she"d been trying to finish all month.
  
  Neil quietly shut the door and turned the lock, then stripped off, not taking his eyes off Sarah. Her hair was down, spilling across her shoulders, and her reading glasses framed her heart-shaped face. His heart ached with how lovely she was. It made him feel like he"d achieved something he didn"t deserve.
  
  Slipping into bed next to her, Neil stretched his shoulders with a grunt. "That"ll be an ache in the morning," he noted.
  
  "You could have had Amy check you over," Sarah pointed out, turning a page without looking up.
  
  Neil frowned. "I can work through it. Don"t want to get spoiled after all. Besides," he added, "it feels like Amy does too much as it is."
  
  Sarah sighed and placed her little leather bookmark before shutting the novel. "I"ve been meaning to talk to Carol about it," she admitted, "but Carol won"t hear it- says Amy"s old enough to handle her own schedule."
  
  "Want me to help?" Neil offered. "Maybe she"ll listen to both of us."
  
  Sarah set her book on the table and shuffled closer to him. "Maybe," she sighed, resting her head on his chest. "But she might say we"re ganging up on her or something like that."
  
  Neil gently leaned back until his head was on the pillow, slipping an arm over his wife"s shoulders to run his fingers through her hair.
  
  "True," he admitted after some thought. Carol usually kept her emotions in check through steely determination, but sometimes her passions ran wild.
  
  Sarah snuggled in close with a soft sound. "This is going to be big," she said morosely. "The Empire"s going to throw their weight around."
  
  "A Star Wars sort of thing."
  
  Sarah raised her head to look at him with a confused expression. "What?"
  
  Neil lost the struggle to contain his grin. "Empire Strikes Back."
  
  Sarah groaned and slapped his chest, but not before he saw her lips quirk in amusement. When she laid down again, he resumed stroking her hair.
  
  "I feel sorry for Elpis," Sarah murmured. "And Spitfire. The whole group. They seemed close, and then..."
  
  Neil rolled over slightly to wrap Sarah in a hug. "Hey," he said gently, kissing the top of her head. "That"s for them to worry about. Don"t go giving yourself more problems."
  
  Sarah was quiet for a long moment. "I suppose. Still, they"re two kids and a mess. I hope they can patch things up."
  
  Neil squeezed in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. Sarah was good at being maternal- it wasn"t a coincidence that the press had nicknamed her Photon Mom. She always got a little protective of young heroes, wherever they were from.
  
  It wasn"t something he could do. Neil"s focus was on his family, especially the kids. He didn"t have space to add more people to that. It was cold, perhaps, but being a pillar of strength for his family was enough for him.
  
  Sarah squirmed around until her back was to his chest, and wrapped her arms around one of his. "Get the light?" she asked drowsily.
  
  Neil rolled his eyes, then turned as much as he could to grope for the light switch. One click sent the room into darkness, then he turned back and wrapped himself around Sarah, shielding her with his body.
  
  It was in moments like this, between wakefulness and sleep, where Neil needed to know where his family was. Eric in his room, Crystal in hers. Sarah wrapped up in his arms. Safe.
  
  Neil burrowed his face into the nape of Sarah"s neck and breathed in the comfortably familiar smell of her hair, letting himself drift away. The doors were locked, the windows were locked, the bedroom was locked...
  
  Damn.
  
  Neil waited a second to see if Sarah was still awake. When she didn"t shift or twitch, he carefully slipped his arms out from her grip, and painstakingly inched himself out of bed. Sarah hated being woken up after she"d fallen asleep.
  
  Stepping around the few floorboards that creaked, Neil padded over to the window and jiggled the latch. Locked. Good.
  
  Satisfied, he circled back to his side of the bed and carefully slid himself back under the covers, wrapping Sarah up in a hug again. She shifted slightly and smacked her lips, then settled down again.
  
  Eric in his room, Crystal in hers, Sarah in his arms. Doors locked, windows locked.
  
  Safe.
  
  6.1
  Monday 28th February, Early Hours, Hebert Household
  
  I wiped my glasses for the fifth time and coughed hard to clear my lungs, but the air still tasted of dust and dirt. I clenched my fists in frustration.
  
  "Come on Taylor, even I"m tired of this," Stoneknapper said. "Go sit down and breathe a bit."
  
  I snarled and punched the wall again, sending a fresh burst of dust into the air. I couldn"t hold back the cough this time, which also meant I couldn"t deny Stoneknapper"s point.
  
  I turned and walked out of the room I"d carved out of the basement wall and underneath the backyard. It wasn"t anything to look at- a low ceiling, walls so close together I could touch either side with my hands, no contents other than loose soil and fragments of stone.
  
  I hadn"t meant to make it, really. I"d slipped downstairs just after midnight for something to do, to get my thoughts away from Spitfire. Expanding the little alcove I hid the black widows in had seemed like a good idea.
  
  Scooping out handfuls of cement had turned into pulling chunks out. That had turned into digging my claws into the soil beyond the foundation, which had become me gouging and punching my way through the ground, compressing the soil into stone with Stoneknapper"s power, then smashing through it with enhanced punches.
  
  Really, if I hadn"t remembered to close the door behind me, I"d definitely have woken Dad up by now.
  
  "Finished with your tantrum?" Rotter asked snidely.
  
  "Fuck off Rotter," I snapped, sitting down on the bottom step and giving him a warning shove.
  
  "We just had to sit through- how long"s it been?"
  
  I grumbled and checked my watch- the face said 3:47am. I"d lost track of time while taking my feelings out on the dirt.
  
  "Right, so more"n three hours of you punching dirt, because your friend yelled at you. Tantrum."
  
  I shoved him into the dark with a growl, then dropped my head into my hands.
  
  After a silent moment, Anchorage broke the silence. "Seriously though, what now? We can"t just sit around and mope."
  
  I sighed and pulled my head up, which turned into a boneless flop back onto the stairs. "I don"t know," I admitted, staring at the ceiling.
  
  "Taylor," Flinch said gently, "You mustn"t blame yourself. You tried your best t-to help Spitfire-"
  
  "And did a shit job of it," I interrupted. "I didn"t even know her parents were dead, Flinch! I never thought to ask."
  
  "Kid." Nemean"s voice brooked no argument. "We"re assholes. I never asked about Muramasa or Quarrel when I was in charge, Anchorage didn"t give a shit when she was in charge- all the way back to Butcher."
  
  Deep in the dark, I felt Butcher struggle silently at Nemean"s critique.
  
  "And you haven"t had friends for years. That fucks you up, and when you"re fucked up, you make mistakes."
  
  I sat there for a long moment. "Is this supposed to be comforting somehow?" I asked at last.
  
  Nemean snorted. "Look, what the kid needed was someone who could take care of her, and everyone in here sucks at that."
  
  "Hear hear," Vladimir said mirthlessly.
  
  "So it"s not your fault you didn"t know what to do," Nemean continued without missing a beat, "but moping around and beating up dirt won"t help anyone."
  
  I grabbed the banister to pull myself to my feet. "So what do I do?" I asked, chewing my lip.
  
  Nemean shrugged. "Something, I don"t know. Talking to her, probably."
  
  "I say cut her out," Firecracker said snippily. "I mean, fuck, we gave her cash, food, a place to sleep, and a cool costume. Nobody said anything about being her fucking nanny."
  
  "Shut it," I growled, pacing the floor, idly kicking a piece of debris back into the new room.
  
  Tactical cleared his throat. "Two questions. First, will Spitfire want to re-join the team? Second, will we want her to?"
  
  "She"s my friend, you soulless prick!" I snapped, kicking another fragment. It shot across the room and buried itself in the wall.
  
  "I"m aware of that," Tactical countered. "But I don"t think she"s cut out for our level of action. As much as I"d like to keep an endless supply of napalm around, the napalm is attached to a scared little girl, and that"s not so easy to hang on to."
  
  "He has a point," Needler agreed. "You might be able to get back on good terms with her, but getting beaten and stripped naked isn"t something easily forgotten."
  
  I rested my hands on either side of the doorway, drumming my claws against the cement. "I want her to be okay," I said eventually. "And I want to be friends with her again. If that means not having her as a teammate-"
  
  Quarrel snorted. "Hey, you still get along with Glory Girl, and you tried to paste her. Spit"ll come around."
  
  I let out a short laugh despite my grim mood. "Well, when you put it like that..." I trailed off and sighed. "Alright," I decided, turning to the jars of spiders I"d stacked to the side, "I"ll finish up here and go back to bed."
  
  "Any chance of a snack?" Tock asked as I started carrying the jars into the new storage room. "I"m craving cheese."
  
  Tock was the master of late night snacking, after his years of Tinkering well into the night. "Something small," I allowed, moulding shelves into the walls. I had to smooth out a lot of other stuff- about halfway through, Stoneknapper"s power had started forming spikes out of the stone with every punch I"d landed. I didn"t want to think too hard about that.
  
  Stoneknapper sighed. "Look, if you want to throw a couple more punches, go for it."
  
  I shrugged, slipping the loom onto a separate shelf, with a ledge underneath to catch what it wove. "Thanks Knapper, but I"m done." I didn"t feel that horrible restless energy I"d been filled with as I came home, that had made me bounce my leg and fiddle with my fork and constantly pick my teeth.
  
  Now I just felt hollow, and tired. What I really wanted was to go upstairs, close my eyes, and go to sleep for the first time in six weeks.
  
   I couldn"t do that. I knew I"d have nightmares.
  
  Still, once I"d had a little cheese and ham and slipped back into bed, I felt a little better. I picked up the library book I"d been reading and opened it at the bookmark.
  
  As the Butchers started voicing each of the characters, I let myself relax a little. I still wasn"t sure how to deal with my latest problem, but there was nothing I could do about it right now.
  
  Better to use the time I had, before diving back into the mess. An old Winslow habit, but a valid one.
  
   Midday, Arcadia High School
  
  I didn"t dread going to Arcadia like I had Winslow, but I felt some of the old numbness all day. Luckily, I only had History with Callum third period, so I didn"t have to fake a good mood that much.
  
  Still, by lunchtime I wasn"t much better off than I had been carving out a new room with my fists. I was just debating whether to make a token effort at socialising or just grab my food and go when I noticed the usual paralysed bug drawing closer.
  
  Amy didn"t seem to notice me as she came out of a corridor to my right, bag hanging from one shoulder. Her attention was on Victoria, who strode along beside her with easy grace, gesturing with her hands as she chattered away.
  
  "Christ, you just keep running into those two, huh?" Bearskin noted. I signalled agreement as I put my head down and followed the flow to the cafeteria.
  
  Today was chicken pot pies. I filled my tray and looked around. I could see Callum and Frankie sitting at a table with a few other people, but as I looked, I decided I wasn"t up for conversation. Instead, I wrapped my food in a bunch of paper napkins and headed outside.
  
  February had mustered up one last day of chill today, and my breath fogged in the air as I found a table.
  
  "Hey," Butcher said suddenly, "When"s the last time we had a smoke?"
  
  I paused in the act of cutting into the pie crust. "What?"
  
  "We haven"t had any cigarettes since you."
  
  "Or weed," Dirty Rotter butted in. "Or booze or anything fun."
  
  "None of that stuff even affects you guys," I protested, even as I cut the top off my pie and folded it in half. One of Vladimir"s old habits- I hadn"t even realised I"d done it.
  
  "It does enough," Rotter insisted.
  
  "Hey, teenage smoking is a time-honoured tradition," Firecracker said. "A couple of those at least?"
  
  Before I could think of a retort, I noticed Amy"s bug drawing closer. I twisted in my seat in time to see her approaching, shuffling through the grass.
  
  "What in Dante"s fourth through sixth hells does she want?" Vladimir asked.
  
  "Mind if I sit?" She asked, pointing a finger at the unoccupied bench opposite me. Since my mouth was full of pie, I just shrugged bemusedly, which she took as an invitation to sling her bag down and flop onto the bench.
  
  I quickly pulled the rest of my food closer towards myself, which Amy rolled her eyes at. "I"m not here to scrounge off you," she said, pulling out a sandwich box. "I"m here because you"ve practically got a thundercloud over your head."
  
  "That obvious?" I asked, shovelling another forkful of pie into my mouth. I also took a moment to organise the few bugs hardy enough to handle winter"s last gasp, spreading them out into a grid pattern so I"d know if anyone was getting close to our table.
  
  Amy rested her elbows on the table. "Be honest," she said quietly, "How are you holding up?"
  
  "I used to think I was bad at small talk," Muramasa commented wryly. "It is a relief to know there are others as bad as me."
  
  I chewed my mouthful for a moment to give myself time to think. "Not great," I admitted at last. "I keep circling back to it, wondering what I could have done better, what I didn"t notice. All that shit."
  
  "Don"t do it to yourself," Amy advised. "I"ve seen some of the doctors fall into that, and it gets pretty grim."
  
  "Do you think hospitals have as much sex going on as TV?" Anchorage wondered. "Getting it on in the supply closet, shit like that."
  
  I flushed, and took a sip of my water to cool off. "I"m not sure when I should call her," I blurted. "Spitfire, I mean. Like, I should give her some time to cool off, but I also don"t want to leave it too late and have her think I don"t care."
  
  Amy hummed as she tore her sandwich box open and pulled out one that smelled of tuna. "Maybe text? That way she knows you want to talk, but she can answer when she"s ready."
  
  I paused, spearing a piece of chicken on my fork. "That"s... pretty good advice actually."
  
  Amy snorted. "I"ve had to talk my sister through her break-ups and make-ups with her boyfriend for years. This is actually less dramatic than some of the fights they"ve had." She pulled a chunk off her sandwich and popped it in her mouth with a sour expression.
  
  Needler hissed. "Teenage romance. I can"t say I miss any of that."
  
  I wanted to change the subject by asking about those bad break-ups, but Amy"s glaring expression made me reconsider. "Will she be alright in the Wards? I"ve only really met Kid Win, and we spent most of that comparing weapons."
  
  Amy gestured with her sandwich. "Probably. They have therapists and handlers and stuff like that. Spitfire"ll have people to talk to."
  
  "Yeah, but what about the Wards?" I asked. "I don"t know anything about them- what they"re like when they aren"t out in public. I don"t know if she"ll fit in or how she"ll get on with the rest of them."
  
  Amy looked at me oddly. Inside my head, Quarrel laughed. "Fuck, you sound like you"re sending her off to kindergarten! "Oh no, what if the other babies are mean to her?" Get a grip!"
  
  "I"m not exactly close with the Wards- I usually meet them when something"s gone to shit and they need me to put their bones back together." Amy pulled another piece off her sandwich. "They"re okay though. Aegis especially- he never whines about if something hurts; just takes the healing and says thank you."
  
  I nodded, recalling the extensive research Quarrel had done before coming into the Bay. Aegis was the Wards current leader, what people called an Alexandria package, after the original flying brick herself. He wasn"t any stronger or tougher than usual- instead his body adapted to work around wounds. That and the flight had the Butchers mark him as a challenge to disable.
  
  "He probably doesn"t feel much pain if his power works like that," Tactical mused. "Probably have to restrain him- maybe bend some metal around him, or just nail him to the ground."
  
  "Probably you need to shut up, maybe," I snapped.
  
  "Clockblocker"s not as funny in private, but he"s okay. I don"t think he likes me that much though."
  
  "Really?" I asked, scooping another chunk of pie up. Amy nodded.
  
  "Yeah, he"s always pretty awkward whenever we meet. No idea what that"s about."
  
  "Maybe it"s her sparkling personality," Rotter snorted. "Guy who calls himself Clockblocker sounds like a fucking laugh riot."
  
  "I kinda want to see if my power would work on stuff he freezes. That"d be neat," Stoneknapper said.
  
  Firecracker rolled her eyes. "Fifty bucks says you can"t. Dumbass."
  
  "Kid Win"s alright- never made much of an impression on me." Amy snapped her fingers suddenly. "You said you met him already, right?"
  
  I nodded and swallowed. "Yeah. Nice guy, we talked about our tech, swapped notes, tried out each other"s stuff. He seemed pretty keen." I stabbed the last bit of pie and added "What about Gallant? If the guy"s managed to be a heartthrob in a full-face helmet, he must have some serious charisma."
  
  "If I were less charitable, I"d ask if he had some device to make people feel more at ease around him," Tock Tick said.
  
  Anchorage snickered. "Yeah, the Panty-Melter 5000. Shame you didn"t make one of those, eh? Then you could"ve actually got laid!" I gave both of them a warning shove before they could start arguing.
  
  Amy"s mouth turned down at the corners. "He"s fine," she said firmly, ripping her sandwich in half and stuffing one part into her mouth.
  
  "The fuck"s that about?" Bearskin goggled at Amy chewing away with bulging cheeks, staring at nothing.
  
  "A change of subject, perhaps?" Vladimir suggested.
  
  "Uh. So." I floundered around for a second. "What about the girls?"
  
  Amy shrugged and finished her mouthful. "Vista"s cool. She and Vicky get on great- call each other Big V and Little V. Honestly, I think she"s more committed to being a hero than any of the boys."
  
  Muramasa whistled appreciatively. "Such passion in one so young," he marvelled. "Perhaps we should keep an eye on her. In a few years, she may be a force of nature."
  
  "Haven"t met Shadow Stalker in person yet though. Vicky says she"s not very friendly."
  
  I frowned, taking another bite of pie. That wasn"t ideal. I knew less about Shadow Stalker than the other Wards- she was the newest member, joined back in autumn, with a dark aesthetic to go with her dark Breaker form that let her phase through solid objects. Her whole image shouted intimidation, especially the twin crossbows she was packing, loaded with tranquiliser bolts.
  
  "She"s just one person," Flinch soothed. "The others sound nice; I"m sure Spitfire will be fine."
  
  "She might get on better with Spitfire though," Amy continued, oblivious to my thoughts. "She did some independent stuff on the streets before she joined the Wards. Maybe they can bond over that."
  
  "I didn"t know that."
  
  "Yeah, it"s not something they spread around too much. Maybe because she didn"t really get much done." Amy gave me a look. "Not every independent shuts down an entire gang by themselves."
  
   "I have no idea if that is meant as a compliment," Needler announced.
  
  "I had help with the Merchants," I deflected. "And it"s not like the fight against the Empire is going that well. My friend"s quit, my sword"s totalled, and," I felt my teeth grow a little at the thought, "I hit Victor with Rotter"s power by accident; so if he gets his brain cells lined up, he might realise I"m not just a Tinker."
  
  That was the other big worry I"d had on my mind, only barely eclipsed by Spitfire; Rotter had been the first Butcher to really be seen as the reincarnating juggernaut, and he"d delighted in using his power to inflict sores, boils, and disgusting wounds of every description. Some of the people who"d seen that power in action were still kicking around, and they might recognise it. Even if they didn"t, it was a hint that I was more than I seemed.
  
  "They"d better recognise it," Rotter said. "I killed a lot of people to establish myself as the fuck-mothering Butcher IV, I deserve to be remembered as such!"
  
  Amy dropped her second sandwich back onto the table. "What."
  
  I winced. "Yeah."
  
  Amy clasped her hands together so hard her knuckles whitened. "You used," she said slowly, "a decay power... on the guy who"s probably siphoned a couple of police detectives or some shit?"
  
  There was a round of immature snickering at her phrasing. "Yeah, I"ll bet he did," Firecracker said mockingly.
  
  "Maybe he "serviced" a couple of mechanics too," Quarrel leered.
  
  I shoved them all irritably. "Not the fucking time." Out loud I said "It"s not like it was on purpose. He"d just beaten up Spitfire, he"d siphoned some skills from me- I lost control."
  
  "Which is exactly what I don"t want to hear from you!" Amy hissed, jabbing a finger at my face. "Remember? The whole reason we have these talks is so I can know if you"re going apeshit."
  
  "I"m not going apeshit," I snapped. "I had a slip-up in the middle of a fight. I"m going to spend some time using Rotter"s power so it doesn"t act up again. The only other thing I can do right now is pray Victor doesn"t figure it out."
  
  "He"s bound to figure something out," Tactical snorted. "Best you can hope for is that Othala gives him regeneration before he gets a good look at himself, but I doubt that"ll be enough to fix Rotter"s shit all in one go."
  
  "Damn right!" Rotter whooped.
  
  Amy took an angry bite of her second sandwich and chewed like a homicidal hamster, glaring at me all the while. I ate the last bite of my pie while I waited for her to say something.
  
  Just as I"d picked up my apple and bit into it, Amy spoke again. "You need to lay off the Empire."
  
  "The fuck?!" Nemean demanded. I was so shocked a bit of apple went down the wrong way, making me cough and splutter a moment before I could clear my throat.
  
  "What the hell?" I wheezed, taking a sip of water.
  
  Amy rolled her eyes. "You got Stormtiger put away and Fenja arrested, plus you helped demolish a couple of their places. And, oh yes," she said sarcastically, "you slapped Victor with a Striker power. They"re going to come after you, hard, and you can"t afford to "slip up" again. Find something else to do, before you lose your temper and do something stupid."
  
  "They hurt Spitfire," I said through gritted teeth. "I want to make them pay for that."
  
  That was mostly a knee-jerk reaction though; I judged it was 50% me, 50% Butcher instinct to retaliate and hurt the Empire at every opportunity. Intellectually, I knew it made sense to wait for the heat to die down.
  
  Nevertheless, I argued the point. "If I let up on the Empire now, I"ll lose the initiative. They haven"t been this vulnerable in years."
  
  "And Carol"s pushing for us to use that," Amy countered. "The Protectorate"s not going to be sitting around either- it"s not like you"re the only hero around. Just wait until the Empire doesn"t want to try and murder you any more. Or until you don"t want to murder them anymore," she added.
  
  I fumed silently for a minute. "I don"t want to admit it," I said inside my head, "but she"s right."
  
  "The hell she is!" Butcher roared. "You were finally doing something right! You"re gonna let this kid tell you not to go out and crack some Nazi skulls?"
  
  Anchorage ground her teeth. "I get you"re playing the long game," she said to me, "but I don"t like this shit. Couple days could get us another couple of their capes, really bleed those fuckers."
  
  Flinch"s voice was a calm spot in the raging mess. "You do whatever works best for you, Taylor. Don"t let the rest of them make decisions for you."
  
  "If we must allow the Empire a respite," Muramasa said, "then we should devote our time to other enemies; repair your swords and wreak havoc against fresh targets!"
  
  By the time Amy had finished her sandwiches, I"d wrangled the Butchers into a plan of action, albeit with a lot of shouting and shoving and resentful feelings.
  
  "Fine," I admitted. "I"ll keep my distance from the Empire until things die down."
  
  Amy relaxed a fraction. "Good."
  
  "I"m not going to stop working though," I warned. "There"s plenty more assholes in this city I can put a stop to."
  
  Amy snorted. "Yeah, I didn"t expect you to give up on fighting completely."
  
  "Bite me. If I didn"t blow off steam and use my powers, I really would go nuts." I took another bite of apple just as I had a thought. "I fhould brobably fhind uh weh tuh oose Beahfhkin"s powah too."
  
  "Oh, for goodness" sake," Needler complained.
  
  At Amy"s confused look, I swallowed and tried again. "I should probably find a way to use Bearskin"s power, before it gets too pent-up. That"d be a lot harder to get away with."
  
  Amy pulled a face. "Yeah, that"s a good idea. So long as you"re careful about it."
  
  "About time you put mine to use," Bearskin rumbled.
  
  "Maybe we could try another identity?" Vladimir suggested. "That night with the glass was a good look for us."
  
  I finished my apple and picked up my pudding cup. "I need to get going- I"ve got library books to return."
  
  "Sure," Amy said, pulling another bit of sandwich off. "Stay safe."
  
  I rolled my eyes. "Well gee, I was going to go and have a fistfight with Lung, but if you insist."
  
  Amy gave me a flat look. "Don"t even joke about that."
  
  "God, imagine the possibilities," Quarrel said wistfully.
  
  "Bitch," I muttered at her. I grabbed my bag, then paused as a thought occurred to me. "Hey Amy?"
  
  "Hm?"
  
  "If you see Spitfire before I do... Can you tell her I"m sorry? For everything?"
  
  Amy looked at me for a long moment. "Yeah," she said at last. "I can do that."
  
  I walked away without another word.
  
  Evening, Hebert Residence
  
  I was just wrapping up Math homework when my bugs sensed a truck pulling into the driveway. A glance with bloodsight showed a tall, skinny man getting out and heading for the door, easily avoiding the rotten first step.
  
  Dad was home, still earlier than I was used to. After Mom had died, he"d started staying later at the Dockworker"s Association, probably to keep himself too busy to wallow in grief. I"d grown used to having the house to myself for most of the evenings, and making dinner in time for him to arrive.
  
  After I"d transferred from Winslow though, Dad had consistently made it home earlier, and found reasons for us to spend time together- making dinner together, offering to help with my homework, or just putting on a movie for us to watch together.
  
  It was nice.
  
  A little more work finished the math problems- then I pushed my chair away from the desk, laced my fingers together, and stretched my arms outward.
  
  The crackle was almost musical, certainly loud. And it happened just as I realised Dad was halfway up the stairs.
  
  "Wow," Dad said, sticking his head in, "I almost heard an echo from that."
  
  "I can"t tell if that"s a compliment or a dad joke," I replied.
  
  A second later, I noticed Dad"s serious expression.
  
  "Uh-oh," Stoneknapper muttered. "This doesn"t look good."
  
  Compared to a lot of the parents the Butchers had suffered under, Dad was Mr Rogers, so I had no fear of him. But this was unexpected.
  
  "Something up?" I asked tentatively.
  
  Dad scratched his head. "Well," he said, "I wanted to talk about yesterday."
  
  My hands tightened on my knees. "What about yesterday?" I managed.
  
  Butcher chuckled horribly. "Oh, let"s see where this goes..."
  
  I rammed him down without letting my expression change. Dad couldn"t suspect anything. I"d never let him see so much as a single spot of evidence, I"d given him a reason for going out on Sunday.
  
  Nothing to worry about.
  
  Dad sighed. "I wanted to let you cool off a bit, that"s why I didn"t ask you then, but- Did something happen? Because you came back from the library looking very upset."
  
  I opened my mouth to lie.
  
  I closed my mouth.
  
  "Well," I began, "it"s sort of like. Uh."
  
  The Butchers bombarded me with advice-
  
  "-say a celebrity died-"
  
  "-time of the month-"
  
  "-imagine the look on his face_"
  
  -until I shoved most of them down into the dark.
  
  "He"s not stupid," Nemean said with a sort of rough care. "You should tell him something."
  
  "He"s just gonna keep digging if you don"t," Anchorage warned. "That"s how my parents found out about my first boyfriend, and fuck was that a mess."
  
  Flinch just said "Your father loves you, Taylor."
  
  Their concern left a lump in my throat, made my eyes feel hot. I opened my mouth to take a breath, and words came tumbling out.
  
  "I was making friends with this girl. Online," I added hurriedly, "and when I"d go to the library I"d go on one of the computers and message her, and we"d talk about books and comics and dumb stuff we saw on PHO and whatever. And it was nice.
  
  "And then she went through some crappy stuff, and she blew up at me for not helping her out before, and I don"t, I don"t know-"
  
  Dad knelt on the carpet and awkwardly wrapped his arms around me, stroking my hair and making soothing noises. Belatedly, I realised I was crying, and dragged my sleeve across my face.
  
  For a second I didn"t feel multiple ages at once, old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, the founding of the PRT, the Siberian Incident, but still a high school student.
  
  I just felt like a little girl, with my dad comforting me.
  
  Dad pulled back after a moment and brushed a bit of hair away from my face. "It"s okay, kiddo," he said simply.
  
  I sniffled. "I just, I feel like I could have helped her, and she was so upset, and I didn"t know what to say to her."
  
  "Taylor, you were a good friend to her. You know how I know that?" Dad hauled himself to his feet, resting his hands on my shoulders. "People don"t get this cut up about a stranger."
  
  I dropped my gaze into my lap, watching my hands squirm over each other. "I don"t know what to do."
  
  Dad sighed. "Well, coming downstairs and having some dinner would be a good start. Talking to me would be another thing."
  
  When I didn"t answer immediately, he gave my shoulders a squeeze. "Taylor, I don"t want us to go back to not talking to each other. That... wasn"t good, for anyone. I won"t force you, and you don"t have to tell me everything, but I do want to help you. Okay?"
  
  I swallowed, sniffed, and forced myself to look up. "What"s for dinner?"
  
  Dad"s expression lightened a little. "Pasta salad."
  
  I managed a small smile. "Sounds nice."
  
  It wasn"t much of a conversation, but it was a start.
  
  6.2
  Tuesday 1st March, Early Hours, The Lair
  
  -Can we talk?
  
  "Nah, that"s not enough," Firecracker said. "You need to get your grovelling in right at the start."
  
  I sighed and deleted the text.
  
  -Spitfire, I know you"re mad at me
  
  "Ugh, definitely not," Anchorage snorted. "I used to hear that shit from my exes when they thought they were right and I was just being "emotional". Something else."
  
  Again, I deleted everything.
  
  -I"m sorry for not being a better friend.
  
  "There you go," Vladimir said approvingly. "That"s a solid start right there."
  
  The Butchers continued to chime in as I worked on the text- "Keep it simple" "Way too sappy" "What is this, a romantic comedy?"- until I finally had something I was satisfied with.
  
  My finger hovered over the send button for a moment. Did I really need to send the text right now? It was the middle of the night, only a day after Spitfire had left. Maybe it would be better to wait.
  
  "Fuck"s sake, girl, either shit or get off the pot," Butcher snapped.
  
  I gave him a shove and a roll of the eyes, hesitated, then hit send. The text moved into the chat, and a little tick mark appeared next to it. No going back now.
  
  I put the phone down next to its charger and stared at the mess of parts on the work table before me. Unlike my friendship with Spitfire, I knew that my swords could definitely be repaired with time and effort.
  
  Like my friendship with Spitfire, however, things were not good right now. I had most of the parts of three swords spread out before me- the two that I"d used in the convoy attack, and the old one I"d retrieved from Cricket.
  
  Jotun"s ice had seeped into the seals and cracks of my greatsword, forcing some components out of alignment and deforming others. I"d had to cut the greatsword open to separate them, and that had written off more parts.
  
  As for the spare, Cricket obviously hadn"t had the first idea how to maintain it. Without realignment and lubrication, the workings had shredded themselves within days.
  
  It wouldn"t take too long to remake the missing pieces and assemble them into two functioning swords again- I"d have it done by tomorrow night at the latest if I started now.
  
  "Booooo-riiiiiiing," Rotter sang.
  
  Unfortunately, for once I agreed with Rotter. I didn"t have it in me right now to sit and listen to music while I repaired my tech. And there was something else that needed doing.
  
  I pushed my chair back and crossed to the other side of the room, where I kept stacks of materials and other stuff, such as a couple of cardboard boxes. I kept some nondescript clothing in there for the non-Elpis work. It was the work of a moment to slip into a dark hoodie and scarf, with a baseball cap to top it off.
  
  I grabbed a bag, added a metal bat and two containers of baseballs Bearskin had asked me to buy a while ago, and slung the bag over my shoulder. I didn"t plan on looking for trouble, but sometimes trouble finds you.
  
  Besides, the Butchers had been wanting to try out this persona for a while.
  
  "Alright," I said aloud, tucking the scarf over my face, "Let"s go check on Coil."
  
  20 minutes on the bicycle took me into downtown, and once I"d stashed the bike in an alleyway, hidden under some trash bags, I grew my nails into claws, latched onto the wall, and climbed up.
  
  The city spread out before me in the moonlight as I reached the roof. I could see the larger buildings of the financial district to the south, including the Medhall tower. To the east was the ocean, reflecting the moon. And to the west were some of the nicer residential areas, and hills beyond that in the distance.
  
  It was a very clear night if I could see so far. It would be a shame to waste it. Maybe I could go around some of the nastier areas once I was done, look for some muggings or-
  
  Gunfire.
  
  "Assault rifle," Tactical said promptly. "More than one."
  
  Sometimes trouble finds you.
  
  I was already in motion, leaping the gap between buildings as I reached out to the insects around me. The heavier bugs couldn"t move fast enough to keep up with me, but I could gather the fliers as I ran and leapt toward the noise.
  
  Blood silhouettes came into view- two hunkered down, two with their arms positioned to hold rifles. I slowed down as I approached, diverting to climb the opposite side of a building so they wouldn"t see me coming. A few dozen flies slipped closer to the silhouettes as I crept up the wall, landing on boot heels and body armour.
  
  When I peeked over the edge of the roof, the silhouettes made sense. The two mercenaries were resting their guns on the hood and trunk of a nondescript sedan, well-positioned to fire or duck behind cover. Their body armour was dark and without insignia, nondescript enough to be distinctive anyway- Coil"s organisation.
  
  Across the street, the silhouettes of two unlucky bastards were hunkered behind a van. One of them now held a pistol, to judge by her hand, while the other held some sort of melee weapon.
  
  Stoneknapper clicked his tongue. "Man, those guys are fucked."
  
  He wasn"t wrong. From the look of the guns the mercs were packing, they could simply pump bullets through the van until they hit something living, with little danger from the other guys retaliating.
  
  I pulled a baseball out of my bag and hefted it thoughtfully. With Quarrel"s power, I could simply knock the guns out of their hands and then bang their heads together until they stopped, and leave them tied up for the police.
  
  "Or just cut their heads off with a throwing star," Quarrel said, in a tone of voice that expected immediate disregard.
  
  I gave her a hard push while I reconsidered. Hitting the guns could make them fire by accident- or just rip their trigger fingers off. I needed to get them to point their guns away first...
  
  Well, these clothes were old, and this persona was meant to be disposable. "Bearskin," I said.
  
  The man himself whooped. "At last!"
  
  The mercenaries were patiently watching for the other guys to make a move first, not fidgeting or losing focus. Unfortunately, they weren"t so good at minding their surroundings. It wasn"t hard for me to slip back to ground level and creep up behind them, bat at the ready, making slow steps from heel to toe.
  
  As I ghosted closer, I took hold of Bearskin"s power for the first time in a while. It felt like a pool of boiling water in my stomach, bubbling away and ready to be let out. I"d barely used it all this time, and now it was like a hair trigger.
  
  "That"s close enough," Bearskin said when I"d got to within ten feet of the mercenaries.
  
  "Alright." Out loud, in the thickest Boston accent I could muster, I shouted " "ey, assholes!"
  
  The one on the right looked back first. Beneath the balaclava and visor, bloodsight showed his face suddenly shifting. He swung the gun around, yelling to his buddy.
  
  He was halfway through the turn when I let the boiling rage seep out of me and spread through the air. They were right in the thick of it in an instant, a roiling red mist only I could see, finally let out with this new persona.
  
  I grabbed the rifle with my free hand and tugged it out of his grip, but Mr Quick-On-The-Uptake wasn"t dissuaded- he just bellowed and swung a left hook into my jaw.
  
  Nemean snorted as I turned my head with the blow to spare him broken knuckles. "That tickles."
  
  The other merc, Mr Slow, used the movement of turning around to jab the stock of his gun at my face. I would have let him hit me to tire himself out, but I didn"t want to have to fix my glasses, so I brought my bat up to block it, then kicked him in the back of the knee to fold his leg.
  
  Mr Quick came at me with more punches, wild but efficient. I dropped the bat to block his flurry of blows, then grabbed him by his belt and equipment harness to throw him down onto his friend.
  
  They both tried to surge to their feet even as I let the rage fade from the air, but I brought my bat down on Mr Slow"s rifle while he was laying on the ground, smashing it into a useless bit of metal. Mr Quick reached for a knife, and I jabbed the tip of the bat into his stomach, hard enough to feel it through the Kevlar. "Stop."
  
  Mr Quick looked at me for a long moment, then let the knife clatter onto the pavement. I kicked it away for good measure.
  
  "Nicely done," Needler praised. "Your practice has paid off."
  
  "But a few broken bones would work just as well," Muramasa grumbled.
  
  "Hush," I scolded, tucking the bat away to haul the two men up, backs against the car they"d been aiming from. They kept their hands raised to shoulder level and their mouths shut, even as I quickly patted their pockets and tossed away ammo, knives, and a hold-out pistol.
  
  The bugs I"d planted on the other two across the street finally stirred. I saw their blood silhouettes start to straighten up, then peek around the sides of the van.
  
  "Well, that rounds it out," Tock Tick announced when I got a good look at the two. "You"ve now encountered every gang in the city."
  
  The two were unmistakably Asian, with the red jackets and green bandannas that were the signature of the Azn Bad Boyz. One held his crowbar uncertainly, the other had her pistol pointed at the ground.
  
  "Easy," Flinch said. "Let"s see how this plays out-"
  
  "Who the fuck are you?" The woman called.
  
  The Butchers burst into laughter. "Well that"s diplomatic," Vladimir chortled.
  
  I kept the Boston accent up as I stepped out from behind the car. "Name"s Umpire, I guess. Heard these guys causin" trouble, figured I"d shut "em up."
  
  "So you"re a hero?" The man with the crowbar asked.
  
  I felt their feet shift through the bugs I"d planted. The woman shifted her grip on her pistol.
  
  "Bollocks," Dirty Rotter complained. "Here we go again..."
  
  I let my hand slowly drift to the handle of my bat, poking out behind my hip. "Yep."
  
  They were both watching my right hand reach for the obvious weapon. They weren"t ready for my left hand to come out with a baseball.
  
  Despite a few southpaws in the Butchers, I was nowhere near ambidextrous. Still, I could throw a ball to hit a human-sized target, with just enough force to knock the wind out of the girl with the gun.
  
  Crowbar dithered a second- long enough for me to pull my bat and rush forward to close the distance. "Come "ere!"
  
  I let the rage boil up and out of me again, smearing it through the air and into them. Crowbar"s face twisted into fury as he brought the crowbar down.
  
  I slapped it aside with the bat, feeling a pleasant rush in my veins. I wasn"t under any real physical threat here, as I blocked and parried his wild swings; and letting Bearskin"s power off the leash was such a relief, like finally getting a stone out of your shoe.
  
  Bearskin was having a whale of a time, with his power and his baseball skill being exercised. "Bunt!" he yelled as the crowbar came in low. I held the bat out, and let the crowbar bounce off it.
  
  The girl was recovering, so on the next swing I turned it aside and slipped past him to grab her pistol. When she struggled, I simply yanked it out of her hand and landed a kick right on her ass.
  
  The mercs were up and about- I hadn"t had time to tie them down, and they were grabbing their things to cram themselves into the sedan- their getaway vehicle, apparently. They were surprisingly quiet- if not for the bugs I might have been too preoccupied with duelling Crowbar to realise.
  
  Still, on the next attack I used one of Muramasa"s techniques, twisting the bat just so to knock the crowbar out of his hands, and then poke him in the chest. As he went down, I swapped the bat to my left and pulled out a baseball from the other container in my bag.
  
  Stoneknapper"s idea, for any big problems. A regular baseball thrown with my strength would stop most people; for everything else, I had these.
  
  I took a pitcher"s stance rooted in Bearskin"s oldest memories, breathed in deep, and pulled on Quarrel"s power just for the hell of it. I wound up, and then threw.
  
  The mercenaries had just started the car when the baseball, filled with a shaped lump of stone, ploughed through the left side of the hood and well into the engine.
  
  "Beautiful!" Bearskin roared. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is a lovely day at Fenway Park and that is a fucking beautiful pitch!"
  
  I grinned, infected with his enthusiasm as I took a running leap onto the hood of the car and pointed the bat at them. The mercs immediately put their hands up.
  
  "Damn right," Firecracker sneered.
  
  It didn"t take long to round them up after that. The mercs and the gangers refused to say anything when I"d tied them up, even when I tried Bearskin"s power again to see if that would shake anything loose.
  
  Still, the police eventually showed up, and I disappeared into an alleyway just before the lights rounded the corner, then climbed to the roof before the cruiser came to a stop. The Butchers were still jeering at the police as I bounded away, further into Downtown and Coil"s territory.
  
  My encounter would have consequences, or course. A seemingly new hero catching a couple of well-equipped mercs on the back foot would surely catch Coil"s attention within a day- maybe hours or even minutes depending on how good his intelligence was. I"d well and truly kicked the hornet"s nest tonight.
  
  "This could be a good thing," Tactical said reflectively as I paused at a vantage point to lose the cap, tug the scarf higher, and adjust the strap of my bag. "It"ll make it harder to retrieve the recordings, but this could also show us how they react to problems. And it might give us a hint about Coil"s power."
  
  I considered. "True. But it"s going to be more difficult now."
  
  "That"s the fun of it," Tock insisted.
  
  Anchorage emoted agreement. "And you"re the one with the sneaky power."
  
  I tucked the scarf into my collar and tugged my hood up. "I suppose," I admitted.
  
  There were other concerns as well- like the fact that a couple of ABB members were strolling around Downtown instead of making trouble in the Docks. Possibly Lung was looking to expand, which would mean more fighting in the future. I"d have to put some thought into it later.
  
  A few more minutes of jumping from roof to roof got me within range of the first safehouse I"d found. It was still a struggle to get insects in past the poisons and bug zappers, but I managed.
  
  Through them and bloodsight, I could see the mercenaries were relaxed. No sudden burst of activity to suggest they knew about a couple of their guys being taken down. Hopefully it would stay that way.
  
  The recording device I"d planted last week was a sound-activated little thing carefully burrowed into a wall with Stoneknapper"s power, that engraved its findings onto a tiny glass disc. It only took a single, but tense, minute for me to open the brickwork and swap it out for a fresh one before I slipped away.
  
  These recorders and a couple of cameras had got me faces of a lot of the mercenaries, and a similar number of names that I was still struggling to match up. Brooks, Senegal, Jaw...
  
  No sign of the man himself though. There was a central base in the city somewhere, but I"d yet to find it. I actually knew more about Coil from the internet than anything else. A few descriptions and a blurry photo showed him as tall and thin, wearing a black bodysuit with a white snake.
  
  I managed to check on another safehouse without incident, but the third one was a lot more active when I reached it. A dozen red silhouettes were checking on equipment or loading weapons when I looked with bloodsight from an alley.
  
  "Pretty good response time," Tactical noted. "Especially since the guys you dropped on didn"t have time to call for help or anything."
  
  I absently agreed. It was probably too risky to try and get the recording out while they were on high alert, but I lingered a few minutes to see if there was anything new I could learn.
  
  "At least Umpire is gonna get some more use now," Bearskin noted as I leaned against the wall and pulled out my earphones.
  
  "Come again?" I asked, hitting play on Flinch"s choice of the night.
  
  "Well, those guys would be more suspicious if they keep getting hit by a bunch of random guys with different powers, rather than one cape with consistent powers."
  
  "Hey yeah," Stoneknapper realised. "You can"t use any of the other powers on them, or they"ll start to see a pattern- the wrong kind of pattern. You"re stuck with the baseball gimmick now."
  
  I paused in the act of guiding a fly through an air vent. They had a point- if Umpire disappeared after tonight, and was replaced by a cape with the same body type and radically different powers, it wouldn"t take half a brain to see something.
  
  Needler nodded. "If Coil is indeed a Thinker, showing other powers to his organisation would be as a red flag to a bull."
  
  "Yeah, and then you"d be mincemeat," Butcher sneered.
  
  I pushed him down into the dark and focused on the fly in the vent. "I guess I can"t do anything to him as Elpis, either."
  
  "You don"t want him p-paying attention to any part of you," Flinch warned me.
  
  "Maybe don"t disappear entirely though," Tock Tick said. "People notice a total absence. Just do something noticeable way away from the guy."
  
  "That makes sense," I admitted. "But I can"t fight Coil, or the Empire, or Lung and Oni Lee. What else do heroes do that gets attention?"
  
  "Uuuuhhh..."
  
  "Don"t all shout," I said sarcastically, finally slipping the fly into the main part of the safehouse.
  
  "Interviews?" Quarrel said. "Adverts, stuff like that?"
  
  "I"m not famous enough for that," I pointed out.
  
  Vladimir shrugged. "Give talks to kids? Stay in school, all that crap?"
  
  "Get cats out of trees, help old ladies across the road, sign autographs," Dirty Rotter rattled off. " "course, if you really want attention, just swear at a kid. That"ll get people looking!"
  
  That brought a round of vicious laughter; one of the big news items a few days back had been of Bastion, the leader of the Boston Protectorate, a big man in armour who could create dozens of powerful forcefields. Someone had pulled out their phone in time to catch him repeatedly bellowing "spic" at a kid that wanted his autograph.
  
  The Butchers had tangled with him a couple of times over the years, and seeing an old opponent sabotage himself so thoroughly brought them a kind of vindictive satisfaction.
  
  I just pulled a face. "I think I"ll be doing the exact opposite of that, thanks."
  
  Nemean stirred thoughtfully. "If Panacea"s going to tell you to stay out of the fight, she can give you some idea of what else to do."
  
  That made sense to me- Amy was emphatically a non-combatant, and not very attention-grabbing, but her public reputation was solid.
  
  "I"ll text her sometime," I decided. "Maybe I"ll ask Ironclad too- even if he doesn"t have any ideas, I could bring him along."
  
  I straightened up from leaning on the wall. "I don"t think I"m getting anything else tonight. Back to the lair?"
  
  Tuesday 1st March, Arcadia High School
  
  -Have you heard from Spitfire?
  
  Ironclad texted back quickly.
  
  Big Metal:
  
  -Nothin. U haven"t either?
  
  "Well, crap," Anchorage cursed.
  
  "Yeah," I agreed, even as I typed out my response.
  
  -No. Let me know if you hear anything.
  
  After a second I added-
  
  -How are you doing?
  
  "Told you she wasn"t coming back," Firecracker said acidly. "She"s fucked off to be a shiny, whiny Ward."
  
  I shoved Firecracker to the edge of the dark, leaving her voice as nothing more than a whisper in my mind. I didn"t need her opinions or emotions right now.
  
  A different message popped up on my phone, not from Ironclad.
  
  Amy:
  
  -What did you want to talk about?
  
  It was from Amy, responding to the text I"d sent her hours ago. I checked on her paralysed bug indicator- on Arcadia grounds, and presumably outside the cellphone jammer.
  
  Tactical hummed thoughtfully. "We should really figure out the limits of that thing at some point. You don"t want to miss something important happening while you"re in class."
  
  After two months of the Butchers in my head, tracking multiple conversations was easy for me.
  
  -I need some ideas for hero work that aren"t fighting. Something public. Was hoping you had some ideas.
  
  I leaned back against the wall of the graffiti-covered nook I was in yet again. The scribbles hadn"t really changed since last time- although there was a crude penis drawing I didn"t remember from last time.
  
  Big Metal:
  
  -Still doesn"t feel real. Like it"s a bad dream.
  
  -I know. I"m taking a break from active duty for a little while. I need to think some things through.
  
  "I don"t think he will be following you in that regard," Muramasa warned. "The boy was beating Nazis with other Nazis before you found him, and now he has had a taste of real battle. He will want more."
  
  Big Metal:
  
  -What am I supposed to do until then?
  
  Amy:
  
  -Crisis points. Checking on kids who"ve been through something crappy in case they"ve triggered.
  
  "Well shit, that was easy," Bearskin said, eyebrows raised.
  
  "I didn"t think heroes did that," Needler muttered. Painful memories welled up for a moment- she"d spent time in the hospital after her trigger. I wordlessly nudged her in what I hoped was a supportive way.
  
  -How do I get into that?
  
  Amy:
  
  -Go to a hospital and mention it to the staff. I can say something at Brockton General later to start you off.
  
  -That"d be great, thanks.
  
  -I"ve got an idea. Want to go visit kids in hospital?
  
  Big Metal:
  
  -That actually sounds good. When and where?
  
  -I"ve got tomorrow afternoon free. I can pick you up somewhere?
  
  Big Metal:
  
  -Sure, that works for me.
  
  Amy:
  
  -Vicky says hi
  
  -Hey Elpis, can we borrow the scanner? Mom wants us to go fuck up some Empire stuff this weedfnbb
  
  -Sorry Vicky took my phone
  
  I smiled a little at the messages. From what little I"d seen, the Dallon sisters had a good back-and-forth between them.
  
  -Ironclad, if you prefer, New Wave is apparently doing some more action against the Empire.
  
  "I"m with "masa on this one," Stoneknapper interjected. "I"m pretty sure the kid"s gonna go with the ass-kicking option."
  
  Big Metal:
  
  -Maybe? I was actually wondering how I"d even fit in a hospital.
  
  -Be careful. The empire"s going to be looking for payback after Sunday.
  
  -If I"m not pissing off Nazis, I"m not doing it right.
  
  Vladimir laughed. "Oh, I like this kid!"
  
  I chuckled a bit as well as I tapped out a message to Amy.
  
  -Sure. I could bring it over tomorrow, show you guys how to use it.
  
  -Anyway, got to go.
  
  I checked the time on my phone. Break was almost over, and I had Geography next, so I needed to get moving.
  
  Before I turned the phone off, I checked the conversation with Spitfire.
  
  Still no new messages.
  
  "She"ll come around," Flinch said comfortingly.
  
  "Or not," Butcher said with cruel glee. I pushed him into the dark and kept walking.
  
  Wednesday 2nd March, Early hours, Downtown
  
  The last of the recordings were resting safely in a little case on my belt, but I was still sitting one street over from the fourth safehouse, curled up out of the wind behind an air conditioner unit. I had a thermos of hot chocolate at Tock Tick"s request, a playlist of the Beastie Boys for Firecracker, and a book from the school library for myself.
  
  It was a particularly bizarre story- The part I was at had an Asian Zamboni driver beating an insane clown to death with horseshoes as knuckledusters.
  
  "It"s just like my life," Quarrel sighed.
  
  There was a long moment where everyone stopped to give Quarrel the mental equivalent of the side-eye.
  
  "In a way," Quarrel added defensively.
  
  Tock Tick rolled his eyes. "Moving on..."
  
  The insects I"d slipped into the safehouse sensed movement at the entrance, and I looked up with bloodsight in time to see a pair of figures slip out through the door.
  
  I slipped the book and thermos into my bag as the two mercenaries started walking away. When I realised they were getting into a car, I immediately went from a crouch to a hurried climb down the side of the building to get to the bicycle in time.
  
  "Fuckin" finally," Dirty Rotter groaned. "Was startin" to think they"d just sit around polishing themselves all night."
  
  "You mean polishing their weapons, right?" Anchorage asked.
  
  "I know what I said."
  
  I made sure to slip multiple insects into the car with the mercenaries, hiding them under the seats, in the trunk, clinging to the undercarriage. To be extra sure, I had half of the bugs turn on the others, directing them to bite off legs and wings without killing them, turning them into a unique signature I could home in on even if the car left my range.
  
  The tactic paid off, because even with Brute strength powering me along, I struggled to track the car as it drove off. I was hampered by having to stay out of sight of the mercs, and by how they took random turns and doubled back to confuse their trail. Twice I lost them, and only the pattern of bugs let me find them again.
  
  One thing I had noticed, the second time they"d slipped out of range, was that my control radius had expanded slightly in response to my sudden burst of desperation. The Butchers had read up on the more specialised research into powers, but it was one thing to read about fluctuation of powers in relation to emotions, and another entirely to experience it with my own, in such a dramatic manner.
  
  "Well, shit, that"s ominous," Firecracker noted.
  
  The car was pulling into a parking lot, and beyond that, the skeleton of a building loomed over us. Girders and beams joined together in what would become one of Brockton Bay"s high rises, twenty stories tall. At the base of it was a sea of crushed stone, with bulldozers, piledrivers, loaders and cement mixers standing still and silent. The only light came from the buildings and streetlights on the surrounding streets.
  
  I stayed out of direct line of sight, using the bugs to track as the mercs got out and headed for a piece of metal set into the ground. A hatch?
  
  "Underground," Tactical mused. "This just got serious."
  
  "How so?" I asked, switching to bloodsight. A constellation of red outlines bloomed into my vision, set underneath the ground. The two mercs heading down an unseen set of stairs were only the highest point.
  
  "Because," Tactical said with satisfaction, "you don"t go to all the effort of burying something underground unless it"s really worth it."
  
  The pair of soldiers came to a halt in what seemed like an enclosed space, and stood motionless for about half a minute. I took the opportunity to slip a few of my bugs onto the back of their boots, their body armour and weapons- places that they wouldn"t be able to feel.
  
  There was a rush of air as an interior door opened, and the pair proceeded in.
  
  Spreading out my remaining insects allowed me to start building up a picture in my mind. The level the soldiers walked on felt like textured metal, and below that was smooth concrete, with stacks of cardboard boxes and things wrapped in plastic.
  
  "Tac"s right," Nemean growled. "This is serious. Squads of soldiers, piles of supplies, an underground base? Whatever Coil really is, he"s a lot more dangerous than we thought."
  
  The pair came to a halt with a group of other soldiers. Seen through bloodsight, they were a rough semicircle of bulky people, centred around one man. It was hard to make out, but I thought his silhouette was a bit taller and thinner than the men and women he was speaking to.
  
  The insects couldn"t relay sound very well, but I could tell he was speaking, hands clasped behind his back, and the soldiers stood still and listened.
  
  "There you are, Coil," I thought as he ordered his troops to do who knew what. "I"ve got you now, you bastard."
  
  6.3
  Wednesday 2nd March, Downtown
  
  "-obviously different materials will have a different resonance, so you"ll have to tune the touch sensor readings until you get a clear image. Just turn the green dial," I pointed, "and that"ll adjust the frequencies.
  
  "And I think that"s everything you need to know," I finished, holding the scanner out to Manpower- though it was strange to think of him like that when he was in a polo shirt and khakis instead of his costume. He took the scanner out of my hands gingerly- the slight movement caused the array to shift around, the armatures flexing to bring the sonar dishes into a different configuration.
  
  "And be gentle with it," I added. "I don"t want to have to spend half an hour recalibrating everything again."
  
  "I did say we should have used more durable materials to build it," Tock Tick grumbled yet again.
  
  "Yes," Tactical answered, "Except we didn"t have enough material to spare."
  
  "If we"re wishing for shit, I"d like a steak, tequila, and a couple of grams," Dirty Rotter interjected.
  
  "Gotcha," Manpower said agreeably, carefully putting the scanner in the trunk of his car and pulling a few bungee cords out to secure it. It was a tight fit- the body of the scanner was two feet long, and the array of dishes could only collapse down so far.
  
  While Amy stood by with arms folded inside her robe as her uncle secured the scanner, Victoria was dressed in civvies and grinning cheerfully, bouncing from toe to toe in long, drifting hops that showed off her flight power. "This is going to be so good," she enthused. "I mean, no offense Elpis, but I think I"ll cover a lot more ground flying than you can driving."
  
  "No worries. Honestly, I"d give my front teeth to be able to fly." Of all the powers the Butchers had coveted over the years, flight was definitely at the top of the list.
  
  Manpower shut the trunk with a satisfied huff. "Well, for what it"s worth, I"m glad we have another Tinker on the side of the angels. This is going to be one hell of a surprise for the Empire."
  
  "Oh, definitely. Anyway," I glanced back at the chariot, now looking smaller without the scanner mounted on top, "I should get going. I don"t want to keep people waiting."
  
  "Oh, Elpis?" When I looked back, Manpower had an awkwardly polite expression on his face. "If you ever want to stop by, just to catch up outside of work, give us a call."
  
  I recognised the platitude for what it was- reaching out to offer support after Spitfire had left. I should have appreciated the gesture, but I really didn"t feel up to talking to him or the rest of New Wave about it.
  
  "Thanks. I"ll see how I go," I said noncommittally, pulling my keys out. Manpower didn"t press the matter further, just nodded.
  
  "Good luck with the kids," Victoria said, giving me a wave. She patted her sister on the shoulder as Amy followed me to the chariot- I opened the passenger door for her, then swung myself across the hood Dukes of Hazzard style to get to the other door.
  
  "You alright to drop Amy off when you"re finished?" Manpower asked, pulling his car keys out.
  
  "Sure thing." I swung myself down into the driver"s seat. Key in, ignition on, seatbelt despite the mocking cries from the Butchers, and I smoothly slid the chariot out of the parking lot we"d agreed to meet up on.
  
  Amy and I were quiet for the first few minutes as I navigated through Downtown. There wasn"t much traffic this soon after lunch, which left me free to occasionally respond to the Butcher"s conversations about how we"d deal with Coil, how the Empire would respond, or what the hell the ABB were up to. There was also a debate going on about what comic books to try next.
  
  "Nice car," Amy said at last as I brought us to a smooth stop behind the other guy waiting at a red light. I saw him glance in his rearview mirror and do a double take at the sight of the armoured beast idling behind him.
  
  "Thanks," I said. At his insistence, I added "Tock Tick says thanks too."
  
  "Only other person that knows it"s my tech, you"re damn right I"ll thank her," Tock said.
  
  "Tock- right, the Tinker. How did he get called that, by the way? Did he just say it wrong the first time and it stuck?"
  
  That startled a laugh out of me. "Ha! No, that"s not it." Relaying Tock"s infuriated rant, minus the profanity, I explained, "He wanted a name that would stand out, flummox people a little. If they"re struggling just to say your name right, it puts them a little more off balance."
  
  "Huh," Amy said, slouching into her seat a little. The guy in front of us had rolled down his window and leaned out to gawk at the chariot. I was vaguely glad I"d thought to tint the windshield slightly so people couldn"t see in easily. "I guess that makes sense."
  
  "Yeah. The Butchers aren"t hard to understand once you get to know them." I only really said it to fill the gap, but Amy suddenly sat up straight.
  
  "You sound like you"re friends with them," she said accusingly.
  
  "The hell"s her problem?" Firecracker asked snippily.
  
  Stoneknapper snorted. "Well, clearly we"re such great company to have around- nope, couldn"t say it with a straight face."
  
  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel for a second, avoiding her eyes. The guy in front was now taking pictures on his phone, dangling halfway out of his car. "Friends is a strong word," I began.
  
  "Ouch," Vladimir said. "Couldn"t even sugarcoat it a little?"
  
  "But they"re here with me for the rest of my life. Besides, it"s a hell of a lot easier to get along with someone when you can see bits of their memories. Or shut them up when they start being a pain."
  
  "Yeah, but they"re murderers!" Amy curled her hands into fists on her lap. "How can you get along with them? How can you choose to get along with them?"
  
  I looked away from her again- and noticed the light was green. I honked the horn irritably, and the guy ahead of us almost fell out of his car before he managed to pull himself back in. He finally drove forward, and I managed to follow him just before the light turned amber.
  
  "What crawled up her ass and died?" Needler demanded.
  
  "Is it truly so hard for her to imagine us as anything but raving lunatics?" Muramasa was less angry and more bemused at Amy"s reaction.
  
  "Guys, focus," I insisted. "Any suggestions?"
  
  The car was quiet for a few more moments as I got us through a busier intersection, while the Butchers argued and debated.
  
  Eventually I picked Bearskin"s suggestion, though he"d got the idea from Anchorage"s memories. "Did you ever see The Green Mile?"
  
  Amy"s eyebrows drew together. "Don"t think I"ve heard of it."
  
  "It"s a pretty good film. It"s Tom Hanks as a prison guard on death row. And obviously you"ve got to be a real bastard to get on death row, right? But the guards still talk to the prisoners, they"re civil with them- one of them has a pet mouse, and the guards take care of it after he"s been executed.
  
  "And the prisoners- okay, there"s one guy that"s really fucked up, but the others, they don"t really act out. It"s not like it would achieve anything. You can"t get any worse than death row."
  
  "This is sounding more and more depressing," Amy noted.
  
  "Oh, it is. But," I slowed briefly as a sedan awkwardly parked on the side of the road, "That"s why it fits.
  
  "The Butchers are dead. It"s not their fault that they"re still here. And they might be a bunch of assholes sometimes-"
  
  "Damn right!" Anchorage whooped.
  
  "-but they"re still people. Nobody"s an asshole all the time."
  
  Flinch snorted. "No, but Butcher makes a good try at it."
  
  "Ooooooooh!" Quarrel howled with laughter. "Oh, the disrespect! Who knew he had it in him!"
  
  "You little-!" Whatever Butcher was about to say wasn"t worth hearing; I pushed him into the dark as I slowed for a cyclist.
  
  Amy hmmed sceptically, but her posture relaxed a little.
  
  We reached Brockton General Hospital after another couple of minutes. I"d barely parked the car before Amy unbuckled her belt and opened her door. I had to quicken my pace to keep up with her as she made a beeline for the entrance, sneaker heels scuffing against the asphalt as she walked.
  
  The way she carried herself was different now- still weary, but with a confidence I hadn"t really seen in her before.
  
  "This is her turf," Nemean said. "Here, she"s the most important person around."
  
  Two figures were waiting for us in the lobby, one in white and gold armour, the other in a grey jumpsuit. Dauntless noticed us first, breaking off from where he was chatting with the male nurse at the desk to raise a hand. "Panacea, Elpis. Good to see you both."
  
  "Likewise," I said, trying to muster up some enthusiasm.
  
  Gargoyle nodded to me awkwardly. "You"re looking well."
  
  I raised an eyebrow. "Thanks." I knew he was being generous. While I"d managed to clean my armour and get rid of the major scratches and dents, I still looked somewhat battered- and my cloak was burnt to the metal lining in some places.
  
  "Right, let"s get started." Dauntless gestured down the hall with one hand- the other held a piece of paper. "I"ll show you two how it"s done for the first few kids, and then you can talk to the rest by yourselves once you"ve got the hang of it. Okay?"
  
  I shrugged. "Lead on. I"ll see you later, Panacea," I added to her.
  
  Amy looked up from a sheet the nurse had just handed her. "Take your time. Looks like I"m walking all over the hospital today."
  
  "Best of luck, then," Dauntless said kindly.
  
  "Good to meet you," Gargoyle added in a rush.
  
  Dauntless led the way toward the Paediatrics ward, explaining as we walked. "We"re not aiming to get these kids to open up to us right away. They"re all still processing whatever they"ve been through, and we only have so much time to speak with them.
  
  "The trick is to show them that we"re willing to listen, so that they can approach us when they"re comfortable."
  
  "Zero pressure," Gargoyle said.
  
  "Right. That also means you"ll have to fill the gap if they don"t want to talk about themselves. What it"s like as a hero, things you can do with your powers, or just what"s on TV. Just keep it PG."
  
  "Should"ve brought some cards," Bearskin said. "We could"ve done some tricks for the little brats."
  
  "Do you do these visits a lot, Dauntless?" I asked. He shrugged.
  
  "We all get scheduled to do some. I just have a knack for it, I suppose." He stopped at a door and checked the paper. "Right, first stop. Hang back and watch."
  
  "He really is good with the little buggers," Dirty Rotter admitted after the third kid Dauntless had introduced himself with. They all seemed ecstatic to meet the rising star of the Protectorate ENE, begging him to give them an autograph or show off his weapons.
  
  "So, think you"re up for it?" Dauntless asked the two of us.
  
  Gargoyle shifted on his feet. "I guess. I can"t think of any little tricks to wow them, though."
  
  "Just do a backflip or something," I suggested, bouncing my eyebrows.
  
  "Or reattach your leg again," Quarrel sneered.
  
  "You"ll be fine," Dauntless said reassuringly. "Both of you." He tore the list of visits into three and gave us a piece each.
  
  I took mine with some trepidation, glancing at the name and room number at the top. Just across the hall.
  
  "We should get a guitar," Tactical mused. "Play a few songs and you"ve got a whole room loving you."
  
  Stoneknapper sniggered. "Unless you play Danny Boy over and over, leprechaun."
  
  I winced as the argument started, giving them both a shove. "Guitar would be a good idea though," I muttered.
  
  "Say again?" Gargoyle asked.
  
  I waved a hand dismissively. "Just a thought." I double-checked the paper, took a deep breath, and strode into the room.
  
  "Elliot?" The boy on the bed with his leg in a cast looked up from the comic he was reading, then dropped it in shock.
  
  "I"m Elpis. Nice to meet you."
  
  Elliot sat up warily. "This isn"t some kind of Make A Wish thing, is it? "cause I"m pretty sure I"m not dying."
  
  I couldn"t have stopped the laughter if I tried. All I could do was cram a fist into my mouth while the mirth echoed through the guffawing Butchers and back into me.
  
  "Holy shit," Vladimir managed. "Holy shit, I thought MY humour was morbid!"
  
  "No," I managed eventually, "No, nothing like that. God, that"s dark. No, I"m just checking in on people, showing the flag."
  
  Elliot sat back on his pillows with a grin the size of a banana. "Cool. I never actually met a hero before. Didn"t you fight the Empire on the weekend?"
  
  "Yeah," I admitted, lowering myself into a chair gingerly until I was sure it could take my weight. "Still making repairs from that."
  
  "Right, so you"re a- a Tinker, right? What kind of stuff do you make?"
  
  I waggled my eyebrows theatrically. "Stuff like this. And also;" I pulled my flail off my belt, making absolutely sure the safeties were on.
  
  Elliot"s eyes went as round as saucers. I saw his hand lift off his lap for a second before he put it back down.
  
  "Now that"s the look I like to see," Tock Tick said appreciatively. "Awed and amazed."
  
  I considered. "Do you think it"s safe?"
  
  Tock snorted. "Of course it is. Unless the kid"s got a tool kit in his cast and a Tinker power, he"d be better off with a baseball bat."
  
  "I meant if it would hurt him, Tock. But I get the point." I held the flail out to him, handle first. "Want to hold it?"
  
  The kid"s eyes went even wider, if that was possible. "Yes please!" he said, grabbing it like it was about to vanish- and almost dropping it when 7lbs of weight made itself known. I caught the head before he could drop it, and helped him balance it right.
  
  "Cool," he breathed. "So what"s it do?"
  
  "For starters, the head extends on a cable for range. Plus it can absorb kinetic energy from impacts and release them for stronger attacks. I can even make it bounce for trick shots."
  
  "What, so you throw it at the villain, and he"s like "Ha-ha, you missed!" and then it bounces off the wall and hits him in the back of the head?"
  
  I clamped a hand over my mouth again as I pictured ringing Kaiser"s helmet like a church bell.
  
  "This kid," Anchorage chortled. "This goddamn kid!"
  
  "That"s- ha- that"s right."
  
  "How"d you come up with this?" Elliot asked.
  
  I fought down the last chuckle as I remembered the fight up the Merchant"s tower. "Well, there"s a funny story behind that."
  
  Two hours later, the three of us met up again; Gargoyle was rambling to Dauntless about the kids he"s talked to. I was shoulder to shoulder with him when he finally broke off and noticed me.
  
  "So how"d it go with you?" he asked. His hair changed as he spoke, darkening and softening from spiky grey bristles to floppy brown. He ran a hand through it, sticking it all up again, then took his hand away and let the rocky grey spread over his hair again.
  
  "Neat trick," Firecracker admitted. "Saves on hair gel."
  
  "Pretty good. I didn"t get the feeling any of them have," I gestured briefly, "joined the club, you know?" I didn"t feel 100% after talking to all of them though. Some unidentifiable emotion was seeping into my brain from the experience., leaving me with a faint feeling of disorientation.
  
  Dauntless nodded. "That"s a relief. I"m not too sure how I"d handle that, honestly."
  
  "I thought that was the whole reason we did this," Gargoyle said confusedly, falling into step with Dauntless"s longer strides. "Find them before they go off and do something reckless?"
  
  "Being a hero is pretty reckless no matter how you slice it," I pointed out. "But the odds of stumbling on a fresh cape are pretty low, right? I assumed this was more for PR."
  
  Dauntless waggled a hand in a so-so gesture. "Six of one, half a dozen of the other," he allowed. "Maybe 1 in 10,000 kids we visit would actually have got powers, but we can do something for the other 9,999 while we"re at it."
  
  "God, does he shit sunshine or something?" Needler asked incredulously. "I"ve never met a hero this... this..."
  
  "Optimistic?" Anchorage asked.
  
  "High-minded?" Muramasa offered.
  
  "Idealistic," Flinch said.
  
  "I liked it," I said out loud, briefly surprised by how much I meant it. "It"s a nice change from my usual stuff. And," I thought for a second on how to describe it, "I guess it"s nice to find something heroic to do that doesn"t need violence."
  
  "Boring," Butcher growled.
  
  Dauntless flashed a smile filled with small white teeth. "Glad you enjoyed it. Think you"ll want to do this again?"
  
  "Definitely. Not sure I"ll always have the time, but I"d like to keep coming back."
  
  "We"ll be in touch then. Or you can always just ask the hospital."
  
  I nodded as I felt us approach Panacea"s latest pocket bug, inside a room to the left. As we passed the open door, I peered in, and saw Panacea standing by a bed as a doctor unwrapped bandages from a man"s face, then held up a mirror. Judging from how the guy burst into sobs and immediately tried to hug her, she"d done another miracle.
  
  Backing away from the guy, she caught sight of me lingering in the doorway. She quickly said something to the doctor and the gratefully weeping patient before hurrying toward me.
  
  "Not going to stick around so he can name his kid after you?" I asked wryly. Amy shuddered as she flicked her hood back.
  
  "Don"t joke about that- people have actually done that."
  
  I caught up with her as we drew level with Gargoyle and Dauntless. "Yeah, some woman with triplets. She started coding as I was passing by, so I went in to help. Three baby girls, all fine."
  
  "So which one got named after you?"
  
  "They all did."
  
  "What?!" Bearskin erupted.
  
  Rotter boggled. "You gotta be fuckin" with me!"
  
  I almost tripped as we started down a flight of stairs before I grabbed the railing. Gargoyle turned back with such a twisted expression he looked disturbingly like his namesake.
  
  "They named all three of them after you?" Gargoyle gasped. "That"s just cruel to the kids. Not being called Amy," he added hastily, "I meant-"
  
  "I know what you meant," Amy said tiredly, not losing a step. "They gave the girls Amy as a middle name. I kept telling them they didn"t have to, but they insisted. Vicky wouldn"t shut up about it for a month. She"d tell total strangers that I had kids named in my honour."
  
  "I think it"s sweet," Dauntless offered. Amy"s reply was a snort.
  
  "So did we need to do anything else?" Gargoyle asked.
  
  "I need a coffee," Amy said. She turned right into a little room with a TV, couches and vending machines with the same casual confidence she"d shown walking into the hospital. She stopped in front of a machine and started going through her pockets while the two women eating on the couch side-eyed the heroes loitering outside.
  
  I pointed to the half-full pot of coffee on the cabinet next to her. "On your left." I"d smelled it coming down the corridor, and it looked like it smelled- thick and dark and with enough caffeine to make your eyes vibrate.
  
  Amy didn"t look around. "That stuff"s been brewing since god knows when. I"m not that desperate. Yet," she added. Her hands came out of her costume"s pockets with nothing but the lining. "Crap."
  
  My hand went to the compartment on my belt where I kept walking-around money. "I"ll spot you."
  
  "You don"t have to-"
  
  "It"s fine," I said, stepping up to slot dollar coins in. "I owe you a bunch as it is." My finger hovered over the buttons. "How do you take it?" "Guys? Requests?"
  
  "Cream and sugar," Amy said with a tone of resigned amusement as the Butchers briefly conferred. I tapped her order in while they decided on a cappuccino, then put cups in for the drinks.
  
  "Can I get one?" Gargoyle asked, leaning in. The doctors didn"t even pretend to eat their sandwiches at the sight of him. The closer one gave him a shameless up-and-down look, lingering on his chest.
  
  "Get it yourself," I said, picking up my cup. Amy immediately took a sip of hers with a grateful sigh.
  
  Gargoyle mock-pouted all the way back to the lobby, where we had to sign a couple of sheets declaring we"d visited the patients, noted no problems, etc, and Amy filled out multiple forms with practiced ease.
  
  "Well, thanks for coming by," Dauntless said once we made it out the door. His boots lit up with crackling white light as he rose into the air. "Give us a call when you"re willing to do it again."
  
  I gave him a wave as he flew off at an easy pace, Gargoyle following him in massive bounds that took him over tall buildings.
  
  "Finally," Quarrel groaned. "Now we can get back to some fucking action."
  
  "Not so fast," Tactical warned. "We"ll still need to figure out more of Coil"s operations; how many mercenaries he"s got active, what weapons they"ve got-"
  
  "Or we can just roll over him and deal with things as they happen," Nemean interrupted. "You"re too slow, Tac. If he had a combat power, we"d have seen it by now."
  
  I snapped my fingers as I unlocked the chariot. "Right, I forgot," I muttered, dropping into the driver"s seat. Amy gave me a look as I put my cup in the holder.
  
  "What?"
  
  "I meant to tell you." I waited until Amy had finished her sip before I told her, "I found Coil"s main base the other night."
  
  Amy spluttered wordlessly for a second. "What?" she repeated.
  
  "Yeah," I explained, heading out of the car park. "It"s wild- he"s got a place underneath a construction site. Lots of soldiers, lots of boxes."
  
  "He has a secret underground base."
  
  "Yep."
  
  Amy sat back. "What the fuck."
  
  "Yep."
  
  Stoneknapper laughed horribly. "Please, please tell me I get some action in this. I mean, this is MY area."
  
  "Subtly," I stressed. "But yeah, we"re going to play some tricks."
  
  "So what the hell are you going to do?" Amy asked. "This is..." She trailed off for a second. "This is crazy, even by Brockton Bay standards."
  
  "It"s a bit much even by Butcher standards too. It takes serious resources just to have a building converted, and it looks like he might have built it from scratch. Plus you"ve got to be confident you"re going to be there for years. Coil"s really playing the long game here."
  
  "Yeah, Accord was the only other guy that really went into that kind of stuff." Vladimir snorted. "I bet he and Coil would"ve been friends."
  
  "And you still don"t know what his power is?"
  
  "Either he"s Mastering all those soldiers into working for him, or he"s some kind of Thinker. I"m leaning toward the latter. Some kind of analysis or precog."
  
  "But you don"t know." Amy took another sip. "We"re still focused on the Empire, but I could try to talk the adults into giving you some help if you need it."
  
  I glanced at her for a second. "I"d appreciate that." I checked ahead. "It"s left here, right?"
  
  "Yeah, and then fourth on the right."
  
  The house in question was nothing special. Looking at it from the outside, I never would have guessed that the Dallons lived there.
  
  Amy popped her door and stepped out onto the curb. "Thanks for the ride."
  
  "Thanks for letting me know about this. I actually had fun talking to the kids."
  
  Amy snorted. "Kids? I"m pretty sure some of them were older than you."
  
  Something clicked in my mind. "Oh no..."
  
  "Heheheheheh..." Firecracker"s snickering was dark and sadistic. "Ah, there it is..."
  
  "No, no, no." I clutched at my head. "I can"t be..."
  
  Amy"s brows drew together in concern. "Elpis?"
  
  "Search your feelings, you know it to be true," Muramasa intoned with cruel amusement.
  
  "I"m old," I groaned. "These bastards have me feeling like an adult!"
  
  Amy"s expression turned flat. "And I"ve suddenly run out of patience. I"ll see you around."
  
  "Bye," I groaned.
  
  Midnight of Friday 4th March, North Downtown
  
  As much as I"d enjoyed visiting the hospital, there were still some problems in Brockton Bay that needed me to go out looking for trouble. And plenty of those problems happened on a wild Saturday night, when the bars started to empty and people started making their way home. The ones that took taxis or had a designated driver had little to worry about, but those who couldn"t catch a cab, who didn"t have the money for it, or just didn"t feel like it, walked home.
  
  For crooks who wanted to demand money with menaces, this was like a buffet. I"d therefore parked the bike in the alleyway below and rappelled up here for a vantage point, fours storeys high atop an apartment building.
  
  "Fish in a barrel," Needler said as a couple of tipsy men walked along the street below. I gave her a frown and a shove in response. I"d picked up this strategy by taking the methods the Butchers had used to get easy muggings, and reversing them; I shouldn"t have been surprised at her casual condonement of beating up random drunks for quick cash, but it still grated.
  
  "Not like these guys got a lot of cash left on them anyway. It"s all watches and phones you gotta take this time of night. And jewels." Anchorage briefly remembered a rich woman with diamonds on her ears and neck and wrists who"d meekly offered them all up the moment Anchorage had raised her anchor. "When the party folks start going home, the smart fences start opening for business."
  
  Butcher chuckled. "Nah, you rob drunks for the fun of them tripping all over themselves. If you want to eat, you don"t go for the minnow," and he nudged my attention to the nightclub across the street that still had flashing lights and muffled bass coming from the windows, "You go for the fat, juicy tuna over there."
  
  "Shut it," I growled. Butcher only laughed, letting the memories roll off him- after serving a few hundred customers, the clubs and bars would have filled their registers with cash. Simply smashing in past the bouncer that was no match for a cape would let a villain hop the bar and fill their pockets with mounds of bills.
  
  Moreover, while a lot of clubs had drug dealers hanging around, some of them sold drugs directly to the partygoers. Not only did that bring in so much more cash than fancy cocktails, but a villain who was fast and smart enough could find their stash and take it himself, either to sell for later or for personal use-
  
  I shook my head and rammed Butcher back into the dark to cut the flow of thoughts short, centering myself on the here and now. I had bugs down on the streets, drawn from alleyways and dirt patches, tracking the people moving on the street and the people staying still in hidden corners. So far I"d stopped two separate incidents and called the police, moving on after each one, spreading out my insects until my body was just the centre of a massive, shifting network.
  
  It was still less activity than I"d expected. The Empire controlled parts of south downtown, while Coil had the north and east, but I hadn"t seen anybody that I could be certain worked for either gang.
  
  "Well, the Empire"s been around long enough they don"t need to roll drunks for money," Bearskin pointed out. "Mostly it"s protection rackets and front businesses, or drugs. If they attack people on the street, it"ll be for hate, not greed."
  
  Flinch nodded. "Coil seems to be more large-scale than that too, if he can afford soldiers with assault rifles."
  
  "Should we maybe think about the ABB?" Tock Tick wondered. "If they start pushing east from the Docks, they"ll need a lot of violence to establish themselves before they can get regular rackets started up."
  
  "Possibly," I considered, getting up from my crouch to stretch my legs and take a sip of coffee from my thermos. "They"d probably need to send Oni Lee to establish a foothold." I walked in a circle across the rooftop as I thought, shaking the stiffness out of my ankles.
  
  "Sounds like fun to me," Dirty Rotter chortled.
  
  I was thinking of a response when I felt something strange at the very edge of my radius. When I stood on the west side of the building, it seemed like some of my insects had gone blind, their poor senses registering no light at all, while also finding their movements slowed and hampered by something.
  
  Curious, I took a running jump onto the next building over, rolling with the landing and coming up in a ready crouch.
  
  I could sense more of it now- more bugs that were within an area of total darkness. When I marshalled a few dozen flies to dive in, they had to beat their wings harder against the air, but they soon landed on walls and an open door. There was a gentle current pouring out of the door and into the street, slightly cool.
  
  I quickly rappelled back to the ground and went back to my bike, flicking the engine to suppress sound as I dialled the PRT, but didn"t call yet. I wanted to see this first.
  
  As my control radius began to cover the anomaly, I sensed more and more strange things. The darkness covered and partially filled an entire building, with dozens of people inside. My flies could taste their cologne and perfume and liquor in the air and in their sweat.
  
  More pressing were the three- somethings. The largest room was mostly clear of darkness, and they stood in the middle, pointed in different directions. The flies landed on them, and the sensations were of hard spikes and rough hide, smelling of overripe meat. They were alive, and big, and dangerous, and one person stood next to them without fear. I landed a fly on the hard plastic covering her face, and she waved it away.
  
  When I rounded the corner, the entire street seemed to be filled with darkness at about hip height, more of it blanketed over a building, steadily oozing out from it. It was hard to judge how much of it there was, because there was absolutely no light coming from it- it was just pure blackness, like closing your eyes in a windowless cellar.
  
  "Definitely time to make that call," Tactical said. "God, would you look at the scale of it! Total visual concealment across a whole street; imagine what you could do with it."
  
  I activated bloodsight as I told the PRT operator my location and what I was seeing, leaving out what I was learning through my insects. Fortunately the slowly spreading darkness couldn"t block Vladimir"s vision power, so the silhouettes of everyone inside the building jumped into view, along with the three massive beasts I"d noticed.
  
  I slowly wheeled the bike through the low fog- it was surreal to see everything below my waist disappear completely into total darkness.
  
  Closer, I could make out the blood silhouettes more clearly- the huddled civilians, the grotesque trio of beasts, a couple of men down on the floor- and a couple of figures in the back, moving with hurried motions and they seemed to grab unseen objects and dump them onto a spot on the floor. I was willing to bet anything there was a big duffel bag there.
  
  "Well, shit," Quarrel said. "I guess Butcher was right- robbing a club"s definitely the faster way to make money."
  
  I pulled the air cannon off my back and flipped the safety. Then, out of curiosity, I pointed it at the darkness along the street and fired.
  
  The pulse of air shot out, and it cut a path through the vantablack fog, throwing ridges of it up and to the side of the shot"s path before hitting the street, leaving a ragged hole in the darkness that showed the road markings underneath.
  
  Inside, one of the moving figures straightened up- taller than the ones on either side of him. I guided a fly onto the top of his head, and felt a smooth helmet, with currents of darkness slowly oozing out of it.
  
  This Saturday night was definitely shaping up to be more wild than I"d expected.
  
  6.4
  Past Midnight, Saturday 5th March, North Downtown
  
  "So we"ve got one in a helmet making the darkness, and probably-a-girl with fuck-off huge monsters, plus three others," Anchorage counted.
  
  "There"s also the hostages," Flinch said.
  
  "Yeah, but they"re not going to fight us," Anchorage replied, confused.
  
  "I mean we have to k-keep them safe."
  
  There was a long pause. "Right. Yeah. Totally."
  
  I rolled my eyes inside my helmet, keeping the air cannon trained on the doorway while my bike idled under me.
  
  The capes inside had hastily finished up when the darkness guy had felt my shot, hauling two bags out into the main room. The beast person stroked the snouts of the creatures while the other villains hefted the bags onto them.
  
  As much as the Butchers were raring to jump in and start cracking skulls, I forced myself to stay outside. The beasts alone would be a problem for me to deal with, let alone whatever other powers the group might have. It"d be better for me to let them move away from the hostages before starting a fight.
  
  Not to mention the Protectorate would be sending somebody as soon as possible thanks to my phone call- time was on my side here.
  
  In the meantime, I could keep slipping bugs in here and there to try and pick up details. Besides Beast Master and Dark Helmet-
  
  "Ooh, Spaceballs!" Firecracker interrupted. "We"ve so got to watch that again!"
  
  "Later," I snapped. "We"ve still got a fight to deal with."
  
  -the other three villains had their hair exposed, which gave me more to work with. One had short curls, and their blood silhouette seemed more masculine than the others. The other two were girls- the only real distinction I could make out without more insects was that one had much greasier hair than the other.
  
  "And we still don"t have a clue who they are or what they can do," Tactical grumbled. "We"re going into this situation virtually blind."
  
  Bearskin nodded. "It doesn"t get any better than this," he agreed with a cheerful growl.
  
  I considered their words, even as they started bickering, then unlocked my flail from its place on my belt. The beasts inside were as tall as horses, but much broader- the cannon probably wouldn"t do anything to them, so I"d need a backup.
  
  Inside, the villains were mounting up, hauling themselves onto the beasts. The unknown girl went behind the beast"s master, and the curly boy accompanied the man in the helmet, leaving the greasy-haired girl to mount the third creature by herself. It seemed odd to me- the beasts were all carrying a bag of loot, and Helmet and Master were both larger than Greasy, so why did she get a steed of her own-
  
  Quarrel shouted at me just as the beasts began to make for the door "Line of sight!"
  
  I gunned the engine and veered away from the door as the creatures stampeded toward it. I heard thundering footfalls behind me as the creatures hit the road, and pulled the bike into a slide to turn. There was a moment where the bike made it out from the layer of darkness covering the road, and the squeal of tyres suddenly became louder. I pulled my cape off as the bike came to a halt, snapping it out into a shield.
  
  I got my first real look at the villains and their rides- three monsters, built along the lines of a tiger, but far larger and brawnier. No skin or fur or scales covered them; instead they were a mess of exposed muscle and spikes of bone. Their heads were elongated, and their muzzles were packed with irregular teeth that jutted out at weird angles, yet were all sharp-looking.
  
  Dirty Rotter whistled appreciatively. "Fuck me, look at the size of "em!" he marvelled. "They make Animos look scrawny!"
  
  The riders didn"t seem to have a theme to them- I immediately picked out the beast"s master, a stocky person in a cheap plastic dog mask, with a thick jacket and heavy boots. I could see the unknown girl behind her, leaning past her to see, blonde hair hanging loose.
  
  "Dogs," Nemean muttered. "If those things are dogs..."
  
  The darkness villain was the largest- a man in black motorcycle leathers, with a matching helmet sculpted to look like a skull in the front. More of that darkness was pouring off him, blurring his outline- I couldn"t make out the boy behind him at all, only the yellow rod across Skull-guy"s chest as the smaller boy held onto him.
  
  The third dog had one rider- a girl with greasy black hair that hung almost to her waist. Her costume consisted of pockets, mostly- a sleeveless jacket, a belt hung with pouches, and baggy cargo pants. Her only concession to a costume was the bandanna covering everything from the eyes down, but I could see something small and silvery passing in front of her-
  
  Danger sense flared in front of me. I couldn"t bring the shield up fast enough, and something clipped the side of my head hard enough to knock it around a few degrees. Just as Quarrel had thought, the girl was some kind of Blaster, riding alone so she could get a clear shot.
  
  I poked the cannon out past the edge of my shield, pointed at Pocket Girl. "Drop the money and surrender!" I bellowed.
  
  The darkness cape exploded with vantablack clouds, flooding the space between us. In less than a second I was engulfed in it, utterly blinded, only able to rely on bloodsight and the poor senses of my insects. Sound was muffled and echoing, and my movements felt a resistance in the air.
  
  I pulled the trigger on reflex, but the beasts were already in motion, and the shot just slapped against a flank as they turned tail and galloped away down the street.
  
  "Did you honestly think that was going to work?" Needler asked. I rolled my eyes at her even as I jammed the cannon back onto my belt, reattached my cape, and rammed the accelerator.
  
  The bike took off after the villains, but not fast enough- the darkness was slowing me down. The gap between me and them was closing, but only gradually.
  
  Then I burst out of the cloud, and the world exploded back into being- streetlamps lighting the night, and the thunder of the beasts paws hammering against the ground. The bike found new life too, leaping forward without encumbrance. My cape billowed out behind me from the speed.
  
  The darkness villain glanced back at the roar of my engine, then shouted something to the lone girl. She twisted from her place atop the third dog to see me and pointed an arm.
  
  I didn"t need the flare of danger sense to tell me to start dodging, swerving the bike back and forth. High-pitched cracking sounds rattled out in a staccato rhythm as whatever she was shooting at me shattered on impact with the road. I could see more of them orbiting the girl, visible as little silvery streaks zipping around her body. At one point she reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful more, little shiny balls that flew out of her hand to join the cloud circling around her.
  
  Even with the dodging, I was still narrowing the gap, almost close enough to reach out and grab the beast"s tails- they each looked like a couple of spinal cords attached end-to-end, long whips of bone and meat. I pulled the cannon off my belt again and set it to pepper-dust rounds. Tripping the creatures at this speed would almost certainly kill the riders as they were flung off, but stinging eyes and noses would slow them down.
  
  Then Pocket Girl threw her hand out- and the road ahead of me was hit by a clump of shots all at once. Flecks hit my visor and scraped across my front, and I swerved hard on instinct, struggling to steer with one hand occupied by the cannon.
  
  Darkness Guy threw out another cloud, and the bike slowed as it hit. I could still see them with bloodsight as the darkness villain shouted something and the beasts suddenly turned hard to the right.
  
  I came out of the darkness a second later, in time to see the beasts take a run at a building and leap up to latch onto its surface. Massive claws dug into the brickwork, and the creatures hauled themselves up quickly.
  
  "Magnificent," Vladimir breathed, watching the creatures make the climb with insolent ease.
  
  I checked left and right, but there weren"t any side roads or alleyways near here for me to drive down. I swung myself off the bike, barely remembering to turn the engine off, and flicked my grapplers out to fire them at the building"s roof as the creatures disappeared over the edge.
  
  The lines began to reel in, and I sprinted with them, running up the side of the building to land in a crouch on the roof.
  
  The creatures were already on the next roof as I straightened up and pulled out the cannon, flicking the selector and firing a pepper-dust shot after them; a touch of Quarrel"s power helped it arc over their heads to burst open in front of them. I didn"t wait to see if it affected them, yanking on the grip to load a new round.
  
  Behind the darkness villain, the second boy looked back, dressed in white that stood out against the black. He waved a hand at me.
  
  My leg buckled under me in a sudden spasm- the muscles jolted like they"d been electrocuted. I fell to my knees.
  
  The boy"s power? It had to be- but I didn"t have time to worry about that. I raised the cannon, still on my knees, and fired again. This time I dipped deeper into the aiming power, drawing a line straight to his back.
  
  The villains were disappearing into the distance, but I saw the boy in white wave his arm again. This time my arm spasmed, flinging the cannon out to the side. The tunnel of altered space that Quarrel"s power created strained and snapped from the sudden movement, and I barely managed to keep a grip on the cannon. By the time I looked up again, the villains were gone, only a slightly darker patch of night there to show where they"d been. They were out of range of bloodsight and my insect range.
  
  "Fuck," I growled, putting the cannon away again.
  
  "You really need to find an excuse to start using the other powers, because that was just embarrassing," Stoneknapper commented blithely. I gave him a shove and flipped my middle finger up at nothing so they could all see it.
  
  "We should get back and check on the people there," Flinch sighed. I stepped off the roof, walking back down with the grappler cables trailing behind me.
  
  The streets were quiet as I drove back to the site of the robbery. The darkness was still hanging in the air, and I went through them more slowly, keeping bloodsight on the whole time.
  
  The building came into my range soon- the hostages were moving around, and there were more people I hadn"t tagged yet. When I made it out of the last cloud of darkness, I saw a PRT van and two police cars parked outside.
  
  "Yeah, now the pigs show up," Anchorage sneered.
  
  I parked the bike and stepped off, heading for the door. As I approached, two silhouettes inside came out, revealing a PRT trooper guiding a woman in a sequinned purple dress. Her makeup had run and she was clinging to his arm as he gingerly walked down steps still obscured by the darkness.
  
  "Hey! Excuse me!"
  
  I turned to see a man in a red bodysuit waving at me. Racing stripes went down either side of it, and two more stripes met in a V at the chest.
  
  This could only be Velocity, the fastest guy in town. His power let him shift into a hyper-accelerated state that could outrun anything short of a bullet. It made sense that he"d be the first hero to respond.
  
  Muramasa checked the edge of my vision as I headed over toward Velocity. "Interesting," he noted, eyeing the subtle shape indicating a lack of armour below the belt.
  
  I flushed inside my helmet. "Oh my god Muramasa, not the time!" I shoved him into the dark with a force born of sheer embarrassment.
  
  The Butchers howled with laughter as I stepped up to Velocity. "Maybe it"s more aerodynamic!" Vladimir chortled.
  
  "Brave man," Bearskin snickered. "Imagine a nutshot at super speed!"
  
  "Elpis, right?" Velocity asked. I hastily shoved the worst offenders into the dark and cleared my throat.
  
  "Yes," I squeaked- cleared my throat and tried again. "Yes, that"s me."
  
  If Velocity did notice my fumble, he was polite enough not to react to it. "Good to meet you in person at last. Sorry it"s not under better circumstances."
  
  "Mm. I tried to chase the villains who did," I waved an arm at the lingering darkness, "all this, but they got away."
  
  "You let them get away," Needler noted snippily.
  
  Velocity folded his arms. "Yeah, they"ve done that before. They"re called the Undersiders."
  
  I frowned, then realised Velocity wouldn"t see it and opened my helmet. "I"ve never heard of them before. Are they new?"
  
  He shrugged. "Nah, they"ve been around for something like six months. It"s just that they"re low profile, small-time. This is the biggest thing we"ve seen them pull off yet, robbing a casino."
  
  I glanced at the building, still coated in darkness all over the façade. "Is that what it is? I couldn"t see."
  
  "Bold choice," Tock Tick commented. "City like this, there"s usually some proper security in gambling places. I used to be on contract to a couple, keeping their vaults locked and their booby traps stocked."
  
  "That"s part of the problem with them- Grue"s darkness gives them cover, and Hellhound"s dogs give them an escape. We"ve got close to them a couple of times, but they either vanish before we arrive, or they slip through our fingers."
  
  "Those are their names?" I asked. "Grue and Hellhound?" The latter tickled something in my memory- or rather, something in the shared memories.
  
  "That"s it." Nemean snapped her fingers. "Hellhound- I heard about her. She turns dogs into monsters, roams all over the state. I thought she could be a fit for the Teeth."
  
  Velocity kept talking even as I dipped into the memories of articles about Hellhound, trying to remember something useful. "Those are the two we know the most about. They"ve both been active a couple of years, pulled small jobs here and there. It"s the others we don"t know anything about- especially now they"ve got a fifth member we don"t even have a name for."
  
  I glanced over at the door again as more civilians were led out by armoured troopers. It was strange to see that kind of light touch in men the Butchers remembered as hardened troops fighting with batons and rubber bullets and steel-capped boots.
  
  "Did any of the civilians catch anything about them?" I asked.
  
  Velocity shrugged. "Not that I"ve heard yet- and honestly, I"m not keeping my fingers crossed. These folks weren"t expecting any more excitement than losing some money at blackjack- it"ll be a wonder if they can remember anything clearly.
  
  "Which is part of why I"m glad you"re here," he added. "You said you chased them, right? Did you get a good look at them, or see them use their powers?"
  
  "Besides darkness and dog monsters? There was one girl- long dark hair and lots of pockets. She shot some stuff at me- I don"t know what it was, but she had to pull it out of her pockets, so we know she"s not creating her own ammunition."
  
  Velocity hummed, then turned and gestured to a trooper, who jogged over like he wasn"t wearing heavy body armour. "Sergeant, can you ask the police to check the road surface? There might be some residue left over from the villains."
  
  "Yessir."
  
  "Good, thank you." Velocity turned back. "Anything else?"
  
  "There was a blonde girl- didn"t see her do anything. And there was a boy in white- I don"t know what he did exactly, but he made my leg give out and threw off my arm when I tried to shoot at them. Maybe some kind of telekinetic?"
  
  "No real firepower besides the dogs," Tactical mused, "but a good mix for thieves. Darkness for cover, the Blaster as a threat. The boy in white trips people up, and Hellhound provides the muscle slash escape route. Interesting."
  
  "Could be." Velocity paused. "When you say you tried to shoot at them..."
  
  It took a second for his meaning to click. "No, I mean with the air cannon," I said hastily, tapping the stock with a finger. "I figured I could slow them down with a net or whatever, but the kid just flicked a hand and suddenly my arm was all over the place."
  
  "Ah. Well, that"s going to be a bitch to deal with." Velocity glanced at the casino again- when I followed his gaze, it looked like some of the darkness had faded away at the edges. "I don"t know if you want to stick around and help-"
  
  "No, I"ll stay," I said, watching a man in an ill-fitting suit scramble away from his trooper escort to wrap a woman in a bear hug- presumably his wife. "I don"t think I can leave now anyway."
  
  "Thanks."
  
  Saturday 5th March, PRT Headquarters
  
  I put the cap back on the pen and stepped back. "I think that"s everything."
  
  Armsmaster nodded. "Thank you for coming in, Elpis. We needed this intel."
  
  "No problem." I looked at the whiteboard again- five columns, each with a photo printed out and taped to the top.
  
  Grue and Hellhound"s columns were the most full- in his case, he"d pulled a number of small jobs over the past three years, robbing stores and acting as a hired enforcer.
  
  In her case, she"d never had a chance at a secret identity due to demolishing her foster home two years ago, killing her foster mother and badly injuring two children. She"d lived on the streets ever since, with a number of violent crimes to the name of Rachel Lindt.
  
  Nemean hadn"t just wanted to try and recruit her for her power. The Case 53 had started her life waking up in an alleyway, and things hadn"t got much better until she"d joined the Teeth. Hellhound was the sort of young and volatile villain that Nemean tended to gravitate towards.
  
  The other three were basically ghosts- the blonde girl was named Tattletale, but other than a blurred picture that showed her costume was purple, there was nothing else.
  
  The last two didn"t even have that- no pictures, no names. Grue"s darkness had made the security cameras in the casino almost useless, and Velocity had been right to assume the civilians wouldn"t be able to give an accurate account of things.
  
  In effect, I was the one most familiar with the Undersiders, so I"d filled out a lot of the columns myself. Two telekinetics of different applications made for a tricky combination to go up against.
  
  "Maybe we should try going after this lot after we"ve dealt with Coil," Rotter mused. "Not too dangerous to fight, but ought to be a fun challenge. Eh?"
  
  "One thing at a time," Vladimir chided. "In any case, the Empire will have cooled once Coil is neutralised, and we can return to harrying them."
  
  "Man," Ironclad said, "These guys sound like a real pain in the ass." I"d brought him along because we"d agreed to meet New Wave here, and he"d insisted on a recounting of the night"s events. He"d made a good audience too, oohing and aahing in all the right places.
  
  Armsmaster nodded, as did Velocity. "They"re a slippery bunch. It"s frustrating that this-" he gestured to the half-empty board, "- is all we have on them."
  
  "We"ll learn more next time," Velocity pointed out. "We"ll just have to wait for them to pop up again."
  
  "True." Armsmaster rubbed his chin. "In the meantime, I should try to upgrade my suit"s sensors. That could help with Grue"s power at least." He shrugged. "Something for later. In the meantime, I think you two have an appointment to keep," he said, casting a glance at Ironclad and me.
  
  I checked the timepiece inside my helmet. "I guess we should go."
  
  Armsmaster made his excuses and left without a backward glance, while Velocity marched off in another direction. Ironclad unfolded his armour from the corner he"d been squatting in and followed me out of the meeting room.
  
  "You"ve got your phone?" I asked.
  
  Ironclad patted the armoured container on his hip that I"d made for him. "Check."
  
  "Alright. Check in when you can, and if anything happens-"
  
  "Fall back and call you," Ironclad listed. "Come on, I"ll be fine."
  
  "It hasn"t even been a week," I countered, leading the way down the hallway.
  
  "Ah, you worry too much," Firecracker said easily. "Kid"s wearing half a tank, and he"s got way more backup this time."
  
  "I didn"t ask for your opinion," I retorted. I was starting to have second thoughts about letting Ironclad go along with New Wave"s outing. I knew the hero family was capable, but I still wanted to come along and watch his back.
  
  Of course, I"d already made plans to visit the hospital again, with decks of cards for Bearskin"s tricks and a few little gizmos I"d Tinkered up to wow the kids. I couldn"t back out of that at the last minute.
  
  Even so...
  
  Flinch sighed. "Taylor, I know you"re still t-torn up about Spitfire, but you don"t need to coddle the boy. You"ve talked with him, he knows what he wants- he"ll be okay."
  
  Whatever I was about to say was cut off when a crimson blur zipped out of a side corridor and snapped to a halt in front of us. It took a second for Velocity to decelerate into a clear image.
  
  "Oh good, you"re still here," he said in a rush. "Listen, I know you"ve got that thing with New Wave to get to, but I saw as I was passing through the Image department and I figured I should say something, so-" He pointed an arm back the way he"d come.
  
  Like a lot of the PRT building, the corridor was grey, boring, standard office fare. A noticeboard halfway along was the only touch of excitement- the rest was doors labelled with whatever they contained.
  
  Just past the noticeboard, one door was open, and someone was standing next to it. A girl with curly brown hair tumbling down around the plain mask she wore, and a t-shirt that said "I"m Full Of Bad Ideas!"
  
  "Look, I wasn"t there for whatever happened between you guys," Velocity said, "but I figured you should talk about it. So I"ll, uh, I"ll leave you to it." He nodded awkwardly and turned away.
  
  I swallowed past the hard lump in my throat. "Spitfire?"
  
  She took a step forward. "Hi."
  
  "...You"re looking well."
  
  "Thanks."
  
  Ironclad banged his hands together with a ringing crash. "Alright, elephant in the room, I"ll just say it. Do you wanna talk about what happened or what?"
  
  Spitfire glared at him. "Missed you too, jackass."
  
  Quarrel sighed. "Go talk to her. Otherwise you"ll be moping again, and I can"t take any more of that."
  
  "Is there somewhere we can talk privately?" I asked. With bloodsight I could see a couple of people hiding just past the doorway Spitfire had come out, leaning towards the door to try and eavesdrop.
  
  "I think this one"s empty," Spitfire said, opening a door on the other side of the corridor.
  
  "Oh yeah, that looks really secure," Tactical snarked.
  
  Anchorage rolled her eyes. "Swear to God, man, is there anything that"ll shut you up?"
  
  I pushed Tactical just out of hearing range as I followed Spitfire. The room inside was stacked with rolls of fabric and boxes of pins, mannequins with pieces of armour on them and sketches of various outfits on the walls.
  
  "Hm. So this is where they design hero costumes." Needler eyed up a couple of the design sketches. "Interesting."
  
  Spitfire opened another door to the side. "There"s a changing room in here. How"s that?"
  
  "Sure."
  
  It was surprisingly spacious, with a bench and mirrors and a wall of cubbys and coathooks. Still, it wasn"t meant for two regular people and someone as big as Ironclad. After trying to fit himself through the door and failing repeatedly, much to the Butchers" amusement, he simply dropped most of the metal on the floor and walked in with only a basic layer of metal covering him. The helmet only emphasised his real size- it sat on his head, the edges reaching to each shoulder, so it looked like he just didn"t have a neck.
  
  Once the doors were closed, Spitfire sat down on the bench against the wall and drummed her fingers on her knees.
  
  "So," she said.
  
  I screwed up my courage and forced myself to talk. "I"m sorry."
  
  Spitfire"s head snapped up.
  
  "You were right. You needed someone to take care of you, and I wasn"t cutting it. You were living in a motel, and you weren"t going to school, and I wasn"t opening up to you about..." I laughed humourlessly, "anything at all. I just threw you in the deep end and I never thought to talk to you about it because I just assumed you were okay with it."
  
  Spitfire stood up. "Hold up a second."
  
  I almost bit my tongue clamping my jaw shut.
  
  Spitfire took a second to speak again. "Okay. So that"s true- like, you were kind of dragging me along for a lot of shit-"
  
  I winced. "Ouch," Stoneknapper agreed.
  
  "-but I probably should have said all that stuff before it all went to shit. Just- I was scared, and hurt, and I know I got healed but still, and somebody said Victor can drain people"s emotional control or something, and-" Spitfire tossed her hands up, "I was all fucked up. I was gonna talk to you about that stuff after the mission anyway, but I just kinda had a meltdown.
  
  "Don"t get me wrong," she said quickly, "I still stand by what I said. But," she sighed and sat down again, "you guys were my friends. And even if I"d joined the Wards normally, I wouldn"t have wanted to leave like that."
  
  I"d come in here braced for an argument or some shouting- now Spitfire"s words had left me utterly flat-footed.
  
  Ironclad raised a finger- his own finger, not one of the fingers on his gauntlets. "Soooo, where do we go from here? Because I"d kinda like it if we were friends again."
  
  Spitfire shrugged. "I"m gonna need time. But they"ve got me set up with a therapist, and they"re sorting out a foster family so I won"t just have to live in the Wards quarters, so... Yeah, maybe we can take another shot at being friends."
  
  Vladimir"s eyebrows went as high as they could- and since it was purely a mental image, that was pretty far. "Well shit, this is a lot calmer than I thought this was going to go."
  
  I coughed gently. "Does that include me?"
  
  Spitfire looked at me. "Yeah. I mean, I"m not a hundred percent right now, but yeah. Eventually."
  
  My shoulders slumped with relief. "Okay. I"m okay with that. Sorry, I just didn"t think you wanted anything to do with me, I mean, you didn"t answer my texts or anything-"
  
  "Texts?"
  
  I stopped mid-babble. "Yeah? I sent you an apology a couple of days ago."
  
  "Was that to my old phone?"
  
  "Yeah?" I asked, unsure what she meant.
  
  "The old phone that was in my costume?"
  
  "Yeah?"
  
  "The costume that totally burnt off and melted everything in it?"
  
  "Oh my god," Tock Tick groaned. "We"re idiots, all of us!"
  
  I buried my face in my hands, agreeing with Tock"s sentiment.
  
  I heard Spitfire snicker, and then Ironclad chuckled, and then the two of them started laughing as I gave a little heartfelt groan. The Butchers writhed in embarrassment that we"d all missed a very simple detail.
  
  Eventually their laughter wound down, and I uncurled a fraction.
  
  "Okay," Ironclad giggled, hiccupping a little, "do we need to talk about anything else?"
  
  Spitfire patted her chest a couple of times and stood up. "Actually, yeah." She turned her gaze on me again. "I want to be friends again. You guys were fun to hang out with, I like you. But if we"re going to do this, we"re going to need to actually talk to each other about shit, and listen. I don"t want us to make the same dumb mistakes all over again."
  
  I chewed my lip for a long while as I thought. It wasn"t unreasonable to ask me to talk more, to open up. If I ignored how that brought me closer to being found out.
  
  On the other hand, I didn"t want to lose the positive parts of my life just to stay safer. I wanted to keep my friendship with them- and to do that, I needed to show I meant it. There were some things I was overdue to tell them. "Guys? What do you think?"
  
  "The choice is yours in the end, Taylor," Muramasa said.
  
  Rotter cackled. "Hey, the sooner you get found out, the sooner we get back home-" That got him pushed into the darkness immediately, but he laughed the whole way down.
  
  Flinch smiled. "This is very brave of you, Taylor."
  
  I breathed out. "Okay." I started bringing insects in toward me, setting them to search for anything like a lens or a microphone. I didn"t need the PRT finding out about this.
  
  "Alright," Spitfire said, relaxing a tad. "Now-"
  
  "Wait a second." I raised my hands to my chin and snapped the catches on my helmet. "I should have done this before, but you deserve to know now at least. Both of you," I added, nodding to Ironclad as I unfastened my helmet from the neck plating and lifted it off, placing it out of the way in one of the cubbies.
  
  "Holy shit," Ironclad muttered as I rolled the neck plating down and found the seam of my mask where it joined the undersuit. Before I could second-guess myself, I grabbed it and pulled upward.
  
  The world blurred as the lenses came away from my eyes- the eyebrow frames pinched as they came away, and I was pretty sure I"d pulled out one of my hairpins along the way. Still, all that did nothing to lessen the twin gasps of shock I heard.
  
  I tossed my mask next to my helmet and opened a hidden compartment on my belt, pulling out a spare pair of glasses. Spitfire"s poleaxed expression came into focus as I put them on.
  
  "Maybe this is too late to really mean much," I said quietly, "but I hope it counts for something."
  
  Spitfire stepped in close to peer at my face. "Holy shit," she murmured, "you"re young. How old are you?"
  
  I winced. "16 in June."
  
  "16?!" Spitfire exploded. "I thought you were like 20! Are you still in school?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Oh my god..." Spitfire clutched at her hair frantically. "Oh my shit, this- but you were so experienced! They way you talked... And you"re my age? This is nuts!"
  
  "Well, at least she"s taking it well!" Firecracker sniggered.
  
  "What"s your name?" Spitfire demanded. "Don"t tell me it"s something like Jane or whatever, because I couldn"t take knowing that the biggest badass I know is really called Jane Smith or something."
  
  I blinked. "No? My name"s-"
  
  "Taylor Hebert."
  
  If my head had turned any faster I"d have broken my neck. As it was, I had to push my glasses back up the bridge of my nose to stare at Ironclad. "What?"
  
  Ironclad... fell apart. The loose layer of ball bearings simply dropped to the floor and rolled all over, while the larger pieces rattled as they hit.
  
  What was left was a skinny teenage boy in dark hoodie and jeans, with a makeshift mask pulled down over his face. It looked less like a balaclava and more like a woolly hat with eyeholes cut out of it, and as he pulled it off-
  
  "You think you"ve got problems? I"ve been going to school with her," said a familiar voice in a tone of half-laughing disbelief.
  
  "Tarquin?!" I shouted in sync with half the Butchers. The other half were swearing up a storm, or in Firecracker"s case, laughing hysterically.
  
  It was definitely him- same pale face, same messy dark hair, same dark circles under the eyes from staying up too late playing video games- or had that just been his excuse for going out at night to find criminals to beat up? In this small room I could even make out his scent with a few deep sniffs.
  
  The biggest difference right now was his gobsmacked expression as he stared back at me.
  
  "You know each other?!" Spitfire shrieked. "And you didn"t know? What next, is your dad secretly Hero or something?"
  
  Tock Tick hissed through his teeth. "Bad taste."
  
  "How the hell did we not figure out we were working with the same kid the whole time?" Butcher demanded. "This is some bullshit!"
  
  "This is far too much of a coincidence," Tactical declared. "The boy"s been playing us- we need to find out what he knows."
  
  As much as I wanted to shout Tactical down for that, I hadn"t got this far without some necessary paranoia, so I flicked to bloodsight and breathed in deeply. Nemean had been able to pick up strong emotions through people"s scent- fear, anger, lust and such. I wasn"t anywhere near as good, but obviously, but Tarquin"s scent seemed genuinely muddled, and his heart was pounding a panicked beat. If he was faking, then he was doing it impossibly well.
  
  "So I guess I"ve got more explaining to do," I managed.
  
  "Yeah, kinda," T said weakly.
  
  "Okay, stop, hold on," Spitfire said, waving her hands. "You"re my age," she pointed at me, "you"re also my age," pointed at Tarquin, "and you go to school together, but you didn"t know each other"s identities until right now?" She collapsed onto the bench. "What the fuck. The fuck what."
  
  Flies on the outer door handle registered movement- someone had just opened the door to the design room. I had to fight down the urge to draw a weapon.
  
  There was a knock on the changing room door. "Um, excuse me?" came a muffled voice.
  
  The other two jumped like they"d been hooked up to the mains. "Yes?" I called.
  
  "Sorry to bother you, but New Wave is here, they"re asking for Ironclad? And the costume team really needs to finish up with Spitfire?"
  
  "Son of a bitch," T swore.
  
  "We can talk more later," I said. "I"ll explain everything, I promise."
  
  "You better," he muttered, bending down to pick up the pieces of his armour. They stuck on to his body as he placed them, while the ball bearings at his feet ran up his legs to spread out over his body. "God, I"m not going to be able to think of anything else now."
  
  "You better explain it to me too," Spitfire said. After a second she sighed and stood up again, fiddling with something at the back of her head. The mask came off, elastic straps falling to the sides.
  
  Underneath, Spitfire"s face was someone I could have passed in the street- brown eyes, long nose, a smattering of freckles across the cheeks. "My real name"s Emily," she admitted.
  
  I smiled involuntarily. "Nice to meet you Emily."
  
  "My parents call me Tarquin," T confessed, rolling his hat-mask back onto his face, "but everyone else calls me T."
  
  "Oh...kay?" Spitfire- Emily, and somehow she seemed to have a very "Emily" face- looked askance at me. I shrugged and picked up my own mask.
  
  "You"ve still got my number?" I asked, switching glasses for mask and fiddling with the eyebrows. "Give me a call and we can meet up. I"ll buy you lunch, and I"ll tell you whatever you want to know."
  
  Spitfire put her mask back on as well, adjusting the straps. "Wish you could tell me now," she grumbled.
  
  I sighed. "Me too." I slotted my helmet back onto my head and redid the clasps, rolled my neck from side to side, then bounced the eyebrows to make sure they worked right. Up, down, left, right. Spitfire giggled for a second at my antics.
  
  "Hey." I laid a hand on her shoulder. "Thanks for giving me another chance."
  
  Spitfire patted my hand. "Well, you gave me one," she admitted.
  
  The knock came again.
  
  "Alright, we"re coming!" Tarquin- Ironclad- shouted.
  
  On impulse, I stepped forward and wrapped Spitfire in a hug, gently so as not to squish her against the armour. I"d forgotten the hint of something like gasoline or napalm on her breath, but it was clear now. Her hair smelled different too- washed with something better than horrible motel shampoo.
  
  I stepped back after a second. "The Wards are lucky to have you," I blurted.
  
  I could see the muscles in her jaw move as she smiled under the mask. "Thanks," Spitfire said softly.
  
  "So I"m opening the door now," Ironclad said, one hand on the handle. "Three-two-one-"
  
  The harried young man on the other side stepped back as Ironclad opened the door and stepped onto the pile of his discarded armour- it moved up his body as his power grasped onto the pieces and pulled them into a coherent form. In a few seconds he was back to his usual massive self.
  
  "So are you going to move your big tin tuchus so we can get out or what?" Spitfire asked.
  
  It took more shuffling and excuse-me"s to get all of us back into the corridor. The intern waved for Spitfire to follow him and took off without waiting to see if she was following.
  
  Spitfire lingered for a second though, fiddling with her feet. "I"ll see you around," she mumbled, and shuffled off.
  
  At the end of the corridor, she looked back. I raised a hand and waved a little; Ironclad gave a thumbs-up. Spitfire waved back.
  
  Then she rounded the corner and was gone.
  
  "She"ll be alright," Nemean said comfortingly.
  
  "Yeah," I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat, "I know."
  
  6.5
  Saturday 5th March, Hebert Residence
  
  Dad looked up from the kitchen table when I came through the back door; some papers were spread out in front of him, and he had a notepad open with some writing.
  
  "Taylor," he said, heaving himself out of his chair with a weary smile. "Good day?"
  
  I slipped my bag off my shoulder and left it at the door. "It was good. A bit hectic in places, but overall- good." I stepped into a brief hug, then made for the fridge once we separated.
  
  "So what was hectic about the library?" Dad asked while I briefly conferred with the Butchers, then pulled out some ham that needed eating.
  
  I dropped the ham on the chopping board and got the bread out of the cupboard. "Well, it wasn"t the library itself. You remember I told you about that online friend?"
  
  Dad frowned. "The one you had a falling out with?"
  
  "Bit of an understatement," Rotter said blithely as I set two slices on the board. I gave him the finger and a shove, buttering the bread quickly.
  
  "Well..." I hesitated for a second, before Stoneknapper spoke up to help me "translate". "I stumbled onto her profile while I was online, and we started talking again. We were actually thinking of meeting up for lunch sometime, talk face to face."
  
  Dad brightened up. "That"s great to hear. I"m glad you girls patched things up. Although if you"re meeting someone you met online, I"m dropping you off the first time, alright?"
  
  "Fair enough. There"s some real freaks on the web," Tock Tick conceded.
  
  "coughroleplayercough!" Vladimir "said".
  
  "Oh fuck you!" Tock snapped. "We don"t even breathe you pretentious prick!"
  
  "Well, she sent me a picture so I"ll recognise her when we meet, so I"m pretty sure she"s not some creep in a van, but fair." I slapped my sandwich together and picked it up. "What"s with the paperwork?"
  
  Dad"s face fell. "I got a call from the guys working today. Some goons were sniffing around the office, making noise about "be an awful shame if something happened". They ran off when someone called 911, but we might have to look into upping our security."
  
  I stopped with my mouth half-open, then lowered the sandwich. "Well crap."
  
  "Language," Dad said absently, picking a sheet up.
  
  "I"m kinda surprised the dockworkers aren"t already in a protection racket," Firecracker said. "There was some real money coming through back in the day."
  
  "Yes, but that was before the bay was blocked by dozens of ships," Needler pointed out. "I doubt there"s enough money now to bother harassing a large group of workers who all handle crowbars and heavy objects as a matter of course."
  
  Anchorage shrugged. "Well, somebody"s bothering now."
  
  "Did they say who it was? Which gang, I mean?"
  
  Dad looked up from the paper with a look of mild surprise. "Couple of Asian guys in red and green, so definitely the Azn Bad Boys. Why do you ask?"
  
  Tactical threw me an excuse. "Well, I heard New Wave"s been focusing on the Empire lately. If it was them we could just hope the Empire gets distracted by that and leaves the DWA alone."
  
  "You heard that stuff on the internet?"
  
  I finally took a bite of my sandwich. "School actually," I said half-truthfully. "Glory Girl, Shielder and Panacea all go to Arcadia. They don"t talk about cape stuff a lot, but it always becomes prime gossip."
  
  "Good cover," Flinch said.
  
  Dad smiled softly. "It"s still strange to think you"re going to school with superheroes. I"ve never been close to a cape in my life."
  
  The Butchers started laughing so hard at that that I didn"t trust myself to respond. Instead I took another bite of my sandwich and moved to look at the papers over his shoulder, while my insects picked up their movements and buzzed in concert with my emotions.
  
  "Do you guys think it"d be believable if I told Dad that New Wave just happened to overhear me talking about this?"
  
  "Just cut out the middle man," Bearskin said. "You can always have Elpis swing by to scare people off. And that way we get some more action."
  
  "Nah, that"s no fun," Quarrel said. "We"ve got Umpire for fucking with Coil, Cullet for the Empire- make a new persona for scaring off the ABB. More room to spread the powers out."
  
  I paused mid-chew. "That"s not a bad idea," I admitted.
  
  "I still think we should have called it Libensky," Stoneknapper pouted.
  
  Muramasa groaned. "Stoneknapper, you are the only one who knows and cares about a glass artist. Cullet is obscure enough and better sounding."
  
  "To you maybe."
  
  The Butchers immediately started brainstorming new ideas, bickering over what powers to use for it, who had already had their powers used, ideas for the costume. I listened to the high points while I leaned on Dad"s shoulder and pointed out what I could.
  
  Early hours of Sunday 6th March, Downtown
  
  The army made their way across the terrain, over peaks and valleys, spread out to avoid detection. It was a long march to their destination, but they did not falter. The objective was almost in sight now.
  
  From the point of view of an insect, life was full of action. A few thousand ants made up the body of the group, while flies followed overhead, scouting for cameras or sensors to avoid.
  
  "This is taking forever," Firecracker whined. "Why not just drop a gas bomb down the vents, let them cough their lungs out?"
  
  "That"s disgusting," I said flatly, double-checking the listening device for tonight. The other devices I"d used for Coil"s safehouses and hideouts had been smaller and less complex. All I"d had to do was plant them in a nearby wall with Stoneknapper"s matter-shaping fizz and wait for results.
  
  Not so this- Coil"s base was too big a find for me to risk detection by getting too close. This device was cylindrical, tipped with a drill bit at one end and a series of grips along its length, about the size of a toilet roll tube. All it needed was a place to start.
  
  Ants scoured a patch of ground directly over the room where Coil"s blood silhouette was sitting, typing away at a keyboard. Flies checked further afield for any surprises and came up empty. No camera lenses, no microphones, no glass or metal or plastic besides girders and construction equipment.
  
  I now felt that I could send in the muscle- a squadron of cockroaches, carrying on their backs what Tock Tick persisted in referring to as the snitch drill.
  
  "And I maintain that it"s a good name," the Tinker declared. "I"d like to see you come up with better."
  
  Vladimir shrugged. "The Tunnelling Tattler?"
  
  "Informant excavator?" Anchorage volunteered.
  
  "It doesn"t matter," I said, sending the cockroaches off across the gravel. "It"s getting melted down once I don"t need it anymore."
  
  "Boo, spoilsport," Dirty Rotter said, blowing a raspberry.
  
  I rolled my eyes as the roaches swarmed over the lot. It was strange to think just how much use I could get out of a few dozen vermin I"d collected out of a garbage can.
  
  I kept an eye on the soldiers underground with bloodsight while the cockroach squadron closed in. No signs of an alert or anything unusual- Coil himself was sat in his office. It would have been faster to throw it and guide it to the right place with Quarrel"s aiming power, but that had seemed far too obvious for me, even in the middle of the night.
  
  Once the roaches had the drill in the right spot, I manoeuvred them to stand the drill upright, drill bit pointed into the ground. A small sensor was tripped once it hit vertical, extending a tripod from the drill"s outer casing.
  
  The drill pressed into the ground and began to spin, quickly detaching from the tripod and boring through the dirt. The grips along its sides would help it push down through the ground until it reached a set depth, while it unspooled a wire behind it.
  
  "Very nice," Tock Tick said. "I never got around to making something quite like this myself- similar stuff, yes, but not like this."
  
  Half the cockroaches carried the tripod back to me, while the rest shifted the spoil around and shuffled bits of gravel over it to hide where the drill had been. A single ant perched on the drill"s back end relayed its progress to me as its movement slowed, switching from the initial high-speed tunnelling to an almost silent grinding descent.
  
  Finally it came to a halt just shy of the ceiling of Coil"s office. The drill bit split apart and retracted, and a touch sensor pressed against the thin bit of concrete.
  
  I"d designed the drill so that I could swap the storage disks out with teams of insects, but I"d had the time to build a second function into it by cannibalising a cell phone. It was far cruder than my usual work- I"d essentially stripped off the casing, the screen, and the buttons, then wired what was left into the touch sensor and the wire antenna that extended up through the hole.
  
  "Calling: The snake in his hole," Stoneknapper quipped as I hit the speed dial on a burner phone. It took a second for the call to connect- then I heard the slightly-muffled sounds of a keyboard clacking, a mouse clicking.
  
  Tactical suddenly snapped his fingers. "Got it. We"ll call the gizmo The Mole."
  
  Tock Tick frowned. "Shit, that"s good."
  
  I smiled to myself and settled back in the alleyway across from the construction lot. Earphones plugged into the phone let me listen hands-free, and then I pulled a book out of my bag and settled in. I could always retrieve the recordings later, but for now I wanted to settle in and see if I could overhear something useful. In the meantime, the duffel bag I carried when dressed as Umpire had plenty of room for a thermos, snacks, and reading material.
  
  The Butchers continued to bicker quietly as I worked my way through a science fiction novel about an AI stuck in a human body, on a quest for vengeance. Mostly they were comparing ideas for the anti-ABB persona.
  
  "Claw blades," Muramasa suggested. "They will work well with Nemean"s techniques and my power."
  
  "What size are we thinking?" Needler asked. "Box cutters, or steak knives? Or just full Freddy Krueger?"
  
  "How about we make "em look rusty?" Rotter said. "That"ll go well with mine. Then add some sacking for the costume, make it look real grimy."
  
  "And what, go around like some cut-rate horror movie monster?" Quarrel sneered.
  
  "Yeah. Stalk around, pick "em off one by one, leave the last bunch fillin" their boots."
  
  "Ooooh," Butcher rumbled. "That does sound good. But what do we use for a name?"
  
  I idly munched on a snack bar while they tossed names around. This was about as peaceful as it got- abandoned streets, the Butchers behaving themselves, and a good book. Even the sounds of Coil"s keyboard was soothing, like an ASMR track.
  
  That made it so jarring when I heard Coil speak for the first time in an hour. "Captains, my office."
  
  Flinch inhaled sharply. "Here we go..."
  
  I slipped my bookmark in and turned back in the direction of the base. The blood silhouettes were pretty small from this distance, but I could make out patterns of movement, see several figures making their way towards the one sitting man.
  
  I heard a heavy thunk, like a thick door opening, and footsteps loud enough for the microphone to pick up. Then silence, as a line of people stood at parade rest in front of Coil.
  
  For a second, a memory sparked- one of Tactical"s, or some combination of the thousands of times his father had made him wait just like that while the old man did some paperwork or poured himself a drink or whatever trick he used to let the boy stew before actually telling him why he"d been called in.
  
  I shook my head hard and focused on the present, tactfully ignoring Tactical"s muttered curses. I didn"t need to pry into his childhood; I already had an unfortunately clear picture as it was.
  
  Without preamble, Coil spoke. "We have a possible new asset. I want a rotating schedule so that we can be ready to acquire her at a moment"s notice."
  
  "A kidnapping," Bearskin rumbled. "This is gonna be a bitch to handle."
  
  "We will have to find the opportune time," Coil continued, "as the target appears to be a precog- that is, one who can predict the future to some degree, in this case quite a high degree. We will need to ensure that there are as few variables in play as possible, and create a scenario in which she has minimal chance of escape."
  
  "A precog?" Tactical swore. "We need to take this guy down before that happens. If he gets a precog to go with his own bullshit, we"ll never catch him."
  
  Coil rattled off an address in the nicer part of town. "We will perform trial runs to get an estimate of travel times between the headquarters and her house. Factor in your best guess of how long it will take to find and subdue her. Now, questions?"
  
  A few hands went up. "Jensen."
  
  The hand on the far right went down. "Sir, should we expect a fight? If the precog can use her power in a fight, subduing her could be complicated."
  
  "She cannot properly use her power in active combat, as far as I am aware. In any case, the target is a 12-year old girl, so I expect you will have no trouble in restraining her."
  
  "THE FUCK?" Nemean roared in sudden fury. My fingernails burst into claws, punching through the tips of my gloves; my teeth lengthened into sharp points, long enough that my jaw grew a little to give them room.
  
  Coil was still talking to his captains like he hadn"t just casually admitted he was ordering the abduction of a preteen girl. "Thanks to our remaining sources, we know there are some upcoming dates when several of the Protectorate will be away from the city. Additional distractions to occupy the remainder should provide a suitable window of opportunity."
  
  Nemean"s rage was like a hot coal in my head. "Enough with the clever plans," she snarled. "Let"s just go in there and pull his head off."
  
  I scraped my claws down the wall, gouging long cuts into the bricks. My teeth creaked as I clenched my jaw.
  
  "I want to," I rasped, "...but I can"t." I pushed Nemean down before she could object, and her absence helped me to rein myself in and start retracting my claws.
  
  "Oh come on!" Vladimir bellowed. "He"s going after a child, that"s worth some maiming at least! Get in there!"
  
  "I"m going to smash my way into his lair," I said, clenching my fists as my nails became blunt again. "I"m going to punch my way through his mercs, especially the captains; I"m going to trash his base beyond repair. And I"m going to drag him out into the light so he can be thrown in the deepest hole I can manage.
  
  "But not yet," I said over their objections, working my jaw as I shrank my teeth back to normal. "I"m going to get everything lined up so there"s no way the bastard can slip away."
  
  I took out my cape phone and selected from its small selection of extras. It didn"t have a camera or a touch-screen, but it could record audio, and I needed a copy of this right away.
  
  My talks with Ironclad and Spitfire were going to be more full than I"d thought.
  
  Monday 7th March, Arcadia High School
  
  Tarquin was tapping his foot impatiently- or maybe it was anxiety. The way he leaned against the wall with his arms folded could have supported either interpretation.
  
  "Relax, T," I said, monitoring Amy"s latest tracker insect- a fly in this case. It was closing in on the graffiti-filled niche I"d used time and again for clandestine conversations.
  
  T shrugged one shoulder. "I"m fine. Just not sure why you invited her."
  
  "I said I"d fill you in on everything. That includes the people who know who I am. If you don"t want to unmask to her, I can tell her."
  
  "Nah, I"m fine with that. Might as well get to know the miracle healer."
  
  Even with Tarquin saying that, I was still nervous. I"d checked with both him and Amy about introducing them to each other, and I"d spent some time going over details with Amy so we had an answer for any questions that might pop up, but that wasn"t enough to make my paranoia go away.
  
  Footsteps approached. I recognised them- Amy never picked up her heels, so her steps always had a scrape to them as her shoes brushed against the ground.
  
  The scrape-step-scrape-step paused just around the corner. "Are you there?"
  
  "No," I said sarcastically.
  
  Amy came around the corner then, immediately turning to look at Tarquin. Her eyes looked him up and down for a second.
  
  "Hmm." Her mouth twisted thoughtfully, making her bottom lip stick out. "World Issues, right?"
  
  Tarquin straightened up slightly, eyebrows raised. "Yeah, that"s me. Tarquin, but everybody calls me T."
  
  "I thought you"d be taller."
  
  T pushed himself to a standing position with a minimal amount of effort and raised his chin to show the two inches of height he had on Amy. "Tall enough."
  
  "Aww, they"re bonding," Firecracker said in a falsely soppy voice.
  
  Amy let out an amused huff. "Well, nice to meet you face to face at last."
  
  "Same to you. Also, it"s kind of weird how many heroes go to this school."
  
  "Yeah; you, Taylor, my family, and absolutely nobody else," Amy said, poker-faced.
  
  "Come on Amy," I said, "Everyone in town knows there"s Wards at Arcadia."
  
  Amy turned the poker face on me. "Really."
  
  "That"s not bad," Bearskin admitted. "We should play cards with her some time, see what happens."
  
  "So how did you guys know each other?" Tarquin asked, changing the subject.
  
  "I figured out Taylor"s age when I healed her after the whole Merchant-Teeth-Empire chase. Once that was out in the open, she told me the rest."
  
  I nodded. "I figured I"d get more respect if I lied about my age. Plus it"d keep people from trying to push me into the Wards. Amy didn"t give a crap about any of that, so I decided to tell her the truth."
  
  "And you didn"t tell me and Spitfire because..." T rolled his hand in a "keep talking" gesture.
  
  "Same reason you didn"t tell me." I glanced at the ground. "Taking the first step isn"t easy."
  
  T sighed. "True. So nobody else knows?"
  
  "Nobody else," I confirmed.
  
  "Alright. Anything else I should know?"
  
  I didn"t miss how Amy became poker-faced again. Butcher himself roared with laughter, spewing profanity until I pushed him into the dark.
  
  "Well, I"ve been spying on Coil"s organisation for the last couple of weeks. I found his base last week, hidden under a construction site."
  
  "Oh, cool!" Tarquin unfolded his arms with an awed look on his face. "The guy"s got a secret lair?"
  
  "Yeah, and filled top to bottom with heavily armed mercenaries. But that"s not the worst part. I slipped a listening device into the base, and I picked up a conversation last night." I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened the audio app, then hit play.
  
  Coil"s voice came through the speaker, tinny and hazy from the recording of a recording.
  
  "-will require sedation until she has been secured in the base. Mr Pitter will arrange the sedatives and instruct you in how to use them. After that, I will expect her to be guarded at all times- awake or asleep."
  
  I paused the recording there. "Coil"s arranging to kidnap a kid. She"s got some kind of power that lets her predict the future."
  
  There was an understanding between capes. Some people called it "the game"; others referred to it as the "unwritten rules" or "unspoken code". It was a basic code of conduct to keep things from escalating into all-out war- no going after people"s secret identities, no targeting families, try to avoid lethal force, no sexual assault. People who went against it were liable to be taken down permanently- the Butchers had done the hunting once or twice.
  
  Of course, the Butchers had bent or broken the rules plenty of times themselves, especially when it came to limiting force. There wasn"t really a way to force them to behave until I"d come into the picture.
  
  Nevertheless, they had some limits- and targeting a child by going after their civilian identity was far past them.
  
  Amy"s horrified expression and Tarquin"s loud "WHAT?" were as obvious an agreement as I could have hoped for.
  
  "Jesus," Amy breathed. "How old is the kid?"
  
  "Twelve," I said grimly. "We have to move quickly. We don"t know when exactly Coil"s going to move, but if he gets hold of her, a precog power combined with whatever his own power is would make him untouchable."
  
  "So what"re we waiting for?" Tarquin demanded. "Let"s get in there and bounce this guy off the walls! We know where he is, we can do it today!"
  
  "Goddamn I love this kid"s attitude," Anchorage said approvingly.
  
  As much as I agreed with the sentiment, I shook my head. "It"s not just Coil that"s the problem, it"s the dozens of soldiers he"s got. They"ve all got assault rifles, grenades, and some Tinker stuff that fires lasers. My armour"s good, but it"s not good enough for all of that." I really didn"t want to answer the question of what happened if I died at the hands of a normal commanded by a cape.
  
  Amy clasped her hands together. "You need New Wave."
  
  "We need New Wave," I agreed.
  
  "And isn"t that strange to say," Tactical muttered.
  
  "What about the Protectorate?" Tarquin asked. "Shouldn"t we call them in as well?"
  
  I stepped a little closer and lowered my voice, even though I knew we were out of earshot of anyone else. "I heard Coil say he was going to move on a day when the heroes were occupied. He said he had sources."
  
  I saw the exact moment when Tarquin realised what I was implying- his pupils widened in shock. "You think he"s got someone in the PRT?" he hissed.
  
  "Could be. If the Empire could get hold of information, a Thinker with lots of money could definitely do it."
  
  "Shit." Amy clasped her hands together. "How the hell do we deal with that?"
  
  "We keep this as close to the chest as possible. Nothing written down, not a word to anyone who isn"t a hero. I"ll talk to Miss Militia soon, get her to bring the rest of the Protectorate in by word of mouth. I doubt even Coil could get a hero on his payroll."
  
  Amy pressed her intertwined hands to her forehead. "God damn it. My life"s got so damn complicated since I met you," she muttered.
  
  I shrugged. "Sorry. Needs must."
  
  Tarquin grimaced and folded his arms again. "So how do we pull this off?"
  
  "Quietly," I said. "I still don"t know what his power is, but if it"s something that doesn"t have him on the field then he"s probably using it for planning or gathering information. The only way we"re going to take him down is if he doesn"t see it coming.
  
  "If we show ourselves doing something else unrelated to him, that should throw him off. Skirmish with the Empire, do outreach, patrol outside his territory, whatever."
  
  "So keep messing with the Empire until I get to help storm a supervillain"s lair." Tarquin nodded. "I can live with that."
  
  "Can you copy out the stuff you"ve got on Coil?" Amy broke in. "Where his base is, what"s the layout, how many soldiers he"s got; that sort of thing."
  
  "I"ll get it to you."
  
  T checked his watch. "Crap. I gotta go, I"ve got Geography next." He grabbed his bag off the ground and slung the strap over his shoulder. "Can we talk more at lunch?"
  
  "Of course," I promised.
  
  "I should go too," Amy said reluctantly. "Actually, can you call Aunt Sarah after school and tell her? It might look weird if I"m always passing on messages from you."
  
  "I suppose they would start to wonder how Panacea is contacting you while she is at school," Muramasa admitted.
  
  "Fine, I"ll ring her up. But I"m not talking about Coil"s informants over the phone."
  
  "Thanks." Amy sighed. "I"m going to be stuck on this all damn day now." She stuck her hands in her pockets and slipped out of the nook with rapid shuffling steps. Tarquin made to leave, then hesitated, looking back at me for a long moment.
  
  "I"ll see you at lunch," I promised.
  
  T sighed and nodded, then jogged off. I tracked his movements with the fly I"d slipped into the hood of his jacket.
  
  "Yeah, that"s not creepy," Quarrel jeered.
  
  "Amy carries a spider in her pocket," I pointed out, grabbing my bag.
  
  "Yeah, but that"s so she can tell when you"re about. The lad doesn"t know you"re tracking him." Dirty Rotter snickered. "Real friendly, that is."
  
  I chewed my lip for a second, then directed the fly out of Tarquin"s hood and away.
  
  "You forgot to tell Amy about the dockworkers," Flinch reminded me gently.
  
  "Fuck."
  
  6.6
  Tuesday 8th March, The Docks
  
  School was an obstacle when it came to daytime work. I did have free periods scattered through my schedule, but an hour wasn"t a lot of time to get off campus, change into costume, get wherever, get back, change into civvies, etc.
  
  I was only really pulling this off by using my free period and my lunch break after that- and even then, the Butchers had insisted I bring snacks.
  
  I prowled the back alleys and side streets around the Dockworker"s Association building in my armour, cape retracted and helmet open, munching on a sandwich as I checked the graffiti. Gangs painted on the walls like dogs peed on trees, marking their territory. And sure enough, there were tags in red and green, bits of Hanzi, scraps of Hiragana, and a few crude pictures of dragons.
  
  "Feels like we"re in a cop show," Firecracker snickered as I stopped in front of a lopsided green ABB next to a dumpster. "Like we"re gonna find a body and the new guy"s gonna puke, and we"re just gonna be there going," she switched to an attempt at a Brooklyn accent, ""Christ, dis poor basterd got it real bad," and then the opening credits roll."
  
  "I"d rather not find anything," Nemean grumbled. "Spring is coming. The bodies won"t keep so well when it gets warmer."
  
  "Charming," I grumbled, stuffing the last bit of sandwich into my mouth. "At any rate, Lung"s definitely making an attempt to expand this way. Guess we should introduce ourselves."
  
  It only took a few minutes to get back to my bike, and just one minute to drive it into the parking lot of the brick cube that housed the DWA. Despite being Dad"s workplace since before I was born, I"d only been here once or twice that I remembered, so I wasn"t really sure where to go.
  
  The lobby was somewhat rundown, with scuffed lino on the floor and tattered corkboards on the walls, with various flyers and adverts pinned to them; they fluttered slightly as I swept through the double doors, cape down and helmet closed.
  
  The guy at the desk, someone I didn"t recognise from the times Dad"s friends had come over, looked up, and then his eyes widened to Tex Avery levels. One hand slipped out of sight, under the desk.
  
  "Let"s get this done before he hits an alarm," Tock Tick suggested.
  
  Bearskin glanced at the aged décor. "Nah, this place doesn"t look like it can afford a panic button. Probably it"s a bit of pipe."
  
  "Good afternoon," I said with forced cheer, flicking my helmet open again and bouncing my eyebrows. "My name"s Elpis, I"m an independent hero. Sorry to drop in, but I thought this would be more effective than a phone call."
  
  The receptionist untensed slightly. "Yeah, I guess this makes more of an impression," he said weakly. "So, uh, how can I help you, Miss, er, Elpis?"
  
  "Well," I leaned my elbow on the raised portion of the desk, "I heard through the grapevine that the ABB have been causing problems around here. Have you heard anything like that?"
  
  The receptionist"s hand came out from under the desk. "Yeah, just yesterday. Had a couple of guys with bandannas come in with a baseball bat, talking about "fire insurance"," he said, making air quotes.
  
  I winced. "Right. Well, I can"t make a lot of promises, but I am going to be doing some work around here soon, so I"ll try to pass through here and keep the gangs from making a mess." I pulled a card from my belt and put it on the desk. "My number"s on there- just pass it along to whoever"s in charge, call me if there"s any more problems."
  
  The receptionist picked up the card and squinted at it. "Well, thanks," he said at last. Something seemed to occur to him. "Wait, is this one of those "heroes for hire" things? Like you come save our asses and then hand us a bill?"
  
  "No, this is just me helping out. I mean, ideally I"d appreciate some kind of donation to keep me in Tinker supplies," I admitted, "but to be honest, I don"t think you guys have the budget for that right now."
  
  The receptionist couldn"t hold back a wince.
  
  "Anyway, it"s just in case of emergencies. You never know, I might be closer than the cops or the PRT. Just call everyone and see who shows up first."
  
  Anchorage snorted. "Yeah, except Brockton Bay cops are halfway Empire, so that"s like calling the wolves to chase out the jackals."
  
  I managed to keep the grimace off my face while the receptionist nodded. "Well, glad to know there"s someone else helping out around here. Anything else I can help you with?"
  
  "This was really more of a flying visit," I shrugged, pushing myself upright. "Just pass the number along. And I hope you won"t actually need it."
  
  Thursday 10th March, Downtown
  
  Lady Photon swooped down from the sky in an elegant curve that ended with her hovering a foot off the building"s roof, then lowered herself gently. It was a lot weirder to see, since she was out of costume. Instead, she was wearing a cream sweater, tan pants and sensible shoes.
  
  "Bizarre," Vladimir commented.
  
  Anchorage gave her a look up and down, then shrugged. "I"d still tap that."
  
  "Good of you to come," said Miss Militia next to me. She"d beaten Photon by a few minutes without needing to fly, which was mildly impressive to me.
  
  "So what"s this about?" Lady Photon asked, stepping closer and folding her arms against the chill of the breeze. "You weren"t exactly clear in your message."
  
  "I know, but I needed to be extra careful about this." I pulled out my phone and selected the audio recordings.
  
  For the second time in a week, I explained Coil"s plans to two people I trusted, and for the second time the response was shock and disgust.
  
  "Bastard," Lady Photon hissed. Purple light flashed in her palms for a second. "New Wave"s in. When do we attack?"
  
  "My word," Needler said, surprised. "I didn"t expect that sort of anger from her."
  
  "We"ll need a few days to coordinate," Militia cut in, eyebrows furrowed. "If Coil really does have plants in the PRT, it"s going to be harder to manoeuvre without tipping him off. Word of mouth won"t be as easy as just filing a report."
  
  "Are there any people in the PRT you can definitely vouch for?" I asked.
  
  "I"ll take this to the Director and work my way down," Militia promised.
  
  "I guess if Coil had the Director in his pocket, he"d already run this town," Flinch conceded.
  
  "There"s something else to think about," Tactical cut in. "Are we sure we want to attack Coil"s base? It"d be easier to just catch him out above ground."
  
  "That"s a good point," I admitted. Aloud I asked, "Should we go after Coil in his base, or just go for him while he"s vulnerable? The mercenaries will probably dissolve once they"re not getting a paycheck."
  
  "Cut off the head and the body will die," Photon muttered.
  
  Militia was already shaking her head. "The Empire and the ABB might try to hire them instead, and that won"t end well for anyone. Not to mention, Coil"s soldiers have access to Tinkertech lasers. If there"s more in the base, the last thing we want is for anything like that to be out in the wild; and that"s not counting weapons, ammunition, drugs, money- It"ll be harder, but I think it"s necessary."
  
  "Raiding a base packed with soldiers is going to be a lot harder than just arresting one Thinker," Lady Photon pointed out.
  
  "That"s what makes it so fun," Butcher rumbled with horrible glee.
  
  "I"m with Miss Militia; it"ll be better in the long run if we don"t leave any mess behind. And frankly, with the amount of firepower we"ll have, I doubt it"ll be much of a struggle for us."
  
  "True." Photon folded her arms again. "Although if we"re thinking in the long run, maybe we should talk about the pattern that"s forming."
  
  "What pattern?"
  
  "You started out hounding the Merchants. You brought Spitfire in, you shook down their dealers, you hit their supplies, then delivered the coup de grace. You helped chase out the Teeth at the same time. We all pitched in to get Stormtiger put away, and now we"re planning how to flatten Coil without warning."
  
  "You"re worried how the villains are going to respond," Miss Militia stated.
  
  Photon nodded. "If the gangs feel like they"re backed into a corner, they"ll only get more dangerous. Not to mention the power vacuum. We helped out during the Boston Games, and believe me, that was chaos on a massive scale."
  
  "Gee, I wish we"d been there," Stoneknapper said pointedly.
  
  Nemean growled. "Will you just let it go? It"s been years!"
  
  "We can"t tell how the gangs are going to react until it"s happening," I pointed out. "We"ll deal with it once we"ve got Coil. Maybe we can ease off for a couple of weeks, let things die down."
  
  "You don"t just give up strategic initiative!" Tactical exploded. "If you catch someone on the back foot, you keep going, you don"t give them a moment to catch their breath-!"
  
  I gave Tactical a hard shove, enough to keep him down for an hour while he cooled off. "We can discuss it later. For now, Coil"s the problem in front of us."
  
  Lady Photon and Miss Militia traded glances, then nodded.
  
  Friday 11th March, The Docks
  
  "It"s all I need!" Dirty Rotter sang, badly, "To get to where I"m going, fast! Speeeeeeeeed Demon!"
  
  I still wasn"t sure how a disembodied spirit who existed only in a mental state could still have such a terrible singing voice. Unfortunately, it was Rotter"s turn to pick the music, and he"d insisted on a driving playlist to fit my late night patrol route.
  
  I"d spent the last few nights zipping back and forth across the Docks, making sure to be seen. I"d interrupted a drug deal on Wednesday, but nothing after that. Still, I felt like there was some effect being had. Dad had mentioned Elpis visiting the DWA, and the absence of any further ABB goons showing their faces, so I regarded that as a win.
  
  On the sneakier side of things, I"d re-visited Coil"s base twice, and extracted further recordings of conversations between him and his employees- mercenaries, civilians, and someone called Mr Pitter who was apparently the medic of Coil"s forces. He was also the guy who was supposed to sedate the little girl Coil was targeting, so I was hoping he"d be in the base when I raided it. Nemean wanted me to put the fear of me into him.
  
  The Docks were a quiet place at night- other than homeless people bedding down wherever there was shelter, there was little life about. I was starting to wonder if I should just go back to my lair and get some Tinkering done. Tock Tick had some ideas for when I finally got back to dealing with the Empire.
  
  "Bah," Muramasa snorted. "You spend too much time in the lair, fiddling with cogs and wires. Prowling the night is the way of the Butchers."
  
  "Except we"re prowling and finding nothing," Vladimir countered. "I like the Hunter of the Night bit as much as anyone, but it"s wearing thin. Let"s just get something to eat and watch a movie."
  
  I did have a laptop back at the lair, and a few DVDs that the Butchers had requested. The idea of having midnight ice cream and pointing out the special effect failures of horror movies was tempting.
  
  My phone vibrated on my belt. I quickly pulled the bike over, killed the engine and dropped the stand, before opening the compartment and pressing the call button.
  
  "Elpis speaking."
  
  The voice that responded was unfamiliar. "Elpis, this is PRT Console. Are you currently in the Docks?"
  
  A sense of foreboding crept over me. "I am. Why do you ask?"
  
  "Gargoyle and Battery are currently pursuing Lung through the Docks, headed south on 33rd Street. Are you available to help?"
  
  Lung. The sense of foreboding solidified. It would have to be the one cape in the city I was least equipped to fight. I"d fought most of the Empire"s roster at this point, and I had Butcher memories for Kaiser, Purity and Krieg to rely on. Oni Lee didn"t seem like a massive threat to me, and the Undersiders were thieves more than fighters.
  
  I"d never come close to Lung in life or memory, and it was publicly available that he"d taken on entire teams in the past and walked away. Going up against him was a really bad idea.
  
  "Pussy," Quarrel hissed.
  
  I growled at her, but she didn"t back down. "Since when do we run from a fight? Hell, since when do you run from a fight? We run towards the fire, bitch."
  
  "At the very least, you can help Gargoyle and Battery," Flinch said. "Just be careful."
  
  "Elpis? Are you still there?"
  
  I shook myself out of my thoughts and answered. "I"m here. Got distracted. I"ll try to intercept Lung if possible."
  
  "Thank you, Elpis. I"ll pass that along." The operator hung up without another word.
  
  I hesitated for a long moment. This was definitely a bad idea.
  
  "GET ON WITH IT!" Firecracker shrieked.
  
  I jolted, reflexively shoving her aside. It did the job of moving me though- I flicked my wrist to flip the bike key out and started the engine. Revving the engine let me make a 180 turn in the street, and then I hit the accelerator and shot off.
  
  33rd Street was to the west of me- I had to make a couple of turns around warehouses and factories before I was headed in the right direction. No sign of the pursuit, so I sped up, scanning with bloodsight.
  
  A few seconds later, I saw something odd in the distance. It was like the streetlights were busted, a patch of darkness-
  
  "Round two!" Butcher roared as the realisation hit me.
  
  The darkness wasn"t a solid block filling the street like it had been when I"d chased the Undersiders before. Instead it was patchy, broken in places, then trailing up to the rooftops, where it seemed to become more full- it was hard to tell against the night sky.
  
  I passed by a trashcan that had been knocked over. In the quick glimpse I got of it, I made out a huge scorch mark on its side. Further on, some scraps of garbage were burning on the pavement, and past that, burn marks along the tops of some buildings.
  
  "Yeah, that"s got to be Lung," Bearskin concluded. "Guess the Undersiders robbed the wrong place this time."
  
  The trail made a sharp right- I had to throw myself into the turn in order to make it, and my knee scraped the pavement for a second before I righted the bike and accelerated again.
  
  Now I could make something out with bloodsight- several figures up ahead, moving back and forth, silhouetted in true vision by yellow flames. All the brighter because of the clouds of darkness spread across the street at rooftop level.
  
  I flicked a switch as I gunned the throttle- the ramming frame unfolded and extended over the front wheel as I aimed for the largest figure, a big shirtless man with flames pouring off him.
  
  Lung turned as I approached, then flicked a hand out. A stream of fire burst from his palm, splashing across the width of the road. I yanked on the handlebars to bring the front wheel up, ducked my head, and ploughed right through the flames.
  
  The ramming frame caught Lung square in the chest, and he went flying back. I hit the brakes, letting the bike fall onto two wheels as I glanced around.
  
  Gargoyle dropped down from his perch atop a building. "Elpis! Thank fucking god, we need all the help we can get!" He pointed at Lung. "We"ve managed to drive him back this way, but he"s getting stronger."
  
  I took control of the insects in the area to run a quick sweep. A bunch of people were fleeing the scene down the back alleys, presumably Lung"s men, and there was a pickup truck up ahead that had been driven into a wall. No sign of the Undersiders- they must have fled.
  
  Battery came out of a side street, clotheslining Lung in a blur of grey and electric blue as he struggled to his feet. He flipped fully over and landed on his shoulders with a roar of pain.
  
  Anchorage shrieked with laughter. "Holy shit, that was fucking great! Where"s a camcorder when you need one!?"
  
  "We need to take him down before he gets any stronger," Battery said without preamble. The lines on her costume were already brightening as she built up a charge again. That was her power- by holding still for a few seconds, she could build up a store of energy, then expend it in a burst of super-speed, with some enhanced strength and an electromagnetic burst.
  
  I tugged on Tactical"s power, letting a plan unfold in my mind"s eye. "Okay; Gargoyle, harry him from above. I"ll draw his attention from the front while Battery tags in and out. Got it?"
  
  Gargoyle swallowed hard- I saw his Adam"s apple bob on his throat. Then he slapped his cheeks a couple of times and nodded. "Got it," he managed. He took a running start and leapt almost to the top of a building in one go, hanging by his fingers below the clouds of darkness overhead.
  
  I revved the bike"s engine, aimed at Lung again as he got to his knees, and released the brake. The bike lunged for him in another ramming attack.
  
  Lung threw himself to the side in a roll and came up standing, fire in his hands. His transformation power had clearly kicked in- I could see triangular scales beginning to break through the skin of his bare upper body, distorting the dragon tattoos along his arms and chest. His eyes glowed from behind his steel dragon mask, like pools of molten metal.
  
  Gargoyle dropped from above, feet first. Lung glanced up and jumped to the side, then backhanded Gargoyle with a flaming fist as he landed. The blow sent Gargoyle reeling back, and Lung followed it up with a series of brutal blows to the smaller man. Gargoyle brought his arms up to shield his front, trying to duck and weave away from the assault.
  
  I swung myself off the bike, rolling it into an alleyway with a hefty shove- it was too cumbersome for this fight, I needed agility- and ran at Lung with a yell. He glanced up, shoved Gargoyle aside, and met my charge with a wild swipe.
  
  Danger sense let me duck under it, and then I exploded upward with an uppercut that crashed into his jaw. Lung staggered back, and I moved in to press the advantage. Gargoyle regained his balance and followed my lead.
  
  Lung exploded. No metaphor there. He detonated in a blast of rolling fire that swept over me and Gargoyle, setting his pants on fire. I flinched back, and Lung lashed out with a kick to my chest that knocked me over.
  
  "Bitch," Lung growled from behind his mask, just as Battery burst into motion, slamming her fists into Lung"s back. Gargoyle threw himself into a sliding tackle that hit Lung"s ankles.
  
  The twin attacks knocked Lung over again, and Battery got a couple of punches in before she had to back off as her charge was spent. I pushed myself to my feet and swung a kick into his ribs, and it clearly hurt him, but he already felt more solid than before.
  
  Abruptly, Lung hunched over- then his back separated in two, revealing a meaty looking gap along his spine. Long metallic scales erupted down the gap, bristling for a second before laying flat over each other. Lung pushed himself to his feet and stretched, and he must have been a foot taller than he was before, now with an armour plated spine. Plus mostly on fire.
  
  "Fuck," Gargoyle said.
  
  "Oh that is cool," Stoneknapper gushed. "Taylor, I"m sorry to say it, but you"re screwed."
  
  I pulled my flail from my belt and flicked a switch. The head dropped to the ground, and I kicked it at Lung as it fell, taking him in the gut. Lung doubled over with a roar, clapping his hands over the flail head. His head came up, and he vomited a stream of fire at me.
  
  I grabbed my cape as the fire washed over me, holding it between me and the flames. The silk charred and burned away under the sheer heat.
  
  Gargoyle crouched and took a flying leap onto Lung"s back, grabbing his hair in one hand and slamming punches into his ear with the other. I took the chance to use one of Anchorage"s tricks- I unspooled more cable from the flail, then flicked my wrist around, around. Gargoyle let go for a second so the cable could circle around Lung"s neck- then I pulled the cable taut and Gargoyle resumed hammering at Lung"s head.
  
  Lung let go of the flail head and groped at the cable with a hand that was sprouting claws, dragging it away from his neck while his other hand tried to block Gargoyle"s relentless blows. I heaved right back in a desperate tug of war, even as the flames on Lung intensified, growing in size. Even with my armour on, I felt like I was standing in an oven.
  
  In the corner of my eye, Battery zipped off in a blur of light.
  
  "Where the hell does she think she"s going?" Needler demanded.
  
  I didn"t have time to answer that, because Lung pulled at the cable again, almost tugging the flail out of my hands. I planted my feet and heaved, while Lung thrashed around, falling to his knees. His free hand groped behind him for Gargoyle, who was still firing punches into Lung"s head and shoulders, his stone form impervious to the heat.
  
  I could see Lung"s blood silhouette shifting through the flames- growing steadily larger, muscles swelling and rearranging themselves even as Gargoyle"s punches opened cuts in his skin and dented his mask into his face. This was an uphill battle, and time only made it steeper.
  
  Lung"s blind swipes at Gargoyle finally connected- his clawed mitt bumped Gargoyle"s arm as the hero slammed a brutal hit into Lung"s ear, and the hand clamped shut on his wrist like a bear trap, then hurled him away from Lung. Gargoyle flew across the street, his floating power lightening him, until his back smacked into the wall.
  
  Lung rose to his feet, staggering slightly as he stood and spat out a tooth, but his eyes blazed behind his mask; two balls of yellowish fire, narrowed in anger. He was taller still now, shoulders at least two feet wide, and now completely wreathed in flame. More scales emerged from his skin as I watched, creeping around his torso and down his arms.
  
  A long piece of metal crashed into his chest so hard I saw one of his ribs cave in.
  
  "What?!" Bearskin shouted.
  
  Battery raced in as a blur, picking up the metal again and spinning to slam it into his ribs again. Lung lost his grip on the cable, then flung his arms out and exploded with fire again.
  
  This time the flames spread across the entire street- I only saw Battery retreating from the blast with bloodsight as fire filled my vision. I threw my cape up in front of me to block the worst of it.
  
  I felt the cable suddenly go slack, right before danger sense blared in my head. I backpedalled frantically, so Lung"s claws only scratched along my cape, tearing great rents in the remaining fabric. He stalked after me, throwing a stream of fire out to the side at Battery, who dropped the car fender she"d used as a weapon and ducked down an alleyway.
  
  Gargoyle soared across the street with a yell, hit the building opposite and pushed off again, criss-crossing from wall to wall before cannoning into Lung from above.
  
  As Gargoyle got Lung"s leg in a hold and swung a punch into the man"s stomach, I backed away a few steps, reeling the flail head in- Lung had slipped the cable off his neck while the flames obscured my view. I swung it a few times to pick up momentum, then flung it into Lung"s chest, pulsing it with the impact. Needler"s power guided me right to his still-healing ribs and broke them again.
  
  I heard a noise, a sharp crack, and for a second I thought I"d hit Lung far harder than I thought. Then Gargoyle glanced to the side, and when I looked with bloodsight, I saw a couple of men"s blood silhouettes struggling with a smaller figure that zipped in and floored them with lightning-quick blows.
  
  "Battery must have found some of Lung"s men," Flinch said.
  
  The roar Lung gave out wasn"t like an animal- it was a very human noise of pain and rage. Then Gargoyle rammed a fist into the same spot and the roar got even louder.
  
  "Hah! I like this kid!" Dirty Rotter cackled.
  
  "Okay, but why does Lung even need guys with him besides a driver?" Firecracker wondered absently.
  
  Lung"s clawed hands lunged at Gargoyle, who ducked low and threw himself back, skidding to a halt while I charged in, swinging the flail in a tight circle. Lung shot a stream of fire at me, and I felt the force of it, like a- hah- a fire hose. Bloodsight still showed me his body though, clearly enough to aim for his ribs once more.
  
  Lung swatted the flail aside and came at me in a rush, crowding me as I tried to evade. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gargoyle leap into the air, perching on a wall to aim himself at Lung again.
  
  "Adjust your pattern!" Muramasa snapped. "Switch to a shorter weapon!"
  
   I reeled the flail"s cable in, set it to mace mode, and brought it down on Lung"s wrist as he swiped at me.
  
  It didn"t do much damage- the kinetic battery didn"t have much to it right now, and Lung was still growing, scales creeping up the last few bits of his skin. Then Gargoyle pushed off and down, shooting himself at Lung.
  
  Lung spun around, faster than someone eight feet tall should be able to, and caught Gargoyle by the throat in his massive hand, the one I hadn"t hit. Fire poured off his arm, bathing Gargoyle in flames as he thrashed and struggled. He was lost to me in an instant- without bloodsight, the fire obscured him completely.
  
  I gripped the flail with both hands and swung it into the back of Lung"s knee. His leg folded, his knee hit the pavement, and I aimed for his broken ribs on the backswing.
  
  Danger sense hammered the inside of my skull, but I was already committed, unable to react fast enough when Lung swung Gargoyle into me. The two of us went flying, Gargoyle soaring a good thirty feet down the street, while I landed in the bed of the pickup truck Lung had been riding in. The truck rocked on its suspension from the impact.
  
  I felt a split second of nausea and haziness before Needler"s regeneration kicked in, and I forced myself to sit up. The armour creaked as I did: when I looked down, I saw that Lung had dented my breastplate.
  
  Tock Tick gave a long whistle. "Colour me impressed."
  
  Vladimir nodded. "If this fight goes south, we"re going to have one hell of a time in his head."
  
  I"d dropped bloodsight on accident when I"d hit the truck, and re-engaging Vladimir"s power when he"d just casually discussed my possible death infuriated me. I forced him down into the dark and hauled myself out of the truck bed, drawing my disruptor axe with my left hand.
  
  Lung appeared inside his own coat of flames and silver scales as an oversized slab of muscle, but something else caught my eye. I turned my head slightly up and to the left, and saw a clump of silhouettes crouched on a nearby rooftop, inside the cloud of darkness. Four humans, and three massive beasts.
  
  "They"re still here?" Tactical"s voice was filled with the angry disbelief that someone could be that stupid. "Why the hell didn"t they run when we started fighting Lung?"
  
  "Hell if I know," I answered, directing some spare flies up to that roof even while I turned back toward Lung. I had a second group of bugs trying to find where Gargoyle was behind me, while the rest monitored the men around the area as Battery circled around to pick them off.
  
  Lung snarled at me, an inhuman edge coming into his voice. "Cocksucker," he growled, stalking forward.
  
  "Prick," I muttered inside my helmet, stepping towards him, moving into a jog, which became a run.
  
  Lung brought his fists down in a hammer blow that cracked the pavement. I barely skipped aside, then swung the flail out to hit his jaw, reeling it back immediately. He staggered, and I swung the disruptor axe low to slice at his calf.
  
  The scales split under the blade, but the cut was far more shallow than I"d expected. Grimly, I pressed the attack, using the flail to attack from a distance, then cutting at him with the axe when I got in close.
  
  The flies I"d slipped up to the Undersiders homed in on the rotten meat smell of Hellhound"s monster dogs, and from them to the riders. They were sat the same as before; two boys, two girls, and the Blaster girl perched on one dog by herself. I could just make out some movement, not enough to tell what they were doing.
  
  Lung swung his claws from low to high like he was trying to gut me. I met his claws with the axe, and Needler"s power let me slip it right between the digits to hack into the meat of his hand. I flicked the switch as it hit, and the blade vibrated with a low hum as the oscillations began to pulverise the surrounding flesh.
  
  Lung screamed in agony, blasting fire at me as he backed away. The axe was yanked from my grip, then fell out of the wound to clatter on the ground. Blood poured from the wound, instantly steaming in the burning heat of Lung"s fire.
  
  "Now that is fucking brutal!" Butcher roared approvingly. "Get in there and fuck him up!"
  
  I unspooled the flail cable enough to spin it in a circle, letting more cable out as I picked up speed, then criss-crossing it in front of me. The head glanced off the ground a few times, absorbing the kinetic energy to recharge slightly.
  
  Flies searching behind me happened upon warm stone, moving slowly. I didn"t dare glance behind me, but I heard the muted clicking of Gargoyle"s footsteps as he came up behind me with a groan.
  
  "Bastard cracked me," he said, clutching his side.
  
  "I don"t suppose you can heal that really quickly," I said as Lung kicked the axe aside and clutched at his wounded hand. Blood streamed between his fingers, a scarlet stream that glowed in my bloodsight.
  
  "No," Gargoyle said, straightening up with a grunt of pain. "But I reckon I"ve got a few more minutes in me."
  
  The last of Lung"s men went from vertical to horizontal on the other side of the block as Battery hit him like a freight train. She"d need a second to restrain him, and even when she was finished I wasn"t sure how much she"d be able to do with Lung completely aflame, but a little more time would bring our third hero back into the mix.
  
  I pulled my cape off my back and snapped it into shield mode. The fabric was almost completely gone by now, but there were still a few scraps of sky blue silk clinging to the edges.
  
  "Alright," I began, bending my knees slightly, ready for action.
  
  Several things happened in rapid succession.
  
  The flies I"d planted on the Undersiders registered movement and noise from the dogs, turning and heading away from the fight.
  
  Lung"s head snapped up, pointed directly at where the Undersiders were.
  
  His hand came up, and a gout of flame burst from it.
  
  I snapped the flail out instinctively, catching him in the chest. He staggered back a single step.
  
  And above, one of the massive, rhino-sized dogs yelped as the flames splashed against its flank- I felt some of the bugs on it die in an instant. The dog jerked and thrashed- one foot slipped over the edge of the building.
  
  Another of the dogs lunged forward, catching the first dog"s leg in its jaws, stopping it from falling. But the flames and the sudden jerk had loosened its rider- the dark haired Blaster girl slipped from the back of the dog and fell three stories.
  
  I was already in motion before I"d really registered it, throwing myself across the gap to try and catch the girl.
  
  Halfway down, she twisted in mid-air, glass balls whirling around her like a halo. Her fall slowed dramatically as she hit the ground feet first.
  
  Not slow enough- her ankle twisted badly and she collapsed instantly, screaming in pain.
  
  "Wait, so how"d she do that?" Anchorage demanded as I sprinted over.
  
  Lung thrust both hands out, a double stream of fire bursting forth. I grabbed the girl off the ground and hauled her behind me, then braced my shield with both hands.
  
  Lung"s attack crashed into me with ferocious heat and force- if his earlier blasts had been like a riot hose, this was a tidal wave. I planted my feet and leaned into the fire while the girl huddled behind me. I could only imagine how bad it was for her- my earlier sweat was now evaporating inside my armour as the flames roared past us on either side.
  
  "Do something!" Nemean shouted. "She"s going to die anyway if Lung keeps this up!"
  
  Lung"s arms suddenly jerked to the side, sending the flames spilling across the asphalt instead. His head suddenly snapped back in bloodsight, struck by an unseen force. When I peeked past the shield, Gargoyle was a dark spot against the fire, kicking Lung in the chest to push off and gain distance.
  
  The Undersider girl had fallen to her knees behind me, hacking and coughing. She pulled her mask down her face and gasped for breath in the scorching air.
  
  I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, hauling her further down the street and into the shelter of an alleyway before Lung could try to barbeque her again. She collapsed against the wall as soon as I let go of her, sucking down deep wheezing breaths. I quickly patted at the smoking bits of her hair.
  
  I felt the ground tremble from a couple of massive impacts as the bugs I"d planted went from rooftop to ground level. They were closing in on us.
  
  "Whirl!"
  
  I turned, covering the girl with my shield even though I knew what I"d see.
  
  The Undersiders stood at the end of the alleyway. The dogs were so massive I wasn"t sure they"d fit down the alley anyway, but their spiked hides and gnashing teeth were threatening enough.
  
  The capes were perched on top of them. Grue on the right, Hellhound and Tattletale on the left. The mystery member was on the middle dog, the first clear look I"d got of him. He was a slightly built boy in a poofy white shirt and dark leggings, holding an ornate sceptre in one hand. Curly dark hair peeked out from over a silver coronet attached to a white carnival mask.
  
  "So he"s, what, a prince or something? I don"t get the theme," Bearskin said.
  
  Stoneknapper snapped his fingers. "He messes with people"s limbs, right? It must have been him throwing Lung"s aim off. People bow, kneel and gesture for him- he"s royalty."
  
  Fire roared along the street behind me, sending another wave of hot air down the alley as a potent reminder of the danger. The light threw detail on the Undersiders, and seeing them clearly drove home how young they were. Grue was tall enough he could have been an adult, but the rest were just kids.
  
  I passed my flail to my left hand and slung my right arm around the girl"s- Whirl"s- waist, lifting her off the ground. The Undersiders tensed at that, then tensed more as I strode over to them. I could see Hellhound"s mouth opening behind her mask, see the royal boy lift his sceptre off his lap.
  
  "Fuck"s sake," Quarrel growled.
  
  "Wait." Tattletale leaned out from behind Hellhound. Blonde hair brushed across a black domino mask for a second before she swept it out of her face.
  
  I heaved Whirl up toward Grue- the dog snarled in a bass register, specks of drool flying everywhere. The villain reached out for his teammate, then hesitated halfway.
  
  "Take her and go," I snapped, pushing her into Grue"s arms. Whirl clung to him desperately, scooting herself up to sit side-saddle in front of him.
  
  I stepped back, switching the flail back to my right again. "Go," I said again, flicking my hand at them impatiently, "I"ll buy you some time."
  
  Tattletale leaned further out from behind Hellhound, eyes wide with some emotion I couldn"t identify. I thought she might say something.
  
  "I"LL RI" OO A"ART!"
  
  I spun around, bloodsight rising. Lung was almost at the entrance to the alley, and going for ten feet tall. His jaw had extended and split into four parts, and his neck had doubled in length.
  
  I glanced back over my shoulder. The Undersiders were still there, Grue pulling Whirl"s mask back up for her. It was a surprisingly tender gesture, but right now it was a waste of valuable time that could be better spent running away from the angry dragon man.
  
  "RUN YOU BASTARDS!" I bellowed, priming my flail. I didn"t wait to see if they listened; I just turned and sprinted out of the alley, calling insects in to search the area for Gargoyle and Battery.
  
  Lung charged at me the second I emerged, fire washing over me in a raging torrent. I hunkered down behind the shield and snapped the flail out. Lung"s head ducked to the side on that long, flexible neck and spat more flames at me, obliterating the last threads of silk on my cape. The transformation had pushed his mask up the top of his head, and his face was a nightmare of sharp scales and pointed teeth, framed with spikes at the edges.
  
  The bugs on Hellhound"s dogs were moving away, out of my range as Lung pressed at me. It wasn"t enough yet- not with Lung grown this far, not with whatever senses he"d used to find them through Grue"s darkness in the first place. I needed to hold out a little more.
  
  Flinch"s voice was urgent, almost desperate. "Taylor, he"s too strong for you right now!"
  
  I could feel my cheeks crisping from the heat inside my helmet- my vision blurred as my eyes watered.
  
  "You"re right," I agreed, hauling the cable back in and setting the flail head spinning. I lashed out again, and again Lung"s head bobbed away from it with contemptuous ease, but this time I heaved my legs to push through the flames, drawing Rotter"s creeping ooze into my hand, and rammed a punch into his scaled groin.
  
  I"d made a mistake when I"d used this power against Victor- I could only hope that the Empire assumed the wound was the result of Tinkertech. But Lung was a regenerator- his own power would deal with the evidence.
  
  The flames cut out, and Lung bellowed in pain, one hand dropping to cup the area. Scales shrivelled and flaked off as Rotter"s power spread out from the point of impact. Several of the Butchers hissed in masculine sympathy.
  
  "Taylor, I meant retreat!" Flinch pleaded. "You"re in danger, you need to get out of here!"
  
  Rotter disagreed- his laugh was cruel and gleeful. "That"s what I"m talkin" about! Come on, give "im another one!"
  
  I did worse- I brought the flail around in an upward swing to crash into his groin. His hand mostly protected it, but I still broke two of his fingers.
  
  Lung screamed and swiped at me. Danger sense was already flaring, and I hopped backward, kicking the flail like a soccer ball into his chest. His ribs had healed up by now, but a blow to his sternum had him stagger back a step. Just one step.
  
  He was too big for the flail to do much against him anymore, so I reeled the cable in and clipped the flail back to my belt. Then I drew one of my swords.
  
  Lung straightened up with a snarl and spread his claws, the two broken fingers bending back into place. "MO"ER UH"ER," he growled. I could guess what he was trying to say.
  
  Muramasa sneered. "Remove his insolent tongue."
  
  The cutting edges snapped out and began to vibrate as I flicked the switches. Lung lunged for me with a roar, and I gave ground, swiping at one hand to shear off the tip of his finger.
  
  Blood spurted out, but the flow lessened even as I watched. Lung"s regeneration was getting stronger as he grew.
  
  However, every Butcher from Needler and onwards knew about regeneration- how to use it, and how to kill someone that had it. I stabbed my sword out low, slicing open the inside of his thigh, where the femoral artery lay. Lung"s leg buckled beneath him.
  
  The first trick was to immobilise them.
  
  Fire exploded off him again, but Flinch"s danger sense was buzzing almost constantly now, and I raised my shield on reflex, angling it to let the flames pour off it as I circled around Lung, slashing at his arm, his shoulder, his back.
  
  The second trick was to attack rapidly and give their healing a lot to deal with.
  
  Rotter"s oozing darkness poured into my fists- I lashed out, hammering at Lung"s back. Each punch withered the scales it touched and spread from there, leaving bare patches of skin on Lung"s body. I stepped back and slashed at them with the sword, cutting deep into his flesh.
  
  Lingering injuries were better than clean injuries- jamming objects into the wounds was another effective tactic.
  
  Lung exploded again, and I felt my eyes dry out inside my helmet. The crashed truck was on fire now- the tyres were giving off clouds of thick smoke, and the seats inside the cab were blazing.
  
  Lung pushed to his feet, new scales already forming in the wounds I"d inflicted. I darted forward and clamped a hand over a wound.
  
  Rotter"s power wasn"t doing enough- but I had another power that could weaken people. Vladimir"s ability jumped at my call- Lung"s blood flowed out of his arteries and into me. I felt my veins thrum with ecstatic heat, a thrill I"d only had memories of, never experienced for myself.
  
  Lung snarled and spun around to claw at me. I leapt back, landing in a crouch, sword held in a guard. My armour could withstand the heat for a while longer- maybe I could put the shield away, combine my swords together and see if the greatsword could force Lung back. I could certainly lop off a limb-
  
  "Elpis!"
  
  Lung and I simultaneously glanced up at the other side of the street, keeping the other in our peripheral vision.
  
  Battery stood at the mouth of an alleyway, next to my bike, visible by the bright circuit patterns on her costume. Gargoyle was next to her, his costume almost completely burned off, clutching his left arm. Both of them were looking at me with incredulous expressions, as if I was-
  
  -fighting the most dangerous cape in the city for no good reason.
  
  "Run away!" Flinch shouted.
  
  The Butchers howled for blood, for violence, for the snapping of bone and the tearing of flesh, mine or Lung"s. I rammed them into the dark as I sheathed my sword and took off in a dead sprint for the bike.
  
  Lung came after me an instant later, swiping at my back. A claw glanced off my air cannon.
  
  The air cannon- I whipped it off my back and spun around, firing all three net rounds into him. The silk strands wrapped over Lung and began to burn immediately, barely stalling him.
  
  That was all I needed though. I knew that if he had enhanced hearing to catch the Undersiders in Grue"s darkness, he might also have enhanced smell.
  
  I switched to pepper dust rounds and shot all three into his face.
  
  White powder coated Lung"s face, deep into the nooks and crannies. He threw his head back and screamed, and I saw some of the powder had made it into his mouth. His head burst into flame- he might have been trying to burn it out.
  
  I didn"t wait to find out if that would work. I sprinted the last few yards to the bike and leapt on, flicking the key out from my wrist and into the ignition. "Get on if you"re coming," I shouted, cranking the starter.
  
  Gargoyle hauled himself on behind me and gripped my shoulder. Battery just took off in a blur of electric blue light, and I followed her into the night as Lung screamed his rage behind me.
  
  
  
  6.7
  Saturday 12th March, Downtown
  
  The bacon on my plate was crispy, slightly burnt and brittle. I"d never felt so sympathetic to pork products before.
  
  After my brawl with Lung the other night, I"d headed home early, and spent the night curled up in bed while Needler"s regeneration fixed the minor burns I"d received through the armour. I"d been fine by the time Dad had woken up, but I still felt somewhat overcooked, still fizzing with nervous energy after hammering at the Dragon of Kyushu.
  
  Not that I was explaining it like that. The slightly altered version I"d relayed to my friends was that I"d fought defensively, delaying him while retreating, and that my armour had insulated me from the worst of the heat, though it was now in dire need of repairs.
  
  The latter had the benefit of being true, unfortunately; my armour was scorched all over, the cape was ash and steel, and some of the more delicate components had warped from the heat. The helmet"s timepiece had even fused into place.
  
  Spitfire took a long drink of her milkshake. "See, that shit"s way outside what I"m cool with," she said, gesturing with the glass.
  
  Tarquin"s usual air of affected coolness had worn thin as I"d explained last night"s ordeal, and his leg was bouncing under the table, while his stack of pancakes was barely touched.
  
  I pointed my fork. "Are you eating that?"
  
  T slid the plate over to me. "All yours."
  
  "Aw nice," Anchorage said, licking her lips.
  
  Bearskin shook his head. "Weak stomach. Damn waste to come to Pancakes Worldwide and not eat."
  
  "So you"re okay?" Spitfire- Emily- asked. "You"re not secretly hiding loads of burn marks under your hoodie or something?"
  
  "What?" I floundered for a second. "No, I"m fine. It"s nothing worse than a bit of sunburn." I sliced a piece off my stack of pancakes and rolled it in the syrup, then popped it in my mouth.
  
  Tarquin leaned forward intently. "I can"t believe," he said quietly, "That you fought fucking Lung."
  
  I shrugged and swallowed. "I"m having trouble believing it myself."
  
  Frankly, the only reason I was still so calm was that I had several of the Butchers in the dark after they"d encouraged my self-destructive behaviour. Butcher in particular was still fuming to himself.
  
  "Anyway, it"s not something I"m planning to repeat. Right now Coil"s the problem."
  
  "Right?" Emily said. "I mean, what, does the guy have a piranha tank as well? It"s nuts."
  
  "I don"t know," Tarquin shrugged, "If I was a villain and that rich, I"d probably lean into it too."
  
  "I can"t say I"d indulge quite like that, but I understand the urge," Needler admitted.
  
  Tock Tick rolled his eyes. "Indah, you wore knives and bones and knives made of bones, you were absolutely leaning into it."
  
  "We can go through all the weird rooms and secret compartments once we actually beat the guy. As it is, we have to wait for the Protectorate to get their asses in gear."
  
  "Please tell me you"re bringing me along on this one," Tarquin said eagerly.
  
  "Of course. Though you"re sticking behind the forcefields until we"ve dealt with the lasers. Those things can cut through steel."
  
  "Fair."
  
  "Gee," Emily said in a piercing tone, "Since when do you worry about risks and shit? It"s not like you just punched the ABB leader not 10 hours ago."
  
  I winced. "Okay, I deserve that one."
  
  Tarquin sipped his coffee awkwardly. "I guess I"ll have to cut back how much metal I bring if we"re going underground, or I"m not going to fit."
  
  Tactical grunted. "Mm. One of Da"s guys bought it like that. Got his bag caught in a door, took five bullets."
  
  "Relax, Tac," I said, eating another forkful of pancakes and syrup. "The heroes and I will crush this guy, and then we"ll go out on St Patrick"s to celebrate."
  
  Tactical nodded agreeably. "That"s what I like to hear."
  
  "On a lighter topic," I said, slicing another chunk off my stack, "Emily, I"ve been meaning to ask, how"s everything going for you? They treating you alright?"
  
  Emily picked up her own fork, going with the obvious change of subject. "Honestly, it"s pretty good. I"ve got a room in the HQ for now, but they"re sorting out foster families with the security clearance to take me in. Although," she paused in cutting up her waffles to give me a mock-serious look, "That"s probably taking a little longer now that they"re searching for spies."
  
  I pressed a hand to my chest. "Truly, I am devastated," I said sarcastically. "And school? If you end up at Arcadia, we"ll have to figure out how we"re all going to talk to each other, or if it"s safer to keep a little distance."
  
  Emily jabbed a square of waffles and dragged it through a puddle of chocolate sauce. "My grades are in the toilet. They"re thinking tutors to help me catch up, and then they"ll start me in the next school year. That way nobody links the new girl to the new Ward."
  
  "Sensible. So long as you"re getting some education."
  
  Flinch chuckled. "It"s sweet how much concern you have for her."
  
  "How about your new-" Tarquin hesitated, "-outfit? What"re they doing for that?"
  
  Emily held up a hand while she chewed a mouthful, then swallowed and continued. "I get some input on it, especially since I"ve already had my "debut". Still gonna be mostly orange, but they"re thinking more of a firefighter vibe. So big coat, hat, and a couple of fire extinguishers."
  
  "Sweet."
  
  "And the Wards are treating you alright?"
  
  "Yeah, they"re pretty cool. Kid Win"s been trying to scan my power and do something with it. He was talking about helping make my extinguishers too."
  
  "Is that something Tinkers can do?" Tarquin asked, turning to me. "Like, they can scan people"s powers and build stuff off that?"
  
  I wiggled my hand. "Sort of? There"s not a lot of literature on it, but it sure looks that way. It"ll depend on the Tinker"s speciality too. Even if I scanned Laserdream"s power, I still probably couldn"t build a raygun."
  
  There was actually a fair amount of literature about it, and the Butchers had read most of it. Tinkers were particularly interesting to parahuman researchers, since their tech could mimic or interact with other powers in a variety of ways. Still, I couldn"t think of a plausible way to explain that I"d read several Harvard theses thanks to that one professor Stoneknapper had done a favour for.
  
  Emily mopped up the last traces of whipped cream and chocolate sauce with a scrap of waffle and popped it into her mouth with a contented sigh. "Well," she said, dabbing at a spot on her cheek, "that"s some good breakfast."
  
  I scooped Tarquin"s stack onto my plate and started on it. "You guys want to make this a regular thing? We could have a weekly breakfast and bitch session."
  
  Tarquin snorted into his coffee. "Yeah, I could do that."
  
  "Could we invite Panacea? I"d kinda like to get to know her better."
  
  I thought for a second. "Yeah, I"ll ask her. But she might have her own stuff to do," I pointed out. "New Wave stuff or hospital volunteering."
  
  "Fair," Emily said.
  
  Tarquin drained the last of his coffee and wiped his mouth. "So what do you guys want to do after this?"
  
  "PRT gives me an allowance, and I want to spruce up my room a bit. Get some posters and comics and whatever."
  
  Before I could respond, my cape phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my hoodie pocket, frowning at a number I didn"t recognise. "Sorry, I need to take this." I tapped the call button and held it to my ear. "Hello?"
  
  "Is this Elpis?" I didn"t recognise the voice either.
  
  "Maybe it"s just a telemarketer?" Stoneknapper suggested.
  
  "Speaking. And this is?"
  
  "This is Darren with the Dock Workers Association. Uh, you left your number for us in case of trouble?"
  
  "God"s wounds," Vladimir cursed, bobbing up out of the dark.
  
  My free hand gripped the table. "Are you in danger right now? Is there someone listening in?"
  
  "What? Oh, no no no, nothing like that. Just, someone left a package addressed to you?"
  
  "A package?"
  
  "The fuck?" Anchorage asked.
  
  Tarquin and Emily were both leaning across the table with curious expressions. I shrugged and made an "I don"t know" expression at them.
  
  "Did you see who dropped it off? Security cameras, anything like that?"
  
  "I already checked the footage. Whoever did it stayed out of sight."
  
  I chewed my lip for a second. "Take the package outside, place it away from people. I"ll swing by to pick it up soon."
  
  Darren swore. "Is it really that bad? Should I call the cops?"
  
  "It"s up to you, but if they wanted to hurt you guys, they probably would have sent something nastier." Most likely this was someone sending me a message, but I didn"t like that they"d gone through the DWA to do it.
  
  Heavy breathing came through the phone for a second. "Okay. I"ll move it to the car park. How soon can you get here?"
  
  I checked my watch. "About an hour. Just sit tight."
  
  I hung up and met my friend"s eyes. "Someone left a package for me at the Dockworker"s Association."
  
  Tarquin snapped his fingers. "Right, you gave them your number."
  
  "Yeah, and it doesn"t look good that someone else knows that. Not to mention my dad works there."
  
  Emily went pale- her freckles stood out in stark relief. "You think someone knows about him?"
  
  "I wouldn"t think so, but I can"t take the risk. I need to check this out." I slid out of the booth and pulled out my wallet, dropping some money on the table. "I"ll call you guys as soon as I can. Hopefully it"s nothing and we can wander around shopping."
  
  "Want me to come with?" Tarquin offered.
  
  "Wouldn"t hurt to have a tank around for bomb disposal," Tock Tick pointed out.
  
  "How soon can you get your costume?" I asked.
  
  Tarquin hesitated. "Probably an hour?" He winced.
  
  I shook my head. "I"ll sort this out myself. Thanks for offering though."
  
  Emily held out a fist; Tarquin followed suit. "Stay safe."
  
  I bumped my knuckles to theirs. "I"ll do my best."
  
  Dockworkers Association Building, The Docks
  
  A man was waiting for me in the car park as I pulled the bike up. Even before he opened his mouth, I could tell this was the Daren I"d been speaking to on the phone. Somehow he just looked like a Darren.
  
  He balked at the sight of me. To be fair, I wasn"t at my best. Lung"s fire had burned away the blue silk of my cape, peeled off the paint stripes, and the metal was discoloured from the heat. I"d re-painted the amphora symbol on my chest just so people would be able to recognise me, but it looked almost comical compared to the rest of me.
  
  "It"s right over here," he said, pointing to a corner of the car park, far away from any of the vehicles. "I wanted to keep it away from anything. I mean, it"s probably not a bomb, right, but I kept thinking, you know-"
  
  Nemean snorted. "Shut him up already, I don"t need to hear any more of that."
  
  Darren stopped when I laid a hand on his shoulder. "Good thinking, Darren. I"ll take it from here."
  
  The box was tucked against the chainlink fence. It was pretty small- a cardboard oblong about the size of a brick. Still, that didn"t mean it was safe. The Butchers had sent all sorts of horrible things through the post- oblique messages like a can of tuna to sleep with the fishes, to more obvious things like severed fingers, to the occasional mail bomb.
  
  I directed insects to the box as I approached slowly, giving them a chance to check it out. A couple of cockroaches chewed a small hole for a fly to crawl in and explore.
  
  All the fly found was some bubble wrap tied up with tape around something hard.
  
  "Alright, so it"s probably not a bomb," Tactical conceded.
  
  "Come on already!" Firecracker burst out. "The suspense is killing me!"
  
  "Watch it," I cautioned her. "I can put you away again whenever I want."
  
  Regardless, I did need to see for myself, so I drew a sword and carefully approached the box until I was close enough to see the "Elpis" written in a neat hand across the side. After a tentative prod revealed nothing, I popped the sword edges and gingerly slit open the tape on the outside, then nudged the flaps open.
  
  Through the bubble wrap, I could make out the shape of a small phone. Curious, I sheathed the sword and picked the lump of wrapping up, tearing it away to reveal a cheap burner. At a touch of the keypad it lit up. A number was already dialled in.
  
  "Guys," Tock said suddenly, "A thought occurs. This cloak and dagger stuff- what if this is Coil?"
  
  "Fuck!" Bearskin swore.
  
  I cursed myself. Tock Tick was right- Coil"s standards of quiet competence and directing his troops from arm"s length seemed well matched to whatever this was. If he"d been observing me well enough to know I"d visited the DWA, he might know I"d been coordinating with the heroes.
  
  How far did his awareness go?
  
  "Well you"re not going to find out just standing around," Quarrel snapped. "Get on with it!"
  
  I gave her a hard shove as a warning- then I hit the button.
  
  The call was picked up on the second ring. "That was quick of you," said a voice. Female, young, with an amused tone. "Hello, Elpis."
  
  "Who are you? I"m not in the mood for games."
  
  The mystery caller clicked their tongue lightly. "That"s a shame, but fair enough. My name"s Tattletale, from the Undersiders."
  
  The final piece of the puzzle. I"d seen all the other Undersiders using their powers except her. Intelligence had her tentatively marked as a Thinker, but that was by the same method as identifying Coil"s power- more process of elimination than much actual evidence.
  
  I folded one arm across my chest to cup my elbow- one of Needler"s old habits. "Okay, Tattletale from the Undersiders. What do you want with the Dockworkers Association?"
  
  Tattletale hummed. "Huh. Genuinely didn"t see that coming. You"ve got a soft spot for them, huh? A blue collar upbringing, maybe?"
  
  I tensed, but she moved on before I could say anything. "I don"t actually have any interest in them. I just wanted to get this phone to you, and they were the easiest way to do it. It"d be a bit more troublesome to go through the Protectorate or New Wave, you understand."
  
  "How did you know to contact me through them? And what do you want?"
  
  "One of them posted on social media about you walking into the building and leaving your number for them. Did you know there"s a whole thread about you on Parahumans Online? I mean, my entire team doesn"t have a thread yet, you"ve been busy-"
  
  "What," I ground out, "Do. You. Want."
  
  There was a pause. Then, "Lung was chasing after us last night. Oni Lee was ahead of us, so we tried doubling back to escape- and Lung was waiting with a bunch of his goons surrounding the area, ordered to shoot us on sight.
  
  "Battery and Gargoyle showed up, and all they did was piss him off. Then you came flying in and knocked him on his ass. You saved Whirlygig"s life when he tried to fry her. And you could have just tied her up in the alleyway to arrest later, get a feather in your cap; but you passed her back to us, and bought time for us to run.
  
  "Basically: we owe you one."
  
  "Well fuck, this is new," Anchorage exclaimed.
  
  Flinch laughed, short and loud. "Ha! Would you look at that! Even the v-villains like you! Taylor, I"m so proud of you."
  
  I didn"t know how to respond. My legs were locked up, my head felt hot. It was one thing to get a compliment from heroes or civilians, but getting one from a villain was like getting blood from a stone.
  
  "I..." I struggled for words. "Guys, a little help?" I begged.
  
  Needler indicated her own confusion. "Polite conversation was never really our strong suit."
  
  "Hold on a second," Stoneknapper interjected. "We can use this. We"ve got a Thinker offering us a solid, right? And we"ve got a Thinker as a problem we"re trying to stomp out. Set a thief to catch a thief and all that..."
  
  I turned Stoneknapper"s suggestion over in my mind, and the idea pleased me. I could get serious intel on Coil, and it might reveal something about Tattletale"s abilities in what she was and wasn"t able to find out.
  
  Plus, in a way, the fact that she was a villain would make her more trustworthy for this. It wasn"t uncommon for villains to snitch on the competition so the authorities could clear the way for them. An unaffiliated group of petty thieves was pretty unlikely to have been infiltrated by Coil as well.
  
  I cleared my throat. "Well Tattletale, that"s very generous of you; I"m flattered. I might have an idea about how you can pay me back if you"re up for it."
  
  "So soon?" Tattletale"s voice was intrigued. "You"re already working on something, aren"t you? Another assault on the Empire perhaps? I didn"t get the impression you were going after the ABB, but maybe that"s changed."
  
  I cupped my hand over the mouthpiece, even though there was only Darren, and he was a good 30 feet away. "Neither. I"m investigating Coil"s organisation."
  
  The line was quiet for a long moment. Then Tattletale let out a long, slow breath- it whooshed through the speaker. "Coil," she said neutrally. "Operates in Downtown, hires mercenaries, wears a black costume with a snake?"
  
  "Exactly." That was basically the summary of Coil"s page on his PHO page. Somehow I"d expected a local criminal to know more off the top of her head.
  
  "You already know that though- and a fair bit more, I"m assuming. So you"re looking for more important info- like a weakness, or some kind of strategy that"ll let you take him down, even though you don"t know his power. You"ve narrowed it down though, you know it"s not anything for direct combat."
  
  "She"s probing," Vladimir noted. "Try to draw you into giving her details."
  
  That was one thing the Butchers had learned about Thinkers- the less information they had to work with, the easier they were to outmanoeuvre.
  
  Of course, another thing they had learned about Thinkers was that they tended towards arrogance.
  
  I kept my tone light as I said "Hey, if you don"t think you can dig up anything, that"s fine. I can save the favour for something else."
  
  Tattletale snorted. "I can tell when you"re trying to play me." Her tone became playful. "And it"s working. I"ll have something up for you in a day or two. Keep the phone, don"t bother with the number; I"m tossing this sim card as soon as I end this call."
  
  "Your paranoia is weirdly flattering."
  
  Tattletale hung up without another word. I slipped the phone into the Faraday-cage compartment on my belt and gathered up the packaging.
  
  "So who was it?" Darren asked when I got back to him.
  
  I dumped the cardboard and bubble wrap in his arms while I thought up an excuse. "Turns out I have fans. Someone wanted to send me a tip, and they figured this was more secure than just messaging me on PHO. Their heart"s in the right place at least."
  
  All the tension left Darren in a rush. "Oh good."
  
  I took a few steps toward my bike, then turned back as Tactical nudged me. "Do me a favour and don"t spread this around? I don"t need more people trying to be helpful like this. And whoever posted about me on the net needs to knock it off."
  
  "Uh, okay?" Darren said with a confused look as I swung my leg over my bike and drove off.
  
  The Lair, The Docks
  
  "Bullshit."
  
  "No, I"m serious," I said, switching my phone to the other shoulder so I could undo the rest of the catches on my armour. "She straight-up offered to get me some dirt on Coil. This could be the silver bullet, Achilles heel, Death Star tiny vent weakness that brings him down."
  
  "You know, I never understood that," Firecracker said thoughtfully. "I mean, why does a station that big have only one weeny little weak point? I mean, either it"d have no weaknesses at all or it"d have a bunch."
  
  Amy scoffed. "Oh come on. How good could she be?"
  
  "Good enough for a bunch of thieves to include her. She has to be more than a pretty face, or she"d be in a jail cell right now." The chest plate came away with a creak, and I started on the legs, unscrewing the hardpoints.
  
  "I guess? But are you really okay with relying on criminals to do the work?"
  
  "Hey, snitching is a time-honoured tradition," I countered, shimmying out of the rest of my armour until I was standing in just my undersuit. The last pieces of metal went on the workbench. I"d have to do some repairs and clean it up before we moved on Coil.
  
  "I mean, how do you know she"s not setting you up?"
  
  I shrugged. "This way seems more beneficial to her and her team. If she went back on her word now, then the Undersiders might as well hang up a sign saying "We"re a bunch of untrustworthy little shits," and shoot themselves in the foot."
  
  "Yeah, like robbing a casino didn"t do that."
  
  "She just doesn"t get it," Tock Tick bemoaned.
  
  I put the phone on speaker and propped it on the workbench, then closed my eyes and started undressing, pulling on the long zipper at the back of my undersuit. "No, listen; villains live and die on reputation. Not just how the public sees you; how competent you are, how dangerous your power is, what lines you will or won"t cross... and if you"ll keep your word in a deal.
  
  "Nobody wants to do business with someone that"ll turn around and gut them as soon as the money"s switched hands. They"ll say, "These are not people that we can do business with. They are not to be trusted. We cannot negotiate with them and expect them to uphold whatever deal we make with cash or drugs or territory". That"s what makes the difference between crime and organised crime."
  
  Even the Teeth had been careful with that. They"d abide by Truce conditions and hold to deals where they could. Oh, they"d attack other gangs, kill a few people, steal their stuff, torch the building and wear their bones and eyes, but not while they were negotiating with them.
  
  Amy stayed quiet for a long while- long enough for me to slip my undersuit off and navigate to the bugs I"d marked my street clothes with. I was just confirming which way round my underwear were when she grudgingly said, "I guess that makes sense."
  
  "Exactly. Look, if it helps, don"t think of it as trusting them, because I don"t. I expect them to do this because it works out better for everyone."
  
  Amy sighed. "Alright, fine. But I still don"t like this."
  
  "Fair." I opened my eyes as I finished putting my bra back on. "Oh, I meant to say, Spitfire and Ironclad wanted to know if you wanted to do something in civvies sometime. Get lunch, wander around the mall, stuff like that."
  
  "Oh. Um. Yes? I mean, yes, that sounds alright."
  
  "Cool." I hauled my jeans on. "Let me know what works for you, and we"ll hash out the details."
  
  "Okay," Amy said, a bit brighter.
  
  "I"ll let you get back to your stuff."
  
  The phone distorted Amy"s snort so it sounded more like an old radio backfiring. "Honestly, you did me a favour. Vicky"s dragged me out to pick a new dress. Her boyfriend"s birthday is coming up."
  
  "Oh, she wants to look nice when she gives him his present?"
  
  "I"m pretty sure the dress is the present," Amy said acidly. She hung up without another word.
  
  "Christ," Rotter said at last. "Someone"s got her knickers in a twist."
  
  "Knock it off," I ordered, pulling my top on. "She"s allowed to not like her sister"s boyfriend. Besides, the sooner we get out of here, the more likely we can fit in a movie with Emily and T."
  
  "Nice! I vote that space Viking film!" Bearskin cheered.
  
  Anchorage laughed. "You would say that, you walking cliché."
  
  "Hold on a second," Vladimir said suddenly. "Taylor, before you go, I have a request."
  
  I paused in the middle of reaching for my phone. "What?" I asked cautiously.
  
  "You"re not going to use that blood you got from Lung in a fight, correct? But there"s no sense in letting it go to waste. You could use it here."
  
  I blinked. Vladimir was right- his power could store the blood he siphoned for a period of time, but it degraded quickly. In a day or two I"d be back to empty again, and there wasn"t likely to be anyone else I was comfortable with siphoning any time soon.
  
  This was a good opportunity- to use Vladimir"s power before it developed a hair-trigger. And, if I was being honest, I wanted to feel it for myself. Memories were all well and good, but experience beat them every time.
  
  "Alright," I said, setting my glasses firmly on my face. "Let"s do it."
  
  The Butchers whooped and cheered as I crossed to the far end of the lair, kicking aside a few bits of broken statue from my last bit of target practice. One of Dark Society"s capes stared back at me, a bandage-wrapped head with smears of ink in a smiley face.
  
  I turned and lowered myself into a runner"s stance, fingers on the ground, one foot in front of the other. I could feel the blood that Vladimir"s power burned as fuel, a hot itch in my veins.
  
  I reached for it, let the heat build to a point where it was almost uncomfortable, and glanced at my watch. Then I grasped the heat.
  
  The world shifted into syrupy-slow redness. Everything was tinged with the same scarlet hue, and I could feel the air thicken. My insects now seemed to be moving through treacle, unable to keep up with my accelerated thoughts. My body felt jumpy- hot and tense, a taut wire ready to snap.
  
  I pushed off, legs pumping into a sprint. My hair flew out behind me immediately, slightly less protected from the effect than the rest of me. My heart was a continuous hum in my chest as I sprinted the full length of the lair in a moment.
  
  I didn"t bother to slow down and turn around- why would I waste this glorious rush? Instead I threw one leg up and heaved, running straight up the wall for one-two-three-four steps before gravity won over. I pushed off as I started to fall and twisted my body- in this strange fast-slow time it was child"s play to direct myself. I landed facing back the way I came and sprinted back to the wall I"d started at.
  
  The blood burned out just before I touched the wall. I felt the heat leave me as the world returned to colour, and my insects were suddenly a frantic buzz.
  
  The Butchers roared in sheer exhilaration as I leaned against the wall and drew deep breaths. A huge smile split my face.
  
  I dug my fingers into the concrete with Stoneknapper"s fizz until I felt the buzz fade. Then I straightened up and shook myself off.
  
  That felt good. Worryingly good. No wonder Vladimir had achieved such a high body count back in his day.
  
  It made me wonder if I could find some other regenerator that wouldn"t miss a few quarts of blood-
  
  "Taylor!" Flinch shouted.
  
  I mentally slapped myself- then physically slapped myself. My throat felt dry, so I crossed over to my backpack and grabbed my water bottle, draining it in a few gulps.
  
  It didn"t help much, but that was Vladimir"s power. Always thirsty.
  
  I shoved the bottle back in and shouldered my bag, pushing Vladimir away as he griped and groaned for more action.
  
  Today was a nice day, and I was going to enjoy it with my friends.
  
  And next week, I"d be diving into a base full of soldiers to slap the piss out of Coil.
  
  I clenched my hands until the knuckles cracked. Then I moved a few bugs to flip the switch that controlled the door, and headed out into the brisk March weather.
  
  Vladimir"s thirst for blood was quieter now- but I could still feel it at the back of my mind, a tiny little impulse, a grain of sand in my shoe; right next to the irritating itch of Rotter"s power demanding use, and the all-purpose urge for violence.
  
  Just one more horrible longing to keep in the back of my head, I supposed. Coil"s base couldn"t come fast enough to give me some relief.
  
  6.8
  Monday 14th March, The Lair
  
  Thanks to Dad turning in for an early night, I"d slipped away to the lair a little earlier than usual to continue repairs on my armour.
  
  A lot of it was just sanding the scorch marks off and smoothing out the dents, but there were also a lot of smaller parts that needed to be reshaped on a level of precision that Stoneknapper"s power couldn"t handle, so I was currently using a blowtorch and my waldo arms to fix the interior rigging. In between components I used the blowtorch to melt bits of cheese onto toast for a snack.
  
  "Now this is living," Tock said with satisfaction as another piece of cheddar slowly melted. I absently radiated agreement as I finished the final interior strut and dipped it into a small container of oil to cool it off. While I waited on that, I picked up my cheesy toast and bit into it.
  
  The inside of my mouth wasn"t nearly as tough as the rest of me, but Nemean"s pain immunity reached everywhere. Even though the cheese was at a scalding temperature, it just tasted delicious. One of the small benefits of my situation.
  
  "I still think you should make another axe," Bearskin grumbled.
  
  I rolled my eyes, ready to repeat my point yet again. Luckily, Tactical beat me to it.
  
  "We"ve been over this," he growled, Boston accent thickening slightly with irritation. "We don"t need to split people in half in the raid, and large weapons would just be a hindrance in an enclosed environment."
  
  Needler quietly radiated smug satisfaction. "Whereas my weakness detection and my cingkrik silat will be perfectly suited for close quarters."
  
  Needler was right, even as Bearskin fumed to himself. In a cramped space, a weapon that needed room to swing was at a disadvantage. That was why I"d focused on making more pepper rounds and net canisters as well as fixing the armour; I"d be able to incapacitate entire squads at a time, as long as I kept my allies out of the area.
  
  "Hey, if you want summat good for hand-to-hand..." Rotter trailed off suggestively.
  
  "Absolutely not," I snapped, taking the last bite of cheese irritably. I was determined to use Rotter"s powers only as a last resort, my fight with Lung notwithstanding. Unfortunately, he"d become a lot more insistent since then, having had a taste of real action.
  
  Nemean"s claws were another option I couldn"t use without giving myself away, but I did have a workaround for that. I was planning on installing small metal claws on the tips of my gauntlets that I could flick out when I needed them.
  
  They"d be last though. I plucked the interior strut out of the oil bath and carefully wiped it down with a cloth, then turned my chair to the breastplate propped up on the workbench, opened up to reveal its workings. The last strut went in with a hooked motion and a few tightened screws to bring it in line with the rest of the components.
  
  With that last little piece, I could close the armour up and call it functionally finished- I"d even replaced the silicone grips on the palms and fingertips that had melted from the heat. It still looked pretty ugly, rusty-looking around the edges and generally drab, but I had another two days to take care of that. The actual raid wasn"t until Wednesday afternoon, so I had plenty of time to get around to the aesthetics. The only thing I"d completed on that score was putting a new layer of blue silk onto my cape, complete with my amphora symbol.
  
  The Protectorate had tweaked their schedules so that Armsmaster, Dauntless and Triumph would be on patrol within reachable distance of Coil"s headquarters that night, so we could keep the illusion of peace going until the very last moment.
  
  Meanwhile, New Wave would simply fly and drive over to rendezvous with us, and then use the Pelham"s shields to push through the base without worrying about anyone catching a bullet.
  
  "Which leaves us sitting pretty on top of piles of cash, weapons and drugs," Anchorage said, then added bitterly, "Except we can"t take any of that with us."
  
  "I can probably slip some of the cash out in my armour," I pointed out. "And I can make stuff that"s more dangerous than guns if we need it."
  
  Anchorage settled down a little, mollified. "That"s something, I guess."
  
  "What I really wish we could keep is the base," Firecracker said wistfully. "Imagine what we could do with a place like that."
  
  Vladimir snickered. "Yes, as soon as we refurbish the piranha tank."
  
  "Or the giant acid vat," Stoneknapper chimed in with a laugh.
  
  "Giant laser to cut the hero in half, crotch first!" Quarrel giggled. "No, Meester Bond, I expect you to die!"
  
  "Nah, we don"t need any of that," Butcher insisted. "Just have the new girl fill a pit with fire ants or some shit and lower "em in. Feet first, so they can watch."
  
  I dropped the other piece of cheese toast back onto the plate. "Jesus Christ, Butcher, what the fuck?!"
  
  "Holy shit, you"re right, that is brutal. We gotta do that one of these days!" Dirty Rotter crowed.
  
  "No, we absolutely do not!" I snapped in disgust, ramming the two of them back into the dark.
  
  The rest of the Butchers settled down after that, unwilling to get pushed down. Their talk was subdued as I filled my belt compartments with various tricks and devices, then set to scrubbing at the right arm to clean the damage off.
  
  I"d just got the right hand back to a decent look when the phone rang. A second later, I realised it was the phone I"d received from Tattletale. I"d taken it apart a few times to make sure there weren"t any tracking devices in it, and decided it was safe to have it in the lair. Now it was vibrating across the workbench surface, trailing its power cable behind it.
  
  I plucked it up and hit the call button. "Tattletale," I began, "Good to hear from you. How"s-"
  
  "Whatever you"re going to do to Coil, you need to do it right the hell now," Tattletale interrupted urgently.
  
  "Hold on, what-"
  
  "Coil"s got a base under the construction site on Midford street- and you already know that, fantastic. He"s got about 60 mercenaries on the payroll, and he"s not stopping there. He"s recruited a whole team of capes, all heavy hitters, and he"s bringing them into the city tonight. You"ve got maybe two hours before they get to his base."
  
  "Hold on a second," I demanded. "How do I know this is legit? I don"t trust you enough to charge in on your word."
  
  "For fuck"s sake!" A few clicks and phone tapping noises came from the speaker for a moment, before Coil"s voice came through.
  
  "-occupy the heroes until approximately 2am. That should be enough time for the Travelers to settle into their accommodations and cover their tracks."
  
  A click, and then Tattletale was back. "There"s your proof. Now hurry up."
  
  The Travellers. The name rang a distant bell in the echoing halls of inherited memories. Quarrel had heard something about them back in winter, when the Teeth were holed up in New York. Nothing very concrete- the papers talked about them performing a couple of robberies and getting away without casualties, but with a stunning amount of destruction of property.
  
  Darker rumours within the underworld had noted how a few dozen people had gone missing while the Travelers were around. No ransom demands, no bodies found, no blood trail- just gone.
  
  I set the phone to speaker and started shimmying out of my clothes and into my undersuit even as my mind reeled from the sudden change of circumstances. "We"re not ready for this- the plan was for later."
  
  "Later isn"t going to work. It"s now or never. You"re not telling me that the woman who punched Lung in the dick is scared?"
  
  I huffed a laugh as I reached over my shoulder to finish doing up the undersuit zipper. "I can tell you"re trying to play me- and it"s working. I"ll do what I can."
  
  "Yeah, well, you"d better pull this off. Otherwise Coil"s going to kill me when he finds out I fucked him over. And I mean that literally." Tattletale hung up without another word.
  
  "Well, fuck," Nemean said at last.
  
  No plan survived contact with the enemy- you couldn"t rely on them to help you set up your dream engagement. Still, this was one hell of a curveball to handle.
  
  First thing first- gather allies.
  
  I took my phone out and hit speed dial. While it rang, I quickly pulled my hair into a bun and yanked my mask on, then stepped into the armour and started pulling the pieces together.
  
  "Do you have any idea what time it is?" Amy slurred angrily.
  
  "Coil"s bringing a team of capes into the city in a couple of hours, we need to hit him now. Tell your family, I"ll call the Protectorate."
  
  "Wait, what?"
  
  "I got a tip just now. Coil"s bringing a team called the Travelers in. We need to hit him within the next two hours."
  
  Rustling sounds on the phone- probably Amy getting out of bed. "Fuck, it"s always something. I"ll tell Carol and call Aunt Sarah."
  
  "Thanks." I hung up, then hit another speed dial.
  
  Miss Militia picked up on the third ring. "Elpis? Is something the matter?"
  
  I quickly gave her the details even while I put my gauntlets on and clipped my helmet into place. Miss Militia cursed softly just as I opened and closed the jawguard.
  
  "I"ll try to get people over there, but we"re not in position for this. Dauntless is off shift and Triumph is out of town."
  
  "What about Armsmaster?" I asked, checking my weapons over.
  
  "I"m heading to him now; he"s in his lab."
  
  "Alright- I"ve called New Wave already. Just send whoever can make it."
  
  "Understood."
  
  I hung up again, and hit my third and final speed dial while I crossed over to the chariot.
  
  "Wstfgl?"
  
  "T, it"s me. I know this is a pain, but Coil"s bringing a whole team of villains into the city tonight. We need to stop him now. Are you in?"
  
  Tarquin groaned and shuffled around. "Fuck. I"m coming. Jesus it"s late."
  
  "Thanks man. I"ll come and pick you up in the chariot." I ended the call and dropped the phone into its compartment on my belt as I swung myself into the driver"s seat. A few ants tripped the switch to open the door, and I drove out of the lair as quickly as I dared, heading for Coil"s base.
  
  
  
  
  
  I switched to the mainspring when I got close, so my final approach was finally silent. Bloodsight let me see the man hiding in the shadows twitch in surprise as I pulled into the parking lot adjacent to the construction site.
  
  "Elpis," Velocity said, stepping out of the shadows. His face was pale in the moonlight, standing out against the dark red of his costume.
  
  "Hm. We should have expected he would arrive," Muramasa grunted.
  
  I nodded in turn as I stepped out and shut the door behind me. "You know what"s happening?"
  
  "Coil"s bought a whole team of villains, so we"re taking him down now." Velocity"s shrug was laconic, but his stance betrayed his tension. "How solid"s this intel though?"
  
  "I trust it, but if you want more proof-" I fished my phone out, "We can listen in and see if Coil"s talking."
  
  I tapped in the number for my listening device, and it picked up after a few rings. The speaker played the sounds of a keyboard clacking in Coil"s office, almost drowned out by the clatter as Ironclad squeezed himself out of the back seat and straightened up.
  
  "We can"t guarantee that he"s going to say something incriminating right when we need him to," Flinch pointed out. "Maybe you should dig up the Mole and play the recordings-"
  
  A trilling sound came through the speaker. The keyboard tapping stopped, and then Coil"s voice said "Uber."
  
  "Don"t you ever get tired of being wrong?" Anchorage asked Flinch condescendingly.
  
  I was aware of Uber, and his partner Leet; they were a couple of minor villains that committed "pranks" and filmed them for a web series, always done with some sort of videogame theme. One time they might be dressed up as Mario and Bowser to break into a mint facility and collect coins; another time they might be capsizing boats for a Bioshock theme.
  
  I"d rated them below the Undersiders in terms of danger and competence- a lot of their audience only watched them for their numerous failures. Hearing Coil talk with them was a surprise.
  
  "I don"t care what game you are acting out, Uber; Are you keeping the heroes occupied?"
  
  Velocity and I exchanged glances as I held the phone between us.
  
  "Good. Keep her attention for as long as you can."
  
  Velocity put a hand to his ear. "Console, is there anything about Uber and Leet tonight?"
  
  A few moments of nodding later, he lowered his hand. "They"re running around Lord Street Market, breaking into the stores there. One of them is dressed up as some kind of monster, and they"ve both got big guns. Battery"s chasing them."
  
  "Which means we can"t expect her any time soon," I grunted.
  
  "Okay, but what game is it?" Stoneknapper wondered.
  
  Something moved along the rooftops close by. I managed to withhold the urge to turn my head and look until I actually heard something.
  
  Assault simply stepped off the roof of an adjacent building and landed as easily as if he hadn"t just taken a thirty foot drop, strolling towards us cheerily. "Evening folks," he said as casually as if this was poker night instead of a last-minute raid on a fortified military installation.
  
  "So I heard we"re moving things up. I actually wanted to be part of this from the beginning- guess dreams really do come true."
  
  "2am should suffice," Coil"s voice sounded from the phone, drawing Assault"s attention. "But feel free to continue longer than that if you wish, and publish any footage that shows Battery in a poor light."
  
  Assault"s boyish grin didn"t fade. It just locked into place, like he"d suddenly turned to plastic. "What"s he talking about?" he said with deceptive calm, turning to Velocity.
  
  "Looks like Coil"s got the gamer duo running interference- Console confirmed Battery"s on it." Velocity patted Assault on the shoulder. "She"ll be fine, Assault."
  
  Side by side, the similarities between the two jumped out at me. Both of them fit men in red costumes; but Velocity"s was a deeper red, and there was more muscle to his frame; Assault was more brightly coloured, more boyish of stature. The sudden display of emotion regarding Battery made him look even younger.
  
  "Coil"s going to be the one looking stupid once we bust his ass," Ironclad pointed out, clenching one massive fist.
  
  "Very good," said Coil through the phone, resuming his typing. Firecracker snickered hysterically at the timing as I ended the call and tucked my phone away again.
  
  Assault rolled his shoulders. "Right." He straightened up, visibly steeling himself. "Right."
  
  "Alright. Elpis, do you have a layout of the base?" I handed Velocity a map I"d drawn from a compartment on my belt.
  
  He unfolded it and gave it a long look. "Any idea how many soldiers in there?"
  
  The base was well cleaned and freshly built, not a great place for insects to establish themselves. Still, I"d been slipping a few in every time I"d come close to the base, and now I was pouring them in through every concealed vent I"d found, spreading flies, moths, beetles and spiders through the air vents and down into the corridors.
  
  "My guess would be something like twenty to thirty," I said as a fly slipped onto the 27th person I"d found inside. "Coil would keep the bulk of his men here. Hard to say how many of them are ready for action right this minute though."
  
  "Well, let"s assume it"s all of them- maybe we"ll be pleasantly surprised."
  
  More bugs laid across the roads died as something crushed them. I turned at the faint sound of an engine.
  
  A nondescript sedan came around the corner with the lights low. The four of us shuffled aside as it drew into the parking lot and slid into a space across from us.
  
  Brandish came out of the drivers seat in full costume, Flashbang from the passenger seat. Victoria floated out, looking distinctly rumpled, while Amy clambered out with little grace, robe flapping around her ankles.
  
  "We have a problem," Brandish said without preamble, striding across the lot. The rest of her family trailed behind her with worried expressions.
  
  "What, there"s more?" Ironclad said sarcastically.
  
  Brandish glared at his helmet. "Sarah and Neil are out of town until tomorrow on a conference. Crystal"s at the college dorms, and Eric isn"t picking up his phone."
  
  "FOR FUCK"S SAKE," Tactical groaned at maximum mental volume.
  
  "So the only forcefield we"ve got is the one wrapped around Glory Girl," I summarised. "Great."
  
  "Maybe we should wait for reinforcements," Velocity suggested, hand to his ear again. "Armsmaster"s suiting up now, and Miss Militia"s on her way. Call it twenty, thirty minutes."
  
  "Neither of them has the kind of defense we need," I pointed out. "It"ll just be two more people who aren"t laser-proof. And we don"t know if we can wait that long. If the Travelers show up before we"ve got Coil, this"ll turn into a clusterfuck."
  
  "I think I"ve heard of them," Glory Girl said, combing her fingers through her hair. "Five members, and they"re all pretty strong. One of them"s some kind of pyrokinetic. Like, melting bricks kind of pyrokinetic."
  
  "That"s a hell of a power," Bearskin idly noted.
  
  "And what"s that supposed to mean?" I demanded, sensing a hidden meaning in his words.
  
  "Nothing, just pointing it out," he said quickly.
  
  "What do we do?" Amy asked, eyes wide in the shadow of her hood.
  
  I chewed my lip, tugging at Tactical"s power for ideas, running through what I knew of the base"s layout, the merc"s capabilities, and the powers present. Eight parahumans was a formidable force, but Amy was a non-combatant, and only three of us were definitely bulletproof- maybe four, I wasn"t sure about Assault.
  
  As for grenades or lasers, even the Butcher"s durability wasn"t that good. Which meant...
  
  "Fast and hard," I decided-
  
  "That"s what she-" Rotter began-
  
  "Two teams," I continued, shoving Dirty Rotter back down again without pause. "One for each entrance. Troop entrance through the hatch, and the large entrance in the parking structure over there-" I pointed to a nearby concrete tower on the other side of the construction site.
  
  "We divide their forces and overwhelm them before they can bring out anything serious. Once they"re down, we arrest Coil. Assault, can you handle bullets?"
  
  "If I can see them coming," he answered with a look of surprise.
  
  "So that means we"ve got two bulletproof heroes to a team. Me and Ironclad on one, you and Glory Girl on the other. Velocity, can you carry Flashbang"s grenades at speed?"
  
  Velocity cocked his head. "Never tried." He glanced at Flashbang with a dawning look of comprehension. "But I"m always up for new experiences."
  
  "Alright. Then I"ve got some ideas.."
  
  
  
  
  
  I could feel Brandish"s gaze on the back of my neck like a burning coal as we crept toward the drainage hatch that hid the entrance. She wasn"t happy about being separated from the rest of her family to go with Ironclad and myself, but we"d eventually all been in agreement.
  
  Glory Girl, Flashbang, Assault and Velocity were heading for the larger entrance on the other side, while Amy was waiting back at the car, ready to be called in once the base was secured.
  
  Standing by while your family went to war sounded like a difficult experience, so I"d positioned a bunch of bugs nearby, sketching out a rough map of the base, with fireflies indicating our respective positions. From the way she tapped the spider in her pocket, I figured she appreciated it.
  
  Brandish glanced at her watch. "Thirty seconds." She"d synced her watch with Flashbang"s so the teams would enter at exactly the same time.
  
  Ironclad bent down and dug his fingers into the concrete rim around the hatch. The metal bent slightly from the force of his touch.
  
  Brandish created a sword in her right hand- a beam of orange-yellow lightning, fizzing with energy. I could feel the gentle warmth it gave off, but I also knew from Tactical that it would be able to cut through flesh and steel with ludicrous ease.
  
  I snapped my cape into its shield form and hefted my air cannon. Fully charged, fully loaded.
  
  "Go," Brandish said.
  
  Ironclad heaved upward, the metal in his armour bunching and rippling in a rough imitation of musculature. The hatch was ripped free and tossed over his shoulder, spinning through the air. There was a crash as it hit the cab of a truck across the construction site.
  
  "Whoops!" Firecracker said cheerfully.
  
  The smell of a storm drain wafted out as I threw myself down the steps and into the tunnel. Brandish followed behind, her sword"s light sending writhing shadows along the walls. Ironclad brought up the rear, the tips of his pauldrons scraping the walls even as he squeezed himself down.
  
  There was a door with metal bars- I smashed it open with a kick and kept running.
  
  Down a long hallway, we came to a small room, with one other door and a surveillance camera up in a corner. I stepped aside to let Brandish through.
  
  She took two steps forward, gripped her sword in both hands, and brought it down in two quick powerful slashes, severing the hinges and lock. Then she stepped aside, leaving the door standing more by its own weight than anything else.
  
  I could see the blood silhouettes of several soldiers gathered around the door, readying weapons to point at us.
  
  Ironclad braced one foot against the back wall and rested his hands on the floor. In one explosive movement, he pushed off to ram his pointed shoulder into the door.
  
  The metal bent under the impact as Ironclad hit and carried on through- I saw two soldiers who weren"t fast enough to dodge get swatted aside.
  
  A second later there was a shriek of metal, and the metal walkways around the perimeter of the room beyond collapsed under Ironclad"s weight, sending him and the soldiers tumbling to the floor one level below. There were cries of pain as some landed badly, and a couple of gunshots. Overlaying that was a squawking alarm echoing through the base.
  
  "Well," Needler said with surprise, "I suppose the overt approach has its benefits."
  
  Brandish dismissed her sword and threw herself through the door, collapsing into her spherical Breaker form mid-leap. She bounced onto the intact walkway on one side and returned to human form, swinging an axe through another soldier"s rifle and into his chest.
  
  In the brief moment, I noticed the level of control she had. She must have altered the axe"s intensity mid-swing, so it cut through the metal, but then only burned the man himself.
  
  I swung myself through the door, hopping over the downed walkway onto the opposite side from Brandish, firing the air cannon as I went. The soldiers past Brandish went down to blasts of air and net canisters, and then I felt bullets hit my shoulder.
  
  "Sloppy," Quarrel tsked.
  
  I swivelled like a tank turret, taking the bullets on my cape-shield. The soldier started moving sideways while firing, reaching for the polished metal attachment under the rifle.
  
  The air blast took him in the face- a net hit him in centre mass. He stumbled back under legs that were partially wrapped and fell backwards over the railing. He hit the floor flat on his back and didn"t get up. I could still see his heart beating though.
  
  Down below, Ironclad was having a whale of a time. The Flashbang grenades we"d piled into the hollow of his armour were being flung with abandon, exploding when they hit hard enough. The concussive blasts threw soldiers around, crashing into piles of cardboard boxes, into the walls, into each other.
  
  Brandish leapt over the railing, turning to sphere form to bounce and pop out again, slashing through weapons with efficient strikes. One soldier dropped the remains of his rifle and went for a pistol- Brandish dismissed one sword, summoned a spike of energy in her palm, and drove it into his wrist. The soldier fell back with a scream- I caught the smell of burnt flesh.
  
  I scanned the room- bloodsight and insect tags confirmed no soldiers left standing. The cape went back on my back, rolled up and out of the way: then I fired a grappler into the ceiling and swung across to the other side. A door there led further into the complex- I could see bodies moving on the other side, forming a chokepoint.
  
  "Let"s keep moving," I said, gesturing to the others.
  
  Ironclad looked up at me, then shook his head. "I can"t climb up that without smashing the walkway again. I"ll hang back and tie these guys up or something, catch up in a bit."
  
  Brandish scowled, but didn"t argue the point. Instead she scaled a pile of crates and accepted my hand to haul her up.
  
  I considered pulling my cape out again- but the soldiers further in would know by now that bullets weren"t working. Explosives, perhaps- and Coil"s mercenaries had those Tinkertech laser attachments. I needed something tougher.
  
  "Ironclad." I pointed. "Pass that door up here."
  
  Ironclad abandoned the soldier he was hogtying to grab the buckled door in one hand and pass it up. The inner side had thick grips along the edge- I grabbed one and awkwardly hefted my impromptu shield into position, then cocked my air cannon.
  
  Brandish raised an eyebrow, then formed a longsword and jabbed it into the lock. Another slash cut the hinges.
  
  "Take these," Ironclad said, holding a hand out. Two more Flashbang grenades lay in his palm.
  
  Brandish dismissed her sword and grabbed them, then collapsed into her ball form. I had to juggle my air cannon for a second to pick her up, but I managed.
  
  More soldiers lay beyond the door, armed and ready with deadly weapons.
  
  "It doesn"t get any better than this," Butcher rasped with dark joy.
  
  I threw a front kick into the door and spun out of the way.
  
  Purple lasers slashed through the air a second later.
  
  6.9
  Monday 14th March, Coil"s Headquarters, Downtown
  
  "Holy crap!" Ironclad yelled as lasers lashed through the air above his head. I saw how they bored steaming holes in the concrete and sliced through the steel walkways as they hit.
  
  "Bugger," Rotter said. "That could"ve gone right through you."
  
  I rammed him deep into the dark with a disgusted grunt, then set the door shield down and took Brandish from the crook of my arm. Her Breaker form was about the size of a basketball, though perfectly smooth instead of textured, and giving off a mild glow of yellow-orange.
  
  Bloodsight showed five soldiers total down the corridor- they"d stopped firing, but I knew they"d open up on the next available target.
  
  Unfortunately for them, their next target was tough. I clipped the air cannon to my back again, took a stance, and hurled the Brandish ball at an angle through the open doorway, ricocheting off the walls.
  
  Shots rang out, just a few- these soldiers were smart enough not to risk crossfire. Then I saw one silhouette"s head snap back as the Brandish ball smashed into his face.
  
  "Nice," Anchorage laughed.
  
  I grabbed the door shield and made to charge after Brandish, but the soldiers were professionals- a pair of them turned back toward me, the one in front dropping to his knee so the other could shoot past him. Danger sense flared, and I spun back out of the way as they fired lasers- a trailing corner of the door was sliced off, glowing hot at the edges.
  
  Gunshots rang out- a combat shotgun, Tactical"s power filled in. One of the soldier"s silhouettes was aiming at something on the ground and firing every few seconds, pumping the action like clockwork.
  
  Tactical nodded approvingly. "Smart move."
  
  I grimaced. Brandish wouldn"t be hurt, but the soldiers were forcing a stalemate, and we were running out of time.
  
  I gritted my teeth and pulled out my air cannon, setting it to pepper rounds. To check, I leaned the battered door out across the opening.
  
  Another laser beam drilled a neat hole right through it, and I hastily pulled it back.
  
  "What the hell"s going on up there?" Ironclad asked, pausing in the act of tying up the remaining soldiers below.
  
  "I"m working on it," I snapped. I cocked the cannon and raised it to my shoulder. Then I took a deep breath, and reached for Quarrel"s power.
  
  "Finally!" Quarrel said.
  
  It felt like a tunnel, or a pipe, extending out from the barrel of the cannon. In Quarrel"s hands it had been flexible enough to tie it in a knot like a garden hose- she"d once made a joke about "hosing" people with bullets.
  
  For me, it was stiffer- but still able to turn the corner. I made sure Ironclad wasn"t looking, then pulled the trigger.
  
  The canister shot out- and immediately took a hard left turn down the corridor. I heard a soft whump as the canister burst open, and then shouts of pain as the burning dust fell into eyes and drifted up noses.
  
  The two soldiers firing down the corridor faltered- I saw the one behind reach for something on his belt, while the kneeling one hastily moved forward to try and escape the dust cloud.
  
  I burst around the corner with net rounds. The crouching soldier was trussed up at once, while the standing one dropped the gas mask he was trying to fit on in order to shoot. A pulse of air knocked him off his feet.
  
  I threw myself down the corridor, air cannon at the ready. All I had to do was create an opening for Brandish to get out of her ball form.
  
  The first soldier wasn"t done though- he rolled over, a ridiculous ball of rope and body armour, until the barrel of his gun, poking through a gap in the net, was pointed at me. I was halfway down the corridor, too late to turn back.
  
  "Climb!" Nemean roared.
  
  I leapt for the right wall and kicked off it, zig-zagging up the corridor. The soldier"s gun waggled about inside the netting, trying to follow my movements.
  
  I went high on my next jump, grabbing a pipe that ran along the ceiling and throwing myself forward to land on top of the soldier, pinning his gun to the side. Needler"s power drew my hand to his throat, a gap in his body armour. One quick chop of the hand had him gasping painfully while I wrenched the rifle free and snapped it in two.
  
  Some of the remaining soldiers had backed off down further corridors, dragging a few fallen others with them; that still left some soldiers coughing and puking inside the cloud. I waded into them with quick punches and the butt of my cannon, flooring them in a matter of seconds. Then I gently kicked the Brandish ball out of the cloud.
  
  "Always wanted to do that," Bearskin chuckled.
  
  Brandish popped back into human form after rolling a dozen or so feet. "Thank you," she said, wincing a little at the edge of the stinging cloud.
  
  I cocked the air cannon again. "Should just be a few more turns before we get to Coil"s office," I said.
  
  "Good."
  
  Something clattered around the corner- I made the mistake of turning to look just as the stun grenade went off.
  
  My vision went white, and my ears rang with incredible noise. My balance faltered for a second before I caught myself on the wall.
  
  Brandish popped out of her ball form again- I hadn"t seen her go into it. She said something to me that I couldn"t hear over the ringing.
  
  "I"m fine," I said at what I hoped was a decent volume. Needler"s regeneration was already fixing the damage. "Let"s keep moving."
  
  Brandish gave me a sceptical look, but formed a pair of axes and went around the corner with me.
  
  Bloodsight was unaffected by my shaky vision- I could see several soldiers had hidden themselves in rooms on either side of the hallway, ready for an ambush. Some of the silhouettes didn"t feel like they had any bugs planted on them, and for a second I worried that Coil had reinforcements I"d missed.
  
  "No, pepper kills insects, remember?" Needler chided me. "This are just the soldiers you caught with the dust."
  
  A door at the end cracked open, and a grenade came sailing out. This one was fatter, rounder.
  
  Brandish dropped into ball form again- as I leapt backward I snatched up my air cannon and shot at the grenade, sending it skittering back along the floor.
  
  The blast knocked the nearest door off its hinges, and even though I was far away, it still felt like a full-body slap. I fell on my back with a shout of surprise, and felt bits of shrapnel pepper my armour.
  
  The soldiers poured out of the rooms, guns at the ready. I kipped to my feet and fired the first shot, then grabbed the barrel of a shotgun aimed at me, yanked it forward, and slammed it back into the soldier"s face. His nose broke, and I saw his balaclava wet with blood at once.
  
  Brandish burst out to slice through a rifle, stab a foot, throw herself forward and bounce in ball form in one fluid movement. The Butchers gave a momentary flash of approval.
  
  My movements were just as practiced, but far less elegant; Needler"s silat was my go-to, but cumulative decades of street fights and bar brawls had their influence as well.
  
  I ducked low and kicked a soldier in the chest, sending him crashing back into the room he"d sprung from. Another shot floored a man taking aim at Brandish, then I drew a sword to taser the nearest soldier, dropped the sword to grab him, and flung him into another. They fell through an open doorway, and I fired a pepper grenade in there for good measure, then slammed the door shut and crushed the doorknob in my fist.
  
  "Brutal," Anchorage said with horrible glee.
  
  Brandish reached the end of the soldier"s ambush and flickered her Breaker ball, reorienting herself to face back towards me. I saw her face change, her mouth open.
  
  But danger sense had already blared its warning. I swung the air cannon around behind me, sending the rifle arcing away from my head. The burst from the laser carved a burning squiggle into the wall, before I seized the rifle in one hand.
  
  The last soldier standing, sprinkled with pepper dust, took one hand off the rifle to reach for a pistol on his hip. Too slow. I yanked him in close and brought my elbow up into his jaw, feeling the bone splinter on impact. He dropped like a stone, squealing incoherently.
  
  "How did you know he was there?" Brandish asked me, gathering weapons off the fallen and destroying them with swings of her burning axe.
  
  I shrugged. "Instinct."
  
  Muramasa snorted. "You were fortunate. If not for Flinch"s power, you would have fallen in ignominy."
  
  I gritted my teeth and gave him a shove, but he wasn"t strictly wrong. That soldier had got the drop on me because I"d killed off my own tracker bugs in him. I"d have to work on that in future- the shot you didn"t see coming was often the deadliest.
  
  We left the soldiers in groaning heaps as we headed for the final turning to Coil"s office. The alarm that had been squawking since we"d burst into the main base finally cut out- I supposed that everyone had already been alerted.
  
  We paused ten feet away from the corner; I could see a squad of soldiers there, arranged like a firing squad, ready to shoot whatever came around.
  
  "Okay," I said, turning to Brandish, "Let"s think. Coil"s office is just past here. Odds of a trap?"
  
  "A certainty," Brandish replied. "Ideas?"
  
  I glanced at her, then through the walls to the blood silhouettes of the remaining soldiers. In the room beyond them, I could make out a tall, thin figure grabbing objects and stuffing them into what was probably a backpack.
  
  Bugs were moving throughout the entire base by now, giving me a map of the structure. I could feel the second team dealing with their half of the mercenaries further away- Velocity brushing my insects aside at incredible speed, the glass-smooth surface of Glory Girl"s forcefield, the thumping explosions of Flashbang"s grenades.
  
  They"d be here soon enough; but I still didn"t plan on waiting around.
  
  I set one hand against the wall, letting Stoneknapper"s fizz rise like pins and needles. I could feel the material of the wall, concrete rebar, pipes and wires.
  
  "Think laterally," Stoneknapper urged me. "Nothing solid"s an obstacle to me."
  
  "We flank them," I said. "If you can cut through here-"
  
  An enormous clang and a screech of metal sounded from back the way we"d come. Brandish and I turned to look as thundering footsteps approached.
  
  Ironclad was squeezed down to the point that there was no space between his armour and his actual body, and even then, he seemed to fill the space like a cork in a bottle. I could see scraps of the broken walkways worked into his mass, and he carried the two broken doors on either arm, held in place with bent bars and tendrils of wire.
  
  "How much further?"
  
  "Just past the bend. Probably there"s an ambush though."
  
  Ironclad jerked slightly. "Fuck."
  
  "Yeah, that"s what I thought." I leaned on Tactical"s power, hoping for a solution.
  
  After a second, I spoke. "We need to go back a bit."
  
  A minute or so later, we stood close to the corner again. I held the air cannon in one hand, and a borrowed stun grenade in the other.
  
  I leaned to the side, far enough I could just see the beginning of the soldier"s corridor. With one hand I hurled the grenade- with the other I fired two pepper rounds.
  
  Neither had hit the ground before I sprinted forward, switching the cannon for my swords as I went.
  
  The pepper canisters burst open with twin muffled whumps- a second later, the stun grenade went off with a deafening bang. The soldiers were instantly rendered helpless.
  
  A second after that, Ironclad punched through the wall of the adjacent room, carrying the Brandish ball in one hand. Slow sweeps of his arms knocked the soldiers off their feet.
  
  Brandish returned to human form and started laying into the soldiers, face obscured by the gas mask we"d taken off one of the defeated soldiers further back. She looked faintly ridiculous in it, but no less dangerous as she dealt out slashes to rifles and stabs to feet and hands.
  
  Within moments, we had the last of the soldiers incapacitated. While Ironclad dragged them over for me to tie up, Brandish dismissed the axes in her hands and made a sword instead, stabbing it into the steel doors that led to Coil"s personal office. I glanced up to check-
  
  -and saw Coil"s rail-thin silhouette rapidly shrinking into the distance.
  
  I bit my tongue before I could let myself swear out loud- blood seeped from in between my teeth. Coil must have had an escape tunnel installed in his damn office. As I watched, his silhouette turned a corner and winked out of my bloodsight range.
  
  "Don"t slow down," Flinch said urgently. "We can still catch him if we hurry."
  
  "He"s not getting away from us," Nemean snarled. I sent insects searching in that direction, inside the base and outside, searching for any gaps and openings that would lead to Coil"s path; at the same time, I hurriedly tied the last soldier hand and foot.
  
  I managed to secure him just as Brandish finished dragging her sword through the doors and stepped back. I waved a hand at the door. "Ironclad, open it."
  
  Ironclad took two hunched steps over to the doors, raised a foot, and kicked forward.
  
  The doors must have had very strong internal locks, because they buckled in the middle like one solid piece, fell out of their frame, and clattered to the floor. Pepper dust swirled in to speckle the grey carpet with white.
  
  I squeezed myself past Ironclad and headed for the far wall at once, pressing my hands to its surface as I drew on Stoneknapper"s fizzing touch to look for a way to open whatever hidden door Coil had run through.
  
  "Shit," Ironclad swore, looking around at the nondescript office with thin carpeting, steel file cabinets, and an extravagantly comfortable-looking swivel chair behind a cheap flat-pack desk. "Where is he?"
  
  "He"s rabbited," I said, making a show of dragging my fingers across the wall. The wall was only a few inches thick, with steel mechanisms inside. Unfortunately, there didn"t seem to be a physical way of opening it- electronic only.
  
  Brandish formed a sword again, crackling with energy. "So where"s the exit?" Her voice sounded muffled through the gas mask.
  
  "Here. This wall"s thin."
  
  Brandish stepped forward, levelling her sword at the wall and pressing forward. The paint blistered and burned away as she drove it in.
  
  My phone rang in my belt. I reached for it- and felt no vibration. I was getting a call on the other phone.
  
  I quickly fished Tattletale"s phone out and hit answer. "What?"
  
  "Hey Elpis," Tattletale drawled, her tone so smug I could feel the self-satisfaction dripping out of the speaker like maple syrup. "I think I found something you lost."
  
  There was a rustle, and then the sounds of muffled bellows came through the phone. Gagged, probably.
  
  "God"s wounds, did she really?" Vladimir boggled.
  
  "We"re bringing him to you. Oh, and don"t try to open his secret door, it"s booby trapped."
  
  "Brandish, stop cutting!" I barked. Brandish jerked back reflexively, sword disappearing.
  
  Tock Tick clapped a hand to his forehead. "Of course it"s booby-trapped!" he cursed. "I should have bloody realised, I did that often enough myself!"
  
  "What just happened?" Ironclad asked. I glanced at my phone: Tattletale had ended the call while I"d been distracted.
  
  "Another hot tip. Coil"s been caught after all."
  
  "By who?" Brandish demanded.
  
  I glanced at the wall, and saw scarlet silhouettes bloom into bloodsight range, one after the other.
  
  "Get away from the wall," I said, taking a few steps back. Brandish stepped back at once: Ironclad followed with shuffling steps.
  
  I counted six human silhouettes; Coil"s figure in front, held in an armlock by a muscular man. The rest trailed behind him, a heavyset one bringing up the rear, with three refrigerator-sized dogs trotting at her heels- Hellhound, no doubt.
  
  They reached the door, and one of the smaller figures stepped forward to tap at something inside the wall.
  
  There was a quiet whirr, and then a wide section of wall slid forward slightly and swung open. I saw the mechanisms on the inside face, and a bulbous package wired on that would surely have blown us to kingdom come.
  
  Tattletale gave me a cheeky wave from the front of the group, eyes sparkling behind her black domino mask. "Hiya."
  
  Brandish formed a sword at once. Tattletale"s hand jerked to the belt on her hips.
  
  "NOBODY MOVE!" I bellowed, cannon and sword already in hand. "Nobody move, nobody do anything stupid. Brandish, drop the sword!"
  
  "They"re villains," Brandish snarled, shifting into a fighting stance.
  
  "They"re just small time crooks, and they just gave us Coil on a silver platter. Now stand down." I glanced over Tattletale"s head at the man himself, who had a gag forced into his mouth through the material of his mask. Grue"s skull helmet nodded to me from behind Coil, but kept a grip on the taller man"s arm.
  
  "We"re not here to fight," Tattletale said, slowly moving her hand away from her belt. "If we were trying to screw with you, we"d have let Coil go."
  
  I flipped the sword around in my hand and sheathed it. "Yeah, I figured. Pass him over."
  
  "Oh, we"re not done yet," Tattletale said, giving Coil a glance. "You think that door was the only part of this base booby-trapped?"
  
  "Oooooh crap," Ironclad said, glancing around the room.
  
  "Exactly." Tattletale crossed to the desk and flopped into the chair, pulling the mouse and keyboard towards herself. Brandish pointed the sword in her direction, but Tattletale seemed not to notice. Grue edged out into the room as well, pushing Coil in front of him. The other three stayed just inside the escape tunnel.
  
  "A fucking self-destruct?" Butcher cackled nastily. "Fucking shame. Could"ve taken out New Wave and you all at the same time-"
  
  I rammed Butcher down into the dark as far as he"d go, taking deep breaths to try and calm myself.
  
  Whirlygig tentatively stepped forward into the room, shooting Brandish a glance before turning to me. "Um, hi." She looked much the same as the last time I"d seen her- cargo pants, sleeveless vest with bulging pockets, and a half-mask covering the lower half of her face. In better lighting, I could see she was Hispanic, with long eyelashes around big brown eyes.
  
  I looked towards her, then shrugged and opened my helmet. "Hey. Whirlygig, right? Glad to see you"re okay."
  
  "Why," Brandish ground out, "Are you talking to the villains?"
  
  "We"ve met before," I stated.
  
  "Uh, yeah. Thanks for saving me, and all that junk." Whirlygig ran a hand through her greasy hair awkwardly. "Not exactly a big fan of getting barbequed, heh."
  
  I pulled a face. "You and me both."
  
  Whirlygig nodded, then stopped and looked at my face again. "You"ve got eyebrows?"
  
  "I know, right?" Ironclad said gleefully.
  
  Regent snickered from where he was lounging against the tunnel wall.
  
  Tattletale glanced up from the computer for a second, made a face, then went right back to tapping at the keyboard.
  
  "Elpis," Brandish said through a clenched jaw, "Why are we letting the villains just stand there?"
  
  "I mean, they did tell us how tonight was going down," Ironclad pointed out.
  
  Brandish"s head snapped around. "What?"
  
  "Tattletale gave me the tip," I explained.
  
  Coil jerked in Grue"s grip, struggling in Tattletale"s direction. The muffled sounds that came through his gag were indistinct, but they were definitely profanity.
  
  "Oooh, someone"s pissy," Firecracker taunted.
  
  "You know, I meant to ask," Tattletale said, wiggling the mouse around and clicking rapidly, "Why did you go after Coil? From the way you talked on the phone, it sounded important."
  
  I clipped the cannon onto my back again and drew a sword, stepping into the centre of the room. I glanced at the walls to check, then hit the oscillator switch and stabbed up, dragging my sword in a circle through the concrete ceiling.
  
  "Close your helmet," Stoneknapper said.
  
  I followed his advice as dust rained down from the tip of the sword, clouding the visor over my face. Then I tilted the sword at an angle, pushed, twisted-
  
  A rough circle of concrete popped free of the ceiling and fell onto my face.
  
  "Smooth," Quarrel sniggered mockingly.
  
  I pointedly ignored her and raised my sword again, prying at the hollow space I"d uncovered. The listening device I"d drilled down to Coil"s office dropped into my waiting hand.
  
  "This," I said, shaking the Mole for emphasis, "is how I heard Coil planning to kidnap a little girl for her Thinker power. So I obviously wasn"t going to stand for that."
  
  The pause wasn"t silent, exactly. It was more the quiet you get when a room full of people have just learned something horrible about someone else in the room, and are staring at him with varying expressions of disgust.
  
  Regent broke the silence with a snort and an idle toss of his ornate sceptre. "Well, I guess he"s got a type, eh Tats?"
  
  "The fuck what now?" Ironclad asked.
  
  Tattletale didn"t look up from the computer. "Not really the time, Regent."
  
  Regent shrugged. "I don"t know, it seems like the perfect time. We"ve got the boss tied up, his goons are all fucked up, and now we"re rubbing salt in the wound before he gets carted off to jail. Isn"t that the American dream?"
  
  Half the Butchers burst out laughing at that quip, but I was stuck on a particular detail. "The boss?" I swept my gaze over the Undersiders- Regent, leaning on the wall without a care; Hellhound, scowling as she reached down to scratch one of her dogs; Whirlygig, shuffling her feet; Grue, poker-faced as only a shadow-wreathed skull could be; and Tattletale, who briefly rubbed at her forehead before going back to typing.
  
  "You guys work for him," Ironclad said faintly.
  
  "No honour among thieves," Brandish said acidly. Despite everything, she was still holding her sword.
  
  "We really were lucky to focus on him," Tactical admitted. "Underground base, dozens of mercenaries, a villain team taking orders from him, plus the precog and the Travelers- he could have knocked this city over."
  
  "It"s not like that," Whirlygig protested. "He was fucking us over first- you know he sent us to piss off Lung on purpose? We"re doing this because he almost got us extra-crispy."
  
  "And because he recruited me with a gun to the head, if you must know," Tattletale said, glancing at Coil for a long moment before typing some more.
  
  "And because he fucked with my dogs," Hellhound growled. It was the first time I"d heard her speak- her voice was rough, a little raspy- very fitting to her overall appearance.
  
  "And because fuck him," Regent added, tossing his sceptre from one hand to the other.
  
  Again, the Butchers laughed at his words, but something else drew my attention. The bugs I"d left by Panacea, drawing out a map for her, were relaying weird information. Panacea had a fingertip resting on the back of the firefly I"d used to represent myself- she tapped it a few times, then dragged her foot across the map of insects, brushing them away.
  
  I moved them out of the way, reaching further out with my senses. Movement on the roads- silk lines broken, ants stepped on. People were approaching the base.
  
  "About damn time someone else showed up," Bearskin grunted.
  
  In all the excitement, I"d lost focus on my insects; Now that I was paying attention again, I could sense people approaching Coil"s office as well.
  
  "Mom!" Glory Girl swooped in through the open door and came to a halt, staring at the Undersiders.
  
  Brandish turned a little to look at her daughter, still keeping her sword levelled at Tattletale. "Glory Girl. You"re alright?"
  
  "Uh, yep. No major injuries. Velocity got clipped on his shoulder, and Assault got knocked into a wall, but that"s it." Glory Girl drifted down to the carpet, staring at the scene. "Soooo... What"s going on here?"
  
  "Yeah, so it turns out the Undersiders work for Coil," Ironclad said. "Except now they"re quitting and handing him over to us."
  
  Glory Girl stared at him, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "I was not ready for today."
  
  "I don"t think any of us were."
  
  I cleared my throat. "It"s getting a little crowded in here. Ironclad, Glory Girl, maybe we should start moving the soldiers up to the outside."
  
  "I"d rather you stayed here, Elpis," Grue said. His voice had a strange echo to it- maybe a side effect of his power.
  
  "Wait, why"re we keeping her here?" Regent asked.
  
  Grue nodded to Brandish, who had yet to lower her sword. "Would you rather be alone with Brandish?"
  
  Needler tsked. "We"re going to have to work on that if they think Brandish is scarier than us."
  
  "No, it just means they trust us more," Flinch countered. "Brandish looks ready to fight at any second."
  
  Bugs on the top step of the entrance felt something heavy enter the base. Backup had finally arrived.
  
  "Maybe I should go help Dad drag people up," Glory Girl said, rising a few inches off the ground. She floated backwards out of the office and went back the way she"d come. Ironclad dithered for a second, then turned and ducked out of the doorway to start dragging fallen soldiers down the corridor. His heavy footsteps quickly faded into the distance.
  
  For lack of anything else to do, I clipped my air cannon to my belt again and pulled the nearest file cabinet open, grabbing a folder at random.
  
  Nothing special jumped out at me. It seemed to be related to Coil"s budget for ammunition.
  
  "Uuurrgh, this is boring," Anchorage groaned. "Can"t we just take Coil and go?"
  
  "Do you want to take the chance of being stuck with Brandish for the rest of time?" I asked. "No? Then wait for Tattletale to finish."
  
  "You realise she"s probably hacking his shit to steal from him, right?" Tock Tick pointed out.
  
  I shrugged. "That"s the trade-off."
  
  Regent blew a raspberry. "I"m bored."
  
  "Oh my god, Regent," Whirlygig said.
  
  "Hey, I expected more out of tonight. Instead we"re just standing around watching Tats type shit."
  
  Tattletale raised her head with a look of annoyance; then something seemed to occur to her. "Oh damn, I forgot."
  
  "What is it?" Grue asked, leaning out from behind Coil.
  
  Tattletale clapped her hands delightedly. "I forgot to tell the heroes what Coil"s power is!"
  
  Coil jerked forward in Grue"s grip, shouting through his gag. I could almost make out what he was saying this time, and it was violent.
  
  Grue stomped on the back of Coil"s knee and twisted his arm further. Coil fell to his knees with a yelp of pain and stopped struggling.
  
  "I was guessing some kind of clairvoyance," I ventured. Brandish"s hostile expression lessened slightly, became curious.
  
  "$20 says he"s got a Trump aspect," Stoneknapper called.
  
  Vladimir raised a hand. "I"ll take that action."
  
  Tattletale typed in one last sequence on the keyboard, then rolled the chair back and stood up, clicking the mouse a couple of times. Something on the desk clunked.
  
  ""I took the road less travelled, and that made all the difference,"" Tattletale quoted. "Coil can split time. Two timelines, running parallel. He takes different actions, makes different decisions, and then picks the one with the better outcome.
  
  "Like when you saved us from Lung; that was the good timeline. The other one, a couple of us died."
  
  "$20 bucks," Vladimir said to Stoneknapper.
  
  "So he can just try a plan in one timeline, drop it, and keep trying until it succeeds?" I asked incredulously. The implications of such a power were staggering.
  
  "Shit," Tactical cursed. "Imagine what we could do with a power like that."
  
  "Or he can amuse himself in one timeline, and keep the more sensible one." Tattletale pointed to something at the bottom of the desk. "Take a look," she invited, stepping back towards her team.
  
  I slowly advanced across the room, splitting my attention between Brandish on one side and the Undersiders on the other. I was beginning to wonder who was more likely to cause trouble.
  
  The bottom drawer of the desk was slid open- Tattletale must have triggered it on the computer.
  
  Inside lay a pistol- a Beretta M9 semiautomatic, Tactical"s power helpfully supplied.
  
  Dirty Rotter surfaced at last from when I"d pushed him down. "Is that it? I kinda expected sex stuff. Or drugs. Or sex drugs."
  
  "He can kill someone," Muramasa said as realisation dawned. "And then he can make it so it never happened. And then he can repeat it."
  
  "Amusing himself," I said quietly. I reached in and plucked the pistol out, ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, and tossed it all on the desk with slow, methodical movements.
  
  Then I turned to face the Undersiders. "You"re finished with the computer?" I asked Tattletale.
  
  "All set. I disabled the passwords on some of his files too, so you guys can go through them easier."
  
  "Good." I took two steps forward and seized Coil"s jaw in one hand, pulling him up off his knees. Grue stepped back quickly as I dragged Coil over to the desk and bent him over it while I fished a zip tie out of my belt and locked his wrists together.
  
  "So what"s the plan after this?" I asked, nudging the pistol"s parts further up the desk, away from Coil. "Retire at the ripe old age of mid-teenager? Leave town? Go straight?"
  
  "Start a band?" Anchorage said jokingly.
  
  Needler rolled her eyes. "They"ll just go back to being petty thieves, you mark my words."
  
  Tattetale gave an exaggerated shrug, palms up in a "who knows?" fashion. "We"ll just have to figure that out, I guess."
  
  I felt the footsteps through my bugs before I heard them- a moment later, Armsmaster appeared in the doorway, halberd in hand, armour polished, and a disgruntled look on what I could see of his face.
  
  He took in the room with one quick turn of his head, then focused on me and Coil. "The operation was a success then?" he said in a tight tone of voice.
  
  I hauled Coil upright. "One criminal scumbag, ready to go." I pushed him forward, and the head of Armsmaster"s halberd broke apart and reconfigured into a different assembly- shaped like a rectangle, with two U-shaped bands of metal with electricity arcing around them. Armsmaster caught Coil between the prongs and used them to steer him back until he was pinned against the wall next to Brandish. The tips of the bands glowed white-hot and burned their way into the concrete before cooling in an instant, leaving Coil effectively welded to the wall. He didn"t even bother to struggle, just slumped against his restraints in defeat.
  
  Armsmaster regarded him for a second, then nodded in satisfaction. "Well, despite the last-minute change, this is a good night for the city. An entire gang taken down, and six villains arrested."
  
  "Six?" My eyebrows went up in surprise. "Did you guys catch the Travelers already?"
  
  Armsmaster hummed. "Ah yes, the Travelers. I expect we can set an ambush for them if we hurry."
  
  "He"s talking about the Undersiders, idiot," Firecracker hissed.
  
  I glanced back at once- the Undersiders were drawing together, reaching for pockets or shaking their fists out. I saw Hellhound"s dogs begin to swell ever so slightly with extra muscle and bone.
  
  Tattetale laid one hand on the small holster at her hip, and looked me dead in the eye. Her eyes were wide and green against the black of her mask. "Please", she mouthed.
  
  I looked past her to the other Undersiders, and I was struck by how young they looked. Grue was tall and broad, but not in a way that said "fully formed adult". I knew from her profile that Hellhound was only fifteen, and while I couldn"t guess at the other ages, Whirlygig and Regent looked younger than me.
  
  I sighed regretfully, and reached for my belt. The Butchers saw the shape of my thoughts, and began to laugh maliciously.
  
  The buckle at the front was locked in the same way as my bike, so I flicked the key out from its spring-loaded mount on my wrist and slid it home. The bolts slid back, and I pulled the belt free from the hardpoints around my waist as I stepped forward.
  
  The belt, my swords, my mace and my air cannon were all placed on the desk, next to the disassembled pistol. I was unarmed. I wanted nobody to say I had a weapon.
  
  Lastly, I shrugged my shoulders, and my cape unrolled from my shoulders- fresh sky blue silk, with my white amphora in the centre. The one part of my costume that I"d had time to properly clean up.
  
  "There"s been a misunderstanding, sir," I said to Armsmaster. "The Undersiders provided the information that allowed us to bring Coil in."
  
  Armsmaster cocked his head slightly. "Ah? I"ll make sure that"s taken into consideration when they have their day in court." His halberd was back to its standard form, with a couple of lights lit up along the length.
  
  I stepped directly in front of him. "Let me be clear, sir. We"d have walked into a meat grinder if it wasn"t for them. That"s worth more than a weak compliment in court."
  
  "Elpis, what the hell are you doing?" Brandish said. She didn"t sound angry- more confused, like she couldn"t believe what was going on.
  
  "Fight, fight, fight, fight," Bearskin chanted under his breath.
  
  I heard quiet shuffling as the Undersiders stepped back into the tunnel. "It"s very late," I said. "I"m sure it"s past the children"s bedtime. Run along, kids," I said, waving a hand back toward them without breaking eye contact with Armsmaster.
  
  I could see myself reflected in that visor- a girl in dark armour, scorched and battered. There was a bullet caught in my shoulder pauldron, and bits of grenade shrapnel stuck in my breastplate.
  
  All that was framed by my cape- unmarked from tonight"s fight, or my brawl with Lung.
  
  "They"re small time," I said quietly. "We can catch them another day. Besides, why worry about the minnows when we just hauled in a shark?"
  
  A muscle twitched in Armsmaster"s jaw. "You don"t have the authority to do this, Elpis."
  
  "I know. But I"m doing it anyway. Don"t forget to close the door," I called over my shoulder.
  
  "Thank you," Whirlygig blurted, just before the door swung shut with a soft click. It really was well engineered- I could barely tell where the seam was now.
  
  Brandish finally lowered her sword and dismissed it.
  
  "You"re a disgrace," she spat, stalking out of the office.
  
  Armsmaster glared at me for a long moment. "That was a very stupid thing to do," he said at last.
  
  "Maybe," I said. "I"m not sorry about it."
  
  I wasn"t even sure why I"d done it. The Undersiders were all criminals- Whirlygig was the least experienced, and she"d been part of the casino heist. Grue had years of enforcer work under his belt, and Hellhound was wanted for multiple homicide.
  
  Maybe it was because they really had helped. Maybe it was because they were about my age, and I sympathised.
  
  Maybe it was because I hoped, if and when I was found out, people might offer me the same mercy.
  
  Armsmaster gave me one last hard look, then turned and followed Brandish out the door.
  
  "That was a very kind thing you just did," Nemean said, as gentle as I"d ever heard her.
  
  I accepted the compliment with a sigh and a brief quirk of the lips. "Thanks."
  
  Interlude 6
  Early hours of Tuesday 15th March, Coil"s Headquarters
  
  Assault couldn"t keep himself still- not that that was a problem he was unfamiliar with. Always too much energy, that was his problem- bouncing from one thing to the next.
  
  Well, right now he was literally doing that- going from helping to haul the last of the mercenaries out of the base to securing the stockpile of drugs they"d found inside to checking on Coil himself for the fifth time, fizzing with nervous energy even though it was barely past midnight.
  
  To be fair, a full-scale gang bust didn"t happen every day. Plus once Console had confirmed Battery was unhurt from her cat and mouse game with Uber & Leet, all that anxiety got funnelled into the hyperactive column instead.
  
  The guest of honour was sitting pretty in the back of an armoured transport truck, shackled to his seat and blindfolded for good measure. No such thing as too paranoid when it came to Thinkers, after all. They hadn"t taken the gag off him yet either, although he hadn"t tried to say anything once he"d been brought out of his little hidey-hole.
  
  Armsmaster had frog-marched him out of the base and locked him in personally. Probably the Protectorate leader had felt the need to visibly demonstrate that he"d contributed to the operation, given that his planned role of leading the charge had gone out the window. Of course, once that was done he"d disappeared back inside to get at Coil"s computer and see what data he could extract; no doubt he"d show that off in the debrief.
  
  Velocity was leading a squad of troopers in through the other entrance to strip out all the stuff left in there- like the machine gun Coil had had pointing right down the cargo entrance. If it hadn"t been for Velocity and Flashbang"s new manoeuvre, they would have been Swiss cheese.
  
  The Dallons were all gathered by their car along with Elpis and Ironclad. Panacea had her hand stuck through an opening in Ironclad"s armour, but her focus was on Elpis as they had what seemed like a heated discussion; Panacea gestured wildly with her free arm, hood pushed back to let her hair spread out over her shoulders. Opposite the healer, Elpis shifted awkwardly, fiddling with her hands as she answered.
  
  White robe with red cross, and dark armour with a blue cape. They couldn"t have contrasted better if they were chalk and cheese.
  
  Assault smirked a little to himself. It was kind of funny to see Panacea, arguably the least dangerous cape in the city, making battle-scarred Elpis cringe and shuffle her feet like that. It reminded him of when Battery went off at him for leaving the dishes in the sink.
  
  Things were going to change after this. Probably New Wave wouldn"t be so keen to team up with Elpis anymore, not after she"d let the Undersiders run off. Not that he disapproved- a little leniency on the bad guys was necessary at times, pragmatically or on principle.
  
  Maybe the Protectorate could offer some collaboration? Armsmaster had been pretty eager to have the bright young Tinker on the team, and Miss Militia spoke highly of her.
  
  Assault definitely wanted to work with her some more too- although admittedly he wasn"t thinking of recruiting her. No, he had something else he wanted to talk to Elpis about: the possibility of shared experiences.
  
  Make some time for Ironclad too- he seemed like a good kid. Interesting power, there.
  
  Movement near the hatch caught his eye. Armsmaster"s helmeted head rose out into the night air, turning this way and that. When he caught sight of Assault, he gestured with one hand for him to approach.
  
  Assault took one step, then two, which turned into a bouncing lope as he used the impact of each footstep to move faster, reaching Armsmaster in a second. "What"s up?"
  
  Armsmaster grimaced. "There really are explosives in the structure. It seems the Undersiders were being truthful about that self-destruct."
  
  "Jesus." Assault shook his head. "I never figured Coil for the type. Sounds more like Accord. Didn"t he put a death ray in a building once?"
  
  "Death ray is a strong word," Armsmaster replied.
  
  "That"s two words."
  
  "We"ve got the mercenaries bagged and tagged, and all the evidence we need," Armsmaster continued, ignoring Assault"s comment entirely. "We"ll cordon off the main section of the base until ordinance techs can get here to go over the place."
  
  "Got it."
  
  Across from them, Panacea finally pulled her arm out of Ironclad"s armour- the hole closed up, and the boy expanded a bit as he stepped back and stretched. Elpis nodded and said something to Panacea, who turned away without a word.
  
  Ironclad tapped Elpis on the shoulder as she watched Panacea flop into the Dallon"s car and shut the door; the two armoured figures said something to each other, then turned and approached Assault and Armsmaster. The Dallons started up and drove away behind them- Assault saw Elpis give them a backward glance.
  
  Assault stepped aside to let Elpis walk up to Armsmaster, which put him in line with Ironclad. He gave the lad a look up and down, lingering on the domed helmet and the shoulders that looked like two halves of an anvil.
  
  "Nice suit."
  
  Ironclad yawned- the armour made it echo oddly. "Thanks," he said at last.
  
  Assault laughed a little. "Yeah, you get used to the late nights. My sleep rhythm"s all shot to hell these days."
  
  "Do you need help with anything else?" Elpis was asking Armsmaster.
  
  "You"ve done enough."
  
  Assault winced.
  
  Elpis reared back a little. "Fine. All yours." She vaguely waved a hand at Assault, who nodded back, and stalked off towards her car, Ironclad trailing in her wake.
  
  Assault held his tongue until the pair had started driving away, then turned to Armsmaster. "Seriously?"
  
  Armsmaster shrugged and started in the direction of Coil"s transport without a word. Assault followed after him, intent on having the discussion.
  
  "Come on, that was petty and you know it."
  
  "She shouldn"t have interfered with my arrest."
  
  Assault scoffed. "Oh please. You and Brandish swinging, Hellhound"s dogs biting, Grue"s darkness- it"d have been a miracle if people hadn"t died in there."
  
  "I would have handled it. I"ve prepared specific countermeasures for the Undersiders" abilities."
  
  Assault spotted Miss Militia circling the transport as they approached, kicking the tyres and making sure the doors were all locked. Assault skipped around Armsmaster and took a couple of bounding strides to reach her first. "MM, help, please," he mock-begged. "Boss-man"s being stubborn and I need your wisdom!"
  
  Miss Militia rolled her eyes fondly. "Assault, what did I say about trying to be cute?"
  
  "That I do it so well?"
  
  Militia opened the driver-side door and pulled herself up into the cab. "Save it for the debrief, Assault." She belted herself in and shut the door, expertly ignoring Assault"s puppy-dog eyes.
  
  Armsmaster pulled his halberd out and slowly ran the head over the sides of the truck, over the green and white lights on the roof, under the chassis, and all around the cab and engine. A couple of little lights on the haft went green, and Armsmaster nodded, collapsing it into a slim rod and returning it to his back.
  
  "All clear," he announced, slapping the side of the truck. "Get him out of here."
  
  Assault shrugged and stepped back as the driver started the truck and shifted into gear, pulling away from the construction site and onto the road. Two other trucks went with it, sliding in front and in back of the transport, to make sure that Coil got to PRTHQ for holding nice and safe.
  
  Assault turned back to go see what else needed doing, and saw something dark move between buildings.
  
  He dropped into a crouch, bouncing from foot to foot, feeling the pulse of kinetic energy build up in his legs. "Movement," he hissed.
  
  Armsmaster yanked his halberd out again. "All points, eyes up. Possible activity."
  
  Every trooper present dropped what they were doing and reached for weapons. Velocity"s voice came over the comm. "Sir, do you need me?"
  
  "Not sure," Armsmaster said, doing something to his halberd. The head spread out into something like a radar dish as he moved it back and forth.
  
  There was a tremendous crash.
  
  Assault spun around to see the lead truck down the road spin almost 180 degrees on its tyres until it pointed back the way it came, rocking on its suspension. The engine was caved in from the left side, something having ripped into it.
  
  "Velocity!" Armsmaster shouted, already running for the transports.
  
  Armsmaster might have beaten Assault in reactions, but Assault"s foot speed was better- in five strides he"d drawn level with his leader, then bounced himself high to see what was happening.
  
  The brief glimpse he got was of a broad figure in black armour, pointing his palm at the transport truck. There was a whipping sound, and the windscreen cracked all over, bulletproof glass hanging on by a thread.
  
  Assault came down on his feet and used the kinetic energy to throw himself to the side, so he could flank the mysterious figure.
  
  The world flickered, and Assault slammed into the side of the rear transport, rocking on its axles. His power kicked in to redirect the energy away, but he still knew he was going to be bruised as hell tomorrow.
  
  Miss Militia had thrown herself out of the transport truck by now, and fired at the mystery man with a fat-barrelled gun. The rubber bullet hit him in the middle, and Assault heard his shout of pain even from a distance. Then he seemed to flicker upright, and ducked to the side.
  
  Troopers poured out of the rear transport, rifles at the ready. The two guys at the back were armed with containment foam sprayers that connected to the large tanks on their backs.
  
  Assault pushed himself upright as the troopers made for the villain, and jumped high over their heads.
  
  The world flickered again, and Assault found himself cannoning into the back of the pack of troopers, just as one of the containment foam guys landed on half of the squad. Everyone went down in a pile of limbs and uncomfortable metal.
  
  The troopers who"d avoided being knocked over turned in confusion, and suddenly one of them disappeared, replaced with Miss Militia. A second later, Armsmaster appeared in place of another, halberd held out with a crackling taser at the end of the haft. A couple more whipping sounds came from near the front, along with cries of pain.
  
  The Tinker swore and turned his head towards the top of an adjacent building. "Militia! Flare!"
  
  Miss Militia"s weapon flickered with green energy, became a flare gun that she aimed high and fired. A brilliant light shot up high, illuminating the scene.
  
  A second man was perched on the lip of the roof dramatically, like he"d struck a pose just then. He looked like he"d just stepped out of a theatre, or a circus ring- a black suit and top hat, with a red mask and snappy white gloves.
  
  Militia"s gun was a rifle again, shooting a nonlethal round into the man"s mask, sending him reeling back. A moment later he flickered too, and hastily stepped back from the edge.
  
  Armsmaster"s halberd reconfigured into a grappling hook that fired at the roof. He shot up after it in hot pursuit.
  
  Assault hauled the fallen containment foam guy upright, along with some of the guys under him. Militia fired another flare for good measure, then gave a couple of hand signs to the troopers and led them around the rear truck to the transport.
  
  Assault decided to stick closer to the ground this time, running after the troopers with bounding strides.
  
  The armoured villain was popping up from behind the wrecked front truck to point his hands and shoot attacks at them. Assault saw one trooper go down, clutching his shoulder with a howl. Assault quickly pushed his way to the front, focusing his power across his front.
  
  The next shot took him in the chest. Assault let the momentum disperse into nothingness- and what momentum! It felt like a harder hit than a bullet! -, and the projectile hit the ground with a musical tinkle.
  
  When he glanced down, he saw a dollar coin staring back at him.
  
  The armoured Blaster reached into one of the many pouches on his costume and brought out a handful of shiny coins.
  
  "Hit the deck!" Assault roared, flinging his arms wide.
  
  The coins slammed into his body, and his power strained to withstand all that kinetic energy. Bits slipped through, adding to his collections of bruises.
  
  Inanely, Assault wondered if he was going to end up with a bruise shaped like George Washington"s profile. It"d certainly be the weirdest injury he"d got in this line of work.
  
  The troopers hadn"t been completely spared. One of them had a coin stuck in the front of his helmet, being dragged away by his buddy as he writhed in pain.
  
  Miss Militia pressed against his back, using him as a human shield. "Say when."
  
  "When."
  
  Militia spun around to point a gun from under Assault"s arm and fired. The rubber bullet hit the Blaster in the thigh, and Assault threw himself forward as the man fell to one knee.
  
  The world stuttered- suddenly the Blaster was on his feet, backing away as he filled his hands with objects.
  
  Assault kept coming, but his vision stuttered again, and the Blaster was ducking out of sight behind the cab of the lead truck.
  
  A sound like a bellowing bull came from behind and above. Assault bounced himself to the side and turned as he used his power to come to an instant stop, keeping the Blaster in sight as he glanced toward the noise.
  
  Something- and boy was it a thing- plunged out of the sky and dropped onto the squad of troopers, laying into them with flailing limbs. It looked like a winged bull-monkey thing, with a long thick head and brawny arms and legs. Its wings were batlike, and a thick tail lashed behind it as it spun in a circle, hitting the troopers aside. Some of them were able to scramble to cover- others stayed on the ground.
  
  Militia opened up with a riot gun, pumping rounds into the creature. Thick rubber bullets slammed into its wings as it spread them over its front as a shield, backing away.
  
  The Blaster turned from where he"d been watching and aimed both palms- one at Miss Militia, the other at Assault.
  
  Assault surged to the side, and felt something clip his leg as a handful of junk shot past him, smashing into the wall behind him. But he"d already closed half the distance to the Blaster, and another bound took him right up to the guy.
  
  "Boo," he said, slapping a hand to the man"s chest.
  
  The kinetic energy was spread throughout the Blaster"s entire body, so he was thrown into a sudden backwards skid, boots scraping along the ground until he hit a bit of scrap from the trucks and pitched over on his ass.
  
  Assault charged him again, zig-zagging to avoid another shot-
  
  The Blaster was getting to his feet-
  
  The Blaster was getting away, so Assault changed direction-
  
  The Blaster was exchanging shots with Miss Militia-
  
  A streak of red zipped in, kicking out at the back of the Blaster"s knees. Velocity"s Breaker form circled around the Blaster at high speed, pummelling him from all angles, keeping him too occupied to reload as he staggered away.
  
  Assault kept pushing forward through the flickers, but now they were coming less frequently. Out of the corner of his eye he could see MM flickering as she dealt with the flying bull-monkey, switching her weapon out for tougher models that increased in damage. One shot tore a hole in the creature"s wing webbing, and its pained noise was a trumpeting bellow.
  
  A second later it flickered back to its uninjured state, but Militia was sticking with the ammo that tore its wings and shredded its hide, forcing it to throw itself behind the transport truck. Militia quickly knelt and snagged a containment foam grenade off one of the fallen troopers. Her weapon flickered into a grenade launcher that she loaded with expert speed, aimed high, and fired over the top of the transport truck.
  
  The bull-monkey hastily threw itself into a tumble away from the grenade, which exploded into a pile of yellow-white foam between the transport truck and the sidewalk.
  
  Assault rolled to the right, came up in a crouch. There wasn"t a flicker.
  
  Line of sight, he realised. The Travellers must have had someone else on overwatch, like the swap-teleporter, but they were both limited to line of sight.
  
  Assault grinned, and threw himself to the ground in a bellyflop. He made himself bounce up and forward like a human torpedo, straight for the Blaster. Velocity zipped out of the way in time for Assault to cannon into the villain"s midsection.
  
  The Blaster went down in a heap- Assault wasted no time in grabbing his arm for an armlock-
  
  The Blaster vanished. Assault wheeled around to see him on his feet again, grabbing a little baggie of something out of a pocket and dumping it into his palm.
  
  Velocity"s blur zipped away as the pile of sand became a tight cloud that shot the length of the street. Assault couldn"t blame him- sand at Mach One would have stripped him to the bone.
  
  Assault bounced himself to his feet as the Blaster set coins between his fingers, ready to fire. There was a brief pause as they sized each other up in the middle of the chaos.
  
  A shout echoed from the roof that Armsmaster had grappled up to. As Armsmaster swung his halberd, the top hat villain threw himself backward off the edge of the roof, right over the pile of confoam.
  
  In mid-air he swapped with Armsmaster, who dropped feet first into the foam as the teleporter sprawled back on the roof.
  
  Assault braced his power over his front and charged straight for the Blaster-
  
  The world flickered yet again, and Assault cursed violently as the Blaster was now running away. Velocity pounced on him again, only for the teleporter to throw himself off the roof once more, trapping himself up to his waist in the foam. A second later he was next to the Blaster, speckled with foam but otherwise untouched, and Velocity was in the foam, struggling like a fly on glue.
  
  Armsmaster had already deployed the confoam solvent in his halberd and was melting himself free, while Miss Militia fired at the bull-monkey as it threw itself at her. One shot caught it in the eye and the creature collapsed. Militia staggered back in shock, only for the creature"s body to begin dissolving.
  
  "Light it up!" Top Hat shouted as he followed the Blaster into the mouth of an alley.
  
  Assault threw himself behind the lead truck to evade whoever the time manipulator was, rolled underneath it, and used a pulse of movement to slide forward on his stomach, making a mental note to thank Battery for making him watch that nature documentary on penguins with her.
  
  Armsmaster had just ripped himself free of the foam, blobs still stuck to his shoulder, when he stopped and looked up. "Everyone get back!" He roared.
  
  Assault looked up too, and saw a point of light rapidly descending through the night, too bright to look at, turning the dead of night into blinding day.
  
  For a second he thought it might be Purity, one of the most dangerous capes in the Empire Eighty Eight. Her power lit her up like burning magnesium, allowing her to fly and unleash incredible blasts of spiralling light that could go through buildings. But the shape of the light was perfectly round, and he could feel the heat on his face increasing-
  
  He threw himself away as the light stopped a few feet inside the alleyway. Even from twenty feet away, the temperature was incredible, forcing him to back up further as he felt every pore on his body start to sweat.
  
  Miss Militia was already behind cover, and Armsmaster quickly sprayed Velocity with solvent and heaved him free of the confoam, hustling the two of them behind the transport truck. Assault joined them with a leap and a bound, careful not to look at the light.
  
  "What the hell do we do now?" He asked, crouching on the hot tarmac.
  
  Armsmaster"s face was hard to make out in the deep shadow of the truck, but his tone was grim enough by itself. "We can"t afford to let them get Coil out. Use any force below lethal if you have to."
  
  A second later, the light winked out. Assault blinked at the sudden change, looking back and forth to try and kickstart his night vision again. The air was still like the inside of an oven, but the heat wasn"t blasting over him like standing in front of a furnace.
  
  Armsmaster poked his halberd round the side of the truck, then his head. A muffled curse followed.
  
  Assault cautiously mirrored him, inching his head past the front of the truck, and gave a long, low whistle at the sight.
  
  The bricks at the mouth of the alley were glowing red from the heat, cracked and splintered in places. The tarmac on the ground below and around looked shiny and smooth. Assault realised with a jolt that the ball of whatever-the-hell had melted the tarmac into liquid. A few silver puddles on one side must have been the trashcans that had been standing there.
  
  "Fuck me sideways," Velocity swore. "What the hell was that?"
  
  Tuesday 15th March, Afternoon, PRT Headquarters
  
  A broad-shouldered young man with a mixture of sports pads and leathers, all in black; lower quality than the fitted bodysuit he"d worn last night.
  
  "Ballistic," Armsmaster said. "Can accelerate objects to supersonic speeds with a touch."
  
  Next picture, a high-res picture from Armsmaster"s visor- a lanky man in an old-fashioned top hat and tailcoat. His red mask had holes for the eyes and mouth.
  
  "Trickster. Exchanging teleportation of people and/or objects."
  
  Several pictures of strange creatures, all of them far from what nature could produce.
  
  "Genesis. Changer with an unknown range of transformation."
  
  A tall man in red, with a cheap iron-on clock face across his front. His face was wrapped up in a black scarf.
  
  "Perdition. Rewinds people or objects through time at 3-second intervals. Luckily he can"t rewind things indefinitely, and he seems to be limited to line of sight."
  
  A slender girl lost in a hoodie with a sun symbol on the front.
  
  "Sundancer. Pyrokinetic- creates a ball of fire that she controls remotely. Temperature is estimated in thousands of degrees."
  
  All five pictures lined themselves up on the projector screen. "The Travellers," Armsmaster said grimly. "They"re itinerant villains, never staying in one city for more than a few weeks. First noticed in Illinois, they"ve been wandering across the country for the past year. Most recently they were in Boston, where they raided Blasto"s territory and demolished one of his labs. We"ve confirmed from Coil"s files that he had hired them after that to supplement his mercenaries."
  
  Assault took another sip of his coffee and tried to blink away the gluey feeling of his eyelids. Despite getting a decent amount of sleep once they"d locked Coil in a cosy underground cell, he still felt like hell. Maybe it was the fact that this particular day had two 3 o"clocks in it for him. That never ended well.
  
  "Despite their powers, the Travellers do seem to avoid going all out and causing large amounts of damage, most likely to avoid a hard response." Armsmaster paused, then added, "I say "seem" because while they haven"t been conclusively linked, there have been reports of large-scale destruction and chaos in areas the Travelers visit, which is at odds with their usual MO."
  
  The range of expressions in the meeting room varied- Miss Militia had her scarf down for once, and her eyebrows were drawn together thoughtfully. Dauntless looked concerned- Velocity just looked tired.
  
  "With that combination of powers, it"d only take a couple of mistakes to go overboard," Battery noted, sat around the corner of the table from Assault. She subtly shifted the foot she"d hiked onto Assault"s lap at the start of the meeting, and he bumped her other foot with his own.
  
  "True," Armsmaster conceded. "Still, we"ll have to be extremely cautious with this group. A squad of heavy hitters, cut loose from their employer just as they arrived in town..." He grimaced.
  
  Assault grimaced along with him. It had only been half a day, but already the E88 and ABB were reacting to Coil"s organisation going under. Gangers in colours had been spotting inching their way through the outskirts of Coil"s old territory, quietly expanding their lines. Coil"s soldiers had been enough of a force to hold his own against the other gangs, force them to split their attention; with him gone, they"d have no-one to fight but each other, and a lot of profitable territory to fight for.
  
  Adding the Travellers to that could make things go to pieces in a hurry.
  
  "There are some other unusual points," Armsmaster added. "Stories of disappearances around them, sightings of "monsters"- and Coil had a large, reinforced vault in his base that was apparently marked specifically for their use."
  
  Nobody spoke for a moment. Eventually Velocity asked "Do we have any idea what that"s all about?"
  
  Armsmaster was already shaking his head. "No. We"re trying to get their file sent up to the Think Tank, but so far they"re low on the list.
  
  "Moving forward," he continued briskly, "any further questions?"
  
  Triumph raised a hand. Still adjusting to the grown-up squad, Assault reckoned. He still fiddled with his lion-head helmet when he was nervous. Gargoyle was fidgeting next to him, the only guy at the table with less experience.
  
  "About Genesis- can she change her forms on the fly?"
  
  "Good question," Armsmaster said, flicking back to the pictures of her many forms. "It seems her form is set until she relinquishes it or it is destroyed, and there"s a gap of time before she"s able to reappear. That does limit her threat level somewhat.
  
  "In fact, based on multiple reports of Genesis returning from having her body destroyed, we think it might be a remote projection. If we can confirm that, then there"s no reason to go easy on her."
  
  "So then we can just pop the bubble and move on to the rest," Dauntless summed up.
  
  Assault saw Armsmaster"s jaw clench slightly. "That is one way of putting it, yes."
  
  "The costumes are different," Miss Militia pointed out. "Perdition and Sundancer didn"t show themselves last night, but the others were wearing high-quality outfits."
  
  Armsmaster nodded, untensing a bit. "Based on their sightings in Boston and Thinker analysis, it"s believed that they performed the attack on Blasto under orders from Accord. The costumes might have been part of his payment to them- it fits with his known neuroses."
  
  "So do we have any ideas for engaging them?" Assault asked. "We only did so well last night because they couldn"t risk hurting Coil."
  
  Armsmaster nodded. "We believe line of sight protocols apply for Trickster and Perdition- break their concentration, come at them from an angle, block their vision. Genesis- as Dauntless so bluntly put it, just "pop the bubble" and move on. Ballistic and Sundancer could be dangerous if pushed, so either drop them before they get started or try to deal with them from a distance."
  
  "Have we told the other heroes about them yet?" Battery asked. "New Wave"s forcefields could stop Ballistic at least."
  
  "We"re keeping them in the loop. I"ll pass a summary on to them next time I see them."
  
  "What about Elpis?"
  
  Armsmaster"s head swivelled like a tank turret toward Gargoyle, with about the same level of inherent hostility. The newbie shrank a little in his seat, much more vulnerable-looking out of his stone form.
  
  "I mean, we should tell her too, right? She gave us the heads-up that they were coming at all, and she might have some ideas we haven"t thought of..." Gargoyle trailed off in the face of Armsmaster"s unwavering gaze.
  
  "I agree; Elpis should be informed. You"ve said yourself that Tinkers work better with forewarning to prepare- and that woman"s a force of nature when she gets going."
  
  Assault gave Battery a glance as she said that to Armsmaster , then bumped his foot to hers again. She shot him a small yet sweet smile.
  
  "She"s put us in a difficult position," Miss Militia cut in. "Assuming command in a tactical situation is one thing- interrupting a Protectorate arrest is another."
  
  Assault rolled his eyes at MM"s by-the-book attitude. "Oh come on, Hannah. The Undersiders practically gift-wrapped Coil for us- that"s worth some leniency."
  
  "One good deed doesn"t give you a clean rap sheet."
  
  "It"s a start. Who knows, maybe one or two of them could come in from the cold. We know villains can change for the better; that"s why I married Ethan at all."
  
  Assault grinned and pecked her on the cheek.
  
  "What?!" Gargoyle yelped, throwing himself out of his chair, which fell over with a clatter.
  
  Dauntless snapped his fingers. "We didn"t tell you they"re married, did we?"
  
  "No, I know that part, Assault mentioned it last month. What I didn"t know is that Assault used to be a villain!" Gargoyle"s face was comically shocked, eyes popping and jaw hanging open.
  
  Armsmaster banged his hand down on the table. "Enough."
  
  Gargoyle jumped, and hastily tried to sit down, realising too late his chair had fallen back. He sprawled on the floor in a heap.
  
  Triumph quickly grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up again while Armsmaster fumed silently. Once Gargoyle was back in his seat, awkwardly avoiding everyone"s gaze, the team leader spoke again.
  
  "Yes, Gargoyle, Assault used to be a villain by the name of Madcap, down in New York. Battery and Legend arrested him, and he chose to join us as a probationary hero. He"s been a well-regarded member of Protectorate East-North-East since. That"s not the issue up for discussion.
  
  "Neither is Elpis choosing to let the Undersiders go the issue. The issue is that she went against the Protectorate"s authority and interrupted an arrest in progress, instead of attempting to communicate with us. She allowed an entire team of villains, one of whom is wanted for murder, back onto the streets, rather than accept our judgement on the matter.
  
  "It isn"t about whether any of the Undersiders will choose to surrender, which I highly doubt. It"s that Elpis has burned a lot of trust with us by using wanted criminals as informants and then setting them loose without any lawful authority to back her up. Redeeming villains is not relevant here."
  
  Assault hesitated, then bumped his foot against Battery"s. When she glanced his way, he nodded meaningfully at Armsmaster and raised an eyebrow.
  
  Battery"s mouth tightened for a second, before she nodded an okay.
  
  Assault cleared his throat. "I"ve been meaning to say, sir; I think it might be very relevant."
  
  Heads turned; Armsmaster turned that visored glare on Assault. "Explain."
  
  Assault sat forward and leant his elbows on the table. "To be honest, there"s not a lot of heroes that will work with villains outside of really desperate shit- which is fair, most villains don"t with heroes unless it"s all going to hell. When Elpis took some kid off the street and built her up strong instead of hauling her in for property damage, I figured she just had a big heart. It certainly paid off- Spitfire"s a good kid. Same deal with Ironclad, I thought nothing of it- Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, right?
  
  "However," he tapped a finger against the tabletop, "now she"s managed to get the Undersiders informing on their own boss, and third time"s the biggie. Even if they were desperate, that takes charisma- the kind of charisma that comes from being able to relate to them. And being able to relate to them like that might be another reason why she let them off the hook."
  
  Armsmaster"s posture unwound a bit as the realisation dawned. "You think she"s a former villain."
  
  Assault ticked points off on his fingers as he listed them. "She showed up out of nowhere and ground the Merchants down to nothing; took on Stormtiger and two of the Teeth; fought Crusader"s ghosts hand to hand, and one of the troopers swore he saw her snap one of their necks."
  
  "She smacked Lung around just last week," Battery pointed out.
  
  "Right, exactly, thank you," Assault said, "and last night she helped us take out one of the big three gangs, while cutting some slack for petty crooks. She"s got power and skill way ahead of what three months of experience should give her. So either she"s got a former hero identity that she"s hiding, God only knows why- or she"s a former villain trying to turn over a new leaf."
  
  Armsmaster rubbed at his neat beard thoughtfully. "Do you have any thoughts as to who?"
  
  "Beats me. I never heard of a mechanical Tinker on either side of the fence, even back when I was Madcap."
  
  Dauntless cleared his throat. "We know she"s got a Tinker power. But what if that"s not her only power? A Thinker power might account for the rapid progress."
  
  "Possibly," Armsmaster said dismissively, "but Tinkers rarely get secondary powers."
  
  "They do if they"re a Grab-Bag cape." Armsmaster paused, then gestured for Dauntless to continue. "I"ve been reading up on multi-triggers, things like that. There"ve been reports where members of the group develop violent, even murderous behaviour to each other. She might be hiding herself because there"s people out there trying to hunt her down."
  
  "They"re both interesting theories," Miss Militia admitted, "but we don"t have any real evidence of either. For all we know, she might simply be a fast learner."
  
  "So," Velocity said, "either she"s a reformed villain, a Grab-Bag on the run, or she"s just that good."
  
  "Wait, hold on," Gargoyle interrupted, "What exactly are we talking about here? What, are we going to run a background check on her? Haul her in for questioning? Elpis helped us against Lung, for crying out loud. If that"s not hero behaviour, I don"t know what is. We should trust her."
  
  "We"ve always kept an eye on Elpis," Armsmaster said dismissively. "It"s basic protocol to keep track of other heroes in the area. In light of her recent actions, and possibly Assault"s instincts, it might be time to take a closer look at her."
  
  "If I"m right, are we floating her an offer?" Assault asked.
  
  "If you"re correct, we"d have to bring her in no matter what; We can"t let a villain escape justice, even if they"re attempting some good now. After that, what happens depends entirely on who she was before. She"d have to pay her debt to society one way or the other- but there aren"t a lot of villains mild enough to get a deal.
  
  "That"s all theoretical though," Armsmaster finished, straightening up. "We"ve got off-topic; Does anyone have further questions regarding the Travellers?"
  
  There was a resounding silence.
  
  "Very good. You"ll get an in-depth information packet e-mailed to you within a day or two based on their PRT files. Dismissed."
  
  Everyone slipped masks and helmets back on as Armsmaster made for the door. As soon as the last mask was back in place, he strode out the door, headed for his lab.
  
  Assault turned to Gargoyle as they were getting out of their seats. "So, you wanna know how me and Battery met?"
  
  7.1
  Thursday 17th March, St Patrick"s Day, Arcadia High School
  
  "How long do you think Amy"s going to be mad at you?" T asked as he clicked around on the library computer.
  
  I shrugged. "I don"t know. She"s been pissy with me since the moment we met."
  
  "Sheesh," T muttered. "Hey, check this out."
  
  I leaned over his shoulder to look at the Parahumans Online page he"d brought up. The coloured tags at the top indicated it was a wiki page for a villain group currently active.
  
  The Travellers.
  
  The page had been updated just yesterday, giving their last known location as Brockton Bay, with a warning advising people not to engage them due to their highly dangerous powers.
  
  "Man, their costumes look like crap," T said to himself. "Except the guy in the top hat."
  
  "Trickster," I supplied. "Why are you looking at this anyway? The Protectorate files will have better info than this."
  
  T shrugged. "Maybe they missed something. Besides, those files feel kind of clinical."
  
  "It"s government intel, of course it"s clinical."
  
  "Yeah, but getting eyewitness reports from people on the street might be, I don"t know, more detailed? Like, you know how they felt when these guys were causing shit, if they were hurting people for kicks or if they just grabbed the money and ran."
  
  "He"s got you there," Bearskin pointed out.
  
  I shrugged at both of them. "So? Is there anything we could use?"
  
  T shrugged, scrolling down to read some comments. "Doesn"t sound like they"re in it to hurt people. If they were it"d be pretty easy for them to take out a building."
  
  I nodded. The information package the Protectorate had given me yesterday had included some pictures showing the aftermath of their attempt to break Coil out. The image of an alleyway where the bricks had melted and dribbled down to the ground was stuck in my head.
  
  The Butchers had, of course, coveted such a power at once. I was still keeping Dirty Rotter down after his comment about me getting myself turned into Extra-Crispy Taylor.
  
  "Well, we"ll figure out what to do about them later. Might be they"ll just move on to another city now that their meal ticket"s been busted."
  
  "And the Undersiders? What do we do about them?"
  
  I watched him as he typed in the address for a video game strategy guide, an unpleasant thought coiling through my mind.
  
  "Oh for heaven"s sake, just ask him," Needler snapped at me.
  
  "T?"
  
  "Mmm?"
  
  "Do you think I made the right call? With the Undersiders?"
  
  T stopped typing, blowing air out through his lips. Then he slowly leaned back in his chair until he was staring at the ceiling.
  
  "Honestly?" he said. "If it was up to me, I"d have just smacked them stupid and let the Protectorate sort them out. I don"t like the idea they"re running around doing fuck knows what. I mean, you read Hellhound"s page, she"s killed people."
  
  I winced. "Yeah," I admitted.
  
  T was quiet for a moment. "But it wasn"t up to me. You"re the leader. I"m the muscle of this outfit. So I"ll trust your judgement."
  
  "Muscle my ass," Firecracker snorted. "I could snap him like dry firewood."
  
  Despite Firecracker"s off-colour commentary, I felt a great rush of affection for T all of a sudden. "Thanks, T," I said warmly.
  
  "Welcome. So long as we"re taking those guys down the next time we see them." He straightened up and scrolled down the page a little.
  
  "Yeah, they only get the one pass. Though if they"ve got any brains between them, they"ll probably skip town with whatever they can carry. They"re not the priority."
  
  "So what is the priority?" T spun his chair to face me. "Empire or ABB?"
  
  "Empire," I said without hesitation. "They"ve got more capes, but they"re overall easier to fight. I don"t want to go up against Lung or Oni Lee without a lot of back-up."
  
  "Yesssss," Anchorage hissed. "Let"s go smashing swastikas!"
  
  "That"s for the future though. Let"s take the rest of the week to recover. I need time to get my armour back up to scratch, and you still need to catch up with your sleep."
  
  "Works for me. Let me know when we"re getting some action."
  
  "Of course. Still on for breakfast on Saturday?"
  
  "Yep. Amy"s probably not going to make it though, right?"
  
  "Nah, she"ll still be sulking," Tock Tick predicted. "You mark my words, that girl won"t be coming along."
  
  "Honestly, she probably won"t," I said to both of them at once. "But I should have a plan by then. I"ll start repairs tonight, get my stuff back up to scratch," I lied.
  
  I was planning on fixing my equipment up over the next few nights, true enough- but Tactical and Quarrel had been insistent over the last few weeks, and I"d put in a lot of effort for my real plans tonight.
  
  Getting a fake ID had turned out to be trivially easy. The hard part had been repeatedly hinting to Dad to plant the idea, until he"d mentioned this morning over cornflakes that he was going to be out late with some of the guys from work and that I shouldn"t wait up for him.
  
  Which suited me just fine, since I would be out late too.
  
  St Patrick"s Day was today; I had some absent friends to drink to.
  
  Evening of Thursday 17th March, South Downtown
  
  The mood on the street was cheery as I walked down the street. Brockton Bay wasn"t particularly Irish, but then again, most people celebrated St Paddy"s for the drink anyway. The bars I passed had varying degrees of loud music and bad singing already.
  
  I was dressed for the occasion- green top and warm coat, plus a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, extensive makeup, and a ring through my eyebrow to complete the disguise. Hemorhaggia"s old necklace, the cheap little four-leafed clover keychain with Kiss Me, I"m Irish in the centre, bounced around my neck with every step.
  
  Alice Kelly had joined the Teeth after Tactical"s reign, so they"d never spoken directly. Still, he"d held a familiarity with her through the eyes of the other Butchers.
  
  Quarrel had fought alongside her while they were grunts in the Teeth. They"d bonded over badmouthing their teammates, low-budget horror movies and dollar-store candy, playfully bickering over whose power was cooler.
  
  Now she was gone, and we were left with the memories.
  
  My destination came into sight- a narrow building wedged between a couple of restaurants. The sign above said Murphy"s. Light spilled from the windows, and music leaked through the door. I thought I recognised the song.
  
  "I like this place already," Vladimir said.
  
  I took a deep breath, catching the scents of whiskey and stout. Then I pushed through the door, settling myself into a particular mindset.
  
  The bar might have been narrow, but it extended far back, enough that it felt like half the block. It was definitely aiming for an aesthetic- green wallpaper, dark wood for the booths, bare boards for the floor. There was even a brass rail along the bar that ran the length of the room.
  
  "God, this brings back memories," Tactical sighed. His family were proudly Irish, and he"d grown up hanging around places like this since he was little, sitting alongside his father as the man played cards and smoked rollups with other men of ambiguous occupations.
  
  Eventually he"d been old enough for his da to give him his first taste of beer, and then a full glass, and then whiskey.
  
  And then he"d been old enough for his da to press him into the family business, and things had all started to go sideways.
  
  I shook off the memories like cobwebs- none of us wanted to dwell on that shit tonight. Instead I made a beeline for the bar, pulling myself onto a stool. The bartender gave me a passing glance when I raised a finger.
  
  "Two shots," I said in Tactical"s Boston Southie accent.
  
  The bartender cocked his head. "And that"ll be two shots of what now?" he asked with an amused tone.
  
  "Two shots of holy water," I shot back on Tactical"s urging, rolling my eyes. "Whiskey."
  
  The bartender shook his head with a smile and pulled two shot glasses off the stacks at the back of the bar, plus a bottle of whiskey with a pouring cap stuck in the top. He set the glasses in front of me and filled them with practiced motions. I was a little surprised he didn"t ask me for any ID, even if it did work in my favour.
  
  "Now, I don"t know you well enough to start a tab, so if you please, that"ll be $10."
  
  I slipped a bill out of my sleeve and laid it on the table, then tossed the first shot back before I could hesitate.
  
  The whiskey was decent stuff- it wrapped itself around my tongue and burned the back of my throat as I swallowed.
  
  I let out a sigh that felt like it had been building my whole life. This was the first time I"d really tried alcohol- the Butchers had years of memories of course, but sooner or later you had to make your own memories. A lack of pain and an iron constitution made the experience easy for me.
  
  I switched the empty glass for the full, and looked at it for a moment. "Alice," I said at last, full of thoughts of the Irish girl who"d been one of the Teeth"s finest. Then I slowly sipped it all down. It was smoother this time.
  
  "You"re from Boston then?"
  
  I glanced across- a man with a cocky grin and intricate knotwork tattoos on his forearms had perched himself on the stool next to me.
  
  "Really?" I drawled, playing up the accent. "What was your first clue?"
  
  He laughed. "Yeah, I guess that was a bit obvious. Bit curious what a Boston girl"s doing up here?"
  
  "Trying to drink."
  
  "Hey, don"t be like that," Stoneknapper said. "He"s kinda cute..."
  
  "You get drinks tonight," I snapped. "Don"t push your luck."
  
  "Alright, fine. Christ."
  
  The man raised his hands. "Right. Fair." He paused, licking his lips nervously. "It"s just- I saw, with the shots... My mom passed away last year, and this is the first St Patrick"s without her. So, you know, thought you might want to get it off your chest."
  
  "That"s a hell of a personal thing this early in the night," I managed, bemused at his sudden honesty.
  
  "People always say I talk too much. Hey Barry," he said to the bartender as he passed by, "Guinness and- what"re you having?"
  
  I followed Tactical"s request. "Guinness too. But you"re not buying it for me," I warned.
  
  "Fair."
  
  "Tell him," Quarrel said.
  
  I managed to keep my expression neutral, but it was a close call. "What?"
  
  "Tell him about Alice. I fucking miss her, and somebody ought to know about her. So fucking tell him."
  
  I chewed my lip as Barry the bartender pulled our Guinness for us. The music changed- The Cranberries now.
  
  It wasn"t until I"d passed Barry the money that I spoke. "Friend of mine. She got caught in a gang fight."
  
  The tattooed man hissed between his teeth. "Holy Mother, that"s rough. I"m sorry."
  
  "Yeah." I sipped the Guinness. Tactical had always got a hint of coffee under the malt and the hops, and I could just about taste it too.
  
  "Her name was Alice. Started out as kind of a work friend," I lied, remembering how Quarrel had joined the Teeth a month after her Trigger, sick of living on the streets and full of spite for the entire rest of the world. Hemorhaggia had handled her initiation of claiming a trophy, loaning her a knife to chop fingers off the corpse.
  
  "Then, you know, get some drinks," and some weed; "see a couple of movies," mostly horror movies, and they laughed at the people who died in them.
  
  "Pretty soon she was my favourite person there." Certainly more than Spree, who could be a real pain in the ass when he was organising things, or Muramasa, who had something of a rivalry with Hemorhaggia and Quarrel both- Hemorhaggia because he maintained that he was the more dangerous close-range fighter, and Quarrel because she wasn"t as vocal about her Japanese heritage as him.
  
  "Sounds like a good friend," the tattooed man said.
  
  A memory floated up, of Hemorhaggia splitting one of the Adepts almost in half with an axe when he"d got the drop on Quarrel.
  
  "She always had my back," I said.
  
  The tattooed man tilted his glass in a small salute. "Well, to Alice then."
  
  I tilted my own glass and took a long sip of it, licking away the moustache it gave me.
  
  The tattooed man set his glass back on the bar just as a hand was set on his shoulder. "Billy, are you bothering the ladies again?" said a fat man with a moustache of his own- as thick and dark as the bristles of a yard brush.
  
  "Aw come on Lee, gimme a fucking break," Billy complained.
  
  "I"ll give you a break alright," Lee said, gently nudging his fist against Billy"s nose with a chuckle. "Sorry, Miss," he said to me. "Hope my nephew"s not being a pest."
  
  I had to laugh. It reminded me a little of the old men Tactical had watched with awe as a boy, who"d affectionately mocked all the younger folks around them. The first time Tactical had brought a girl around, they"d spent all their time recounting every embarrassing story of him they could think of just to watch him squirm.
  
  "No, it"s fine. Just talking. Absent friends," I explained.
  
  Lee"s moustache shifted from side to side. "Ah. Sorry to hear that. Is that what brings you to town?" he asked, signalling Barry, who wordlessly poured him a glass.
  
  "No, I"m here for family," I said truthfully.
  
  "Always a good reason to travel," Lee opined, accepting his glass. "Speaking of, to introduce us proper, this here"s my sister"s boy Billy, and I"m Lee. Lee O"Daly."
  
  The surname was vaguely familiar to me- I thought Dad had maybe talked about someone of that name as a Dockworker.
  
  "Rose Kelly," I said, clinking my glass with his.
  
  "Well, Rose Kelly, if you"re toasting absent friends, might as well not do it by yourself." He indicated a table with a few empty seats. "We"ve got half the O"Daly clan here tonight, so you won"t have to settle for what passes for conversation with Billy."
  
  "I"m sitting right fucking here," Billy complained. Neither of us looked at him.
  
  "I"m for it," Tactical said.
  
  Quarrel nodded. "Sounds good."
  
  The rest of the Butchers chimed in too, mostly positive.
  
  I shrugged and stood up from my seat. "Sure, why not?"
  
  "Here's to you, to me and one and all," we sang in a ragged chorus, "The day that D'arcy's drunken donkey won the race at Donegal!"
  
  Several hours after I"d arrived, everyone was about as drunk as that donkey, singing along to every song on the jukebox, the boombox, and one song a man had found on the internet and played through his phone. Even Billy was slurring his speech, despite switching to cranberry juice a while back, which everyone had gently mocked him for.
  
  Thanks to Needler"s regeneration and the various Brute powers, I was barely tipsy. It was the atmosphere and the sense of camaraderie that had relaxed me- or maybe it was being able to talk about some of the Butcher stuff, even if I had to filter out the incriminating details. I got the impression that the O"Dalys were doing the same with me, if on a lesser level.
  
  It filled a need I"d barely realised I"d got from the Butchers- to be a part of a crowd. It certainly wasn"t my own- I was an introvert even before Emma decided to make me a target. But the Butchers had largely been extroverts in life, and being the figurehead and leader of the Teeth meant there was always a crew around you, ready to jump at your word.
  
  So with backslapping and stumbling dances and toast after toast, I gradually became another Irish girl at Murphy"s getting my pride on, Alice"s clover necklace bouncing through the air as I laughingly attempted to follow someone"s demonstration of step-dancing.
  
  The door banged open, letting in a draft of cold air. I didn"t bother to turn my head until I heard someone shout "Top of the evening, lads!"
  
  There was a great shift in the room as everyone looked to the door. Several men had come in through the door, shaking off the cold and stepping aside as more piled in, maybe fifteen total. The first of them were already heading for the bar.
  
  "The fuck is this?" Dirty Rotter asked, more curious than annoyed.
  
  Barry the bartender took one look at the man in front and pointed a finger at the door. "Get out."
  
  "What?" The man said in an injured tone of voice, leaning against the bar. "We"re just in here to get a drink, celebrate the night."
  
  "You"re not doing shit in here with that around your neck," Barry said. "Out."
  
  "I"ve got a bad feeling about this," Flinch murmured uneasily.
  
  The man laughed easily. "Ah, come on, that"s bad business, turning away paying customers. Just pour us our drinks and we"ll sit nice and quiet."
  
  "You"ll not stand in here, let alone sit," Barry snapped, going from stern to angry. "No Empire in my bar."
  
  There was a shift in the atmosphere- before, everyone had been curious, a little put out at the newcomers.
  
  That one word stirred everyone up. The O"Dalys started to spread out a little, arms slipping from shoulders to hang at their sides. There was a clearing of throats and a cracking of knuckles among the men, and some of the women. The other patrons shrank back- I saw one dark-haired girl in leggings retreating into her booth until she was almost entirely under the table.
  
  The spokesman clicked his tongue, still smiling like this was all some big joke- now that I was paying attention I could see the eagle necklace he was wearing, and notice the other men were sporting short haircuts, patches, tattoos; all the other subtle little signs that you learned to spot in Brockton Bay.
  
  Billy laid a hand on my shoulder, gently coaxing me backward. I didn"t move, curling my hands into fists as I felt the anger start to build in me.
  
  This was my night off. This was a night for Tactical to connect with his roots, and for Quarrel to mourn her friend, and the Butchers to have fun and drinks, and for me to relax away from cape stuff for a bit.
  
  But the Empire just had to be here. There was nowhere in the city they wouldn"t try to go, no peace they would give. They"d killed Hemorhaggia and looted her body, they"d hurt Spitfire, they"d dug themselves into this city like a tumour and slowly sucked the life from it.
  
  And here they were again.
  
  "You"d better do this right, girl," Butcher growled. "You know what they need."
  
  "I know," I replied, shaking Billy"s hand off my shoulder.
  
  "Get the clover out of the way," Quarrel hissed. I tucked it inside my shirt without question, safe from getting snagged or grabbed.
  
  The spokesman glanced at us. "We"re just here to drink," he said, half to Barry and half to the ranks of irate Irish. "No need for you to make it a problem."
  
  Liam stepped forward, moustache bristling. "He said get out, boy. That"s walking or crawling, but you"re going out."
  
  Barry was busy pulling the bottles off the shelves and placing them out of reach, but he spared Liam a nod.
  
  The spokesman"s smile shrank a few degrees. He pushed himself off the bar to stand upright, straightening his jacket. "Just out of curiosity," he said softly, "What happens if I say... no?"
  
  Liam pulled a hand out of his pocket and held it up. A dollar coin gleamed between the knuckles of his first and second fingers. "Billy?"
  
  "Yeah?"
  
  Liam tossed the coin to him. "Go put on B7, there"s a lad."
  
  "Right." Billy slipped through the crowd, pausing by me to put a hand on my shoulder again. "You should get back, Rose," he whispered, "This is going to get ugly."
  
  "I know," I whispered back, not taking my eyes off the thugs.
  
  "Is nobody else going to ask what the fuck B7 is?" Firecracker demanded.
  
  Billy shook his head and moved past me. I didn"t turn to see what he was doing, but I heard a clink at the back, a moment of silence, and then a hiss of static through speakers.
  
  I knew the tune as soon as the music started, and I understood why Liam had chosen it. The sound of the Dropkick Murphys" best song filled the bar from edge to edge.
  
  "Oh fuck the hell yes," Tactical groaned. "This is MY fucking song!"
  
  "Last chance," Liam said, balling his fists up in front of him.
  
  The spokesman sneered. "You"re gonna-"
  
  The lyrics started, and so did Liam with a right hook that sent the spokesman toppling over.
  
  I"m a sailor peg/and I lost my leg/climbing up the topsails/I lost my leg!
  
  The O"Dalys barrelled forward with yells. I outpaced them all, leaping forward to ram my fist into a tall man"s sternum. He folded up instantly, vomiting onto the floor.
  
  "Use skill, not power!" Muramasa warned. "You are unmasked here!"
  
  Needler voiced her agreement. "Focus on your technique," she scolded.
  
  If I knocked someone senseless with a single punch, that would seem odd for a skinny girl to manage. I wasn"t armour-clad Elpis in here.
  
  So instead, I slammed my palm into the vomiting man"s temple, just hard enough to send him falling to the floor.
  
  A big guy I thought was named Shawn-with-an-S-H bodyslammed one of the goons before he could dodge. Liam had the spokesman in a headlock while he kicked out at another guy, and Little Dave was banging yet another goon"s hand against a table until the switchblade in it fell from battered fingers.
  
  The old memories and skills came to me like an eager dog. The Butchers were veterans of bar brawls- original Butcher used to start them for fun. Every dirty trick, every low blow, every groan-inducing attack had been learned or honed in places like this.
  
  One guy had taken off his belt to lash out at people with the buckle end. I ducked his swing and kicked out at his knee, just light enough not to break it. He howled and dropped the belt to clutch it, in time for Billy to come in with a wild yell and a leaping punch.
  
  "On your right!" Anchorage shouted. A guy with a Confederate flag patch on his jacket knocked Tall Dave down with a brass-knuckled punch and rounded on me like an angry bull. I stepped forward, weaved away from his first swing, and let Needler"s power guide the flat of my hand into his throat.
  
  He choked and staggered back, but I didn"t have time to press the attack before danger sense flared. I jumped back in time to avoid a random thrown glass, then stepped forward again as the flag man tried to stagger away.
  
  He tried to get his fists up again, but I just hauled his arm aside and punched him one-two-three in the face until he slumped against a booth.
  
  "Get the knuckles," Stoneknapper said.
  
  "What?"
  
  "Get the knuckles," Stoneknapper repeated, with an air of exasperation. "They"ll be useful."
  
  I rolled my eyes and quickly checked there weren"t any other Empire guys nearby to sucker punch me, then grabbed the Confederate"s hands and prised the brass knuckles off him. They were a bit big for my hands, and uncomfortably sweaty, but I slipped them on as I got back up to help.
  
  The fight was swiftly going in the O"Daly"s favour- they had the numbers, even if the Empire had come prepared for a fight. As I watched, Little Dave and Medium Dave were kicking a guy who"d curled into a ball on the ground, and Liam was bashing a ginger man"s head against the doorpost.
  
  One Empire thug had pulled a pair of blades and backed up to a booth, daring the Irish to come closer. He was too busy spitting slurs and jabbing his knives threateningly to notice the woman slowly rising up from underneath the table. I stalked over to join the Irish fighters keeping a circle around him, adding some choice words to theirs to draw his attention. I even held up the brass knuckles and made a horrible gesture with them.
  
  "Come on, girl, come on," Dirty Rotter urged as the dark haired woman silently grasped an empty whiskey bottle by the neck.
  
  "Hey fuckstick! Asshole with a concussion says what?" I jeered.
  
  "What?" said the fuckstick, right as the woman swung the bottle down on his head. It shattered magnificently, drawing blood at once. He fell to his knees, screaming in pain.
  
  I took one step forward and punched him in the hinge of the jaw. There was a muffled click as it dislocated, and he collapsed onto his side, squealing through his lips, knives discarded.
  
  I grabbed them off the floor and nodded to the woman. "Nice swing."
  
  She just dropped the remains of the bottle on the table and huddled back into the booth.
  
  I sighed and glanced around the room. There was a table with a knife sticking out of it, broken glasses here and there, spilled drinks on the floor, and a lot of bruised and battered Irishmen standing victorious over their enemies. I spotted Billy sporting a nasty cut on his cheek and a massive grin on his mouth.
  
  That left all the Empire goons down for the count- until I saw the spokesman dragging himself to his feet, using the brass rail on the bar as a handhold.
  
  "I must commend his spirit," Vladimir admitted. "If not his intelligence."
  
  "Fucking shitwads," he growled, red in the face, a magnificent bruise already swelling on his cheekbone. "We offered you... friendship... and you fucking spat in our faces." He managed to get his feet under him, though he still had a hand on the bar. "You"re gonna get fucked up now," he slurred. "Nobody fucks with us. We"re the motherfucking Empire Eighty Eight."
  
  Down the far end of the bar, I noticed Barry coming out of a back door with a baseball bat in hand. Possibly there would be two taps on the head tonight.
  
  Liam spat on the floor as his friends and family formed up around him. "That"s some big talk coming from a thin streak of piss like yourself. What do you think"s going to happen, eh? It"s just you now."
  
  The spokesman snarled at Liam, then suddenly threw himself bodily onto the bar. I thought for a second he was trying to climb over it to escape and failing badly, but he came back a second later with a clinking of glass, beer bottle in hand. He stumbled forward slightly, raising it over his head.
  
  "Oh, I see," Bearskin said, following the man"s hand down to the brass rail along the bar. "What"re we thinking, will he break it?"
  
  Butcher shrugged with the nasty grin of someone watching an enemy make a huge mistake. "I reckon he"s got decent odds."
  
  "Hey," I said to the spokesman, "don"t do that. Just take your guys and go, don"t make it worse-"
  
  "Shut the fuck up!" the spokesman screeched hysterically, bringing the bottle down on the rail.
  
  The bottle shattered in a spray of beer froth and fragments of glass.
  
  There was a breathless moment, when the spokesman stared dumbly at his hand, with all those shards of green glass sticking out of his palm, blood and beer dripping to the floor. I could see the look on his face change from concussed fury to agonising pain as a thin, animal noise hissed through his teeth.
  
  I pushed through the crowd, away from him, looking for- there, the belt one of the goons had been using as a weapon. I tossed the knives aside to snatch it up, shoving my way back through to him. He was too busy whimpering to protest as I stepped in close and wrapped the belt around his wrist, threading it through the buckle and cinching it tight.
  
  "Somebody call an ambulance," I said. "And help me get him on the ground."
  
  Billy hustled over to help me guide the spokesman to the floor, reaching for the hand-
  
  "Don"t touch it," I snapped. "He"s got a handful of broken glass. Prop his feet up and call an ambulance, but don"t touch the hand and don"t touch the tourniquet."
  
  I was aware of the crowd staring at me as I shouted orders. "Heard about something like this once," I explained half-truthfully. I remembered it pretty clearly, because it was Stoneknapper who"d done it down in Boston in 2000.
  
  "Turns out it"s a lot harder to break a beer bottle than you"d think, and it goes wrong pretty easy. Some guy grabbed a bottle, didn"t know how to break it, ended up with a handful of shards, and the other guy reached down and squeezed."
  
  There was a collective groan and hiss from the crowd.
  
  Barry leaned over the bar, corded phone in hand. "Just called 911. I"ll get the police in here."
  
  "Hang on, Barry," Liam said, waving a hand. "Just get the ambulance. Chances are these shits"ve got friends in the police."
  
  "City like this, chances are some of them are police," Anchorage snorted.
  
  "Yeah, good point," Barry conceded. He disappeared back behind the bar.
  
  "This was stupid," Flinch muttered.
  
  "In what way?" I asked distractedly, checking the spokesman"s pulse and breathing.
  
  "The Empire, doing this. They"ve basically made it so they can"t recruit any Irish people at all thanks to this."
  
  "That might just be this guy being stupid," Tock Tick said, indicating the idiot in question who was still moaning piteously.
  
  Muramasa snorted. "I will not credit his intelligence, but perhaps the Empire is attempting to extend its reach. With Coil now removed, they have only the heroes and the," he grimaced, "Asian Bad Boys to contend with. They will seek to recruit or remove every other force."
  
  The thought of that was sickening. I"d hoped for at least a little reprieve from taking Coil off the board, but apparently there really was no rest for the wicked.
  
  I straightened up while Billy wedged the spokesman"s feet onto the crossbar of a chair. Liam was close by, blowing his nose into a handkerchief.
  
  "That"s a damn decent thing you did just now," he said, glancing at the red stain on the handkerchief. "I"d have just let the bastard bleed."
  
  I shrugged uncomfortably. The morality of the action hadn"t really occurred in the moment. Mostly I"d considered how Kaiser would have got a lot of useful propaganda and ordered this place burned to the ground if one of his men had lost a hand to it.
  
  "I think I"ve had enough for tonight," I said, stepping around Liam. "I"m just going to get my coat."
  
  Liam looked me up and down thoughtfully, then nodded. "Don"t be a stranger, Rose Kelly."
  
  "Well, that was fun," Quarrel declared as I slipped my coat on again and went out through the door, breath fogging in the cold March air.
  
  "Mmm," Tactical agreed. "The fight could have gone on longer, but it was a good evening all round."
  
  "Oh my god, will you stop?" I demanded, striding along the sidewalk in the direction of my house.
  
  Firecracker cackled. "Not a chance! And the best part is, you"ll have to keep doing it! If the Nazis are on the move, you"re going to have to crack some skulls, which means we get action!"
  
  I snarled to myself as I stalked back home, good mood now fouled. "I"ll fight them because it"s needed. I"m not going to go around starting bar fights just so you can get your jollies."
  
  "You say that," Firecracker said smugly, "but you didn"t even notice you took the knuckles with you."
  
  I came to a halt on the sidewalk, pulling my right hand out of my coat pocket. Sure enough, the knuckleduster was still in my grip. Worse, Stoneknapper"s fizz was still tingling in my hand.
  
  Without noticing, I"d altered the brass knuckles, tightening them up to fit my hand perfectly.
  
  I yanked them off and stuffed them into my pocket, then stuffed Firecracker into the dark as she laughed.
  
  I made the rest of the journey home in silence.
  
  7.2
  Morning of Saturday 19th March, Downtown
  
  I"d texted Amy the diner we were all meeting up at for breakfast, but I hadn"t really expected her to show up. She"d chewed me out at length after the Coil bust, and then said maybe a handful of words to me the rest of the week.
  
  So it was a shock to me when I felt a paralysed mosquito enter my range from a few blocks away, bouncing around inside the soft dark space of a coat pocket.
  
  I shovelled another forkful of waffle into my mouth to hide my reaction from the others. Luckily Emily and Tarquin were too focused on their own orders right now- Tarquin with a whipped-cream-smothered stack and Emily on her third stack of Neverending Pancakes.
  
  "Oh for fuck"s sake," Butcher groaned. "Here I was hoping we were rid of her."
  
  The bell over the door jingled merrily, in contrast with how Amy shuffled in, practically swimming in a big fluffy pink hoodie and beanie. As I looked out of the corner of my eye, she spotted me within a second and weaved her way through to our booth, plopping herself down next to me without ceremony.
  
  "Don"t think this means I"m not mad at you," she said tartly, grabbing a laminated menu and staring at it intently.
  
  "Never crossed my mind," I said, smiling a little.
  
  Tarquin set his coffee down. "Nice outfit," he said blandly.
  
  "It"s Vicky"s."
  
  "Yeah, a pink hoodie with Princess written on the front doesn"t seem like it"s your style."
  
  Amy"s eyes snapped down to the front of her hoodie.
  
  "Oh that"s cute ," Firecracker snickered.
  
  "Oh, that"s what it says?" Emily said, halfway through slicing another bit off her stack. "I couldn"t read the font."
  
  "Hello to you too." Amy paused, then lowered the menu and gave Emily a closer look. "This is actually the first time we"ve met out of costume, isn"t it?"
  
  Emily shrugged. "Yeah. Name"s Emily." She popped a bit of pancake into her mouth and added, "Fo ow"s oor hum-er-ee "aking ih?"
  
  "What?" Amy asked.
  
  Emily swallowed and pointed a knife in my direction. "How"s your family taking it, with Taylor?"
  
  Amy flicked the menu up again. "They"re not happy about it. Carol"s especially not happy about it."
  
  I sighed. "Figures. One act of mercy and I burn all my goodwill."
  
  Emily shrugged. "I didn"t talk to the adults as much, but they"re still figuring out how to act. Assault"s still saying you"re cool, if that helps."
  
  "Huh. I knew I liked that guy," Anchorage said.
  
  "What about the Wards?" Tarquin asked.
  
  "They haven"t actually told us," Spitfire shrugged, picking up her cocoa. "I think Aegis might know, because he"s the team leader, but nobody actually said anything." She took a sip and added, "Shadow Stalker still thinks you"re cool."
  
  "Well, good to know the one with the best name likes us," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  Dirty Rotter snorted. "You bleeding edgelord, you think that"s a good name?"
  
  "Well, good to know I"ve got a grand total of five heroes who still like me."
  
  "I never agreed to that," Amy said without looking up from the menu.
  
  Quarrel burst out laughing. "Hahahahahaha! Oh shit, she torched your ass, white girl! She torched your ass!"
  
  "That"s cold," Firecracker giggled. "That is stone cold."
  
  "I"m sure she doesn"t mean it," Flinch tried, before Stoneknapper interrupted him with a snort.
  
  "Judgemental little twerp. When"s she ever had to get her hands dirty?"
  
  With all their various emotions bleeding through to me, I didn"t really know how to deal with Amy"s attitude.
  
  Luckily the waiter came over at that moment to take her order for chocolate chip pancakes and a coffee. When he"d walked off, I tried to start the conversation again.
  
  "If you"re still mad at me, why did you come here in the first place?"
  
  "Because I already told Carol I was going out with friends, and if I"d changed that she"d have wanted an explanation, and I just didn"t have the energy for that. Besides, you"re paying for the pancakes."
  
  I gritted my teeth. "Amy, what will it take for you to stop sulking and just talk to me?"
  
  "Sulking?" Amy turned in her seat to face me. "What, like this is me being childish? You"re the one who turned a bunch of dangerous criminals out onto the streets!"
  
  "Hey, keep your voice down," Tarquin cautioned, leaning across the table. "People can hear us."
  
  Amy shot him a glare before looking back at me. "You wanted me to keep an eye on you, and now you"re letting villains loose and acting like I"m being unreasonable?"
  
  "I never said that," I hissed, leaning in close. "But you could at least hear me out before getting all pissy."
  
  "Pissy?!" Amy"s whisper was full of venom. "You bitch, I"m telling you-"
  
  A hand waved in between our faces, startling me. I snatched up my knife before I realised it was just Emily, halfway out of her seat to reach across the booth.
  
  "Can I say something?" She said snippily.
  
  "Well, at least there"s one person here with their head on straight," Needler remarked.
  
  Emily sat back in her seat. I gingerly set my knife down on my plate and folded my hands together on the table.
  
  "Amy," Emily said, jabbing her fork into her stack and cutting a fat slice off. "Did you know I"ve burned a building down?"
  
  The silence was broken only by Emily"s knife squeaking across the plate.
  
  "Well," Firecracker said, "That"s one way to kill a conversation."
  
  "I...uh, I... what?"
  
  "By accident," Emily clarified. "Then I was getting chased by the Empire, and I was stuck down an alley with a couple of assholes shooting at me. That"s how I met Elpis.
  
  "Thing is, I was so sure I was going to jail. Like, the idea that anyone would let me off the hook never crossed my mind."
  
  Emily hefted the chunk of pancake stack, dripping with maple syrup, and somehow fit the chunk into her mouth without touching the sides. She held up a finger while she chewed, swallowed, and spoke again.
  
  "And then Elpis talked to the PRT, and found me somewhere to sleep, and got me a costume and everything- and now look at me. I"m a stand-up, productive member of the community and all that crap."
  
  "It"s not the same," Amy said, finding her voice. "The Undersiders are career criminals; Hellhound"s got a murder charge! They don"t deserve a second chance."
  
  "Amy." I pushed my plate aside to rest my elbow on the table. "It"s not about deserving. Sometimes you just have to help people anyway. Even if you know they"re probably going to fuck up again." I subtly curled a finger to point at myself and cocked my head.
  
  "Yeah, you probably are going to fuck up-" Butcher began. I pushed him into the dark with a resigned sigh.
  
  Amy looked at me for a long second, then looked down at her lap. "It feels wrong," she said in a small voice.
  
  "That"s fair," I admitted. "Look, if they pop up again, I"ll be first to start chasing them down again. Plus you get to say "I told you so" as much as you like."
  
  "Choc chip pancakes?"
  
  Amy looked up at the waiter. "Here please." A plate of pancakes drizzled with chocolate sauce and mini marshmallows was set in front of her.
  
  "Suicide by Chocolate," Bearskin marvelled. "Damn that looks good."
  
  Amy slowly unfolded her napkin and popped it on her lap. "I"ve got my eye on you," she said half-heartedly, picking up her cutlery.
  
  "Wouldn"t have it any other way," I said, surprised by my own sincerity. I pulled my plate back towards myself and took another slurp of my milkshake.
  
  Tarquin glanced around at all of us, then scooped up a dollop of whipped cream with his finger. "Well, now that Mom and Dad made up," he said, ignoring Amy"s squawk of indignation, "What"s the plan after this?"
  
  "Finally, someone has their mind on business," Tactical said exasperatedly.
  
  I chopped my waffles up into small pieces. "I"m thinking we might need to shift down a gear. The way things have gone the last few months, the gangs are going to be tense. If we go too hard now, they might lash out in a way we"re not prepared for."
  
  "Empire and ABB are definitely gearing up for a territory fight," Amy said, slicing a bit off her pancakes and rolling it through the sauce. "There"s fresh tags, smashed windows- I"ve had a couple of mugging victims come my way in the last few days, and one of them said the guys who jumped him were talking about Lung getting some new muscle."
  
  "So we hit some of their operations to reduce their resources, slow them down," Tarquin said.
  
  I shook my head. "Normally I"d say yes, but they"re bound to be wise to us by now. They"ll have extra guards, maybe even capes watching the important spots. I think we should wait for them to let their guard down before we start directly hitting them again."
  
  "Protectorate"s planning some patrols along the edges of Coil"s old territory," Emily broke in. "They said that way we can stop any fights before they get out of control, and maybe keep them from expanding at all if we"re lucky."
  
  Nemean grunted. "So we hang around waiting for the fight to come to us? Sounds boring."
  
  "We"ll have our hands full of action doing that," I said to both at once. "Sounds like a plan. Assuming the Protectorate"s willing to coordinate with us."
  
  "I could mention that to my family," Amy said, licking chocolate off her lips. "They"re probably not going to want to work directly with you for a while," she added pointedly, "but it"s a good idea. Aunt Sarah"s been talking about how all the work lately has got New Wave flying high again- she"ll want to keep the ball rolling."
  
  "Good to know." A thought struck me. "Hey, what happened with Shielder? I remember you couldn"t get through to him that night- what was that all about?"
  
  Amy snorted. "Eric forgot to put his phone on charge. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil were pissed- they"ve been pestering him about it all week." She took another bit of pancake and added "Man, these are good."
  
  "Sounds like the opposite of the usual parent complaint," Tarquin said with a grin. ""You"re not paying enough attention to that damn phone!"" he said in a gruff, sitcom-dad kind of way, wagging his finger severely.
  
  Tock Tick snickered at the joke, and I snickered along with him.
  
  "Yeah, they said they"d tie it to his wrist the next time he doesn"t pick up," Amy said with a small smile, licking a drop of chocolate off the back of her hand with a darting motion that drew the eye.
  
  "Well, it sounds like a plan, at any rate," I said, digging into my waffles again.
  
  "Fingers crossed for some action tonight," Rotter said. "Like Elton says, Saturday night"s-"
  
  "-alright for fighting, yes," Muramasa said with poorly concealed irritation. "Must you always make that joke?"
  
  "What? It"s a good song! He might dress like a peacock on acid, but he does good music."
  
  "Wait a s-second," Flinch interrupted. I immediately stopped and listened- Flinch"s stutter didn"t flare up much these days unless he was nervous, and this sounded important.
  
  "What about the Travelers? What if they show up?"
  
  I frowned in thought. I was reasonably sure the Travelers would just leave town now that Coil was gone- they had a reputation for moving around, and they didn"t have someone paying them to stay.
  
  On the other hand, they might pull a couple of jobs to get the money needed for travelling before they left Brockton Bay, and that could be messy. I"d seen pictures of the melted alleyway Sundancer had left behind.
  
  A drop of maple syrup plopped onto my plate, and I realised I"d been holding my fork in mid-air for the past few seconds, lost in thought. I popped the bit of waffle into my mouth and chewed.
  
  "Guys, the Travelers. Thoughts?"
  
  "Fuck "em up," Anchorage said without hesitation. "They sound like a tough bunch, but not impossible. You could do with the cred."
  
  "I give it decent odds one of them gets in a lucky shot at you," Quarrel said, "so go for it." I gave her a shove and a glare.
  
  Vladimir shook his head. "Don"t bother with them. You"ve got a real chance to hurt the Empire, and that"s been a dream of mine since I first got a crush on Tom Selleck."
  
  I stopped chewing for a second. "Tom Selleck? Really?"
  
  "I like the moustache," Vladimir said primly.
  
  "Hey Taylor, you alright?" I glanced at Emily. "You were looking all spaced out."
  
  "I"m okay. Just had a weird thought." I cut another slice of waffle. "T, if the Travelers show up, we need to be careful. And if I say run, run."
  
  "Hey, I could take a couple of them," Tarquin protested.
  
  "Yeah, and if it"s just them, I"ll say fight. But if it"s Sundancer there, we"re getting some distance."
  
  Tarquin pulled a face, but relented. "Alright, fine. I don"t want to end up in a puddle of metal."
  
  Afternoon of Saturday 19 th March, Downtown North
  
  The Protectorate had given me an abbreviated schedule of patrol routes and the breaks taken along them for this week. It didn"t have enough information to mean much to someone who hadn"t had the specifics explained to them in person; it would change after this week; it might have been changed already; but I still glanced at the map as we drove through Downtown in the chariot.
  
  Tarquin had dumped his armour in the back seat to sit shotgun, with only the helmet still on him.
  
  "Any idea who we"re gonna meet? Because I kinda want to get Dauntless"s autograph."
  
  "You want to get a superhero"s autograph, even though you are a superhero?" I asked, shaking my head with a smile. "Never change, T."
  
  "Sure. I can sell it on Ebay."
  
  I laughed at that, along with a couple of the Butchers. "Smart kid," Stoneknapper said approvingly.
  
  Finally, I pulled into a parking lot behind a bakery. The smell of pastry and cinnamon was rich in the air, even with the windows rolled up.
  
  Right at the end, their backs to the wall, were two figures. A tall, broad man with a golden lion helmet and shoulderpads, and a short, slim figure in a black cloak and bodysuit.
  
  Triumph and Shadow Stalker. Two heroes I had yet to meet.
  
  "Hell of a contrast those two make," Stoneknapper mused as I opened my door and swung myself out. Tarquin clambered into the back and burrowed into his pile of metal like it was cotton balls.
  
  I raised a hand towards the two heroes as I waited for Tarquin to sort himself out, simultaneously shifting some bugs over towards them. Nothing directly on them, but some that could feel their general movements. I could clearly see Triumph wave back anyway.
  
  Shadow Stalker looked antsy- bloodsight let me see she was wringing her hands inside the folds of her cloak, tapping her foot. Triumph said something to her, and she suddenly smacked his arm with a fist. He just clutched a hand to the area and laughed.
  
  Ironclad finally poured himself out of the back door and shuffled his armour into place, shrugging massive shoulders until he was satisfied with the look. With a mutual look and a nod, we started across the lot towards the other heroes.
  
  Triumph pushed himself upright from where he"d been leaning against the wall with effortless ease. "Elpis," he said with a winning smile and an outstretched hand. "Good to meet you at last."
  
  "Likewise, Triumph," I said, accepting the handshake. Firm grip- he did have a bit of superstrength, I remembered. Mostly people talked about his power to emit concussive shouts.
  
  "Hope you don"t mind us dropping in," I said, bouncing my eyebrows. "We wanted to meet up, but we weren"t sure about the mood."
  
  Triumph smiled- nice white teeth. "Hey, no problem. You helped take down Coil- as far as I"m concerned, you"re golden."
  
  Firecracker took in that chiselled jawline and the athletic figure under that skin-tight suit. "He"s cute," she purred.
  
  I felt the heat rise to my face, and hastily turned to the Ward instead. "And you must be Shadow Stalker."
  
  Up close, I could see that she was a little bit shorter than me, even if I mentally subtracted the height the armour gave me. Her mask was a frowning woman"s face in dark metal, and I could see brown eyes past that.
  
  She straightened up, swept her cloak out behind her, and propped her hands on her hips in a pose that wouldn"t have looked out of place on a poster. "Damn straight. I"ve heard about your work. Good stuff."
  
  There was something familiar about her voice, but her overall tone sounded off- like she was uncomfortable or holding herself back from something. Maybe she was just trying to be polite.
  
  I shrugged it off and gestured to the mobile mass of metal hovering over my shoulder. "The big guy here is Ironclad."
  
  "Yo."
  
  Shadow Stalker gave him an up-nod. "S"up."
  
  "Teenagers," Tactical said despairingly.
  
  "So have you guys seen anything so far? We"re trying to keep an eye out for the gangs right now," I explained.
  
  "Good plan," Triumph said, "but so far we haven"t seen much. It"s mostly just some paint, and that was a while back. Downtown"s pretty clear so far."
  
  "Here"s hoping we can keep it that way."
  
  "Bet you"ll be right where the action is, huh, Elpis?" Shadow Stalker asked eagerly.
  
  "I"ll certainly try?" I said uncertainly, a bit thrown off by her sudden enthusiasm.
  
  "Sweet."
  
  "We were going to do some foot patrol, if you guys wanted to come with," Triumph offered. "Show the flag, let people know the heroes are around, that sort of thing."
  
  I shrugged. "Sure, lead the way."
  
  Triumph led the way out onto the street. Shadow Stalker jogged to catch up with me, falling into step beside me- and Ironclad brought up the rear, taking up the entire width of the sidewalk.
  
  People turned their heads and pointed as we made our way through Downtown. Some took pictures with their phones. Triumph waved to a few of them, or gave a friendly smile and a casual nod. He made it look so easy.
  
  "You"ve been busy," Shadow Stalker commented as she matched pace with me. Her fingers drummed a pattern on the twin crossbows holstered at her hips. The bolts were interesting- glass shafts filled with liquid, pronged heads with a cross-shaped flare past that to prevent it from penetrating too deeply. Tranquiliser bolts, made to prevent accidents.
  
  "Kid"s stuff," Bearskin said derisively.
  
  Tock Tick hummed. "It"s a good design though. Shame we can"t cook up some sedative ourselves, it"d make things a hell of a lot easier."
  
  "I mean, shit," Shadow Stalker continued in a low yet animated voice. "The Merchants, the Teeth, Coil- gone. Half the gangs in the city, that"s what I call making a difference. None of this kid"s table shit."
  
  "Thanks?" I said, feeling briefly wrong-footed. "It"s definitely satisfying to know I"ve made things better around here."
  
  "By taking down the bastards that deserve it. We should work together some time. If you can keep up with me," she added.
  
  We had to stop as Triumph paused to give an autograph. The young woman looked ecstatic to be up close and personal with a handsome hero, and pretty happy to see me and Ironclad as well.
  
  Shadow Stalker tapped her foot throughout the whole interaction, only untensing when we started moving again.
  
  "So you"ve been a Ward for a while," I tried. "Enjoying it so far?"
  
  Shadow Stalker snorted. "No," she said, like I"d asked if the sky was green. "I don"t usually do the whole team thing. Prefer solo work. That way I don"t have to wait around for other people to keep up or catch up." The look she flicked at me seemed appreciative- since she"d offered to work with me, I guessed she thought I could keep up with her.
  
  "I think Parian"s shop is this way," Triumph announced over his shoulder, sparing me from having to think of a response to Shadow Stalker. "You"ve met her before, right?"
  
  "Yeah. She made Spitfire"s first costume. Sweet girl."
  
  "Feel like dropping by, saying hello?"
  
  "I"m in," Ironclad said, raising one platter-sized hand. "I haven"t seen her puppets in person yet."
  
  "They"re pretty interesting," I agreed. I turned to Stalker in an effort to include her in the decision. "How about you, Shadow Stalker?"
  
  Stalker cocked her head for a second. "Fine," she said at last. "As long as it"s quick."
  
  Nemean grunted. "She"s angry."
  
  She didn"t need to elaborate further- a few flashes of memories conveyed her full meaning.
  
  Not the kind of angry from having a bad day, stubbing your toe, or having a bird crap on you.
  
  Nemean thought Shadow Stalker was the kind of personality that operated on a constant, low burn of anger, like a pilot light of emotion, ready to heat up at a moment"s notice. There were plenty of people like that in the Teeth over the years- Butcher, Anchorage, Nemean herself- and they"d learned to spot the signs.
  
  Still, I balked at the idea of labelling Shadow Stalker like that. I barely knew the girl, and putting her in the same category as people like that felt insulting.
  
  As we turned the corner towards Parian"s, I tried to restart the conversation. "I guess your power makes it easy to get around, walking through walls like that."
  
  "Yup. Plus I"m really light when I shift, so I can jump between buildings, glide a little, stuff like that. It"s more than just turning-," She snapped her fingers a few times, "-intangible? Is that the word?"
  
  "Yeah, that"s the one. Sounds useful. All I"ve got are my grapplers."
  
  "Can you shoot people with those?" Shadow Stalker asked curiously. "I never heard if you could or not."
  
  "I could hit someone with them, but there"s a safety mechanism built in so they won"t cut into someone. The air cannon"s better for knocking someone over anyway." I tapped the cannon on my belt for emphasis.
  
  Shadow Stalker shrugged. "I guess. Still, it"d be cool if you could just hit someone and reel them in."
  
  Needler hmmed. "She has a point. I know you won"t allow simply harpooning people like that, but possibly a less harmful version?"
  
  "I"ll think about it." I put the thought aside- Parian"s shop was just ahead. I could see the hanging sign with gold script from here.
  
  I could also spot a man in overalls scrubbing at the glass with a brush on a pole. A window washer probably.
  
  Except as we got closer, the window didn"t seem white with suds. It looked more like he was trying to scrape something off the glass.
  
  "What the hell is this?" Triumph asked, coming up to the window.
  
  The cleaner glanced at the four of us with brief surprise. "Cleaning the glass. Some punks decided to decorate." He stepped aside so the rest of us could see more clearly.
  
  "Oh no," Flinch whispered.
  
  "Fuck," Shadow Stalker said.
  
  "Why would they do this?" Ironclad demanded. "All she does is make clothes."
  
  "It doesn"t matter to them," I said bleakly. "Either you"re with them or against them."
  
  The sign on the door said CLOSED. The paint that had been crudely daubed on the display window read E88, plus a couple of symbols.
  
  With the power vacuum in the bay, the Empire would be looking for the extra muscle to expand. Pressganging a harmless girl who wanted to do nothing more than make pretty clothes and be left in peace sounded exactly like the sort of thing they"d stoop to.
  
  "Welp," Dirty Rotter said. "Looks like we"re cracking Nazi skulls tonight."
  
  I felt my nails lengthen, just a little. "Looks that way," I growled.
  
  7.3
  Early hours of Sunday 20th March, South Downtown
  
  Asking the neighbouring businesses and other eyewitnesses had painted a picture- sometime in the early morning, a couple of guys had shown up in an unmarked van, slopped a load of white supremacist slogans onto the window of Parian"s shop, and departed.
  
  Several people had stopped to gawk at the graffiti before Parian finally trotted up on the back of a patchwork horse. As a concerned antiques dealer put it, she had politely pushed through the crowd, taken one look at the paint, and then gone inside without flipping the CLOSED sign.
  
  The cleaner had come along not long after, and Parian had locked the shop and left in a hurry. Nobody had been able to contact her since- she only had a business number, and she wasn"t answering.
  
  The Empire had hurt her as surely as if they"d struck her. All Parian did was make giant toys to entertain children, and beautiful clothes for wealthy customers- no harm to anyone. But now, even if absolutely nobody believed that she was linked to the E88- and there were morons out there who"d believe the government was run by walrus people from Jupiter- plenty of people would avoid her out of fear that patronising her business would get them targeted in turn.
  
  The fight had Murphy"s bar had rattled me, but the targeting of Parian had lit a fire in me.
  
  Which was why, after we"d ended the patrol with Triumph and Shadow Stalker with stilted farewells, after I"d dropped off Ironclad and gone back home, after Dad had fallen asleep and I"d changed back into my armour, I was now prowling the streets on my bike, looking to put boots to asses.
  
  There wasn"t a plan, or careful consideration. There wasn"t backup waiting, or reconnaissance to work off. I just wanted to give the Empire something to really worry about, to stop them from hurting innocent people for once.
  
  My insect range had ballooned out from its usual one block radius to something verging on three, and I welcomed it, sweeping past buildings without waking the occupants, scanning with bloodsight for anyone suspicious moving around at 2am; although with the bars starting to close, that was easier said than done.
  
  "We"ve had enough sneaking and planning and shit," Anchorage fumed as I turned to double back on the grid search pattern. "This isn"t some plotting mastermind in a secret base- we go scorched earth on these fuckers. Got it?"
  
  "I still think we should use their secret identities," Needler insisted. "One call to the police and Kaiser will be gone within a week- dropped into a hole so deep not even the crows will land their droppings on him."
  
  "No," I disagreed, as much as I wanted to take the simple and ruthlessly effective option. "If I spit on the code like that, half the state will come after me. And if I do it anonymously, Kaiser can wriggle out of it."
  
  Not many of the Empire members that Bearskin had worked with back in the day were still in town, but the few that were had made it up the hierarchy; enough that they had arranged enough protection to keep their civilian identities secure from casual attempts to unmask them.
  
  There was also the backlash to worry about. Capes who didn"t have somewhere to retreat to tended to resort to more extreme tactics, and I didn"t want to inflict that on Brockton Bay.
  
  "Besides," I added, "You guys will want the personal touch."
  
  There was a rumble of agreement inside my head. "Let"s get on with it," Butcher growled.
  
  It took a few more passes before I found something. Further away from the bars and nightclubs, there was a knot of people in a restaurant parking lot loading bags and boxes into the back of a truck. Not entirely unusual, but worth looking at.
  
  I cut the engine and switched to mainspring as I made the turn, gliding into the parking lot like a whisper. It wasn"t until I swung a leg over to dismount that one of the guys glanced up and saw me, dropping his box to shout.
  
  The rest of the men all jumped at his shout, making to draw weapons- until the last of their number stepped out of the shadow where he"d been observing them.
  
  The downside of bloodsight was that it only showed me a person"s body, so unless they had a really distinctive shape, it was hard to pick out a specific person.
  
  So it was a shock to me when Krieg stepped into the orange light of the one street lamp in the parking lot, long dark coat flapping at his heels. The light glinted off the metal fittings of his gas mask and gleamed over the peak of his cap.
  
  I"d had ideas on how to specifically deal with Krieg, mostly by collaborating with other heroes. New Wave"s lasers could go right through his kinetic field, for instance. But it was just me now.
  
  I grabbed my flail off my belt and smacked it into my palm as I stalked forward with a growl. Krieg"s presence was a nasty surprise to me, but kicking the crap out of him sounded really therapeutic right now. I rolled my shoulders as I went, retracting my cape into the reel at the top.
  
  "You"d better put him on the ground this time," Firecracker said. "No screwups like last time."
  
  Krieg waved a leather gloved hand to the men. "Take the supplies and go," he said, still putting on that stupid faux-German accent. "And call for reinforcements. We will handle her."
  
  I hit the edge of Krieg"s kinetic field as I approached, and felt the resistance on my limbs and in my lungs. It was an inconvenience, but I powered through it, unspooling the flail"s cable to spin it in my hand.
  
  The men behind Krieg were hastily piling their loot and themselves into the truck as the driver started the engine. One lean silhouette clambered out of the passenger seat and swung themselves over the hood to land in a neat crouch, kamas at the ready, teeth bared behind the cage on her head.
  
  "Cricket too?" Dirty Rotter asked. "Two-for-one special, then!"
  
  I lunged toward Krieg, reeling the flail in to give it extra momentum as I swung for his head. With my left I drew the air cannon off my back, bringing it around to point at Cricket as she burst into a sprint.
  
  Krieg stepped back, and his kinetic amplification sent him back a foot, the flail sailing through the space where his head had been. Cricket was zig-zagging to throw off my aim, but I at least didn"t need to hit her directly. I pointed the cannon down and fired.
  
  The pepper round burst in a white cloud on impact, sending stinging dust fountaining into the air. Cricket visibly stalled at the edge of it, circling around to find a safer angle of attack. I remembered to plant some bugs on the top of her cage mask, on the hems of her pants.
  
  Sloppy- I should have done that before I even started this fight.
  
  The truck was driving off, but I didn"t have anything to hand to stop it. I had my hands full as it was.
  
  Krieg came barrelling back in, fists raised in a boxing stance. I reeled the flail back in, firing a wild shot of air at him. It hit centre mass, but it just burst and spiralled apart as it hit him, barely stalling him.
  
  I couldn"t spare the half-second to holster it, so I flipped it around to hold it like a nightstick, the barrel parallel to my arm.
  
  Then Krieg was upon me with a right hook. I jerked back and swung my elbow up to deflect, feeling the impact rattle my bones. I brought the flail around in a wild swing at his ribs, smashing into his guard. He grunted through his gas mask and pushed out, throwing jab after jab at my face.
  
  I backpedalled, fighting against the resistance in the air that followed Krieg, blocking or deflecting his blows with the flail and the cannon, using Needler"s power to aim for his weaknesses; joints, nerve clusters, old injuries; I brought the flail down on his left knee and was rewarded with a pained wheeze, even if I hadn"t done a lot of damage.
  
  "Don"t let him push you out of the cloud!" Tactical shouted. I realised his point- we were at the edge of the pepper dust, and Cricket was circling around towards us. I ducked and sidestepped Krieg"s next blow, spinning aside to get back into the cloud.
  
  Krieg spun around in an instant, but he didn"t come after me immediately. As I put my battered cannon back on my belt, he straightened his coat, flicked some dust off his lapel, and squared his shoulders.
  
  "Come on," I growled, hefting the flail and dialling the Pulse setting to maximum.
  
  Krieg brought his arms out to either side- and slammed them together at arm"s length. The result was a rush of air as his kinetic field amplified the clap, blowing the dust clear of our fight.
  
  Cricket came at me like a homing missile, swinging a kama at my armpit. I slapped the blade aside with my free hand and intercepted her next blow with my flail, an inch from my groin. I twisted my wrist to try and disarm her, but she disengaged immediately and pulled back-
  
  Danger sense flared- I shouldn"t have needed that to remind me that Krieg was still there, but now he was leaping at me boot first. I twisted desperately to duck under his attack, but I still felt the heel of his boot graze my jawguard as he passed.
  
  Then he landed, I straightened up, and both of them went on the attack.
  
  Their styles were different- Krieg used boxing and kicks in blocky, heavy movements, a grinding advance to wear at my defence while his kinetic field slowed my movements; while Cricket was constantly changing directions, probing at me from unexpected angles, using the blades of her kamas to slash and scratch at my armour, or pull my flail out of position, always one step ahead of me with her sonar power.
  
  Even worse, they were each attacking from my worst side. I could have used my free hand to fend off Cricket, blocking her kamas with my armour, and used the kinetic flail to block and counter Krieg"s power. Instead they were they other way around, Krieg from my left and Cricket from my right, forcing me to back up and give ground, or else risk exposing my back to them.
  
  Unlike them I didn"t have anyone covering me right now- and that was a depressing thought.
  
  I was getting close to the wall of the restaurant, losing space to manoeuvre. If I let them pin me, I"d be in trouble.
  
  "Hit them with pain or something!" Quarrel shouted. "Rage them, rot them just hurt them already!"
  
  I was getting desperate, but not that desperate. I wracked my brain for something. What did I have to hand? Flail and fist, the drill bits in my boots, the grapplers in my bracers-
  
  Yes.
  
  I twisted my arm as I blocked Cricket"s next strike, pointing my wrist at Krieg"s mask. Curling my fingers sent the panels of my right bracer sliding open, allowing the grappler to pop out. Another gesture fired it into the metal filter of Krieg"s mask.
  
  Krieg yelped in surprise and made to grab at the cable- I yanked my arm back before he could, tearing the bolt loose and ripping a wide hole open over his mouth. I hadn"t drawn blood, but I"d clearly thrown him off his game.
  
  Cricket slammed a kama into the exposed grappler, twisting her weapon to bend the delicate mechanisms out of shape. Something snapped, and the cable was left dangling loosely, unable to finish reeling in.
  
  I snarled and twisted my arm, grinding the components against the blade, damaging them more and trapping the kama. Cricket yanked on it unsuccessfully, unable to free her weapon, then grunted in shock as I dropped the head of my flail, kicking it into her stomach as it fell. The sphere pulsed as it hit her, and she was thrown back to collapse in a heap.
  
  "Yes!" Tock Tick crowed. "How do you like that, bitch?!"
  
  Krieg came at me with a roundhouse punch, his bellow no longer muffled by his gas mask. I couldn"t get the flail up to block, and his fist crashed into my jawguard like an asteroid impact. My feet actually left the ground for a second, and I tripped as I came down, sprawling as I felt the halves of my jawbone grind against each other.
  
  I kicked out as Krieg tried to stomp on me, catching him in the left knee again. His gasp of pain was a lot clearer this time- it encouraged me.
  
  I rolled over to get some distance and came up in a crouch facing Krieg, reeling the flail in until it locked onto the handle once more. With my free hand, I beckoned him.
  
  Krieg snarled and burst forward in a rush, hard enough for Flinch"s danger sense to flare. I caught the first punch on the flail head and struck back with a left cross. The kinetic field slowed my fist until it was like pushing through liquid cement, but my knuckles still smashed against his cheek with enough force to get a grunt from him.
  
  Krieg struck back with an uppercut to the chest. I put the flail in the way, but the sheer force drove the flail back into my chest anyway, and I felt the blow.
  
  We traded blows with furious shouts and grunts of impact, the Butchers shouting encouragement and approval as I stomped on his boot and cracked him across the face with the flail"s handle; then they bellowed abuse as Krieg turned the blow into a spinning kick that caught me in the chest.
  
  I flew backwards, tumbling head over heels as I hit the ground, unable to stop myself before my back slammed into the wall of the building opposite the restaurant. My breastplate was dented in the middle, and my breath wasn"t coming.
  
  "Something in the diaphragm," Bearskin worried. "Push through it and get up, he"s coming-"
  
  Krieg was already airborne, coming down from his leap with a wild punch.
  
  I had no breath, but I managed to push myself to roll onto my side at the last moment.
  
  Which meant that instead of coming straight down on my right knee, Krieg"s punch smashed into the side of my left knee. I felt the tendons and bones crack and crunch.
  
  My breath kicked in again, Needler"s regeneration working just after the nick of time. "Scream," Vladimir said. "That"s supposed to hurt- make him think he"s got you."
  
  So I screamed, loud and shrill, straining my throat, thrashing my right leg in the best performance of pain I could manage. Krieg pulled his hand out of the crater he"d made in my leg and grinned sadistically- I could see his straight white teeth bared-
  
  -through the massive hole in his gas mask filter.
  
  Still screaming, I whipped my left hand behind my back and wrenched the air cannon free of its clip. Krieg raised a hand in defence as I brought the barrel up, but he didn"t realise what I was trying to do until the pepper canister exploded against his palm, sending a fresh spray of burning white dust all over us.
  
  And this time, I was the only one with a full-face mask on.
  
  Krieg gagged and coughed, staggering back as he tried to cover his mouth, spitting chalk from his mouth and desperately sweeping the dust off himself- it hung strangely in the air as his kinetic field thickened in his distress, falling slowly to the ground.
  
  He shook himself like a dog, then brought his hands up and clapped them together again, sending the dust flying away from him and leaving mostly clear.
  
  The second he lowered his hands, I quickly switched to a net round and shot him in the chest, pinning his arms with nylon cords. It barely stalled him, but it was enough for me to fire my other four pepper rounds at him. Krieg snapped the net as soon as the dust exploded over him, choking on dust and frantically clearing it away from him.
  
  Movement off to the side caught my eye- Cricket had painfully rolled over onto her front, and was now struggling to get her knees under her. I could see a little splash of vomit next to her, but she was still trying. It was weirdly impressive for someone with no added durability.
  
  Of course, if she could move, she was still a possible threat. I fired a net round at her, trussing her up like a Thanksgiving turkey, then dropped the air cannon and grabbed onto the brickwork, using a little of Stoneknapper"s fizz to mould myself a handhold I could pull myself up by. Once I had my right foot under me and my back against the wall, I smoothed it out.
  
  Cricket managed to lift her face off the ground, and I could see the hatred on her face through the cage. I felt nausea rise as that ultrasonic screech warbled at the edge of my hearing, shaking my equilibrium and turning my stomach. The bugs I"d planted on her were only clinging on through my command, battered by waves of noise.
  
  I tensed my neck and snapped my head sharply from side to side. Padded covers inside my helmet clamped down over my ears and applied suction, insulating my ears from the sonic attack. My ears rang for a moment in the sudden silence.
  
  My jawbone was still knitting itself back together, unfortunately. I would have loved to explain to Cricket that I"d obviously thought ahead and built a countermeasure for her power since the last time we"d fought, due to not being a fucking idiot.
  
  Instead I settled for hobbling over on my one good leg, balanced against the wall for support, and smashed the flail down on her hand. Bloodsight let me see the bones break around the handle of her kama. The only sound she made was a choked gasp. My bugs felt her sonar cut out- probably she"d passed out from the pain.
  
  Shadows shifted behind me- I spun around to see Krieg stumbling toward me, white as a ghost, coughing and spitting as he shed chalk dust with every step. I turned to face him, leaning an elbow against the wall, and drawing a sword with my left.
  
  "At last," Muramasa murmured.
  
  I jerked my neck side to side again, releasing the covers from my ears. "Stay the fuck away from Parian," I hissed, raising my weapons threateningly.
  
  Krieg came to a halt, lowering his fists incredulously. "What?" he rasped, wheezing and spitting to the side. "The fucking doll girl? That"s what this is about?"
  
  "That," I popped the edges on my sword, "and you"re a bunch of bastards who need a beating."
  
  That did it- Krieg charged at me with a roar. I pushed myself off the wall and met him in the middle, forcing my broken leg to support as much weight as it could.
  
  Krieg"s movements were sloppy, but ferocious. I barely deflected his first punch with the flail, and his second and third punches clipped my armour, adding fresh dents. His boots lashed out at my wounded knee, pursuing the weakness; I managed to ward him off with the sword and make a desperate hop sideways, but he was relentless.
  
  I slashed at him with the sword, fast enough to cut his leather coat, but not enough to hurt him. He swiped at the sword with a fist, and I had to pull back before he could snap it, swinging the flail again.
  
  Krieg caught the flail in one hand and grabbed my sword blade in the other, apparently not worried that I could slice his hand open with one pull. Maybe his gloves were armoured.
  
  But I wasn"t trying to cut his hand. Instead I pumped the trigger for the sword"s dynamo, sending an electrical shock up his arm.
  
  Krieg jerked and let go reflexively, but I just retracted the edges and jammed the sword into his side again, pressing it in even as his kinetic field pushed back. The flail came around and down to hit him in the left knee, and this time I felt something give way from the blow.
  
  Krieg roared and kicked out, cracking me on my already-broken left knee. I roared back and let go of the flail to punch him in the jaw. This time he went down, and I shocked him once more with the sword for good measure.
  
  When he"d twitched into unconsciousness, I sheathed the sword and fell back against the wall, breathing heavily as I took stock. Flail over there, cannon over there; breastplate dented, left knee compressed so badly the regeneration couldn"t fix it yet. Jaw still healing, probably a bunch of other bruises that would be gone by morning.
  
  Result: Krieg and Cricket, beaten and helpless. All I had to do was call the PRT for pickup-
  
  "You can"t hang around- Krieg had his men calling for reinforcements. Just load them onto the bike and go," Vladimir said.
  
  -all I had to do was load them onto my bike and take them to the PRT, and I could call this night a win. Even the Butchers were impressed- Cricket wasn"t the most powerful of the Empire, but she was tricky; and Krieg had been able to give even Needler trouble during her reign as Butcher V.
  
  So why the hell didn"t this feel like a victory?
  
  "Oh come on, this is totally a victory," Stoneknapper coaxed. "See, you got payback for Parian, you got a couple of villains off the streets- it"s all good. Okay, you took a couple of hits, but you"ll heal up fine and be back for more in 24 hours."
  
  I looked down at my mangled knee. I"d have to remove the armour in sections to get it off, and rebuild the joint entirely. Plus I"d have to call Amy to set up an alibi for how my leg got fixed so quickly.
  
  "...This was stupid," I said, more to myself than anyone else, awkwardly bending down to pick my flail up and put it back on my belt. "I didn"t think about this."
  
  "You got results," Nemean said.
  
  "By sheer dumb luck!" I pointed out, hobbling over to my air cannon. "I"m not supposed to rely on luck- I"m supposed to be smart! I"m supposed to make a plan and think! That"s how I took down Coil- with brains. Instead I just got angry, went out looking for a fight, and made a fool of myself."
  
  Flinch sighed softly. "You were angry for your friend. That"s not something to be ashamed of. T-take some time to think about how you"re going to move forward from this, okay?"
  
  "Fuck, there"s no pleasing you-"
  
  I shoved Butcher into the dark while I picked up my air cannon and awkwardly straightened up. "Thanks Flinch," I murmured.
  
  I decided to get Cricket onto the bike first- she was already tied up in the net. I grabbed hold of the handle and hauled her up like a suitcase, manhandling her onto the bike. It took a moment for me to figure out how to tie her on so she wouldn"t accidentally fall off.
  
  I was just done with the knots when the insects I"d spread out in a grid pattern between rooftops were battered aside by something huge and fast coming in my direction.
  
  "Fuck!" Firecracker snapped. "The fucking reinforcements! Quick, get Krieg!"
  
  The Unidentified Flying Racist had to be Rune- the only other flyer was Purity, and I"d have been able to see her light by now. I started toward Krieg, but a glance with bloodsight showed three silhouettes approaching at speed, one small shape flanked by two larger ones.
  
  If I"d been in better condition, I"d have risked it. If I"d had someone with me for backup, I wouldn"t have hesitated. But I didn"t have the element of surprise, I"d expended all my pepper rounds, and I was down a leg. There was no way I could win that fight without resorting to other Butcher powers.
  
  "Don"t you do it," Dirty Rotter warned, "Don"t you fucking do it!"
  
  I loathed the idea. In all my time with powers, I"d only had to back down from Lung himself, and I felt no shame in that.
  
  But I shouldn"t have needed to do this- I should have still been able to keep going.
  
  Call it a strategic withdrawal, call it a temporary retreat, it was still running away. And it sickened me to be backing away from bullies yet again.
  
  I limped back to the bike, swung a leg over, and started the engine as the floating slab of concrete came into view. I glimpsed Alabaster"s white suit and Jotunn"s horned helmet before I gunned the accelerator and fled.
  
  7.4
  Sunday 20 th March, Brockton Bay General Hospital
  
  "They chased me like hell after that," I continued. "Well, Jotunn and Rune did, I think Alabaster stayed back to check on Krieg. I managed to lose them with a couple of turns and switching to the mainspring for stealth.
  
  "After that I dropped Cricket off at the PRT building- and I mean I literally pulled up, dumped her in front of the door, and drove off as soon as someone looked over. Got the armour off at the lair, and called it a night."
  
  Amy took her hand away from my exposed cheek. "Okay. Well, you"re all "healed", so you can put your leg down now."
  
  I shifted my left leg off the break room couch, pulling the new knee joint out of a compartment on my belt to slot it into place. Good as new.
  
  "Seriously, thanks for this. You"re a life-"
  
  I looked up at the rustle of paper, just in time to see Amy bringing a rolled up newspaper down on my head.
  
  "Idiot," Amy snapped as I frantically shielded myself with my arms. "Idiot, idiot, idiot," she repeated, swatting at me with every word.
  
  "Gah- Amy, will you stop- Pfft- Knock it off!"
  
  Amy did step back, but she was still obviously angry.
  
  "Idiot," she proclaimed, pointing the newspaper at me like a sword. "When you were talking about helping people who screwed up yesterday, I didn"t think you were going to go out and screw up right after! I"d better not need to heal you again any time soon."
  
  Dirty Rotter was killing himself laughing. "Just like me old mum!" he cackled. "Used to smack me with the Telegraph whenever I came in late!"
  
  "Yeah, well, you won"t," I said, hauling myself off the couch and grabbing the crutches I"d come in with to sell the illusion of my busted knee, folding them up with a few movements. "I can"t afford to screw up like that again."
  
  "And what exactly is your plan for that?" Amy said, tossing the paper down on the coffee table again.
  
  I shrugged. "I"ll have to go back to tactics, start inventing some new tech. It"ll probably be a while before I"ve got the pull to organise a team-up like before."
  
  "Right," Amy said, glancing back down at the paper with a frown. I followed her gaze, and grabbed the paper up to read it.
  
  "So the Cornell Bomber"s getting tried after all," Tactical noted. "About time the Protectorate did something right."
  
  "A bomb Tinker," Flinch shuddered. "Of all the specialities to have."
  
  The Cornell Bomber had been in the news a few days ago- a student at Cornell University down in New York who"d seemingly triggered and held the campus hostage with a bunch of Tinkertech bombs before the Protectorate had stepped in to capture her. Nobody was seriously hurt, but it came close.
  
  There was some other stuff- the Canary trial was on-going, Bastion"s recent screwup was having effects on his career. More positively, in Boston the Chain Gang had suffered a few arrests, which was always nice to hear.
  
  "Hah! Fuck those guys!" Anchorage crowed.
  
  I tossed the paper down. "And in local news, Elpis is planning to get her ass in gear and stop troubling the local healer."
  
  Panacea"s mouth twitched into a slight smile as I followed her out of the break room and into the hospital"s hallways. "When asked for a comment, Panacea of New Wave said she was glad she wouldn"t have to be fixing dumb mistakes, giving her more time to heal terminal diagnoses instead."
  
  "Hey, do you think I should drop by here again some time?" I asked, side-stepping a nurse with an armful of boxes. "Do some more crisis points, stuff like that?"
  
  Amy shrugged. "Couldn"t hurt. Maybe visit the children"s ward."
  
  "Ooh, we can do some card tricks!" Bearskin enthused.
  
  We split up at the front desk- Amy to get an update on patients to heal, while I waved her goodbye and headed out to my bike. A couple of guys in scrubs were taking selfies next to it, and didn"t see me even when I swung my leg over and slid myself on. I had to rev the engine before they jumped and got out of the way.
  
  A few minutes" drive took me close to the Boardwalk, and then I parked and walked back to Parian"s shop, nodding to people as I went.
  
  The glass was mostly clean when I got there, although there were smudges of fingerprints here and there, probably from people who"d stopped to gawk. The display dummies were stood a bit further back than last time, and they looked like they were made of thicker material now. The lights were off, casting the interior into darkness.
  
  Something moved inside the shop- a flash of white and yellow and pink. I leaned closer to the glass, squinting into the gloom, and saw a white face staring back at me from the far end.
  
  Parian startled and hurried over, waving me toward the front door, trailed by a massive pink rabbit. I stepped over to it just as she unlocked it.
  
  "You"re okay," I blurted, opening my helmet at the sight of her.
  
  "Oh- oh, yes, I"m alright, thank you." Parian paused, then stepped to the side. "Come in?" she said uncertainly.
  
  "Thanks," I said, gently easing past her into the shop. She closed the door behind me with a jingle of the bell.
  
  The shop looked depressing in the dark. The air of old-fashioned genteelness felt more like abandoned old relics in the dark, and the drapes and little tables just deepened the shadows further.
  
  "I swear to god," Firecracker muttered, "if one of those dummies moves, I"m going to scream."
  
  I rolled my eyes and turned to Parian, who was wringing a lacy handkerchief between her gloved hands. The ruffles of her dress made the slump of her shoulders seem a little less obvious, but she was clearly not feeling well.
  
  "I"m sorry," I said. "I was coming by to say hello yesterday and I saw the paint."
  
  Parian sniffled- the ceramic of her mask made it echo a little. "I don"t understand why," she said weakly." I"ve never had any contact with the Empire, I don"t know anyone who"s connected to the Empire- I never wanted any part of this!" The big pink bunny behind her shifted its weight slightly.
  
  "It"s nothing you did," I said, trying for reassuring. "The Empire"s probably just looking for anything it can get- they"re desperate after all the shakeups lately. Probably some morons just wanted to scrawl their garbage anywhere they could find."
  
  "But what do I do now? I put so much into this shop after I got the funds! I thought this, this would be my one thing, it made sense! But I called the PRT and they said they can"t intervene unless there"s capes involved, and the police said they can"t do anything unless there"s a repeat, and I had to shut down and people are calling me to ask what this means and I don"t know-"
  
  "Parian," I said, raising my hands, "Breathe."
  
  Parian took a couple of great, gulping breaths, shoulders heaving.
  
  "Guess she"s high... threaded?" Stoneknapper said. "Like, high-strung, but with threads, "cause-"
  
  "Now," I said, "I can talk with the other heroes, see if they can patrol around here and keep an eye on things- hell, we were coming to see you on patrol yesterday, it wouldn"t be much of a stretch."
  
  Parian"s breathing evened out a little more, even as she kept twisting her handkerchief. "Alright," she managed. "But what if they come back?"
  
  I winced. Thanks to my little slip-up to Krieg last night, there was a pretty good chance they"d come back, if only to see if Parian and I were familiar enough to make her useful to get to me indirectly.
  
  I had two options there- I could either cut ties with her as much as possible and hope the Empire would lose interest, or I could lean into it, publicly support Parian and make the Empire understand she was under my protection.
  
  "Parian..." I began.
  
  The tiny doll raised her little white face to look at me.
  
  "Maybe I could help with that," I offered, plumping for option two. "If you"re worried about security, I could install some kind of system for the shop-"
  
  Parian gave a little cry and seized my gauntleted hand in both of hers. "Really? That would be wonderful, Elpis! I"d feel so much better-oh," she hesitated, "but I don"t know if I could afford it."
  
  "Afford nothing," I said. "I"ll put it in gratis." I managed a smile for her. "Us girls have to stick together."
  
  Needler chuckled warmly. "Oh how sweet."
  
  Parian raised a hand to her mouth, bumping it against the mask before she realised. "Oh, I couldn"t ask you to do that," she said. "At least let me pay for some of it, I insist. I wouldn"t feel right otherwise."
  
  I shrugged. "Alright, you can pay for the materials, and I"ll do the installation, how about that?"
  
  "That will be excellent," Parian said, tucking her handkerchief into a concealed pocket in her skirt.
  
  "I"ll have to be sometime in the week- and I"ll need to come in regularly to maintain it," I added.
  
  "Oh. Well, how often will that be?"
  
  "I"d say about once a week."
  
  I could hear a small smile in Parian"s voice. "I"m sure I can stand having a knight in shining armour popping in to see me." She cast an eye around the shop and added "Would you like some tea while you"re here?"
  
  Afternoon of 20 th March, The Lair
  
  I was packing chalk dust laced with pepper spray into a new batch of ammunition when my phone rang. I sealed the last one and stepped away, pulling the cloth around my mouth and nose down to answer it. "Elpis."
  
  "Hello. I"m sorry I haven"t been able to call you back until now." I propped the phone up at the end of the workbench and put it on speaker as I kept working.
  
  "No problem, Militia," I said, loading six of the new rounds into my cannon"s cylinder. The rest of it was disassembled on my workbench, victim of an idea that had spawned somewhere between Anchorage"s memories and Tock Tick"s power. There was a vague memory of Kid Win"s pistols in there, for reasons I couldn"t quite explain. "But now that I have you here, what"s the status on Cricket?"
  
  Miss Militia"s voice was quietly disapproving, but her words were professional as ever. "We have her in a soundproof containment cell. Her injuries have been treated, and she"s scheduled for transport soon."
  
  "Spectacular," I said, shifting a few bugs to make the waldo arms pick up some components. "Do you want me to help out when that happens, provide support?"
  
  "There"s been some discussion of that. Given your recent shift back to targeting the Empire, it might be better if you aren"t near the transports for a while. Your presence might provoke a response."
  
  "What, more than a truck with one of their buddies in will?" I asked, picking up a wide loop of metal with a pair of pliers. "I get your point though. How about those patrols I"ve heard about, watching the borders for any trouble?" I manoeuvred the loop into the barrel of the air cannon, and started fastening it in place with the waldos.
  
  "That"s possible. The ABB is starting to move, and we"re hoping we can stop either side from expanding their reach. Shadow Stalker"s been very vocal about "seeing you in action"."
  
  "I"m flattered, I think."
  
  "The recordings," Vladimir reminded me.
  
  "Oh, by the way- are you guys recording Cricket while she"s locked up?"
  
  "I don"t think so, no. She struggles with regular speech, so even if she was willing to talk, we wouldn"t be able to get much out of her. Why do you ask?"
  
  "Actually I wanted to get some readings off her power. I had some ideas for upgrades I could make to my gear."
  
  "I"ll see if Armsmaster will be able to provide something."
  
  "Please and thank you," I said, selecting the new trigger mechanism for the cannon and clicking it into place, sliding a flexible screwdriver in through an opening to tighten the bolts.
  
  "I truly hope so," Muramasa said. "It will be very satisfying to fight the Empire with devices derived from one of their own."
  
  "You can say that again," Vladimir agreed.
  
  "I"m supposed to ask, what were you doing down at Parian"s shop this morning?"
  
  "Checking up on her. Apparently she"s already called the PRT and they said they couldn"t help her."
  
  "There must have been a mistake. I"ll run it down."
  
  The conversation stalled for a moment. I was halfway through assembling the new folding stock of the air cannon when Miss Militia spoke again.
  
  "Coil is being moved tonight."
  
  I almost crushed the part I was holding with tweezers. "Shit, don"t just drop that on me," I muttered. More loudly I asked "When"s it happening?"
  
  "Late tonight. I"m afraid you can"t come Elpis."
  
  "Why the hell not?" I asked, rounding on the phone angrily.
  
  "Careful with the components!" Tock Tick scolded me.
  
  I growled and forced myself to link the next section in, aligning the gears together as I asked "Why not? I helped capture the guy in the first place."
  
  Miss Militia"s sigh turned into a staticky rush over the phone. "I"m afraid it"s politics. You burned a lot of goodwill around here, especially with the PRT higher-ups.
  
  "If it"s any consolation, we"re not taking this lightly. There"s an entire trooper squad escorting the transport to prison, and Dauntless and Gargoyle will be riding along until it"s clear of the city."
  
  "Is that going to be enough if the Travellers try to bust him out again?"
  
  "Dauntless has the offence and defence to hold them off, and Gargoyle"s durable enough to push through. In any case, Thinker support says there"s a very low chance they"ll help him. Possibly he lost their loyalty in losing so spectacularly."
  
  I hummed. "Could be." The Butchers had seen capes cut and run after defeats- sometimes they"d been the victim of it, like when Firecracker had challenged Needler after the Nine had run them out of town back in the winter of 1996. Firecracker had duelled her shortly after the New Year in Boston, and wrung out a brutal win.
  
  "Well, so long as the guy is out of the city for good, I"ll be happy."
  
  "I"ll be glad to see the back of him too," Militia said heavily. "We have enough problems."
  
  I thought of Krieg, probably getting healed up by Othala now and driving the Empire after me, and of Parian, counting on me to help her keep her livelihood.
  
  "Yeah, we do." I glanced down at the last few components I was slotting together. "Any chance we can trade some tech? I"m trying to upgrade, come up with some new solutions, but I"ve realised I don"t have a lot of options for quick takedowns."
  
  "I can pass it on," Miss Militia said noncommittally. "Could you be more specific?"
  
  "I want to trade for some of Armsmaster"s tranquilisers," I said, testing the locking mechanism to make sure the new handle would hold its shape, and nodding as it stayed steady.
  
  Miss Militia hissed. "I can put the request in, but that"s going to be difficult. We can"t just give out Tinkertech tranquilisers easily."
  
  "So long as you try. Thanks, Miss Militia. If there"s nothing else, I"ll hang up now."
  
  "Good luck, Elpis." The call ended with a quiet click.
  
  I looked down at the cannon, and clicked a switch, folding the handle up into its typical shape. It was definitely coming together.
  
  "Don"t forget the new ammo," Quarrel said. "It"s about time you learned how to fight like a sniper."
  
  "And the claws," Nemean added. "They"ll never disarm you again."
  
  "I"m not sure about the claws," I admitted. "Feels like it might be kind of close to you. I mean, you"re kind of distinctive, Nemean."
  
  Nemean snorted with satisfaction at the compliment, but conceded the point.
  
  "There"s plenty of other stuff to do," I continued, heading over to the bins and drawers of parts and starting to fill a tray with pieces. Once that was full, I grabbed a lump of concrete and used Stoneknapper"s fizz to shape it into a mould, ready to smelt some metal into another set of components.
  
  "New weapons, new ammo, traps, restraints," I listed, grabbing a crank on the side of the furnace and giving it a few hard turns. The flames inside began to climb higher as air was forcibly pumped into them.
  
  "I can finally pull the Spitfire turbine out of the chariot, break that down for parts, maybe add something to my armour, whatever.
  
  "I"m going to get good and ready," I said, grabbing an ingot of steel and opening the furnace doors. I felt my skin dry out as the heat lapped at me, my fingers tightening as I slotted the ingot into the top and positioned the mould beneath it, then shut the doors.
  
  "I"m going to plan it all out," I said, crossing over to the big map under the sheet of glass covered in scribbles.
  
  "And I"m going to hit this city like a wrecking ball."
  
  7.C
  Monday 21st March, PRT Prison Transport Vehicle
  
  His timelines were identical.
  
  That wasn"t how Coil operated. He always preferred to keep his timelines as separate as possible- usually one safely ensconced in his base or at his home, while the other engaged in business. No matter what happened, he would have safety at all times.
  
  Instead, both of him were locked away inside this armoured van, chained to the seat in prisoner overalls and gagged for good measure.
  
  A whole squad of PRT Troopers were riding in the van behind this one, with Gargoyle accompanying them. And in this van, sitting opposite Coil in his gold and white armour, was Dauntless, the rising star of the Protectorate ENE.
  
  It was almost flattering, that they deemed him enough of a threat to have two heroes ensuring he"d be safely transported to prison without incident.
  
  Or maybe it was simply out of spite. Director Piggot had recognised him when they"d finally forced the mask off him in that interrogation cell- they knew each other of old after all, and he"d consulted for the PRT for years, often butting heads with her over various cases.
  
  Whatever the reason, here he was; guarded with ferocious care while they kept alert for any attempt to break him out.
  
  There would be no attempt- Coil had placed various moles in the department, paid off officials, retained capes for future plans; but he"d simply never had a contingency plan for an assault force ploughing into his base and pulling out his carefully constructed organisation root and stem.
  
  Perhaps there would be opportunity in prison. He could use his power to test the waters, identify those who could be useful to him and those who he could gain some measure of control over, slowly develop a power base, and dream of the possibility of escape.
  
  Assuming he could do that while under constant scrutiny from people who now knew full well what his power could actually do.
  
  He"d already tried a few things in throwaway timelines just on this journey- he"d attempted to fake a seizure not long after they"d set off, but they hadn"t taken the cuffs off to examine him, or spoken to him in any way, and they"d soon resumed their journey.
  
  Another time he"d tried to speak to Dauntless past the gag. The hero had simply ignored him with ease until Coil had finally given up.
  
  In the end, Coil was left with nothing to occupy him but thoughts of revenge.
  
  Director Emily Piggot.
  
  Elpis.
  
  And his Tattletale. In that order.
  
  He didn"t actually feel any particular animosity towards Piggot- he simply felt it was necessary to plot revenge against her, given how she"d lorded over the proceedings as everything crumbled around his ears. That same judgemental attitude she"d levelled at him back in the aftermath of their disastrous mission to Ellisburg. Admittedly, becoming a costumed criminal and leading a gang of mercenaries while simultaneously corrupting the PRT"s inner workings was a shade more heinous than shooting his commanding officer during a life or death situation, but it still rankled.
  
  Then Elpis of course. He"d monitored the hero as soon as she"d appeared, poring over the PRT"s slim file on her, and making a few inquiries of his own. His curiosity had been piqued when he"d casually sent a squad to kill her in an expendable timeline, simply to gauge her abilities, and she"d not only survived, but had gone on the warpath against him immediately afterwards.
  
  He"d marked her down as a potential threat after that, but that hadn"t let him predict a coordinated assault spearheaded by the independent, who"d somehow managed to find the location of his base.
  
  And Tattletale, damn her. He"d always known that his Tattletale chafed under his orders, lingering resentments as a result of how he"d recruited her, but he"d kept careful watch on her to ensure she couldn"t slip free of his control.
  
  The altercation with Lung- that must have been the tipping point. He"d sent the Undersiders to draw the dragon out, move him out of place so his other operatives could move into ABB territory. Elpis appearing to reinforce the heroes and deliberately allow the Undersiders to escape had been very unexpected. Coil had heard the awe in Tattletale"s voice when she"d reported to him after that, and he"d thought little of it. She had escaped a near-death experience after all.
  
  The rumble of the engine changed slightly after hours of steady travel. Coil sat up, shifting in his seat as much as the restraints would allow him, paying attention. Yes, the truck was turning slightly, slowing down- there was a slight shake as it stopped entirely, the engine cutting out.
  
  Too soon to be their destination- the prison was further than this, he was sure. He"d familiarised himself with the locations of parahuman prisons long ago, in case he needed to orchestrate a breakout of some useful asset.
  
  Dauntless stirred for the first time in hours- at least he thought it was hours, there were no clocks or windows in this truck- and stood up, grunting slightly as he shook his arms out. The doors opened from the outside, a uniformed trooper standing at the entrance.
  
  Coil craned his neck to see as much as he could before Dauntless climbed out- a gas station from the looks of it, lit by cheap fluorescent lights to show off the off-brand products on sale. No convenient clocks in sight, but they looked like they were just off the highway. Well outside of Brockton Bay"s limits.
  
  The door slammed shut, and Coil was left to lean in his seat, straining his ears to try and make out anything. It sounded like there was a muffled conversation going on out there, but he couldn"t discern the words.
  
  After a short wait, the engine started up again, with no sign of Dauntless returning.
  
  Coil tried kicking the partition between him and the driver for a while- tried being the operative word. The hobble chain connecting his ankles to his wrists didn"t give him that degree of flexibility.
  
  Instead he simply stomped his feet on the floor, for lack of anything else to do.
  
  After a while, he gave that up in one timeline and sat back to think. In the other, he tried stamping his feet as hard as he could, to try and provoke some sort of reaction from the driver.
  
  No response. No real difference to his two timelines, except that in one he now had stiff legs.
  
  His mind rebelled at the boredom. He could feel himself stagnating in this cramped little container, wearing himself away without anything to occupy his brain.
  
  Nothing to do but list his regrets and dream of his hopes. Perhaps some of his mercenaries would mount a rescue attempt for him.
  
  Coil snorted to himself. Unlikely. The entire point of mercenaries was that they followed the money- that was what he enjoyed about them. It was refreshingly simple to hand someone money and have them do his bidding.
  
  Whatever small number of his mercenaries remained, they wouldn"t be coming for him- not even Creep, who he"d secured the loyalty of through a currency far rarer than dollars- and much more distasteful to Coil"s other employees.
  
  Uber, Leet, and Circus- certainly not. Just as monetarily motivated as his soldiers, and less professional.
  
  Chariot he dismissed out of hand. Even after almost a year, he"d kept the boy at arms length, for long-term plans as a double agent. Frankly, unless the boy had suddenly checked the news for once, he might not even know Coil had been arrested.
  
  The Travelers had made that attempt to set him free during his initial arrest, but he hadn"t heard from them since. Presumably they"d gone to ground.
  
  Perhaps their additional member would have herself a little flare-up and cause some trouble for Brockton Bay. Coil smiled to himself at the thought. One could only hope that some of that trouble would fall upon his traitorous Undersiders.
  
  Time passed, and kept passing. Coil amused himself by imagining painful ends for the Undersiders, various catastrophes to fall upon the city, places he"d rather be than inside this glorified sardine can, and other such topics.
  
  By the time he"d finished tapping out the William Tell Overture on the floor, the truck had started to slow again. Pulling in for a custody transfer, perhaps; or just stopping to gas up and allow the troopers a bathroom break.
  
  Coil rolled his eyes and started stomping his feet again out of boredom. The only thing he could do right now was attempt to irritate his captors a little. Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp-
  
  The truck rocked on its hinges as something struck it from below, the side opposite Coil. A second later, another blow hit from almost directly underneath him, sending him slamming forward in his seat and jarring his neck.
  
  The timeline where he"d been stomping his feet recovered a little faster, maybe because in that one he"d been a little more prepared for sudden movements. After a moment"s hesitation, he started stamping again, as loudly as he could. He had little to lose at this point- if whoever was out there could get him out of this transport, he"d gladly throw his lot in with them.
  
  In the timeline that hadn"t been stamping, he finally felt his vision stabilise, and began rattling his chains back and forth. Couldn"t hurt to experiment, see what changed.
  
  Muffled shouts were coming from outside- a few screams, matching one another across the timelines- not surprising, given that Coil could do little to affect the outcome from in here, but still eerie. Muffled shout cut off by a sudden yell, answering bellows, a loud rumble, and so on.
  
  Nothing from the attackers.
  
  The doors at the back were wrenched open, only a second or so apart in his timelines.
  
  The man holding them casually tossed them aside and stood aside, allowing a second man to clamber into the truck.
  
  A cape, certainly- his mask was black on one side and white on the other, concealing his face. His hair was neatly combed back with plenty of oil, and he wore an elegant black suit fit for a night at the opera.
  
  "Coil, I presume," the man said, crossing over to him and producing a keyring, which he began testing against the restraints. Within seconds he had undone the ankle restraints and started on the wrist cuffs.
  
  Coil tried to ask a question through the gag in his stamping timeline- in the other he remained silent as the man worked.
  
  "Ah, of course. My apologies," said the man, inspecting the keyring and then fitting a slim key into the lock at the side of Coil"s head. The restraint fell away, and Coil worked his jaw for a moment, getting some sensation back and finally pressing his tongue to the itch on the roof of his mouth. Sweet relief.
  
  Then he went to business. "Who are you?"
  
  "Ny name is Othello," the man said, clicking one more key into the wrist restraints, "and I am here on behalf of Accord."
  
  Accord! That sly little devil! No wonder this rescue operation had gone so well- Accord"s was a Thinker power, much like Coil"s own, or his Tattletale. Faced with an intellectual problem, his intellect supposedly scaled according to the complexity of the problem, allowing him to make intricate plans for any situation. No doubt he"d accounted for the cape escort and when they would break off, the troopers, what routes they"d take, and so on.
  
  Coil had enjoyed a beneficial relationship with him, as two Thinker masterminds working through careful planning to expand their reach. They had traded information and resources many times- in fact it had been Accord"s recommendation that had given Coil the idea to hire the Travelers.
  
  How unexpectedly generous of him, to rescue him like this. There would surely be a price to pay down the line, but that was for later.
  
  "So what does Accord want for me?" he continued in his speaking timeline, remaining silent in the other.
  
  "Accord is upset with you," Othello said smoothly, popping the restraints off Coil. "He gave you significant payment in exchange for access to PRT resources. You failed to uphold your end of the deal."
  
  Coil stared at the man. "You do realise I was arrested?" he asked, gesturing around him to the prison transport he was currently sitting in. Surely not even Accord would take him to task for this.
  
  Then again, Accord had once put out a hit on a man for accidentally urinating on the toilet seat. Coil began to feel an icy ball grow in his stomach.
  
  "That," said Othello crisply, "is not Accord"s concern." In the timeline where Coil remained silent, Othello finished removing the gag and said "Come with me please," handing him a simple paper mask from an inside pocket.
  
  The silent Coil obediently stood and followed him out of the truck, slipping the mask on quickly and glancing around through the eyeholes as they stepped down to the horrible little gas station they"d stopped at.
  
  The results of a short battle were all around them. Blobs of containment foam were scattered here and there- one pile had a trooper"s helmeted head sticking out of it, struggling frantically, while another contained some sort of massive reptilian limb. Spikes of asphalt stuck out of the ground all around in various locations.
  
  A... shape was drifting over the battlefield. It had no limbs or head that Coil could see; only pink folds and edges continuously shifting and unfolding as he watched, like some sort of endless origami.
  
  "This is preposterous," the speaking Coil said, getting to his feet to loom over Othello. The effect was rather spoiled by the fact he had to stoop rather heavily to avoid banging his head. "You"re telling me that Accord had me broken out of a prison transport just because I owe him some money?"
  
  "I couldn"t possibly guess at Accord"s motives," Othello said blandly. "Regardless, he is expecting you, so if you would follow me please?"
  
  "Do I have any say in this?"
  
  "I suppose you could stay here and wait for the troopers outside to come around, or see how far you can make it on foot. Or you can follow me. Please."
  
  The Othello in the other timeline walked across the parking lot to where a discreet car was waiting for them. As the silent Coil followed, three other capes fell into step.
  
  A man in a dark blue suit rose up out of the very ground, adjusting his cuffs as he went. Coil noticed he had a shark-tooth tie pin that gleamed in the street lights. His mask suggested a shark"s mouth, grey and white with sharp points along the jaw.
  
  The unfolding shape unfolded-refolded-coalesced into a woman in a beautiful pink dress, wearing a mask like a bouquet of flowers. Her hair was in an elaborate updo that remained improbably steady.
  
  The last man was a broad fellow in a dark suit with a green shirt, whose mask was a coppery reptilian thing. His arms changed at the shoulder into massive scaley things tipped in claws; he had to bend them at the elbows and wrists just to keep the knuckles from trailing on the ground, though they were shrinking as Coil watched. The fabric of his suit was reasserting itself too- unusual.
  
  "I"ll make my own way," the other Coil said, making for the door. He"d barely hit the ground when the man with the lizard arms seized him in one monstrous hand.
  
  "I suppose I should have been more specific," Othello said from behind him, stepping out of the truck. "When I said you could attempt to run, I was speaking entirely in the hypothetical. Your compliance is not a factor."
  
  Coil struggled and thrashed as much as he could. The lizard-armed man simply closed another hand around him and gave a warning squeeze that made something in Coil"s back pop. Rather than risk an impromptu chiropractic session, Coil decided to stop.
  
  In his silent timeline, the man in the shark mask opened the back door of the car for Coil, and waited patiently as he climbed in. The seat was already set low enough for him to sit comfortably without hunching over.
  
  That was Accord for you- always looking out for the details.
  
  The lizard-armed man sat next to him, and the woman in flowers took the other window seat. Othello claimed the shotgun seat, and the shark man simply sank into the ground and re-emerged by the driver"s seat in a quietly competent display of power.
  
  The Coil that had resisted was unceremoniously wrapped in bungee cords and tossed into the trunk of the car. There was a pillow inside for him to rest his head on.
  
  It seemed that Coil would be visiting Accord one way or the other. The only difference was in the level of comfort.
  
  Although...
  
  Coil kept his voice steady in his more comfortable timeline as he cleared his throat and spoke. "Do you have a cell phone I can borrow for a moment, please?"
  
  Othello immediately produced a burner phone from the car"s glove compartment as the shark cape started the engine and smoothly pulled away from the scene, handing it back to Coil without even turning around.
  
  Coil took the phone with a discreet eye roll and tapped in a number he"d taken the trouble to memorise. His soldiers were gone, the Travelers were no longer his, and his various moles and contacts would no doubt be distancing themselves from him as much as possible.
  
  But he still had one long shot to play- and with his power, long shots could be a certainty. After a second"s thought, he dismissed the timeline where he was rattling around in the trunk and split his comfortable self in two.
  
  The phone rang for some time before picking up- in that time, the shark man took them on a winding route through several blocks, clearly meant to obscure their route.
  
  "H"llo?" came a groggy teenager"s voice.
  
  "Chariot," Coil said crisply. "I need you to listen carefully, because this needs to be done as soon as possible."
  
  In the other timeline, he said, "Chariot. I"m afraid this will be my last order to you. I"m going to have to disappear for now. If I get the chance, I will contact you again. Carry out this order whenever you feel secure."
  
  A suddenly awake "What do you need?" versus "Oh shit. Uh, yessir."
  
  "Write this down. There is a disused factory in the Docks called Redmond Welding. It"s marked by a large sign, you"ll know it when you see it.
  
  "I want you to go there, with whatever flammables you can get your hands on, and burn it to the ground. Use whatever means necessary, and don"t stop if there are people inside. Is that clear?"
  
  "Got it," versus "Uh, okay. Is this part of a bigger plan or something?"
  
  The memory of his defeat flashed into Coil"s mind- nipped at by Bitch"s dogs, staggered by Regent"s control, strong-armed by Grue, and undone entirely by Tattletale.
  
  He wasn"t free yet, not while Accord held him captive, but he was a step closer to walking free. And a step closer to taking his revenge on the Undersiders.
  
  "Yes," Coil said in the second timeline as the streetlights flashed by outside. "This is only the first step."
  
  7.5
  Monday 21st March, Hebert residence
  
  Other than the torment of French for second period, today was decent. I"d barely managed to keep a straight face at lunch as Callum had shown us all screenshots from PHO of Cricket being hauled into custody, and of me as Elpis visiting Parian"s shop, tape measure in hand as I got the measurements for her door and display window.
  
  But that was then- school was done, and Dad and I were splitting the dishes- he washed the remains of the Bolognese off, I dried them.
  
  "That"s a nice tune," Dad commented as he scrubbed at the bottom of the pot with a brush. "What"s it called?"
  
  I started- I hadn"t realised I"d been humming in the first place. To my embarrassment, I realised it was one of Dirty Rotter"s favourites, the Beer Barrel Polka.
  
  I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. "Not sure. Think it was in an ad on TV."
  
  "Oh come off it!" Dirty Rotter shouted. "It"s a bloody classic!" He started crooning the lyrics with as little talent as he"d had in life- "Roooll out the barrel, we"ll have a barrel of fuuuuun!"
  
  I shoved him into the dark and slotted the last plates away, rolling my eyes before I turned back to Dad.
  
  "Boy, he really "Butchered" that song, huh?" Firecracker snickered. I shoved her down too in disgust.
  
  "So did anything good happen at work?"
  
  Dad turned the pot upside down to pour the dregs out and handed it to me. "Well, we might have a contract in the works," he said, drying his hands as I dried the pot. "There"s some job openings for construction. You know how the heroes found that villain base last week?"
  
  I bit my tongue and stared determinedly at the pot, afraid to look Dad in the eye for fear I"d start laughing. "Mm-hmm?"
  
  "Well, there"s talk of converting it into an extra Endbringer shelter. It"s right in the middle of downtown, and a lot of the construction crew who were building it in the first place are getting investigated, so there"s contracts going out all over the bay, looking for any takers. I"m trying to get our foot in the door, bring in some more money."
  
  "Hey, that"s good to hear," I said, finishing the pot off. I felt a rush of quiet satisfaction at seeing the positive effects of my work. Dad"s happiness was clear on his face- he looked younger somehow, with some of the energy he"d seemed to lose when Mom had died.
  
  "So, anything you feel like doing tonight?" Dad asked. "We could see what"s on TV?"
  
  I opened a cabinet and put the pot away. "Sorry, I"ve got homework. Math problems and stuff."
  
  "Ah. Alright then." Dad opened his arms, and I obligingly stepped into the hug for a firm squeeze, before Dad let me go to trot up the stairs.
  
  Once I"d shut the door, I relaxed a little and headed to my desk. I actually did have homework, but it wouldn"t take too long. I was actually hoping for an early night so I could sneak out a little earlier and get to work at my lair. I was halfway through a new Tinkering project, and plans for plenty more that would help me do some real damage to the Empire.
  
  "I still say the crossbow is a good idea," Tactical said as I pulled out pens and a workbook. "The cannon lacks stopping power against a lot of enemies."
  
  "Yeah, but I"m supposed to bring people in alive, not as kebabs. The cannon works well enough- and it"ll do plenty more damage once the upgrades are finished."
  
  Quarrel snorted. "Nailing someone"s foot to the floor isn"t lethal."
  
  "Still pretty brutal. No, until or if the Protectorate comes through with those tranquilisers, arrows are too hardcore."
  
  "They"ll have to pull their heads out of their assholes first," Quarrel sneered.
  
  I snorted, but I didn"t deny the statement.
  
  A thought struck me, and I reached into my rucksack to retrieve my "work" phone from its pocket. No new messages or missed calls. As I put it back, my fingers bumped against the other phone, the one the Undersiders had used to contact me. I"d thought about swapping the sim card out and using it as a cheap personal phone, if I could find the right way to tell Dad I was getting a cell phone.
  
  I absently turned it on, and got a shock when I saw there was a missed call displayed on the screen. Even weirder, when I checked it against previous calls, it matched the last number Tattletale had called me by to warn me about Coil"s plans.
  
  "What the fuck?" Anchorage muttered. "Why"re they calling now? Thought they"d be done with you after all that."
  
  "Trap," Tock Tick said immediately. "They"re trying to fuck with you, I"ll bet any money."
  
  "Well, what do I do?" I asked. "I can"t just ignore this."
  
  Nemean shrugged. "Call "em back. Bring lots of weapons. If it"s a trap, kick the crap out of them and drag them back to the heroes- that"ll make them shut up and help you again. If it"s not, maybe they can be useful again."
  
  "Nemean has a point, if bluntly stated," Muramasa admitted. "Ultimately, they will either be useful by assistance, or be useful by being captured and mending your bridges with the Protectorate."
  
  I considered. Nemean had cut right to the heart of things- whether or not the Undersiders were trustworthy, I needed to deal with them.
  
  Of course, I needed to consider how I"d fight them. Grue"s darkness was a mild inconvenience for me at best, but Regent"s spasm power was frustrating. I"d seen little of Whirlygig"s power, but if it wasn"t much stronger than clouds of marbles I could power through it.
  
  The real problems were Hellhound and her dogs, and Tattletale.
  
  Hellhound"s page on PHO specifically labelled her as dangerous and highly aggressive. She was known to have murdered at least one person and maimed dozens more- her dogs could grow to the size of a small elephant, and they were extremely strong and durable. Three of them focused on me, with the other Undersiders providing assistance, would be a problem.
  
  But it was Tattletale that really worried me. I had little idea what her power really did, but given that she"d somehow figured out Coil"s power, I couldn"t give her even the tiniest indication of who and what I really was. I couldn"t sneakily resort to Dirty Rotter"s decaying touch, or Stoneknapper"s matter shaping, or Quarrel"s space-warping aim.
  
  Stoneknapper snorted. "You don"t use any of the good stuff anyway!"
  
  "Yeah!" Rotter agreed. "I coulda boiled those dogs down to bones back in the day! Come to think of it," he added reflectively, "I wonder if they shrink back down when they die. Could make some bloody great trophies out of "em. Imagine a throne made out of giant monster skulls!"
  
  "We tried that with Blasto"s creatures," Vladimir pointed out. "Remember, when Nemean was in charge? They all just started going brittle after a couple of months."
  
  Flinch made a face at the other"s gory musings. "You don"t have to do this all by yourself though. Even if you don"t want to call New Wave or the Protectorate in on this, Ironclad would be happy to help. You were saying it"d be sensible to accept help."
  
  I hunched my shoulders a little, feeling silly for forgetting that Tarquin was still on my side. He"d be eager to pitch in on this, and his sheer size and power would make him a good counter for the dogs all by himself.
  
  "You"re right, Flinch," I said gratefully. "I"ll text him about this, see if he can make it. I still want to put together some new tech for them though."
  
  "The spear then," Tock Tick said. "Even if Armsmaster hasn"t come through yet, we can still get something going. It"d be good against the dogs, and the rest of them don"t have powers that can block it."
  
  I pulled a piece of scrap paper towards me and scribbled down some quick designs. "It won"t be that good," I said eventually. "Not much range, and breakable."
  
  "We only need it to work for now. Upgrades can come later."
  
  I pushed the scribbles away again. "Alright, show of hands, who wants me to go?"
  
  Every single one of the Butchers gave their assent; even original Butcher, skulking silently.
  
  "Fine," I said, leaning almost horizontal in my chair to pull my first phone out of my bag before sitting upright again. I opened my texts and tapped out a quick message to Tarquin, letting him know that the Undersiders were trying to contact me and asking for his support.
  
  "So, now what?" Firecracker asked.
  
  "Well, I don"t know what"s going to happen later," I said, pulling my workbook towards me. "But I need to do at least some homework tonight."
  
  It was a few hours later, in the dead of night, that I teleported into my lair from outside. Once the burst of flames had died away, I pushed open the scorched door of the soundproof booth and made for the workbench, pulling out the Undersider phone as I went.
  
  I had to finish off my work on the air cannon first, but I could get some pieces for the spear design out of the containers and set them out beforehand.
  
  The waldo arms on the desk flexed and whirred as I fed ants into the control mechanisms, poring over the partially assembled air cannon. I was done with the handle, but I still had some work to do on the interior of the barrel and the recoil dampeners in the stock.
  
  Once I"d picked out some parts that would help me start the spear, I set the waldos to assembling the air cannon and slipped my earphones in. Tonight, it was Butcher"s turn to choose the music, which meant a lot of rap and hip-hop, and the occasional metal track.
  
  As I started slotting components in with tweezers, letting the waldos add screws and bolts or interlocking pieces, NWA starting blasting in my ears, and Butcher bellowing along inside my head. Despite myself, I started bopping my head to the music.
  
  In the space of an hour I managed to finish the air cannon- a little thicker in the barrel, and the trigger was now behind the body instead of under it. Both ammo cylinders were full of net rounds and pepper dust canisters, and the air reservoir was full.
  
  I set it to one side, and picked up the Undersider phone, selecting the one missed call. With only a moment"s hesitation, I hit redial.
  
  As the phone rang, I pulled out my earphones and shifted the ants inside the waldos. Articulated arms rotated and bent to pick up the parts I"d brought over earlier, arranging them in the space between. The spear wouldn"t be very high quality to start off, not without custom forged parts, but it"d mostly suffer in longevity, and if it was only a single use item for now, that didn"t really matter.
  
  It took a few more rings than I was expecting, but the call was picked up as I was setting fine metal prongs in the centre of the table. "Elpis?" came a breathless girl"s voice.
  
  "Tattletale," I responded, putting it on speaker. "I have to say, I wasn"t expecting to hear from you again."
  
  "Well, yeah. But we need to talk, face to face. I"ve got an idea for how we can both help each other out. How soon can you meet?"
  
  They probably already had a spot picked out, with terrain that would give them an advantage, maybe some traps, possibly even some extra muscle. There were at least a few other low-level goons floating around the city- I"d heard about some smash and grab guy who could make himself explode. Apparently he was calling himself Boombox.
  
  On the one hand, more time would give me longer to prepare and create tech to specifically counter them. On the other hand, more time would also allow them to think up counters for me.
  
  "Say about two hours," I said. "Where"s the place?"
  
  "Parking structure by the cinema on Fifth Avenue. We"ll be on the ground floor. Two hours, right?"
  
  "Two hours," I confirmed, touching a long metal rod to my fingertip. Stoneknapper"s fizz travelled down the length of it, bending it into a tight helix.
  
  One part down, a hundred more to go.
  
  "We"ll see you there. Thanks, Elpis." Tattletale hung up without another word.
  
  "So what"re we thinking?" I asked, putting the earphones in again. "Trap?"
  
  "Trap," Bearskin said all matter-of-fact.
  
  "Trap," Flinch said reluctantly.
  
  "Trap," Butcher said gleefully.
  
  "Yeah, I figured," I admitted, pulling out my personal phone to text Tarquin the details. "Might as well dive into it then."
  
  The parking structure loomed large in the night as Ironclad and I approached. I"d cut the chariot"s engine a few blocks back before hiding it in an alleyway and continuing on foot, senses straining for sings of any trickery. Ironclad followed a few feet behind me, trying to be stealthy. His footsteps were slow and careful enough to only produce a low clinking, but it felt loud compared to my tread.
  
  We were twenty minutes early when I got close enough to the meeting spot for the Undersiders" blood silhouettes to become visible. I counted one-two-three-four humans and three regular sized dogs. Smaller, even- one of them must have been a terrier or something, because it wasn"t even knee high on any of the Undersiders.
  
  Grue was the tallest, Hellhound had her dogs. Tattletale and Whirlygig were less distinctive, but still obviously female.
  
  So where the hell was Regent?
  
  I pulled myself up to the roof of the cinema with a grappler, under the pretence of scouting the place out for Ironclad. He stayed below in the alleyway while I crept a little way across the rooftop.
  
  I scanned the parking structure as best as I could with bloodsight, and with careful sweeps of insects. There was a March chill in the night"s air, but there were enough bugs milling around the cinema"s dumpsters for me to run subtle reconnaissance, and I had the entire cinema building between me and them to hide myself so I could observe undetected.
  
  With five minutes to go, I was finally forced to conclude that Regent just wasn"t around.
  
  "A split in the team, I suppose," Needler declared. "They have less reason to stay together without Coil directing them, and he did strike me as the unmotivated type."
  
  Hopefully, one less opponent to worry about. Still, I"d proceed as if he was still with the team and lying in wait.
  
  I let myself back down the wall, dangling from the grappler"s cable. "It looks like they"re on the ground floor like they said. Didn"t spot any traps, but that doesn"t mean they"re not planning something."
  
  "True," Ironclad whispered. "We going in?"
  
  "Yep. I"ll go in from above, work my way down to them. I"ll text you once I"m sure we"re clear, then you come in through the front. Remember, they might be serious about working together, so hang back a bit so you don"t spook them, and don"t start a fight unless it looks like they"re about to try something."
  
  "Got it," Ironclad nodded, flexing his wire-and-ball-bearing fingers.
  
   I gave him a thumbs up and reeled myself back up to stalk along the roof of the cinema, unslinging my air cannon from my back.
  
  The parking structure was right next to the cinema, so I just had to hop over the concrete barrier separating the cinema"s roof from the third level of the structure, and stealth my way down the ramps toward the Undersiders, checking every shadow for tricks and traps, staring down every parked car like it hid an assassin.
  
  Tactical"s power began to bloom in my mind as I approached the last corner, plotting out angles of attack and the Undersiders likely tactics. Grue would provide visual cover, Hellhound would grow and unleash her dogs, Whirlygig would start firing at me with marbles and such, and Tattletale would hang back, trying to find a weakness of mine, maybe resorting to the little pistol I"d seen on her belt if things got serious.
  
  Not that I would let her get that far. PRT standard procedure was to take out the Thinkers first, and the Butchers at least agreed with them on that one point. I"d wrap and taze her first while Ironclad held off the dogs; then I"d take out Hellhound, then Whirlygig, and finally Grue.
  
  I could make out low voices as I silently reached the last ramp down to the ground level. Seeing through the concrete with bloodsight showed four teens and three dogs, same as when I"d checked 30 seconds ago.
  
  "it doesn"t make any damn sense," Tactical said. "They have to know you can take them, so why here? This place is a damn nightmare for them to fight in."
  
  The watch inside my helmet ticked over to exactly the right time. "I guess we"ll find out," I said, rising from my crouch to prowl down the ramp on thick-soled boots. I returned the air cannon to my back, but loosened my new spear in its holster slightly. Ready for action.
  
  One hand dipped into a compartment on my belt, and I tapped out two letters to Ironclad.
  
  -Go
  
  The Undersiders were gathered against a wall, occasionally glancing at the entrance. Hellhound was scratching her largest dog behind the ears, and Whirlygig was tossing something back and forth between her palms. None of them had noticed me yet.
  
  Heads turned toward the front as Ironclad came out of the alleyway and started walking up the street toward us. He wasn"t that loud, but he was the only person around at 2am on a Monday.
  
  "The hell is that?" I heard Whirlygig say.
  
  "Heavy footsteps, rattling metal- that"s Ironclad. Elpis must have called him in for support. Makes sense- I wouldn"t trust us either." Tattletale took a few steps away from the wall. "Odd."
  
  "What is?" Grue asked in that deep, echoing voice of his, little wisps of darkness trailing off his shoulders.
  
  "Only one person walking," Tattletale said, just as Ironclad rounded the entrance to the parking structure. His helmet scraped the top of the entrance a little before he hunched over and awkwardly got first one leg over the barrier, then the other.
  
  Tattletale stepped out into the open, raising a hand in greeting. Now that she was in the dim light of the street lamps, I could see she"d picked up a larger belt than last time, hanging diagonally across her hips with a few pouches here and there.
  
  Whirlygig followed her, holding a handful of marbles, and Grue close behind her. Hellhound came last, forming a line between Ironclad and me.
  
  I stepped around the corner myself and down the ramp, rolling my feet from heel to toe in the careful way the Butchers had learned for teenage sneaking out or adult breaking in.
  
  "Hey, see how close you can get before they notice you," Anchorage goaded me. "Bet you can touch one of them first."
  
  "I"m trying not to start a fight," I shot back irritably, carefully raising a hand to signal Ironclad as he stopped a respectable distance from the Undersiders.
  
  I"d have sworn that I made no sound they could hear, but Tattletale spun around before I"d taken a few steps, eyes glittering against the darkness of her domino mask.
  
  "Elpis," she said, the others turning in surprise. "Nice to see you again."
  
  "Tattletale," I replied neutrally, reaching the bottom of the ramp. "Sorry for not announcing myself. Your call was a bit of a surprise."
  
  "Not a problem," Tattletale replied, taking a few steps to her left, opening a gap between her and the wall for me to pass.
  
  Unsettling, that- that she"d picked up on my intent to circle around them to join Ironclad. Still, I made my way in a wide arc around the Undersiders, hands away from my weapons as they nervously watched me.
  
  At least, nervous was the impression I got from Whirlygig"s expression and everyone else"s posture. Hellhound had her plastic dog mask pushed up on top of her face, and her blunt features were scrunched up in an uneasy scowl, thick eyebrows drawn together. Grue was inscrutable behind his helmet, and Tattletale simply smiled like a fox with chicken feathers around its mouth, even when I passed closer to her than anyone else, a mere ten feet.
  
  Then I was past them, keeping them in the corner of my eye as I crossed over to Ironclad and turned to face them fully.
  
  "So," I asked, folding my arms, "what"s this about? You said something about helping each other out, but what does that mean?"
  
  "Simple," Tattletale said, clapping her hands together. "We want to work for you."
  
  "...what?" Quarrel asked.
  
  Dirty Rotter sneered. "Oh, this is some world class bullshit."
  
  I closed my mouth and found words from somewhere. "You"re going to have to elaborate on that."
  
  "We want to join you, and be heroes."
  
  I stared at Tattletale"s wide grin. "No the fuck you don"t."
  
  "Tattletale," Whirlygig said weakly.
  
  "Relax, I"ve got this." Tattletale took a step forward, looking supremely unconcerned. Whirlygig"s shoulders hunched a little, and Hellhound"s scowl deepened. The dogs at her heels- a Rottweiler, a German Shepherd, and a ratty little one-eyed, one-eared, hairless terrier- seemed to go on guard a little. Her Master power readying them for trouble maybe.
  
  "Villains don"t just become heroes like that," I said, snapping my fingers demonstratively. "You four all have rap sheets- you think you can just start calling yourselves the good guys and people will believe you?"
  
  "Of course not," Tattletale said. "Which is why we need a well-established hero to vouch for us, show that we"re really sincere about this."
  
  "I don"t believe you"re sincere about this," I snapped.
  
  Internally my mind was buzzing. They had to be pursuing an angle here, but what? Frankly speaking, this was bizarre. In all the Butcher"s experiences, they"d never once heard of a villain publicly turning to the side of the angels.
  
  "If this is supposed to be an ambush, I can give them points for creativity," Muramasa admitted.
  
  Nemean snorted. "My guess is they"re just stupid. You let them off once and that makes them think they can just change sides."
  
  "Hold on," Flinch insisted. "Let"s just hear them out first. I don"t really believe them either, but who knows? We"ve seen plenty of crazy things over the years."
  
  I mulled their points over before speaking. "If you were really serious about being heroes," I began, "then why come to me? The PRT are the ones with the government backing and the lawyers- although I don"t think there"s any lawyer that could keep you guys out of prison."
  
  "Well, that"s one of the problems with the PRT, to start. They wouldn"t be wiling to hear us out, they"d just arrest us. Some of us have commitments," Tattletale said, spreading her hands, "the kind that we can"t just put off for however many years they"d lock us away. The other problem is that I"m pretty sure the PRT hasn"t got rid of all Coil"s moles yet."
  
  "Why does that matter?" Ironclad broke in from behind me. "Not like they"re going to do much now he"s in the slammer."
  
  The Undersiders visibly reacted to that- Whirlygig"s eyes went wide, Grue straightened up, Hellhound"s teeth flashed for a second. Tattletale"s mouth became an O of surprise before she let out a long whistle.
  
  "Wow. Woooooow. They really didn"t tell you?" She glanced between me and Ironclad. "Either of you?"
  
  "Tell us what?" I asked impatiently.
  
  "Coil escaped from his prison transport the other night. Word is he"s somewhere in Boston now, with another villain called Accord."
  
  "The fuck?" Ironclad erupted.
  
  The Butchers burst into cacophony.
  
  "Fucking shit!"
  
  "Accord, that sneaky little lawn gnome-"
  
  "-couldn"t keep hold of this one damn guy-"
  
  I knew Accord, or rather I knew of him via the Butcher"s memories. He occupied the Charlestown part of Boston, leading a group called the Ambassadors, and he ran the place like clockwork. His Thinker power was to come up with increasingly complex schemes depending on the size of the problem.
  
  If Coil was working with someone like that now, then things had just taken a poor turn.
  
  And the PRT hadn"t bothered to tell me.
  
  "Hold on, they could just be lying," Stoneknapper pointed out.
  
  "How do you know he escaped?" I challenged Tattletale.
  
  She shrugged. "Little bit of hacking. They"re keeping it quiet for now so they can figure out how to spin it, and because there"s jurisdiction arguments between Boston and Brockton."
  
  "We also know because he torched our fucking place," Whirlygig said wearily.
  
  Tattletale winced. "Yeah, that too."
  
  I looked the four of them over- no scorch marks or anything as blatant evidence, but they didn"t seem like they were lying.
  
  Four of them. A thought struck me.
  
  "Where"s Regent?" I asked carefully.
  
  "Hm? Oh, he"s fine. He just wasn"t on board with the plan, so he just grabbed his stuff and left. We"d already moved our stuff out, so it wasn"t a big deal."
  
  "He took the TV with him," Whirlygig interjected. "I don"t actually know how he did that- I mean, it"s a big screen and he"s not exactly ripped, you know?"
  
  Firecracker snickered to herself inside my head.
  
  "Hold on a moment," Vladimir said. "Their old boss has escaped and had their place set on fire, and suddenly they want to be heroes? I think I see what"s going on here."
  
  I looked over the Undersiders with fresh eyes, and something clicked. "You"re scared of him."
  
  Tattletale"s smile became just a little fixed. Grue"s darkness streamed out a little thicker and faster, and Hellhound glared at me intensely, shifting her feet.
  
  "That"s what this is about," I continued in a rush, the words coming as fast as the realisations. "You"re not turning to the good side out of a crisis of conscience, you"re running for cover. Coil"s power means he could just keep trying to come after you, and you"d never know until one of them stuck. So you"re trying to link up with me to cover your asses." I looked Tattletale in the eye. "That"s it, isn"t it?"
  
  Tattletal"e smile shrank to nothing, and she let out a frustrated groan. "Fuck, I hate being on the receiving end. Alright, yes, we need help. We need someone that can look out for us, but we wouldn"t join the Empire or the ABB even if they would have us, and the PRT would slap us in prison where Coil could just pay someone to shank us in the shower."
  
  "And even if they did make us heroes, no fucking way am I working with Shadow Stalker," Grue said. It was the first thing he"d said since I"d shown myself, and I was surprised at the heat in his voice.
  
  "Oof," Firecracker hissed. "There"s a story there."
  
  "Listen, I let you guys go for helping take down Coil, but that"s not the same as working with you. You"re still criminals- I can"t trust you not to screw me over, and I"ll burn my bridges with the Protectorate if I take you on."
  
  Tattletale snorted. "The Protectorate that didn"t bother to tell you that the guy you helped put away is back on the streets? Do you really need that?
  
  "And as for trusting us- well, trust us to want to stay alive. Really, we"re taking a bigger risk by assuming you wouldn"t just try to take us in."
  
  Off to the side, I saw Hellhound shift her weight, glaring at me and Tattletale in equal measure.
  
  "We could probably get away with having Whirlygig at least," Needler suggested. "Her record isn"t that much worse than Spitfire. If she appears genuine, she could be useful. The rest are too well known though."
  
  Butcher snorted. "Screw that! Take them all, force them into line! I want to see what those dogs can really do in a fight!"
  
  "She"s not going to do it," Tock Tick said, shaking his head. "It"ll ruin her hero cred."
  
  And Tock Tick was right, frankly. As much as the Butchers liked the idea of a couple of experienced minions- hell, as much as I liked the idea of a couple of experienced minions- I just couldn"t afford the distance and scrutiny I"d get from the other heroes. I was only just recovering from letting them off the hook the last time.
  
  It made me feel rotten inside to leave a bunch of teenagers to fend for themselves, but they were all capes with experience. Hopefully they could go to ground until Coil was caught again or lost interest in them.
  
  "I"m sorry," I said, surprised by how much I meant it. "But I can"t take you guys in. That"s full-on illegal, and I"m not looking to get hunted."
  
  "So you won"t help us," Grue said. He didn"t sound surprised or sad or angry, just matter-of-fact.
  
  I considered. "I could maybe help you guys find a place to hide, if you"re in that much danger. You could leave town, get out of the state- if you change your costume and name you might be able to start fresh. Or I could point you in the direction of a different group. There"s a mercenary group, they"re led by a woman called Faultline-"
  
  Tattletale snorted. "Yeah, we know all about her."
  
  "She and Tattletale have a rivalry," Grue supplied. "Anyway, we can"t all just disappear."
  
  "Look," Tattletale said, "if you"re not willing to take us on completely, maybe we could do some kind of co-operation? Get our foot in the door, that sort of thing."
  
  That didn"t sound as bad, but I still shook my head. "Same problems, just less so. I"ll still have the PRT on my ass just for talking to you guys."
  
  "This is stupid."
  
  I turned to look at Hellhound. "Excuse me?"
  
  "Not the time, bitch," Tattletale hissed.
  
  Hellhound glared at her. "I said this is stupid. You"re the one who tried to be smart by taking out Coil, and now we"re being hunted. I don"t trust her," she gestured at me angrily, "and I don"t need her."
  
  "Geez, tell us how you really feel," Ironclad snarked.
  
  Hellhound glared at us both. Then she said "Brutus, go."
  
  Grue bolted across and seized her by the collar, but the Rottweiler was already padding towards me. As it walked, it expanded rapidly- the fur split and tore, new muscle growing into place, the outer layers hardening into gnarly armour plates while spikes of bone pushed through in random places. I instinctively switched on bloodsight to see the dog"s original body being engulfed in more and more flesh, until it just curled up in the middle of the new body, firmly ensconced.
  
  My hands were on the hilts of my swords before I was consciously aware of it as the dog came to a stop a few feet away from me. It was six feet tall at the shoulder, a mass of spikes and plates, claws and teeth. I could smell the breath that panted from its huge, tooth-laden maw, and it smelled like rotten meat.
  
  Tactical"s strategy power and Needler"s weakness sensory power unfurled in my mind, sketching out a plan. I could duck under the dog"s jaws as soon as it lunged, or to the side, and drive a sword up into its real body, killing it instantly. Hellhound would probably empower her remaining two dogs, but I could dispatch them before they got too big, and beat the Undersiders senseless with their main hitter out of the way.
  
  Ironclad swore and shifted behind me- the bugs I"d slipped into his armour suggested a fighting stance. He could probably wrestle this thing all by himself if things went wrong.
  
  Except, as I tightened my grip on my swords and shifted my stance, something itched at me.
  
  "The fuck are you waiting for?" Butcher howled. "Kill the fucking thing already!"
  
  I shoved him into the dark to let myself think a little clearer, and vaguely realised a whole five seconds had passed. The dog was just standing there. It sniffed at me curiously, with nostrils as wide as baseballs, but that was all.
  
  "Taylor, don"t get cocky, this thing can bite your damn head off, just stab it and move on," Bearskin insisted.
  
  I shoved him down too, still staring the dog down- and past that, the Undersiders; Grue looked like he was trying to get Hellhound in a chokehold while shouting "call it off", Whirlygig was backing away, and Tattletale-
  
  -was just standing there. Looking at me with an intense stare.
  
  "Stop," I said. When that didn"t do anything, I repeated myself louder. "STOP."
  
  Grue and Hellhound froze mid-wrestle. The dog growled low in its throat, a deep bass rumble. I slowly loosened my grip on my swords, and then, feeling like I was doing something stupid, took my hands away entirely.
  
  "Great, we"re going to be stuck inside another teenager," Quarrel said despairingly. "For fuck"s sake, we couldn"t have got killed by someone with actual breasts?"
  
  I pushed her down too, still staring at the dog.
  
  "Elpis, what the hell..." Ironclad trailed off, uncertain.
  
  "Hellhound," I said, still looking at the dog"s bloodshot eyes, "That was a very stupid thing you just did."
  
  "Bitch," Hellhound managed to grunt; Grue"s arm was still around her neck.
  
  "And name-calling"s just childish," I retorted. "I thought you were trying to attack me, Hellhound. That"s not a smart thing to do right now."
  
  "My name"s not fucking Hellhound," the villain said, a little more clearly as Grue loosened his hold slightly, though he didn"t let her go.
  
  "What am I supposed to call you then?"
  
  "Bitch."
  
  "...Are you shitting me?!" Anchorage exploded. "She wants to be called Bitch? She"s actually choosing to be called Bitch?"
  
  "Um. Alright. Bitch. What the hell were you thinking growing your dog like that?"
  
  Bitch- and I felt that suddenly told me a lot about her as a person, if I got the chance to sit down and think about it- struggled a little in Grue"s hold before subsiding. "Got tired of talking. Wanted to see what you"d do."
  
  "Well, I might have hurt your dog if it"d moved any faster. You"re lucky this didn"t get ugly."
  
  "I dunno, that"s pretty fucking ugly right there," Dirty Rotter pointed out.
  
  I focused on the dog again. It was still staring back at me, not moving its paws, and not growling anymore now that things had gone quiet.
  
  The Butchers had seen plenty of disturbing beings resulting from powers- from Muscular"s disturbingly meaty appearance and Crimson"s bulging red everything, to Blasto"s attack animals and homunculi, and Dark Society"s self-mutilation shit.
  
  I"d seen plenty with my own eyes- Mush"s stringy tendrils, Animos"s bestial form, Lung"s increasingly monstrous transformation.
  
  This dog was pretty damn scary looking too. Its jaws were wider than my head and packed with teeth, and its paws were the size of trashcan lids. Every inch was exposed muscle, calcified flesh, armour plates and bone spikes.
  
  But it was just standing there, breathing heavily. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth a little, a thing like three strips of meat braided together.
  
  "Why"d you say the command out loud?" I asked. "Doesn"t make sense to announce what you"re doing in a fight."
  
  "They"re trained," Bitch grunted, pushing at Grue"s arm again. He tightened his grip warningly. "Hng- tell them what to do."
  
  Trained animals. Not directly controlled by her power, like my insects or Crusader"s ghosts or that prick Felix Swoop"s birds.
  
  "It"s just a dog," I said to myself.
  
  "Elpis?" Ironclad said worriedly from behind me.
  
  "It"s just a dog," I said a little louder. "I figured the power made them more aggressive, gave Hell- gave Bitch control over them, but that"s not it, is it? It"s just extra-extra-extra-large."
  
  I glanced at the Undersiders again. "His name"s Brutus, right?"
  
  Bitch gave me a long look I couldn"t quite decipher. "Yeah."
  
  "Brutus," I said, looking back at the dog. He- at least I thought it was a he- shifted slightly. "Brutus," I said again.
  
  A definite reaction, if a small one- but the bugs I"d slipped onto him relayed the twitches of his muscles precisely, along with the ripe meat smell of said muscles.
  
  "If he"s still a trained dog under all that," I mused aloud, "does he like scratches?"
  
  "What?" said Bitch.
  
  "The fuck?" said Ironclad.
  
  "No," said Tactical. "This is a terrible idea- that thing could take your whole arm off."
  
  "Can I pet him?" I asked.
  
  "Elpis, what the hell are you doing?" Ironclad hissed.
  
  "Ironclad, trust me. I"m going somewhere with this."
  
  Bitch stared at me for a moment. "Go slow," she said at last. "Under the chin. Brutus," she said to the dog, "Behave."
  
  "Got it."
  
  I slowly raised a hand, bit by bit. Brutus"s eyes swivelled to track it as I lifted it towards his chin.
  
  "Easy, Brutus," I said softly. "Easy now." I felt his muscles tense through the flies on him. "It"s okay," I murmured, reaching a little further. "I"m not going to hurt you."
  
  Finally, my fingers made contact with the exposed muscle under his chin. I gently ran my palm over it to let him get used to my touch, then started to give him a proper scritch.
  
  Brutus didn"t really react to that until I dug a little deeper, put a bit more force into it. Maybe all that muscle and armour made him disregard lighter touches. Regardless, he tilted his head a bit to let me reach further along his jaw, and I could see his tail starting to wag from side to side behind him, scraping against the floor. A rumble came from his chest, so deep I felt it as much as I heard it, but it sounded a bit like the pleased rumble of a dog getting some welcome attention.
  
  "There you go," I said, growing bolder as Brutus leaned into my touch. "You"re just a big guy, aren"t you? A big old dog in a weird meat suit, yes you are."
  
  "Man, what the fuck," Stoneknapper marvelled as I petted this massive spiky beast while four villains and my teammate looked on.
  
  Actually, from that perspective, it was pretty weird.
  
  After a few seconds more, I pulled my hand away and stepped back. Brutus made a noise in his throat, but didn"t move to follow me.
  
  "That"s all for now," I said reluctantly. "Go back to your mom."
  
  "Brutus, come," Bitch said, looking at me with wide eyes.
  
  Brutus slowly turned around, his bony tail sweeping through the air behind him, and padded back over to Bitch with heavy footsteps, positioning himself behind his mistress as Grue slowly let her out of the headlock.
  
  "Okay," Tattletale said, starting to smile again, "That happened. And now you"re convinced we"re not an impossible case, aren"t you?"
  
  As creepy as it was for her to say it, that was pretty close to what I"d been thinking.
  
  "You"re still a bunch of horrible little thieves," I said, but my heart wasn"t as in it as before.
  
  "Still just kids," Nemean rumbled. "Worse than Spitfire and Ironclad, but they could get better."
  
  "Yeah, but you"re not as bothered about a bunch of thieves as the Empire. That"s your real target, right? But word is they"re gearing up- not just for the ABB, but for you.
  
  "You"ve built your reputation, but that means they"re taking you seriously now. You"re looking for an edge so you can take the fight to them again."
  
  Tattletale spread her hands like a showman. "We," she announced dramatically, "can be that edge."
  
  "You"re seriously willing to help me throw down with the Empire Eighty Eight?" I asked.
  
  "Yep," Whirlygig broke in.
  
  Grue nodded. "I"m up for it."
  
  I glanced at Bitch, who was silently scratching her German Shepherd behind the ears. "Bitch, how about you?"
  
  She met my gaze with an expression that seemed less hostile than before. "They run dog fighting rings." Her lip curled. "If you"re fighting them, I"m in."
  
  "I"ll take that as a yes." I looked them over for a second. "I can"t make any promises, honestly. But on the off chance that you guys are sincere about this, I"ll give you a shot."
  
  Flinch smiled softly. "I know this is a difficult situation, but I think you"re doing the right thing."
  
  "Thanks, Flinch."
  
  "Seriously?" Ironclad said incredulously.
  
  I turned and stepped up close to him. "I know it"s a lot, but we need all the firepower we can get," I said in a low voice.
  
  "I don"t like this," Ironclad protested.
  
  "That"s fair. I"m still not 100% either. But remember what we said over pancakes? Sometimes you have to give people a chance, even if they might fuck up."
  
  Ironclad sighed. "Don"t say I didn"t warn you."
  
  "Wouldn"t dream of it." I turned back to the Undersiders. "Alright, if you"re sure, we can try shutting down some Empire stuff and see how it goes."
  
  "Great," Tattletale began. I held up a finger.
  
  "But," I added warningly, "you double-cross me, you jerk me around: I"ll hunt you down and slap the cuffs on you myself. Got it?"
  
  "Absolutely," Tattletale said, still smiling obnoxiously.
  
  I"d need to approach this carefully. I trusted the Undersiders a lot less than I could throw them, and the PRT might start investigating me if I didn"t frame this just right.
  
  Still, I reckoned I could pull it off. It wasn"t like I"d be working with the Undersiders for long.
  
  7.6
  Tuesday 22nd March, Arcadia High School
  
  "Are you insane?" Amy hissed, cradling her coffee cup like she was debating throwing it in my face.
  
  Anchorage didn"t even need to say anything- she simply radiated amusement inside my head.
  
  "If it"s any consolation, I think it"s dumb too," Tarquin pointed out, sipping his hot chocolate.
  
  Amy didn"t even spare him a glance, still laser-focused on me. "This is the dumbest thing you"ve ever done! You weren"t satisfied with letting them go, now you"re actually teaming up with criminals? A bunch of thugs and an actual murderer?"
  
  "Keep your voice down," I hissed, glancing around. Our usual corner was occupied by a couple of guys making out, so I"d bought us all drinks from the cafeteria while we talked under the cover of a tree, out of earshot. That didn"t mean I was okay with Amy yelling her opinions across the campus.
  
  "Why? You said you weren"t letting them get away again."
  
  I winced. "I did. But I took another look through their files."
  
  Not just the publicly available stuff on PHO, but the information the PRT had shared after the casino fight. The exact dates and times and police reports and witness statements.
  
  After meeting the Undersiders last night, I"d dug through the files again, especially the stuff on Hellhound aka Bitch aka Rachel Lindt. Removed from her mother"s custody in a half-feral state, placed in three different foster homes, long history of attitude problems reported by all of them.
  
  In the last one, she"d triggered. Apparently she"d empowered a dog, which she"d sent into the house to attack her foster mother and siblings. Everyone had been badly injured, and the foster mother had been pronounced DOA. A classic villain origin story.
  
  However, the Butchers knew that trigger events always had more to them. I"d gone back over the files with a fresh eye, and found a few things; crime scene photos with claw marks coming out of the pool in the backyard; witness statements that insisted the family didn"t have a dog; an autopsy report on the dog that showed it was little more than a puppy.
  
  Rachel Lindt"s Trigger wasn"t a murder- I felt it in my gut. And that cast everything she"d done since then in a different light.
  
  Lonely girl, ignored by the system, until powers kicked in and she hurt someone by accident. That could have been me all too easily.
  
  As for the other Undersiders, none of them had any counts of serious violence. They"d robbed people and businesses, caused more than a bit of property damage, and doled out a few injuries, but nothing that heinous. Hell, if they were members of the Teeth, they"d have double digit body counts each by now.
  
  "They"ve all earned their reputations," I admitted, "But I don"t think they"re monsters. Bitch especially has more to her than first glance."
  
  Amy rolled her eyes dramatically. "Oh yeah, because someone who calls herself Bitch must be such a complex and layered individual- do you hear yourself when you talk?"
  
  "I get that it"s kind of crazy," I said, "but..." I floundered, struggling to think of how to explain what I felt.
  
  Finally I said "I got them into this mess in the first place."
  
  Amy laughed sarcastically, hard enough that I could smell her overly-sweet coffee on her breath. "Ha! No, they got themselves into this when they broke the law. This is just what happens."
  
  "Getting on a creepy mastermind"s personal shit list isn"t exactly regular," I pointed out. "That happened because of me, and I feel like I need to follow through on it. There"s more to this job than just beating up acceptable targets."
  
  Amy glared at me for a long moment, then down at her coffee. "What do you think?" she asked Tarquin at length.
  
  "I think it"s a bad idea," Tarquin said without hesitation.
  
  Bearskin burst out laughing "Well, he"s honest!"
  
  "Look, I get they"re about our age, but I still think you"re way too hung up on them. I mean, last I checked, they did shoot at you before." Tarquin shrugged and took another swig of hot chocolate.
  
  "Right." Amy snapped her fingers. "They did do that."
  
  "So yeah," Tarquin said with a shrug, "When this all goes to hell, I"ll be right there saying I told you so."
  
  "Alright," I sighed. "I get it- trying to flip a bunch of villains isn"t smart."
  
  "No- well, yeah. I agree with the sentiment, I just don"t think it"s going to work with these guys," Tarquin admitted. "They did say they"re only in this to save their own asses."
  
  "Hey, how many capes become heroes because it"s safer?" Stoneknapper asked rhetorically.
  
  "They"re villains. I was expecting them to be kind of shitty. But we"re heroes. That means we have to aim higher. Being the bigger person sucks, but it needs doing."
  
  Tarquin was quiet for a long moment. "Shit, that"s good," he muttered.
  
  Amy knocked back the rest of her coffee with the air of a hardcore alcoholic. "This"d be easier if you weren"t so goddamn idealistic," she griped.
  
  "Thank you?" I asked, unsure if that was a compliment or not.
  
  "It"s not a compliment," Amy said. "Now you"re being a pain in my ass by doing the right thing."
  
  Quarrel snorted. "I know what that"s like."
  
  It wasn"t until fourth period that I managed to get outside the signal jammer to check my phone. I had two missed calls from Miss Militia.
  
  Once I"d ducked into an alleyway to make the call, she picked up quickly.
  
  "Elpis, good. Are you in a secure location?"
  
  "Yeah, what"s up?"
  
  "Coil"s transport was attacked in Boston. A gang called the Ambassadors broke him out of custody."
  
  "What? Oh my gooood?" Firecracker droned sarcastically.
  
  I ground my teeth for a second. "And it took you this long to tell me, why?"
  
  Miss Militia sounded apologetic at least. "I"m sorry, we couldn"t pass the information to you until we had confirmation. The Ambassadors have connections with other groups- this could have been on behalf of another faction."
  
  It was a weak excuse, and the fact that I"d already heard this from the Undersiders only made it worse. I popped the claws on my free hand for a second to scratch at my chin irritably.
  
  "Well, that"s a fucking problem," I said. "Do we have any plans for dealing with him?"
  
  "The Boston PRT"s taking steps to find him, and the Think Tank"s been alerted. They should be able to counter any moves he makes while they close in on him. Preliminary predictions say he"ll probably lay low until the heat dies down.
  
  "We"re also stepping up our security- if things get out of hand, we can call in reinforcements from other towns or departments, all the way up to Dragon herself."
  
  "Shit, really?" Tock Tick marvelled. "Hell, if it gets us a chance to talk with her, maybe we should start some fires."
  
  "In the meantime, we"re asking you to stay close for now, for your own safety. We can speed up the exchange process for those tranquilisers you were asking about, and some other equipment requests."
  
  "Seriously?" Tactical asked. "How stupid do they think you are? They fuck up this badly and they think we"ll stay close just for that?"
  
  I curled my hand into a fist until the knuckles popped. "I appreciate the help," I ground out, struggling to keep my tone level. "I"ll try to keep in touch."
  
  "Thank you."
  
  I hung up and turned the phone off. The whole experience had left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
  
  "Man, the Undersiders are starting to seem like the better option," Stoneknapper snorted.
  
  "I"m sure the PRT are trying their best," Flinch said weakly.
  
  "Yeah, and the problem is that their best sucks ass!" Dirty Rotter bellowed.
  
  "Enough," I snapped, heading out of the alleyway and back towards Arcadia. "They screwed up. But I"m not giving up on them. If I can give the Undersiders a chance, I can give the heroes a chance."
  
  The Butchers quieted as I strode through the crowd, my mood foul. People stepped out of my way as I stormed down the sidewalk.
  
  "It"s impressive that you"re willing to give people chances," Needler said eventually. "But that can come back to haunt you."
  
  Her memories drifted through my mind- her victory over Dirty Rotter and inheritance as Butcher V; her brutal fight against Muscular when he"d challenged her in 1996, and her decision to spare him with a warning; and her death after Firecracker challenged her, furious with her loss against the Slaughterhouse Nine.
  
  "My life was defined by the hard decisions," Needler said. "Don"t make the mistake of holding back."
  
  My temper cooled slightly at that. "I get it," I muttered, stopping at the edge of the sidewalk. "I"m still not cutting the Protectorate loose just yet though."
  
  "Don"t say I didn"t warn you," Needler said.
  
  Thursday 24th March, The Docks
  
  The Protectorate had come through on the trade. I"d finally taken the afterburner out of the chariot, and used that to make another power frame for Spitfire. Frankly, having the Protectorate pay me to make and maintain tech for one of my friends was about the best outcome I could have hoped for.
  
  In return, they"d promised several doses of Armsmaster"s tranquiliser formula as soon as he could distil the hideously complicated chemical, and they"d delivered on recordings of Cricket in her cell, which had given me some extra data to upgrade my new spear.
  
  My shiny new weapon now hung on my belt with the rest of my weapons, with a longer point and a thicker handle and a small spike on the end as I hurried through the morning traffic. I was cutting it close by using a free period to slip out of school to meet up with the Undersiders, but apparently the E88"s dogfighting rings were mostly active during the daytime, so my usual night time pattern wouldn"t be as effective.
  
  Tattletale had given me specific instructions to meet up with the Undersiders, so I turned down an alleyway just past a taco restaurant and threaded the bike through the twists and turns until I came to an open space.
  
  The Undersiders were waiting for me there, next to a white van. The daylight changed them- they seemed out of place in the weak March sunlight, the details of their costumes jumping into view. I could see a faint eye symbol on one of the black bars of Tattletale"s costume, and the clumsy patches on Whirlygig"s cargo pants.
  
  I parked the bike and swung off in one easy motion. "Where"d you get the van?" I asked.
  
  Grue rapped against the side with a knuckle. "It"s a rental. We needed something to carry all the dogs out with."
  
   "Smart," I admitted It was surprisingly mundane, but sometimes the boring legal way was useful even to criminals. "So where"s the ring?"
  
  "Quick walk thataway," Tatttletale said with a jerk of her head and a grin. "Shall we?" she added with a cocky little flick of her hand.
  
  Bitch set off without another word, barely glancing at me. Her dogs followed at her heels, and Tattletale followed them, still grinning.
  
  Grue and I looked at each other, one expressionless helmet to another, before he inclined his head slightly and stepped after the girls.
  
  That left me and Whirlygig bringing up the rear. I pulled my air cannon off the back of my belt and double-checked the air reserve and ammo count, while Whirlygig reached into some of her many pockets and dragged out handfuls of marbles. As we walked, they were tugged from her hands to orbit around her, along with the various bits of detritus we passed- dust and grit, bits of paper, cigarette butts.
  
  "So, uh," Whirlygig said awkwardly as we walked, "Thanks for coming. And for saving all of us. I know I said that before, but, y"know..."
  
  I glanced sideways at Whirlygig. She was twisting her fingers together over and over nervously, shoulders hunched, steps small and rapid. She reminded me uncomfortably of myself before I"d inherited. "No problem," I said, giving her what I hoped was a comforting pat on the shoulder.
  
  I reached for bloodsight as we walked, and checked on the insects in my range. We were closing in on a few hundred fleas, and I could make out a few dozen silhouettes, both human and canine, at the edge of my vision.
  
  "Is that it?" I asked, pointing ahead to the old factory the silhouettes were in.
  
  "Yeah," Bitch grunted, not slowing down.
  
  I quickened my pace, stepping past Grue and Tattletale to draw level with Bitch. "Wait a second," I said, sticking my arm out in front of her.
  
  Bitch came to a halt, glaring at me. "What."
  
  "Before we do this, we need a plan." I tugged on Tactical"s power for a workable strategy. "Bitch, can the dogs work in Grue"s darkness?"
  
  "Yeah, they can smell their way through it."
  
  "And Whirlygig, can you aim through the darkness?"
  
  "Uh, no?" Whirlygig answered, catching up to the rest of us.
  
  "Alright then, we"ll do a pincer movement. There"re entrances south, west and east. Bitch and the dogs go in through the south entrance, I"ll take the west, Grue and Whirlygig go in through the east. Grue, you block the windows and doors, but leave enough space clear inside for us to work in, and help Whirlygig aim."
  
  "Got it," Grue said.
  
  "So I guess I follow once everyone"s down and help dig up information on the next operation to hit?" Tattletale asked.
  
  I paused and ran it through my head. "Yeah, pretty much," I admitted. "But the rest of you, listen up. If you"re really serious about turning over a new leaf, it starts here. That means as little force as possible- nothing they can"t walk away from. No looting drugs or weapons, no kicking them when they"re down. Got that?"
  
  There were a couple of murmured agreements. I gestured theatrically to my ear. "I said, got that?"
  
  "Okay." "I understand." "Fine."
  
  "Good. Now let"s split up. Bitch, wait a couple of minutes for everyone to get in position, then make your way in and we"ll follow after."
  
  "You"re doing good at this," Nemean commented as we split up and took our places. "You"re better with other people around."
  
  "It"s certainly refreshing having somebody besides us," Vladimir agreed. "I mean, Spitfire and Ironclad are decent kids, but having you hold their hands quickly becomes grating."
  
  I shrugged as I drew level with the grimy side door, re-checking my cannon yet again. After a second"s thought, I flicked the selector away from the pepper rounds- if they were bad for humans, they"d be agonising to the dogs.
  
  The flies I"d sent after Bitch relayed the sudden scent of rotten meat as her dogs grew to monstrous side. I set my feet and flicked my cape away from my shoulders, waiting on her.
  
  A few seconds later, the first of the dogs crashed through the door, and people started screaming.
  
  "Music to my ears," Butcher crooned horribly.
  
  I threw a front kick at the lock, shattering it with ease, and charged into the fray. All three of the dogs were standing in the demolished entrance, snarling amid the remains of the doors. A cloud of darkness was spreading from the other side, blocking the windows and sweeping over the dogs, rapidly turning the inside of the factory into darkness with only the ceiling lights and the windows on my side to let any light in.
  
  I dove into the crowd, firing blasts from the cannon one-handed while grappling and blocking with my left. Some of the tougher-looking people were rallying, trying to fight back. I blocked a baseball bat with my forearm and shot a blast of air into the guy"s face, sending him reeling. I ducked low and swept his legs out from under him with a kick, which also let a length of chain go whistling over my head. I came up to smack the cannon"s stock into his face, and the chain guy collapsed with blood gushing through his fingers.
  
  The middle of the room was taken up by a circle of crates and boxes, two rough-looking dogs in the middle of it, looking about wildly. I switched to net rounds and wrapped the two of them- they might hurt themselves or each other if I didn"t.
  
  Fresh shrieking started up on the other side of the ring- people were falling, clutching limbs and chests. I switched to bloodsight, and saw two silhouettes hiding in the darkness, the larger one standing behind the smaller one to guide her hands. The vantablack pitch of the darkness made it hard to make out movement, but Grue"s darkness seemed to be swirling around, stirred by Whirlygig"s power.
  
  A strange coincidence, two powers interacting like that. I"d have to make a note of it.
  
  The remaining Empire goons were trying to aim at the section of the cloud without being pummelled by marbles. I hopped up to the top of the ring and starting firing net rounds at them from behind, trussing them up before they could get a shot off.
  
  And then as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Every member of the crowd was either incapacitated or making like they were, huddled on the ground and trying to avoid attention.
  
  I jumped off the crates and checked over the crowd for any last surprises. "Clear!"
  
  Grue and Whirlygig came out of the darkness, him almost wrapped around her like a leather overcoat. "Clear," he answered, stepping away from Whirlygig to start gathering up weapons. Whirlygig awkwardly stood where he"d left her, marbles zipping around her.
  
  Bitch came out of the darkness at the entrance, the dogs padding along behind her. She made for the ring, clambering over the crates to check on the dogs, soothing them with surprisingly gentle touches to their heads.
  
  I watched her for a second, vaguely surprised by the tenderness of her actions, before getting back to work. I started picking people out of the crowd and dragging them over to the front- mostly the people who"d drawn weapons, especially guns. Most of them had patches or tattoos declaring their allegiance- actual members, not just hangers-on here for a bit of bloodsport.
  
  "Ooh, paydirt," Tattletale said, coming out of the darkness. She stumbled a little before she adjusted to the dim light, then sauntered over to the Empire goons as I tied them hand and foot with lengths of cords from my belt.
  
  "So guys," she asked, leaning over with a smirk, "Who wants to tell me about the other dogfighting rings the Empire"s running?"
  
  "Fuck you!" snarled a guy with a badly cut mullet.
  
  "That"s what I"m looking for. Let"s see..." She stared at Bad Mullet intently. "So you know some of the other guys who run the fights, huh?"
  
  "I"m not saying anything," Bad Mullet snapped.
  
  "Oh, you don"t need to," Tattletale shrugged. "I just need to look at you. You see," she explained, her smile widening, "I"m psychic."
  
  Bad Mullet sneered, but a lot of the other guys were suddenly looking uncomfortable.
  
  "So what do we think her power actually is?" Dirty Rotter asked. "Because if she was actually a mind-reader, she"d be running screaming from us."
  
  "Let us see how she handles these fools first," Muramasa suggested. "Her methods may reveal her abilities."
  
  "Don"t believe me? That"s fine, makes it more fun. You," she said, pointing to the guy I was wrapping up, "just started here. You"re hoping to work your way up the ladder, get a bigger cut of the money."
  
  I felt the guy flinch as I finished tying his wrists behind his back.
  
  "And you," Tattletale added, pointing to a man at the back, "Are the leader of this little crew. Reporting direct to Hookwolf, my my."
  
  "Oh fuck," another man whimpered.
  
  As I worked on their restraints, Tattletale kept pulling little facts out of thin air, all with that satisfied smile on her face. I mentally upped her threat level as she worked- I"d considered her the weakest of the Undersiders, but clearly she could be dangerous in her element.
  
  The dogs started make little barks just as I picked up the distant whine of police sirens. "Wrap it up," I called across the factory, "It"s time to go."
  
  Bitch was carefully carrying occupied dog crates out from the back- I headed over to help, and the rest of the Undersiders followed suit. Bitch took one crate, Grue took another, I handled one in each hand, and the girls managed one between them. I recognised the dog inside as one that I"d wrapped in the ring. It growled at me as I passed it.
  
  We left the building and made it back to the alleyway just as the first cop cars rounded the corner. Grue threw up a wall of darkness halfway down the alleyway to cover our retreat, and we made it to the van without incident.
  
  "Alright," I admitted, helping to load the dog crates into the van, "This was good. Tattletale, how much information did you get from those guys?"
  
  "Enough to tell you there"s a bigger ring in South Downtown. I"ll narrow it down and let you know when I"ve confirmed it."
  
  "Good," I said as Bitch secured the crates with bungee cords. "If you guys can repeat this performance, then we should be good."
  
  "It won"t be as easy," Tattletale warned. "Bigger fights means more Empire money. They"ll have more guys guarding it, maybe even a cape with how you set them on alert."
  
  "You let me worry about that," I said, thinking of the upgrades I"d made and the upgrades I could still do. "You going to be alright with the dogs?"
  
  "I"ll take care of them," Bitch grunted, not looking up from securing the last cord.
  
  "Alright then." I glanced back at the alleyway, and the blood silhouettes beyond that as the police swarmed the factory. "You guys should get out of here."
  
  "Yeah, I don"t think the cops will be quite so understanding," Tattletale agreed. She swung herself up into the back of the van.
  
  Grue climbed into the driver"s seat and gave me a nod as the girls hauled themselves in. "Nice working with you."
  
  "Same to you," I said, stepping back. "Now get going."
  
  Without another word, he started the engine and drove off, disappearing down the street in a couple of turns.
  
  Saturday 26th March, South Downtown
  
  Ironclad unfolded himself from the backseat of the chariot and straightened up. "S"up?"
  
  Whirlygig took a step back. Ironclad had been a lot shorter the other times they"d met, crammed into Coil"s lair or hunched under the low ceiling of the parking garage. This time he"d settled on a comfortable 10 feet of height in the open air, anvil shoulder-guards jutting out to the sides.
  
  I was glad to have him along this time- he"d been moody about not being able to help me with the first raid, and I hoped this would satisfy him. Plus it was reassuring to know I could unequivocally trust at least one person here.
  
  The rest of the Undersiders seemed unbothered, being more experienced and confident. Still, in a mean-spirited sort of way, it was comforting to know he could get a reaction from at least one of them.
  
  I clapped my hands together, hard enough to echo off the walls of our latest meeting spot, a trash-strewn little lot that several businesses kept their dumpsters in. "Alright," I announced, "Now that we"re all here, let"s go over the plan. Tattletale, what"ve you got for us?"
  
  "I checked the place out yesterday, and we"ve definitely found the Empire"s main dogfighting ring. I spotted Hookwolf coming out yesterday, which means he"s got a personal stake in this place."
  
  "Wait a second," Ironclad interrupted, "How do we know he"s not in there right now?"
  
  "Because I"ve been watching the place since this morning," Tattletale retorted, slapping the pair of binoculars in a case on her hip and jerking her other thumb at the warehouse on the next block over. "The big guy left 20 minutes before you guys showed up. We can get in and out and let the cops clear the place out before Hookwolf even finds out we were here."
  
  "We"re taking him down at some point though, right?" Anchorage asked. "I figure we could draw the guy into a car compactor or something, squeeze him down into a solid block of asshole."
  
  "Well, not like that, but once I can build a big enough trap to be sure we"ll get him, we can take a shot at it," I offered.
  
  "Nice."
  
  "I can fight him if he shows up," Bitch said, cracking her knuckles.
  
  "No you can"t," I said firmly. "He"ll shred your dogs and you. If capes show up, I"ll handle them while you lot run. Tattletale, what else is in there?"
  
  "I"d say about 20 Empire foot-soldiers and associates, and at least a hundred spectators. Knives and bats, a couple of pistols, maybe a shotgun or two at worst."
  
  I nodded. "Alright, last time we went for a three-pronged attack," I explained for Ironclad"s benefit. "This time we"ve got more people, but we"re going with two teams. Ironclad, you"re with Grue and Whirlygig. Grue blacks the place out and aims for Whirlygig, while you shield them from any stray shots. You alright with that?"
  
  Ironclad gave a shrug like tectonic plates moving. "Yeah, okay."
  
  "Which leaves me, Bitch, and Tattletale, in that order. I"ll take point, Bitch directs the dogs, Tattletale hangs back to call out patterns and priority targets."
  
  "Fine," Bitch grunted.
  
  "We"ll enter from the north side, you guys come in from the south. We go on my signal. Any questions? No? Alright, let"s get to it."
  
  I clapped Ironclad on the shoulder, and the group split in two. Tactical"s power unfolded as Bitch and Tattletale trailed me to a side door recessed into the warehouse"s wall- now that I"d seen the Undersiders in action, the strategy ability had more data to work with, and the projections it sketched out were clearer, crisper.
  
  The sounds of shouting and dogs barking was faint through the door, but unmistakable; the scent of blood was there too, though I doubted the girls could smell that. Still, I heard Bitch snarl with rage behind me, and spotted the dogs starting to swell with muscle. Time to get in there.
  
  "Brings back memories," Bearskin rumbled. "And not good ones."
  
  "Look on the bright side," Firecracker suggested. "Now we get to make some new ones from the other side."
  
  I pulled my cape off my back and snapped it out into shield mode, then drew one of my swords in a reverse grip and held it high, in the dramatic stabbing motion you saw in slasher movies and never on any killer who actually knew what they were doing.
  
  "Get ready," I said, triggering the oscillation. I slashed down, shearing through the lock with ease, and slamming the sword back into its sheath, all in one fluid movement.
  
  My armoured foot hit the door, and the door hit the woman in the plaid vest beyond the door, hard enough to knock her over. I shoved through the door, bellowing "EVERYBODY ON THE GROUND!" at the top of my lungs, drawing my air cannon with my free hand and firing a shot at a man with a rat-tail hairdo who was counting money into a lockbox by the centre ring.
  
  The rat-tailed man fell back against the chicken wire panels that made up the ring, a handful of bills spraying into the crowd. Panic was immediate, people stampeding in every direction away from us.
  
  The dogs leapt past us, blood spattering from them with every movement as they moved, past the size of refrigerators and still growing. Bitch whistled and yelled, directing two of them to push through the crowd while the third went to guard the door off to our left. Brutus maybe- I wasn"t always able to tell which dog was which once they were mutated.
  
  We pushed into a room in a bizarre conga line, me knocking people aside while the Butchers pointed out people going for weapons or escape routes as Bitch and Tattletale trailed behind me. The others burst in from a loading bay at the far end, Ironclad looming head and shoulders out of the darkness even as he hunched forward, arms spread out protectively to either side as Whirlygig and Grue sprayed the crowd with detritus.
  
  "EVERYBODY ON THE GROUND!" I shouted again, blasting a woman in denim as she made to throw a crowbar at us. By now people were listening to what I was shouting, between my weapons and Whirlygig"s shots and the dogs bounding through the crowd, barging people aside with sheer mass. I was glad to see that they weren"t biting or clawing at anyone- Bitch had listened to my instructions.
  
  As the warehouse quieted and we all converged around the fighting ring, I called out new orders. "Bitch, we"re good for now; go get the dogs out. Grue, go with her. Tattletale, Ironclad, I want you rounding up the ringleaders, separate them out from the rest of the crowd and get them outside." I pulled some cords from my belt and tossed them to Tattletale. "Get them secured for the cops. Whirlygig," I said, turning to the last girl, "we"re keeping an eye on the crowd. Go clockwise from here, I"ll start from the other side. You see a head rise, you slap them down again. Let"s go."
  
  "Very nice," Tactical praised. "You"re getting the hang of commanding in the field. Get a few more followers and you"ll have a potent force."
  
  "I"m not trying to build an army, Tac," I insisted as I clipped my cape back to my shoulders and drew my spear. A snap of the wrist had it extend to half-size, three feet long, and the mechanisms hummed as it warmed up.
  
  "Why not?" he coaxed as Bitch and Grue started hauling the abused dogs from the cramped containers they"d been stuffed into. Tattletale and Ironclad stopped by the ring to pick up the rat-tailed man, and Ironclad took the opportunity to rip the chicken wire off and absorb it into his armour.
  
  Dirty Rotter snickered at the sight. "Hehe, looks like he"s got a string vest on!"
  
  "As I was trying to say," Tactical said with a long-suffering tone as the other Butchers chortled, "You"re a lot more effective with people to work with. We didn"t just keep the Teeth around to stroke our egos, after all. The Undersiders are a decent crew to have around."
  
  "Maybe," I allowed, kicking a switchblade away from a fat guy who was very noticeably not looking at it. "But this isn"t going to be permanent. There"s no way I can keep the secret from Tattletale if I keep this up. Once I"ve got them some good press, I"ll cut them loose."
  
  The nice thing about doing hero work on the weekend was that there was more time to deal with the cleanup. We spent a decent amount of time bagging and tagging dogs and crooks alike, hauling them out into separate groups on the curb. Whirlygig"s personal storm grew wider and denser as she swept the floor clear of larger and larger bits of debris- at some point when I wasn"t looking, she rose up off the floor, hovering along a few inches off the ground as her little hurricane spun around her.
  
  "Shit, that"s cool," Stoneknapper murmured as she drifted around the room, dark hair whipping around her.
  
  Eventually Bitch and Grue finished with the dogs and split up; her to get today"s rental van while he helped to shift the fight-goers. He handled them with the workmanlike air of someone shifting sacks of potatoes, if sacks of potatoes occasionally struggled and spouted slurs.
  
  We were almost finished when I felt some bugs at the edge of my range stir as something tweaked a line of silk strung across a street. I kept my reaction internal, shifting some fliers in that direction, and felt something man-sized heading in the direction of the warehouse.
  
  I strolled over to the remains of the ring as casually as I could, trying to make it seem natural as I felt the something approach. "We almost done?" I asked as Ironclad draped two people over each arm and made for the door.
  
  "Just about," Grue said, walking one of the last people out in an armlock. Past his voice I made out the sound of an engine at the edge of my enhanced hearing.
  
  "Well, we should probably wrap up," I said. "We"ve been here long enough, we"re pushing our luck." Either it was Empire reinforcements coming for a fight, or a hero was coming in and I"d have to answer some very awkward questions before I was really ready.
  
  Tattletale turned to me with her cheeky grin, only for her expression to turn serious as she looked at me. Then she glanced in the direction of the engine noise that shouldn"t have been audible to regular humans yet. "Company?" she asked in a low voice.
  
  My blood went cold. She"d seen something in my reaction, through a closed helmet and armour. What had she seen? The Butchers started talking all at once as I struggled to think of a way to play it off
  
  Tattletale shook her head slightly. "Elpis," she said carefully, "are you getting a bad feeling right now?"
  
  I stared at her, ready to push the Butchers down to gain some space, when Tattletale glanced in the direction of the newcomer. The engine noise was loud enough to be properly audible now.
  
  The last five people on the ground looked toward the noise too. I made a decision. "Up and at them!" I shouted, nudging one of them with a foot. "Out the door, we"ve got company! Undersiders!" I shouted. "Get the dogs out of here, trouble"s coming! Ironclad, get behind me, wait for my word!"
  
  Suddenly there was motion. The stragglers scrambled to their feet and out the door. Ironclad dumped the people he was carrying in a sudden heap next to the other Empire supporters lined up against the wall outside and hurried over with thundering footsteps. Tattletale bolted towards the van with a speed I hadn"t seen from her before, while Whirlygig dropped to the floor and hurried over on foot.
  
  "What is it?" she asked over the buzz of her miniature hurricane zipping around her. It was enough to drown out the engine noise for a moment.
  
  "Trouble," I said, hefting my spear and cannon as Ironclad came up behind me. "Get to the van. Grue," I called, "throw up some more darkness in the entrance, hide yourselves." Whirlygig was still standing by, eyes wide over her mask. "Go," I snapped at her.
  
  Ironclad raised his fists as Whirlygig hurried off. "So what do I do?" he asked.
  
  "Depends on what comes through the door," I began, just as the engine cut out. I checked with bloodsight and saw someone big swing their leg off a motorcycle and come for the door. Grue threw out enough darkness to block the main doorway from floor to ceiling, shielding them from view. Whirlygig disappeared through it, tendrils of darkness being whipped out and around by her telekinesis as she plunged through.
  
  The door at the other end of the warehouse swung open, followed by an angry shout of "What the hell is this?"
  
  The man who came through was big and brawny beneath his leather jacket and jeans. As he threw the jacket off, I could see he was bare-chested beneath it, with a carpet of thick body hair as blonde as the greasy mess on his head. One bicep had E88 tattooed across it; the other had a wolf"s head over a swastika.
  
  Butcher started to laugh as the man stalked forward, huffing furiously. The crude mask of sheet metal he wore gave his puffs a tinny quality.
  
  "Oh, this is going to be fucking fantastic!" Butcher crowed as the newcomer came to a halt, spikes and blades and barbs and hooks sprouting from his hairy shoulders, from his bruised knuckles, and from the ragged holes in the knees of his jeans.
  
  "The fuck are you doing to my ring?" demanded Hookwolf, the most rampantly homicidal cape in the Empire.
  
  7.7
  Saturday 26th March, South Downtown, E88 Dog-fighting Ring
  
  Years ago, the Butchers had considered recruiting Hookwolf. Back then he"d made a name for himself as an underground pit fighter who"d been dangerous even before he gained powers, and a nightmare afterward. When he wasn"t pummelling people into the ground for money, he was putting them in the ground for money, on a much more permanent basis.
  
  Then he"d got greedy, or got angry; he"d had some long-standing grudge with the guy who ran the fights, some minor villain called Ragtime. Whatever the details, Hookwolf had left him spread all over the floor, torn open the safe, and ran off with all the money he could carry.
  
  Plenty of groups had come after him, and not just heroes- plenty of villains had been making money at Ragtime"s events, and they didn"t want to lose it. So Hookwolf had been forced to keep running, until an organisation had offered him shelter.
  
  After that, Hookwolf had racked up a huge count of brutal kills in service to the Empire, quickly earning a reputation as one of the most dangerous guys around. He led an entire cell of the Empire Eighty Eight, more violent and rough than the rest, with Stormtiger and Cricket as his followers from his pit fighter days.
  
  I"d beaten down and put away both of his subordinates in the recent past. And now I was standing in the middle of Hookwolf"s business just as I"d finished pulling it apart, watching the man shift into a fighting stance with a growl as more and more blades and needles pushed their way out of his skin.
  
  Butchers laugh was devilish. "Man oh man, you really fucked the dog here! Only way you could make this worse would be ploughing his girlfriend!"
  
  The bugs I"d slipped onto the Undersiders and the guys we"d tied up started moving away from the factory, down the street and away from trouble. That made things easier- I just had to delay long enough for the Undersiders to get clear, then make a break for it.
  
  "Hey, fuck that!" Quarrel shouted. "You get in there and kick some ass right fucking now!"
  
  "Elpis, what the fuck do we do?" Ironclad hissed to me.
  
  "Fighting retreat. Wait for my signal," I hissed back. Louder, I called across to Hookwolf, "Sorry, we thought you"d be gone longer. Did you forget your wallet or something?"
  
  "My phone."
  
  I blinked. "Seriously?"
  
  "Shit, your luck sucks," Firecracker giggled with a slightly nervous edge. "You better come out of this alive, because I don"t wanna be sharing a head with this guy."
  
  "Fucking amen to that," Bearskin agreed fervently.
  
  "Couple of our guys managed to send a message when our last ring got busted. They said you were working with the Undersiders. I didn"t think you"d be stupid enough to try it twice in one week, with even less backup," he sneered, directing a glance at Ironclad.
  
  "Well, nothing personal," I said, managing to keep my voice steady as I flicked my spear back into its holster and drew my flail. "We just don"t like people who hurt dogs, or white supremacists. And you"re both, so..." I casually pressed a switch on the air cannon, and the stock and grips loosened slightly with a muted click.
  
  I didn"t think I could beat him as I was. Damage him, certainly, but not beat him. Quarrel had traded a few blows with him during the clash between Empire and Teeth back in January, and his durability was impressive. She"d considered simply shooting arrows through his eyes at long-range, but I didn"t have that option.
  
  That didn"t mean I was going to make it easy for him.
  
  "You seriously trying to be funny right now?" Hookwolf snarled. "You"ve been a thorn in the Empire"s side for far too long. Kaiser wants you out of the picture, and he doesn"t give a fat wet shit about how many pieces I have to chop you into to do it."
  
  "Classy," I muttered.
  
  "And you," Hookwolf pointed a finger at Ironclad, little barbs sprouting from every joint, "Krieg told me about you. You cost us a lot of money, and I"m taking it out of your hide."
  
  Ironclad"s armour shuffled around a little, the parts reorganising themselves for a second. "I can control metal," Ironclad said in a tight voice. "You can"t hurt me."
  
  Hookwolf looked at him for a long second, then chuckled. "Yeah? Let"s test that."
  
  I raised the air cannon and fired a pepper dust round right into his face.
  
  Hookwolf moved to dodge it with a fighter"s reflexes, but the canister clipped him on the side of the head, and white dust erupted all around his head. He stumbled backward out of the cloud, a forest of spikes lancing from him as he cursed and rubbed at his eyes.
  
  "Go," I roared, charging forward as I flipped the cannon in my hand and flicked the trigger handle hard. The stock, the trigger and the forward grip all flicked out into a five-foot long pole with the cannon"s body at the end. The recoil reduction system at the back split open, revealing the opening I"d added in the upgrades.
  
  With my other hand, I slotted the flail"s handle into the opening. Mechanisms inside locked the flail into place and connected its internal kinetic battery with the air cannon"s charging systems and air reserve.
  
  Another flick of the wrist locked my warhammer into position as I ran forward. As I reached Hookwolf, I landed my next stride on the ball of my foot and spun like a top, pulling the trigger. The cannon fired, creating a gust of air that propelled me around in a pirouette that brought the hammer"s head, the kinetic flail, up under Hookwolf"s guard and into his spike-laden chest.
  
  Hookwolf went tumbling backward with an enormous crash, roaring curses as he clattered across the floor. Ironclad rushed past me, delivering a mighty kick to Hookwolf as he crouched, sending him skidding back even further.
  
  "God almighty," Tock Tick said gleefully. "I knew it"d be powerful, but this..."
  
  I agreed with him, even as I continued forward. The warhammer"s design had come to me after trading notes with Kid Win- since both the air cannon and kinetic flail used stored energy, it seemed like they"d mesh together well. But the difference between my theories and hopes for the weapon versus seeing it in action- that was like the difference between reading a love poem and losing your virginity.
  
  I could see Hookwolf changing further through bloodsight, pushing more metal out of himself and drawing his remaining flesh into a tight core at his centre, shielded by all his blades. The form of a wolf emerged from the mass with the sound of a thousand scraping knives, every tuft of fur a dagger, every claw a dagger, every tooth a spearhead. Only the eyes were still human, and blades whisked over them constantly in a barely-visible blur.
  
  "Ironclad, fall back," I yelled, closing in. "And check your earplugs!"
  
  Thankfully Ironclad obeyed at once, backing away from Hookwolf"s form in a cautious stance. I could see his blood silhouette inside probing at his ears to check for the earplugs I"d insisted he wear today. I snapped my neck from side to side to deploy my own ear covers inside my helmet, just in case.
  
  I drew the spear again and flicked it out to full length, a six foot pole with a leaf-shaped head. I levelled it at Hookwolf as he turned to me with gnashing teeth, and hit the switch. The mechanisms inside spun up to speed, and the spear vibrated as it emitted a harsh screech of sound from the tip, aimed directly at Hookwolf.
  
  I saw his form ripple and writhe as the sound hit; I"d developed the spear"s sonic attack from the recordings of Cricket the Protectorate had provided me and a few scans of Butcher"s pain blast ability. Even for someone who didn"t currently have ears, that had to hurt.
  
  "Excellent," Needler hissed.
  
  It wasn"t enough to stop him though. Hookwolf charged for me, extra spikes sprouting from him; I feinted and dodged, slamming the hammer into his flank. It was a lesser blow than the first, but it still left the spikes on that side flattened and bent before he managed to replace them with new metal.
  
  I fired the spear at him again as I backed away, setting the hammer controls to automatic before tossing it to Ironclad. "If you want to fight, then keep hitting him, don"t let him grab you, and if I say run, you run. Got it?" I remembered to open my ear covers to hear his answer.
  
  Ironclad raised the hammer one-handed. "Hell yeah."
  
  I drew one of my swords to match the spear, edges out and oscillator to maximum. "Let"s do this."
  
  Hookwolf"s form rippled- the paws became something more like wrecking balls, and his tail tripled in length, with axe blades spaced along its length.
  
  "This will be interesting," Vladimir mused as we charged at each other.
  
  I ducked under Hookwolf"s swipe and slashed at his leg, sending fragments of metal falling to the floor as I fired another sonic blast into his head. Without the covers I could hear the edges of it, a high-pitched shriek like someone playing a violin with a hacksaw.
  
   Gnashing jaws almost caught the spear before I pulled it away, and then Hookwolf dodged back as Ironclad swung from overhead. The hammer hit the floor instead, shattering the concrete.
  
  Hookwolf spun in a circle, sending that tail lashing out to rip through the air. Ironclad yelled as it hit his leg and cut through, sending ball bearings scattering across the floor. I managed to leap over the tail as it came around, swiping the sword across it to chop the tip off.
  
  Hookwolf reared up on his hind legs, turning his front paws into massive spikes. He swung one at Ironclad, catching him in the shoulder. I charged forward as Hookwolf blocked Ironclad"s return blow with the other spike; I dodged Hookwolf"s awkward swing of his tail and kicked off Ironclad"s knee as he struggling with Hookwolf"s equal mass, stabbing my sword into the joint of Hookwolf"s arm.
  
  The arm bent, and Ironclad pulled himself free of the spike, stumbling away, but Hookwolf caught him a great raking slash across his back as he turned. Ironclad cried out, and I roared, dropping to the ground as Hookwolf came for me again.
  
  "I"ll make you pay for that!" I yelled, giving ground as Hookwolf created a new pair of wolf paws and shifted the spike arms to his shoulders, pursing me as a quadruped while jabbing those massive spikes at me. I hacked pieces off him every time he attacked, and it clearly hurt, but it wasn"t doing significant damage.
  
  At the edge of my range, I could feel some of the bugs I"d left on the Undersiders coming back. Not all- it was hard to keep insects on someone once they were outside my control- but enough to sense their movement. I hoped they wouldn"t be foolish enough to try and help; this fight was beyond them.
  
  Hookwolf"s experience was demonstrated in his movements- how he powered through the pain of the sonic attacks, how he used only the necessary movements to dodge my attacks, and how he was changing his form when I landed a hit, adding more metal to soften the blow, like a boxer tensing before a punch. His strength was enough that every blow sent jitters through my arms, and he was fast, fast enough to make the air whistle through his hooks.
  
  I spared a glance past him at Ironclad, who"d recovered and was following after us, if hesitantly. Bloodsight showed no injury, but that slash across his armour must have shaken him.
  
  That glance cost me though- danger sense flared, and I ducked away from Hookwolf"s spike, only for the joint to reverse itself mid-swing and slam into my chest.
  
  The blow sent me back, stumbling and falling. Hookwolf stabbed down with both spikes and I rolled away, slashing with the sword as I went, cutting a huge gash in one that almost severed it. Then Hookwolf had to turn and face Ironclad as he charged like a steam train, swinging the hammer in great sweeping arcs that drove Hookwolf back.
  
  "Get up, Taylor!" Flinch pleaded. I forced myself to my feet, leaving the spear on the ground as I drew my other sword. The sonic attacks weren"t doing enough, so I"d have to try cutting off as much metal as I could.
  
  I hit the third triggers and brought the swords together as Ironclad landed a blow to Hookwolf"s jaw that sent metal teeth flying across the floor.
  
  "Hurry!" Muramasa demanded as Ironclad pressed the advantage, grabbing one of Hookwolf"s spike arms and slamming the hammer into the joint, hard enough to snap it off.
  
  Hookwolf"s form rippled all over, and he threw himself over Ironclad like a blanket, his wolf form losing detail as he tried to engulf ironclad. The shifting and roiling of the blades wore away at Ironclad"s armour as they struggled against each other- I could see pieces falling to the floor as he tried to prise Hookwolf off him, the villain fighting back with holds and grapples.
  
  The greatsword came together with a final click, and I charged with a snarl. I"d pry Hookwolf off Ironclad like a barnacle off a rock, and then I"d see if my greatsword could reach the softer parts at his core. I cranked it to full oscillation as I ran, ready to cut pieces off.
  
  Loud cracking noises echoed across the factory as little bits of glass shattered against Hookwolf"s back. When I looked, Whirlygig was standing just past the wall of darkness at the door, tendrils of the black stuff swirling around her counter-clockwise like her debris. She was shaking, but her left arm was outstretched as she fired off more marbles from her telekinetic tornado.
  
  Hookwolf"s feet morphed into grasping claws that tore at Ironclad"s knees- he toppled over with a yell and a crash, but Hookwolf didn"t continue. Instead he fell back, limbs and head shifting so he landed on all fours facing the door, already breaking into a run as his paws hit the ground.
  
  I pushed myself even faster, leaping forward to swing at Hookwolf. He made to veer aside, but I brought the sword around with enough speed and strength and Muramasa"s sharpening power to carve right through his front left leg and gouge a hole in his flank.
  
  Caught mid-step, Hookwolf lost his balance and crashed to the ground. I fell into a roll and came up thrusting, driving it at the wound. He formed layers and layers of hooks and spikes over it, but I pierced almost to his core, set my feet and pushed harder.
  
  Hookwolf"s tail came around, heralded by danger sense, and I had to jump back, only to slash at the tail as he pulled it away. More blades clattered to the floor.
  
  Hookwolf rolled away from me, morphing himself again to come up on his feet, left paw already replaced. He threw himself at the door again, spike arms moved to his side as extra legs.
  
  "Get him!" Nemean roared. I grabbed at his tail with my left hand as he fled, and pulled on it with all my strength, ignoring how the blades screeched and scraped and cut into my gauntlet as I tightened my grip. I felt Hookwolf"s body jerk as I slowed him down, and raised the sword to take more limbs off him.
  
  And then he flicked his tail, barbs digging into my cape as it caught the silk; and the tail snapped off just past my hand, leaving me with a handful of metal spikes that fell apart without a connection to him, leaving Hookwolf to sprint for the door.
  
  I threw myself after him, but he had a head start, a longer stride, and six legs. Worse, I could see the Undersiders as red shapes inside the darkness as Whirlygig desperately fired more debris. Whether Hookwolf was aiming for an easy exit from a hard fight or a softer target, I didn"t know- but I knew he could shred them in passing without missing a step.
  
  My muscles screamed as much as the Butchers, but I physically couldn"t go any faster. My grapplers couldn"t stop him, nets wouldn"t slow him, air and pepper would be an annoyance.
  
  Whirlygig was screaming as Grue pulled her back into the dark- not fast enough, Hookwolf was almost upon them, he was going to kill them, they were going to die, they were kids going to die, they were kids going to die because of me-
  
  Fire burst from me in every direction, my ears popping as I snapped into place between Hookwolf and Whirlygig. He tried to stop, claws gouging into the ground, but all he did was skid across the floor as I slammed the sword down on his head with a raging yell.
  
  The blow cleaved right through the wolf"s head from snout to nape, and carried through to the floor. The two halves of Hookwolf"s head flopped apart on his neck, an eye on each, and his form almost dissolved as his metal writhed and spasmed.
  
  The sword was wedged into the ground, and I left it there instead of wasting time, bounding forward to slam a punch into the inside of his head, Needler"s power guiding me to where the armour was weakest around his right eye. His metal crumpled under the blow, and I pursued, tearing at the metal with my hands.
  
  Stoneknapper"s fizz couldn"t get a grip on it, but sheer Brute strength was enough for me to rip chunks away. The blades scratched at my armour, but I didn"t care. My cape got snagged, and the catches gave way to let it fall off- just a detail. I dug my fingers in and gouged. Claws sprouted from my fingers inside the gauntlets, pressing against the metal, and inside my helmet my teeth grew into fangs.
  
  Somehow, Hookwolf rallied- his head flowed back together, almost trapping my arm, and he threw himself backward in a flip, his tail barely scraping my armour as he executed a morphing roll to the middle of the floor, near the remains of the fighting ring.
  
  I turned to grab my sword-
  
  -and saw the Undersiders, staring at me in terror. Whirlygig"s eyes were wide enough to see the white all around, Grue was in a defensive stance, and Bitch was pressed in close to the biggest of her dogs, staring at me. Tattletale"s expression was an open-mouthed mask of shock.
  
  Butcher laughed cruelly. "You"ve done it now, girl!" he howled. "Secret"s out! No more hero shit, we"re finally getting some action!"
  
  "No, no, no," Flinch moaned as I reflexively grabbed the sword"s handle and yanked it free. The Undersiders flinched away from me, Whirlygig letting out a muffled squeak.
  
  Firecracker winced. "Maybe you can say it"s Tinkertech?"
  
  "Butcher."
  
  I couldn"t stop myself from turning my head back toward Hookwolf. He"d brought his mouth and lungs out of his core, hidden inside the wolf jaws, and his voice was rough with exertion. Maybe a trace of fear.
  
  "So this is where you"ve been hiding," he rasped, his wolf form slowly reforming and growing. "I honestly figured you were gone for good. What kind of warrior hides away like that?"
  
  "Taylor, lie," Tactical urged me. "Holy Mary, you have to lie like the devil, because I am not having him along with us."
  
  "Did I hit you that hard in the head?" I asked, trying to keep my tone light. "You must have brain damage if you think I"m the fucking Butcher."
  
  The metal wolf head slowly rocked from side to side. "No. I know it"s you. That teleport- I"ve seen it, felt it. I thought your fighting was familiar- it was just missing a few pieces." He got to his paws. "What happened to you?"
  
  "Elpis?" Ironclad had pulled his feet back on and stood up, but the hammer hung loose at his side. "He"s wrong, isn"t he? That"s just some new tech you didn"t mention? You- you can"t be the Butcher, it doesn"t make sense."
  
  I tried to speak, but the words wouldn"t come. I pushed down Butcher and Dirty Rotter as they jeered and laughed, followed by Quarrel as she taunted me, but I still couldn"t think of a damn thing to say to my friend.
  
  The rest of the Butchers were in turmoil too, all with different wants. Some, like Muramasa, wanted me to use this as my first proper kill. Anchorage insisted I win so they wouldn"t be stuck with Hookwolf. A few just wanted Hookwolf dead. Their voices were a constant now as they talked all at once.
  
  "Holy fucking shit," I heard Whirlygig whisper behind me in a trembling voice.
  
  "Does anyone else want to just pretend that was Tinkertech and move on?" Tattletale suggested with nervous cheer. "Because I"m in if anyone else is."
  
  The Butchers kept their voices low, afraid of being pushed into the dark, but that just created a susurrus of arguments and insults and demands that rang through my head. I could feel the insects around me responding to my distress, moving faster in frenzied patterns as I racked my brain for a solution.
  
  "Well," Hookwolf said. "I"ll see you some other time. Kaiser"ll want to know about this."
  
  Without warning, he threw himself in the direction of the loading bay, paws throwing up chips of concrete with every step.
  
  I spun on the spot and teleported in front of him again, greatsword slicing him from jaw to shoulder. His leg came off and shattered into pieces as he collapsed, rolled, came up again.
  
  I hit him with pain, and felt sick at how easy the sensation of hot wires stabbing out from me into him was. Hookwolf"s form collapsed like butter in a frying pan, and I carved another huge chunk off him with the greatsword.
  
  I couldn"t let him leave, not now. Kaiser would declare war and send his forces after me. The Protectorate and New Wave would turn on me with no hesitation. The ABB would probably jump in just because it might benefit them.
  
  And I"d just be Butcher XV.
  
  So as the pain receded, I reached for Dirty Rotter"s creeping decay, and let it flow down the greatsword like pouring noisome filth on it. It was an old trick that Rotter had learned- it required a constant flow of his power, and without careful concentration it could destroy the weapon you were using, but it was devastating when it worked.
  
  As Hookwolf backed away, I followed, and where the sword cut at him, the metal around the wound began to slowly rust. I pulled on my bugs too, and they came from all around- the ceiling, the drains, through the windows and doors to crowd the air in a humming, teeming cloud.
  
  Hookwolf abandoned the wolf shape, lashing out with tentacles of blades as he collapsed into a ball, rolling away from me. I severed two with a swipe and teleported behind him, driving the sword into his body.
  
  The point just grazed his core when a pillar of blades erupted around the wound like a geyser, forcing the blade out and pushing me back. Hookwolf spun, tentacles whipping about, backing away on spidery legs. Some of the tentacles scraped off my armour, and one caught my jaw. I felt the blow turn my head and scrape hard along my armour.
  
  I took one step back, then let boiling red rage pour out of me to spill over Hookwolf. Bearskin"s power was perfect for keeping people from trying to flee- if you could withstand their attacks.
  
  Hookwolf shuddered and leapt.
  
  I jumped to the side and dragged the sword through his side as he passed me, splitting the metal with a discordant screech and a shower of sparks. He rounded on me the moment he landed, spikes lancing out from the ball toward me. I backed up, flicking the sword around in complicated patterns, using the long handle as a lever. More sharp pieces tinkled on the floor, the sound weirdly merry compared to the rest of the moment.
  
  Bearskin"s power reached its limit, the red fog clearing, and Hookwolf visibly shook himself as his brain started working again. He pulled the spikes back in and morphed them into legs, dodging around me without taking his eyes away.
  
  I hit him with pain again, but this time he rolled aside, breaking the connection, and swung a tentacle low at my legs. I jumped over it, he jumped back, still going for the exit.
  
  A wave of darkness flowed across the room, blocking the loading bay doors from view. Grue"s hand was outstretched as he knelt to pick up the sonic spear where I"d dropped it.
  
  Beside him, Whirlygig floated off the ground, emptying every pocket she had. Bits of metal flashed in her storm- fragments that had been cut from Hookwolf. Bitch whistled, and her dogs came to heel, growling through massive jaws. Tattletale stood in the shadow of the smallest dog, staring intently at Hookwolf with her arms clutched to her middle.
  
  Tactical"s strategy power unfolded in my mind, drawing out a plan that incorporated their abilities. I glanced the other way, and saw Ironclad staring at me, pale and confused through the helmet.
  
  "I"m sorry," I managed to say. Then I yelled, "Hit him with everything!" and leapt forward.
  
  Hookwolf shot upward on a few dozen spindly legs, tottering toward one of the support pillars. Even as I hacked through his legs, they regrew, or the intact ones split into new ones like a hydra.
  
  "He"s going for the roof!" Anchorage warned me. I doubted the pillar could take Hookwolf"s weight for him to climb out- but maybe that was the point, to collapse it on top of us and escape in the chaos.
  
  I teleported upwards, balancing on a girder just as Hookwolf rose up to the same height. He backpedaled furiously, legs clacking loudly, but I just jumped after him and sliced through half of them in one swing. I hit the ground and rolled to come up and swing back the other way, chopping the rest of his legs off as well.
  
  Hookwolf teetered and collapsed like a tree trunk, rolling away from me across his own discarded metal. I snarled and chased after him, but he seemed to have gained a second wind as he suddenly flipped and headed towards the Undersiders again.
  
  Heavy footsteps sounded as Ironclad broke into a run, raising the hammer. Stretched out to his maximum height, he overtook me and knocked Hookwolf sideways with a massive swing.
  
  Hookwolf grew huge spikes to dig into the floor and bring himself to a halt as Ironclad and I closed in on him- then his metal rippled again as a piercing screech filled the air. Grue was pointing the sonic spear at him while Tattletale fiddled with the controls- the noise got louder as she found the volume dial.
  
  The Hookwolf ball extended some spikes and shrank others to roll away, clattering over more metal as he fled from the noise and our weapons, picking up speed as he went.
  
  "Whirl!" I heard Tattletale yell. "Spread out, grab all the metal!"
  
  I teleported behind Hookwolf as he fled and hit him with pain, sending him staggering off in yet another direction on hastily formed legs.
  
  "Elpis!" Tattletale called. "Don"t let him get any of his metal back! He"s re-absorbing it to keep his strength up!"
  
  The tip of my sword caught Hookwolf"s ankle as I chased him, sending him limping long enough for me to close the distance and slam a punch into the pit that held his eye. Blades bent and ground against my gauntlet, and Hookwolf"s body folded away from the blow.
  
  Ironclad brought the hammer down on the top of him, knocking a huge dent in his top. I saw Hookwolf"s core bend a little at his centre under the impact. The movement of his blades stalled, and his legs gave out from under him.
  
  I snarled, hefted my greatsword, and started swinging, Muramasa"s sharpening pushed to the very limit. Metal fragments flew as I slashed and spun, shearing blades off at every angle. Hookwolf tried to throw himself away, but Ironclad slammed a hand onto him and gripped tight, ignoring how Hookwolf"s frantic thrashing tore at his gauntlet.
  
  There was a sick sense of relief to be found as I carved away at Hookwolf"s form. All my powers brought to bear, no more secrets to keep, facing off against a genuine piece of shit. No more holding back, no more half-measures.
  
  And all it would cost me was the last bit of my innocence.
  
  The fragments fell to the ground in heaps, and as I hacked more away from Hookwolf"s body, the scraps started to move- slowly at first, then faster, all drifting to the right.
  
  I glanced, and saw Whirlygig hovering a foot above the floor, the centre point of a storm as she drew the metal in with her telekinesis, hurling debris around in a wide circle that filled with larger and larger pieces as she picked up speed. Bits of cracked concrete joined the fragments as the floor was swept clean by an indoor hurricane. The Undersiders stood on the opposite side from us, Grue still holding the sonic spear.
  
  Hookwolf jerked and writhed, then somehow wrestled himself loose from Ironclad"s grip, narrowly dodging a wild swing of the kinetic hammer as he left blades behind in Ironclad"s hand, bounding for the centre of the storm in a shape that almost looked wolflike once more.
  
  "He"s going for her again!" Nemean roared.
  
  Firecracker"s teleport was ready. I grasped that feeling of imbalance and falling and let the fire snap me into place in front of him once more, driving the sword forward in a thrust to his core.
  
  Hookwolf"s own momentum drove him onto the sword, even as he tried to stop, to change his form and armour himself up. I felt the sword cut into the very edge of his core.
  
  Hookwolf unfolded all at once, and I heard him scream in pain as his human body reformed at the centre of a thousand blades. The same cut was repeated in a dozen places over his body- his arms and legs and torso all bleeding red.
  
  I balked for a second, struck by the horror of what I was doing- using the Butcher powers like this, to take a man apart in gruesome fashion.
  
  "Kill you," Hookwolf howled, more metal extruding from his skin to patch up his wounds. "I"ll chew your fucking legs off!"
  
  I gritted my teeth and raised the sword, edged with fury and coated in rot. Another slash set metal flying, immediately lifted away and into the storm. Whirlygig rose into the air, hanging well above our heads as I struck at Hookwolf again; with the sword, with pain, with decay, with thousands of insects pouring into the gaps between his blades, seeking the vulnerable body within.
  
  Hookwolf tried to tuck his flesh away, but his metal was forming slower and slower, and I"d found my rhythm now, circling around him to cut and hack and cleave. The others hung back- this wasn"t their fight anymore, not between two monsters.
  
  Bit by bit, I whittled Hookwolf away, paring him down to the fat metal core that housed his humanity. A blast of pain had him twitch and unfold slightly, and Needler"s Thinker power guided my hand to the crack, giving me an opening to force his core open.
  
  Hookwolf burst back into human form, stabbing wildly at my head with a blade from each fist. I dropped the sword- too long for me to use at this range- and deflected his stabs with silat, countering with an elbow to his jaw that dented his mask.
  
  He reeled back, and I pursued with punishing blows, feeling the metal under his skin bend and give under my strength. Insects flew into his eyes to blind him, danger sense let me dodge him, and Needler"s skills and powers let me take him apart, hammering at his wounds until he fell to one knee.
  
  Even then he wasn"t finished. Hookwolf took one last desperate stab at me with that knuckle blade as big as a kitchen knife. I skipped aside, grabbed his wrist, and brought my fist down on the flat of the blade.
  
  It snapped off, and Hookwolf screamed in pain.
  
  A haymaker right to the nose cut him off, and he toppled over. I followed him, slamming a knee down onto his chest as I rammed another punch into his face.
  
  And another.
  
  And another.
  
  And another.
  
  Finally, when he"d stopped struggling, and stopped groaning, I lowered my fists, checking him with bloodsight. He was still alive, heartbeat and breath going, although bruises and fractures ran through every piece of him.
  
  As I looked down at him, at his heartbeat highlighted through Vladimir"s power, I realised there was fresh red on me as well- blood smeared all over my knuckles from his wounds.
  
  I got my feet under me and rose off him, staring down at the battered, bloodied wolf mask for a long moment. Around me, Whirlygig"s storm began to slow, the whistling of her debris quieting, bits of it dropping to the ground with a clatter.
  
  "You gotta do it," Bearskin said at last.
  
  I sighed, swallowed, and turned away.
  
  "Elpis?" Ironclad asked as I trudged back to where I dropped my greatsword.
  
  "Ironclad," I said haltingly, picking up the sword with stiff fingers, "I need you to step outside for a bit."
  
  "What?"
  
  I hefted the sword. "I don"t want you to see this."
  
  "What? No- no, wait, what the fuck!?" Ironclad stomped over, tossing the hammer aside to stand between me and Hookwolf. I could see a lot of his face through the openings of his helmet, and his face was pale and frightened.
  
  The storm was dying around us, letting everything drop from biggest to smallest, forming a perfect circle of debris around us. I felt Whirlygig touch the floor through my bugs and scurry over to the rest of her team, but I only distantly noticed it, too occupied with my friend.
  
  "Elpis, what the hell is wrong with you?! You can"t kill him!"
  
  "I have to," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
  
  "No you don"t! No you fucking don"t, Elpis! Why would you think that?"
  
  "Because he saw me. He saw my powers, Ironclad. I"m exposed now. He"ll never keep the secret."
  
  "That doesn"t mean you"re supposed to kill him!" Ironclad shouted. "There"s- there"s got to be options!"
  
  Abruptly, I lost my temper. "You"re right, Ironclad, there are options. One, I can let him go, and he"ll go back to the Empire and tell Kaiser I"m the Butcher, who"ll declare war to get rid of me. Two, I can turn him in, he"ll tell the heroes I"m the Butcher, and they"ll start a witch hunt just for me. Three, I can kill a racist supervillain with a laundry list of homicides as quickly and painlessly as possible- and then I have to fucking live with it, because it"s the only way to keep every psycho on the East Coast coming for my head."
  
  Ironclad took a step back. "No," he whispered.
  
  "Please, Ironclad, just go," I begged. "There"s nothing else we can do."
  
  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I spun around, and the Undersiders flinched back. The dogs growled, Grue"s darkness streamed off him, and Whirlygig let out a squeak, feet leaving the ground as she floated a few inches up.
  
  Tattletale was the odd one out. She stood a few paces in front of them, her arms folded over her middle. I vaguely realised she was holding a bundle of fabric to her stomach.
  
  "There might be another option," she offered in a careful tone.
  
  "...what?"
  
  "Well, Hookwolf"s been convicted and sentenced to the Birdcage," Tattletale explained, cocking her head slightly. "The heroes caught him twice, but he escaped both times."
  
  "What"s your point?" I demanded.
  
  "My point is, the Birdcage could be option four. Nobody ever gets out, nobody communicates- it"ll keep him from telling anyone that can actually act on it, and it"s exactly what he deserves."
  
  I shook my head. "No, that won"t work. It"ll take days to sort a prison transport, and the Empire will try to break him out. There"s too much time for him to wake up and tell someone."
  
  "It"d take days for a regular prison transport, yes," Tattletale said, stepping closer. "But Hookwolf"s well past his third strike. Hell, he"s past his thirtieth. For him, they could call in a high-speed transport to scoot him over ASAP."
  
  I stared at her for a long moment. Her faint smile didn"t waver as the silence dragged on. Then I opened my helmet.
  
  "How fast are we talking?"
  
  "God"s wounds, are we doing this?" Vladimir asked.
  
  Tattletale"s smile widened, showing a flash of teeth. "One of Dragon"s aircraft. The Protectorate have her on alert after Coil got busted out."
  
  None of the Butchers had seen Dragon"s tech in person, but her reputation was globally recognised. If it was a Dragon craft, it could certainly make the trip to wherever the Birdcage actually was before Hookwolf could wake up and talk.
  
  In fact, I dimly remembered that Miss Militia had mentioned something like this the last time we"d talked.
  
  It sounded like it could work- a way to preserve my life as Elpis. But scepticism reared its head quickly.
  
  "How do you know they"ve got Dragon on call?" I asked suspiciously.
  
  Tattletale"s cocky smile widened into a cheeky grin. "Well, if we"re sharing secrets, I may have done a little hacking on some of the PRT"s less secure files. There was a mass email sent out to everyone- it wasn"t even hard to find."
  
  She unfolded her arms from her stomach, and the bundle she was holding unfolded as she held it out by the corners.
  
  It was my cape. The fabric was torn in a dozen places, wide rents exposing the woven steel cables underneath, but the blue silk was still hanging on despite the punishment it had taken. Tattletale must have picked it up from where it had been pulled off.
  
  "You want to keep being a hero," Tattletale said, "And we need you to keep being a hero. Hell, this city needs you to keep being a hero. So what do you say?" She wiggled the cape teasingly.
  
  I looked at her, and I looked at the cape. Then I looked down at my sword. The fight had seriously damaged it- the edges were chipped in places, and the metal was scratched and scored all over- not enough to stop it from working, but it looked ugly as sin. Blood stained the very tip, but only because the oscillation had shaken off all the rest.
  
  "Guys?" I asked. "What do you think?"
  
  "You can do this," Flinch said immediately.
  
  Tock Tick shrugged. "It"s crazy. But that"s our specialty. Besides, I want to get a look at Dragon"s tech."
  
  "Do it," Needler said.
  
  "I wouldn"t mind better fights," Anchorage admitted, "But slam-dunking his ass into the "cage sounds like fun. Let"s rock!"
  
  The Butchers all shouted and cajoled and wheedled, but the general consensus was clear: do it.
  
  I raised my head, and flipped the greatsword around in my hand to drive it into the floor, turning the oscillation off before it damaged itself on the concrete.
  
  Tattletale"s smile was insufferably self-satisfied as I took my cape from her hands and carefully fastened it to my shoulders again.
  
  I turned and looked up at Ironclad. "You were right. I"m sorry."
  
  My friend stared at me for a long moment, swallowing heavily. "You owe me an explanation," he said at last.
  
  I winced, but nodded. At length, he nodded back.
  
  I turned to the Undersiders. "I assume you guys are smart enough to keep your mouths shut?" I asked for completion"s sake.
  
  Whirlygig nodded so frantically her head was a blur. Grue"s "yes" echoed from the darkness steaming off him, and Bitch just grunted an affirmative without making eye contact.
  
  I sighed and shifted my shoulders, feeling the weight of my cape move slightly. "Okay," I said. "This is what we"re going to do."
  
  7.8
  Saturday 26th March, Downtown
  
  "So, if you"ve been Butcher all this time," Tarquin said at last, "What do they think of me?"
  
  I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. "Honestly, it"s mostly positive. They like your power and your attitude. Anchorage especially, but she"s kind of a blunt instrument herself."
  
  "Fuck you too, white girl," Anchorage laughed.
  
  "Vladimir too. I guess it"s because he likes other people with a dramatic flair."
  
  Tarquin managed a smile. "Good taste."
  
  "Thank you," Vladimir said primly.
  
  "He says thanks," I relayed.
  
  There was still plenty of awkwardness in the air, even after I"d answered his questions on how I"d inherited, how I"d hidden my powers, and what those powers were.
  
  Probably because I could feel him holding back other questions I could only guess at.
  
  Maybe it was because he was slumped in the back seat, half in and out of his armour, the helmet pulled hallway up to show some of his face. There were new bits in the mass- Hookwolf"s leftover metal, some of it shiny and razor-sharp, some of it rusted and blunt.
  
  Or perhaps it was because an unconscious Hookwolf was trussed up in the shotgun seat, tied up with everything we"d been able to find- plastic ties, lengths of rope, and even some chains and wire from Tarquin"s armour. I"d straightened out his mask a little, but it still sat crooked on his face, and blood from a broken nose had oozed down to stain his neck and chest.
  
  I"d used my one precious dose of Armsmaster"s tranquiliser to ensure he"d stay under, but even though I trusted the Tinker"s work, sitting in an enclosed space next to a hardened supervillian, with only flimsy restraints, a concussion and some Tinker drugs I had no experience with to keep him handled, was not good for my nerves.
  
  "Focus," Tactical scolded me. "You"ve only got one shot at this. Eyes on the road."
  
  I hastily snapped my head forward again, but even in Downtown, traffic was sparse on a Sunday afternoon. We"d made good time from the dog fighting ring to the rendezvous point the PRT had directed us to when I"d called them.
  
  The building was pretty boring- six stories of dark brown brick and dark glass, standing alone on an grassy hill between the Docks and Downtown. A stretch of beach sat on the other side. I turned into the parking lot, right between the PRT vans that were parked at either end, turret-mounted hoses on top manned by troopers ready to spray containment foam at anything.
  
  I"d barely turned off the engine when a red blur materialised at the window, resolving into Velocity as he slowed to normal speed. I opened the door and nodded to him briefly.
  
  "Hookwolf"s unconscious, and I used some tranquiliser, but if we can check to make sure he"s not going to wake up that"d be great," I explained in a rush.
  
  Velocity leaned over to peek into the chariot"s interior, and gave a low whistle at the sight of Hookwolf. "Damn," he muttered, straightening up and pressing a finger to his ear. I vaguely noticed that the gloves he was wearing had more padding over the knuckles than last time. "Armsmaster, Velocity. Can confirm Hookwolf is confirmed, Elpis is requesting check and additional tranquilisers."
  
  A pause, a nod, and he took his finger away.
  
  "Let"s get him up the hill," he said briskly, blurring around to the other side.
  
  Ironclad squeezed himself out of the back seat as I jogged around to help Velocity haul Hookwolf out. A pair of troopers were coming down the hill to help just as I passed the villain to Ironclad, who slung the man over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
  
  "Man, he"s heavy," Ironclad muttered, heading up the hill. His footsteps left impressions in the grass, tearing up the soil as he strode toward the building, forcing me to jog to keep up.
  
  Nemean sighed. "He"s hurting."
  
  I winced, but I couldn"t deny it. Even if I"d answered everything he"d asked me, he"d only just found out I was keeping a huge secret from him. That was going to take time.
  
  There were a few more troopers standing in front of the doors as we approached, armed and ready. Armsmaster stood between them, halberd planted firmly on the ground. Gargoyle was to the right, shifting nervously. I saw his eyes widen as he spotted Hookwolf laid on Ironclad"s shoulder.
  
  Armsmaster stepped forward without preamble and prodded the butt of his halberd against Hookwolf"s arm. There was a small beep and a flickering light, and Armsmaster grunted. "He"s out. Probably won"t be awake for some time, but to be sure-"
  
  A huge needle extended from the shaft, and he carefully pushed it in for a few seconds before withdrawing. "That should keep him out for another six hours," Armsmaster announced. "By the time he wakes up, he"ll be in the Birdcage."
  
  "Here"s hoping," I said.
  
  "The Empire"s going to come for him though, right?" Ironclad asked, laying Hookwolf down on the ground and pulling the wires and chains off him. One trooper stepped forward with a bucket and slid both Hookwolf"s hands into it; then another trooper squirted some containment foam in there, pinning his arms better than anything I"d done.
  
  "Huh," Stoneknapper noted. "That"s actually pretty smart. Lot of powers would have trouble with that."
  
  "We have to assume that they"ll hear, and they"ll come in guns blazing," Armsmaster confirmed, setting his halberd on the ground again. "We"ve noticed that the Empire"s adopted regular check-ins by phone to counter your usual tactics," he spared me a glance, "And Hookwolf is one of their most powerful capes. They can"t afford losing him, or the loss of reputation."
  
  "Krieg"s still out of action, right?" I asked.
  
  "No sign of him since you fought him," Armsmaster said. "But at least one other heavy hitter will come for this. I"m sure of it."
  
  "Goody," Butcher rumbled gleefully. "More fuckers to hurt."
  
  I shoved him down and made a show of checking my weapons. "So how much time do we have?"
  
  "We can"t be sure of the Empire"s movements, but Dragon is already en-route from Toronto. ETA 50 minutes. If we can hold out long enough to get Hookwolf onto the transport, we"ve won."
  
  "Simple," Ironclad said sarcastically.
  
  Armsmaster shot him a look, but I cleared my throat before either of them could start arguing.
  
  "Should we try to reinforce this position? Set up traps or something, block the roads?"
  
  We ended up deciding on a defensive strategy, with Tactical"s Thinker power and some software of Armsmaster"s giving us the bones of a plan. Hookwolf would be moved inside the building, guarded by a couple of troopers who"d foam him if anyone got to him, which would hopefully keep them from carrying him away.
  
  We heroes were arranged in a rough triangle facing down the hill. Ironclad took point as the biggest and strongest of us, with Armsmaster and myself on either side as close-quarters support. Velocity was to Armsmaster"s right and Gargoyle was to my left, ready to jump in with their Mover powers if things got ugly.
  
  The weather was brisk, but the sun shone down. I"d need to add some extra vents to my armour when the summer hit. Right now, it was the tension making me uncomfortable. We stood ready for ten minutes, then twenty, without any sign of trouble.
  
  Eventually, it was Gargoyle who broke the silence. "So," he asked with uneasy cheer, "How"d you take down Hookwolf?"
  
  Ironclad visibly flinched at his words. I bit my lip.
  
  "I think," I began, "He loses stamina when he extrudes metal. I managed to cut enough off to slow him down, and Ironclad managed to keep him from reabsorbing it."
  
  "Interesting," Armsmaster said, giving me a long look.
  
  "To be honest, I just threw everything I had at him," I added hastily.
  
  "Technically, that"s not lying," Dirty Rotter said slyly.
  
  "Pepper bombs, a couple of nets, and the sonic spear- I can show you that later, if you like."
  
  "I"d like that," Armsmaster said, returning his gaze to the slope of the hill.
  
  It was another ten minutes before we spotted something coming through the air. I pulled my air cannon and spear, but Armsmaster held out a hand to stop me.
  
  "Reinforcements," he said with a small smile.
  
  Laserdream touched down behind us and dropped the glowing orange ball from her arms. Brandish burst out of her Breaker form and gave us a nod. Both of them were in casual clothes, which was strange for me to see.
  
  We reshuffled things a little- Laserdream hovered behind and above us, and Brandish stood with Ironclad, back as straight as a ruler. Tactical"s Thinker power gave me a more complete picture, since I was more familiar with their fighting styles than the Protectorate heroes- little models that moved along multiple paths in my mind, sketching out the most likely scenarios.
  
  "Good," Needler said. "This should give the Empire pause."
  
  I pondered over some memories of the bad old days that bubbled up. "I hope so," I admitted, "But Kaiser"s a lot to deal with. And if he convinces Kayden to come along..."
  
  Bearskin made a pained noise at that.
  
  Another ten minutes went by, Laserdream idly making conversation for a while before Brandish ordered her to focus. I kept watch with bloodsight, and swept through the area with insects. There were plenty in the grass and trees for me to use.
  
  Then I saw something- in the sky, coming for us.
  
  "Heads up," I began, just as Armsmaster bellowed "EVERYBODY GET READY!"
  
  "Man, what a voice," Firecracker said. I caught her meaning a second later, and gave her a shove as I readied my weapons. After a second"s thought, I passed the sonic spear to Ironclad. He strapped it to his arm with some wires, ready to use.
  
  The shape in the sky became clearer as it approached. A platform ringed in spikes, with several people standing on it.
  
  I knew Rune had to be there to make it fly. And as ghostly figures starting pouring off the sides, I could count Crusader too. But the real threat was standing at the very centre, hands behind his back like he was taking an afternoon stroll, like the colossal prick he"d always been. A tall man in a full suit of dark grey plate armour, with a helmet that sprouted blades from the top like a macabre crown.
  
  "Kaiser," Bearskin snarled.
  
  The leader of the Empire 88 had been an enemy of the Butchers and the Teeth since the beginning. He"d maimed and murdered their fighters, and plenty of people who"d just got caught in the crossfire.
  
  Bearskin had some more personal reasons to loathe the man.
  
  I drew my flail and checked the ammo counter on the cannon. Five pepper rounds, six net rounds. The air reserve was full.
  
  The strategy updated again- Rune would be mostly occupied keeping the platform intact, and didn"t seem to have brought extra weapons, but Crusader would try to flood us with his copies, and Kaiser could turn this place into a kebab shop if he wanted to.
  
  Laserdream fired off a salvo of red beams at the platform- it swerved in midair, and more spikes grew out of the leading edge to shield them. The PRT vans in the parking lot turned their hoses upward, only for spikes to erupt from the ground and burst their tires, then cut through the hoses themselves. The troopers were swiftly buried in mounds of off-white foam.
  
  The ghosts swooped through the air towards us- a terrible match for us, with three of us in armour and no Brutes. Worse, I could see two ghosts carrying someone between them- a familiar antlered helmet glinting in the afternoon sun. Jotunn, back for another round.
  
  I aimed high, grasped Quarrel"s aiming power, and fired a pepper canister in a high arc towards the platform. It almost hit, but another barrage from Laserdream had the platform swerve, and the shot landed in the parking lot, coating the chariot in dust.
  
  Then the first of the ghosts were on us. Armsmaster and I put our weapons away and raised our fists. "Ironclad!" I shouted as I slapped a spear aside and swung a kick at the ghost holding it, "these guys can go through armour! Fall back!"
  
  Ironclad hastily backpedalled, and to my surprise Brandish followed him, shouting something I couldn"t make out. Velocity had shifted into his Breaker state, and now a red blur was pummelling the ghosts that went after my friend.
  
  Gargoyle launched himself forward in a huge leap, bowling into two ghosts. One of them popped on impact- the other disappeared when Gargoyle threw a haymaker into its helmet.
  
  "Ha! Suck it!" Gargoyle bellowed, leaping forward to help Armsmaster, who was using an impressive mix of punches, kicks, dodges and flips to fend off his opponents, using the extra athleticism his suit granted him to great effect.
  
  Quarrel whistled at the sight of Gargoyle clotheslining another Crusader and barely stumbling as a spear stabbed at his chest. "I guess the lawn gnome"s good for something after all." Gargoyle"s Changer form seemed to combine stony durability with the Manton Effect needed to touch Crusader"s copies.
  
  I slammed a palm into a Crusader"s elbow to shatter it, and used the brief gap to draw my cannon again, firing another round at the platform that once again couldn"t hit the wildly moving target. I saw Kaiser"s head turn toward me for a second, and then look away, concentrating on the battle with him and Laserdream, who was flying higher and higher to get away from the Crusader ghosts chasing her through the air.
  
  A glowing orb shot through the air straight at the platform. As it came within a few feet of the Empire"s transport, Brandish briefly popped back into human form and slashed at it with a two-handed sword, before collapsing into a ball again to bounce off the parking lot"s asphalt a few times.
  
  A chunk of the platform fell off the side, then suddenly flew towards the fighters on the ground. Ironclad stormed forward and caught it in a bear hug, feet digging into the ground as he pushed back against Rune"s telekinesis. I could see the spikes and blades on the side bending as his metal control began to affect the chunk, winning the fight.
  
  I drew a sword and ran over to him, slashing a piece off the chunk. The fragment dropped into Ironclad"s armour without further resistance.
  
  "Destroy her object and you remove her control," Muramasa realised. "Quickly!"
  
  I cut at it again, once-twice-thrice, and the pieces were all incorporated into Ironclad"s form as Rune lost control of it. Ironclad shuffled the bits around so the blades were sticking out of his upper arms and shins, and gave me a quick nod.
  
  I nodded back, before something caught my attention- a set of feet zigzagging up the hill. When I turned, I couldn"t see anything with bloodsight- but I could feel where the grass was being pushed down.
  
  I fired another pepper round down the slope, bursting open in a cloud of white, and was rewarded by Jotunn popping into visibility as he tried to stop, not quite quickly enough to avoid a brush of stinging dust.
  
  "I"ll get Jotunn," Armsmaster shouted, charging forward as his halberd unfolded in his hands. "Keep Crusader off me!"
  
  I cursed- Tactical"s strategic power threw up an error. It would have been better for Ironclad to take Jotunn, while Armsmaster helped fend off the ghosts. I could see some of them going overhead to swarm to the doors of the building, though Gargoyle was leaping through the air to catch them with powerful blows.
  
  "We just need to hold out a little longer," I said, sheathing my weapons again. "See if you can use the spear on the ghosts."
  
  "Will that work?"
  
  "Fuck if I know," I admitted, breaking into a run up the hill.
  
  "I mean, if Crusader can sense what his ghosts do then they should be vulnerable to similar levels-"
  
  "Not the time, Tock," I snapped, catching one Crusader by the shoulder and driving my elbow into the back of its neck. Something crunched, and it disappeared.
  
  The last time I"d fought Crusader, all his ghosts had converged on me after I"d done something like that. This time they ignored me, heading for the inside of the building where Hookwolf was being held. I chased after them, using stomps and punches and brutal holds to destroy them bare-handed, but two made it into the lobby.
  
  The lone trooper there caught one with a kick to the chest, driving it back, but the second Crusader slashed at their leg with its spear, sending the trooper tumbling to the ground. I grabbed that one"s helmet and twisted to snap its neck, then dodged the first one"s spear thanks to a flare of danger sense. I caught the shaft, twisted, and rammed the point up into its visor. It spasmed and vanished.
  
  I made to check on the trooper, but they waved me away. "Go, damnit!" they said in an unexpectedly female voice- all that armour made it hard to tell.
  
  "Thanks," I shouted, rushing back outside in time to see Kaiser dramatically raise his hands like an orchestra"s conductor.
  
  "Look out!" I screamed, sprinting forward.
  
  Metal blades started bursting out of the ground all over the hill, sweeping up towards the peak. Armsmaster was forced away from Jotunn as daggers punched up between them, growing into spears as the hero backed away. Velocity dodged between them with ease, but Gargoyle was too slow and caught a stab on his shoulder, knocking him to the ground.
  
  A dozen thick blades stabbed into each of Ironclad"s legs, piercing through the largest armour plates and pinning him in place. I could see his silhouette safe inside the armour"s torso, but I still felt a thrill of fear as he yelped.
  
  With that one massive attack, Kaiser had changed the battlefield in the Empire"s favour. Crusader"s ghosts boiled off the platform with renewed vigour, and Jotunn disappeared in a rush. I could just about track their movements through my insects, but that was telling me we were on the verge of being overwhelmed.
  
  Armsmaster had activated the plasma cutter on his halberd to start cutting the blades down, but it was like trying to bail out a boat with a spoon. Further down the hill, Brandish was sprinting up from the parking lot, her swords lopping Kaiser"s swords off left and right, but she was hampered as more began to sprout around her, forcing her to evade.
  
  "You know what you"ve got to do," Butcher rumbled.
  
  Nothing for it then. I fired a net in Jotunn"s direction, not stopping to see if it hit as I charged over to Ironclad. Danger sense blared a warning in time for me to side-step the blade that speared out of the ground halfway there.
  
  "Ironclad!" I shouted, drawing a sword, "Throw me the spear!"
  
  Ironclad stopped struggling to shift his armour around the blades long enough to pull the sonic spear off his right forearm and toss it to me. I threw my sword to him right before catching the spear, so he could start cutting himself free.
  
  "It doesn"t work on the ghosts," Ironclad said, pressing the sword to one of the blades in his leg and slicing through with a squeal of tortured metal. "I tried."
  
  "Worth a shot," I said, hastily opening the control panel and fiddling with the innards. "Time for plan B."
  
  "Good luck," Flinch said sincerely as I closed the panel and extended the spear to full length.
  
  I took a deep breath, and began to swing the spear around by the end in wide circles. As it spun, it emitted a loud, warbling whistle- not painful, but it carried across the hill and out over the streets around.
  
  For a long moment, I thought it wouldn"t work, and that we"d have to push through with what we had. I could see Laserdream dive toward the ground, drawing the Crusader copies chasing her within reach of Gargoyle as he hauled himself up, see Brandish slice through a whole fence of blades and throw herself over in ball form to get past. It might be doable.
  
  Then there was an explosion of ice from down the hill, and Velocity went sprawling as he lost traction. I glimpsed Jotunn cackling as he disappeared into a run again, arm raised from throwing something.
  
  And at the very edge of my range, a bunch of flies smelled something I recognised- raw meat, past the point of spoiling. Three massive forms, heading our way.
  
  The Undersiders burst out of an alleyway like demons from hell, bounding across the empty street at the bottom of the hill. I"d told them to stay put until signalled, but part of me had feared they"d use the opportunity to run.
  
  The Empire"s floating platform flinched in mid-air and jerked sideways as Whirlygig fired a hail of marbles and pebbles from her storm cloud. Laserdream took the opportunity to fire a beam that scored across the metal and severed a few of the smaller blades.
  
  The dogs split up- Whirlygig circling around to the left, still firing detritus at the platform, while Grue went right, trailing a cloud of pitch black behind him. Bitch and Tattletale went straight down the middle, skipping past a furious Brandish and a shocked Armsmaster. I spotted Jotunn turning visible as he threw himself out of Grue"s way, who doused him with darkness as he rode past.
  
  They converged again in front of me as I switched my spear for my second sword and cut the rest of the blades holding Ironclad. Whirlygig clambered off hers to stand half an inch off the ground, her storm whirling.
  
  Tactical"s power shifted in response to the reinforcements, drawing a new plan out. I gave the sketches a quick look, then refocused on the here and now. "Grue, can you make a barrier between us and Kaiser? Block his line of sight?"
  
  "I"m going to need a distraction," he warned.
  
  "You"ll get one," I promised, severing the last blade. Ironclad"s armour rippled and stretched to twelve feet tall, the blades sinking into his mass as he incorporated them. "Bitch, I need to ride one of your dogs."
  
  Bitch dropped her gaze as I turned to her, but her tone was still angry. "Don"t let them hurt Judas," she snapped.
  
  "I won"t," I said, sheathing my swords as I carefully approached the dog Whirlygig had rode. "Whirlygig, you"re on anti-air duty. Get yourself off the ground, keep moving, and hit that platform with everything you can. Bitch, Tattletale, you"re up here. Any ghosts come through, you pop them. Ironclad, can you block the door so Jotunn can"t sneak through? Grue, follow me."
  
  I carefully grabbed one of the bone spikes sticking out of Judas" shoulder and swung myself up. I managed to find another spike to hold one handed. With the other I drew my air cannon.
  
  "GO!" I bellowed. Bitch whistled something, and the dogs burst into motion, galloping down the hill, dodging nimbly between the spikes littering the grass. The jolts shook me to my bones, making my weapons rattle on my belt. My cape streamed out behind me, tattered silk flying in the wind.
  
  "Dogpile on the Empire!" I shouted as we closed in on the other heroes. If they misinterpreted this, assumed it was an opportunistic attack, then this would all go to hell in an instant.
  
  Laserdream, bless her, caught on quick. She swerved direction, flying across the path of my mount. The dog, Judas, smashed through the ghosts that tried to fly after her without pause. Without pursuit, she executed a graceful turn to resume firing her attacks at the Empire"s platform.
  
  Behind us, bits and pieces arced overhead like bullets; Whirlygig was rising higher off the ground, adjusting her aim closer to the platform by the second.
  
  "I love these fucking dogs!" Firecracker whooped as I made a straight charge towards the platform, a big shiny target.
  
  Kaiser didn"t disappoint- a thicket of blades rose up in front of me to block my path. I hauled myself up on the dog"s saddle, praying that Nemean"s reflexes would let me keep my balance, and swatted Judas on his flank.
  
  The dog immediately swerved away from the blades, and I threw myself into a huge leap from its back; right over the blades, air cannon braced against my shoulder as I aimed mid-air.
  
  Kaiser was lethal- he could make any solid surface in his sight grow blades on command. But unlike his father and sister, he couldn"t shoot loose blades at people- which meant he was weak against fliers.
  
  I might not have inherited flight from any of the Butchers, but right now I was ten feet off the ground, pumping the trigger for all it was worth.
  
  My three remaining pepper rounds fired one after the other in a spread pattern. Caught between Laserdream and Whirlygig, Rune couldn"t dodge.
  
  Flat panels of metal burst from the platform"s edges to form walls, and the canisters burst open against the new barriers. It was hard to tell how much they"d hurt the Empire, but it was an opening.
  
  I hit the ground and rolled to a stop, air cannon at the ready. Above me, the sky went dark as Grue spread a huge cloud of inky darkness between us and the platform, a good 20 feet above the ground. The entire hillside was plunged into darkness, only illuminated by the sunlight leaking in from the edges. I glimpsed Laserdream flying straight up through the darkness to continue the aerial battle above the cloud, until she was only a blood silhouette against the black.
  
  "What did you do?!" Armsmaster yelled as I turned and sprinted back up the hill, zig-zagging in case Kaiser took a random shot.
  
  "Kaiser can"t aim now," I called back. "Gargoyle," I yelled as the stony hero leapt over to us, "You"re the only one who can keep the ghosts off Laserdream. See what you can do!"
  
  Gargoyle shot a look at Grue, who was coming up with the two dogs, then closed his jaw and managed a nod. He bent his knees and shot up through the cloud in a single bound.
  
  "Grue," I called, "With me. We"re taking out Crusader"s ghosts." I turned to Armsmaster- only to be taken aback by the gritted teeth he was showing. "Can you handle the rest?"
  
  Armsmaster tightened his grip on his halberd. "We"re not done with this," he said angrily, turning away from me and calling out to Brandish.
  
  Grue urged his dog forward, and I grabbed onto Judas as he loped past, swinging myself up onto his back again. The blood silhouettes above the black cloud were moving at a frantic pace, Laserdream weaving and swerving away from invisible attacks, while the Empire"s platform jinked left and right. The only visible sign was the fresh Crusader ghosts drifting down through the cloud, spears aimed squarely at us.
  
  Grue shouted and pointed, and the dogs fell on the ghosts with vigour. The Crusaders fought back, spears jabbing at their hides, but they could barely get past the bone spikes and gnarled plates, and the dogs were so massive they just shrugged the wounds off. I saw the one-eyed dog, Angelica, seize one between her jaws and crush its torso like a piece of biscuit.
  
  I wasn"t just watching- I was in the thick of it too, breaking limbs and beating on helmets. Grue stayed on Angelica"s back, but he defended himself well against the Crusaders who aimed at him.
  
  Then I heard something- a low roar like distant thunder, rising in pitch and building in volume, coming from the north.
  
  "Dragon," Tock Tick breathed as the sound of jet engines began to fill the air. "Holy shit, it"s Dragon!"
  
  Grue glanced upward as he kicked one of the Crusaders away. "Shit!"
  
  "Don"t worry, that"s-" I looked up too, and saw the problem.
  
  The Empire"s platform, or rather their blood silhouettes, were now making a straight line towards the top of the hill. Seeing Hookwolf"s final taxi service must have spurred them to abandon caution and go for a straight-up assault.
  
  "Back!" I shouted, crushing a Crusader"s fist and scrambling onto Judas. "Back up the hill! We can"t let them get there!"
  
  Grue was already spurring Angelica into running back up the hill-a lot of the blades had been cut down, which made it easier. I tracked the platform through the black cloud, and managed to breathe out when I saw the platform was having to dodge a renewed counter-attack from Laserdream.
  
  Where the cloud ended, I could see Dragon"s suit coming in to land. It looked like a clunky metal version of a standard fantasy dragon- four legs planted on the ground, two wings raised high in the air, and an arrow-shaped head on a long neck. The torso was blocky, like a cargo container, and a ramp had lowered from the chest, leading in.
  
  "Huh." Vladimir sounded bemused. "Somehow I expected something that didn"t look so much like a Transformer."
  
  There was a yell, and Gargoyle came plummeting down through the cloud, gouging a furrow in the turf as he landed on his back. I flung myself off Judas, yelling at Grue to keep going, and raced over to him.
  
  Gargoyle was already sitting up when I ran up and hauled him to his feet. "We need to keep Laserdream safe," I said. Since she was our only real flier and Blaster, if she got bogged down evading the Crusaders, then the Empire could fly right up to the building and start doing real damage.
  
  Gargoyle laced his fingers together. "I can throw you."
  
  I glanced up, acting like I was only going by the sounds of tearing metal and Laserdream"s shouting than being able to see the combatants themselves.
  
  "Fine," I said, placing my foot in his hands. "Go."
  
  Gargoyle hauled up with surprising strength, and I pushed off with all of mine. The force sent me sailing up- through the cloud, an instant of total darkness and muffled echoes, and out into brilliant sunlight.
  
  For a second I was weightless. I could see the building on my left, Laserdream playing high-stakes keep-away with the Crusaders, Whirlygig weaving back and forth as she gathered dust and pebbles from the gravel around the building; and I could see the Empire"s flying circus on my right, including the gawking mouth inside Rune"s hood that would have made Tex Avery proud. Forward and down the hill I could make out Armsmaster and Brandish tag-teaming Jotunn as ice erupted in great chunks around him, only for their blazing weapons to melt right through.
  
  Then gravity took over and I started to fall again. I twisted to get my grappler up-
  
  -and my feet hit something. It broke almost instantly, but I"d pushed off reflexively, and more appeared as I jumped.
  
  Forcefields, red and transparent, spaced out like a grid. This must have been how Gargoyle had been able to help keep the Crusaders off her- jumping from platform to platform without ever having to touch the ground.
  
  I landed on another one, jumped as it broke, landed and jumped again. This time I landed on a Crusader with both feet, and something gave way before it popped.
  
  Anchorage burst out laughing. "Holy shit, we"re like Super Mario!"
  
  "Then let"s-a fuckin" go!" Dirty Rotter whooped.
  
  "Laserdream! Over here!"
  
  She immediately flew towards me, and past me, trailing the pursuing Crusaders as she re-doubled her laser attacks on the platform. I hopped from platform to platform, frantically dodging as fast as I could and trying to keep the Crusaders from getting past.
  
  Gargoyle rocketed up from out of the cloud, clipping one Crusader and sending it into a tumble before it vanished. He landed on a platform as light as a feather and pushed off, almost flying through the air as he tore through the ghosts like a wrecking ball.
  
  I wasn"t content with just being the support though. The chance of taking out another Empire cape, maybe even landing a hit on Kaiser himself, was too good an opportunity to pass up. I kicked off another Crusader, raised my arm, leapt off another platform, and fired my grappler.
  
  The bolt sailed through the air, passed through a couple of Crusaders, and buried itself in the side of the platform, drilling into a panel near the edge.
  
  I made to jump off and start reeling myself in, when a noise caught everyone"s attention. I fumbled the jump and fell, swinging from the line like a conker and jerking the platform off-kilter, drawing some curses from the Empire; but those were just details.
  
  The sound was of Dragon"s suit spinning its engines up. Its wings lowered into position as it steadily lifted off the ground, ramp folding back into its chest.
  
  "FUCK YES!" Butcher roared. "Even playing it safe, we fucked you over, tinhead!"
  
  "No!" Kaiser howled. The platform shot forward, and I was dragged along, hurriedly reeling myself in to try and stop him. I had no idea how, but I was going to try.
  
  A massive spike hurtled through the air, missing the platform by a few feet. When I looked down I saw Ironclad readying another blade in his hand. Whirlygig was off to his side, aiming with her left arm. I heard a faint zipping noise as a bit of something tore through the air.
  
  I let the grappler cable reel out to its maximum, and fired the other one at Ironclad. It caught on his shoulder, and he flinched, but a second later he realised what I was trying to do and wrapped his hands around it.
  
  Gargoyle suddenly landed on my back, throwing his arms around my shoulders. "Sorry," he yelled in my ear. I felt his weight suddenly increase- I knew he could control his personal gravity to walk lightly or make massive leaps, but this must have been the reverse effect, turning him into a huge ballast.
  
  The Dragon suit was now well off the hill and accelerating, but not fast enough that Rune couldn"t catch up to it. If Kaiser got close enough, he could turn that wonderful Tinkertech machine into so much scrap metal and tear Hookwolf out of it.
  
  I hit the retract on both cables, bunching my shoulders up and feeling grateful, once again, that I couldn"t feel pain. Otherwise this would have really hurt.
  
  The cable went taut, jerking the platform to a halt. Rune, Crusader and Kaiser were thrown about, Kaiser"s armour scraping against the blades ringing the platform. Something in the grapplers bent out of shape, and I knew I was going to have to fix both of them later.
  
  At least my left shoulder, which had been yanked out of its socket from the sheer force, would fix itself in a few minutes at most. And probably nobody would be able to tell through the armour- Gargoyle certainly hadn"t.
  
  With the platform temporarily halted, Laserdream opened up with everything she had, Whirlygig following suit. Kaiser was forced to raise layers of hasty barriers around the platform to protect them, turning it into a steel igloo- and I could still see the outer layers starting to buckle.
  
  A hundred feet in the air, Dragon"s suit twitched its wings into a different setting, and the engines on its back spat flame as it sped off, rapidly vanishing into the distance.
  
  The Butchers whooped, cheered, hollered and sang with vicious joy. Bearskin roared out a "HELL YEEEEEAAAAAHH!" that damn near echoed off the inside of my head.
  
  There must have been a hole in the platform"s barriers that I couldn"t make out, because I saw Kaiser"s blood silhouette turn his head to stare at me through all the metal.
  
  Then two blades grew out to either side of my cable, and extended towards each other, shearing the cable where they met.
  
  "SHIT!"
  
  The cable gave, and I dropped instantly. I could feel Gargoyle hastily grabbing me as we fell- but he could only make himself lighter, not other people.
  
  We hit the ground in a tumble of limbs, fortunately far from any of Kaiser"s blades, and Gargoyle immediately pulled himself out from under me, gingerly patting my armour like he was checking for injuries.
  
  I pushed up with my good arm and threw myself to my feet, swinging my left arm around in a circle until my shoulder was popped back into place with a gristly thump. Then I felt a pulse of danger sense and threw myself backward, a huge spike erupting out of the ground where I"d been standing.
  
  A second spike burst at right angles from halfway up the first, aimed right at me. I ducked sideways, and a third blade shot out.
  
  I drew a sword and sliced through that one, but more blades erupted from the fragments. Kaiser was clearly out for blood- the initial spike was sprouting more from every angle, like a murderous Christmas tree. I heard Gargoyle yelp, and saw him stumble back, clasping his bicep.
  
  More spikes were bursting from the ground, from the walls of the building; many were smashing into the building, shattering windows and breaking brickwork. Kaiser seemed intent on causing as much damage as possible. I saw one massive spike burst from high up one wall, aiming for Laserdream. It didn"t even get hallway before its weight ripped it out of the wall, and it fell to the ground in a shower of brick dust, landing almost perfectly vertical in the grass.
  
  A wave of darkness washed over me, and cleared just as quickly, leaving a vantablack wall between my and the platform. The blades kept bursting out every which way, like an army"s worth of swords being unsheathed one after the other, but now they were at random, untargeted- Kaiser couldn"t tell for sure where any of us were.
  
  After a few more seconds, the blades slowed, and finally stopped. The platform began to rise up and move away, even as Laserdream fired a couple of parting shots. I spotted a couple of Crusader ghosts swoop out of the darkness towards Jotunn- he threw his axes to the ground, creating a wall of ice that forced Armsmaster and Brandish back long enough for him to start running. He reappeared at the bottom of the hill in time for the Crusaders to carry him off into the air.
  
  I lowered my sword, then sheathed it, and opened my helmet to take a breath.
  
  Heavy footsteps came up behind me, and I turned to look Ironclad in the eye. "It"s over," I said.
  
  He huffed a laugh. "It better be."
  
  I laughed a little, and then more as the absurdity of the situation hit me. "We did it," I said, growing more excited. "We just got Hookwolf out of the city for good!"
  
  Whirlygig suddenly let out a trilling shout at deafening volume as she dropped back to the ground, piles of dirt and grit scattering around her in a spiral pattern. "Suck it, assholes! Que te folle un pez!" She shouted again, and this time I realised she was doing a grito- Flinch had enough memories of his cousins doing that at family reunions for me to recognise it.
  
  "The lungs on that girl," Flinch exclaimed. "I haven"t heard a grito that good in years."
  
  "Ah, shame on you," Tactical snickered, uncharacteristically giddy.
  
  The rest of the Undersiders converged, along with Laserdream and Gargoyle, who was sporting a shallow gouge on his left arm. The two heroes looked uncertain about the villains in their midst; but in the Butcher"s experience fighting Nazis together helped people bond quickly.
  
  "Alright, good work!" I praised. "Undersiders, you did good."
  
  "Why the hell are you guys here?" Laserdream interrupted, glancing nervously at the dogs as Bitch scratched at Brutus" chin. "I thought you guys were more on the supply side of crime," she added accusingly.
  
  "Because we didn"t want Hookwolf shredding us into sausage filling after we broke up his dogfighting ring," Tattletale said easily. "Besides, times change. Could be you"ll see more of us in future."
  
  Footsteps were coming up the hill- Armsmaster and Brandish at a run. I glanced over my shoulder, and both of them looked pissed off.
  
  "Well, at present, you guys should get going," I said. The Undersiders collectively stiffened at my words. "On the dogs, off you go, move move move." I ushered them onto the dogs quickly, giving Tattletale a leg up. "I"ll catch up with you later, alright?"
  
  "See you around," Tattletale said as Bitch whistled and urged the dogs into a gallop.
  
  Gargoyle watched them leave with a poleaxed expression, gingerly poking at the wound on his bicep. "You keep some crazy company, Elpis," he managed at last.
  
  I squared my shoulders as I heard Armsmaster come up behind me. "Yes I do." I turned around to face the man"s thunderous expression.
  
  This was going to be a long and painful conversation.
  
  7.9
  Sunday 26th March, Downtown
  
  After a few moments of near-simultaneous ranting, I stopped waiting for Armsmaster and Brandish to pause for breath and just interrupted them both mid-sentence.
  
  "What on earth possessed you-"
  
  "-we trusted you to-"
  
  "Because I didn"t want a bunch of dead kids on my conscience!"
  
  That brought them up short. In the second their surprised expressions registered, I forged onward.
  
  "The Undersiders have been in danger ever since Coil broke out. They came to me for help! I figured I could at least point them in the right direction, but Hookwolf tried to puree them. I let them come along to help because I knew they"d be in more danger if he got back on the streets, so excuse me for trying to keep them alive and get one of Brockton Bay"s most wanted off the board!"
  
  Flinch sighed. "It"s just like Coil all over again. You"d think they"d just be happy Hookwolf is gone."
  
  "Uh, sir?" Gargoyle briefly raised a hand, before wincing and clutching the wound on his left arm again. "I"m with Elpis on this one. We wouldn"t have won this one without them."
  
  "They"re still villains," Laserdream cut in, folding her arms.
  
  "And what if they didn"t want to be?" I said. "They"ve helped put away two major villains- I"d say that"s a good start at turning over a new leaf."
  
  "They could start by turning themselves in and answering for their crimes," Armsmaster retorted through gritted teeth.
  
  "When Coil"s still out in the wild? You know he torched their old hideout, right? All it takes is one mole you guys haven"t caught yet, and they"re dead meat."
  
  Armsmaster"s jaw relaxed, just a fraction. Not enough to make me think I was winning him over, but enough to make me think he"d accepted the point.
  
  "Keep going," Anchorage urged me. "Maybe he"ll take the stick out of his ass."
  
  "The fact remains that they"ve all got active criminal records. We can"t be seen condoning villains just because they"ve done a few good deeds."
  
  "I know that. I"m not asking you to trust them or like them-I"m not even asking you to publicly support them. I"m asking you to give them a chance- to screw up and prove me wrong, if nothing else."
  
  "And what if they do?" Brandish snapped. "Are you going to bring them in?"
  
  "Yes," I said.
  
  Privately, I wasn"t sure. Now that the Undersiders knew my secret, we were in a state of mutually assured destruction. If I handed them in to the authorities, they could try to blab in exchange for a plea deal. It"d be crazy, but a lot of capes fit that description.
  
  Butcher snorted with dark amusement. "Fuck"s sake! Those brats practically shat themselves when they found out! Fear works wonders at keeping people in line, girl. You"ll soon learn that."
  
  Brandish was clearly still angry, but at least Armsmaster seemed vaguely mollified by my response. "If you go down this road, there"s no turning back," he warned. "It"d take a miracle for the Undersiders to receive a pardon; which means we"ll have to try and arrest them no matter what. And if they go back to crime, you could be treated as an accessory; which means we"ll arrest you too."
  
  Tock Tick snorted. "Oh, I would love to see that."
  
  "And even if they do better, there"s still public opinion. People will turn on you overnight."
  
  "Oh gee, we"ve never thought about anything like that," Dirty Rotter snarked. "How will we ever cope?"
  
  "I understand," I replied. "But I have to try."
  
  Armsmaster gave me a long look. "Very well."
  
  It took maybe half an hour to get our statements taken down, free the troopers who were trapped in the containment foam, and clear away some of the hundred or so blades Kaiser had left around the place. Ironclad took a dozen more, folding them into his armour so the edges were covered.
  
  "Need to remember to blunt those," Stoneknapper mused. "Some of them at least. Guess it"s not very heroic if you turn around and shred the guy next to you."
  
  I brushed off some of the pepper dust that had landed on the chariot, then slid into the driver"s seat. Ironclad had squeezed his increased bulk into the back and tilted his helmet up a bit.
  
  I closed the door, then just sat there for a long moment.
  
  "Fuck," I said at last.
  
  "Yeah," Tarquin agreed as he pulled the helmet off completely.
  
  "Pretty much," Tactical sighed.
  
  After a few seconds of silence, I started the engine and eased the chariot out of the parking lot, into the evening traffic.
  
  "Hey Taylor?"
  
  "Oh god," Quarrel grumbled. "More feelings."
  
  I shoved her aside and glanced at Tarquin in the rear view mirror. His hair was a mess and his cheeks were still a bit flushed from all the exertion. "What"s up?"
  
  "What you said about the Undersiders... All that stuff about people hating you, and getting a second chance... Was any of that about you?"
  
  I chewed my lip as I indicated and turned. "Some of it," I admitted at length. "The reputation of the Butchers runs deep. If people find out who I am, what I am, then they"ll go straight to calling me a villain."
  
  "Right."
  
  "So I guess I can empathise with the Undersiders because of that. I mean, you never hear about villains going good. Either nobody"s ever been able to do it, or it"s been hidden away from the public every single time; which means that people won"t accept a hero with a criminal record."
  
  "My money"s on the latter," Vladimir said. "There"s bound to be someone that made it to the other side."
  
  "But you didn"t do anything," Tarquin protested.
  
  "I killed Quarrel. It might have been an accident, but that"s still murder. And everyone else who"s taken the mantle either went mad, or they were already pretty crazy to start with. Sooner or later, they were just another Butcher."
  
  "Damn right," Firecracker said.
  
  "You didn"t go crazy though."
  
  I shrugged. "How many people will believe that? And the Butchers have had a lot of effect on me anyway."
  
  The hands of Tarquin"s armour gripped his knees. "What do you mean by that?"
  
  "Before..." I sighed. "I was alone. Depressed, closed off, resigned. When I inherited, I got decades of life experience, and a team"s worth of super powers. That kind of thing gives you a massive confidence boost.
  
  "More than that though, I"m angrier. It"s a genuine struggle not to lash out sometimes, because I"ve got all these memories of solving problems with more and more violence."
  
  "We didn"t solve all our problems with violence," Needler protested.
  
  "Most of the problems we concerned ourselves with were violence-related anyway," Muramasa pointed out.
  
  We were quiet for a long time as I steered us through the streets. "Did you really change that much?" Tarquin eventually asked.
  
  "I think so," I admitted. "The Taylor Hebert of before is a very different person from me. It"s just not something I can really talk about. I can count the number of people who know the truth on my hands and still have fingers left over, and none of you knew me before I inherited."
  
  "Well," Tarquin said uncomfortably, "If you ever want to vent about something... I mean, you"ve got someone to talk to. That"s not a criminal, I mean."
  
  I briefly turned back to muster a small smile. "Thanks, T."
  
  "You should probably tell him about Amy," Nemean warned.
  
  I bit my lip. Unfortunately, she had a point.
  
  "About that... There"s one more person who knows. Besides you and the Undersiders, I mean."
  
  "And Hookwolf-" Tarquin started, before my words fully registered. "Wait, who? Your dad?"
  
  "God no. Would you tell your parents?"
  
  Tarquin nodded. "Okay, so who is it?"
  
  I winced. "Amy Dallon- Panacea, I mean."
  
  "What?!" Tarquin straightened up- the effect of all that armour suddenly jerking up sent the chariot rocking on its suspension. "You told her first?!"
  
  "I didn"t "tell" her!" I snapped, twisting in my seat to glare at him. "I haven"t "told" anyone! She found out by accident, same as you, and she tried to rat me out before I managed to stop her. She still doesn"t trust me, either- in fact she"s probably going to flip her lid when she hears about all this crap."
  
  "Oh."
  
  I turned back to the road, and we drove in silence for a while longer before he asked another question. "Does Spitfire know too?"
  
  My grip tightened on the steering wheel for a second. "No. No, she doesn"t know about me."
  
  "...Are you going to tell her?"
  
  I sighed. "I don"t know. She"s staying with the PRT- if it comes out that she knew and didn"t tell them, she could be in trouble. Not knowing might be safer for her."
  
  "Does that mean I"m going to be in trouble?"
  
  "Just say I threatened you." I laughed humourlessly. "They"ll believe that."
  
  Bearskin wordlessly radiated a feeling of empathy and sorrow.
  
  Tarquin winced. "Shit." After another pause, he said "Maybe you should at least tell her what you told Armsmaster." He shrugged uncomfortably. "She might think you"re, I don"t know, replacing her, or something? If she doesn"t hear it from you first?"
  
  "Crap." I hastily turned down a side street- the car behind me blared its horn at me- and parked on the side of the kerb before I took out my phone.
  
  Spitfire"s number was on speed dial, so I pressed the 3 button down before I could hesitate. It rang for a few moments before she picked up. "Elpis? What"s up?"
  
  "Spitfire, hi-" I fumbled for what to say next. "-uh, I don"t know if you"ve already heard, but I"m calling to make sure you know."
  
  "About what?"
  
  I took a deep breath. "We just took out Hookwolf. He"s on his way to the Birdcage now. Might already be there, actually."
  
  "WHAT?!"
  
  I held the phone away from my head for a second, wincing at the volume. "Yeah. It was a group effort- Me, Ironclad-"
  
  "Hi Spitfire," Tarquin said, leaning over the back of my seat.
  
  "-Ironclad says hi. Plus some of the Protectorate and New Wave."
  
  "Holy crap!" Spitfire"s voice squeaked as she whooped down the line. "He"s really gone! Oh my God, this is incredible! Dude, we need to celebrate!"
  
  I couldn"t help but smile at her enthusiasm. "Yeah, we should. But there"s something else you need to know. I had more help than that. The Undersiders."
  
  "Really?" Spitfire hummed. "Well, shit, good for them."
  
  "Well, I wanted you to hear this from me first; The Undersiders contacted me a while ago. They said they were looking to try and turn hero. Ironclad said I should tell you myself, and I agreed, so- yeah, that"s it."
  
  The only sound from the phone was Spitfire"s breathing. At last, she said "So you"re adopting them?" with forced calm.
  
  "It might be more like a parole officer thing. Honestly, I don"t know. I"m just trying to get them pointed in the right direction."
  
  Spitfire blew a breath out. "Okay. I"m going to be honest, this feels weird. This isn"t some weird way of making up for me, is it?"
  
  "Ouch!" Anchorage exclaimed.
  
  "No, no, it"s nothing like that," I hurried to explain. "Look, I know I made mistakes with you, but that"s not it. They came to me, and they really seem like they want to try and be better. But they"re not a replacement- you were here first."
  
  "Darn right." Spitfire chuckled a little. "Okay, I guess that makes sense. Listen, I gotta go, but I"m glad you called me." She paused for a moment, then added "Tell the Undersiders I said thanks. My debut"s coming up soon, and I"m going to feel a lot better without Hookwolf in town."
  
  "Got it. Thanks, Spitfire."
  
  The call ended, and I sat back in my seat.
  
  "Huh," Dirty Rotter marvelled. "I expected more."
  
  "More what?" Vladimir asked.
  
  "I"unno, more shouting. Real soap opera shit, screaming match and nasty words. That was just... reasonable."
  
  I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for the support." After a second"s thought, I pressed another button.
  
  Amy"s phone just went straight to voicemail. "Amy, it"s Elpis," I said into the receiver. "You"ll probably hear this soon. Long story short, the Undersiders helped me send Hookwolf to the Birdcage, Armsmaster and your mom are pissed at me. Call me when you can."
  
  "Now that," Quarrel said with undisguised glee, "Is going to start some screaming."
  
  I shoved her into the dark and put my phone away.
  
  "Soooooo..." Tarquin said awkwardly. "What now?"
  
  I started the chariot up again. "Now we go talk to the Undersiders."
  
  Interlude 7
  Early hours of Saturday 5th March, Redmond Welding Factory
  
  Grue pulled his helmet off and scratched between his cornrows. "That was way too close."
  
  Regent slouched past him and flopped onto the couch, face down. It must have been uncomfortable with his mask still on, but he showed no signs of moving.
  
  Whirlygig hung her sleeveless jacket on a coat rack by the staircase and unclipped her belt. "What the hell, Tattletale? You said we"d have time to run before the heroes showed up. How"d Elpis get there so fast?"
  
  Lisa shrugged at the newest Undersider. "She didn"t get there. She was already in the area- she was surprised to see us, didn"t know who we were. My guess is she was just driving around looking for trouble."
  
  "She shot at my dogs," Rachel growled, kneeling down to check Brutus"s head.
  
  "It"s compressed air. About as non-lethal as you can get. Smart too- you"d never run out of ammunition."
  
  "What about the tear gas?" Grue asked, shedding his jacket and hanging it up alongside Whirlygig"s.
  
  "Not gas- chalk dust mixed with pepper. Again, non-lethal. It just stings like hell."
  
  "This is all very interesting," Regent"s voice was muffled by the couch, but the sarcasm was clear, "But how come we didn"t know about this before? You screwed up." He pointed his sceptre at her dramatically- or at least he tried. His actual aim was about two feet to her right.
  
  Lisa sighed and mustered up some patience. "Elpis has been focusing on one gang at a time since she appeared. First the Merchants, now the Empire. I didn"t expect her to come after us, and she didn"t even recognise us. This was just a random bit of bad luck."
  
  "Alright," Grue allowed, visibly shifting out of scary-Grue-mode and into mellow-Brian-mode, "But we can"t get caught out like that again. Can you dig up anything on Elpis we could use?"
  
  "Can do, fearless leader," Lisa smirked, tossing off a salute and heading for her laptop.
  
  Truthfully, she would have done some research even if Elpis hadn"t come so close to them. There were some odd details about the hero that Lisa"s power had picked up on.
  
  Armour partially hollow; armour is designed to give appearance of size; armour is designed to mimic other Tinkers work.
  
  Armour is mechanical, little to no electronics; armour has no electronic sensors.
  
  No electronic sensors, still able to accurately follow through Grue"s darkness; has additional sensory powers.
  
  From what Lisa had been able to pick up, Tinker powers rarely came with anything else mixed in. Of course, it would make sense to hide something like that from general view as an ace in the hole. Still, it had the feeling of a mystery- there was more to the city"s newest hero than met the eye.
  
  Coil would probably insist on a report too, paranoic that he was. Elpis hadn"t so much as glanced in his direction, with her laser focus on the Empire, but the boss believed in being prepared for anyone to turn on him.
  
  Lisa opened her laptop and grabbed a notepad while it booted up. PHO, news articles, message boards- Elpis was in the public eye, and that gave more information to work with.
  
  Friday 11th March, Redmond Welding Factory
  
  The Undersiders hauled themselves up the staircase with only mutters and mumbles. Grue guided Whirlygig to the couch and sat her down, propping her twisted ankle up on the coffee table, then made a beeline for the fridge. Bitch sat on the floor with her dogs, and Regent flopped into an armchair, sceptre hanging from his fingertips.
  
  Lisa peeled off her mask and rubbed at her eyes, remembering too late that she still had the eyeblack on. Probably she"d just smeared it all over her face.
  
  Grue came back with a handful of soda cans and an icepack. He gave one to Regent as he walked past, another to Bitch, and then he sat heavily on the couch next to Whirlygig and gave her a third, carefully placing the icepack on her ankle.
  
  Isabella wasted no time in pulling her mask down, cracking the can open and drinking deeply. She paused to couch and thump her chest, then drank again, her lip piercing clinking against the rim of the can.
  
  Throat is sore from heat and smoke inhalation, in shock from earlier events; drinking to relieve and distract herself.
  
  Imitating behaviours of role models; wants to ask for alcohol, is afraid of developing alcohol problem-
  
  Lisa winced and hauled her walls up again. She"d pushed herself tonight, first to bypass the security of the electronics firm they"d broken into, and then to try and find an escape route from Lung. She wasn"t that close to her limit yet, but she had more pressing questions than Isabella"s hangups.
  
  The girl in question set her can down with a hollow clunk. "What," she began, then coughed a bit and started again, "What the fuck was that?"
  
  "Yeah, I"m with New Girl on this," Alec said, pulling his mask off and letting his sceptre thunk to the floor. "The fuck?"
  
  Grue still hadn"t taken his helmet off, and his voice echoed a bit. "We... got saved by a hero."
  
  "Why?" Bitch asked, unusually quiet.
  
  "She"s the real deal," Lisa answered. "She really believes in doing the right thing, even when it"s hard for her."
  
  When Lisa had seen Elpis in that alleyway, mace and shield at the ready, she"d expected- what had she expected? Hostility, obviously. Maybe an attack, or a demand for surrender.
  
  She would have considered something pragmatic- Elpis retreating to let them take Whirlygig away while the heroes focused on Lung"s rampage.
  
  She hadn"t expected her power would pick up on compassion.
  
  Is surprised; is surprised at seeing you clearly; is surprised at relative youth.
  
  Relative youth; is very experienced, but still young; Elpis has been a cape for years.
  
  Sees you as children, is protective of children.
  
  Does not want you to be hurt or killed; does not want to be responsible for deaths.
  
  Harbouring guilt over an earlier loss.
  
  Lisa had told her teammates to wait, to see what would happen next.
  
  And then Elpis had scooped up Whirlygig like a baby and plopped her into Grue"s lap.
  
  "Take her and go."
  
  The hero had tossed her weapon from hand to hand with the ease of long practice. "Go," she"d said, flicking a hand at them. "I"ll buy you some time."
  
  Willing to let you escape, feels sorry for you.
  
  Knows she can stall Lung, is confident in her abilities.
  
  Is confident in her current abilities to stall Lung, is holding back.
  
  Lisa should have felt fear at that- at the idea that Elpis was that powerful as a hero while holding back. Instead she"d felt awed, and opened her mouth to say something.
  
  "I"LL RI" OO A"ART!"
  
  Elpis had swivelled like a tank turret at Lung"s roar, glanced back at them, and bellowed "RUN YOU BASTARDS!" And then she"d simply sprinted out of the alleyway, as if fending off that monster wasn"t something to be afraid of.
  
  "She saved my life," Isabella said, rubbing her throat. "I thought I was gonna die, I could feel the heat, and she just..."
  
  Abruptly she hunched over, clutching at her cargo pants. Grue awkwardly laid a hand on her shoulder as Whirlygig trembled.
  
  Lisa sighed and stepped a little closer. "I"ll try and talk with the boss. Hopefully I can convince him not to send us on jobs in ABB territory for a while, let things die down."
  
  "Good," Grue responded. "We got lucky tonight. We owe Elpis one for this."
  
  "Yeah, if she survives," Alec said, a tiny crease between his eyebrows.
  
  "Alec!"
  
  "What?" Alec shrugged at Lisa"s glare. "I mean, she was squaring off with Lung. She"s probably gonna get her ass kicked."
  
  Isabella whimpered and curled up a little more.
  
  "Knock it off, Alec," Grue growled.
  
  "Alright, alright." Alec held up his hands. "I"ll shut up."
  
  "I"ll check in the morning," Lisa said, "But I get the feeling Elpis is a lot tougher than she looks."
  
  "She got smacked halfway down the road and she shook it off," Grue pointed out. "Plus the heroes get good healthcare," he added, more to Isabella than the rest of them. "Even if she gets hurt through all that armour, Panacea"ll fix her right up."
  
  "Wait, what?"
  
  Grue glanced up at Lisa. "What?"
  
  "Say that again- Elpis got smacked?"
  
  "Yeah, she took some heavy hits. At one point Lung grabbed Gargoyle and used him like a club. Elpis landed on Lung"s truck, and she just got right back up."
  
  Lisa snapped her fingers. "That"s where that dent was from," she muttered.
  
  It wasn"t outside the realm of feasibility for Elpis"s armour to protect her from impacts like that- Tinkertech rarely made sense from the point of view of regular physics. Still, Elpis should have been at least a little rattled from what must have been several feet of air time.
  
  Maybe Elpis just had really good armour. Or maybe it was that wealth of experience that let her bounce back.
  
  Which looped back to the question of where Elpis had got all that experience from. There was nothing about Elpis from before a few months ago, and no previous users of the name listed anywhere. Maybe she"d changed her name, rebranded? But why?
  
  Lisa was tired, and stressed, and more than a little sore, and a good night"s sleep would have been great. But this was going to keep her up all night.
  
  Monday 14th March, Redmond Welding Factory
  
  Once everyone had clinked their drinks together in a toast and taken a sip, Lisa spoke up.
  
  "We should find a new place."
  
  "I just sat down," Alec protested.
  
  Lisa rolled her eyes. "Not right this second. I mean we should move all our stuff out of here. I scrubbed everything I could find about us on Coil"s computer, including where we are, but the white hats might still pull some details."
  
  "What if he just tells them who we are?"
  
  "Personally, I think he"s too proud to admit how much we screwed him over. Even if he does, they won"t come after us so long as we keep our heads down. If Armsmaster had managed to arrest us then and there, we"d be fair game; but so long as we keep our heads down, they"ll have bigger priorities."
  
  "Did you get his money?" Bitch asked, scratching Angelica behind the ears.
  
  "All the numbers for his investments and off-shore stuff. Not as much as I"d like, but I also got the number for a villain called the Number Man. We let him handle the money in a diversified investment, and we can live comfortably off the 5% annual interest without ever touching the original money."
  
  "So I get to sit around and do nothing? Score!" Alec cheered, as excited as Lisa had ever seen him before. Still not a lot, but impressive.
  
  Brian raised a hand. "What about my cover job?"
  
  Lisa pulled out her phone and opened the photo album she"d sent to herself, then passed the phone to Brian.
  
  Brian stared at the screen for a few moments. "What am I looking at?" He asked eventually, in a tone of voice that said he was hoping he wouldn"t get an answer.
  
  "That"s the blackmail Coil was using for your cover boss. You probably won"t need to use it though; it"s not like they"ll want to fire you out of nowhere when it could be traced back to them. You"ll be fine."
  
  "Sweet." Brian took another swig thoughtfully. "Another toast," he proposed, raising his drink. "To Elpis- we wouldn"t be here, free and rich, if it wasn"t for her."
  
  "To Elpis," Isabella concurred, tapping her soda against his.
  
  "To Elpis," Lisa agreed, adding her own drink.
  
  "Yup," said Alec. Bitch raised her drink with an agreeable hum.
  
  Isabella tapped her soda nervously. "Why"d she do it though? I mean, fighting Lung was maybe a heat of the moment thing-"
  
  "Pun intended?" Alec asked.
  
  "No, shut up- but she blocked freaking Armsmaster for us. That guy"s on posters and stuff. It"s a lot, you know? I wouldn"t be able to do something like that."
  
  Lisa set her drink down. "Elpis used to be a villain, I think. Haven"t figured out exactly who, yet, but she"s got some stuff in her past that she"s not proud of."
  
  The rest of the team all stared at her like she"d grown an extra head. "Holy crap," Isabella mumbled.
  
  "What the hell, Lisa, why didn"t you say anything before?" Brian demanded.
  
  "Hey, I only figured it out a while ago- we"ve been busy. And like I said, I don"t have any details yet. Just that she"s a lot older than she looks, and she"s got some extra powers besides the Tinkertech.
  
  "My guess, she was like us, small-time thief. Then something went wrong one day, and someone, or multiple someones, got hurt. She"s got some guilt issues, a real self-sacrifice complex going on.
  
  "So she went to ground, changed her name and her costume, and started being as heroic as possible to make up for it. She literally remade herself into a knight in shining armour. Hell, even the cape- did you see she unrolled it when she blocked Armsmaster for us? That thing"s like a signal flag for her- she associates it with being good."
  
  Lisa paused as a thought occurred to her- how many prominent heroes actually wore capes? Not many- despite being the popular name for parahumans, almost nobody could actually look good in one. The best example would be Alexandria- maybe Elpis had been a fan? Something to think about.
  
  "Woah," Isabella said, sitting back on the couch. "So, what, does she want us to be like her? Start pulling cats out of trees and helping old ladies cross the road, all that crap?"
  
  "No idea. That woman"s weirdly hard to read sometimes- lots of conflicting signals. I could see her tensing up to fight every second- but she overruled herself every time."
  
  Brian shrugged. "Well, good for her. I"ll settle for donating to charity or something."
  
  Isabella shifted. "Hey, I know we don"t have to work together any more, but do you guys still want to hang out?"
  
  "Of course," Lisa smiled.
  
  "Absolutely," Brian agreed. "Nothing like pulling off a heist together to bond."
  
  "Probably not," Alec said.
  
  "Yeah yeah, fuck you too, Alec," Isabella laughed.
  
  Saturday 26th March, The Docks
  
  The Undersiders were all restless.
  
  Grue was cracking his knuckles, wisps of darkness leaking from his helmet, blurring his outline and making him look bigger.
  
  Whirlygig kept running her hands through her hair, untangling the knots with her fingers. When she wasn"t doing that, she was dipping her hands into her pockets, checking that the marbles and ball bearings and nails and other bits of detritus were all present.
  
  Rachel had her mask pulled up on top of her head as she leaned back against the wall. Her dogs sat by her feet with an air of confusion. They could sense the tension in the air, but didn"t understand what was happening.
  
  Lisa was calm.
  
  Sort of.
  
  Calm, in that bright, shiny way of burning through all your panic and coming out the other side. The mountains of stress had many little plateaus.
  
  Rachel heard it first, raising her head to listen. A second later, Lisa heard it too- an engine off in the distance. The deep tones were familiar- the sheer size of the engine made it a bass rumble.
  
  "She"s coming."
  
  Those two words had the Undersiders jolting to readiness. Everyone straightened up and turned in the direction of the approaching vehicle like they were preparing for a fight.
  
  Not that it would have done much good, Lisa admitted. They were small time thieves. Elpis was an entirely different weight class.
  
  Her massive car drew closer and closer, finally turning the corner into the empty parking lot they were standing in. The six tyres rolled over the cracked asphalt and weeds with ease, until the entire machine came to a halt.
  
  Elpis came out first- her armour was still scratched and scraped from fighting Hookwolf earlier, and her knuckles were still smeared with blood. She"d picked up some grass stains and smears of mud after that, but she slid herself out of the car with the same unconscious confidence as ever. Her cape swung from her shoulders as she shut the door behind her, tattered strips of silks hanging off it.
  
  Ironclad made the car rock on its suspension as he squeezed himself out of the backseat and straightened up. His armour was compressed into a squat, heavy shape instead of the towering giant he"d been before. Indicative of something?
  
  "So," Elpis said flicking her helmet open, "How do you want to handle this?"
  
  Grue stepped forward with barely a pause. "What did the Protectorate say about us?"
  
  Elpis shrugged. "They"re still going to try and arrest you. They want to put you through the court system so you officially pay for your crimes- and if you go back to crime they might charge me too."
  
  "Um."
  
  Elpis glanced at Whirlygig. "What?"
  
  Whirlygig jumped a little. "Uh, sorry. Sorry, I was just wondering, uh... If they tried to arrest you, would you go along with it?"
  
  Elpis cocked her head thoughtfully. "I"m actually not sure. Probably not, but I guess it depends what they"re arresting me for."
  
  "Well, we can"t afford to get arrested," Grue said.
  
  "And I can"t afford to let you get arrested," Elpis pointed out. "I don"t think you"ll talk, but I can"t take the risk."
  
  Lisa let her power unfurl as she stared at Elpis. She needed more data for this negotiation.
  
  Wants to trust you; has difficulty trusting others. Personal issue, not developed from Butcher personalities.
  
  Wants you to work with her; wants to control her identity. Wants to define herself beyond the Butcher persona.
  
  Is talking with the previous Butchers; can moderate their influence on her. Thinks of them as friends. Does not want to be like them.
  
  It was so much easier now- knowing Elpis"s big secret made all the conflicting signals and contradictions line up neatly.
  
  "So," Elpis was saying, "We"re going to have to work together after all. You guys are going to be heroes."
  
  "We could just lay low," Grue pointed out. "It wouldn"t take much for us to stay out of sight."
  
  Elpis was already shaking her head. "No. I need you where I can see you. Working together is our best shot."
  
  Wants you to accept, wants more people to trust. Wants friends.
  
  Wants you to become heroes; stems from wanting to prove herself as a hero.
  
  Wants to be a hero; wants to be a good person.
  
  "Do you guys remember when we all first met?" Lisa interrupted, smiling. "That night at the Trainyards? Well, the originals first met- you weren"t there, Whirl."
  
  "What"s your point?" Grue asked.
  
  "I said I should take a backseat role, be more like mission control, feed you info. And Rachel," she nodded to the other girl, "said I"d have to get my hands dirty to be a part of the group." Lisa gestured to Elpis. "Same principle applies."
  
  Elpis nodded. "Tattletale"s right. If you"re just huddled in a bunker somewhere, you"re no use to me."
  
  "See?" Lisa said, grin widening. "We"ve seen the big secret. And I just figured out the bigger secret."
  
  Elpis"s gaze snapped to her. "What bigger secret?" She demanded.
  
  Lisa spread her hands; fingers splayed. "The big secret is that Elpis is actually Butcher XV. The bigger secret is that Butcher XV, of bone-breaking, skull-taking fame..." she paused for effect, "...is actually a good person."
  
  Elpis stared at her for a long moment, not saying anything.
  
  "I mean, who saw that coming? A Butcher who"d throw herself in front of Hookwolf to save a couple of asshole kids? And here you are. Hell, I"ll follow you just to see what you do next."
  
  Elpis"s lips twitched, just for a second. "You"re going to be a handful, aren"t you."
  
  Lisa shrugged. "Probably."
  
  "I"m in."
  
  Everyone turned as Whirlygig stepped forward, making a visible effort to stand tall. "You saved my life a bunch of times. So I want to try." She walked over to Elpis.
  
  Grue sighed. "This really isn"t what I expected when I woke up this morning." The skull on his helmet turned to Elpis. "I"ve got people to take care of. So tell me the truth- can you keep them safe as well?"
  
  "I can."
  
  Grue nodded slowly. "Then I"m in too." He crossed over to Elpis too.
  
  That just left Rachel, who bent for a second to scratch her dogs. When she straightened up, her eyes were lowered. "I just want my dogs safe."
  
  "We can help you with that."
  
  Bitch raised her head a little. "Fine," she grunted, approaching.
  
  Elpis looked them all over. "This is going to be hard," she warned. "As far as I know, there"s never been a villain who publicly turned it around, let alone a whole team. It"s going to be uphill the whole way."
  
  "Figures," Whirlygig said.
  
  Elpis cracked a small smile. "Alright then. Let"s find you guys a place to stay. Although," she glanced at the car, "I don"t know how the hell we"re all going to fit in there."
  
  "They can take the backseat," Ironclad said. Lisa realised it was the first time he"d spoken since he"d got here.
  
  "Well, where are you going to sit?" Elpis asked.
  
  "At home."
  
  "What?"
  
  Ironclad sighed. "I just found out my friend"s been the stuff of nightmares since before I ever met her. I saw you take Hookwolf apart. Honestly, you scared the crap out of me.
  
  "Look, I"m sticking with you. I"m still your friend. But I need to go home and freak out about it in peace before I do anything else. I"ll see you on Monday."
  
  Elpis swallowed. "Okay. Monday then. Be safe."
  
  Ironclad waved to her, then trudged out of the lot and around the corner.
  
  Elpis stood and stared after him for a moment longer. Then she twitched, shook herself, and turned back to the Undersiders.
  
  "Okay. Okay, we should go. Do you guys need to pick anything up?"
  
  8.1
  Sunday 27th March, The Lair
  
  Isabella clattered up the stairs, hugging a cardboard box full of bits and bobs to her chest. "Dibs on the first room!" she called down to the rest of us, before ducking away.
  
  Lisa snorted. "I don"t know what she"s so excited about. They"re barely even rooms right now."
  
  "Move," Bitch said, shouldering past her with a sack of dog food under one arm and a backpack slung over the other. Her dogs clambered up the stairs after her, Angelica lagging a bit due to her small size.
  
  Brian cleared his throat. "Lisa, this stuff is heavy," he said, nodding to the boxes in his hands.
  
  "Wimp," Firecracker snorted.
  
  I tapped my foot loudly. "I know you guys can"t see my face," I called, "But I"m rolling my eyes. Hurry up already."
  
  I had to announce that because I couldn"t actually see the Undersiders directly, instead using bloodsight and insect mapping to keep track of everything. The fridge I was carrying in my arms made it impossible to see directly in front of me.
  
  "Right, moving." Lisa shrugged the strap of her bag back onto her shoulder and started upward again, Brian following, and me bringing up the rear.
  
  I"d cleaned out the loft of the old warehouse a while ago, but I"d never been able to think of a use for it; all my stuff fit on the ground floor.
  
  As it turned out, with a few dividers, some cheap furniture, and what the Undersiders had been able to shift out of their old headquarters, it made a fairly decent place to live. The skylights let in the sunshine, and I"d got the water and power turned on by paying through one of the fake IDs the Butchers had collected over the years.
  
  We made it up at last- Brian went to set his boxes down in the "living room" area closest to the stairs, while I walked over to the kitchenette in the middle and gently lowered the fridge to the floor before plugging it in.
  
  "We should do a food run," Nemean said. "Get some bread, eggs, milk, few kinds of meat-"
  
  "You always want rice," Needler put in, "And some spices. Garlic at least."
  
  Dirty Rotter snorted. "We don"t need anything fancy, just get some frozen pizzas and call it a day."
  
  "Rice is fancy to you?" I muttered, pulling out a notepad and scribbling a list down as the Butchers shouted requests.
  
  "Did you say something?" I looked up at Brian, who was on his knees, sorting out a box of cables. We didn"t have a TV yet, thanks to Regent running off with the Undersiders set, but they still had the Tivo and stuff.
  
  "Hm? Oh, no." I tapped my temple. "They"re just arguing."
  
  Brian"s eyebrows drew together. "Right."
  
  I winced to myself. The Undersiders still weren"t used to me. Especially when I talked about the Butchers.
  
  Isabella came out of the nearest room, dusting her hands. "Well, I"m moved in," she announced.
  
  "Good to know," Lisa called from her room.
  
  "It"s still a bit barebones. We should do a supply run, get some stuff. I can rig up a proper shower by tonight, and a toilet."
  
  Isabella cocked her head. "I don"t know how comfortable I"d feel sitting on a Tinker toilet," she admitted, sticking her hands in her pockets, worrying at the stud in her lower lip. Her greasy hair was held back with an elastic band, but it still reached almost to her hips.
  
  Bearskin made a face. "Yeah, I wouldn"t want to try that either."
  
  I wrinkled my nose. "Hell no. The Butchers squatted in enough buildings to know how to put a toilet together. It"s just DIY."
  
  "Huh. Neat." Isabella wandered over to Brian, squatting down next to him. "Need any help?"
  
  Brian held up a tangle of cables. "See if you can find the end in all this."
  
  Lisa came out of her room. It was still a little impressive how different she looked in casual clothes. As Tattletale she wore her hair down and wore a domino mask with eyeshadow covering the gaps. As Lisa she kept her hair up, changing the shape of her face, and the spray of freckles across her cheeks gave her a more youthful, girl-next-door look.
  
  She glanced at Isabella and Brian, then glanced at me and smirked.
  
  I frowned back. Unfortunately I could guess what she meant. It wasn"t hard to see Isabella had a crush on Brian- and I couldn"t blame her. Six feet seven of sculpted muscle with neat cornrows and nice clothes didn"t come along every day- he"d even polished his boots for God"s sake.
  
  However, Brian seemed completely oblivious to Isabella batting her feather-duster eyelashes at him and sneaking glances at that firm ass. I wasn"t sure how to deal with it yet- the Butchers didn"t care if the Teeth were screwing each other, or prostitutes, or random hookups; which meant that for once I didn"t have any useful experience to draw on.
  
  "I say take a swing at him," Anchorage said.
  
  I rolled my eyes. "You"ve been saying that for hours, Francine," I snapped.
  
  "You want him, I want him; we all want him! Tell me you don"t want some of that!"
  
  I avoided looking at Brian, even as my cheeks flushed hot. "Shut up," I growled, pushing her into the dark.
  
  Bitch emerged at last, still with the dogs, blunt features set in her characteristic glower. I set the notepad down and stepped forward.
  
  "Right," I announced, drawing everyone"s attention. "We need to talk about what we"re going to do next."
  
  Brian got to his feet, Isabella following him. "The Empire?" She asked.
  
  I shook my head. "Before all that, we need to get you guys polished up."
  
  "New costumes," Lisa said.
  
  "Right. Nobody"s going to believe you"re a hero with a skull helmet." I nodded to Brian, who scratched his head.
  
  "What did you have in mind?"
  
  "Come up with some ideas, and we"ll go over them. I can make you guys some light armour to go with it. The important thing is not to look scary." I pointed at Isabella and Bitch. "You two especially need help."
  
  Bitch raised her head a little, still not-quite looking me in the eye. "What"s that mean?" she said with a hint of challenge.
  
  "Because you two barely have costumes. And we need to get you a new name."
  
  "Bitch is fine."
  
  "The heroes aren"t going to call you that," Lisa pointed out. "Think of it as something better than Hellhound, at least. We can still call you Bitch in private."
  
  Isabella raised a hand. "Are you kidding me with this shit?" Quarrel asked incredulously.
  
  "Do we need to change our names too?"
  
  I shrugged. "Up to you. Let"s face it, you guys aren"t going to fool anyone into thinking you"re different people- you"re too distinctive. Might as well keep the names and push through.
  
  "Anyway, costumes. I"ve got a pretty good idea of what you can do, but give me a rundown. Maybe we can make you a theme out of it."
  
  Brian shrugged his shoulders, which was an impressive sight. "I create clouds of darkness," he said, raising a hand and forming a blob of absolute black in his palm. "Blocks all light, radio signals- Lisa thinks it could block radiation too, but we haven"t tested that. Sound gets muffled, and it slows people down. I don"t get any of those problems though."
  
  "You"re trained too," I noted. "I saw some of your moves- what style do you use?"
  
  Brian let the darkness in his hand dissipate. "I dabbled in a lot of stuff. Boxing, Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Jiu Jitsu. Never stuck to one really."
  
  "We should arrange to spar with him," Muramasa mused. "It could be interesting."
  
  "Fair enough. Isabella, what"ve you got?"
  
  "Uh, well, I can spin stuff around me. Small stuff at first, then heavier as I keep going. It"s always anti-clockwise, I don"t know why. After a while I can start to hover with it."
  
  "Small, then heavy?" Tactical pointed out. "Is it weight or size?"
  
  "Is it weight or size that"s the determining factor for your power?" I asked. "Could you pick up small heavy things before large lightweight stuff, or is it the other way around?"
  
  Isabella hesitated. "I... don"t know?"
  
  "Well, we"ll figure that out."
  
  Lisa didn"t wait to be asked; she just started talking with a grin. "I can draw conclusions from small details. So I look at someone, how they stand, how they part their hair, how they tie their shoes; and I can get their ATM numbers and email passwords, or whatever else I"m looking for."
  
  "Sounds like Sherlock Holmes on speed," Tock Tick snorted.
  
  "Basically like Sherlock Holmes-" Lisa broke off as she glanced at me. "One of them already said it, didn"t they?"
  
  I nodded, impressed. "Very good. Tock Tick said the same thing."
  
  Lisa waved her hand a little. "Hi in there," she said in a sing-song tone.
  
  "Cheeky little shit," Rotter said, thoroughly amused.
  
  Bitch shifted as I looked at her last. "I make my dogs grow," she grunted. "Easier if I do it slow, doesn"t tire me out."
  
  I nodded. I"d seen with bloodsight how the dog gradually got lost in more and more generated flesh, until it was curled up in a little pod in the middle. The flesh itself was pretty durable, and armoured with bone spikes and calcified muscle. I didn"t need to push her for more details- she clearly wasn"t the talkative sort anyway.
  
  "Well, they"re all good powers. Like I said though, they"re distinctive. You"ll need to come up with a different look each- reinvent yourselves."
  
  "Hey, it"s not like we"ve got extra powers to choose from," Lisa said playfully. "Most people get one or two, remember?"
  
  I snorted. "Yeah, don"t remind me."
  
  "Actually, can we get a bit of history on yours? I looked some stuff up online, but there"s a lot of conflicting sources- and there wasn"t anything about Tock Tick being one of the Butchers."
  
  "In a way, he wasn"t- he only lasted a week before Stoneknapper claimed the title-"
  
  "OI!" Butcher thundered. "Forget the nerd, start with me!"
  
  I gritted my teeth and pushed Butcher back into the dark recesses of my mindspace, even as I admitted he had a point.
  
  "Alright, from the top. Butcher started the Teeth in "91. They weren"t as bad in the day- or at least they couldn"t get away with as much. Still, they were brutal- Marquis was classy, and the Empire pretended they had standards, but the Teeth made no excuses.
  
  "Butcher had super strength, super durability, and the ability to inflict pain- like, give-you-a-heart-attack pain. Then he and Vladimir got into an argument, and Butcher decided to get rid of him."
  
  Which was a quick way of saying Vladimir had got tired of Butcher"s homophobic jokes and picked a fight. Butcher had simply caught him by the throat and blasted him with pain, until Vladimir had started draining Butcher"s blood, and hadn"t stopped when he let go, or when Butcher toppled to the ground.
  
  As for Butcher, if he"d been surprised that his durability didn"t stop Vladimir"s draining, he"d got the shock of his existence when he"d suddenly been behind Vladimir"s eyes.
  
  "Vladimir had a blood-drain Striker power, which fuels a superspeed power. Being able to see people"s circulatory systems through solid objects helped him ambush people, but once he had Butcher backing him up, he was better in a straight fight.
  
  "A few months later, Flinch bumped into him, and hit him a little too hard. Super strength and danger sense, which works best on physical danger- it used to be able to pick up on traps, ambushes, even bad intentions."
  
  That danger sense had been blaring in his head the entire time Flinch threw himself into danger, driven mad by the endless howling and screaming in his head to return to the Teeth. He"d hoped to wipe out the Teeth and end his torment, to no avail.
  
  "Dirty Rotter was next- his power decays anything he touches, and it gets worse over time. He"s the one who really got people believing in the inheritance- before that it was all rumours. Probably doesn"t hurt that he started the tradition of the Teeth wearing bones."
  
  "Christ, I remember that," Flinch sighed. "That was a bad time."
  
  "Needler was after him- her regeneration let her survive his decay long enough to land a hit, and her Thinker power homes in on physical weak points. She jammed a knife right into the thin part of the skull here," I tapped my temple, "and became Butcher V."
  
  Dirty Rotter had brought it on himself, really. Making a joke after Behemoth had hit Jakarta and guaranteed the deaths of her extended family had driven Needler into a homicidal rage. The only unexpected thing about her response was that she"d issued a formal challenge instead of lunging for his throat right then and there.
  
  "Sorry about that, love," Dirty Rotter said, subdued. "Shouldn"t"ve..."
  
  "It"s all in the past," Needler replied.
  
  "Needler lasted two years, up until the Nine came through in "96."
  
  "Wait, the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Isabella squeaked. "The Butchers fought them?"
  
  "Yep. Needler actually killed Nice Guy, if you can believe it. Claimed the bounty, used the money to relocate after the Teeth took heavy losses."
  
  "Nice Guy? Doesn"t sound scary." Brian frowned. "Which probably means his power was something horrible, right?"
  
  "He catches on quickly," Vladimir noted.
  
  "Nice Guy was a Stranger- he couldn"t be perceived as a threat. He could stab the guy next to you and you"d suspect everyone except him."
  
  "So how did Needler kill him?"
  
  "Well, she figured out Nice Guy was hiding in this apartment building. They were just outside the range of his effect, and they knew they wouldn"t be able to kill him in a straight fight."
  
  I shrugged. "So, Needler had all the doors and windows nailed shut and firebombed the place. When it stopped burning, they hauled the body out and confirmed he was dead."
  
  Isabella looked vaguely nauseous.
  
  "Who came after Needler?" Lisa asked interestedly.
  
  "Firecracker. She was 19 when she beat Needler in Boston- youngest Butcher until me. Blamed Needler for the Teeth"s losses, so she challenged. She was a Brute too, but with an explosive teleportation power. I"m sure you all remember that."
  
  Isabella shivered a little, and nodded.
  
  "Well, Firecracker was a lot faster with it than me. She played keep-away with Needler until she let her guard down, then teleported behind her and punched her through the back of the head."
  
  "You mean in the back of the head," Brian corrected.
  
  I shook my head. "No, I mean through." I resisted the urge to go and clean my hand.
  
  "Tock Tick was next- he wasn"t really a villain, just a guy who wasn"t picky about who bought his tech. When the Teeth started causing problems and trashing his stuff, he set a trap with some automatons. Worked too well- and it turns out it"s hard to concentrate on Tinkering when you"ve got six other people yelling in your head.
  
  "Like I said before, he lasted a week. Stoneknapper"s power is matter-shaping- he went through all of Tock Tick"s defences like they were modelling clay, and took the mantle. Pretty successful reign- obviously it"s easy to break into safes when you can just open it up like Play-Doh. He also started digging into power research- even got a Harvard professor to pass stuff on to them."
  
  "How the hell did he pull that off?" Brian asked, folding his arms.
  
  "Killed a cop for her, made it look like a robbery gone wrong."
  
  "Jesus," Isabella hissed. "At least tell me he was a bad cop."
  
  "They"re all bad," Anchorage snorted.
  
  "No, good cop. Lousy husband though."
  
  "Best job we ever pulled," Stoneknapper reminisced. "Pull off a robbery, splatter a cop, and get all the latest Parahuman research papers."
  
  "Not to mention Professor Wilk"s sweet, sweet ass!" Firecracker cackled.
  
  I did my best to keep the blush off my face and pushed on with the explanation before the memories could distract me.
  
  "After Stoneknapper was Bearskin. He"s ex-Empire-"
  
  "What?" Brian demanded.
  
  I held up my hands conciliatorily. "He"s well past that, I promise. Everyone else made sure of that. You can"t really share a head with a black man, a gay man, a Hispanic man and a lesbian without learning some things.
  
  "Anyway, Bearskin has a mid-range power, drives people into a mindless rage. He figured he could get someone else to kill the Butcher for him and take the fall. Nobody expected he"d inherit- but he did. Once everyone else knocked some sense into him, he returned to the Teeth and led."
  
  To be more accurate, the others had driven him to the brink of madness before he"d finally caved. That might have been one of the reasons behind Bearskin committing some of the bloodier acts of the Butcher"s history.
  
  He"d used Stoneknapper"s power to toss knives into a crowd before using his own power to drive them into a bloody rage, or sculpted his armour into spikes and let them cut themselves to ribbons attacking him.
  
  One particularly gruesome incident involved a dirty cop who refused to tell Bearskin where he"d hidden a kilogram of heroin. Bearskin had wrapped him in chicken wire and vigorously scrubbed the officer with a cheesegrater until he"d told the truth.
  
  I shook my head to clear the phantom images away and continued. "Tactical was next- he figured the Butcher legacy was a matter of range, so he planted IEDs and used a huge rifle to finish the job."
  
  "So what?" Bitch grunted. "His power"s guns?"
  
  "Military Thinker power," I explained. "He understands the ins and outs of every conventional weapon, and he can create battle strategies for attack and defence. It works better the more he knows about the people in the fight though.
  
  "He tried to bring the Teeth back to the Bay in 2002. Caused a lot of damage, but New Wave were at their peak and the Empire was pissed off, so it didn"t go well."
  
  "That"s an understatement," Tactical groused. "I still miss that glaive-rifle I put together."
  
  "I miss Sweet Caroline," Bearskin rumbled, meaning the XM134 minigun that Tactical had managed to acquire through a string of favours and deals, which had quickly become the greatest weapon in the Butcher"s arsenal, albeit one that was reserved for special occasions.
  
  Ammunition didn"t grow on trees, after all.
  
  "Anchorage took over in 2003- she had a form of super strength, though it"s more about altering the mass of objects. She used to have this huge boat anchor she"d swing around," I pantomimed the size of the weapon, arms spread wide; "Plus her power let her reinforce objects. Turns out that includes increasing the surface tension of water enough to walk on it."
  
  "You can walk on water?" Isabella goggled. "Oh, that"s just not fair!"
  
  I smiled. "It"s a pretty neat trick. That"s actually how she won- took the fight to the shoreline, used the water to outmanoeuvre Tactical, and kept smashing him with the anchor from a distance until she could finish him. It was probably the most dramatic title match the Butchers ever did."
  
  "Thank you," said Anchorage with mock primness.
  
  "Nemean took the title in 2005. She was with the Teeth for pretty much her whole life, and eventually she decided she"d be a better leader than anyone else."
  
  Brian frowned. "Her whole life? How is that possible?"
  
  "Nemean"s a Case 53," I explained. "A "monster cape"" I added, seeing the looks of confusion. "Like Weld over in Boston."
  
  "There"s a couple of guys around here too," Lisa chimed in. "Gregor the Snail and Newter. They work for a mercenary outfit lead by Faultline."
  
  "Yeah, I"ve heard of her; she does good work."
  
  Lisa"s bright smile turned into a sour look. "Oh."
  
  "Lisa can"t stand Faultline," Brian explained to me and Isabella, who was looking confused. "They"ve got a pissing contest going on over who"s got the better team."
  
  "Well, now you"re with me, so you"ve definitely got more muscle," I pointed out. "Anyway, Nemean. She woke up in an alleyway, no belongings, no clothes, and no memories. A couple of assholes thought they"d try and take advantage of the naked lion-lady, so she gutted them both and ran. The Teeth found her, liked her style, and took her in."
  
  "Um." Isabella raised her hand again. "You said lion lady- what exactly did she look like?"
  
  I held up my own hand and let my nails grow into long hooked claws. "Sandy fur all over, digitigrade feet, and sharp nails. Her actual powers were super-durable hide, pain immunity, and the power to grow her teeth and claws out. Which is how she won- She was way deadlier at close range than Butcher XI. The pain, the bloodletting, the rot; none of that affected her.
  
  "Being that tough meant she lasted longer than any other Butcher, and she led pretty well, so she didn"t have a lot of challengers either."
  
  "Wearing Anchorage"s skull as a trophy might have had something to do with it," Quarrel pointed out. "That shit used to creep me out."
  
  "Still, eventually Muramasa decided to shoot his shot. He"s another Brute, but his real trick is to hyper-sharpen any blade he holds; sharp enough to get past Nemean"s invulnerability.
  
  "He took the title, made himself some really spiky armour and a couple of swords, and stayed in charge until late last year, when Quarrel challenged him."
  
  "Butcher XIV," Lisa said knowingly.
  
  "Are we supposed to be impressed that she can count to fourteen?" Muramasa sneered.
  
  "My predecessor," I confirmed, determinedly not laughing at Muramasa"s snark. "Her power lets her warp space between her weapon and whatever she aims at, so she"ll always be on target. Throwing knives, arrows, bullets, a dollar coin once... It works on melee weapons too, although the effect drops once it hits something solid.
  
  "She got Muramasa in a running battle, bleeding him out with broadhead arrows, and then a headshot." I noticed Brian wincing at that and put it aside for later. "Then she decided to take another crack at muscling into Brockton Bay again, and" I shrugged, "here I am. Controlling every insect within a block"s radius, sometimes more."
  
  "And that"s what keeps you... stable?" Isabella asked hesitantly. "Insect control?"
  
  "Honestly, that"s just my best guess," I admitted. "The Butcher power is unique, and poorly understood. Maybe the same power to multitask hundreds of thousands of bugs also lets me handle the Butchers- none of us know."
  
  Brian winced. "Well, as long as you"re in control."
  
  "Three months without going mad- I"d say it"s proven."
  
  I clapped my hands to clear the air a bit. "Anyway, all this means I"ve got a good idea of what costumes look scary as hell, and what looks heroic. Darker colours are fine, but let"s avoid spikes or edges. Showing a bit of face is a good idea too, makes you look more personable."
  
  Lisa shrugged easily. "I guess I"m all set then. Bright colours, small mask."
  
  "Then you can help everyone else," I countered.
  
  Lisa snapped her fingers playfully. "Darn, you got me."
  
  "In the meantime, I"m going to run out and get some supplies to fix up the place. I need to talk to Parian along the way, so I could see if she"d be willing to take a commission. Don"t burn the place down while I"m gone."
  
  Isabella snorted. "We"re not that bad."
  
  "Force of habit. The Teeth actually did that once."
  
  The Boardwalk
  
  "No, it makes total sense," Tock Tick insisted. "He"s got boxing, he creates shadows- so we call him Shadowboxer. Get him some gloves and one of those robes they use to walk into the ring, it"s perfect."
  
  "It"s stupid," Nemean said flatly. "Sounds like something out of a cartoon, not real life."
  
  The Butchers kept bickering and tossing ideas around as I loaded stuff into the back of the chariot. I"d got some very weird looks shopping at a hardware store in full armour, but other than a couple of people taking pictures, I"d left without incident. There was enough piping and tubing and tiles and grout for me to make sure the Undersiders wouldn"t stink up the place.
  
  Once I"d locked up, I grabbed a bag full of tools and parts, and made my way towards Parian"s shop. More looks as I walked along- people stepping aside as I approached, whispering to each other as I passed.
  
  I was just around the corner when a woman stepped close and held up a newspaper. "Excuse me?"
  
  "Yes?" I said, coming to a halt and popping my helmet open.
  
  The woman, maybe college age, smoothed her dark hair back over her shoulder and held out the newspaper. "You"re Elpis, right? Can I have your autograph?" she asked in an eager Boston accent.
  
  "The fuck?" Butcher asked.
  
  I looked at the paper- it was folded to show the front page pictures. It took me a second to recognise it.
  
  The left side was a photo of Hookwolf, mid-transformation, blades popping out everywhere. It must have been taken by a bystander some time ago, given the blurred edges.
  
  The right side was me, Armsmaster, and Laserdream, working together to clear the remains of Kaiser"s blades off the hill where we"d sent Hookwolf off. It was a pretty good photo- me on the left, sword raised to shear off some spikes; Laserdream on the right, hands up to fire off a beam; and Armsmaster in the middle, halberd held at the ready. All three of us were scuffed and scraped by battle, but still standing strong.
  
  A bit misleading, considering that pose had happened well after the Empire had retreated, but the reporters hadn"t arrived until the action was over, so they must have made do with what they could.
  
  The title above it all was "Hookwolf Birdcaged! Local Heroes Defeat Notorious Villain".
  
  I knew that Hookwolf"s capture and imprisonment had made the news- Dad and I had briefly talked about it at dinner last night. However, it was still unexpected to have my picture on the front page, my achievements written down for all to read. I felt a sudden rush of satisfied warmth.
  
  "You"ve come so far, Taylor," Flinch said warmly. "The whole city knows the good you"ve done."
  
  I gently took the paper and pulled a pen from my belt. "Yes, you can. Who should I make it out to?"
  
  "Janet," the woman said, grinning eagerly as I signed "To Janet- Best wishes, Elpis" just under the title in florid handwriting. "I can"t believe you got rid of Hookwolf."
  
  "Well, it was a group effort," I tried.
  
  "No no nonono," Janet interrupted, "I can read between the lines. Maybe the rest of them helped send him off, but I know you brought him in, no matter how the papers try to spin it. Modesty"s no use here!"
  
  "I"ll keep that in mind," I said bemusedly. "Have a nice day."
  
  Janet waved as I turned the final corner out of sight, Parian"s sign coming into view up ahead.
  
  "Well, that was bizarre," Vladimir decided.
  
  Dirty Rotter shrugged and grinned lewdly. "Hey, if it gets pretty girls throwing themselves at us, I"m all for it!"
  
  "Speaking of pretty girls," Needler mused as I reached the elegant sign for Parian"s shop, "I wonder how old Parian is?"
  
  "Knock it off," I said, giving the shop window a quick glance. No paint or smudges this time, I was pleased to note. The dummies in the display were sporting slinky gowns in cheerful colours, like they were headed out for a high society gala.
  
  I spotted Parian before she spotted me, as she was showing a swatch of fabric to a middle-aged woman. I gently pushed the door open, the bell overhead barely ringing.
  
  Parian glanced up at the sound, then did a double take as she saw me. "Elpis!" she cried, making to come over before she remembered her customer. "Oh, uh..."
  
  "Don"t mind me, I can wait," I said, waving a hand.
  
  I didn"t have too long to wait, as it turned out. I"d just re-checked my measurements and the parts I"d brought along when Parian and the woman shook hands and parted. The woman breezed past me to the door with the scent of expensive perfume and the casual arrogance of money, hardly sparing me a glance as she exited to a nice car parked outside.
  
  Parian bustled over happily as I pulled a roll of wire mesh out of the bag. "That was Lilian Stansfield," she said excitedly. "She"s commissioned me for a bespoke dress, just to start!"
  
  I whistled. "As in the mega-rich Stansfields? Their son"s dating Glory Girl?"
  
  "Exactly! Oh, Glory Girl must have mentioned my work to her!" Parian giggled excitedly.
  
  "Wish someone would recommend us to some rich MILF," Stoneknapper groused. "We need more spending money."
  
  "Hush," I told him. To Parian, I said "I"m happy for you. It"s about time you got some good news."
  
  "Oh, thank you-" Parian clapped a hand to the mouth of her mask. "Oh my goodness, I"m so sorry," she said in a mortified tone of voice. "I heard the news yesterday, but I forgot- are you alright?"
  
  "Still in one piece, despite everything. Thanks for asking."
  
  "Well, of course. Hookwolf"s the stuff of nightmares. Everyone who"s not Empire is glad to see the back of him." Parian carefully laid a small gloved hand on my forearm. "I was afraid you"d been hurt."
  
  "It was close here and there," I admitted. "I think I"m going to lay low and recover for a few days, get my equipment back to 100%."
  
  "Good." Parian"s gaze drifted to the roll of mesh. "Is that part of the security system?"
  
  "It will be. I"ll do the control mechanisms now, while there"s no customers, and then set this up on the outside."
  
  "Right. Would you like a drink while you"re here? Tea, perhaps?"
  
  "That"d be great, thanks." I pulled out a pre-made control panel and a spool of cable as I crossed to the counter.
  
  Parian bustled off to some discreet alcove while I attached the control panel next to the light switch and wired the end of the cable spool into the switch. By the time she came back with a cup and saucer, I"d run the cable up the wall and was stapling it along the edge of the ceiling towards the door.
  
  "I wasn"t sure how you take it," Parian explained, proffering the tea. "I can add milk if you like."
  
  "No, this is fine," I said, letting the cable go, mildly satisfied that it stayed in place.
  
  "Come on already, make a move," Firecracker coaxed as I took a sip.
  
  "What are you on about?" I asked.
  
  "Dude, you"re all alone at her place. She"s been all worried about you, she made you a drink- she"s into you. Flirt a little!"
  
  "Come on," Anchorage leered. "You"re the buff delivery guy here to drill the cute little lady"s new doohickey into the wall- all we need is a bad soundtrack and this could be the opening to a porno. Bow-chicka-wow-wow!
  
  I pushed Firecracker and Anchorage down before I could blush any further, and lowered the cup. "This is really good," I said, rolling my shoulders to try and work out some tension.
  
  "Oh, your cape..."
  
  I glanced down, and realised my shrug had set my cape swinging out a little. Parian must have noticed the tears and rents that I"d barely managed to stitch up.
  
  "Ah, yeah. I really need to replace the fabric on it- it"s always the first bit to get damaged."
  
  Parian raised a hand. "I could try and fix it up a little, if you like."
  
  "Oh, you don"t have to-"
  
  "Please, I insist."
  
  "Oh for god"s sake, let her," Bearskin grumbled.
  
  I relented, pulling my cape off with my free hand. Parian took it from me and held a hand over it. The threads unravelled and re-wove themselves as I watched, the visible stitches I"d made being lost in the rest of the silk. Within a few seconds, the cape was almost as good as new- still a few visible flaws here and there where the biggest rips had been, but better than I"d left it.
  
  "Nice work," I praised her, clipping the cape to my shoulders again. "Which reminds me," I added; "Would you be available for a couple more commissions?"
  
  8.2
  Monday 28th March, Arcadia High School
  
  I"d expected to hear some talk about Hookwolf getting Birdcaged when I got into school. A bit of casual discussion, maybe something from the more avid cape geeks or people who were close to the Dallons.
  
  The first thing I heard as I got through the door was a couple of guys loudly laughing over how "Hookwolf totally got his ass kicked".
  
  A bit further on, I passed a group huddled around one girl"s phone- when I craned my neck to look, I saw pictures I recognised from the fight.
  
  And in the corridor after that, I heard someone say my name, and slowed down so I could hear them say "I"m telling you, Elpis dragged the guy in-"
  
  Anchorage cackled madly. "Oh this is great! Drink it in, baby!"
  
  Vladimir marvelled at the sights as I made my way down the corridors. "I knew people would be glad to see the back of him, but I didn"t expect this kind of reaction. Certainly not from the children."
  
  Bearskin shrugged. "This is the biggest loss the Empire"s taken in years. Doesn"t hurt that it happened in a huge battle that got a few good pictures out."
  
  I turned the corner as I considered. He had a point. Not since Allfather"s death had the Empire been so visibly wounded- and Kaiser had stepped in to fill his father"s shoes almost immediately. There wasn"t anyone in the current roster who could fill Hookwolf"s role- hell, I doubted there was anyone else like that in the state.
  
  They"d rally, of course- but not before Lung used the chance to advance his people into vulnerable territory, I expected. And not before the Protectorate and New Wave hopefully used the chance to kick the Empire while they were down.
  
  I, at least, would take some time off. The Empire would want my head- best to let them cool off a little and re-arm before going back out. It would be a chance to get the Undersiders kitted out too.
  
  Of course, I still had plenty of other business to take care of.
  
  Case in point, the envelope I held in my hand. Inside was a key to the lair, and instructions on how to find it.
  
  When I reached Tarquin"s locker, I stopped in front of it and slipped the envelope through the vent at the top. I hoped I"d get the chance to talk to him today in private and patch things up, but in case that didn't happen, I wanted him to have this.
  
  "Hey."
  
  I spun on the ball of one foot at the voice. Amy was coming down the hallway towards me with a purposeful stride. Her face was set; the cupid"s bow of her mouth was taut.
  
  Extending the metaphor, I wondered what arrows she was ready to hiss at me.
  
  "Walk and talk?" she asked, jerking her head to indicate as she reached me. I considered for a second before falling into step; having this talk in one spot would make it easier to avoid eavesdroppers and rubberneckers.
  
  "She hasn"t got a bug in her pockets," Quarrel noted. "Weird."
  
  Amy said nothing for a while as I followed her- I"d assumed she was taking me somewhere private to raise her voice.
  
  "Are you okay?"
  
  I stared at Amy, and she looked back with what looked like genuine concern.
  
  "Um. Yeah?"
  
  "Are you sure?"
  
  "Positive. Not a scratch, you know how it is."
  
  Amy rolled her eyes impressively. "I know. I didn"t mean physically. Just," her tongue popped out to moisten her lips, "You had a lot to deal with."
  
  "Shit, this is weird..." Rotter muttered.
  
  Nemean made a face at him. "Shut up! I want to hear this!"
  
  "You did get my messages, right?" I asked. I"d sent Amy a bunch of texts explaining everything that happened, but I hadn"t heard back from her, just a lot of "read" notifications.
  
  "Yeah, but that only tells me so much. I mean, Carol"s been going on about it since Saturday, but that doesn"t really explain things." Another look at me.
  
  "Of course she has," Firecracker snorted. "Bitch."
  
  I felt like one of those guys in cartoons who tries to run at a door to break it down and can"t stop running when someone opens the door. I almost wanted to ask where the sarcasm and criticism was.
  
  "Still adjusting," I admitted at last. "The group"s settling in, but we"re not a hundred per cent copacetic yet. I mean, they"re getting used to having me, and I"m getting used to more people in the know."
  
  "Is that good or bad?"
  
  I shrugged. "I guess it"s nice to be able to talk about this, let off some steam. And it"s a little encouraging that they"re not freaking about it."
  
  "Actually, what are they like? In private, I mean." Amy gestured vaguely to her face in what I realised was meant to be a mask-lowering gesture.
  
  "Teenagers," I snorted. "The big guy"s professional even now, the blonde"s curious and a little smug; brunette"s the shy one, but she"s trying to catch up; and..." I paused, mulling over Bitch"s weird behaviour to me.
  
  "You intimidate her," Nemean said plainly.
  
  Flinch butted in indignantly. "That"s not it- well, maybe a little- but I think that girl"s not used to someone as powerful as you treating her with kindness. She"ll come around," he added encouragingly.
  
  "The dog"s not used to me, I think. She looks at me like she thinks I"ll start shouting any second."
  
  Amy snorted quietly. "Your reputation precedes you."
  
  "Mm."
  
  After a little more aimless walking, Amy spoke up again. "So, how"d they react when they saw you in casual clothes?"
  
  "Actually, they still haven"t. I"ve only been dressed up around them."
  
  Amy stopped and turned to me, eyes wide. "What?"
  
  "Well, I can"t just tell them right away," I reasoned, not sure why Amy was acting so surprised.
  
  Amy huffed and looked about, then grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me into an empty classroom. I was too confused to protest, even as the Butchers snickered in anticipation of what looked like an argument.
  
  Amy shut the door behind us and leaned on it. "Tattletale," she said acidly, "is a Thinker."
  
  "I"m well aware of that," I shot back, feeling the irritation of our usual interactions rising.
  
  "So cut out the middle man and tell them already. They already know the worst and they"ve stuck with you. No use dangling a secret in front of someone who"s going to jump on it like a cat on a mouse."
  
  "Hey, it"s not that simple," I pointed out. "I"m processing enough without unmasking on top of it."
  
  "How is this the bigger obstacle for you?" Amy demanded. "You told me, you told Tarquin, you told Emily-"
  
  "I didn"t tell you shit, remember?" I snapped.
  
  "Woah, easy," Tactical cautioned me.
  
  I gritted my teeth and swallowed my next words before I could say something hurtful.
  
  "Look," I said with forced calm, "They only found me out by accident. I don"t have much of a track period in telling people I"m Taylor Hebert, let alone the B-U-T-C-H-E-R. I only showed T and Emily my face, and you figured me out on your own.
  
  "I"ve never actually been totally honest with someone of my own accord, alright?"
  
  Amy stared at me for a long moment, full deer-in-the-headlights mode.
  
  "That... makes sense," she said eventually.
  
  I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. "Sorry. That was a little more intense than I meant to be. I just... I can"t open up easily. There"s all this horrible shit inside me-"
  
  "Watch it," Needler warned.
  
  "-sorry, all these "horrible secrets"," I air-quoted, "And I feel if I tell people anything they"ll see everything else. And then they"ll freak out and scream and run away."
  
  Amy grasped her left arm in her right hand, letting it hang by her side. "Right."
  
  I lowered my hands and cracked my knuckles restlessly. "You"re right though," I admitted. "I should show the Undersiders. Might as well rip off the band-aid."
  
  Ah, while we"re on the subject of letting people in, as it were..." Tock Tick prodded.
  
  "Shit, right." I pulled the second envelope out of my coat and held it out. "Uh, kind of a non-sequitur, but I was going to give this to you."
  
  Amy gave it a blank look. "What is it?"
  
  I pushed it a little closer to her. "It"s for the lair. My lair. I mean, it"s the Undersider lair now, but this is just in case you need it."
  
  Amy took the envelope between finger and thumb, hooking a finger under the flap to tear it open, then tipping it into her hand. A note and a key fell onto her palm.
  
  "See the arrow on the handle?" I said, pointing to the little triangle I"d added with Stoneknapper"s power. "You put the key in with that facing up. Quarter-turn clockwise, half-turn back, and that"ll get you in through the door."
  
  Amy held up the key, four rows of notches set in a cross, and a length of silk cord looped through the handle. Then in a sudden, hurried gesture, she pulled the cord over her head and tucked the key down her front, flicking her hair back out to finish up.
  
  "Right. Thanks. Listen, I"ve got to go, but... let"s talk later? Okay?"
  
  "Uh, yeah," I began, before Amy grabbed the door handle and pulled it open, slipping out into the corridor with that low-heeled shuffle of hers.
  
  "Did I just piss her off?" I asked, genuinely confused.
  
  Bearskin shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me."
  
  It wasn"t until fourth period chemistry that I got a chance to talk to T. We usually sat together, occasionally working together on practical experiments. The Butchers had some extra experience that had let me catch up, though there was no way I was going to tell Ms Watts that I knew how to cook up a batch of napalm.
  
  We made some small talk before the lesson started, like we were just two friends who"d only heard about Hookwolf"s defeat, not two capes who"d actually caused it. Some stuff about video games, a few questions about the homework, and so on.
  
  I scratched a note while Ms Watts started drawing molecule diagrams on the board, explaining about hydrocarbons and emulsion and similar stuff. When her back was turned, I passed the note to T.
  
  -Are we okay?
  
  T made a show of nodding along to Ms Watt"s explanation before glancing down at the note. After a few seconds, he wrote his own message and passed it back, bumping his elbow against mine.
  
  -Yeah, we"re good.
  
  A small smile turned my lips upward as I glanced at Tarquin, who smiled back.
  
  Ms Watts glanced in our direction, and we both straightened up, acting like model students. No note-passing going on here, certainly not.
  
  "God, I didn"t miss this," Stoneknapper groaned. "I had a teacher just like this in high school."
  
  Once she was looking away, I passed the note over again.
  
  -Sorry I didn"t tell you before.
  
  T looked down at the note for a long moment, before adding his own and passing it back.
  
  -Not sure I would"ve taken it any better anyway.
  
  "I would"ve loved to see that," Butcher snickered. "Kid"d probably piss his pants on the spot!"
  
  I gave Butcher a shove while holding back a frown, scratching another note.
  
  -Still feel bad. Anything I can do to make up?
  
  "Tarquin?"
  
  I almost tore the note in half when Ms Watts called on T, but he kept it together.
  
  T lowered his hand. "That"s a covalent bond, Ms Watts."
  
  "Correct. So in this case-"
  
  I waited a few more seconds for her attention to drift to the other side of the class, before sliding the note along. T read it, then tucked it under his textbook while he jotted some other stuff down.
  
  After a few moments he pulled it out again and wrote a reply without looking down. I was impressed by his dedication to pretending to pay attention to the teacher.
  
  The downside was that his handwriting suffered. It took me a second to realise that the M I"d been staring at was actually two Es, and the F was really a K.
  
  -I want to meet them. And know more about you.
  
  Ms Watts glanced at the clock. "Okay, before everyone starts packing up," she said, "Homework. Pass up last week"s assignment to the front. This week, I want you to answer the practice questions in Chapter 7, including the diagrams."
  
  There were a few half-hearted groans, but people started passing their homework along. I added mine and T"s to the pile as it came our way.
  
  As the bell rang, everybody streamed out the door to lunch, glad to be free of the horrors of high school Chemistry.
  
  T and I made a beeline for the cafeteria at once. "What do you want to know?" I asked in a low voice.
  
  "Like, what you can do," T said, wiggling his fingers in a way that obviously implied powers. "And about, you know, the others," he added, twirling his finger by his ear.
  
  Firecracker chuckled. "I like this kid."
  
  "That"s totally fair."
  
  "Ask him about the key," Muramasa prompted me.
  
  I snapped my fingers. "Shit, that"s right, I forgot. Did you get my note?"
  
  T patted his pocket. "Yeah. Thanks for that. Might swing by some time, say hi to everyone else."
  
  "Let me know when you do. I still need to tell them some other stuff, it"d be easier if you"re there too."
  
  I caught a scent as we made it in. Beef, onions, and a rich tomato sauce. It was appetising enough to make my stomach growl.
  
  "Sloppy Joes," Anchorage crooned. "The food of champions."
  
  The two of us quickly grabbed servings of meaty goodness and extras, before casting about for the rest of our little friend group. The usual table was occupied, but I spotted Frankie"s red hair pretty quickly.
  
  "Has anyone read Of Mice And Men before?" Callum asked as T and I sat down. "Because I don"t know how much of it I can get through before my brain turns off."
  
  "Oh come on, it"s not that bad," Stacy insisted, jabbing a fork into her salad.
  
  Callum flicked his scarf back over his shoulder in a move that he thought was debonair, and the rest of us gently teased him about. "It"s not bad. It"s just depressing. My mind starts to drift off in self-defence."
  
  "I"ve read it," I volunteered, picking up my sandwich. "I can help you if you want."
  
  "Less talk, more meat," Nemean demanded. I obligingly cranked my jaw open and dug into my meal with gusto.
  
  There was a thunk as Amy slapped her tray down and threw herself into the seat opposite me.
  
  I inhaled in shock- which is a bad move when your mouth is full of mincemeat and bread. I choked and frantically pounded myself on the chest to clear the blockage, sucking in a breath through my nose.
  
  "Oh thank Christ," Quarrel breathed. "I don"t want to have two experiences of choking to death."
  
  The rest of the group were similarly surprised. "Can we help you?" Stacy asked uncertainly.
  
  Amy picked up her drink. "If I have to keep watching my sister suck face with her boyfriend, I"m going to lose my appetite," she said venomously, taking a swig.
  
  I managed to swallow some of my mouthful as I glanced over at the popular kids table. Sure enough, Victoria and her boyfriend were kissing with sickening affection, giddy with young love.
  
  Callum leaned past Frankie to look, cocking his head. "Huh. Fair enough." He sat back down. "So, hi. I"m Callum."
  
  "Amy Dallon, but you already knew that."
  
  "Well, yeah. Carrot top here is Frankie, ow," he said cheerfully as Frankie flicked his ear, "That"s Stacy, Tarquin who prefers to be called T, and Taylor."
  
  "We actually met once before," I said, before I could stop myself.
  
  Amy glanced up at me, momentarily surprised. "Right. World Issues," she said heavily, in a tone that said I should play along if I knew what was good for me.
  
  "Yeah. Thanks for that," I replied awkwardly, with equal lack of subtlety.
  
  Everyone else present was staring at us, so I quickly picked up my sandwich and took another bite before I had to say anything.
  
  "Sooooo," T drawled, drumming his fingernails on the table, "I heard someone say your sister was dancing around to "Who"s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf". Any truth in that?"
  
  "Oh my fucking god," Stacey whispered, burying her head in her hands.
  
  Amy gave him a cool look. "No," she said, picking up an apple. "It was "Hungry Like The Wolf", actually."
  
  Frankie burst into giggles, clamping a hand over her mouth to muffle the noise. Callum pressed his lips together so all the snickers came out through his nose.
  
  As for the Butchers, they were laughing themselves stupid inside my head, spouting every joke about Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs they could think of.
  
  "Huff and puff and blow me!" Rotter cackled.
  
  "Oh, what was that book?" Stoneknapper wondered. ""Hello, she said, and do please note-"
  
  "My lovely furry wolfskin coat," I finished, smiling at the Revolting Rhyme.
  
  T barked a laugh. "Classic."
  
  "Wow." Stacey cleared her throat. "So I guess you"re all pretty excited. That Hookwolf"s gone, I mean."
  
  Amy shrugged. "I"m always happy to watch the Empire eat shit. You wouldn"t believe the kind of stuff I had to heal because of Hookwolf."
  
  Vladimir winced. "I"m amazed there was anything left to heal."
  
  That killed the mood a bit. I cast about for a different topic wildly, the Butchers offering suggestions.
  
  "Cats or dogs?"
  
  "Really?" I asked Nemean on the inside.
  
  Nemean shrugged. "Hey, you said it."
  
  Amy blinked. "Cats," she said at last. "They don"t slobber like dogs do."
  
  "They do scratch though."
  
  "I guess."
  
  "My grandma had a rabbit," Frankie offered, tapping on her phone. "See?" She passed the phone over so Amy could see.
  
  "Why"s it got a moustache?" Amy asked, peering at the image.
  
  Frankie shrugged. "No idea. Rest in peace, Mr Herriman."
  
  "My little brother"s got a frog," Callum revealed. "We call him Bait."
  
  "I"m afraid to ask why," Amy said, but she was smiling a little as she said it.
  
  "Well, Dad took us out on a fishing trip when we were little..."
  
  As Callum started on his story, I caught Amy"s eye. She nodded a little.
  
  I probably should have been more concerned that my regular life and my cape life were starting to overlap more and more, but this was too peaceful for me to care.
  
  Afternoon, Hebert Residence
  
  "I"m home," I called, pulling my shoes off and leaving them in the hall.
  
  "Hey sweetheart," Dad said, poking his head out of the kitchen. "How was school?"
  
  "Pretty good. French was fun, but Chemistry"s always a drag."
  
  "Maybe you should tell him about Amy," Flinch suggested. "It"d be easier if you two can meet unmasked without people taking notice."
  
  "Good point," I admitted.
  
  "If it means less skulking in alleyways, I"m all for it," Vladimir chimed in.
  
  "Crazy thing happened at lunch though," I said, following Dad into the kitchen. "This girl just sat down at our table out of nowhere, and it turns out she"s Amy Dallon. You know, Panacea, from New Wave?"
  
  Dad"s eyebrows went so high they almost reached his hairline- which was particularly impressive given that he was receding a bit.
  
  "Wow. I knew the New Wave kids went to Arcadia, but that"s a surprise."
  
  "Yeah, said she wanted to get away from her sister making out with her boyfriend. Amy"s actually kind of fun- doesn"t like talking about cape stuff as much as you"d think, but other stuff"s fine."
  
  Dad nodded. "Makes sense. I guess she gets enough talk about heroes and villains as it is." He pulled an oven tray out of the cupboard and opened a box of frozen pies. "So what did you talk about then?"
  
  "Lots of stuff. Pets, Mrs Williams"s assignments, movies. Actually, Amy knew a lot of that- her family"s got a bunch of Aleph movies and stuff."
  
  "Hm." Dad nodded as he set steak and kidney pies on the tray, two for each of us. "Makes you think- I"ve only seen a few Aleph films. It"s weird seeing how different the same story can be with a couple of changes."
  
  "Yeah. Need any help with dinner?"
  
  "No, it"s nothing difficult. I"ll call you when it"s ready."
  
  "Ok, back in a few."
  
  Upstairs, I dumped my bag and tossed the stuff I"d need for homework onto my desk, before taking out my phone. I hadn"t checked it since this morning, what with the jammer at Arcadia.
  
  I had two messages waiting from me. One was from Tattletale, letting me know that Whirlygig had come up with an idea for her new costume and wanted to hear my thoughts.
  
  "I hope she keeps the name," Tock Tick said. "It"s not like there"s a lot of better options. It"s all either too hardcore or too silly."
  
  "Right, yeah," Bearskin agreed. "I mean Hurricane, Cyclone, Typhoon, those are all intimidating."
  
  "If she calls herself Carousel or something, I want her out," Needler said.
  
  The second message was from Miss Militia. I was a bit surprised- the Protectorate and New Wave hadn"t contacted me since the Hookwolf Hill Havoc, as one newspaper had called it.
  
  -Travellers spotted in Downtown area at 1415 hours. Attacked and robbed an armoured car.
  
  I reread the message, brow furrowed. I"d assumed the Travelers would just pack up and move to another city. Coil had been removed from play for almost two weeks now, and they didn"t have any other non-racialised gangs to ally themselves with.
  
  "This could be a problem," Tactical admitted. "Chances are they"ll want to take a swing at you if you meet them in the field. You did ruin their job after all."
  
  "God knows I did plenty of shit to people who cost me money," Butcher agreed.
  
  "So to sum up," Stoneknapper said, "The Empire hates you for getting rid of Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Cricket, et cetera. The Travelers hate you for ruining their meal ticket. And Lung probably hates you for punching him in the dick. Congratulations, Taylor; you make enemies like a craftsman."
  
  8.3
  Late Monday 28th March, The Lair
  
  I had the sneaking suspicion that T was meeting me at the lair as a way to avoid doing his homework, but I was still glad to have him with me for tonight.
  
  "So remember, arrow up, quarter turn right, half turn left," I repeated. "Otherwise you"ll set off the alarm."
  
  "I"m surprised you don"t have booby traps," T noted as I pushed the door open.
  
  "Oh, there are traps. Using the key just disarms the nastier stuff; if you don"t remember the correct turns, you"ll get the nets and snares and stuff."
  
  Tarquin just grinned. "Cool."
  
  "Finally, someone who appreciates the work," Tock Tick sniffed.
  
  I looked up through the ceiling with bloodsight, counting the silhouettes. "All here," I said, directing some flies upstairs to do a circuit of the living quarters, alerting the rest of the Undersiders to my presence. "Time to introduce ourselves."
  
  I led the way up the stairs, Tarquin glancing back at my workshop, the forge and material piles and the glass terrariums full of insects, before following. Both of us were in plain clothes, dark hoodies and scarves over our lower faces. It made my glasses fog up every time I exhaled, but that wasn"t a problem for me.
  
  Grue and Whirlygig were waiting for us in the living area, which was looking a lot more put together. All the cables and boxes had been loaded onto a small cabinet, with a new TV perched on top. A bunch of empty soda cans and pizza boxes were dumped on top of a worn coffee table in between the ratty couch I"d helped the Undersiders put in and the equally ratty one they"d apparently found without me. Off in one corner was a set of free weights and a punching bag hanging from a chain, and in another was a shelf full of kitschy china figurines.
  
  "Uh, hey Elpis," Grue- Brian, Flinch reminded me- said, looking a bit confused, glancing between me and Tarquin. "What"s up?"
  
  Next to him, Isabella nodded, one jittering leg sending her sweatpants rippling. I figured that the new boss showing up late at night had her a bit on edge.
  
  "Just came by to check on you, talk a few things out."
  
  Bitch came out of her room, saw me, and ducked into another to get her dogs. I decided against calling out to her- let her come at her own pace.
  
  I gestured to T. "Ironclad also wanted to meet you guys properly."
  
  T pulled his hood and scarf off in one quick two-handed motion. "My real name"s Tarquin, but just call me T."
  
  Isabella gave a nervous little wave with her hand. "S"up? I"m Isabella." She frowned a moment. "Why don"t you like your name though? I"m pretty sure Tarquin was supposed to be, like, the last king of Rome. That"s kinda cool."
  
  T blinked. "Wait, really?"
  
  "Yeah, read it in a book once."
  
  "There"s your fun fact of the day," Lisa said, walking out with a smile. "Hey boss, hey new guy."
  
  "His name"s Tarquin," Brian said, not noticing T"s scowl.
  
  "I heard his name," Lisa said. "But he got here last, so he"s the new guy by default." She winked playfully.
  
  "Oh, she"s going to be a handful," Tactical sighed.
  
  "You look taller in costume," Lisa went on. "Both of you."
  
  Tarquin spread his hands. "What can I say? I like to spread out."
  
  "Well, anyway, I"m Lisa, and I"m guessing Brian hasn"t introduced himself yet?"
  
  Brian shrugged. "Forgot. Good to meet you, anyway."
  
  Bitch finally made an appearance, three dogs at her heels. She gave Tarquin a quick, hostile look, then settled her gaze on me, not quite making eye contact.
  
  I stepped forward. "Well, now that you"re all here, there"s something I neglected to say the last time." I flipped my hood back and tugged the scarf down, shaking my hair out. "I"m Taylor Hebert; nice to meet you."
  
  I maybe could have done that more gently; my response was a round of surprised expressions, wide eyes and slack jaws all around.
  
  "Holy crap," Isabella blurted. "You"re way young!" She cringed a little, maybe realising how she"d said that. "Sorry, just- you seemed a lot older."
  
  I shrugged. "With all the Butcher memories, I kind of am. But physically, I"m fifteen. Sixteen in June."
  
  "That"s wild," Lisa admitted. "I couldn"t really guess your age because of all the mixed signals. That makes you the youngest Butcher ever, right?"
  
  "Yeah, Firecracker was 19 when she took the mantle. I mean, we can"t be sure what age Nemean is, but she always felt adult."
  
  Brian cleared his throat. "Uh, Elpis? Or Taylor, I guess- why are you telling us this? Not that I"m complaining," he added, "But I wasn"t really expecting it. Not tonight at least."
  
  I shrugged, unzipping my hoodie for some air as I did. "I did some thinking. I need to be honest with you guys to make this team work- and frankly, it"s a relief to not have to hide it. I can count on my hands how many people know all this and still have fingers left over."
  
  "Besides, being on a team with a Thinker means there aren"t a lot of secrets," I acknowledged with a nod in Lisa"s direction.
  
  "I wasn"t trying to figure out your identity," Lisa said. "Cross my heart."
  
  "Well, if you guys had any more questions about me, or the Butchers, or the inheritance, now"s the time to ask."
  
  Nobody spoke up. Isabella"s jittery leg sped up, Brian shifted his weight, but nobody asked anything.
  
  "Why"d you take all that anyway?"
  
  Everyone rounded on Bitch. "Rachel, for fuck"s sake-" Brian began angrily.
  
  "You can"t just ask someone that-" Lisa protested.
  
  I found my voice. "Guys."
  
  Everyone froze. I"d said that a little louder than I meant to.
  
  "It"s fine. I"m not offended." I turned to Bitch. "To answer your question, I didn"t mean to attack Quarrel. I was just blindly lashing out at the guys attacking my school."
  
  "You go to school?" Brian said in disbelief.
  
  "You go to WINSLOW?" Isabella gawked, cringing again as I turned to her.
  
  "I transferred to Arcadia, actually. I probably would have exploded if I"d had to stay at that shithole."
  
  "No kidding," Isabella agreed. "I just stopped going ages ago."
  
  "I just can"t believe you go to school," Brian admitted, looking disturbed. "It"s... bizarre."
  
  "You want to know the really weird part?" Tarquin broke in. "I knew her from school before we unmasked to each other."
  
  "Shit, really?" Isabella scratched her head wonderingly, looking back and forth between us.
  
  "Yeah,that was weird. But yes, I do still go to school- I"ve got a civilian side of my life to keep up with. Actually, what about you guys?"
  
  "Lisa and I got GEDs," Brian supplied. "And I"ve got a cover job."
  
  Bitch just grunted.
  
  "Well, points for having at least some education," Muramasa noted.
  
  "Anyway, if there"s no more questions, we can get on to business," I said, trying to move away from the topic of inheritance and my old school days. "You guys settling in alright?"
  
  "Rooms are all set up, we"ve got the TV sorted out, and the bathroom works fine." Lisa ticked the points off on her fingers as she listed them.
  
  "The shower pressure"s a bit much though," Isabella volunteered. "I feel like I left a layer of skin behind."
  
  "Gross," T said.
  
  "Wimp," Anchorage snorted.
  
  Firecracker sighed. "God, I wish we could get some time in there though. I"m feeling the itch, y"know?"
  
  I flushed hard at the memories that turned up, mortified to realise the Undersiders could all see me blush.
  
  Firecracker cackled as I shoved her into the dark. "Sorry, Firecracker was being... embarrassing."
  
  Stoneknapper mock-gasped. "Why Taylor, are you embarrassed of us?"
  
  "Does that happen a lot?" T asked carefully.
  
  "I"ve got used to it, but every now and then they surprise me with something. Lots of memories up here.
  
  "Changing the subject; costumes. Lisa, you said there were some ideas?"
  
  "I don"t think I need to change my costume that much," Lisa said nonchalantly. "A bodysuit"s pretty neutral as aesthetics go. Might update the colour scheme a little though."
  
  "Maybe get rid of the pistol," Vladimir suggested. "Sends the wrong message."
  
  "Vladimir thinks you should lose the gun- and I agree with him. We"ll get you some non-lethal stuff."
  
  "I guess that"s the price to pay," Lisa said, raising her hands in a "What are you going to do?" sort of gesture.
  
  Brian raised a hand. "I know the skull design is out, but I"d like to keep my old helmet, for the protection value. Any chance we can do something with that?"
  
  "Any suggestions?" I asked the Butchers.
  
  "A simple visor would do the trick," Needler pointed out. "Full-face, smooth and simple."
  
  I pictured that. "True, but it might be a bit impersonal? We want to friendly them up a bit."
  
  "We could do a half-visor," Bearskin proposed. "And then the lower bit could be, I don"t know, some generic jawline?"
  
  "Okay, Tock"s "Shadowboxer" idea was stupid and we all know it-" Quarrel began.
  
  "Bite me," Tock retorted.
  
  "But maybe something from boxing? Like Muhammad Ali"s lower face?"
  
  "Okay, so two ideas from the Butchers. One is a full-face visor; the other is regular visor and mould the bottom half to some famous guy"s mouth. Muhammad Ali, for example; lean into your fighting skill."
  
  Brian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That actually sounds pretty good."
  
  Isabella held up her hands, a grin emerging on her face. "Okay, so I figured I could get one of those big leather jackets, the leather helmet thingy and the goggles," she made finger-goggles over her eyes to demonstrate, "And dress up like an old-timey pilot."
  
  Muramasa hummed thoughtfully. "A fitting image for a flying gun platform."
  
  ""specially if she"s gonna be unloading on Nazis," Dirty Rotter added with a horrible grin.
  
  Butcher laughed. "I like it. Shame we can"t give the kid some sharp stuff to shoot with, since you"re being all nice."
  
  I nodded, warming to the idea. "That"s an excellent idea. We can add a bunch of pockets for your ammo, give you some armour underneath. You"ll still need to cover your mouth though- that piercing"s distinctive."
  
  "Yeah, I figured."
  
  Tarquin grinned. "Bonus points if you can talk the talk. "Tally-ho, Jerries at twelve o"clock!"" he said in a plummy British accent.
  
  Isabella snickered. "Oh my god, no, that"s terrible."
  
  "Oi, use your own bloody slang," Rotter said laughingly.
  
  "How did Americans sound in the Second World War?" Nemean asked curiously.
  
  Vladimir shrugged "Something like "Awright doll, you"ve got moxie, but let"s see if you can cut the mustard and give these mooks a knuckle sandwich.""
  
  Quarrel gave Vladimir a look. "Riiiiight..."
  
  "Last, but not least..." I turned expectantly to Bitch.
  
  "I don"t need anything," she said, her scowl unchanging.
  
  "You do if you want this to work," I countered.
  
  "Come on, Rachel, you have to admit some armour would be useful," Lisa said coaxingly.
  
  "Something better than a cheap plastic mask at least. A helmet would work- I can make something that looks doglike."
  
  "Yeah, aren"t people going to try and target you first?" Tarquin asked. "If they knock you down, then that stops the dogs- or at least they"d think that."
  
  Bitch bared her teeth. "I"ll fuck "em up first."
  
  I rolled my eyes at the bravado. "Look, Tarquin"s right. People are going to come at you. I"m offering you free armour, and maybe some stuff for your dogs."
  
  Bitch"s eyes briefly met mine, then dropped again. "Fine," she said.
  
  "No need to sound so enthusiastic," Anchorage said sarcastically.
  
  Flinch glared at her. "Leave her alone, she"s adjusting."
  
  "So; a helmet, some kind of armoured jacket and pants;" I listed out loud, "Oh; I can also make you guys some undersuits. They"ll help stop knives and stuff like that. You"ll need one too, T."
  
  "Sweet. So what"s that made of?"
  
  "Black Widow spider silk."
  
  "Wait, what?"
  
  "Yeah, it"s some of the strongest silk by species. I"ve got enough Widows now that I can make enough for all of you guys. The tensile strength is fantastic."
  
  "How the hell did you get Black Widows?" Tarquin stared at me, wide-eyed.
  
  "I just picked them up as I was going through town. There weren"t a lot, so I had to breed more, and some of the eggs are finally starting to hatch."
  
  "Wait a minute," Brian interrupted, looking distinctly unsettled, "Where are you keeping those spiders?"
  
  "In the terrariums downstairs," I pointed down through the floor. "I thought I told you guys."
  
  "You didn"t," Tactical supplied.
  
  "Oh. Well, what did you guys think all the big glass tanks full of insects were for?"
  
  "How many?" Isabella asked. "How many spiders are in here?" She was standing feet together, hands balled up at her sides, in a pose that screamed "50s housewife afraid of a mouse".
  
  Firecracker"s muffled laughter finally clued me in to the problem. I was disturbed to realise I"d completely forgotten most people had a problem with sharing a living space with thousands of venomous arachnids.
  
  "Oh, no no no, you don"t need to worry," I hurried to assure them. "They"re all kept in sealed cases with no way out from the inside. You"re perfectly safe."
  
  Their expressions plainly showed they didn"t fully believe me.
  
  "Look guys, I promise you"re fine. I"ve got spiders in my home- I wouldn"t risk keeping them there if I thought they"d be a problem."
  
  "Taylor, as your friend, I have to ask," Tarquin insisted. "Did getting your powers do something to the part of your brain that tells you to be afraid of, literally, fucking hundreds of spiders?"
  
  I opened my mouth to snap at him-
  
  "I mean, there are some theories about that," Stoneknapper pondered. "We all get drawn to conflict, but some people figure there"s a mental adjustment to get comfortable with your powers. Kind of chicken and egg though- is it the power changing you to adapt, or are you changing to adapt to the power? Or maybe the power just fits your underlying personality, or your Trigger event-"
  
  -and closed it again, thinking. "Maybe?" I admitted at last. "I haven"t found a bug yet that I can"t control, so I don"t really have to be afraid."
  
  Tarquin blinked in surprise. "Oh. Okay."
  
  "Look, I get this sounds weird, but the silk can keep you guys safe, and I"ll keep you safe from the widows, or any other bugs. Okay?"
  
  I looked around the group as I said it, trying to gauge their reactions. Still some uncertainty, some nerves.
  
  Isabella giggled a little, nervously. "Well, I didn"t think this job would come with silk underwear as a perk, but I"ll give it a shot."
  
  "Alright. Just let me know your size and I"ll start putting something together. Later on I can add more silk to your costumes, but for now it"ll just be the undersuits."
  
  "How long is this going to take?" Brian folded his arms, which made his biceps stand out wonderfully.
  
  I shrugged. "Depends how many adjustments I have to make. I"d say I"ll have it done by the end of the week. If you guys can get your new looks put together by then, we can debut the new Undersiders by the weekend.
  
  "In between, we can try to get some practice in. T and I have experience with each other"s fighting style, but not a lot with you guys. We"ll have to figure out what works and what doesn"t."
  
  "Getting Tarquin to ride one of those dogs certainly won"t work," Needler pointed out. "He"d just crush the damn thing."
  
  "For instance, as Needler just pointed out, T"s not going to be able to ride the dogs with his armour on."
  
  "I"m not losing any metal," T said mulishly.
  
  "Maybe we could split the armour between the dogs?" Lisa suggested.
  
  "It"s a nice thought, but I doubt it. The Ironclad armour"s about 2000 lbs by now. I don"t think the dogs could run with that and two riders apiece."
  
  "Fuck that," Bitch said flatly, bending down to scratch the Rottweiler- Brutus.
  
  "We"ll figure something out," I promised. "So the plan is sparring, practice and new costumes. Everybody clear on that?"
  
  "I"m on board," Brian said with a sharp nod.
  
  "Ditto," Isabella agreed.
  
  "Loud and clear," Lisa chimed in, grinning cockily.
  
  "Sure," Tarquin drawled.
  
  "Hm," Bitch grunted. I considered making her answer more clearly, but it didn"t feel like forcing her was worth the trouble.
  
  "Gonna have to get them to speak up more," Bearskin noted. "They"re all shuffling around like kids when the teacher comes in."
  
  "They"re not that bad. Right?"
  
  "They"re still scared of you, girl. Good way to keep "em in line," Butcher said, schadenfreude thick in his voice.
  
  "Alright then. I can get started on the silk right now; get me your sizes and I"ll start the loom up, then I"ll help you guys with the details."
  
  Brian raised a hand.
  
  "See? Kids and teacher?" Bearskin said, not unkindly.
  
  "Yes, Brian?" I asked, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice.
  
  Brian lowered his hand. "Before the costumes, I was wondering; what did you have planned for our "debut"?" he asked, air-quotes and all. "I know you said you"ve got second-hand experience in leading a team, but the Teeth were never even close to heroes."
  
  I snorted. "Oh, you have no idea." More seriously, I continued "Nothing concrete, but I figured making up for your last couple of thefts would be a good start."
  
  "Won"t we look kinda dumb showing up in costume and apologising?" Isabella asked tentatively.
  
  "Oh, you"re not just apologising. You"re giving the money back."
  
  "What?" Lisa blurted.
  
  "Uh, yeah, I"m with the blonde. The fuck?" Dirty Rotter asked.
  
  "You heard me."
  
  "But that"s a lot of money-" Isabella began.
  
  "You can still keep your Coil money, you"ll be fine. But if you want to make this work, you"re going to have to undo some of the damage you did. So we"re going to figure out the last couple of places you hit, and how much you took, and you"re going to give it back."
  
  "Hm. Interesting. Come to think of it, I don"t believe I"ve ever heard of a villain returning stolen goods before," Muramasa mused.
  
  "Fuck that."
  
  For the second time of the night, everyone turned to Bitch.
  
  "We worked hard for that money," she snapped, uncaring of how everyone was staring at her. "I"m not just giving it up."
  
  Nemean huffed a laugh. "Well, she"s fun."
  
  "Goddamnit Rachel!" Brian yelled, rounding on her.
  
  I grabbed his wrist as it came up- he tried to tug his arm free, but I just held on. He was strong, but he might as well have been trying to move a girder. The real challenge for me was fitting my hand around his wrist without gripping too hard.
  
  "Everybody stop," I ordered.
  
  The room froze- Brian in my grip, Isabella trying to pull Brian away, Lisa reaching out to Rachel, and Tarquin behind me.
  
  I released Brian"s wrist, and he immediately stepped back, rubbing at where my hand had been. Isabella shuffled along with him, swallowing heavily. Lisa slowly pulled her hand back and stepped away.
  
  That left Bitch standing right in front of me, the dogs at her heels looking vaguely confused. Bitch met my gaze for once with a truculent gleam in her eye.
  
  "Your first real challenge as leader," Vladimir said. "How you handle this will set the precedent."
  
  Needler eyed Bitch speculatively. "She doesn"t seem like a challenger; but I would suggest a firm hand. No need for another Muscular."
  
  I forced myself to breath slowly as I held eye contact with Bitch. The Butchers came down heavily on rowdy minions- today"s troublemaker could be tomorrow"s usurper. A heavy-handed slap would be the bare minimum for a direct refusal.
  
  Brian had been right though- the Teeth weren"t even close to heroes. I needed to handle this as a hero would.
  
  "Rachel," I said, meeting her stare, "Do you want to be a hero?"
  
  "No."
  
  I almost bit through my tongue trying not to laugh at the sheer bluntness of that. The Butchers howled with laughter inside my head.
  
  "Oh fucking Christ that"s perfect," Quarrel gasped. "I love this fucking kid!"
  
  "Zero hesitation! No regrets!" Anchorage shook her head. "Comedy gold."
  
  I pushed down some of the more amused Butchers until I could trust myself to speak calmly. "Rachel," I said with forced evenness, "If you don"t want to be a hero, then why are you here?"
  
  Bitch snorted. "Because fucking Coil and the Empire"ll try to hurt my dogs if I don"t stay here."
  
  In a weird way, I admired her honesty. I tried to adjust my thinking to something more straightforward, like Nemean"s disdain for pleasantries and small talk.
  
  "Fair enough. But if you don"t do this right, you"ll have both heroes and villains after you. You"ve got plenty of money- you can spare this much."
  
  "Kinda feels like bribing a charge away," Tock Tick muttered.
  
  "...That might work." Out loud I said, "If it helps, you can think of it as paying off the good guys."
  
  Bitch stared at me a moment longer, then grunted and dropped her gaze. "I don"t like it," she grumbled.
  
  "Yeah, well, we all have shit we don"t like to do, but we do it anyway. Now put on your big girl pants and deal with it."
  
  Flinch winced. "That might have been a little condescending," he said as Bitch growled a little. Her dogs sat up, growling in harmony with their mistress- even ratty little one-eyed Angelica.
  
  I glanced down at the dogs. "And stop with the growling. You can"t scare me."
  
  Bitch snorted, then snapped her fingers. The dogs stood up and followed her as she stomped off to her room.
  
  Once the door clicked shut, Isabella let out the breath she"d been holding in a big woosh. "Fuck."
  
  I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I need a drink. What"s in the fridge?"
  
  Lisa pulled it open. "We"ve got soda," she offered, holding out a can.
  
  I opened my hand and caught the can as Lisa tossed it to me. "So is she always like that?" I asked, cracking the can open.
  
  Brian gave me a look of grudging respect. "She"s usually worse. She never listened to me like that."
  
  "Yeah, when I joined, she had her dogs attack me," Isabella admitted. She tugged one leg of her sweatpants up to reveal a couple of little scabs on her calf. "Said something about seeing if I was tough enough."
  
  Tarquin grabbed a can of his own off Lisa. "And I thought I was going to be the annoying one," he mumbled, taking a deep swig.
  
  "That needs dealing with," Tactical advised. "If she"s not straightened out by the time you show the Undersiders off, it"ll only cause problems."
  
  "I"ll talk with her later, when she"s cooled down. In the meantime, is there some paper around here? I can start taking notes."
  
  "I"m just gonna check some of my clothes real quick," Isabella said, pointing back to her room. "Get my sizes off the labels."
  
  "Go for it," I said, waving her away.
  
  Lisa produced a pad and pen from somewhere and proffered them to me as Isabella scurried off.
  
  "Okay, sizes people."
  
  I quickly scribbled down chests and waists and inside legs, shoving Firecracker down when she made a crack about Brian"s "inside leg".
  
  "How exact do these have to be?" Tarquin asked, hauling on his t-shirt collar and twisting his neck to try and read the label.
  
  "I can adjust them later," I said, peering past him to read the label myself. "God knows I got practice doing my own undersuit." I crossed to the fridge to get myself another soda.
  
  "The fuck is this?" Anchorage exclaimed as I opened the fridge door.
  
  Stoneknapper regarded the soda cans, the pudding cups, the tub of leftover Chinese food and the mouldy grapes. "Reminds me of my first apartment."
  
  I eyed the 2 litre of Shasta and the protein shakes in the door. "God, this is depressing."
  
  It wasn"t a total nightmare- I"d bought some stuff when I"d helped the Undersiders move in. The carton of eggs was there, along with the salami, the pack of luncheon meat, the bag of apples. There"d been some effort to separate things- fresh food one side, old food on the other. Little Post-It notes in meticulous handwriting.
  
  It was just that it made the rest of the fridge look worse by contrast. I wasn"t even sure how those grapes had gone bad so quickly. I hadn"t seen them in the fridge yesterday, so they couldn"t be that old, surely.
  
  "Wasn"t me," Dirty Rotter sniggered.
  
  I grabbed the bag of grapes, cinched the top closed, and hurled it over my shoulder.
  
  Quarrel"s aiming guided it in a perfect arc to land on top of the fly I"d placed at the bottom of the bin. It didn"t go splat so much as squelch.
  
  I picked another soda and bumped the door shut with my hip, flipping to another page on the notepad. "While we"re writing things down, we need to do something about the fridge."
  
  8.4
  Tuesday 29th March, Arcadia High School
  
  Amy sat with us again at lunch, less pissy than yesterday. I noticed Victoria glancing over at us repeatedly, but she didn"t move towards us or anything.
  
  "I usually don"t get those cases myself," Amy admitted, folding up her pizza slice, "But the weirdest I ever heard of was an MP3 player."
  
  "Seriously?" Callum goggled.
  
  T snorted. "Maybe they really wanted to "feel" the music."
  
  "Something with a lot of bass," Firecracker snickered. "Talk about a "pounding" bassline."
  
  Stacey pulled a face. "Do we have to talk about this while we"re trying to eat?"
  
  Amy shrugged. "At this point there"s no bodily function on the planet that could gross me out. It"s all just... stuff."
  
  I tapped the table for attention, already done with my pizza. "I heard somewhere that capes get mental adjustments to their powers," I said casually. "Like, fliers don"t get scared of heights, Tinkers can keep track of parts and tools better, et cetera. Did you ever hear anything about that?"
  
  Amy raised her eyebrows. "I think Vicky said something about that. People aren"t sure if it"s chicken or egg, to be honest. I mean, you"d have to adjust to your power just to cope, so it might just be human psychology at work."
  
  "Yeah, I guess it"d suck if you had gills, but you were scared of water," Callum pointed out.
  
  "Or if you had fire powers but you"re scared of fire," Frankie added.
  
  "I remember I was nervous to use my blades for some time," Muramasa reflected. "Though I think that was more a lack of practice. Once I had gained experience, my fear faded."
  
  "I learned not to flinch," Nemean rasped. "Had to lose the instinct."
  
  T shrugged. "It"s not like powers make a lot of sense anyway."
  
  "True," Amy conceded.
  
  "You know something that makes a weird amount of sense?" Callum said, leaning forward. "I was on the internet last night-"
  
  "Oh god," Frankie groaned.
  
  "Not like that! I was just clicking on articles."
  
  "Right, you were just reading it for the articles," I smirked.
  
  "Can I speak? Please?" After a few seconds, Callum began again. "So, I found this article about fan theories for films, and one of them was for The Departed. You know, that Aleph film with Leonardo DiCaprio in it?"
  
  "Oh, I love that film!" I enthused. Strictly speaking, Tactical loved it, but I could see why a Boston Irish criminal would love a film about Boston Irish criminals. And it was a genuinely good movie.
  
  "I never saw that," Frankie admitted. "What"s it about?"
  
  "It"s about a dirty cop and an undercover cop trying to find each other. Matt Damon"s the dirty cop, DiCaprio"s the undercover cop."
  
  "So what"s the theory?" Amy asked, looking interested.
  
  "That Matt Damon"s character is gay."
  
  I paused with a mouthful of pizza. "Hmf?"
  
  Amy frowned. "That doesn"t sound right. He"s got a girlfriend for most of the movie, right?"
  
  "Well, Aleph"s not as progressive with LGBT stuff, right? They didn"t have Legend to push everyone forward. So the idea is that a lot of his personality is trying to cover for being in the closet. Like, really deep in the closet."
  
  "He was married with a kid on the way," Tactical protested.
  
  "Probably not his kid, the way DiCaprio was tapping that," Anchorage countered.
  
  Stoneknapper nodded. "Actually, wasn"t there a whole thing about him being impotent?"
  
  "Shit, that makes a lot of sense," I muttered.
  
  "See? Taylor gets it," Callum said triumphantly, gesturing with his slice. A sliver of pepperoni slipped off from his gesticulations to land on the table, only to be swiftly snatched up by Frankie before Callum could grab it.
  
  "I"ll take your word for it," T said, starting on his apple pie. "I never saw it. Aleph DVDs are expensive, y"know?"
  
  "Yeah, I only really saw it by accident," I added.
  
  "We"ve got a bunch of films at home," Amy said. "I can lend you guys some if you like."
  
  My eyebrows went up. "Huh. Thanks. That"d be nice."
  
  "No problem."
  
  The conversation meandered onto other films- favourite directors, genres, and the differences between Aleph and Bet films. Amy and I managed to keep talking together enough that nobody commented when we got up from the table together and walked off.
  
  "So how"s your team doing?" Amy asked as we made it out of the cafeteria.
  
  "T and I told them last night. You were right, it was kind of silly to keep hiding it."
  
  "See?" Amy bumped her arm against mine. "You should listen to me more."
  
  "Is that doctor"s orders?" I snarked.
  
  Amy smirked, before her face turned serious. "Did you hear about the Travelers?"
  
  "Yeah. Can"t believe they"re still in town."
  
  "You"d better be careful. All five of them are seriously dangerous."
  
  "Oh please," Bearskin rumbled. "We"re dangerous!"
  
  I grimaced a little at the round of appreciative shouting that got, but nodded.
  
  "The ABB"s probably going to try to take advantage of things. Need to try and address that."
  
  "Hopefully without charging in to punch Lung in the dick."
  
  "Do it, do it, do it," Butcher chanted lowly. I gave him a push just to keep him down for a minute.
  
  "I"ve actually got a different idea for that. You remember I told you about Cullet and Umpire?"
  
  "Right, because you"ve got so much shit you need extra personalities to use it all."
  
  I rolled my eyes as Vladimir cackled, giving him a light shove.
  
  "Anyway, I"ve got a plan for something new. I figure it"ll throw the ABB off their game."
  
  "I"m not going to like this, am I?" Amy asked flatly.
  
  I explained my plan to her. She didn"t like it.
  
  
  
  Later, The Docks
  
  The four people inside the shop"s back room were so busy sorting through stolen electronics that they didn"t notice the first few flickers from the lightbulbs.
  
  Then the light cut out entirely.
  
  "What the fuck?" The tallest one yelled.
  
  Another pulled out a flashlight. "Calm down, it"s probably the fuses. I"ll go check it out."
  
  The remaining three fiddled with their phones to get some light going while Flashlight headed out to the little closet that held the breakers. A couple of the switches had flipped down, so he pushed them back up again.
  
  Nothing.
  
  "The hell?" Flashlight tried the tried and true method of flipping them off and on again. Still nothing.
  
  He wasn"t to know that the wiring had frayed. Chewed through by cockroaches; though I hadn"t had to do much on that score. This place really needed some work done.
  
  "ABB"s probably making this place seem shit on purpose," Tock Tick pointed out. "Crappy little shops are great for hiding goods."
  
  Flashlight groaned. "It"s fucked," he announced, turning around. "We"re gonna have to- FUCK!"
  
  He"d finally spotted me, standing at the other end of the corridor.
  
  "FUCK! Guys, get in here!"
  
  The other three charged into the corridor, pulling knives from their pockets. All of them flinched when they saw me. I saw their heartbeats quicken through my bloodsight.
  
  Dirty Rotter"s chuckles were low and oily. "Bloody perfect."
  
  This was by far the most intimidating persona I"d created yet, at the Butchers" insistence. A burlap sack for a mask, much like the first Butcher had used, and torn, ragged clothing over my body, bits of rope tied around my waist and limbs. I looked like something out of a horror movie- or a nightmare.
  
  I slowly tilted my head as I stared at them, then brought my hands around from behind my back.
  
  Three-inch-long blades clinked on the ends of my gloved hands as I spread my fingers.
  
  "What the fuck," the tallest one whispered hoarsely.
  
  "Yeeesss," Quarrel hissed. "Come on, let"s really scare them!"
  
  I stretched my arms out until my blades scratched at the wallpaper on either side. Then I stepped forward, blades screeching as they tore through the wallpaper and scored the plaster underneath.
  
  The heavyset guy at the back screamed and bolted for the door.
  
  I bolted after him, kicking off the wall to leap at him. The other three fell over themselves to get out of my way, and I crashed into the big guy, sending him sprawling to the floor.
  
  I rolled to my feet at once, fingers spread, clinking the blades against one another. The big guy raised his head to look at me, whimpering with fear.
  
  "Stay," I hissed through the voice changer I wore under the mask. Steel wires vibrated in time with my words, turning my speech into a metallic rasp.
  
  Flashlight threw his namesake at me- rather than fumble catching it with my claws, I just slapped it aside and hopped over the big guy on the floor. The light sent shadows stretching across the far wall, illuminating parts of me and throwing the rest into contrasting darkness. The shadows of my claws stretched across the wall.
  
  The tallest flicked a collapsible baton out and brandished it fearfully. "Get back!"
  
  Needler scoffed. "That"s adorable."
  
  I grabbed the tip of it with my fingers, blades rattling against the rod, and simply yanked it out of his grasp.
  
  The fourth man, a guy with a bandana over one eye, must have panicked. He lashed out with the kind of overhead knife-down strike that only really worked in old murder mystery movies.
  
  I stepped back, letting the knife whip through empty air, then curled my fingers so the blades were folded along my wrists, and rammed a punch into his stomach. He gagged and dropped the knife.
  
  Flashlight grabbed a folding chair and swung. I flicked the blades out again and slashed, Muramasa"s power tingling along the edges. The cheap metal chair was torn to strips.
  
  Tallest turned to run- I hopped past Flashlight and kicked him in the back of the knee, folding his leg and sending him crashing to the ground. I jammed my foot into the joint to keep him there as I rounded on Flashlight.
  
  He dropped his knife and backed away, tripping on a box. I pointed one bladed finger to the far wall, and hissed "Stand there. All of you."
  
  The four ABB men hastily scrambled to the wall, once I"d taken my foot off Tallest"s leg. I stood still and stared at them as they crammed themselves up against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, pressing themselves against the plaster like they were trying to sink into it.
  
  They were terrified of me. The feeling was heady, intoxicating.
  
  Flinch pressed against me wordlessly, warning me. I pressed back gratefully. Terrifying others might be sweet, but that sweetness was poison. I couldn"t afford to develop a taste for this.
  
  "Spoilsport," Anchorage grumbled.
  
  I"d slipped bugs into the store well before I"d picked the lock on the back door and crept inside, but now I took the chance to look the room over with my own eyes.
  
  This store was mostly a stash for stolen electronics, and small stuff at that- phones, laptops, radios, what might have been a car GPS. But there was other stuff as well- a coil of electrical wire, a bag of tools, bottles of household chemicals and bags of various powdered substances.
  
  This didn"t add up. Why would the ABB be keeping this stuff here?
  
  I pointed at a sack of fertiliser. "Explain," I rasped, about half a second before Tactical"s Thinker power made the connection.
  
  Charcoal, potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate, bleach- and all the bits and pieces needed to jury-rig transmitters, receivers, and detonators.
  
  "Bombs," Tactical marvelled. "Lots of bombs."
  
  Firecracker started. "Oh shit. You know Oni Lee"s power? What if he could use his duplicates as a delivery mechanism?"
  
  "A teleporting serial suicide bomber ninja." Nemean swore in her native tongue. "Not good."
  
  "That"s a fucking understatement."
  
  Flashlight stammered a moment before he managed to get the words out. "We got orders. Stash the usual goods, but the other stuff is for the new girl."
  
  "New girl?" Muramasa frowned.
  
  "Explain," I growled.
  
  Flashlight swallowed and glanced at his friends. I saw the bandana guy mouth the words "fucking tell them".
  
  "Lung"s got a new cape. She"s called Bakuda. She makes bombs."
  
  Those ten words were all it took to turn the blood in my veins to ice.
  
  I remembered something I"d read in the paper- a villain who"d held Cornell University in New York hostage with Tinkertech bombs. She"d been arrested by the Protectorate and sentenced. I hadn"t heard a damn thing about her getting broken out and recruited by the ABB.
  
  "Man, the heroes fucking suck at keeping their prisoners in," Stoneknapper said with a nervous laugh.
  
  Butcher"s laugh was anything but nervous. His sadistic glee rattled the inside of my skull. "Tinkertech bombs! Ah, what a time to be alive! You"re in for trouble now, girl!"
  
  I didn"t even try to argue with that statement, just pushed him into the dark as far as I could.
  
  "Where is she?" I snarled, stalking forward, blades rattling against each other.
  
  "I don"t know anything!" Flashlight wailed as I levelled the blades at his face. "We never got told anything- we were just supposed to sort this stuff and sit on it until the pickup. I don"t know where it goes, I swear!"
  
  I glared at him, then turned to Tallest. "You."
  
  "I don"t know shit!"
  
  Bandana and Heavyset hastily indicated their own ignorance before I could even look their way.
  
  "When is the pickup?" I hissed. Maybe I could hang around here until then and set an ambush, interrogate the newcomers on the Tinker"s location.
  
  "Noon sharp," Flashlight said, swallowing heavily when my head snapped to him.
  
  Fuck.
  
  I couldn"t stay here all night and all morning for that. Dad hadn"t noticed my late-night excursions, but there was no way he"d ignore my total absence if I wasn"t back home when he woke up.
  
  "There"s the problem with trying to balance a civilian life," Vladimir said with some sympathy. "Sooner or later, you"re going to have to make a choice about your priorities."
  
  I let my teeth grow a little as I growled in frustration. I could smell the fear in the sweat of the four men.
  
  I folded the blades along my wrist, except for my index finger, pointing at Flashlight. "Phone."
  
  Flashlight hastily delved into his pocket and pulled out a flashy looking phone with a many-tailed fox on the case.
  
  "Kitsune," Muramasa murmured.
  
  Quarrel squinted. "I don"t recognise the characters," she said. "I don"t think it"s Japanese."
  
  "Call the police," I said to Flashlight as he held the phone out to me.
  
  "Huh?"
  
  I tilted my head and spread the fingers of my right hand, waggling them to clink the blades together.
  
  Flashlight swallowed. "Right. Okay." He tapped the screen, drew a circle, and dialled 911, putting it on speaker.
  
  "911, what is your emergency?" Flashlight looked to me for what to say next.
  
  "Address."
  
  "Uh, we"re at 27 Sycamore Street? Uh, there"s this... cape, in front of us. They"re making me call you."
  
  "Okay sir, stay calm. Are they listening to you right now?"
  
  "Yes," I interrupted. "Found them guarding stolen goods. ABB members. Send police."
  
  To give the operator credit, he didn"t seem put off by the metallic rasp of my voice. "Okay, dispatch is on its way. Can I ask you your name, please?"
  
  I slowly turned my head to look each of the ABB guys in the eye- without exception, they all avoided my gaze. Then I spread my fingers and clinked the blades together.
  
  "Ruin," I rasped.
  
  "Very nice," Bearskin said approvingly. "God, it"s fun to scare the little bastards."
  
  "Ruin. Alright. And, just to be clear, you"re a hero?"
  
  "Yee-ees," I said, drawing it out. "The wicked shall fall to Ruin..."
  
  Vladimir actually clapped. "I love it."
  
  
  
  Undersiders Lair, The Docks
  
  An hour after I"d tied the ABB four up and made sure the cops had taken them in, along with the literal piles of evidence, I"d made my way back to the lair, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. I"d shed the mask and gloves halfway there, and finally teleported into the soundproof booth inside.
  
  Once the flames died down, I unbolted the door and stepped out. A quick glance with bloodsight showed three people asleep upstairs- Lisa, Isabella, and Rachel in a pile with her dogs. They hadn"t stirred as I came in.
  
  I crossed the ground floor with soft footsteps to dump the Ruin costume in a drawer, under the drawers for Cullet and Umpire. I"d have to consider using them more- while Elpis had to lie low for a while, I could use my alternate personas to keep the gangs off balance and keep them afraid of the dark.
  
  Still, first things first. I picked up the notepad Lisa had left on my workbench, with the full measurements for each of the Undersiders, and put the details into the automatic loom, then unlatched the case where I kept the bulk of the black widows. Spiders streamed out and loaded themselves into the loom, spinning out silk as the machine began to weave the strands together.
  
  More pages held more details- Isabella had found herself a bomber jacket at the Lord"s Street Market, Lisa had sourced herself a new utility belt. The page after that held a list of possible new names for Rachel.
  
  "Wild Hunt seems a little pretentious," Needler critiqued. "And frankly, it gives an image of sophistication- nobles out for sport and glory. She doesn"t fit that."
  
  "We"ll figure it out," I said, turning to a fresh page and writing in the details I"d learned about the new ABB Tinker. Maybe Lisa could research her, find out some more about her speciality.
  
  I wished I could tell the other heroes about this directly, but I couldn"t exactly let them know that I was moonlighting as several other capes with my wide selection of extra powers.
  
  "Maybe we can try to develop some counters in the meantime," Tock suggested. "A field kit for disassembling traps. Or some way of containing an explosion."
  
  "We got no idea what she can cook up," Dirty Rotter snorted. "It"s Tinkertech. For all we know she can make a bomb that turns water into coke."
  
  "Why am I not surprised that"s the first place your mind goes to?" Flinch said snippily.
  
  "Guys," I interrupted. "We need to think of something."
  
  "Well, for now, we should get the Undersiders ready," Flinch said.
  
  I absently nodded as I picked up some metal and laid it out next to the forge. The map board was in full view from here- I"d updated it a while back, erasing Coil"s territory and drawing out the new areas where the Empire and the Azn Bad Boys held sway. Yellow for the Empire, red for the ABB.
  
  I stared at the red area for a long moment, wondering what the hell was going to come from there.
  
  "Can"t wait to find out," Firecracker grinned.
  
  8.5
  Friday 1st April, The Lair, The Docks
  
  A streak of clear fluid burst forth, spattering onto the ground as a line of flames.
  
  The camera panned to the side, revealing the person who"d created them; A mid-sized girl in a heavy orange coat with reflective silver stripes and a matching firefighter"s helmet with a visor. A metal canister across her chest and the bulges under her sleeves hinted at the equipment she was packing.
  
  The girl gave a big toothy grin to the camera, before turning and spitting another fiery stream onto the concrete floor. More flames followed as she kept firing off flammable loogies, hopping between and over the lines of fire in big tough boots.
  
  Finally, with one last spin, she came to a stop behind the pattern of flames she"d drawn out on the concrete. She held her arms up, fists curled and biceps flexed. "Watch out, Brockton Bay," she said. "I"m bringing the heat!"
  
  The camera then pulled back and up, tilting down to give a bird"s eye view of the floor. The lines and curves of fire spelt out a single word;
  
  Spitfire.
  
  "I have to hand it to the PRT," Lisa admitted, tapping her phone screen, "They know how to make the heroes look good." I nodded in agreement- I"d already seen the video earlier at school, when Amy had shown it to me on her phone, but it was still impressive.
  
  I"d made sure to send Spitfire a text congratulating her when I"d slipped out from under the signal jammer. I had a free period right before lunch, so I was using the extended break to meet with the Undersiders. T was stuck with lessons, but I"d promised to send his regards.
  
  "Hey, play it again?" Isabella asked. She was messing around with the gloves I used when I was dressed up as Ruin, waggling the blunt blades back and forth.
  
  "Quit messing with those," I said absently, slipping another steel plate into the armoured vest I was working on and starting to seal it up. Next to me, the waldo arms zipped back and forth as they assembled a different project- spools of silk ribbon, several springs, a regulator mechanism.
  
  Isabella turned, the voice-changer pressed to her face. "I find your lack of faith disturbing," she droned.
  
  Flinch burst out laughing. "Oh that"s priceless!"
  
  "Ooh, get Brian to wear it," Firecracker enthused. "Big black dude in a scary helmet, he"d be perfect."
  
  Brian himself was watching Spitfire"s debut video with Lisa, intently focused as he peered over her shoulder. I gave him a speculative look. "Maybe."
  
  "Of course, first you ought to ask him his opinions on sand," Vladimir quipped. "I mean, it"s dry and coarse, and it gets everywhere."
  
  "Okay," Lisa said, interrupting the chorus of booing inside my head, "I"ve picked up a few details."
  
  "Do tell," I said, finishing the last stitch and holding the vest up. It seemed satisfactory. "Also, Brian; try this on for size."
  
  Brian took the black vest from my hands with a slight grimace. "You don"t think this is too heavy?"
  
  "It"ll be easier to handle once you"re wearing it," I said, flapping a hand at him. "Anyway Lisa, you were saying?"
  
  "Well, for starters, Spitfire"s a little rushed in this video. She wasn"t expecting to get her debut just yet. That tells me the PRT"s trying to bring her out to draw people"s attention from Hookwolf being captured."
  
  "And the fact that we totally did their job for them?" Isabella said, still rasping through the voice changer.
  
  "That"s part of it. But also to try and distract the Empire supporters a bit. They"re still mad about losing one of their big guns, and this release is supposed to draw their attention away. Not that they"re trying to use Spitfire as bait," Lisa added, glancing at me, "but just to try and simmer things down a bit."
  
  "Like jingling your keys in front of a baby," Quarrel snorted.
  
  "The other thing is that she"s not using the extinguishers." Lisa pointed at the screen. "You can see the nozzles poking out from her sleeves, and they could have chosen to have her put her fires out, but they didn"t. They"re trying to emphasise her power- she"s basically got the most destructive power in the Wards team, and they"re displaying that heavily."
  
  "I mean, I could definitely think of some dangerous tricks to do with Vista"s space warping," Tock Tick pondered.
  
  "So are they trying to make sure people know Spitfire can handle herself, or that the PRT"s got the bigger guns?" I asked, picking up a box of the Thai food we"d got for lunch and digging in.
  
  Lisa tilted a hand side to side in a so-so gesture. "It"s a bit of both. I might lean a little more towards option two, but I can"t be sure how seriously they"re taking the Bakuda info."
  
  "You"re sure they received it, right?"
  
  Lisa gave me a wounded look. "Boss, I know what I"m doing. Pages of info sent to their anonymous tip inbox, and I tagged it with all the keywords they use to filter priority. They got it."
  
  I glanced to the side of the map board, where Tattletale had printed out a few pages and tacked them up. Newspaper clippings about the Cornell Bomber, movements from the ABB, and the beginnings of a psych profile we"d worked out together.
  
  "Maybe the PRT"s trying to act like they haven"t heard. Give the ABB a false sense of security." Brian had draped the vest over his front and back, and was now fastening the side panels around himself.
  
  "While also showing off the cool new hero they"ve got," I continued, chasing a piece of pork down with my chopsticks.
  
  Isabella fumbled with the voice changer before she figured out how to take it off. "So it"s all posturing."
  
  "A lot of stuff that capes do is posturing," I pointed out, setting my food down to pick up the now-finished device from the waldos, clicking the casing shut with my fingers. "Reputation"s everything to capes. If you can"t establish yourself, nobody will take you seriously."
  
  "I hear that," Brian said, cinching up the last of the straps on the vest and thumping himself on the chest experimentally. "I did a lot of jobs just because it was a way for me to get my foot in the door." He frowned a little. "It"s going to be weird doing it all over again, in the other direction."
  
  "Preaching to the choir here. So how"s the vest feel?"
  
  Brian twisted from side to side at the waist, then bent over to touch his fingertips to his toes. "Pretty good," he said, coming back up. "Doesn"t feel like it"ll get in the way."
  
  "It looks good on you," Isabella said, a little dreamily. She had her fingers laced together in a way that would have been cute if she wasn"t still wearing the bladed gloves.
  
  Anchorage chortled. "Oooooh, girl"s got it baaaaad."
  
  "Can you blame her?" Dirty Rotter asked. "Did you see his arse when he bent over?"
  
  I fought down my blush as I turned back to the device I"d just finished. "Glad to hear it. The helmet"s almost done too. We should have everything ready for tomorrow."
  
  Pressure on some silk tripwires outside. Someone was approaching the building. I focused, moved some flies and ants around, and confirmed it was one person, with three dogs following her.
  
  "About damn time," Bearskin grumbled, as I heard Rachel open the door.
  
  "There you are," Lisa said, looking up from your phone. "What took you so long?"
  
  "Had to walk the dogs," Rachel grunted.
  
  "I told you Taylor was coming over to finish the equipment, Rachel," Brian said severely. "You should have walked the dogs earlier."
  
  Rachel scowled at him. "I did walk "em earlier. That"s why I"m back now."
  
  I rapped my knuckles on my work table for attention. "I"d have preferred it if you"d been here when I got in, but this works too. I"ve got something for you. Well, for your dogs." I held up the device.
  
  "A collar?" Brian peered at it. "What"re all the bits for?" he asked, gesturing to the metal compartments and the extra bits of fabric
  
  "Collars won"t work on my dogs," Rachel interrupted. "They"ll just snap off when they grow."
  
  "That"s the trick," I said, gripping the collar in both hands. "The collar grows wider to stay on the dog no matter what." I spread my hands apart, and the collar stretched with them. There wasn"t any resistance to it, just a smooth give as I pulled.
  
  "I just need to do a final check to make sure it works. We"ll need to put this on one of the dogs and make them grow."
  
  Rachel looked at me for a moment. "It won"t hurt them?"
  
  "I"ll be right next to them the whole time. If the collar does anything it"s not supposed to, I"ll snap it off in a second."
  
  Rachel nodded. "Fine. Brutus, heel." The scarred Rottweiler obediently trotted forward a little to sit at the side of her foot.
  
  I held the collar out to Rachel, who took it and fastened it around Brutus" neck with surprising tenderness.
  
  "Brutus, stay." I thought I saw a flicker in Rachel"s expression, like she was thinking hard.
  
  Abruptly, Brutus began to grow, getting up on all fours. Muscles swelled beneath his skin, which stretched and then split. The flesh split, filled in, split again as spikes of bone began to push through at irregular intervals. Joints popped and snapped as Brutus shuffled his growing paws to balance his increasing frame on, and there was a very gristly sound as his tail extended from a stub into a whiplike length of bone and meat.
  
  It was amazing to watch, seeing a fairly regular dog swell up into this massive beast. Going slowly just made the transformation seem all the more powerful as the eye took in the details of the change.
  
  Finally, Brutus was as big as I"d ever seen him, as tall as me at the shoulder, long as a sedan and about as broad. One massive grapefruit-sized eye rolled to look at me, and a tongue like three strips of meat braided together lolled slightly out of his lopsided jaw. His breath smelled like ripe meat.
  
  Bitch ran her hands along the side of Brutus" neck, tugging underneath the wide strip of the collar with two fingers, grunting in satisfaction as it stretched a little.
  
  "It works," she said, leaning around Brutus" head to speak to me.
  
  "Good. There"s an extra function though- See those loops on the side?"
  
  Bitch glanced down. "They"ll just get caught on stuff."
  
  "In a way, you"re right. I"ve given Brutus one of the most significant military developments in human history."
  
  "Wait, we"re putting guns on him?" Isabella blurted.
  
  I glanced at her. "What? No, we"re not doing that."
  
  "Spoilsport," Stoneknapper grumbled. "Mega-monster dogs with guns on their collars? You can"t tell me that wouldn"t be badass."
  
  I rolled my eyes. "They"re stirrups. This way you can slip your feet in to hold on as we ride."
  
  "Which frees up our hands to hold weapons," Lisa continued with a cheeky grin. "I like it."
  
  "There"s a handle on the top of the collar for extra grip too," I pointed out. "But yeah, we"ll be able to fight from dog-back now."
  
  Rachel frowned at the loop of fabric hanging from Brutus" collar. "I don"t know how to use this."
  
  "Stick your right foot in the stirrup, and use that to push up. Swing your left leg over as you go, and stick your left foot in the left stirrup."
  
  Haltingly, Rachel managed to get her foot in, and then haul herself up Brutus" frame. It took her another few seconds to find the left stirrup and fit her foot in, but eventually she was perched behind the dog"s head, arms held slightly out from her sides.
  
  "Hm." Rachel shifted from side to side experimentally. The collar-saddle stayed in place, and so did she. Brutus flicked one crusty ear, but otherwise held still.
  
  "Okay, good. I"ve got to be back for fifth period, so I can"t stay too much longer, but I wanted to get one more thing out of the way while we"re all here and awake. Specifically, your name."
  
  Rachel frowned from atop her dog. "I still think it"s dumb. Bitch works fine."
  
  "It works great for a villain. Trouble is, people don"t think heroes can have names that are also swear words. It might be dumb, but we"re going to have to play along, at least a little."
  
  "If it helps, you"ll always be Bitch to me," Isabella said with a suspiciously straight face.
  
  Rachel either didn"t get the subtle insult or didn"t care, but she nodded in acknowledgement, still frowning.
  
  Lisa pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. "So we"ve got a bunch of ideas. Fang, Pack, Mutt, Mongrel. Any of those sound good?"
  
  "Nope."
  
  "Hound."
  
  "No."
  
  "Guard Dog?"
  
  "No."
  
  "Havoc? It"s from a play- Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."
  
  Rachel paused, then shrugged. "Maybe."
  
  "Might be a little too villainous," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  "We"ll see". I checked the next name on the list. "Do you have any Irish in you?"
  
  "Don"t know. Don"t really care either."
  
  Lisa crossed Cu Chulainn off the list. "Guess that"s a no."
  
  "Damn shame," Tactical said wistfully. "I used to love the stories about the Hound of Ulster when I was little."
  
  "Yeah, I"m not ready to teach Rachel how to fight with a spear. We might as well go for the big one." Out loud I asked, "How do you feel about Cerberus?"
  
  Rachel frowned. "Don"t know that word."
  
  "It"s Greek. It"s the name of the giant three-headed dog that was supposed to guard the gate to the underworld."
  
  "I think Hercules did something with Cerberus," Isabella recalled.
  
  "The Disney film?"
  
  There was a pause.
  
  "Since when do you watch Disney films?" Brian asked slowly.
  
  Rachel shrugged. "It was on TV when I was little. I didn"t really get it."
  
  Muramasa shrugged. "Fair enough."
  
  "Well, yes," Isabella continued. "In the original story, one of the tasks Hercules had to do was to fetch Cerberus and present him to the king. So we"d be naming you after a dog so tough it took the son of a god to handle them."
  
  Rachel looked thoughtful. "That"s not bad," she said eventually.
  
  "Spectacular," I said.
  
  Needler spoke up, "You know, I think I remember from somewhere that Cerberus means "spotted" in Greek. So we"d basically be calling her Spot."
  
  I bit my tongue before the giggles could get loose, even as the Butchers sniggered at the mental image.
  
  "See Spot run," Butcher cackled.
  
  "Alright," I coughed and tried again; "Alright, that should be everything. I"ll get the other collars and the last bits of armour finished up tonight, and we"ll head out sometime tomorrow morning."
  
  "T"s coming too, right?" Isabella asked.
  
  "Damn straight. He"s been looking forward to this."
  
  Saturday 2nd April, The Lair, The Docks
  
  Ironclad hunched over and tensed his armour, wires and cables standing out like veins on a bodybuilder. The tires at his shoulders, hips and back began to turn, slowly at first, then faster.
  
  "That"s so cool," Isabella said.
  
  We"d had trouble thinking of ways for Ironclad to keep up with the dogs. They could run at the same pace as a car in a straight line, and instead of taking the streets, they could bound across rooftops and down alleyways.
  
  A few quick lessons in freerunning had let me show Ironclad how to cover ground more effectively, and he"d figured out his own trick of stretching and contracting his limbs to pull himself along and leap gaps with relative ease.
  
  The real trick had come when he"d accidentally absorbed an electric motor into his armour, which had begun to spin around as his pseudo-magnetic field affected it.
  
  So, several tires, connected to large motors I"d put together. It took some practice for Ironclad to be able to make them all turn at the same speed, and more practice to be able to steer, but he was getting the hang of it with considerable enthusiasm.
  
  "Good to have you with us," Brian said, slipping his helmet on and fastening the strap. As promised, I"d removed the skull design, replaced with a smooth visor and a sculpted mouth with a neutral expression. The leather jacket had been swapped for a long black duster, slightly ragged at the edges, and the armoured vest and plates along his chest and limbs.
  
  Whirlygig was double checking her pockets next to him. She"d done well assembling her own costume- a double-breasted bomber jacket, and some tough cargo pants. Parian had provided the leather flight cap, and Lisa had found the goggles online. The mask over her mouth was styled to look like an oxygen mask, and she had a leather harness crammed with pouches and pockets, all full of marbles and ball bearings and various other kinds of ammo.
  
  Tattletale was basically the same as before- purple and black bodysuit, domino mask, and a belt set diagonally across her hips. However, I"d also cobbled together a pistol crossbow with blunt bolts after hearing her go on at length about her being helplessly defenceless without her gun, et cetera, et cetera.
  
  But it was Rachel- now Cerberus- who had changed the most. Her usual thick jacket with the fur ruff had been fitted with a few armour plates, most notably bronzed shoulder guards in the shape of dogs" heads. Her helmet was designed similarly; a full-face helmet made to resemble Brutus. She"d looked pleased when I"d first shown it to her. Spiked wristbands and a thick leather belt added to the look.
  
  I fastened my belt on and ran my fingers over my weapons one last time. "Everybody ready?"
  
  "Yes." "Yep." "Good to go." "Born ready."
  
  I smiled. "Let"s ride."
  
  Rachel whistled, calling the dogs over. They all trotted up, the name tags on their collars jingling faintly, while Grue and I grabbed the carry bags and harnesses. The dogs were already starting to grow as we made for the shutters- I moved a couple of ants to trip the switch and roll them open for us.
  
  By the time we were outside, the dogs were big enough to ride on. Cerberus, Grue and I set to work strapping the harnesses onto them, using the collars to help hold them in place. Cerberus calmed the dogs throughout with murmured words and soothing pats.
  
  Attaching the carry bags was relatively easy compared to that- the dogs were well trained enough to hold still as we hauled the bags up and strapped them onto the harness, two to each dog.
  
  Once we were finished with that, Cerberus swung herself onto Brutus, with Tattletale clambering on behind her. Grue took Judas, offering a hand to help Whirlygig up. I took Angelica the one-eyed mutt, and Ironclad stretched himself out to full height, wheels turning gently.
  
  Everyone turned to look at me, awaiting my orders. I felt a surge of pride and confidence at five capes looking to me for orders.
  
  "Undersiders," I said, "Let"s ride!"
  
  Cerberus whistled and kicked her heels to Brutus" flanks, and the dog broke into a powerful loping run, Judas and Angelica following suit. Ironclad brought up the rear, eating up the distance with long strides.
  
  It wasn"t a smooth ride- Angelica"s gait threw me back and forth, and the bone spikes rubbed against my armour with every step. But riding atop a massive monster as we pounded down the road was incredible- I opened my helmet just to feel the wind on my face, grinning like a maniac.
  
  Cerberus threw her head back and howled at the top of her lungs. The dogs joined in, echoing bellows; and so did I, with Nemean whooping with exhilaration inside my head.
  
  "Now this is living!" She cried. "This is how you do it!"
  
  Cerberus signalled left, down the next turn. I gripped the handle on Angelica"s collar as we made the turn, and saw Whirlygig clutching at Grue"s waist with a little yelp.
  
  The side of a building approached. I switched to bloodsight, and saw people inside, gawking at us from the windows as we bore down on them.
  
  "Kip up!" Cerberus called.
  
  The muscles in Brutus" legs bunched up, then powered him up and forward. Claws sank into the brickwork, and he hauled himself straight up the wall.
  
  Judas was next, and Angelica after. I gritted my teeth as I felt the impact in my hips, but I was still grinning with glee.
  
  I looked back to check on Ironclad, just in time to see him do as I"d shown. He jumped forward, feet pushing off the wall to get a boost, throwing his arms out to grab the top. His armour contracted and collapsed in on itself, and he used the momentum to throw himself up onto the roof at the same time as me.
  
  I whooped and threw him a thumbs up as he got to his feet. I could hear him laughing as he stretched to his maximum again and broke into a run.
  
  Then the edge of the roof was coming up, and the dogs leapt-
  
  -my heart jumped into my throat-
  
  -and we landed with a massive jolt. Even bracing myself, I felt rattled.
  
  "Hell yeah!" Firecracker roared as I whooped again.
  
  The dogs ate up the distance, Ironclad just about keeping up, until he managed to shift some wheels to his feet and skate along after us. We left the Docks in short order and made it into the north end of Downtown.
  
  Cerberus whistled the dogs to a halt on a rooftop, and we gathered at the edge, looking down.
  
  It was the middle of the day, so it was only just open, but the neon sign for the Ruby Dreams Casino blazed a bright red.
  
  "You guys ready for this?" I asked.
  
  "How hard can it be?" Tattletale asked.
  
  Quarrel groaned. "She just fucking jinxed it, didn"t she?"
  
  "Cerberus."
  
  The bronze dog head turned toward me. I gestured towards the street below.
  
  "Take us down, please."
  
  Cerberus nodded and whistled a command. The dogs moved to the edge and started down, claws gripping in again. It was still incredible to see something so large holding itself vertical by its toes, even as I was riding it.
  
  Once we reached the ground, I pulled myself off Angelica and started unhitching the bags while the rest of the Undersiders handled theirs.
  
  I saw a couple of faces at the door- I"d called ahead to let the staff know that I was coming, though I"d left out the part about the Undersiders. I couldn"t imagine the thoughts that must have been going through their heads.
  
  Butcher sniggered. "Oh this"ll be fun. Think they still remember how your kids robbed the place a month ago?"
  
  I pushed Butcher down and grabbed two bags in each hand. Ironclad and Grue took the rest while the girls stayed with the dogs.
  
  A chubby man in a vest and nametag opened the doors just as we approached. "We don"t want any trouble," he began, just as Grue crouched down and unzipped his bag.
  
  The poor guy"s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head when he saw the stacks of money packed into the bags. "Wha..."
  
  "This is all the money the Undersiders stole on Coil"s orders," I explained, hefting the other bags.
  
  Grue straightened up and bowed his head. "On behalf of the Undersiders, I apologise for our actions. Obviously this won"t make up for the time, the damage, the general disruption and headache; but we hope this will be a good start to making things right. If there"s anything else we can do to make up for the harm we caused, please don"t hesitate to ask."
  
  Even though we"d worked the apology out days in advance, I was still impressed at Grue"s delivery. Deep and rich, with a hint of echo from the wisps of darkness leaking off him.
  
  The casino man looked entirely lost. "Um..."
  
  Bearskin snorted. "No survival instinct, this one. Bags of Benjamins dropped at his feet and all he can do is-"
  
  Whatever Bearskin was about to say next was interrupted by a tremendous bang from off in the distance. Everybody present jumped or flinched, except me; I was already turning in the direction of the sound, drawing my air cannon.
  
  "Must have been at least two blocks away or we"d have felt it through the bugs," Tactical muttered. "Doesn"t sound like a gasoline bomb, too deep..."
  
  Car alarms were going off from that direction now, echoes blaring into the day. A gunshot punctuated the noise like an exclamation mark.
  
  "Elpis!" Tattletale yelled. "That"s not a regular bomb! It"s some kind of Tinkertech!"
  
  "Bakuda," Flinch murmured.
  
  I turned to Ironclad. "Leave the money here," I ordered. To the chubby casino man I said "Take the money, get inside, lock the doors and call the police. Tell them Elpis and the Undersiders are responding immediately."
  
  Chubby man yelped and hurried to start dragging the money in, yelling at his coworkers to come and help.
  
  "Mount up!" I yelled to the Undersiders, marching back to the dogs. "This is the ABB making their play, and we"re not letting them! Whirlygig, up front, get a storm going! Grue, sit behind her, get ready to go dark on my mark. Tattletale, front seat, crossbow out! Ironclad, I want you on street level; we"ll take the rooftops and hit them from above."
  
  "We"re running toward the explosions?" Whirlygig squeaked. "Estas loca?"
  
  "You wanted to be heroes, this is the job," I snapped, hauling myself onto Angelica. "This is our city, and we"re not letting these fuckers throw bombs around for shits and giggles. Comprendes?"
  
  Whirlygig audibly swallowed. Then she reached into a couple of pockets and dragged out handfuls of ball bearings.
  
  "Good."
  
  "And here I thought today was going to be boring," Anchorage grinned.
  
  As soon as we were all on the dogs, Rachel whistled and gestured. The dogs made for the buildings closest to us and began to climb.
  
  8.6
  Saturday 2nd April, South Downtown
  
  It only took a couple of minutes on the dogs to find the source of the explosion we"d heard.
  
  Down on the street, half a dozen guys in red and green were attacking people in the streets, throwing them around and tearing their valuables off them. The civilians weren"t resisting, since the gangers were armed and clearly willing to use their weapons.
  
  There was also a huge, irregular chunk of ice sitting in the middle of the road, with an empty car trapped halfway inside it.
  
  "Bet that"s what the explosion was?" Tattletale asked.
  
  "No bet," Tock Tick and Bearskin said in unison, then glanced at each other.
  
  "Alright," I said, getting off Angelica. "I"ll hit them first. Grue, black the place out so they can"t risk another bomb. Girls, circle the darkness. Keep the civilians away and the gangsters down."
  
  As soon as Grue said "Yes", I threw myself off the building.
  
  I landed on top of the chunk of ice with a crunch as it cracked under the impact, and jumped to the ground from there. "Drop your weapons!" I shouted, pointing my air cannon at a guy with an actual katana on his belt.
  
  Credit where it"s due, he drew the katana with some measure of skill and held it in front of him. Muramasa snorted derisively.
  
  "Slow draw, poor grip, terrible stance- and is that a shirazaya sheath? Pathetic."
  
  Sure enough, I could see how the blade was mounted in a decorative wooden sheath and handle, rather than a proper hilt and scabbard. I lowered my estimation of him a couple of points, changing targets to fire a net round at another guy who was pulling a handgun from his coat.
  
  At the same time, a screech of tires heralded Ironclad hurtling around the corner. He rose into a crouch as he did, scraping across the tarmac as he came down on a couple of thugs like an avalanche.
  
  Darkness swept across my vision, accompanied by heavy thumps as the dogs hit the ground. I heard screams of fear echoing through the darkness as gangers and civilians alike panicked. I switched to bloodsight, lighting them up as red silhouettes, and rearranged the bugs I"d pulled into the area to give me some direction.
  
  "Stay calm!" I shouted, swivelling to wrap another ABB man. "We"re here to help! Grue, get the civilians to safety!"
  
  The shirazaya idiot came at me with a sideways swing. I stepped back from it, then stepped in and rammed two fingers into a nerve cluster in his deltoid, courtesy of Needler"s Thinker power. His arm went numb, and I headbutted him as I twisted the katana out of his grip. He went over like a tree.
  
  I set the katana on the ground and stepped over to another guy who was swinging a club around wildly. I caught it in my free hand before he could clip some bystanders- a baseball bat by the feel of it- and fired an air blast into his stomach. He went down with a groan, clutching his middle.
  
  A silhouette was closing in on me- I recognised Grue from the bugs I"d slipped onto his costume. He gently took the civilian couple by the hands and led them away with a soothing tone.
  
  "Anyone else think he"s weirdly good at this?" Firecracker asked. "Dude barely needs any coaching or whatever. Next thing you know, he"s gonna be helping old ladies across the street."
  
  I picked up some extra violence through my insects. A few of the gangers had made it out of the darkness, only to face Cerberus"s dogs gnashing their teeth, Whirlygig with ammo at the ready, or Tattletale putting her pistol crossbow through its paces. The really unlucky ones ran into Ironclad, who was clearly having fun picking them up and tucking them under his arm as he stomped about.
  
  A few more net rounds, and some pummelling from Grue, and we had the ABB gangers all wrapped up. "Okay Grue, let"s clear the darkness," I called. A second later, we were back to a sunny afternoon, with groaning crooks and frightened civilians all around.
  
  A few people yelped when they saw the dogs for the first time, backing away and pulling out phones.
  
  "Better step up and say something before they get stupid," Anchorage pointed out.
  
  I set the air cannon back on my belt and raised my hands carefully. "It"s okay everyone, we"re here to help. The police are already on their way."
  
  "Then they"ll find you sucking on this!"
  
  I swivelled at the sound, cursing myself for putting the air cannon away even as I drew it again. One of the ABB guys had crawled out from underneath a car- I must have missed him taking cover in all the confusion. He had one arm raised high and back, with a metallic canister in his hand-
  
  I fired the air cannon from the hip, hitting him in the leg and knocking him down, but the bomb had already left his hand, and it was headed in an arc towards me. I threw myself to the side to get out of the way, and saw it sail right past, smashing through the glass door of a building.
  
  A second later, there was a bang that rattled the air and set car alarms off. The lobby of the building erupted in lurid pink flames. Fire alarms inside went off instantly.
  
  I fired a net round at the bomb-thrower without looking, already running back toward the building. The heat was tremendous, at least as hot as Lung"s flames when I"d fought him. I could see the blood shapes of the staff in the lobby running for the back door as the flames rapidly spread- one man ran upstairs, just ahead of the fire as it reached the foot of the stairs. More people were escaping out the sides from different areas- maybe kitchen staff, given how few insects there seemed to be in there.
  
  "Dumbass," Rotter sneered. "It"s like in horror movies when they run upstairs instead of outside."
  
  I looked up, and saw the man"s silhouette banging on walls, opening doors, gesturing frantically to the other silhouettes in the building.
  
  "There"s more people," I said out loud with growing horror. "There"s people trapped in there!" I yelled, turning back to the street. "Undersiders! Up to the roof! Now!" Insects moved at my mental command, filing into the building. I spread some around the ground floor, and along the steps, to give me an idea of how fast the fire was spreading.
  
  I fired a grappler upward and reeled in as soon as it caught, winching myself up to a window. A kick smashed through the glass, and I found myself in a hotel room- bed, nightstand, desk, little bathroom. Barks and growls sounded from outside as the Undersiders mounted up and drove the dogs to climb.
  
  I could hear the man yelling, pulling people out of their rooms. I ripped the door handle out and stepped into the corridor, where an old couple were trying to argue with the concierge.
  
  "The building"s on fire!" I shouted at them, striding forward. "Ground floor"s off limits, we need to get to the roof, use the fire escape."
  
  The couple paled and immediately rushed off to the far stairs. The concierge stood frozen in terror.
  
  "Come on," I said, grabbing him by the arm. "We need to get everyone up and out."
  
  "We don"t have a fire escape," he mumbled.
  
  I almost stopped moving, before Needler hissed at me to keep moving ahead of the flames. "What the hell do you mean?" I snapped, hauling him along.
  
  "All the exits are on the ground, we can"t get out, I don"t wanna die, I only started working here a couple months ago-"
  
  I slapped him across the face, none too gently. "Listen," I snarled, a trace of Nemean in my voice. "I"ll figure something out. Your job is to get everyone to the roof as fast as you can. Got it?"
  
  The concierge swallowed and rubbed his red cheek, then nodded.
  
  The fire was advancing up the steps, almost at the first floor. I pulled the concierge along until he found some nerve and pulled ahead of me, calling for everyone to evacuate the building in a calm orderly fashion.
  
  I searched with my insects and with bloodsight, opening doors where I knew people were, telling them to move to the rooftop, not to take anything with them. If people started trying to grab their suitcases, we"d waste valuable time.
  
  And on the inside, I was scouring my inherited memories for anything that might help. The Butchers and the Teeth were no strangers to arson- in fact, they were enthusiasts. Needler had claimed her most famous kill in that fashion, back when the Slaughterhouse Nine had come to town in 1996. She"d tracked Nice Guy to an apartment complex, and rather than risk getting caught in his Stranger power and rendered helpless, she"s simply nailed the doors shut and torched the building.
  
  "Took a while to verify the corpse for the bounty though," Needler remembered.
  
  A hotel in the middle of the day wasn"t very occupied, which was one minor upside. The staff were helping to urge people up the stairs, aiding the less mobile. There was a girl in a wheelchair who was having trouble, until I stepped forward, plucked her out of the chair, and slung her over my shoulder in a fireman"s carry, taking the wheelchair in my other hand as a maid folded it up and held it out.
  
  "Sorry kid, no time to be sensitive," I grunted, slipping past people to get up the stairs.
  
  "Hey- Ah! Who the hell are you?!" She shrieked, pounding on my back indignantly.
  
  "I"m Elpis, local hero, and the person carrying you to safety, so if you don"t mind?"
  
  The hotel was ten stories tall, and I ended up having to help several other people along, an old man on my arm and a few others holding onto my cape. The Undersiders were already waiting on the rooftop for me, and they didn"t look happy about it. Cerberus and Grue were both tense, Whirlygig was shaking, Ironclad was as collapsed in himself as I"d ever seen. Only Tattletale looked composed, and her cocky smile was noticeably absent.
  
  "Whirl, start spinning up," I ordered, crossing the rooftop, letting the old man go to the side. "Have you ever carried passengers before?"
  
  "I- No! I"ve never-!"
  
  "Well, we need to find out fast," I said, pulling the girl off my back into a bridal carry. When she saw the dogs she screamed a little and clung to me.
  
  "Grue, Tattletale, Cerberus, you"re on the dogs. You need to jump people across to the next rooftop," I pointed to the building next door, which was luckily the same height as us. "How many can the dogs take at once?" I asked Cerberus.
  
  She shrugged. "Three at most. And they"d better not be stupid about it."
  
  "If it"s the dogs or burning to death, I think they"ll behave." I turned to Ironclad. "Do you think you can stretch enough to reach across the gap?"
  
  Ironclad"s head rotated to look across the wide gap from the hotel to the next building over. "I think so," he said uncertainly.
  
  "Okay, give it your best shot. I"ll start winching people to the ground. We"ve got to move fast, that fire is spreading quickly." It had already consumed the insects I"d left behind on the first floor and was making its way up the stairs.
  
  More people started coming out onto the roof, slowing in shock and fear as they spotted the Undersiders. The people coming up behind bumped into them and stalled.
  
  "Move forward!" I shouted. "Let the people behind come up, we don"t have much time!" I shifted the girl in my arms as I turned towards the growing crowd. "My name"s Elpis, these are the Undersiders. We"re going to get you out of here. You"re going to have to either ride on the dogs, or cross the bridge that Ironclad"s forming. I"ll lower people myself, but I can"t move fast enough to take all of you."
  
  "Boss!" Whirlygig was floating several inches off the ground now, a storm of dust and marbles and bits and pieces around her. "I think I can carry someone. Maybe not heavy, but, um."
  
  I crossed back over to her, holding the girl in my arms out. "See if you can hold her."
  
  "What? Hey!" The girl protested, as I transferred her to Whirlygig"s grip. She dipped immediately, toes brushing the rooftop, but then slowly rose again, even if she was straining to hold the girl in her arms.
  
  "Okay, good. Start lowering people to the ground, away from the flames. I"ll follow you in a sec." I passed the girl her wheelchair as well.
  
  "Taylor, give Ironclad some nets," Vladimir broke in. "He can use them as part of the bridge."
  
  "Good idea." I pulled a couple of net canisters out of my air cannon and tore them open, tossing the bundles of nylon string and silk to Ironclad. "For the bridge."
  
  Ironclad nodded as he stretched out to his maximum, gingerly reaching across the gap. His hands were a few feet short of the other side until he pushed forward, holding himself across the gap by hands and feet. His metal rippled, moving the nets along to cover the spaces between his arms and his legs.
  
  It still wasn"t a pleasing sight- a narrow bridge of irregular metal, with no railings and a ten storey drop below.
  
  People were still hanging back, uncertain and scared. I stalked forward impatiently.
  
  "This building is on fire. It"s either the dogs, the bridge, or jump off the roof."
  
  As if to underline my point, Whirlygig chose that exact moment to step off the roof and drift down to the ground, carrying the girl with her
  
  The old man I"d helped up the stairs came forward. "Those things are dogs?"
  
  "Yep."
  
  He stared at them a moment, then started towards them. Grue stepped forward to meet him in the middle, offering a hand to help lift the man onto Judas.
  
  That was enough for people to start hurrying forward. I took one look at the dogs and stepped in to handle the flow.
  
  "Two people to a dog! Don"t crowd them! These are well-trained animals, but they"re still animals! Keep calm and we"ll get you out of here! Anyone who"s sure-footed enough, take the bridge, we don"t have time to stand around!"
  
  "Damn right," Ironclad called out.
  
  Tattletale and Grue helped people onto Judas and Angelica, but Cerberus was having trouble. "Watch it," she snapped to the woman fumbling with the stirrup.
  
  I hurried over before things turned ugly, cupping my hands to boost the woman on. "Easy," I muttered to Cerberus. "Everybody"s scared. Just hang on and we"ll get through this."
  
  Cerberus growled but didn"t reply. Instead she turned to look at the other dogs and whistled a command.
  
  Muscles bunched in their legs, and the dogs exploded forward into running jumps that shot them onto the neighbouring roof. The passengers shrieked as they landed, and quickly clambered off as Cerberus whistled the dogs back around to jump over.
  
  Some of the younger civilians went for the bridge instead- a guy in an Eidolon t-shirt led the way, crawling on all fours across Ironclad"s back.
  
  The fire crept higher and higher as we shuttled people across. Whirlygig floated back up, and I joined her in ferrying the lighter people to the ground; though it got harder to do as the flames began to billow further out from the hotel and we had to move further away from the heat.
  
  "You"re doing well," Flinch said encouragingly as I rappelled down to the ground with a middle-aged man in my grip, then zipped back up as soon as he"d touched the ground.
  
  Finally we were down to a handful of people. I"d just helped one of the maids onto Angelica"s back when I felt the flames making their way up the last flight of stairs.
  
  I slapped Angelica"s flank. "Go! Go!"
  
  The fire came up through the stairwell, lurid pink flames casting the rooftop in a sickly glow. Cerberus whistled and led the dogs in one last leap across the gap. Ironclad kicked off from the rooftop and let himself dangle by his fingertips as soon as the last person crossed, then simply dropped to the ground, letting his metal collapse around him to cushion his fall.
  
  Whirlygig had jumped down, carrying a little kid. It was just me, and the concierge I"d first met, as the flames advanced towards us.
  
  "Time to go!" I shouted, sprinting towards him.
  
  "Wait, wha-"
  
  I practically tackled him off the roof, firing a grappler behind me as we sailed off the rooftop. He screamed in my ear as I grabbed the back of his head and held it in a death grip.
  
  There was a jolt as the grappler started to slow our descent, lowering us to six stories, five, four- and then a drop that I felt in my stomach.
  
  "The grappler head!" Tock Tick realised. The sheer heat must have done something to the mechanisms, or loosened it from where it latched on.
  
  We were in free fall, going too fast. Even if I landed just right-
  
  Ironclad was below, arms outstretched. One of the nets was held between his hands.
  
  Anchorage"s power let me roll my body in mid-air, throwing the concierge to land dead centre in the net. He bounced in the air like it was a trampoline and came to rest unharmed-
  
  I hit the ground like a meteor, on my side. My head bounced off the ground.
  
  I blinked and raised my head. Must have blacked out for a second. There were definitely a few things cracked in my body. My wrist was definitely sprained, although it was already healing.
  
  Whirlygig was crouched over me, silhouetted against the pink flames that were now engulfing the hotel. I could hear crashes from inside as the structure began to give way.
  
  "You know, it"s kind of pretty," Stoneknapper mused.
  
  I rolled my eyes and pushed myself to my feet, grunting as I felt bruises wane and fractures seal. I made a show of rolling my head on my shoulders and stretching my arms. "Gonna be sore in the morning," I said for the benefit of the onlookers. "I"m okay," I added quietly, for Whirlygig"s benefit.
  
  She visibly sagged in relief. "You"re nuts, you know that?"
  
  The hotel staff and guests had formed a huddle well back from the fire, just past the block of ice. The last few stragglers were coming out of the building we"d jumped them over to, and other people had joined in as well; drawn by the sheer spectacle, offering comfort or asking questions or just taking pictures on their phones. Many were taking pictures of the Undersiders as they rode down to street level on the dogs and dismounted.
  
  "Is everyone alright?" I asked, stepping forward- and yes, there was something wrong with my ankle. I stifled a grimace and faked a healthy gait.
  
  A couple of people managed replies, and Tattletale stepped forward from the rest of the team, who were standing off to the side as Cerberus meticulously checked the dogs. "Doesn"t look like there"s any big injuries, boss. Plenty of bruises from the ride, and something like sunburn, but I don"t think anybody needs a hospital visit."
  
  I nodded. "Good job. All of you. This could have been a lot worse."
  
  Whirlygig glanced at the fire, still burning bright. I could see the ice block melting in the heat. "This is not what I was expecting for my first day."
  
  I set a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, chin up. People are alive because of you."
  
  "We should probably wait around for the fire department to get here," Tattetale said. "I don"t know what"s going on with those flames, but they"re definitely not normal. Putting water on them might just make things worse."
  
  "Fucking hell," Butcher murmured as the flames licked at brick and plaster. "Imagine if we"d got our hands on that Tinker. Could"ve turned this city topsy-turvy, and all kinds of curvy."
  
  I rammed Butcher back into the dark while I nodded to Tattletale. "Let"s get the ABB in order too. We can get some information out of them and them hand them over." They were mostly sat in a heap against one of the parked cars, staring at either the fire or us. It was hard to tell what scared them more.
  
  Sirens came from off in the distance. "Speaking of which," I added. Frankly I was surprised it took this long- the fire must have been visible for miles. Although now that I looked, I realised it wasn"t giving off any smoke.
  
  "Cops showing up late, what a surprise," Quarrel said sarcastically as a police cruiser came around the corner and screeched to a stop.
  
  The officers inside came out with guns drawn. "Freeze!" roared the passenger, pointing his pistol at us over the top of his door.
  
  The crowd backed up with a few panicked gasps.
  
  I blinked. "Come again?"
  
  "Hands in the air!" he shouted, jerking his gun towards me for emphasis.
  
  "Are you serious?" I demanded, feeling my teeth start to itch. "We just pulled dozens of people out of a burning building and you"re trying to arrest us?"
  
  The driver muttered something to his passenger, who gritted his teeth and kept his gun trained on me.
  
  "You might need to take them down," Tactical said. "If one of those bullets ricochets off you, someone in the crowd could get hit."
  
  I gnashed my teeth together. This was going all wrong. I hadn"t expected the authorities to be happy about the Undersiders trying to turn over a new leaf, but I didn"t think anyone would be stupid enough to try and start a fight with multiple capes between a burning building and a crowd of civilians.
  
  The Undersiders were tense behind me. Ironclad slowly stepped in front of Tattletale and Whirlygig, and Cerberus was hunched over, raring for a fight. The dogs were growling softly, a bass rumble that promised swift and terrible violence.
  
  Someone cleared their throat. "Officers?"
  
  The concierge stepped forward, looking distinctly rumpled after his landing but still in one piece. "The, ah, Undersiders are telling the truth. They just helped evacuate," he gestured blindly at the crowd behind him, "everyone here."
  
  "Saved our asses," said the girl in the wheelchair, rolling herself forward.
  
  A woman in a baseball cap held up her phone. "I"ve got video."
  
  More voices spoke up out of the crowd- people we"d saved or witnesses to the feat, all singing the Undersider"s praises. The cops looked more and more unsure as they heard it all.
  
  I felt a sudden hot weight in the pit of my stomach, like I"d just taken a huge gulp of hot tea. It was a good feeling, but it was so sudden and unexpected that I didn"t quite know how to process it.
  
  "All units, all units." The cruiser"s radio was blaring at hilariously loud volume. "Backup required at 56th and Glevum- another bomb has been found. Respond if possible."
  
  Another bomb- how many had Bakuda made?
  
  "Enough that she handed a bunch out to the foot soldiers," Firecracker said. "And if they"ve planted some of them ahead of time, half the city could be rigged to blow."
  
  I carefully raised my hands, fingers spread. "Officers," I said carefully, "You"ve got two options here.
  
  "Option one, you try to arrest us in front of all these people while the city is falling apart.
  
  "Option two, you let us do our jobs and save lives. It"s your call."
  
  The cops exchanged looks, and there was a wordless conversation of head tilts and eyebrow twitches before the passenger lowered his gun with obvious reluctance.
  
  "Thank you," I said, trying not to smirk. As I turned back to the team, I saw Tattletale wasn"t bothering to try.
  
  "Mount up," I ordered, striding over. "We"ve got more to do. Sorry to cut and run," I called to the crowd, "but duty calls."
  
  Ironclad shuffled himself into a driving configuration as the rest of us climbed onto the dogs. Tattletale waved cheerfully to the crowds as she took a seat behind Cerberus.
  
  "Let"s ride!"
  
  Cerberus whistled, and the dogs set off. I thought I heard someone shout "Your dogs are awesome!" as we pounded down the street and away.
  
  "So how"s it feel to be superheroes?" I yelled as the dogs climbed to the rooftops and bounded towards 56th and Glevum.
  
  "Fucking insane!" Whirlygig shouted back.
  
  "And it"s not even lunchtime yet!" I laughed.
  
  8.7
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Saturday 2nd April, Downtown
  
  The second bomb had already exploded by the time we got there, something more in line with regular pyrotechnics in a parking lot. Several cars were totalled, and a few people had been hurt by debris.
  
  I carefully pulled the last metal fragment out of a man"s shoulder with some fine tweezers, then dabbed some antiseptic on it and circled the area with a marker pen so the paramedics wouldn"t have to check it twice.
  
  "There you go, you"re all set," I said, rinsing the tweezers and putting them back in my pocket Tinker kit.
  
  Grue had formed a ring of darkness around the area at waist height, like a grim version of police tape. It kept the crowds back while Tattletale looked the scene over and Whirlygig and Ironclad talked to some civilians.
  
  "I"m pretty sure that"s the dogs looming around," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  "That too," I conceded.
  
  "Hey boss!" Whirlygig shouted, waving. The kid standing next to her was holding his phone up. "We"ve got something!"
  
  "Excuse me," I said to my patient, leaving him to jog over to Whirlygig.
  
  "So they just put an alert up about what the bombs look like," the kid said, scratching one pimply cheek, "And my boyfriend just texted me saying they found something at a gas station."
  
  He turned the screen towards me, and I saw a low-quality picture of a gas station snack rack. Someone had crudely stuffed a metal canister behind a couple of bags of Cheetos. It was slightly larger than a can of cola, and had a couple of lights flashing at one end.
  
  "Where did you say it was?" I asked.
  
  We got to the third bomb site before anything bad happened, which was a relief. A PRT van had already pulled up, and the troopers present looked like they were radioing for orders just as the dogs trotted up.
  
  They reached for their weapons on reflex, so I swung myself off Judas to approach. "Easy," I said, raising my hands. "We"re here to help. I"m Elpis, and these are the Undersiders."
  
  Whirlygig gave a half-hearted salute at that, and Tattletale waved a little.
  
  The troopers traded glances behind their helmets, then relaxed a little. "I"m Gregson. Do you understand the situation?"
  
  "Tinker bombs," I said. "Not my area of expertise, but I"ll do what I can."
  
  "That"s good to know. We"ve got no idea what kind of bomb is in there, and we"re not going to get bomb squad here any time soon with how things are going."
  
  "Did you get everyone away from the bomb?"
  
  "We"re clear to 50 metres," Gregson said, waving a hand at the onlookers who were gawking at us from across the road. "But someone"s going to have to go in and get it."
  
  "Taylor, don"t you dare," Tactical said at once.
  
  "I"ll go," I said, rolling my shoulders to retract my cape. "I don"t know if I can disarm it, but I can try and take a look."
  
  "Hang on a second," Ironclad protested. "Why do you have to go? The bomb hasn"t gone off yet, shouldn"t we just leave it?"
  
  "We have no idea what that thing could do. At the very least it could take out the whole damn building. And I really don"t want to see what happens when you mix high explosives with however many thousands of gallons of gas are stored here."
  
  "I kinda do," Firecracker said.
  
  One of the troopers made a sound like a mouse being stepped on. "Uh, maybe we should pull that cordon back a bit more," he said in a strangled tone of voice.
  
  "Good idea," Tattletale said. "And do you guys have a camera?"
  
  A few minutes later, I"d managed to fit a headset onto my helmet, and stick a small video camera to the tip of my spear as I carefully advanced into the station building. I"d swept the entire place with insects from top to bottom before I"d even started approaching, but I still felt on edge.
  
  Between my armour and my general durability, I could survive a normal bomb. But who knew what the hell this thing could do?
  
  "Creeping into a gas station snack aisle while shaking with fear. It"s almost like smoking weed!" Anchorage joked nervously.
  
  I saw the snack aisle, and as I turned the corner I could see the bomb canister sticking out from behind a crumpled chip bag. I held the spear up so that the camera had a clear view.
  
  "Talk to me, Tattletale."
  
  Tattletale hummed over the earpiece. "Handmade, but not crude. It"s meant to be able to work in a launcher or thrown. The lights are indicators for the detonation system, just showing that it"s active. Not on a timer- Hey Elpis, can you toss something close to it?"
  
  "You think there"s a proximity sensor? Because I really don"t want to figure that out the hard way."
  
  "Just throw a bag of chips past it and see what happens."
  
  "Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea," Needler muttered as I plucked a bag of chips off the rack and gingerly tossed it forward.
  
  The bag sailed through the air- and clipped the bag in front of the bomb. That bag fell off the rack, and the bomb rolled forward to rest on the edge of the shelf with a loud clunk.
  
  I flinched backward- in fact I leapt backward several feet. It was only after several seconds, when I wasn"t consumed by a fireball and I"d managed several deep breaths, that I managed to relax a fraction.
  
  "Okay," Tattletale breathed. "The bomb"s set to remote. So you should be able to pick it up and move it out of the building without any problems."
  
  "Oh yeah, fucking simple," I said sarcastically. I grabbed a plastic bag off the counter and hooked the handles over the tip of the spear, then carefully advanced.
  
  I still didn"t want to actually touch the bomb with bare hands, despite Tattletale"s assurances, so I gingerly pushed down on the rack, tipping it as I held the back out underneath, until the bomb finally tipped over, off the edge-
  
  -And into the bag with a soft rustle.
  
  "That... was intense," Flinch said.
  
  I backed up to the front door, holding the spear with both hands, moving as carefully and deliberately as-
  
  "-a porcupine trying to do his missus?" Dirty Rotter suggested. I shoved him into the dark and kept moving, kicking the door open behind me.
  
  The troopers waved me over to an area they"d cleared, away from the gas pumps and the underground tank. I approached, setting the bag onto the ground and pulling the spear away, then hastily retreating.
  
  "Fuck," one of the troopers said at last. "I could barely watch that."
  
  "Try living it," I snapped.
  
  Trooper Gregson nodded to me. "Hell of a job. All of you," he said, nodding to the Undersiders. Tattletale gave him a thumbs up as I handed him the camera back.
  
  Gregson made a few calls and had my phone linked in to the PRT alert system, so we could follow up on more calls instead of waiting to hear an explosion. We followed the next alert to a bodega just at the east edge of downtown.
  
  I could see even from a distance that there wasn"t anything we could do. A huge spherical volume of the building had turned transparent- walls, floor, ceiling, and everything in between.
  
  I only stepped inside to throw a sheet over the poor bastard who"d been caught at the register in mid-scream, his face locked in a rictus of terror. I wasn"t sure what would happen to his remains, but at least people wouldn"t be able to stare.
  
  "The fuck kind of bombs is this bitch making?" Quarrel asked as I stepped outside.
  
  "I"ve got no fucking clue," I said tiredly.
  
  I checked my phone. The next alert was for a park.
  
  "Let"s go," I said, motioning to the team. Ironclad set his wheels to the ground and started rolling as the dogs went from walk to trot to run.
  
  "Hey," Butcher said as we sped through the city, cutting through the thinning traffic with ease. "That was your first corpse."
  
  I blinked, surprised. Butcher was right. That was the first time I"d seen a dead body with my own two eyes. I"d seen plenty of violence since I got my powers, and the Butcher memories were filled to the brim with corpses.
  
  But that one glass statue in the bodega was the first I"d seen for myself.
  
  "Certainly in better condition than anything we"ve seen," Muramasa said quietly. His first corpse had been one hell of a mess, after all- split in half from shoulder to hip.
  
  At least the sheer mess had meant he didn"t get a clear look at his father"s face.
  
  "I"ll have to think about it," I said at last, squeezing the handle of the collar-saddle. "React later, do now."
  
  "There"ll probably be more today," Nemean said- not unkindly, just stating grim fact. I gave her a half-hearted shove as the park came into view.
  
  It was immediately obvious what was going wrong- there was a mass of brambles and thorns looming in the middle of the park. I could see a couple of figures running back and forth around it- one on green-brown, one in orange, both spraying flames at the steadily growing monster bush.
  
  "Guess we should have packed weedkiller!" Whirlygig shouted as the dogs tore up the turf beneath their claws.
  
  "Let"s shred it!" I yelled as we reached the bush. It was twice my height and half again that wide. Branches sprouted off the main mass, reaching out in every direction.
  
  I swung off Judas and drew my swords. "Hey Spitfire," I called out as I lopped a couple of branches short, advancing on the main bush.
  
  Spitfire turned to stare for a second before spewing another stream of clear liquid onto the bush. A huge swath of it caught fire, but the bush simply grew around the fire, more warped branches snaking out.
  
  "Nice dogs," she yelled, spitting another stream. "So how"s your day been going?"
  
  I cranked the swords to maximum vibration and started swinging them in a pattern, carving into the bush. "Burning hotel, exploded apartment, bodega turned to glass. Not how I wanted my Saturday to go. You?"
  
  "This was supposed to be my first patrol," Spitfire complained. She spat a stream up high, igniting some of the bush at the very top.
  
  "Sorry it happened to you," I grunted, hacking at a bigger branch. "Ironclad, Whirlygig; get your blades out and start shredding this thing with me! Grue, make a ceiling, try and starve this thing of sunlight! Cerberus, send in the dogs! Tattletale, you"re on crowd control. Go!"
  
  Ironclad shuffled his armour, exposing some of the blades he"d picked up from Hookwolf and Kaiser. He passed some of the smaller ones to Whirlygig as she started her storm, then waded into the fray, swinging his arms and legs in wide sweeps. Whirlygig followed a few moments after as she began to hover, carving a furrow in the greenery.
  
  I sliced off a couple of branches that were getting too close to Spitfire, and she spat a gout of flames at the ground in front of me, killing off the thorns that were approaching my feet. I growled and brought my swords together, combining them into their greatsword mode.
  
  Darkness rolled overhead as I slashed into the bush, carving a huge chunk out of it. Ironclad was forcing his way further in to the right, ignoring how the thorns tried to crawl over him. On the other side I could see the dogs snapping and clawing away, though they weren"t having a lot of success.
  
  There was a creaking noise, and then a crack, and our section of the bush abruptly slowed.
  
  "What just happened?" Spitfire asked, shuffling around to the left.
  
  "Hey Elpis, I think I found the roots!" Ironclad shouted from somewhere inside the bush. There was another crack, and the bush shuddered.
  
  "Fucking right then!" Bearskin yelled.
  
  "Nice job Ironclad! Keep it up, we"ll hold it off out here!"
  
  I followed Spitfire as she paced the perimeter, carving huge swathes of branch and twig away with my sword. Mounds of burning wood gathered at my feet, forming a barrier that the new growth struggled to get past.
  
  We reached Miss Militia just as there was another crack from inside- her power was in the form of a flamethrower with a back-mounted fuel tank, which she was using to spray the bush with a grim expression.
  
  "Lovely day for it," I said sarcastically, swinging the sword into the bush.
  
  Miss Militia nodded. "At least it"s not boring."
  
  There was another crack from inside the bush, and then the whole thing shuddered. There was a massive creaking noise, and then the entire bush began to lift into the air.
  
  Ironclad was holding the centre of the bush in his hands, blades sticking out from every part of him as he lifted the entire plant into the air. I could see the roots still stuck in the ground where he"d torn it apart, and they were clearing trying to regrow.
  
  "We need to kill the roots," I said, pointing.
  
  Militia advanced, waving Spitfire along with her. The two of them poured fire onto the remains as Ironclad stepped back, scouring the earth. Once that was done, we all retreated, and Ironclad dumped the remains on the fire. Spitfire spewed another stream of fire on top for good measure.
  
  "Anybody else craving marshmallows all of a sudden?" Stoneknapper asked as we watched the bush become a bonfire.
  
  "What the hell kind of bomb makes plants grow faster?" Grue asked, clearing away the cloud above us.
  
  "Some kind of mutation," Tattletale suggested, putting her hand to her chin.
  
  "Miracle-Gro," Whirlygig said, lowering herself to the ground. "Hey, here"s your metal back," she added, flinging the blades to Ironclad. He re-absorbed them into his armour with a nod.
  
  "So," Miss Militia said, her power changing into a fat revolver, "You"re the Undersiders."
  
  "We are," said Grue, shifting his stance slightly. I carefully stepped forward to put myself in Militia"s line of fire.
  
  Militia looked us over, then nodded slightly. Her power became a knife, sheathed on her leg. "Nice work."
  
  "Thanks," Whirlygig blurted. "I mean, uh, it"s nice to... work with you too?"
  
  Miss Militia smiled a little- or at least her eyes did. "I think I heard something about you giving some money back?"
  
  "Yeah, the Ruby Dreams," Tattletale confirmed. "And then things started blowing up, and we"ve been running around trying to hold it together ever since. It"s exhausting," she finished with a dramatic sigh.
  
  I rolled my eyes at Tattletale"s overacting, before quietly turning to Spitfire. "You alright?"
  
  "Pretty much," she said, flicking a twig off her shoulder. Up close, I could see the symbol on her firefighter helmet was the Protectorate"s winged shield.
  
  I pulled a rag out of my belt to clean the sap and dirt off my sword. "How"s the framework holding up? Do you need me to adjust it?"
  
  Spitfire did a little shadowboxing to demonstrate, and I saw the powerframe moving with her under her coat. "No, it"s okay." She paused, then added, "Thanks for coming."
  
  "No problem." I pulled the greatsword apart and sheathed the two swords at my hips. "So," I asked cautiously, "Do you guys need a lift?"
  
  Miss Militia looked at the dogs, then shook her head firmly. "We"ll use my bike. Besides, it"s probably better if we split up."
  
  "Yeah, I guess we can cover more ground that way."
  
  Miss Militia looked me in the air. "Elpis," she said severely. "I can let it go right now because we"re in the middle of an emergency, but the Undersiders are still wanted criminals. Next time, I am going to have to try and arrest you."
  
  I frowned, but nodded. "Well, thanks for the heads up at least. We"ll get going then."
  
  Tattletale pulled her phone out. "There"s an alert a few blocks away. Something about a-" she squinted at the screen, "-glue bomb?"
  
  "That"s us then." I patted Spitfire on the shoulder, a touch awkwardly. "I"ll see you around. Uh, I like your costume by the way."
  
  "Thanks. Go kick ass."
  
  "I always do," I said, climbing onto Angelica.
  
  Evening, The Lair
  
  Rachel pulled her helmet off and dropped it on the ground, then set to tending to the dogs as the last traces of her power shrank and faded away.
  
  Ironclad trudged into the corner and let the metal fall off him. "Need rest," he groaned, stretching his arms over his head.
  
  "How are you tired?" Isabella asked, pulling her mask and cap off. "Your armour did all the work."
  
  Tarquin shrugged. "I don"t know. I just am."
  
  I stepped over to my workbench and started pulling my armour off, setting it on the rack. "Powers are weird like that. Hell, I"m worn out."
  
  Twelve bomb sites in total, out of dozens more. Only a few of them produced the same effect- they mostly seemed to be random. Bombs that turned objects to dust, bombs that only exploded on the horizontal axis, bombs that warped living tissue. I was going to have nightmares about that poor cat, I just knew it.
  
  Hundreds displaced by damage, dozens injured, and a handful of people killed. The only upside was that the bombs had petered out eventually. Maybe the ABB simply didn"t have enough for a sustained assault.
  
  Or, the more cynical option, that they were conserving ammunition for another wave later on.
  
  One by one, the Undersiders trooped upstairs, shedding bits of their costumes as they went, until we were just a bunch of worn out teenagers. I followed them once I"d got the last bits of armour put away, wearing just my undersuit and glasses.
  
   Whirlygig threw herself onto one of the couches, face down, letting out a long groan that seemed to deflate her like a punctured balloon. Tattletale sat down on the other, and T joined her a second later, while Rachel sprawled on the rug with her dogs. Brian disappeared into his room with the pieces of his costume under his arm.
  
  I headed for the kitchen area, and started pulling stuff from the fridge and cabinets. "So is anyone else hungry?"
  
  "YES," Isabella"s muffled voice answered.
  
  Grunts of agreement came from the rest. I filled a pot with water and put it on the hob to heat up, and turned on the oven while I was at it.
  
  "Pasta," Anchorage mused. "Can"t go wrong with pasta."
  
  Someone, probably Brian, had got some actual groceries for the lair. So I had onions, garlic, peppers, bacon, tomatoes, and other bits and pieces.
  
  Annoyingly, even with Nemean"s pain immunity, chopping the onions still irritated my eyes. I blinked the tears away with a grunt and dumped the pieces into a frying pan.
  
  Within a few minutes, the lair was starting to smell of garlic bread, frying onions and bacon, and the rest of the team were perking up. Rachel eventually got to her feet and tromped downstairs, returning with a big bag of dog food and some doggy bowls, which she set out to feed her dogs.
  
  "Something smells good," Brian commented, emerging from his room. He"d switched out the last bits of his armour for a soft white t-shirt and loose sweatpants.
  
  "Should be ready in about ten minutes," I said, putting the pasta into boiling water. "Could you grab some plates?"
  
  "Sure thing." Brian pulled open a cabinet and grabbed a stack of plates, then got knives and forks out of a drawer.
  
  "So you like cooking?" Lisa asked.
  
  I shrugged. "I"m okay with it. Anchorage loves cooking though- she learned a lot of recipes and stuff."
  
  "Should we do anything?" Isabella asked, having rolled onto her back at some point.
  
  I waved a hand. "It"s okay. I"m almost done anyway."
  
  T groaned and stretched. "Works for me. We usually don"t do a big dinner on Saturdays; just grab something out of the fridge." A second later he bolted upright. "Shit!"
  
  "What?" I asked, turning around.
  
  "I gotta call my parents!" he said, pulling himself off the couch.
  
  "Seriously?" Lisa said.
  
  T shot her a dirty look even as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I"ve been out all day while there"s fucking bombs going off, what do you think? Aaaaand there"s three missed calls. God damn it."
  
  Tarquin trooped downstairs with a put out expression. I gave him a nod as he went, but I wasn"t sure if he saw.
  
  Flinch winced. "It"s not easy balancing two lives," he admitted. "Angie understood, but..." He trailed off sadly.
  
  "Mm." I looked at the Undersiders. "Does anyone else need to call someone?"
  
  "Nope," said Lisa.
  
  "Nuh-uh," Isabella said.
  
  "No," Rachel said, not looking up from brushing Brutus.
  
  "I called while I was getting changed." Brian set the plates on the counter and got some cups out. "Dad"s fine, and Aisha"s alright. Whining about being cooped up, but that"s typical."
  
  "Who"s Aisha?" I asked curiously, giving the sauce a stir.
  
  "My little sister. Pretty much the whole reason I became a cape. I want to get custody of her, and I needed a lot of money for that, so..." He shrugged expansively.
  
  "Huh. That"s sweet," I said, smiling a little.
  
  "Ah right," Dirty Rotter said. "I figured he had a kid. I mean, he looks like he fucks."
  
  I almost choked on air. Brian looked over at me with a surprised expression.
  
  "You alright?"
  
  "Fine!" I managed. "I"m fine, just- Rotter said something weird." I shoved him back into the dark as he cackled horribly.
  
  "Too late now," Firecracker said with malicious glee. "You"ve thought of it, you can"t unthink it. Take a swing at him already! You know you want to-"
  
  I shoved her down to and turned back to the sauce, cringing as I felt my cheeks grow hot.
  
  "Okay... Do you need to call anyone?" Brian asked awkwardly.
  
  I bit my lip. "Dad"s probably worried, but he doesn"t know I have a phone."
  
  "You can borrow mine if you want," Lisa offered. She held up a slim phone with a dark purple case.
  
  I glanced at the timer for the pasta. Five more minutes. I had time. "Okay. Thanks."
  
  I took the phone and dialled my house"s landline. It picked up on the second ring.
  
  "Hello?"
  
  "Hey Dad, it"s me."
  
  "Taylor," Dad"s sigh of relief was like a rush of static. "Are you okay? I didn"t hear about the bombs until I turned on the news at lunch, I"ve been so worried-"
  
  "I"m fine Dad, I promise. I wasn"t anywhere near the bombs. I just stayed indoors and kept my head down." I crossed my fingers as I said it, because a lie that huge was too big otherwise.
  
  "Good. That"s good. Do you need me to pick you up?"
  
  "I"ll be alright for now. I actually met some people while I was in town, and we figured we"d get something to eat together, wait a little longer to be sure it"s safe. I hope that"s okay."
  
  Dad hummed uncertainly. "Are you sure? If you only met them today..."
  
  "I"m safe, Dad. Really. I trust them, and we"re in a safe place. I"m not following them down a dark alleyway or anything."
  
  Isabella snickered to herself.
  
  Dad was quiet for a moment. "Alright, but I don"t want you walking home at a time like this. Call me back when you"re ready and I"ll come and pick you up."
  
  "Thanks Dad. I"ll see you soon.
  
  "I love you, Taylor."
  
  "Love you too."
  
  Dad hung up a few seconds later, and I handed the phone back to Lisa.
  
  "That"s sweet," Isabella said quietly.
  
  "Thanks."
  
  The timer dinged, which was an excellent distraction from me feeling emotional. "Okay, pasta"s ready, come and get it." I poured the pot of pasta into a strainer, took the sauce off the heat, and pulled the garlic bread out of the oven.
  
  After a few minutes of shuffling around and getting in each other"s way, everyone had a plate to sit on the couch and dig in. Tarquin came up a little later and grabbed his own, then sat on the rug with his back against the couch.
  
  "Oh my god this is good," Tarquin said around a mouthful of pasta. He ripped a chunk of garlic bread off and crammed it in.
  
  "If he chokes, someone else can give him the Heimlich," Tock Tick said.
  
  "Thanks. It"s nothing too complicated. You just have to add a little brown sugar to the sauce."
  
  "Really?" Isabella popped another forkful into her mouth.
  
  "Yeah. Learned that trick from Hemorrhagia. She was basically the Teeth"s go-to cook for years. Her chili was the best."
  
  Quarrel shifted in my mind, but didn"t say anything. I left her alone.
  
  "It"s kinda cool how you"ve just got all this stuff in your head," Isabella said, jabbing her fork into her pasta.
  
  "I object to being called "stuff"," Vladimir said primly.
  
  "It has its moments," I admitted. "And on the subject of good moments, I just want to say that I"m proud of you guys. You were great today."
  
  Brian blinked. "Really?"
  
  "Really," I confirmed. "You guys got thrown in the deep end today, and you swam like champions. There are people alive because you rose to the challenge."
  
  The Undersiders perked up at that; Lisa"s smile was more honest than I"d ever seen, and I could see Isabella"s pleased glow even as she shyly ducked her head. Rachel looked confused, like she wasn"t sure how to react.
  
  "Cute," Nemean rumbled.
  
  "Thanks, Taylor," T said. "You were pretty cool too."
  
  "Oh yeah," Isabella agreed. "That jump off the hotel roof was awesome."
  
  I laughed a little. "Thanks. Although I hope I don"t have to do that again."
  
  Brian raised a finger. "Hate to kill the mood," he said, "But this isn"t over, is it? The ABB"s probably going to bring out more bombs, aren"t they?"
  
  Firecracker rolled her eyes. "God, what a buzzkill."
  
  Buzzkill or not, he was right. I set my plate on the coffee table. "Honestly, you"re probably right. I don"t know how much more they"re going to do, but we haven"t seen the last of this."
  
  "We have to do more of this shit?" Rachel exclaimed.
  
  I shrugged. "If we"re lucky, this was just the big opening move and they"ll dial it back later on. We"re still going to have to be ready to move if they start shit again."
  
  Isabella groaned. "Being a hero is hard."
  
  "Tell me about it."
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  The UK is going through a hot spot, so I hope you've been reading this in less horrible sweaty weather than I have. Dear god.
  
  8.8
  Early hours of Monday 4th April, The Lair
  
  Dad had insisted we stay indoors all day on Sunday to avoid getting anywhere near the trouble. Instead we"d curled up on the couch and surfed channels until we found a movie marathon and some sitcom reruns, and cooked up some comfort food to eat off our knees.
  
  On the one hand, it was the kind of quiet, cozy day that had helped me survive the Winslow experience, and it made me feel grateful that I had a parent who was trying, as opposed to the Butchers' largely terrible collection of parents.
  
  On the other hand, although it was nowhere near as bad as yesterday, a handful of bombs had still detonated over the course of the day. Tattletale had texted me a few times to keep me in the loop- The Undersiders had poked their heads out and run a couple of patrols through the Docks to try and make people keep their heads down, but without Ironclad they were lacking in muscle, and without me they couldn"t take the chance that one of the other heroes might try to arrest them, so they hadn"t been able to get much done.
  
  At last, past midnight, I"d been able to slip away once Dad started snoring, and biked over to the Lair.
  
  When I padded up to the loft, Isabella looked up from reading a comic book in an armchair.
  
  "When did we get an armchair?" Stoneknapper asked.
  
  "Don"t mind me," I said, checking on the others with bloodsight. The girls were sleeping soundly. "Just came by to get some work done."
  
  "Okay," Isabella said uncertainly, gradually turning back to her comic.
  
  I pulled a soda out of the fridge and cracked it open, drinking deeply and wiping my mouth. "Good book?" I asked.
  
  Isabella turned the comic around to show me the cover. A girl in a pirate outfit with a broadsword and her face painted like a skull. "It"s pretty cool."
  
  "Oh shit, you"re reading Ship Bones? I love those books."
  
  "You"ve read them too?" Isabella asked, sitting up straight.
  
  "Yeah, Spitfire recommended them to me. I mean, pirate necromancers fighting ghost ships and zombie whales? How was I supposed to run that down?"
  
  Isabella pointed a finger. "No spoilers. I"m begging you."
  
  I made a show of zipping my lips.
  
  "Hey, don"t forget, we gotta get the next one soon," Firecracker reminded me. "I wanna see what the Ninth Fleet does next."
  
  Isabella relaxed a little. "Cool. Yeah, I picked this up while we were getting settled. Doesn"t feel right to live somewhere that doesn"t have anything to read, y"know?"
  
  "Preaching to the choir." I looked around the room, and noticed a little china cat on one of the shelves that I hadn"t seen before. "Or little ornaments, apparently."
  
  Isabella followed my gaze, and ducked her head a little. "Oh, right. Um. My aunt used to collect stuff like that. Little animals and stuff. I kinda thought..."
  
  "No, no, it"s cute. Definitely brightens the place up." I crossed the room to give the figurines a closer look. The cat was white and blue china, one paw raised. Next to it was a dog made of black ceramic, a fat little bird on a tree stump, and a stained-glass cow.
  
  "If you want, I could probably make some more for you," I offered. "Stoneknapper"s been getting antsy about doing something more creative lately."
  
  "Really? I mean- yeah, that"d be cool."
  
  Isabella"s shy smile was a thing to behold. "Really," I confirmed. I finished my soda and crushed the can flat. "Have to be some other time though- I"m going to get some work done. Don"t stay up too late."
  
  ""kay."
  
  
  
  Monday 4th April, Arcadia High School
  
  Spending the night Tinkering up some bomb-disposal tools and maintaining the Chariot had improved my mood somewhat, but I was still feeling grouchy as I came through the doors of Arcadia, and woe betide anyone who got in my way.
  
  Not that there were many people roaming around- most were huddled into groups, catching up and showing their phones to each other.
  
  I spotted Amy getting a drink from a water fountain as I made for my locker- she was tucking her hair behind one ear to sip. She spotted me and straightened up, wiping a little water off her lips. "Hey," she began, then took another look and asked, "What"s eating you?"
  
  I flicked my fingers out. "Bang."
  
  Amy gave me a flat look. "You know there was a bomb that warped living tissue? Some poor bastard got twisted like Silly Putty from the waist down. I had to amputate most of it and rebuild his entire lower half from scratch.
  
  "So do you want to be more specific about why you look like a giraffe with a sore throat?"
  
  "Wait, there was more than one of those?" I asked, pausing in the middle of opening my locker.
  
  "You found one? Shit, how bad was it?"
  
  "Only thing that got affected was a cat, but that was a lot to look at. I had to put the poor thing out of its misery."
  
  "Hey, is there a cat version of Old Yeller?" Stoneknapper asked randomly.
  
  Quarrel gave it some thought. "I don"t think so, dude."
  
  "Gross," Amy admitted. "But seriously, what"s up?"
  
  I sighed. "I thought the high point of the weekend would be going out on the town and making a start on a positive reputation. Then the bombs started going off; we had to evacuate a hotel, treat the wounded, there was a guy who got turned into a glass statue, and the PRT are barely letting us do anything.
  
  "And then I spent all yesterday at home with Dad, sat on the couch with a bowl of popcorn."
  
  Amy tilted her head. "That doesn"t sound so bad," she said uncertainly.
  
  "No, it wasn"t. It would have been great if I wasn"t aware that shit was going on and I couldn"t get away to stop it. Dad didn"t want me outside while things were going all to hell."
  
  "Ah."
  
  "Yeah." I cracked my locker open and sighed. "It"s... I can"t tell him. I mean, can you imagine how that would go? But I can"t... I can"t just stay away. But he wants me to stay safe when things are dangerous, which is also when I need to go out and help the most."
  
  "It"s hard for people to understand the drive," Flinch said. "Angie and I worked it out, but she never stopped worrying."
  
  Amy awkwardly patted me on the shoulder. "Yeah, that does sound kind of hard."
  
  I sighed, swapping my books out and shutting the locker. "Thanks. So, your weekend was rough too, huh?"
  
  "We"ve been running around like maniacs trying to keep a lid on things," Amy confirmed, falling into step with me as I headed down the hallway. "I don"t know what the ABB are trying to do, but they"ve officially kicked the hornet"s nest. The Protectorate"s on high alert, my whole family"s been patrolling the city, and there"s rumours that the Empire"s going for a counter attack."
  
  I nodded. "Crusader and Alabaster would probably be at the front of that- they can both just shrug off bombs."
  
  "We should pass that along, see if the heroes can scoop one of them up," Tactical said.
  
  I spotted Stacey coming down the corridor to our right and waved to her. She came up and joined in the conversation with ease.
  
  "So what"re you guys talking about?"
  
  "All the weekend shit."
  
  "Oh, wow, yeah. Part of my mom"s work got hit- there"s a huge hole in the ground right out front, and they can"t get any deliveries in. They"re having to do everything through the back door."
  
  "Damn, if I had a penny for every time I heard that," Rotter snickered.
  
  There was a round of booing. "Man, you suck," Anchorage jeered.
  
  "It"s a classic!"
  
  "My dad kept me in all Sunday so I wouldn"t get hurt."
  
  "What, you wanted to go out in all that?" Stacey asked.
  
  "No," I said, trying to sound convincing. "Just- it felt kind of... stuffy?"
  
  "Oh yeah, that makes sense." Stacey checked her phone. "So what classes do you have?"
  
  "Nothing good," Amy said. "Double English first thing."
  
  "I"ve got French later- I"d trade in a second."
  
  
  
  "As fathers go, your dad"s decent," Vladimir said.
  
  "I"m not complaining about him," I protested, trying to focus on the Chemistry lesson. "I just- I don"t know what to do. There has to be some way to get out of the house without him worrying."
  
  Firecracker shrugged. "It"s either sneak out or tell him the truth. Pick one."
  
  "You could always let him think you"re up to something else. Like you"re going out to parties or seeing a boy or something," Bearskin suggested.
  
  I briefly considered the idea-
  
  "Like anyone"s going to believe she"s sneaking out to keggers," Butcher sneered.
  
  -and rammed Butcher into the dark again. My pencil lead snapped against the paper, and I angrily grabbed my sharpener out of my pencil case.
  
  "I still think you should have put the self-driving mechanisms into the chariot," Tock Tick wheedled.
  
  "For the last time," I grumbled as I sharpened my pencil to a needle-like point, "I don"t have the time, and I don"t have the equipment to build an entire mechanical GPS, or jailbreak an electronic one."
  
  Not to mention that I had sorted out a far simpler method of getting the chariot to me. The Undersiders had shared their series of phone passwords with me. Whoever called would say the first letter of one of our names, and an object that was either green, yellow or red, depending on how much trouble they were in. The person answering would respond with the last letter of that name and their own colour.
  
  Now that I knew that little code, I"d asked them to keep both my and T"s armour and weapons near the chariot in case we needed them brought to us in a hurry. It"d make things a lot easier if I didn"t have to run all the way to the lair to get changed.
  
  Tarquin nudged me as I brushed my shavings away. You alright? said his note.
  
  Hanging in there, I wrote back.
  
  Unfortunately Ms Watts was really on alert today, so we didn"t manage any more talk until the bell rang and we made it out to lunch.
  
  "Seriously though, you doing alright?" T asked.
  
  "I"ll feel better once I get some food in me," I admitted. "How"d your parents react?"
  
  T pulled a face. "They"re being all worried. I mean, I get it, but they were acting like it was going to start raining grenades as soon as I got on the bus."
  
  Nemean snorted. "Is helicopter parents the right term?"
  
  "Precisely," Needler confirmed. "Because they hover about."
  
  My mood improved as I caught the scent wafting from the cafeteria doors. It smelled like fried fish, golden and crispy. I grabbed myself a big battered fillet with fries and greens, and snagged a chocolate pudding just before they ran out.
  
  Frankie waved us over to our usual table, and I sat myself down next to Callum, who was fiddling with his scarf, trying to get it to sit right on his shoulders.
  
  "Did you guys hear about the new heroes in town?" Frankie asked, leaning forward eagerly.
  
  "New heroes?" I said, surprised. Had somebody come in from out of town to help with the bombings?
  
  "She means the Undersiders." Muramasa"s tone was a weird mix of amusement and scorn.
  
  "Oh. Oh, yeah! Didn"t they used to be villains?"
  
  T gave me a very straight-faced look. "Yeah, the Undersiders used to be a bunch of thieves. Smash and grab stuff. But now they"re saving people. In fact, I heard people say they helped get Hookwolf in the Birdcage."
  
  "Wow," Frankie breathed, wide-eyed.
  
  "Pics or it didn"t happen," Callum said, reaching into his jacket. "But I do have pics of..." he tapped the screen and flicked through a few circles, then turned it towards us; "This."
  
  "Okay, that is pretty badass," Anchorage admitted.
  
  It was me- in full armour, cape billowing dramatically behind me as I leapt off the roof of the hotel, a screaming concierge in my arms. The pink flames behind me cast me in shadows and blurred the details a little, but the silver of my mask lenses and the blue stripes down my arms stood out.
  
  "Cool," I grinned.
  
  "Send me that," Frankie ordered. "I have to draw that."
  
  Stoneknapper started howling with laughter as I fought to keep the embarrassed blush off my cheeks. I pictured ice, I pictured boring maths problems, I pictured the horrible old nuns that used to threaten Tactical with a yardstick.
  
  It felt like it worked, but Tarquin was clearly fighting to keep from saying anything incriminating.
  
  "Yeah, the Undersiders evacuated an entire hotel when it got firebombed. Half the people in there got carried out on Hellhound"s dogs- I think she"s calling herself Cerberus now?- and Elpis carried the last guy down herself."
  
  "I heard that Ironclad guy turned himself into a bridge to get everyone else to safety," I said, smiling a little at T"s pleased smirk.
  
  "Guess who got the last chocolate pudding!" Stacey cheered as she sat down next to Tarquin.
  
  "Bugger me, this is so weird," Dirty Rotter said as Callum showed Stacey the photo. "Having kids pass around photos and think we"re cool? We never had that."
  
  "We did have that," Quarrel said mulishly.
  
  Vladimir rolled his eyes. "We had a handful of weirdos on the internet thinking that some of our costumes looked interesting- and those were usually the sort of idiots we wouldn"t even care about stepping on. This is the general public approving of us."
  
  Amy came last, sitting next to me and immediately staring daggers at my tray. "Of course," she grumbled, stabbing her fork into her fish.
  
  "Whoa, what"s eating you?" I asked.
  
  Amy indicated my and Stacey"s trays. "You guys got the last chocolate pudding. I was hoping for my own."
  
  "The vanilla"s good too," Tarquin said, indicating his own choice.
  
  "Not my point," Amy groused. She started spearing fries onto her fork and dragging them through the ketchup.
  
  T caught my eye and nodded in Amy"s direction.
  
  I raised my eyebrows questioningly. He nodded at Amy again, more insistently.
  
  I rolled my eyes and turned towards Amy. "So, Amy; what do you think of the new heroes in town?"
  
  T winced.
  
  "Subtle as a trainwreck," Firecracker said.
  
  Amy looked up from her plate, mouth full of fries. She held up a finger while she chewed and swallowed.
  
  Then I felt a sharp kick to my shin. Amy met my wounded gaze without remorse.
  
  Then Amy spoke. "Honestly, I"m a little surprised that they"d do a 180 like that," she said, carving another bit of fish up. "I"ve never actually heard of a villain trying to go straight before. But if it means they"re helping instead of hurting, it"s not all bad. Means I don"t have to heal as many people with hands turned to salt or their ass blown up to triple size."
  
  "Hey, now there"s a fourth hero team in town, maybe you can take a break once in a while," Stacey said optimistically.
  
  "Nope," Amy said without looking up. "I mean, it"d help, but people would still get broken bones or tumours or have some birth defect or... whatever."
  
  "Well, that"s fucking depressing," Tock admitted.
  
  I stared at Amy for a long moment, hunched over her meal and moodily chewing; then I came to a decision.
  
  "Taylor, no," Bearskin protested as I grabbed Amy"s bowl of vanilla pudding. "I"m serious, don"t do it," he said as I snagged my own bowl of pudding. "Taylor, don"t, no, no, no, not the pudding-"
  
  Amy looked up as I plonked the chocolate pudding down on her own tray. "What?"
  
  "You owe me next time," I said, turning back to my own food.
  
  Stacey glanced back and forth between the two of us. "That was adorable."
  
  Frankie cleared her throat. "Okay, moving on from whatever the hell that was," she set her phone down, "Does anyone remember what the other Undersiders do? Because I only remember the dog girl."
  
  Tarquin counted on his fingers. "There"s Grue, he makes clouds of darkness. Whirlygig makes a tornado around herself. And there"s a girl called Tattletale who- well, she doesn"t do much."
  
  Tactical snickered. "Harsh, but accurate."
  
  "Aren"t you a Thinker too?" Flinch pointed out.
  
  "Yeah, and I did plenty."
  
  "And of course, Ironclad," I said. "Formerly known as Konnigit." T cringed a little.
  
  "So are they all the Undersiders?" Callum asked. "Or is it "Elpis and the Undersiders", like Bob Dylan and The Band?"
  
  I bit my tongue before I could laugh, but Amy just spluttered outright. "Hahaha! Oh god, that"s mean, I love it!"
  
  Needler chuckled. "Alright, I like her."
  
  
  
  By the time I"d finished lunch, I was looking forward to a little time to myself, away from the talk of bombs and people"s opinions on the Undersiders.
  
  It was encouraging to see how many people at school seemed to have heard about us, let alone approve. I still didn"t know how the adult majority would think of us, but knowing that people my own age thought we were fighting the good fight lifted my mood.
  
  I made it outside and pulled out my phone as I headed to a tree outside the phone jammer, breath fogging in the spring chill. Once I was sat with my back to the tree trunk, I checked my messages.
  
  Fortunately nothing serious had come up since I"d last checked. There"d been a false alarm earlier in the day, where someone had mistaken a bit of pipe for a pipe bomb, but that had been sorted.
  
  "Strange," Tactical muttered. "I can"t figure out what the ABB is up to. It"s like they wanted to put the whole city on edge."
  
  "Perhaps they simply wished to demonstrate their newfound power," Muramasa suggested. "A short, sharp shock to establish Bakuda"s abilities and intimidate the competition."
  
  "Yeah, but it"s sloppy," Stoneknapper pointed out. "I mean, if it was us running the show, we"d have attacked Empire hangouts, police stations, the PRT, and anywhere that pissed us off. This was just random crap in random places. There"s no pattern, no style."
  
  "Maybe they"re just dumb," I muttered.
  
  I noticed the usual paralysed bug approaching me. I didn"t look up as Amy plopped herself down next to me with a sigh, busy scrolling through PHO for updates.
  
  "Thanks for the pudding," Amy said, leaning back against the tree. I caught a whiff of her scent- her shampoo, and her oddly clean personal smell, without a trace of BO or old sweat.
  
  "No problem," I muttered, frowning at the screen. "So long as you"re alright."
  
  "Eh. So what"s the plan with the ABB? You going to do some daring stunt that cuts them off at the knees?"
  
  "Maybe if I knew what they were trying to do," I admitted, putting the phone down. "Going after them"s going to be difficult now. All those bombs could make for a lot of booby traps."
  
  "Try not to get yourself blown up," Amy said warningly.
  
  "Gee, Amy, you almost sound like you cared," I said teasingly.
  
  Amy shifted but said nothing.
  
  I turned my head to look at her cloud of frizzy brown hair.
  
  "Ooooh," Anchorage said with rising amusement.
  
  "Wait, are we friends now?" I asked.
  
  Amy slumped lower against the tree trunk, shoulders hunched. "Don"t make this weird."
  
  I realised I was smiling. "Okay, that"s fair."
  
  "Thank you."
  
  I raised my phone again, then paused. "I can"t believe you actually like me though," I added slyly.
  
  "Oh god," Amy groaned.
  
  "I mean, Amy Dallon, professional grump, being friends with me? That is so embarrassing for you."
  
  "You"re worse than Vicky," Amy said. I could hear the laugh in her voice though.
  
  I spotted T coming out of the school building, looking around for us. He didn"t notice when I waved to him, so I directed a fly in front of his face to get his attention. Once he"d swatted it away, he finally spotted us and jogged over, flopping down on the grass.
  
  "We should do something besides work," he said, rolling over onto his back and putting his hands behind his head.
  
  "Can you be more specific?" I asked.
  
  "All of us, I mean," T said, indicating the three of us and waving his arm in a broad gesture. "Go see a movie, or get something to eat. Something to bond over, y"know?"
  
  "Not a bad idea," Nemean said.
  
  "I can"t imagine it"ll be easy to get Rachel to do anything in public," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  "We could get her a disguise," Tock Tick suggested.
  
  "Yeah, true," I admitted. "Could see if there"s any movies on or something. Do you want to come along, Amy?"
  
  Amy hesitated. "Probably not a good idea," she admitted. "I"m even more recognisable than Hell- Cerberus, I mean. People could probably draw conclusions if they saw us together."
  
  "Crap. Well, let me know if you change your mind. Or find a good enough disguise, or whatever."
  
  "How do you go out in public when you don"t want to be recognised?" Tarquin asked curiously. "Like, big sunglasses, hat?"
  
  "Yeah, that"s usually the go-to," Amy said. "It"s not perfect though. Vicky"s better at it than me- she does stuff with her hair or her makeup, or puts on a different outfit."
  
  My phone buzzed- a call from Lisa. Curious, I pressed accept and put it to my ear.
  
  "Hello-"
  
  "Boss! L Tomato! It"s the Travelers! They"re at Weymouth Mall and they"re tearing it apart!"
  
  "WHAT?!" I leapt to my feet, startling Amy and T. "Son of a bitch! Uh, A grass!"
  
  "What do you want us to do?"
  
  "Can the other heroes handle it?"
  
  "They won"t get there in time, they"re too spread out."
  
  "Shit." I looked down at Tarquin as he got to his feet.
  
  "Time to make a choice, Taylor," Quarrel said.
  
  I swore. "Tell Brian to put our armour in the chariot and meet us at the corner of Glevum. You and the girls run ahead on the dogs, we"ll catch up. Observe the situation, keep the civilians away, don"t engage until I get there. Got it?"
  
  "Copy that." I heard her shouting to the rest of the team as she hung up.
  
  "What"s going on?" Amy asked, standing up.
  
  "The Travelers are at Weymouth Mall." I winced. "Looks like I"m skipping fifth period. T, you in?"
  
  "I never liked French anyway."
  
  "Good. Grue"ll meet us with the chariot, we"ll get changed on the way."
  
  Amy grabbed my arm as I reached for my backpack. "I can get Vicky to help you out."
  
  "Thanks."
  
  "Be safe."
  
  I nodded, then broke into a run, T hurrying along behind me.
  
  "Gotta say," Dirty Rotter leered, "I"ve been looking forward to this..."
  
  8.9
  Chapter Notes
  
  This chapter has been heavily rewritten. For the original, check the Apocrypha tab on the Spacebattles thread.
  
  Monday 4th April, South Downtown
  
  I grabbed Tarquin as the chariot pulled up, tossed him into the pile of metal on the backseat, and leapt into the passenger seat, closing the door behind me.
  
  "We"ve got to work on the kid"s cardio," Tactical said as Grue hit the accelerator.
  
  "Your costume"s in the bag," Grue said, pointing to the sports bag at my feet.
  
  "Thanks." I kicked off my shoes and started pulling out the undersuit. "Fill me in."
  
  "Tattletale"s got some kind of social media sieve set-up to alert her to any messages about villains, plus a police scanner. A bunch of people started calling, texting, everything- they all said villains were attacking. Tattletale matched the descriptions to the Travellers."
  
  "Any idea what they want? Hostages?" I turned away to pull my jeans off and struggle into the lower half of the undersuit. Grue was keeping his eyes on the road, but I was quietly mortified that my first time undressing in front of a guy was on the way to a fight.
  
  "Hang in there, Taylor, we"ll get you a guy," Anchorage said encouragingly.
  
  Grue shook his head as he swerved around a car in front. "No idea. Tattletale said she needed more data to figure it out."
  
  "We can take them, right?" Tarquin said breathlessly, metal piling up around himself, the larger pieces shuffling over one another to fit into place.
  
  I managed to simultaneously shrug off my shirt and pull the rest of the undersuit up in the move that Anchorage called "worm with problems". "It won"t be easy. We"re tougher overall, but they can throw out more damage and control the battlefield."
  
  Grue grunted as he rounded a corner. "Perdition sounds like a pain to fight. I hate powers that mess with time."
  
  "Amen to that," I said, slipping the mask on and grabbing my armour pieces. The Butchers had fought Epoch, leader of the Adepts, several times; and every time they"d come out of it frustrated.
  
  Perdition"s power seemed much more limited, and easier to handle by comparison. It was Sundancer I was worried about. If her power was as dangerous as the PRT reports said, this could get really ugly, really fast.
  
  In a few moments more, I"d got my armour all settled in time for Grue to pull up to Weymouth Mall, a big building with several wings on its cement-and-glass structure. The girls were waiting next to the dogs, all looking nervous.
  
  Well, Whirlygig looked nervous. Tattletale looked amused and Cerberus looked grouchy.
  
  There was a small crowd of people outside, keeping well back. It looked like a couple of cop cars, some bystanders, and a news crew who were setting up. I saw the camera swivel over to us as I stepped out of the chariot. Someone took a picture on their phone.
  
  People pointed and gawked, and pointed and gawked some more as Grue and Ironclad followed after me.
  
  One of the cops walked over to meet us as we approached the doors, a sergeant. "You"re Elpis?" he said gruffly.
  
  I opened my helmet. "That"s me. The Undersiders are responding to the Travelers. So what"re we looking at?"
  
  "Alarm went off about 10 minutes ago," said the sergeant, falling into step. "Most of the people managed to make it out, but there"s still some inside the mall. A couple of them managed to call out before the villains got their phones."
  
  I nodded, reaching out with bugs and bloodsight as I made it to the doors, scanning the mall. The Travelers were relatively easy to spot- top hat, armoured suits, and a small bright spot throwing out incredible heat that my bugs couldn"t stand.
  
  "Tattletale," I said, "How many in there?" I casually raised a hand to my chin and scratched it with three fingers, then pressed my thumb and index finger together in an O.
  
  "About 30," Tattletale said with a knowing smirk. The sergeant"s face was a picture of surprise.
  
  "Okay, the Travelers have two crowd control powers- Trickster can swap-teleport objects and people, Perdition can rewind them a few seconds. They need line of sight to work, so Grue, you"ll blot the whole area, then you, Tattletale and I evac the hostages first."
  
  "Fair enough," Needler acknowledged. "They don"t have the offense to handle these guys."
  
  "Whirlygig, pair up with Grue once everyone"s clear, give the Travelers some hurt."
  
  Whirlygig pulled handfuls of ball bearings out of her pockets, adding them to the little storm spinning around her.
  
  "Cerberus, you, Ironclad and the dogs will jump in once we"ve cleared the area and softened them up. Trickster and Perdition shouldn"t be a problem once they can"t see, but we still want them taken out. Ballistic and Genesis are next, but watch yourselves around Sundancer. She"s the big gun in this. Everybody clear?"
  
  Once I had a round of agreement, I drew my air cannon. "Let"s rock."
  
  The mall was eerily still as we headed inside. Slightly tinny music was playing over the speakers, the escalators were still running, the displays were still flashing or spinning or whatever they did to attract attention- but there was absolutely nobody around.
  
  I stopped us once we"d turned a corner and were out of sight of the cops and news crew. "There"s something else- we"ve got a few people in hiding, and more gathering up loot- I"d guess the Travelers are making the hostages load the take."
  
  "Makes sense," said Grue.
  
  "Yeah, but there"s two others with the Travelers. I can"t tell much; probably both men, one"s wearing a hat and a long coat." For a brief second I thought it might be Krieg, then dismissed it.
  
  "Uber and Leet," Tattletale said at once. "Coil hired them before, the Travelers must have made contact and hired them for extra muscle."
  
  "Eh, how tough can they be?" Bearskin said. "They run a fucking Youtube channel for god"s sake."
  
  "Except we have no idea what kind of tech they"ve got," I countered. This wasn"t looking good- the Undersider"s first fight as a proper hero team. We"d had the battle for Hookwolf and the rescue operations on Saturday to establish ourselves, but this was important. Lives were on the line again.
  
  I pulled on Tactical"s power, and the scenario it generated was hazy, blurry. Not enough data, too many variables. "We need to take out Leet too- whatever tech he"s got could be the difference between winning and losing."
  
  We stalked further along, Ironclad wading through a little cloud of Grue"s darkness to muffle his footsteps. With a few quick orders, we split up- Grue, Tattletale and I took the lead.
  
  By this point I"d slipped gnats and flies onto everyone, so when we reached an electronics store, I held up a hand to stop. As the middle aged woman inside came out, I clapped a hand over her mouth, and caught her pile of DVD players in the other.
  
  "It"s okay, we"re here to help," I said quickly. "I"m going to take my hand away, just don"t scream."
  
  As soon as her hand was free, she started to babble. "Oh god, please, you have to help, my daughter"s back there-"
  
  "Ma"am, it"s going to be okay, just calm down," I said lowly, setting the pile to one side.
  
  Tattletale stepped forward a bit. "Can you tell us what they"re doing?"
  
  The woman gulped and clutched at her necklace. "I, um, they- they came in here, and they told us to grab anything- uh, anything electronic, like computers. I think they were stealing jewellery too, I saw the green one go into Zales..."
  
  "Green one?" Grue asked.
  
  "It was this big monster thing, and it was all green, but its hair was orange- I don"t know what it was."
  
  "That"s got to be Genesis."
  
  "What were the others wearing?" Tattletale asked. "There should have been a man with a top hat, a man and woman in body armour, and a man with a clock symbol. Did you see any others?"
  
  The woman nodded frantically. "Yes. Two guys- one of them was wearing," she gestured vaguely, "one of those ninja outfits, with the sleeves cut off? And the other had a red coat, and a hat."
  
  Tock Tick provided the answer. "Son of a bitch, they"re doing Street Fighter! Aw, I used to love those games!"
  
  "Ryu and Bison," I said. "So we"re probably in for martial arts and energy blasts."
  
  Grue cracked his knuckles. "We can handle that."
  
  "Ooh, look at Mr Macho over here," Vladimir quipped.
  
  "Alright. Thank you for your help. The exit"s over that way- get outside and tell the cops what you told us."
  
  "B-but Lydia-"
  
  "-will be okay," Tattletale said with surprising gentleness. "We"ll get her out, but if you stay, you"re liable to get hurt. Go on."
  
  The woman visibly dithered for a moment, before groaning and giving in.
  
  We walked back with her to the others, calming her when she saw the dogs, and hurried her off towards the doors while we filled the rest of the group in. Tactical"s projection was clearer now, with the extra information we"d learned. I drew out a map in insects to give everyone an idea- the food court, with the villains scattered around in various overseeing positions or looting themselves, and the hostages, either sat in place or being made to work.
  
  We advanced again, Tattletale and I heading up an escalator to get a vantage point while the others stacked themselves up around a corner.
  
  "You been practicing with the crossbow?" I asked as we sneaked over to a railing above the food court. I could see the people through it with bloodsight
  
  Tattletale pulled the little pistol crossbow from off her hip, cocked it, checked the ammo, and gave me a grin. "Oh yes."
  
  I pulled out my air cannon and closed my helmet. "I"ll go for Perdition; you figure out which one is Leet, and shoot him so he can"t set off any gizmos- blunt bolts unless it gets desperate. Then we signal Grue and rappel down to start evac."
  
  "Gotcha."
  
  I counted down with my fingers, then popped up, aiming for the one member of the Travelers who I hadn"t been able to place- a tall man in red jacket and pants, a black shirt with a red clock face on it, and a featureless red helmet.
  
  He was looking right at me.
  
  The world flickered, and suddenly everything was pitch black but for the blood silhouettes. Tattletale was ducked down, yelling something.
  
  A second later, there was a pulse of something that I felt in my hair and my teeth, and the darkness was cleared away. The light shining down from the glass ceiling was a sudden shock.
  
  I saw a broad man in angular red and black armour aim a hand at me- Ballistic. I dropped low, and something shot overhead and cracked the tiles on the wall behind me.
  
  "What the hell"s going on?" I yelled at Tattletale.
  
  "It"s a set-up!" she yelled back. "Leet"s tech- they knew we were coming!"
  
  My teeth were still tingling from the effect of whatever the hell that was. When I focused, I could feel it coming in waves a couple of times a second.
  
  "Alright," Butcher growled. "Looks like it"s going to be an old-fashioned brawl instead!"
  
  "Stay here," I said, switching to pepper rounds and vaulting over the railing. Bugs on the targets let me aim without looking- one for Perdition, one for Trickster, one for Ballistic. I landed on a plastic table that shattered under the impact, bringing the cannon up again as the civilians ran screaming for cover- ducking into shops, under tables, behind counters.
  
  Trickster disappeared before the canister hit him, replaced with a man in a security guard uniform, who howled as the dust exploded all over him. Perdition simply wiped the dust off his helmet, then turned his head to Ballistic, who was cursing and wiping at his eyes. Ballistic flickered back to pristine condition, jerked, then spotted me and grabbed a handful of ammo.
  
  "Undersiders!" I bellowed, dodging to the side as Ballistic opened fire. "Darkness isn"t working! Brutes up front, get the civilians out of here!"
  
  Ironclad came around the corner with a yell, Ballistic"s shots being absorbed into his mass as he pounded forward. The dogs followed close after, with Cerberus shouting commands. Grue was a vaguely human cloud of vantablack, his outline flickering as fresh darkness poured off him and got erased by Leet"s tech. Whirlygig was hovering off the ground.
  
  Trickster pointed dramatically from atop the raised flowerbed he"d climbed onto. "Attack!"
  
  "Dumbass," Quarrel snorted.
  
  I fired a net round at Ballistic while I circled around to the first civilian I could reach- a skinny guy with a bad beard hiding behind an overturned table. "Let"s get you out of here," I said, pulling my cape off and snapping it into shield mode.
  
  The gnat on Ballistic"s back suddenly jittered in place, and my cannon suddenly got heavier- about the weight of a net round.
  
  "Oh my fucking god, I hate these guys so much," Dirty Rotter groaned.
  
  An inhuman roar came from the back. A green monster with spiky orange hair on its head, chest, forearms and shins sprinted out and threw itself onto Brutus, sparking with electricity. "The Hunt begins!" it bellowed, pouring an electric shock into the dog, who barked and thrashed, trying to throw his attacker off.
  
  "Blanka! That"s Blanka!" Tock Tick squealed. "Oh, this is so good!"
  
  A bright spot flared- Sundancer had an incandescent light between her hands. She opened her arms, and the ball flew into the air, up and over, heading down and straight for-
  
  "Ironclad!" I yelled, firing the same net round at Sundancer, who squealed as she toppled over. The ball stopped in mid-air, about ten feet off the ground. Ironclad made to duck under it, then swore and backed off. Even from a distance, I could feel the heat- it must have been unbearable for him.
  
  I grabbed the civilian and pulled him to his feet, covering him with the shield as I hurried back, firing air blasts at the villains. The dogs were bounding forward; left, right and centre; jaws gnashing and tails cracking like whips. Blanka- Genesis- was leaping and flipping about, swiping at Grue and Whirlygig with clawed fingers.
  
  The debris around Whirlygig battered her hand in an instant, and Genesis fell back with a cry of pain.
  
  I saw the taller of the video game geeks, Uber, dressed like Ryu- white sleeveless gi, red headband and gloves, black belt. He ducked under Judas"s head, crouched, and then-
  
  "SHORYUKEN!"
  
  -exploded upward in a spinning uppercut, his fist lit up with blue light. Judas stumbled back from the blow, shaking his head with a snarl.
  
  Cerberus roared with rage. "Judas, hurt!"
  
  I pushed the civilian past the corner, saying "Get out of here!" before turning back to the fight.
  
  Trickster and Perdition were shuffling everyone around like a deck of cards; I saw Sundancer switched with Whirlygig, who shrieked and ducked for cover as her storm was left behind. Ironclad made to swing at Ballistic, only to stop as he almost hit the security guard instead. Cerberus flickered back several steps in the middle of commanding the dogs.
  
  A crossbow bolt hit Perdition in the thigh, drawing a pained howl from him.
  
  Tattletale ducked back down and added insult to injury with a sudden shout. "Trickster can"t swap Ironclad or Elpis- they"re too heavy! And Grue"s hidden from him or Perdition!"
  
  "You bitch!" Perdition roared, flickered in place. He was upright again, uninjured- did he retain his memories when he reset himself?
  
  "Questions for later," Tactical said. "We"ve got an advantage!"
  
  "Grue!" I shouted, firing another pepper canister at Perdition, who fell on his ass as it hit him in the chest; "Get Perdition!"
  
  Grue changed course from Leet without pause, turning his run into a kick to Perdition"s helmet that almost flipped him over.
  
  I saw Leet, dressed as M Bison, strike a pose I recognised from Tock Tick"s memories. "BLAST!"
  
  I threw myself forward, bringing up the shield desperately as a ball of purple light streaked for Grue. I got there just in time for it to hit me instead, but the force was incredible. I stumbled back into Grue before I got my feet under me again, accidentally treading on Perdition"s hand. I felt something break.
  
  Perdition screamed under me- and then disappeared, reappearing in front of me on his hands and knees, dripping with dust. A second later he was swapped with Uber, who looked as startled to see me as I was to see him.
  
  I caught his high kick on my shield, knocked his punch aside with the air cannon, then dropped it to handle him hand to hand. His fists glowed blue and hit like sledgehammers, but he could barely land a hit. I could see his skill was lacking- more individual moves than a learned style, disjointed and clumsy compared to Needler"s mastery of silat. All I had to do was feint high, then drop the shield and ram a fist into his ribcage, perfectly guided by Needler"s Thinker power.
  
  Right under and to the front of the ninth and tenth ribs on the right side of the abdomen was the liver. Hitting there could disrupt the blood flow in a person"s body and incapacitate them immediately.
  
  Uber was no different- he dropped with a pained gasp. I snatched up the cannon and wrapped him on the spot, then kicked my shield back into my left hand.
  
  "Show-off," Flinch said fondly.
  
  Trickster had made it over to Sundancer, and was trying to cut her loose with a knife as she moved her sun around Ironclad, blocking him from going anywhere. Leet was firing off purple blasts at the dogs, Grue was chasing Perdition towards a Starbucks, and Whirlygig had built up her storm. She opened fire on Ballistic, who ducked as she shattered a window behind him with a stream of ball bearings. I caught the sound of screams from inside the shop.
  
  "Whirlygig, check your fire, there"s civilians in there!" I yelled. I swapped the cannon for my sonic spear, flicking it out to full length.
  
  Whirlygig stopped at once, dropping back to ground level. Then Ballistic popped up, arm raised.
  
  Whirlygig shrieked and ducked- I saw something small and silver shoot from Ballistic"s hand and disappear into her storm.
  
  I threw the spear overarm- Ballistic ducked, but he was only the first target. The spear carried on, and smashed into an ad poster next to Trickster and Sundancer, exploding into debilitating sound. Trickster clutched at his ears, and Sundancer"s sun winked out.
  
  Ironclad shook himself, slapping at bits of his armour that had got scorched by the heat. Now our main Brute was back in the game. "Ironclad, take out Leet! Cerberus, get Ballistic!"
  
  "Brutus, hurt!"
  
  Brutus bounded forward, paws shaking the floor as he advanced- or maybe that was Ironclad circling around towards Leet, extending his legs for a longer stride.
  
  Ballistic backed away, firing everything in his hands. Brutus only grunted as the projectiles smacked into his armoured hide and ricocheted off the bony spurs. I closed in as well, ready to assist.
  
  Then Ballistic reached down and grabbed something off the ground- the pepper canister. He suddenly ran forward, throwing his feet out in front of him to slide under Brutus"s maw and jam both hands against Brutus"s throat.
  
  There was a meaty sound, and Brutus"s neck erupted. He stumbled to the side and collapsed in a bloody heap, gore leaking from the front and back of his neck.
  
  Cerberus"s scream was anguish and fury. She sprinted forward, throwing herself over Brutus"s fallen form and cradling his head.
  
  "Bastard!" Nemean roared.
  
  I leapt at Ballistic, shield raised. An entire handful of dollar coins hit me like bullets, and I just snarled and powered through it.
  
  As if that could stop me. Butchers didn"t flinch from bullets- they chewed them up and spat them back out.
  
  I tackled Ballistic to the floor and smashed my fist into his face. The back of his head bounced off the floor, and he went limp.
  
  Metallic clangs caught my attention- Leet was ducking away from Ironclad, weaving between racks of clothing and potted plants as he desperately fired blast after blast at Ironclad. None of that did a damn thing except shift some of Ironclad"s metal around a bit.
  
  Danger sense flared. I rolled forward and spun, came up facing Genesis. She came at me in a rush of crackling hair and claws, swiping at my head and chest. I caught her wrist- the one Whirlygig had injured- and twisted.
  
  Her body was weird through bloodsight- not like normal humans- and Needler"s power gave me very different results. Still, I was able to see that it would really hurt if I twisted backward and threw her to the side.
  
  Genesis tumbled and came up snarling, rising to her full height, spreading her claws and roaring mightily.
  
  A crossbow bolt sprouted from her stomach. A second hit her in the chest, and a third in the eyes.
  
  Genesis exploded into wisps of greasy smoke. The bolts clattered to the floor.
  
  "I was hoping for a worthy duel," Muramasa said, disappointed.
  
  "Not the point." I shouted over the sonic spear"s scream. "Whirlygig, help Ironclad! Tattletale, Trickster!"
  
  Another bolt took Trickster"s hat off his head. He yelped and disappeared, replaced by Leet, who threw a blast up at Tattletale"s hiding spot. Sundancer got to her feet, the last of the ropes cut loose, and ran for cover.
  
  Tactical"s power was feeding on the information observed, and working faster now that three opponents were down. Next move was to get the dogs back in the fight.
  
  Cerberus was crouched next to Brutus"s corpse, hacking away at his stomach with a knife, hands red with blood. Judas and Angelica were stood on either side, the ultimate guard dogs.
  
  I rounded Angelica"s snout and knelt next to Cerberus, hoping to reason with her.
  
  She turned her head to look at me. She"d taken her helmet off, and I was shocked to see tears running down her face. "Help me," she rasped.
  
  I glanced down and Brutus- and got a shock. His body was greying out in bloodsight, but I could see a red shape in the centre.
  
  "Holy shit, he"s still alive?" Firecracker goggled.
  
  I immediately drew my sword and popped the edges. "Get back."
  
  Muramasa"s sharpening let me part the flesh like water. Needler"s weakness sense and Vladimir"s bloodsight let me stop the blade just before it touched Brutus"s real body.
  
  As soon as I"d drawn the sword out, Rachel shoved me out of the way and buried her hands in the mess past the elbow. She came out holding Brutus as tender as a newborn child. He stirred, shook his head weakly, and snuffled.
  
  Rachel clasped him to her chest and stroked his head, staring past me with red eyes.
  
  "Rachel," I said urgently. "We need to finish this fight, right now. Before they hurt your dogs again."
  
  Slowly, too slowly, Rachel nodded. Then she whistled. Judas and Angelica turned their heads to look at her as she opened her mouth.
  
  A gunshot cut through all the noise, echoing around the entire mall. Civilians screamed and flinched. The capes all froze and turned towards the sound.
  
  Tactical"s power identified it- a pistol, medium calibre. And the direction-
  
  Grue slowly backed out of a store, arms raised inside his darkness.
  
  Perdition followed, one arm wrapped around the neck of a fat man with a gaudy tie. A 9mm Glock was pressed under the hostage"s chin.
  
  "Nobody move!" Perdition screamed. "I"ll blow this guy"s brains out!"
  
  Everyone stopped moving. I got to my feet, flicking the blood off my sword.
  
  "He"s bluffing," Needler said. "He must be."
  
  "Guys," Tattletale called over the spear"s screech, "He"s not kidding. Do as he says."
  
  Perdition jerked the hostage towards the spear. "Turn that fucking thing off, now!"
  
  "Okay," I said, setting my sword and shield down and raising my hands. "I"m going to turn it off now."
  
  "Perdition, what the hell are you doing?" Trickster yelled, sticking his head out from behind the pile of loot.
  
  "Getting us out of here," Perdition snapped without taking his eyes off me as I gingerly tugged the spear loose and turned off the emitter.
  
  Perdition jerked his chin at me. "Now drop it. Drop all your weapons. All of you," he added, turning to face the rest of the Undersiders. The sudden motion made his hostage whimper in fear.
  
  Whirlygig kept her arm pointed at Perdition, her storm whirling around her. Cerberus was crouched next to her dogs, a snarl on her lips. Ironclad raised his fists.
  
  "Stand down," I ordered, leaning the spear against the wall and stepping back. I slowly reached down to my belt and undid the clasp, pulling the whole thing off my waist and tossing it to the side, weapons and all.
  
  "Tattletale too," Perdition demanded. "No more arrows from her."
  
  Tattletale"s crossbow appeared over the edge of the railing and fell to the ground with a clatter.
  
  "Good." Perdition began dragging his hostage over to the loot pile, ignoring the man"s desperate pleas.
  
  "Bring Ballistic and Uber over here. No tricks."
  
  "Okay, no tricks," I said. "Grue, you get Uber. I"ll grab Ballistic. Everyone else, get back. Let"s not provoke him."
  
  Rachel glared at me, then Perdition, and then said "Come," and clicked her tongue. Judas and Angelica followed her as she backed away. Ironclad inched along with her, Whirlygig ducking behind him for cover.
  
  "Provoke me?" Perdition spat. "You already did that! Coil was supposed to be the answer- we had a good deal. And you ruined it! You ruined it for us!"
  
  I paused next to Ballistic, who was blearily staring up at me. "I"m sorry," I said carefully. "There was nothing personal about that. You have the right to be mad at me. But there"s no reason to drag innocent people into this."
  
  "Please," the hostage moaned. "I have a family, I just started working here, I don"t want to die-"
  
  Perdition jammed the gun into the man"s jaw. "Shut up."
  
  Anchorage hissed through her teeth. "Okay, this guy"s insane. Straight-up nuttier than squirrel turds."
  
  I slowly took Ballistic"s arm and hauled him onto his feet, leaning him against my shoulder as we shuffled over to the loot pile. Grue brought Uber along in a fireman"s carry, carefully laying him down at the base of the pile of electronics. I could see now that there was a tarpaulin laid under it, edged with wiring and blinking diodes and enigmatic little boxes.
  
  Stoneknapper attempted a joke. "Feels fitting, huh? Video game geek laid to rest at the foot of a pyramid of consoles."
  
  "For god"s sake, Knapper, this is not the time," Flinch snapped.
  
  The rest of the Travelers approached- Sundancer got up from the planter she"d hidden behind; Leet emerged from a little newsagents, paused, then grabbed a candy bar and a drink off the shelf.
  
  Trickster circled around to the front of the loot pile, keeping his feet on the tarp.
  
  "This was not the fucking plan," He hissed in a low voice.
  
  "Fuck the plan," Perdition hissed back. "It didn"t work! Waste of money- I"m saving our asses."
  
  I cleared my throat, shifting Ballistic"s arm off my shoulder. He staggered forward, and Trickster caught him, guiding him to rest against the pile.
  
  I backed off, motioning to Grue to do the same. "You can let him go now," I said softly. "He"s no part in this. You"ll only make it harder on yourselves if you hurt him."
  
  Perdition snorted. I could see the blood vessels in his face twist into a sneer. "Leet," he said. "We"re leaving."
  
  Leet pocketed his snacks and pulled a janky little remote from his coat as he crouched to check on Uber. He hauled on Uber"s shoulder, rolling him bodily onto the tarp, then nodded. "Ready when you are."
  
  Perdition stared at me for a long moment, then abruptly shoved the man towards me. "Go!"
  
  I grabbed the man as he stumbled forward, swivelled at the hips to swing him behind me. There was a flare of blinding light, and two gunshots, and a rush of air as the Travelers vanished.
  
  Grue crumpled to the ground with a groan. Darkness exploded out of him, filling the mall in a second.
  
  "Grue!" I let go of the hostage and dropped to my knees, poring over Grue with bloodsight, with weakness sensing, with first aid knowledge and sheer panic.
  
  No blood- no external bleeding, no signs of internal bleeding. My fingers ghosted over his costume, and caught on two bits of metal sticking out of his armoured vest. Flattened 9mm slugs. No penetration.
  
  I sighed with relief. "You"re okay," I said. "Your armour took the hits."
  
  "Perdition"s gonna take a few hits when we get out hands on him," Firecracker
  
  Grue groaned. "Ow." The darkness melted away, first around him, and then the rest of the mall, a little slower than it had come. Light crept in from the windows and the fluorescents.
  
  Whirlygig sprinted over to us, sliding to a halt and dropping down. "Ohmigod! Are you okay?! Is he okay?!" She cradled Grue"s helmeted head between her hands. "Grue, say something!"
  
  "Ow."
  
  "He"s fine, just sore." I pushed up to my feet and turned to the former hostage, who"d sat down heavily on one of the planters. "Sir?" I said carefully. "Are you okay?"
  
  The man shuddered and buried his head in his hands, shoulders trembling.
  
  "What kind of stupid question is that?" Quarrel asked.
  
  "Right, yeah." Raising my head and my voice, I started calling out instructions. "Undersiders, villains are gone. Check on all the civilians, see to any injuries."
  
  There was a clanging noise, and then someone stepped around the corner and into the food court.
  
  "There are medics outside ready to treat any wounded," Dauntless announced, striding forward, white and gold armour gleaming, tapping the butt of his Arclance against the floor with every step. "If you guys can do some triage, we can get this sorted out a lot faster."
  
  Another figure rounded the corner, also in white and gold, but without the clatter. Glory Girl floated a foot off the ground, staring around at all the damage.
  
  "Right," Bearskin grumbled. "Let"s see if they"re going to arrest us."
  
  "You two stay put," I said. "I"ll handle this."
  
  Dauntless did something to his Arclance that collapsed it down into a short rod the size of a pencil, and then tucked it into his belt. "Elpis," he said with a nod.
  
  "Dauntless. Glory Girl."
  
  "What happened here?" Glory Girl asked, turning on the spot to take in the shattered windows, the toppled displays, the cracked tiles. Her gaze landed on Rachel, splashed with gore and cradling Brutus.
  
  "The Travelers. Plus Uber and Leet. They had something that countered Grue"s darkness, they said something about a plan- I think this was intended to attack us."
  
  Glory Girl"s expression sharpened. "You"re sure?"
  
  I shrugged. "It"s a theory. Let"s talk more once we get the civilians out of here?" I offered.
  
  Dauntless nodded. "Agreed."
  
  
  
  It took time- to coax the civilians out of their hiding places, to check their injuries, to guide or even carry them out of the mall at to the waiting medics. Not all of them had been cornered and made to strip the stores of valuables. Some had simply ducked into little nooks and stayed there, and some had been trampled in the panic when the Travelers burst in.
  
  Some of them were spooked from the fighting, and didn"t want to come near us. Dauntless and Glory Girl had more luck- shiny, authorised figures that they were.
  
  Eventually the Undersiders made it out as a group. I helped carry Grue, his arm over my shoulder, Whirlygig supporting him from the other while he stoically trudged on, careful of his cracked ribs. The dogs had shrunk down to regular size, and Rachel had set Brutus down, though she kept checking on him. Ironclad was squashed down, and Tattletale was unusually subdued.
  
  Outside, the place was in turmoil. The cops were maintaining a cordon to keep the crowds back, while some PRT troopers who"d arrived with Dauntless were looking a bit lost now that they didn"t have anything to do. The news crew was going wild, a reporter posing in front of the camera and eagerly blabbing about what had happened. I slipped a few bugs over there so I could know what they were pointing at.
  
  Some of the hostages were getting questioned by the cops on the other side of the parking lot- I spotted the middle-aged woman from before hugging a similar looking girl, and the man with the gaudy tie, wrapped in a shock blanket.
  
  "Over here."
  
  I spotted a familiar cloud of mousy brown frizz, and changed direction. Amy was waving to get my attention while she laid a hand on an old man"s wrist, then released him with a nod. Despite being in casual clothes, she still commanded the attention of people around her- the paramedics orbited around her, the patients gazed at her with awe.
  
  I wondered if she knew the devotion she inspired.
  
  "Panacea," I said formally as we reached her, flicking my helmet open. "Always good to see you."
  
  Amy gave me and the Undersiders a look. "People tend to say that after they"ve been in a fight."
  
  "You should see the other guys," Whirlygig joked nervously.
  
  Amy laced her fingers together and stretched her arms out, cracking the knuckles. "Alright then. Who"s closest to death?"
  
  I had to bite my tongue before Vladimir"s laughter made it onto my face.
  
  "I got shot," Grue grunted.
  
  "Right. I"ll need skin contact for that."
  
  I unhooked Grue"s arm from my shoulders and helped him pull one glove off. Amy"s freckled hand was dwarfed in his palm.
  
  Her gaze went distant. "Yep, hairline fractures in the upper right ribcage, larger fractures on the lover left. Plenty of bruising, but no internal bleeding. I can fix that up easy. Do I have your permission to heal you?"
  
  "Yes, please do-ooooh my god," Grue sighed. "That feels so much better."
  
  "You"ve got a lot of other scars on you," Amy continued. "What"s that one on your back? Looks like a stab wound?"
  
  "Crossbow," Grue said, straightening up and stretching his arms a little.
  
  "Don"t move or this"ll take longer. Who even uses a crossbow?"
  
  "Shadow Stalker."
  
  "That doesn"t look like a tranquiliser arrow did that," Amy said, her gaze focusing on Grue again.
  
  "Because it wasn"t," Tattletale broke in. "Shadow Stalker"s got a serious hate-boner going on for Grue. Last time they were near each other, she used a broadhead. Grue bled all over our couch until we got him patched up."
  
  "You never told me that," Whirlygig said, eyes wide.
  
  "Never told me either," I pointed out, feeling my claws itch. The idea of someone, a government-sponsored hero, shooting one of my teammates with lethal ammo; it brought back memories of the bullies at school, who could do anything in plain view of the teachers and not get in trouble. It twisted something deep in my soul.
  
  Amy stared at Grue. "Holy shit, you"re serious. Wait, was this before or after she joined the Wards?"
  
  "After."
  
  "Jesus."
  
  "How the hell is she a Ward?" I demanded.
  
  Tattletale shrugged. "Plea deal. She nailed some guy to the wall with crossbow bolts and got busted. Wards or prison time- she picked the Wards."
  
  "Bugger me," Rotter breathed.
  
  Amy had gone pale. She let go of Grue"s hand and scratched at her scalp.
  
  I felt a couple of bugs approaching- one clinging to smooth metal, the other moving with a smoothness no walking human could achieve.
  
  I waited until Dauntless and Glory Girl were within a few feet before I turned slightly and made a show of spotting them. "Oh, hello you two."
  
  "Subtle," Stoneknapper snarked.
  
  "Elpis," Dauntless said. "Panacea." He visibly hesitated before adding "Undersiders."
  
  Whirlygig waved a little.
  
  Glory Girl"s attitude was noticeably colder. "We need to know exactly what happened in there. From the beginning."
  
  I sighed and started to explain how I"d got an alert from Tattletale, and swiftly made my way over with Ironclad. I didn"t mention where I"d come from, and they didn"t ask.
  
  From there, I told most of the story of how we entered the mall, tried to evacuate the civilians, and wound up fighting the villains. The others chimed in with their two cents, and Tattletale provided a lot of extra details, pointing out weaknesses in the Travelers" powers- Trickster could only swap objects of similar mass, and the greater the difference, the longer it took; Genesis needed at least a few minutes to make a new body; Perdition"s maximum rewind was about three seconds, and it didn"t stack.
  
  "Perdition"s the weak link in that group," she concluded. "In personality at least. None of them like him, even a little. They don"t like Trickster either, but they"re willing to listen to him."
  
  "Could we use that?" I asked, vaguely gesturing. The motion made something in my shoulder scrape- when I glanced down, I could see a squashed dollar coin lodged in one of the plates.
  
  "Hard to say," Tattletale admitted as I pulled the coin out with finger and thumb. "They"d probably drop Perdition like a hot potato if they had to- I"d bet big money that Trickster"s hit him at least once by now for the hostage taking. But they"re used to putting up with Trickster."
  
  Dauntless was taking notes on his phone. "Well, this is all good information, regardless. Thank you, Tattletale."
  
  Tattletale shrugged and smiled. "No problem."
  
  "But what do they want?" Whirlygig asked. "This seemed kind of... stupid. Broad daylight, loads of people- It"s like they wanted attention."
  
  Tattletale pointed a finger. "Uber and Leet wanted attention. Dumb stunts are their bread and butter."
  
  "And now they"ve got a huge pile of electronics for parts and jewellery for funds," Grue said. "Dumb and dumber."
  
  Tattletale"s smile shrank a few molars. "They"re building something for the Travelers, I think. I can"t be sure, but they were very concerned about getting those electronics out of there. I don"t know what, but it"s personal to them."
  
  "So the heavy hitters, that hate you specifically, are teamed up with the shitty Tinker who can make one of anything, and they"re building something to fix a problem so bad they went to a guy with an underground base for help," Tock Tick summarised.
  
  Butcher chuckled with rare cheer. "Oh, this"ll be fun to watch."
  
  Dauntless grimaced. "This won"t be fun to report."
  
  "Just pass the intel on, and we"ll do what we can on our end," I said.
  
  Dauntless gave me a long look. "Officially I can"t condone what you kids are doing. You"re still wanted for a lot of charges."
  
  He shrugged one shoulder. "But I am rooting for you, just so you know. I hope you make it."
  
  Nemean nodded thoughtfully. "I like him."
  
  I didn"t miss how Glory Girl gave the lot of us a dirty look when he said that.
  
  "Any advice you could give us?" Grue asked politely.
  
  "You probably want to sit down and think up some different tactics," Dauntless said. "Saving people"s a very different ballgame. You didn"t hurt anyone by accident, but it"s way too easy to slip up."
  
  I bit my lip, thinking of a bunch of slip-ups we"d made during the fight. Hell, the fight itself wasn"t too smart. We could have tried to move it away from the hostages.
  
  "I"ll put some thought into it," Tactical offered. "Never really had to think that much about avoiding collateral damage, but it"s worth a shot."
  
  Dauntless leaned forward and lowered his voice. "For now, you should get out of here. I"m not going to try to arrest you, but Armsmaster"s on his way, and he might give it a shot."
  
  Whirlygig squeaked. "Crap."
  
  "Yeah, that"s a pretty good reason to split. Thanks, Dauntless. Best of luck."
  
  "You too."
  
  "Back to the chariot," I ordered, hustling the Undersiders along.
  
  Glory Girl drifted over to hover by her sister as we left. I saw Amy give me a tiny wave before we all piled in and headed away from Weymouth Mall.
  
  Interlude 8
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Uber & Leet"s Secret Lair, Monday 4th April
  
  The gunshots startled him, and it took a supreme effort of self control for Krouse to hold still until the teleport was complete. It took even more effort to count to three Mississippi in his head after that, to hold himself until he was absolutely sure he was out of the window for Cody"s power.
  
  Uber and Leet"s hideout was a surprisingly well done-up space- an old fish cannery that had been abandoned by its old owners and renovated by its current ones. The windows were large and clear, but treated with something that made it impossible for people to see inside. The walls were almost entirely filled with shelves and drawers of all manner of tools and parts, and what free space was left displayed posters of various video games and cartoons.
  
  A piece of equipment caught his eye- a hot glue gun left on a work bench. He angled his head so that he could keep both the glue gun and Cody"s pistol in his field of vision.
  
  Cody turned to him, lowering the gun to his side. "I know you"re about to bitch about-"
  
  Krouse"s power kicked in, and Cody was suddenly holding an unplugged glue gun. He made the mistake of glancing down.
  
  Krouse slammed a fist into his gut, and followed it up with a rising knee as Cody folded. Krouse yelled as his kneecap smashed painfully into Cody"s armoured helmet, but he kept going, grabbing Cody"s jacket and throwing him to the floor.
  
  Cody reset himself, and suddenly he was standing again, confused. Krouse kicked out and caught him in the side, making him stumble.
  
  Another reset, and Krouse stepped in close to drive a fist into Cody"s throat. That did something- Cody fell back, clutching at his throat and gagging.
  
  Arms suddenly wrapped around Krouse"s head and shoulders in a full nelson, and a deep voice said "Enough," in his ear.
  
  Krouse growled and swapped himself with Cody, then spun around to face the rest of the group.
  
  Sundancer was bent over Ballistic, patting his face as he stirred weakly. Leet was standing back and watching with his peaked cap between his hands. Uber had stepped back as Cody straightened up, holding his side with one hand and taking deep breaths.
  
  "What the hell did you do?" Trickster snarled.
  
  Cody swivelled to face him. "I got us out, you stupid prick!" he rasped.
  
  "You just painted a target on all our backs! You threatened to shoot someone! Where did you even get a gun?"
  
  Cody scoffed, pulling off his helmet. His face was red, and his hair was a flattened sweaty mess.
  
  "Like you were doing anything? We were getting our asses handed to us! I stepped up and ended the fight."
  
  "Dude," Leet said, tossing his cap onto the pile of loot, "You"re not getting it. We"ve never used a real gun in any of our videos," he indicated himself and Uber, "And the heroes don"t put too much effort into catching us. You just bumped all of us up to being a major threat. That means they"re going to come at all of us harder now. The gloves are off."
  
  "It would"ve been bad enough if you just threatened the guy," Krouse growled, "But you actually shot someone! You better hope they didn"t die, because otherwise we"re fucked."
  
  Cody shrugged apathetically. "I shot at Grue. Pretty sure I got at least one hit."
  
  Krouse pulled off his mask and ran his fingers through his hair. "Jesus Christ."
  
  "The Undersiders are kids, man," Uber said in his clear, TV-announcer voice. "You know what the heroes can do to kid killers?"
  
  "Aw, who fucking cares?" Cody snapped. "They"re all still villains anyway, right? The heroes aren"t going to give a shit."
  
  "We"re supposed to give a shit," Sundancer said quietly. She turned around to look at Cody. "For God"s sake, Cody, why are you acting like none of this is a big deal?"
  
  Cody"s expression remained stubborn, mutinous; but his feet shuffled uncertainly, and his shoulders hunched.
  
  Abruptly, Krouse felt the last thread of his patience snap. "Get out."
  
  "What?"
  
  "Get out. I don"t want to see you. Find somewhere else to be."
  
  "You can"t just throw me out!" Cody yelled. "I"m a part of this team!"
  
  "You fucked up, and you put the rest of us in danger."
  
  "Cody, maybe you should leave," Sundancer said. "Take a few days. Cool off."
  
  Krouse would have preferred if Cody never came back at all, but he held his tongue.
  
  Cody stared at Sundancer, who wouldn"t meet his eyes. He briefly glanced at Uber and Leet, who both looked mad at him.
  
  He didn"t even try to look to Krouse for support, so at least he wasn"t completely stupid.
  
  "Fuck this," Cody growled, jamming his helmet back on and moving in the direction of the pistol. Krouse stepped into his path before he"d taken two steps.
  
  "Leave the gun."
  
  Cody"s helmet was completely featureless, but Krouse could feel him glaring down even still. Cody could emote with the force of a cannon.
  
  They stood glaring at each other for a long time, before Cody abruptly huffed and turned on his heel, heading for the door. He wrenched it open, stomped through, and slammed it shut behind him like a kid throwing a tantrum.
  
  Krouse let out a breath. "Fuck."
  
  There was a loud groan from Ballistic. "Wha" the fuck?"
  
  "Luke?" Sundancer leaned over him, holding up some fingers. "How many fingers do you see?"
  
  "Uh, three? What happened?"
  
  "Pretty sure Elpis hit you, dude," Leet answered.
  
  "With what?"
  
  "We should probably get you guys patched up. We"ve still got the healing vat from Fallout 2, an hour in that"ll have you all fixed up. Uber, you need a soak?"
  
  "Yeah, but let"s get him in first," Uber said, making to bend down and help Ballistic up, before straightening up with a grunt. "Nope, can"t do that." He pressed his hand to his side and winced.
  
  "I"ve got him," Krouse said, crossing over and hunkering down to grab Ballistic"s arm. "C"mon Luke, I"ve got you."
  
  With Krouse"s help, and Sundancer doing what she could, they managed to get Ballistic on his feet and towards a large vertical glass tube. Leet went to a control panel and tapped something in, causing the glass to retract into the floor.
  
  Ballistic did his best to shuffle onto the upright couch inside, though Krouse had to help him turn around and settle himself. Sundancer helped him take his helmet off and set a breathing mask over his nose and mouth.
  
  "We"ll catch you up in a bit," Krouse promised, stepping back as Leet typed in another sequence. Luke gave them a thumbs up as the tube closed up and began to fill with clear liquid.
  
  Sundancer puled her own helmet off and pulled out her scrunchie, letting her long blonde hair tumble down her back. "I"m going to take a shower," she mumbled, heading off to the living quarters on the other side of the hideout.
  
  "Leet, is the stuff we stole going to be enough for you to finish?" Krouse asked.
  
  Leet was staring after Sundancer as she walked away. "Hm? Oh, yeah. Uh, I"d say we"re mostly there- I can gut the electronics for parts, cobble the chips together for the processing power, melt some stuff down. The jewellery can buy most of the other stuff- we know a guy."
  
  Krouse nodded, a little bit of hope rising in him. "So how long until go time, do you think?"
  
  Leet sucked his teeth contemplatively. "Well, the tungsten"s the real thing. This is going to take mucho power, dude, and for that I need the tungsten. Depends how soon we can get it delivered, and then I can get it shaped and fitted for the generator. Anywhere between one and three weeks."
  
  "I can try and sweet talk our supplier," Uber said, fiddling with something at his neck. He pulled upward, and the entire Ryu face peeled off in one vaguely horrifying movement, revealing Uber"s fairly average face underneath.
  
  Krouse blinked twice- first at the disturbing visual, and then again as his brain caught on something. "What, is persuasion a skill you can use?"
  
  Uber wiggled his hand in a so-so gesture. "Kind of?"
  
  Krouse mentally added that to the list of weird skills Uber could apparently adopt with his power, then put it aside. He reached up to remove his hat and mask- and then remembered that Tattletale had shot the hat off his head.
  
  "Got to get a new hat," He grumbled, pulling his mask off and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
  
  Leet clapped his hands together. "Well, I"m gonna start breaking down the stuff. Uber, you need anything?"
  
  Uber shrugged and rubbed his side some more. "I"m good, man. Maybe a drink?"
  
  "Gotcha."
  
  Leet sidled off towards the pile, rubbing his hands in anticipation. Uber shuffled around to look at Krouse. "Are you alright?"
  
  Krouse shrugged, bemused. "You"re the one that got beat up, not me."
  
  "You"re the one that lost a teammate."
  
  Krouse laughed humourlessly. "Hah! No, Cody was never really a teammate. Just some asshole I got stuck with. I never thought he"d be this stupid though," he added bitterly.
  
  Uber nodded silently. "So," he said slowly, "Is he actually coming back, or what?"
  
  Krouse snorted. "Hope not."
  
  "You sure? I mean, his power"s strong. You guys"ll be losing a major advantage without him."
  
  That part was true. Despite Cody"s attitude and everything, his power still had major synergy with Krouse, giving the Travelers superb battlefield control.
  
  On the other hand, he opposed every plan just because Krouse came up with it, complained about everything- and now he"d managed to up their threat level in the eyes of the heroes.
  
  Privately, the best thing Cody could do right now was get himself killed and take some heat off the rest of them.
  
  "We"ll manage," Krouse said to Uber. "Anyway, I need to make a call."
  
  Krouse pulled his phone out of a pocket and hit speed dial as he walked across the hideout to lean against the wall. The other end picked up within three rings.
  
  "Are we clear?" said the man on the other end, with a voice even more clear and rich than Uber"s power-assisted nonsense. The faint sounds of a moving car were audible in the background.
  
  "We"re good. Got away with the goods, everyone"s alive."
  
  "How did you guys get out of that?" came Genesis"s voice, slightly reedy and a little faint. Understandable, since she was loaded into the back seat.
  
  Krouse sighed. "Cody did something stupid. He grabbed a hostage, pulled a gun from, I"m assuming, up his own ass, and threatened to kill the guy if they didn"t let us go."
  
  "What?!" "Oh my god!"
  
  "Yeah. And what"s really fucked up is that according to Tattletale"s helpful little comment, he wasn"t bluffing." Krouse rubbed his nose some more. "And he shot at one of the Undersiders as we were leaving. I kicked him out for a while. God knows if he"ll calm down- lately it feels like he"s getting worse."
  
  Genesis cursed to herself for a bit. "At least tell me we got the goods."
  
  Krouse glanced back at the pile that Leet was now looking through, sorting the electronics into groups that Krouse couldn"t see any particular pattern to. A small bag stuff with stolen jewellery was off to the side.
  
  "Yup. Leet reckons it"ll only be a few more weeks at most."
  
  Oliver whistled. "After all this time, it doesn"t feel real."
  
  "Well, it"s real," Krouse said confidently. "We"re finally going to get our solution."
  
  At least, that was what he hoped. Leet"s tech could take just about any shape, and he"d certainly never done anything like this before, so they were probably safe from any of the malfunctions that he was known for.
  
  And they had the plans they were buying from Accord to give them some Thinker interference, plus the other Thinkers he had on the payroll to increase their chances of success. Although, and he would die before ever admitting it, despite Accord"s prediction that the Undersiders would be the most likely to reach them first, and despite the plan he"d drawn up for the Travelers to fight them off with, they"d only really made it out of there because Cody had gone a little crazy.
  
  Maybe Accord had taken that into account? God only knew how the man"s mind worked-
  
  "Krouse? You still there?"
  
  "Huh? Uh, yeah, yeah. Sorry, got- got lost in thought."
  
  "Is anyone else around to talk to?"
  
  "Uh, Mars is taking a shower, and Luke"s getting patched up." That did remind him though...
  
  "Okay. Well, we"ll be back in about a half hour. We"ll see you then."
  
  "Stay safe," said Krouse, ending the call.
  
  He glanced across at Leet, who was occupied with the pile, and Uber, who was leaning back against Ballistic"s healing tube.
  
  Quietly, he pocketed his phone and made his way to the very back of the building, where Leet had put together a large metal cube, 15 feet to a side. Uber and Leet had somehow stolen a bunch of shipping containers and melded them together into one shiny box, with walls six inches thick.
  
  The metal was just a precaution though. The real trick was something built into the cube that Leet had got from scans of one of the local Wards- and boy had that been a nerve-wracking experience for Genesis, to make a projection of a normal teenage girl and go along to one of the guided tours the PRT allowed, right into the lion"s den.
  
  It was worth it though- now they had a temporal stasis field, or "time fridge", as Leet insisted on calling it, that kept everything inside in a single frozen instant. No movement, no thought- to anyone inside there, it would be like no time passed at all until someone opened the cube.
  
  Krouse wanted to open it up, insanely enough. He wanted to let Noelle know that they were making progress, that they were finally close to solving their big problem.
  
  Well, one of their big problems.
  
  There was a sheet of printer paper taped to the front of the cube at about eye level. It was a print out of a photo they"d taken of Noelle, from the shoulders up.
  
  She"d managed to clean her hair before the photo, and it fell straight past her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes were dark and had shadows under them, but there was a hint of optimism in the set of her mouth.
  
  Krouse pressed his fingertips to his mouth, then touched them to the paper. "I"ll see you soon, Noelle."
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Quick note to everyone- I'm doing a writing chqllenge this month. Not quite NaNoWriMo, but it will involve me working on several little snippets, so keep your eyes peeled.
  Incidentally, I've unlocked my works so they can be read by non-users again. Hope that helps people.
  
  Interlude 8.B
  Tuesday 5th April, Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre, Location Unknown
  
  Brad moodily scratched at his shoulder as he slouched back into the cell block. It wasn"t really by choice- he"d planned to stay gone for a while, get his head on straight away from people, then come back and kick someone"s ass to establish a rep.
  
  Thing was, he hadn"t been expecting that there would be other people in the further parts of the Birdcage, away from what passed for civilisation around here. Loners who wanted or needed space, the people who even the worst of the worst didn"t want, or people who just couldn"t hack it for lack of a spine.
  
  One guy had come after him while he was down there. Skinny man with short hair falling out, some kind of projection power. He threw invisible shit at Brad- sharp stuff. If he"d been a bit slower, he might have left chunks of himself behind. That concussion had made him sloppy.
  
  As it was, he had some big-ass cuts right through the wolf tattoo on his shoulder, deep enough that he knew they were going to scar and ruin it. Maybe he could get it touched up- there were plenty of people walking around with ink.
  
  Assuming he could bargain. People had been giving him the evil eye from the moment he"d been dumped in this hellhole- and Dragon had put him in the cellblock with a tight-knit community that closed ranks and left him out in the cold.
  
  Galvanate was the leader- an old-school Mafia boss who"d been at his peak in the 90s. He was a power granter, like Othala; less variety, but more people. He could grant invincibility, strength, and an electric touch to entire squads of people that lasted for hours, allowing him to keep control by granting those powers to trusted enforcers who kept the peace.
  
  So, Brad would have to use charisma and negotiation to get what he wanted. Not his favourite. He had respect for people who could charm people with a silver tongue, like Kaiser and Krieg, but he preferred to be straightforward. Tell people what he wanted, and the consequences if he didn"t get it.
  
  He made his way up to a couple of guys who were playing cards on top of a large plastic crate- the ones that supplies were sent in. Neither were quite as big as Brad, but their relaxed postures reminded him that they probably knew what they were doing.
  
  "Hey," he grunted, shifting the makeshift bag he"d fashioned out of the dead guy"s spare clothes. Gray cotton, like all the other clothes down here. He was already sick of it.
  
  The guys set their cards down and gave him speculative looks. "What do you want?" asked the taller guy in a Minnesota accent. His beard was so thick he sounded a bit muffled.
  
  "Food. I"m starving."
  
  "You ain"t one of ours," said the smaller man accusingly. He was missing a tooth near the front, and it made him whistle when he talked.
  
  "Naw, he is," said the tall one. "He"s the wolf guy, right?"
  
  "Hookwolf. I dropped in about a week ago."
  
  "Yeah, I remember. Galvanate had me watching you for a bit while you were working through that concussion."
  
  Brad peered at him. "I don"t remember that," he admitted.
  
  "Not surprised," said the tall one. "I"ve had a couple"a knocks to the head myself- you lose time. Anyhoo, we still got some food from the drop. Nothing fancy, but it"ll keep you going. Hope you like pasta."
  
  "You want anything fancier, you"re going to have to trade, or talk to the boss," the smaller man said.
  
  Brad reached into the bag he"d brought back with him.
  
  The smaller man sucked in a breath. Tall man stuck out a finger. "Easy now."
  
  Brad paused. Right. Slowly. He carefully pulled out some of the stuff he"d grabbed from the dead guy"s little stash.
  
  Tall guy"s eyebrows lifted at the sight of the pack of cigarettes. "Yeah, that"ll do for trade. What"d you do for that?"
  
  "Killed a guy."
  
  Tall man gave him a considering look. "Why?"
  
  Brad shrugged slowly, mindful of his cuts. "He had it coming."
  
  Tall guy nodded. "Fair enough. You like donuts?"
  
  "Got any jelly?"
  
  "Ah, I knew you were a man of taste. "fraid those always go first. We"ve still got ones with frosting though."
  
  "Fine." Brad set the cigarettes down, collected a tub of pasta and a little bag of donuts, and took himself to a corner to sit down and eat with his back against the wall.
  
  He"d survived his first week, and he was well on the way to surviving his second. He could probably manage this pattern for a while.
  
  Still, Brad wasn"t stupid. As much as he hated to admit it, he wasn"t getting out of here. There were supposed to be almost 600 prisoners in the Birdcage, and nobody had ever got out alive.
  
  He wasn"t the biggest fish either- everyone in here had done something worth coming here, especially the leaders. Lab Rat had been on the most wanted list for years, experimenting on people to turn them into monsters; Gavel had roamed Australia as a murderous vigilante, dispatching people with a massive hammer; Teacher had been sent down for assassinating the Vice President and the Prime Minister of England.
  
  The women"s side was, if anything, worse. Lustrum basically started a cult of castrating men; Black Kaze had a four digit body count; String Theory had threatened to shoot down the moon. And as for Glaistig Uaine...
  
  Brad shuddered. No. Absolutely not.
  
  He needed to make allies. Unfortunately, the Birdcage was a bit lacking in the white power department.
  
  Brad chewed on the problem and his lunch while he watched the comings and goings. The common area was fairly neat- there was a seating area with tables and chairs, plus extras put together out of scrap. A couple of guys were playing cards or board games, some of which looked improvised out of various materials.
  
  An open area seemed to be for general sports and exercise. One guy was shadowboxing, while a ring of guys were playing hackysack.
  
  A couple of guys were using the two weight benches to get a workout in; some others were watching TV on the various monitors- a guy with an improvised toolbelt was digging around inside another. Brad couldn"t tell if he was fixing it or upgrading it or stripping it for parts.
  
  The crate guards were talking with someone, and pointing in his direction. Brad stuffed the last donut in his mouth and jumped to his feet as the man started over. He pulled some metal from his core, growing blades from his shoulders, his knees, his forearms and knuckles.
  
  The man was big from far away, and he only got bigger as he approached- not particularly fat or muscular, just built larger. He swung his arms as he walked, and Brad noticed the man was missing a finger on one hand.
  
  "Hookwolf?" asked the man, coming to a stop a few feet away. He must have had a good six inches on Brad, and at least 40 pounds.
  
  "Yeah?"
  
  "There"s someone who wants to talk to you. Marquis, in Cell Block W."
  
  "I don"t know who that is," Brad said, truthfully. Mostly truthfully- there was something about the name that itched at him.
  
  The big man raised an eyebrow. "Used to run business in your town. Guess he wants to hear how things are doing."
  
  Brad"s jaw clenched. Now the name was familiar. Marquis was one of the villains of what people called the bad old days, way back before Hookwolf had joined up with the Empire Eighty Eight. Marquis had been one of their biggest enemies, along with the Teeth.
  
  The thought of the Teeth- of Butcher- made him grind his teeth together. That bitch and her little pet villains...
  
  And he couldn"t even get good and angry about it to blow off some steam. Not when he was still suffering the lingering effects of the beating she"d given him, and not when he was surrounded by dangerous villains who didn"t know to properly fear him yet.
  
  "Which way"s Cell Block W?" Brad growled.
  
  After the big guy, whose name turned out to be Rotund, gave him directions, Brad tossed his trash at a nearby bin and set off out of one territory and into another. The space in between was essentially neutral territory, a large atrium with a few bits of furniture. Maybe they used it for meetings between leaders, like the run-down shitty little bar in Brockton Bay.
  
  Cell Block W had two bored-looking guys posted at the entrance. Both of them were pretty distinctive. One of them had red hair that was shaved on the sides and stuck up on top, plus a couple of crude rings and bars in his ears and nose that looked like they were made of scrap metal. More noticeably, his arms from the elbows down were burned black, like logs from the remains of a campfire.
  
  The other guy was slight in stature, and neatly dressed somehow. He wore the same gray cotton as everyone else, but he made it look like a butler"s uniform. His hair was perfectly combed, his jaw was perfectly shaven, his shirt looked freshly ironed and his pants were properly creased.
  
  "Can we help you?" asked the neat man.
  
  Brad shifted his bag around to his back and pulled in his blades a little. Not enough to put them away, but enough to look like he was being considerate. "I"m Hookwolf. Heard Marquis was asking for me."
  
  The neat man nodded. "If you"ll wait here a moment, I"ll see if Marquis is available. Cinderhands, I"ll be back shortly."
  
  He pivoted and turned away like a little windup toy, making his way into the block. Peering past, Brad could see it was laid out the same as Galvanate"s block, and every other block; the cells were arranged in a horseshoe shape around the common area, with two gently sloping ramps meeting at the furthest cell. Beneath that cell was a corridor that led to the showers and the supply delivery area.
  
  Still, there was only so much he could look at before he got bored. The neat guy sure was taking his sweet time.
  
  He gave Cinderhands a considering look. "So. What"re you in for?"
  
  Cinderhands held up a finger. A bright little flame popped up from the tip. "Burned some people, burned some buildings. How about you?"
  
  Hookwolf flicked one of the hooks sprouting from his knuckles. It made a twang like a tuning fork. "Cut some people up."
  
  Cinderhands nodded. "Yeah, I probably should have seen that coming."
  
  Brad cast about for something else to talk about. "There any contests around here?"
  
  "Contests?" Cinderhands asked, confused.
  
  "Fighting rings, stuff like that," Brad elaborated. "I used to do that kind of stuff up in New York."
  
  Cinderhands snorted. "Hell no. Starting fights on purpose around here would get riots going. You want everyone in here brawling?"
  
  Brad grimaced. "Never mind then."
  
  "You want something to do, take up a hobby," Cinderhands suggested. "Lot of guys around here try making stuff with their powers. Me, I get some of the plastic wrapping from the crates, melt it, try to shape it into different shit."
  
  "Yeah, I ain"t doing arts and crafts," Brad said dismissively.
  
  Cinderhands shrugged. "Suit yourself. It"s a good way to impress the ladies."
  
  Brad was about to say he didn"t need any help impressing the ladies when the neat little guy came back. "Marquis will see you now," he announced.
  
  Brad considered asking the guy if he was Marquis"s butler, but held his tongue. Instead he just said "Fine," and followed the man into Cell Block W.
  
  They got a few looks as they proceeded into the block, but nobody looked for long. Brad took the time to get a better look around- the block was exactly the same as Galvanate"s block in layout, but there were subtle differences.
  
  There was a guy standing guard next to the TV monitors, all five of which were working. The improvised furniture around here was a bit neater, more decorative. Some of them looked like they"d been carved, or melted together. That hobby stuff Cinderhands had talked about, maybe.
  
  Brad noticed a guy sitting at a table, with a bunch of weird looking tools. A Tinker, obviously. He had what looked like a tattoo gun in one hand as he poked at it with a metal probe. Brad made a mental note to ask about him later.
  
  The neat guy led him up one of the ramps to the final cell. Brad saw the floor in front of it was littered with fragments of bone. Like a lion"s den- an indicator of the predator inside.
  
  The neat guy rapped his knuckles on the wall outside. There was a shuffling sound from inside, and then Marquis emerged.
  
  Like Brad, Marquis wore his hair long, down to his shoulders. However, he clearly put some effort into it, and his beard- both sets of hair looked well-groomed and sleek, a shade of brown darker than his eyes. His face was lined with age but otherwise unmarked, dominated by a strong nose. He was a little shorter and slimmer than Brad, but still plenty tall to everyone else.
  
  "Ah, Hookwolf," he said pleasantly in a rich, deep voice. "Thank you, Spruce, that will be all."
  
  The neat guy, Spruce, nodded and left without a word.
  
  Marquis gestured into his cell. "Drink?"
  
  Brad shrugged and pulled in his blades. He thickened the metal under his skin though, wrapping it around his muscles and his vitals. In his experience, metal beat bone.
  
  Then again, Allfather, Iron Rain and Kaiser used metal, and they hadn"t been able to take him out.
  
  Brad stepped in regardless, looking about. The place was pretty neat. There was a bookshelf sculpted out of bone, stacked with various titles and ornaments. Brad recognised Dickens, Steinbeck, and a couple of Stephen King novels. A small table was in the middle, made like the standard tables in the common area, along with two chairs.
  
  "How do you feel about tea?" Marquis said, opening a small box.
  
  "Not really my thing," Brad said.
  
  "Ah. Well, it"s a little early, but," Marquis opened another box, and extracted a bottle made of bone. He snapped the top off with ease and poured a bit into a goblet, also made of bone.
  
  "See what you think," he said, holding the cup out. Brad hesitated, then took it from his hands and sniffed.
  
  Alcoholic, definitely. Beer? He gave it a sip, swished it around his mouth, then swallowed. Not quite any beer he"d tasted, but pretty good.
  
  "What is this?"
  
  "Prison wine," Marquis said, dropping a tea bag into a pot and pouring hot water from a metal kettle. "And before you ask, I can assure you it wasn"t brewed in a toilet."
  
  Brad hadn"t been about to ask that, but it was reassuring. He took another sip. "Not bad."
  
  "I"ll pass your compliments on to Gastro. He can"t make a lot, but he"s quite proud of his work." Marquis shrugged and took a seat at the table, gesturing to the other. He continued as Brad sat, "It"s his livelihood, you see. His Tinker speciality doesn"t allow him to maintain the televisions, but it does allow him to do amazing things with edible substances."
  
  "How"d a cooking Tinker end up in here?" Brad asked.
  
  "Apparently he supplied enhancing concoctions to various criminal groups, then convinced them to turn on one another as part of some elaborate scheme to clear out the local underworld." Marquis poured some tea from the pot into a fancy looking cup.
  
  "And now he"s brewing prison wine."
  
  "As you have no doubt guessed, it didn"t go according to plan. Still, the man who makes the drinks enjoys a certain level of prestige. Or at least, the man who makes the good drinks- plenty try their hand at it. Wheresoever men are gathered together, someone will find something to distil in a kettle, boil in a boot, and sell to his friends."
  
  Marquis sipped his tea experimentally, made a hum of approval, then seemed to remember something. "A word of advice; never accept a drink from Lab Rat or any of his subordinates if you want to wake up the same shape in the morning."
  
  Brad pulled a face and swigged his drink. "Got it." He set the cup down. "So. Why"d you want to talk?"
  
  Marquis shrugged. "It"s been, what, ten years since I was sent here. I"m curious what happened to Brockton Bay in the years since then."
  
  Sounded like crap to Brad. There must have been other ways to stay up to date over the years- those TVs must have got the news. Still, he"d play along for a while. Maybe he could get something out of Marquis that he could use- a favour, or some info.
  
  "Well, I joined the Empire a few years after you ended up here. Did you know Challenger?"
  
  "Ah yes. Nice woman. Used an axe, and the biggest rifle I"ve ever seen."
  
  "Well, she"s dead. Went off to an Endbringer fight, didn"t come back."
  
  Marquis sighed. "A shame. A very fine figure of a woman, as I recall."
  
  Brad shrugged. "Couple of new gangs- bastard called Lung showed up in 2007, fought all the heroes at once and walked away. He turns into a dragon the longer he fights. He took over all the chink gangs, made them into one big gang. Called them the Azn Bad Boyz."
  
  "Impressive."
  
  "Allfather"s gone- you"re probably smug about that."
  
  Marquis simply sipped his tea. "How"d that happen?"
  
  Brad shrugged. "He got old, got slow." He"d save the details on that for later- if Marquis wanted the whole story, he could bargain for it.
  
  "Hmm. Well, I suppose time makes fools of us all."
  
  Marquis was starting to annoy Brad. The man either had the best poker face he"d ever seen, or he just didn"t care enough to react. If one of Brad"s longtime enemies had bit the dust, he"d have grabbed a couple of drinks and thrown a party.
  
  "How about the heroes?" Marquis asked. "I heard there was a man called Armsmaster in charge of the local Protectorate now. One of the big heroes."
  
  "Yeah. He"s a Tinker- got a suit of armour and a halberd. That"s-"
  
  "A mediaeval polearm, yes. What does it do?"
  
  Brad shrugged. "All kinds of crap. It"s got a grappling hook, a wrecking ball, collapsible metal cages. Plus it"s sharp as hell, and he can set it on fire for extra power."
  
  "Did you ever encounter him?"
  
  "Couple of times. He always had some new trick. Came close to beating me once."
  
  "He must be quite competent if you weren"t able to kill him."
  
  Brad snorted. "If I was trying to kill him, he wouldn"t be alive. Dead heroes aren"t worth the hassle."
  
  Marquis shrugged. "I killed a few heroes myself, during my time. There was a reaction, obviously, but they couldn"t really hate me much worse than they already did."
  
  Brad blinked. He"d killed a couple of do-gooders himself, but they were mostly the street level vigilantes who tried to mess with the Empire"s business, or that one woman who tried to break up his old fighting ring. People who the Protectorate didn"t much care about.
  
  The way Marquis was talking, he"d killed some of the bigger, important heroes; and he talked about it like it was no big deal.
  
  He talked about everything like it was no big deal, yet he"d invited Brad personally.
  
  "What do you really want to know?" Brad asked.
  
  Marquis paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. "I"m not sure what you mean."
  
  "You asked me here because you want to know about something specific," Brad said, growing bolder as some instinct told him he was on the right track. "You wouldn"t just invite the new guy into your own room just for some random gossip. There"s something bigger going on here. Quit dancing around the subject and ask, or I"ll just walk out of here." He took a long, slow sip of his drink, keeping eye contact with Marquis the whole time.
  
  Marquis smiled faintly and lowered his cup. "My daughter. Have you heard of her?"
  
  Brad paused. Then he set the cup down and swallowed. "Didn"t know you had a daughter."
  
  "Really? I would have thought Kaiser would have told you about it. There was an incident some years ago. Allfather swore he would kill my daughter in vengeance for me killing his."
  
  "Iron Rain," Brad murmured. He"d heard the name- Kaiser"s sister. More than once Kaiser had said he thought Brad would have got along with her. "That was you?"
  
  "Indeed. Allfather said he planned to wait until my daughter was of a similar age, so that I would love her as much as he loved his daughter- and murder her then, so I would know how he felt."
  
  That sounded like Allfather to Brad. The old bastard had always had a flair for the dramatic.
  
   Brad shrugged. "News to me."
  
  "My daughter"s name is Amelia," Marquis elaborated. "She would be- what year is it? 2010?"
  
  "2011." The question unsettled Brad. Did people in the Birdcage really lose track of time that bad?
  
  "She would be seventeen. If she had powers, they might have something to do with bone?" Marquis raised a hand, and a needle-thin spike of bone lanced out of the tip of his index finger, then retracted just as quickly. The torn skin sealed shut without any sign that it was ever cut.
  
  "Nope. Never heard of anyone in the Bay besides you who could do anything like that." Brad paused, then added, "Where"d you hide her, anyway? I would"ve thought ten years would be long enough for the heroes to find her, probably move her out of town."
  
  Marquis smiled as if Brad had made some great joke. "Ah, but the heroes are the ones I left her with. Are the Brockton Bay Brigade still active? Brandish, Lady Photon, Manpower, the rest of them?"
  
  Brad scoffed. "You mean New Wave? You left your daughter with the heroes that put you in here?"
  
  Marquis waved a hand. "That was the only time I lost a fight. It seemed best to put her with people who could protect her." His expression became thoughtful. "New Wave, though- odd to change their name like that."
  
  Brad"s eyebrows shot up. Then he started laughing. He pushed his chair back and slapped his hands down on the table, laughing so hard he could barely sit up straight. "Ah crap," he wheezed at last. "You really don"t know?"
  
  "Know what?" Marquis said, looking faintly annoyed.
  
  Brad straightened up and pulled his chair in again, leaning an elbow on the table. "New Wave," he said with a grin, "Is what those assholes called themselves after they unmasked."
  
  Marquis"s face visibly flickered. "You"re joking."
  
  "Nope!" Brad chuckled. "They went public- took their masks off, revealed their identities, preached a load of crap about accountability and transparency. And this whole time they"ve been keeping your daughter under wraps." The thought was so funny he started laughing again.
  
  Marquis knocked back the rest of his tea and set the cup down with a very deliberate clink. Brad stifled his chortling as Marquis rested his forearms on the table and sighed.
  
  "This is hardly what I had in mind when I asked them to protect her," Marquis admitted.
  
  Brad shrugged. "That"s what you get for expecting heroes to think."
  
  "Hm." Marquis got up to refill his cup from the pot.
  
  Brad gave him a long look, then decided to- ha- throw him a bone. "Her name"s Amy now."
  
  Marquis didn"t stop pouring, but he did turn slightly to listen to Brad.
  
  "Amy Dallon. Brandish and Flashbang are her parents- or at least they"re supposed to be. Guess it makes sense how their kid looks nothing like them."
  
  Marquis put the teapot down and carefully picked up his cup. It was a lot more full than last time- almost overflowing.
  
  "I mean, they"ve got another kid. Definitely theirs- she"s just as blonde as Brandish. But your girl..." Brad squinted at Marquis. He"d never seen Panacea up close, but he"d seen pictures. The nose and the brow were different, but the hair and eyes were the same colour. And something in the chin seemed to match.
  
  "So she"s a part of their family," Marquis said steadily, setting his cup down carefully. A drop of tea ran down the side. "I"m glad she"s doing well."
  
  Brad shrugged. "Guess so. Never met her myself." He scowled. "They didn"t bother to send me to her when I got caught."
  
  "Send you to her?" Marquis said curiously, picking his cup up.
  
  "She"s a healer," Brad said. "They call her Panacea. Big white robe with a red cross. They say she can fix damn near anything."
  
  A little more tea slopped over the side of Marquis"s cup. "A healer. Good God."
  
  "Yep. Fucking frustrating too. I tore Assault a new belly button last year. Next day the guy was back on his feet, because your girl fixed him back up good as new."
  
  Marquis smiled- and it wasn"t just a smile like he was trying to be pleasant. He actually looked impressed. "My word."
  
  Brad scowled. "Yeah, nice if you can get it."
  
  "So you weren"t given access to her healing before you were sent down here?" Marquis asked. "I did think it was unusual for someone to arrive here injured- usually they wait until a prisoner is in good health before dropping them in. Avoids them becoming an easy target, you see."
  
  Brad growled. "They must"ve hoped they could get me in here before I could talk. Surprised they didn"t just kill me."
  
  Marquis raised an eyebrow.
  
  Brad hesitated. He hadn"t told anyone yet. He figured people would just assume he was making the story up for some rep, or that he was crazy.
  
  Then again, Marquis was from the bad old days of Brockton Bay. He"d know all about the bitch. And it wouldn"t cost Brad anything to tell the guy. Info about his daughter was the valuable stuff.
  
  And frankly, he wanted to tell someone. He wanted someone to know that he didn"t get put in here because of a fair fight; that the only way the heroes had been able to beat him had been with one of the biggest monsters on the East Coast.
  
  Brad picked up his cup. "There"s this new hero. Calls herself Elpis. Got silver armour and a blue cape. She"s been running around like her ass is on fire, going after the gangs."
  
  Marquis tilted his head, but said nothing.
  
  "First she went after the Merchants. Fine by me, they were a bunch of crap anyway. Then she starts going after the other gangs, especially the Empire. She smashed up some of our holdings, captured some of our capes. Two of my guys, Stormtiger and Cricket- they"re both in prison now because of her."
  
  Marquis wordlessly picked up the bottle and refilled Brad"s cup. Brad took a swig and continued, his anger starting to build.
  
  "Then she goes after my dogfighting rings. And she"s not alone, no. It"s not even just her crappy sidekick, now she"s got a whole fucking team! Bunch of small-time thieves called the Undersiders. One of them was already fucking with my business, I didn"t expect all of them."
  
  Brad banged the cup down. "I came in, and I saw the little bastards gutting my place. They took the dogs, they took the money. And then Elpis jumped on me with a fucking," he waved a hand around, "A fucking rocket hammer!"
  
  "Then she pulled out a sword- and I mean a real sword, it was as long as she was tall- and starts hacking bits off me. I could see I wasn"t prepared for this, so I ran for the door, figured I"d fight another day.
  
  "And she fucking teleports! Right in front of me, and almost cuts me in two with that fucking sword!"
  
  Marquis hummed. "I assume that wasn"t a piece of technology she had demonstrated before."
  
  "It wasn"t tech," Brad snarled. "She was holding back the entire time. When Butcher XIV died and the new one didn"t show up, we all figured the freak was gone for good, halle-fucking-lujah. And it turned out Elpis was hiding all that power the entire time!"
  
  "Butcher XIV? My word. The highest I met was Butcher IV. I"d heard of Butcher VIII though. So they"re pretending to be a hero now?"
  
  Brad shrugged. "I don"t know what the fuck she"s doing. I mean, she fought against the Teeth, worked with the Protectorate- there was some shit about her visiting sick kids in the hospital. But she"s still the fucking Butcher. Maybe she"s just gone a different kind of crazy.
  
  "Anyway, she and the Undersiders hit me with just about everything- bugs, pain, anger, you name it. Then she just... just ripped all the metal off me, and started punching me into the ground." Brad stared into his drink. "I didn"t think I was going to wake up again."
  
  It wasn"t that Brad hadn"t thought about his own death. He"d hoped for something worthy- to go out atop a pile of his enemies in glorious battle. But having someone chop him to pieces and start punching his face in wasn"t what he had in mind. The last thing he"d seen before blacking out was a fist covered in his own blood coming right for him.
  
  Marquis set his cup down. "For what it"s worth, Butcher was always a damn difficult being to fight, even in the early days."
  
  "I know that. I fought XIV when she brought the Teeth back to town. Woman could hit like a truck. But I knew what I was getting into, I figured I could handle that. Fighting Elpis was like picking up a mouse and the damn thing shoots lasers out of its eyes."
  
  The two of them were silent for a while.
  
  "I"ll admit, this is concerning," Marquis said at last. "The Butchers have always been unstable, but in a predictable sort of way. They attack soft targets, terrorise the populace, and harm anyone who they think insults them. Acting like a hero is new, and rather unsettling."
  
  Brad polished off the last of his drink. "Damn right. Makes you wonder what the hell they"re going to do next."
  
  
  
  A small device in the corner of the cell, similar to a camera but far more advanced, focused on the conversation the two men were having. As dictated by its guiding program, it mindlessly recorded their words and actions, and saved it to an archive of surveillance footage for later study.
  
  Although the goings-on of the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre were not revealed to the general public, or even most of the Protectorate, they were still heavily monitored for breakout attempts, the deaths of inmates, and various other disturbances.
  
  The video was flagged as a significant conversation for later viewing. A few minutes later, the warden of the prison known as the Birdcage checked the video, and immediately opened communications with the head of the Protectorate ENE.
  
  "Colin?"
  
  Colin Wallis, better known as Armsmaster, turned away from the software program he was working on and gave a friendly smile towards the computer screen that had just switched on in his lab. "Dragon. Good to see you." He frowned. "Is something wrong?"
  
  The face on the screen was as serious as a heart attack. "I just heard something inside the Birdcage. We"ve got a problem."
  
  9.1
  Late Monday 4th April, Undersiders Lair, The Docks
  
  I"d hurried back to the lair as soon as Dad had fallen asleep, teleporting into the soundproof booth as soon as I got within range.
  
  Lisa opened the door for me the second the flames of Firecracker"s power died down. "Hey boss."
  
  "Hey," I said, stepping out and brushing myself down.
  
  The rest of the team were piled onto the couches, along with the dogs. Rachel was running a brush over Brutus" back, combing out loose hairs with uncharacteristic gentleness. There was a laptop open on the coffee table.
  
  "How are you guys doing?" I asked, leaning on the back of the couch. I"d checked them over once we got back from Weymouth Mall, but they"d had a couple of hours for the adrenaline to wear off and the fight to slot into memory.
  
  Brian looked up from the can of soda in his hands. "I still can"t believe Perdition shot at me. It"s not that bad," he added quickly, "Panacea healed me up fine, but... It"s a new experience."
  
  "Ballistic wasn"t exactly holding back either," Isabella muttered. "I could feel how fast those shots were going when they hit my storm."
  
  "I still feel kinda crispy," Tarquin chimed in.
  
  Rachel continued brushing Brutus down without a word. I noticed Angelica was flopped over one of her feet, dozing peacefully, her one and a half ears occasionally twitching.
  
  "Well, they are just kids," Anchorage shrugged.
  
  "On the bright side," Lisa pointed out, "The city loves us. I"ve been checking through PHO and news sites since we got back, and people are singing our praises."
  
  "Really?" Isabella asked.
  
  "Oh yeah." Lisa crossed over to the laptop and scrolled down on the trackpad. "We saved the hostages and kicked the crap out of the Travellers even with them being prepared for us. Lots of people appreciate that. Plus there"s lots of pictures of us talking with Panacea, Glory Girl and Dauntless- the healer, the flying princess, and the rising star of the Protectorate."
  
  Firecracker hummed. "Well shit, I guess we really are making this thing work."
  
  "It definitely helps that Uber and Leet were livestreaming the whole thing," Lisa added. "They took it down, but people saved copies, and they"re already making gifs and memes out of it. That body blow you gave Uber is doing the rounds."
  
  "So where do we go from here?" Brian asked, raising his drink to his lips.
  
  I wrapped my left fist in my right hand, cracking the knuckles one at a time as I thought. "The Travelers probably won"t poke their heads out for a while after this. They"ll want to recover, re-arm, wait for the heat to die down.
  
  "In the meantime, there"s the Empire and the ABB. Though to be honest, neither of those are good options. E88 hates our guts, and if the ABB haven"t booby-trapped all their locations with Tinker bombs, I"ll eat my own foot.
  
  "We need to come up with some new tactics, get some practice in. Today went alright, but there"s room for improvement."
  
  "Maybe practise advancing and retreating with cover," Tactical suggested. "Plus evacuating people. It"s not like that was something the Teeth ever did."
  
  "We did kidnap people a lot," Stoneknapper pointed out. "It"s broadly similar."
  
  "We could try another publicity thing," Lisa suggested. "Giving Ruby Dreams their money back got us some brownie points."
  
  "How much more money do we have to give away?" Rachel complained, lifting the brush from Brutus and carefully hauling him off her lap. A snap of her fingers summoned Judas from the side of the couch, and she started brushing him in turn.
  
  "I don"t know," I said honestly. "But it"s not like you guys have a lot of other options besides returning your loot or fighting villains. It"s not like you can walk into a hospital to visit sick kids; they"d just call the cops."
  
  I avoided looking at Rachel. I knew by now that she wasn"t as harsh as her reputation suggested, and I trusted her to have my back in a fight, but I wasn"t fully comfortable with the notion of leaving her with small children. I doubted she had the patience.
  
  "Maybe some investigative work?" Tattletale suggested. "Pass on some intel to the white hats, let them try to use it?"
  
  Tock Tick mentally snapped his fingers. "We forgot to get the scanner back from New Wave."
  
  "Huh." I"d forgotten about that. It was probably inoperable by now. Still, it wouldn"t be hard to fix up.
  
  Thinking about it, with Tattletale"s Thinker power, my bugs scouting, and the scanner, we could split into three and cover a lot of ground between us.
  
  "Search and destroy," Nemean purred.
  
  "There"s got to be some kind of community service thing we can do," Tarquin said. "I could clear up rubble and scrap, things like that. Maybe we could do something with the dogs- digging ditches or something."
  
  Rachel scowled at him. "You don"t decide what my dogs do," she snapped.
  
  "Touchy," Rotter said.
  
  "If you don"t want the dogs to do something, just say so," I said. "Besides, having them dig stuff up would be way less dangerous than a fight."
  
  Rachel"s expression didn"t soften, exactly; but it did loosen up slightly. "I guess."
  
  "Can"t imagine Grue"s stuff being friendly-looking," Bearskin pointed out. "What"s he going to do, shade little old ladies on hot days?"
  
  The mental image of Brian shading people on a beach was quite fun. Then it morphed into the image of Brian, on a hot beach, in nothing but swim trunks. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks.
  
  Clearing my throat and pushing down on the laughter and wolf whistles inside my head, I pushed forward. "Isa, can you think of anything your power could do outside of a fight?"
  
  Isabella shrugged and brushed some hair out of her face. "Dunno. I mean, I can pick stuff out of my storm. But I doubt there"s a big convenient pile of mixed crap waiting around for someone to sift through it."
  
  "Maybe you could sort recyclables," Lisa said with a cheery grin.
  
  "Oh! Idea!" Firecracker waved for my attention. "Idea here!"
  
  "Shoot."
  
  "Okay, so, the beach- don"t shut me down, I promise this is going somewhere."
  
  I paused mid-push, and grudgingly let Firecracker continue.
  
  "Okay, so even back in the day, people didn"t really walk on the beaches around here, right? Too much trash, used syringes, dead bodies- stuff like that. It"s a fucking health hazard."
  
  "Oh my, yes," Needler agreed. "Take ten steps barefoot and you"ve got tetanus at least."
  
  "But! If we get Whirlygig to work her way down the beach, sucking up the sand and filtering out all anything bigger than a grain of sand..."
  
  I whistled under my breath. "We"d turn the beach into a tourist attraction overnight."
  
  "Non-violent and thoroughly helpful. It"s a brilliant idea," Flinch said.
  
  "Thank you," Firecracker said cheerily.
  
  "We could probably find a bunch of valuables in there too," Stoneknapper pointed out. "I used to do some beachcombing- it"s amazing what people drop. Coins, earrings, watches, all sorts."
  
  "Hey guys?" I said out loud. "The Butchers have an idea for Isa; you could use your storm to clean up the beaches. Just take out the trash and leave the sand behind."
  
  Isa rubbed a hand over mouth, one finger flicking at her lip stud. "I could probably do that, yeah."
  
  "It"s risky," Brian countered. "If we wanted the credit, we"d have to do it during daytime, and the Boardwalk"s going to have more tourists as the weather warms up. If people see a bunch of villains walking around, using our powers near big crowds of civilians, the heroes"ll come down on us like a ton of bricks."
  
  "Well, Isabella would be the one doing most of the work," Lisa reasoned. "The rest of us could be on standby to run interference and make a getaway if anyone objects."
  
  "I mean, you guys are still wanted, and I think the PRT want to charge Taylor," Tarquin motioned to me. "But I don"t think I"ve got a rap sheet. I could probably hold them off while you guys leave."
  
  Brian patted him on the shoulder. "Appreciate the offer, but let"s save that for when we"re desperate. I can still throw out cover against most of them."
  
  "There will be more trash buried further down, either by time or by effort," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  "Like guys who couldn"t pay the loan shark," Quarrel snarked.
  
  "I could make some sort of plough to comb through the sand, dig out anything buried," I mused. "T can carry it in pieces, and then we put it together there." I turned to Rachel. "Would you be okay with the dogs pulling it?"
  
  She shrugged. "I guess. Depends how big it is."
  
  "I"ll let you know."
  
  Isabella raised a hand. "Hey, so, this plan seems like it"s going to be me doing most of the work while you guys stand by and watch. I want to get something out of this."
  
  "Fucking hell, they"ll be forming a union next," Butcher complained.
  
  "Don"t say union like it"s a dirty word," I told him. "What exactly do you want?"
  
  "A day off," Isabella said boldly. "Something for all of us out of costume. Like, a shopping trip. See a movie, get lunch, all that."
  
  The sheer mundanity of the request surprised me. I thought she would ask for a pay bonus or for me to make her some Tinkertech.
  
  Then again, it made sense. Isabella was the newest of the original Undersiders, the least experienced. Having a designated rest day after all the chaos was pretty reasonable.
  
  "It will be good for you all as a team," Muramasa pointed out. "To fight together forms bonds, but to drink together strengthens them."
  
  "Okay," I said. "How about this weekend? We could hit Lord"s Market, the Boardwalk, see if there"s any good films.
  
  "I"m not going," Rachel said, finishing Judas" brushing and letting him off her lap, much sleeker
  
  "What, you don"t want to spend time with us?" Tarquin asked.
  
  "They know my face, dumbass," Rachel said.
  
  "And she"s still wanted for murder," Tock Tick pointed out. "Bit of an inconvenience."
  
  "We could disguise you," I offered. "Do something with your hair, change your clothes-"
  
  "No."
  
  Lisa subtly shook her head. I took the hint. "Alright. We can grab you some stuff while we"re out if you like. There might be some chew toys for the dogs or something."
  
  Rachel frowned for a second. "No rawhide toys. Those can be bad for dogs."
  
  "Got it."
  
  
  
  Tuesday 5th April, Arcadia High School
  
  History with Mrs Howell was a drag. Somehow she made learning about the Russian Tsars and all their crazy shit boring. Even Butcher"s appreciation for Ivan the Terrible or Dirty Rotter making jokes about Catherine the Great wasn"t enough to make it amusing.
  
  Thankfully, I had a free period straight after that, so I could finish off the tedious homework and make a start on another project before the lunch bell rang.
  
   I was halfway down the hall when I spotted Callum coming out of a classroom as I passed.
  
  "Hey, wait up!" Callum called, swinging his satchel over his shoulder.
  
  I slowed my stride until he drew level with me. "Hey Callum."
  
  "Hi. So what"s new with you?"
  
  "Not a lot. Trying to plan something for the weekend. You?"
  
  Callum shrugged. "My little brother"s got a bunch of new swipe cards for his game, and he keeps bugging me to play with him."
  
  "Is that the one based on capes?"
  
  "Yup. He got Chevalier, Exalt, and some guy from England called King of Cups."
  
  "Right, The Suits. They"re all named after playing cards."
  
  "Never seen playing cards with cups on them."
  
  "It"s from the Tarot- the old version of cards. They had Swords, Staffs, Cups and Coins. The Suits use those plus the modern cards."
  
  "Huh. Well, thanks, I didn"t know that."
  
  Technically, neither did I. Bearskin had learned about it years ago while practicing card tricks- he"d even tried his hand at Tarot readings for a while.
  
  All the Butchers had unexpected little nuggets of knowledge like that; history, science, pop culture. Vladimir could rattle off names and dates from European history, Muramasa had followed baseball with a passion, and Tock Tick could sing a bunch of Animaniacs songs from memory for some reason.
  
  Today"s lunch was penne pasta in tomato sauce. I grabbed myself a bowl, along with garlic bread and, at Bearskin"s insistence, a chocolate pudding.
  
  Stacy waved us over to the usual table, Frankie and Tarquin already seated with her. "I"m sure you guys want to talk about the latest cape thing, so let"s just get it out of the way," she said without preamble. "Undersiders vs Travelers the other day. What have we heard?"
  
  "One of the Travelers pulled a gun and took a hostage to stop the Undersiders," Callum said, oddly serious. "I don"t think I"ve ever heard of villains doing something like that."
  
  "It"s nuts," Tarquin agreed. "From what I saw, none of the other villains knew Perdition was going to do that."
  
  "I found a video with sound, and he sounded crazy," Frankie said. "Like," she strummed her finger over her lips, making a cartoonish blub-blub-blub noise.
  
  "Yeah, and he actually shot one of the Undersiders; Grue. Lucky the guy was wearing armour, but that must have hurt like hell." Callum shook his head.
  
  "What hurt?" Amy asked, setting her tray down and sliding in next to me.
  
  "We were talking about the mall fight yesterday," I said. "Sorry if you didn"t want to hear cape talk."
  
  Amy shrugged. "I figured. None of the civilians were badly hurt, and I fixed everyone up just fine."
  
  Callum leaned forward. "Hey, you met the Undersiders, right? What"re they like?"
  
  "Is Grue hot?" Frankie asked with a grin.
  
  My jaw dropped. Tarquin buried his face in his hands.
  
  Amy picked up a fork. "Not my type." She stabbed a bit of pasta and added "But if big and burly is your type..."
  
  "Oh, it is," Frankie agreed.
  
  Amy snapped her fingers. "Right." She picked up her chocolate pudding- one of two she had on her tray, and slid it in front of me. "For yesterday," she said, going back to her pasta.
  
  Stacey clasped her hands together with a delighted look on her face. Tarquin raised an eyebrow suggestively.
  
  I quickly took the bowl before the moment dragged out any further. "Thanks."
  
  "How about the rest of the Undersiders?" Callum asked loudly, clearly trying to change the subject.
  
  Amy gave him a look. "I"m kind of surprised you get this keyed up about cape stuff, but you"ve never really asked me about New Wave."
  
  Callum shrugged awkwardly. "Feels weird to ask someone about their celebrity family. Besides, the Undersiders are the new thing right now."
  
  Amy popped her fork into her mouth and chewed for a second. "Well," she said eventually, "I"ve met Elpis and Ironclad before; they"re alright. Whirlygig seems kind of jumpy."
  
  "To be fair, she"d just come off a fight and hostage situation," Flinch pointed out.
  
  "Cerberus didn"t really talk much. Tattletale, on the other hand, just wouldn"t shut up."
  
  Anchorage burst out laughing.
  
  "So what is her power anyway?" Stacey said interestedly.
  
  "Seems to be figuring out secrets or weaknesses," Amy said nonchalantly. "She passed on a bunch of stuff to the PRT about the Travelers."
  
  "Man, that must be a bitch to fight," Frankie said. "You think you"re being all cool and mysterious, and then wham! Some blonde starts blabbing about all your embarrassing moments." She picked up a fry and added, "It"s like when Gran brings out the baby pictures."
  
  The table collectively snickered sympathetically.
  
  "Yeah, grandparents are like that," Tarquin said. "My granddad always tells the same jokes every time I see him. We get him joke books every Christmas, but he never gets the hint."
  
  "My grandparents have kind of a rivalry going on," Stacey added. "They don"t get crazy with Christmas presents, but there"s definitely comparing who got the better gift."
  
  My eyebrows drew together. "I"ve only got Gran. She"s down in New York. Never liked Dad much, so she mostly just sends cards."
  
  "Ouch," Frankie said.
  
  Amy shrugged. "I never met my grandparents. I never really thought about it. Having my cousins just down the street was always enough family for me."
  
  "My gran was lovely," Rotter reminisced. "I always got a biscuit every time I saw her."
  
  "No accounting for taste, I suppose," Needler sniped.
  
  While the argument in my head grew, I focused on the table. "Changing the subject, does anyone know if there"s going to be any good movies this weekend?"
  
  "I think there"s a new Planet of the Apes film coming out," Frankie said. "It"s an Aleph film too."
  
  "Sweet. I"m always down for monkey movies," Firecracker said.
  
  "Apes," Tactical corrected.
  
  "Whatever."
  
  
  
  Late Tuesday 5th April, Hebert House
  
  "Hey Dad, is it okay if I go out with some friends on Saturday?"
  
  Dad paused halfway through cutting his fish. "Friends from school, or your other friends?"
  
  "Other friends. We were going to walk around the Market, maybe see a movie."
  
  Dad frowned. "I don"t know. It"s only been a few days since bombs were going off. I"m not sure I"m comfortable with you going out on your own again."
  
  "Not another weekend on the couch," Stoneknapper groaned.
  
  "But I won"t be on my own," I pointed out. "I"ll be in a group, and we"ll be in one of the biggest, safest places in the city. I"ll be okay, I promise."
  
  Dad rubbed his chin. "I suppose," he said reluctantly. He pointed a finger. "I want you to try and check in a couple of times, let me know how you"re doing."
  
  "Uh. I don"t know how many payphones there are around there. I could borrow Lisa"s phone again-"
  
  "About that," Dad said uncomfortably. "I think..." He visibly steeled himself. "I think it"s time we get you a cellphone."
  
  I blinked. "Really?"
  
  "Yes. I still don"t... I don"t think I"ll ever like them, but they"re useful. It"s better if you can call me yourself in an emergency instead of having to borrow someone else"s."
  
  Nemean grunted. "Past time he got around to it," she said, though not unkindly.
  
  "Okay," I said, still a little surprised that Dad was willing to bend on this. Ever since Mom died, neither of us had really wanted anything to do with cellphones. It was inconvenient, awkward, and sometimes downright antisocial, but it was just something we did.
  
  I attempted a joke. "I promise I won"t spend all my time running up a phone bill talking to my friends."
  
  Dad smiled a little. "That"s actually one teenage stereotype I wouldn"t mind seeing. I"m glad you"ve got more friends to talk to."
  
  "This is so saccharine my fangs are going to rot," Vladimir groused.
  
  "You never had fangs, you poser!" Bearskin retorted.
  
  I pushed them down a little so I wouldn"t be laughing in front of Dad. "Thanks, Dad. I"m pretty happy about it too."
  
  "You know, if you want," Dad said, poking at his fish again, "You could have some of your friends around here for a party or a sleepover, something like that."
  
  I briefly considered my dad meeting the Undersiders, and quickly resolved to avoid that as hard as possible. "That sounds fun," I said with a straight face. "I went round to Stacy"s last time- maybe she and Frankie could come here."
  
  Dad nodded. He"d briefly met the two of them when he was picking me up after our previous sleepover. "Sure- they seem like nice people."
  
  "God, sleepovers and shopping trips," Butcher complained. "We need some fucking action."
  
  "You had a huge fight just yesterday," I retorted. "And I need this. I"m going to have some quiet downtime without any cape nonsense."
  
  Quarrel sneered. "When everything goes to shit, don"t forget that I told you so."
  
  9.2
  Late Wednesday 6th April, Downtown
  
  Making the plough for our plan to clean up the beach hadn"t taken more than a few hours last night, and the Undersiders and I had brainstormed ideas for new tactics in between watching B-movies and eating takeout.
  
  I"d also sent off a text message to New Wave asking them to return the sonic scanner so I could repair it, which left me with little else to do but wait.
  
  Rather than let my free time go to waste, I decided to go out and do some hunting solo, starting from the stroke of midnight.
  
  I"d decided against going out as Elpis, so instead I"d pulled out the box of moulded glass and a spare hoodie I"d bought at a thrift store, and hit the streets as Cullet for the first time in over a month. A thick green visor covered my face, and my hands were encased in glassy gauntlets.
  
  There were limitations to it- less weapons, and I couldn"t be seen using my bike or the chariot. But it let me use Stoneknapper"s power freely, and more importantly, it let me act in a way that wouldn"t be connected to Elpis.
  
  The Empire and the ABB were both creeping into the unoccupied parts of Coil"s old territory, and now they were almost at the point where their new borders would meet. My plan was to get in between them and see if I could intervene before they started causing chaos.
  
  "I still think you could use more spikes," Bearskin insisted as I sprinted across a rooftop.
  
  "If I need more spikes, I"ll grow more spikes," I countered, leaping across the gap to another building. "I don"t want to hurt someone by accident."
  
  I kept up my scan of the surrounding area as I moved- insects to monitor around me, and bloodsight to check for people. As expected, there was very little going on at oh-dark-thirty on a weekday.
  
  Except, as I paused at an intersection too wide for me to jump, I caught a flash of red at roof level.
  
  "Hero?" Vladimir asked at once.
  
  I dropped into a crouch to make myself less visible, watching for- there. A flash of red as something dark landed on a rooftop and ran across. When they reached the edge of the rooftop, they disappeared from bloodsight, and a dark blur leapt across the gap in a high, wide arc.
  
  "Breaker," Tactical said immediately.
  
  "Could be a Changer," Needler said in a tone that implied she believed Tactical"s words more than her own.
  
  "How many people are there in the city with a dark Breaker state?" Flinch pointed out. "It must be Shadow Stalker, out on patrol."
  
  I didn"t have Stoneknapper"s level of precision, but a little bit of fizzing power pushed into the green glass visor flexed its surface just enough to act as a telescope. The view in front of me zoomed in, enough for me to clearly make out the dark cloak, twin crossbows, and the scowling mask.
  
  A second later, the mask turned towards me, and one of the crossbows came up. Somehow, Shadow Stalker had spotted me.
  
  "Good instincts," Nemean praised.
  
  "Or maybe it"s "cos we"re all shiny like a bloody Christmas bauble," Rotter countered.
  
  I wasn"t sure how to feel about her any more. On the one hand, she was a hero- government-approved, certainly more legitimate than me. I"d met her, and while she"d seemed a bit callous, that wasn"t a dealbreaker.
  
  On the other hand, the Butchers had sensed a lot of anger from her, and Brian had told me about her inexplicable hatred for him, her persistent attempts to take him down, and the scar on his back from the broadhead arrow she"d hit him with.
  
  "Good chance to find out," Anchorage suggested.
  
  Shadow Stalker was still pointing the crossbow at me, so before she could draw the wrong conclusion, I raised a hand and waved as cheerfully as I could. Shadow Stalker"s surprise was evident in her body language.
  
  A second later, she took a running start and leapt towards me, flickering into her shadow state as she pushed off. The leap carried her over the intersection to gently touch down just inside the edge of the roof, a few feet from me, with her crossbow up and ready.
  
  "Now that was pretty cool," Anchorage said.
  
  "Are you going to fight me?" she growled.
  
  Butcher burst out laughing.
  
  I reshaped some of the glass over my mouth, adding folds and hollow spaces inside. When I spoke, my voice came out with a kind of reverb, hopefully enough to disguise it. "Don"t worry, I"m a hero too. Name"s Cullet."
  
  "The hell"s a cullet?"
  
  "It"s what you call waste bits of glass that you melt down to recycle." I raised my hands and drummed my fingertips against my palms, producing musical little clinks as the segments chimed against each other.
  
  I also directed some bugs to cling to the folds of her cloak, and at the back of her hood. I didn"t think I"d need to track her, but it might be handy. Better safe than sorry and all that.
  
  Shadow Stalker shrugged and tucked the crossbow back into its holster. "Okay, new word. So what, you got your costume out of people"s recyclables?"
  
  "Yeah."
  
  Shadow Stalker paused, apparently confused. "Okay... So what"re you doing out here? I don"t like people staring at me while I"m working."
  
  "I"m guessing the same as you- looking for bad guys to ruin their night."
  
  Shadow Stalker barked a laugh. "Okay, I like that. You find anything yet?"
  
  "Nah. You?"
  
  A shrug. "Not yet." She looked me up and down. "What even is your power, anyway?"
  
  I held up a hand, and reshaped the glass into studded knuckles, then claws, then a hook. My other hand went to the armour piece on my thigh and pulled a piece off, stretching it into a baton, flattening it out to make a sword, curling that up into a rose, which curled up into a ball and then widened into a small shield.
  
  "Very nice," Stoneknapper said.
  
  Shadow Stalker cocked her head, then shrugged. "Okay. You can tag along if you want, but I"m not slowing down for you. I seriously need to blow off some steam right now."
  
  Without another word, she turned and leapt, shifting into her Breaker state as she took off. This close, I could see the suggestion of bones inside the shadowy figure, and see how she timed her transformation so that she used the force from her normal body to push the lower mass of her Breaker state.
  
  I also got something weird from the bugs on her. When she shifted into shadow, I lost the positions of the bugs. I could still feel them in my range, and get some sort of sensation from them, but if I wasn"t looking at her, I wouldn"t be able to tell what direction or distance they were.
  
  "Well, don"t just stand there gawking," Quarrel snapped.
  
  I pulled my glass in close to my body and hopped off the edge of the roof, catching a ledge halfway down to break my fall, then dropping the rest of the way to the ground. I rolled as I landed, came up sprinting into a jump, and scaled the opposite building in about a second.
  
  Shadow Stalker was waiting, one hand on her cocked hip. "Not bad," she said carelessly. "Now let"s see your endurance."
  
  She broke into a sprint, skipping around an air conditioner unit. I followed, hurdling the unit and trailing after her.
  
  She must have had a lot of practice- she dodged around, over and through obstacles with ease, arms swinging and knees pumping like she was trying out for the track team.
  
  Still, I was no slouch either. Long legs and super strength let me keep pace, my bugs mapped out the terrain in advance for me, and the Butchers" collective experience in rooftop manoeuvres let me thread the needle between the clutter.
  
  Shadow Stalker glanced back over her shoulder at me following her, and then snapped her head back around. She accelerated, throwing herself across a gap in a flicker of darkness.
  
  Too wide for me to jump straight- but it was an avenue. I dropped down into the branches of a tree, jumped to the middle of the street to another tree, and flung myself up the wall without losing speed.
  
  Shadow Stalker was already on the other side of the roof, hopping across the gap.
  
  "Man, what"s up her ass?" Firecracker asked.
  
  "She"s angry," Nemean said, like she had the first time we"d met her. Not angry right this moment; angry all the time, as a baseline emotion.
  
  That set the standard for the next 20 minutes or so. Shadow Stalker would run ahead, using her shadow form to slip through objects and leap impossible gaps, and I would follow, dodging problems without seeing, leaping down drops and clawing my way back up. And every time, Shadow Stalker would look back, like she was gauging the distance between us.
  
  We all wondered how she would react if I made an effort to overtake her. Firecracker"s teleport itched in my mind, but I might not even need it.
  
  Something scraped at the edge of my senses.
  
  I slowed down, focusing on the insects in one alleyway. I couldn"t really see or hear through insects, but I could make out some sounds, some rapid movements.
  
  I moved the flies around to try and get a clearer picture while I changed direction. They bumped into brick walls, a metal dumpster, fabrics, and skin.
  
  Multiple people crowded around one person. Sweat and blood.
  
  "Finally," Butcher growled.
  
  Shadow Stalker"s tracker bugs turned back towards me- she must have looked back and spotted me. I didn"t slow down, even when she landed beside me.
  
  "Heard something," I grunted, shifting around some of the glass on my body, creating reinforcements and preparing weapons.
  
  "You better be right," Shadow Stalker muttered as we reached the edge of the alleyway and looked down.
  
  Four against one. Two of them had the victim"s arms pinned against the wall, while the other two were standing back. One of them was tossing a ball in his hand and catching it.
  
  The four were all Asian, and wearing bandanas.
  
  "It seems we have found the new border," Muramasa stated.
  
  "See, the thing is, we don"t actually know what this does. So what we"re gonna do," said the guy with the ball, "Is we"re gonna shove this in your mouth and put some tape over it. Then we"re going to let you see if you can get it out before it goes off. If you do, you win the grand prize, and you get to live. If you don"t, we"ll post it on Youtube and let Bakuda know about her latest experiment."
  
  "Bakuda," Tock Tick swore.
  
  "Okay, but after we save this guy, can we actually find out what the bomb does?" Dirty Rotter asked.
  
  Shadow Stalker crouched and drew her crossbows. "Not bad, new kid," she whispered.
  
  I moulded studs on my knuckles and some blunt hooks on my forearms. "You get the guys holding his arms, I"ll get the other two," I whispered back, separating some of the glass on my palm into a disc.
  
  "Wait a sec-"
  
  I didn"t hear whatever Shadow Stalker said next; I"d already jumped off the edge, flicking the glass disc out of my hand like a throwing star. Quarrel"s power guided it to smash into the grenade mid-air and send it rattling down the alleyway.
  
  The guy with the grenade and his partner, who had his bandanna covering one eye, yelped and spun around as I landed behind them.
  
  I lashed out with silat, kicking the grenade guy in the kneecap and punching the other in the sternum. Grenade guy toppled over, howling as he clutched his knee, while the bandanna guy staggered backward and fell on his ass.
  
  The other two dropped the victim"s arms and pulled out knives. Without their support, the victim crumpled to the ground, groaning.
  
  "Oh please," Bearskin sneered.
  
  I rolled my eyes, ready for Shadow Stalker to hit the two idiots with tranq arrows.
  
  Shadow Stalker didn"t so much as twitch.
  
  "Oh, that bitch," Firecracker said as the two men came at me.
  
  I caught the first stab on my arm and twisted my wrist to catch it with the hooks. The goon pulled back before I could finish the motion, stabbing at my face.
  
  The other guy went for my stomach at the same time, so I stepped back and brought a knee up, smashing the knife aside with the glass armour under my pants. A bob of the head let me dodge the first knife; then I whipped my head forward to crash into his wrist.
  
  The goon howled, and I stepped forward into a kick to his side and a punch at the other guy, who reared away from it. First guy grunted as the kick connected, and a hammerblow to the jaw took him down.
  
  Three down, one to go. The guy backed away, dropping the knife as I advanced. Then he reached around to the small of his back-
  
  Three of his friends on the ground, me still standing- the victim!
  
  I threw myself to the side as the last guy whipped a pistol out of his waistband and started firing wildly, curling myself over the victim"s body and shielding him with my own. The gunman managed to focus his last two shots at me, and they crashed into my shoulder and spine with the sounds of shattered glass. The victim yelled in fear beneath me.
  
  As soon as I heard the click of an empty chamber, I leapt to my feet, Stoneknapper"s fizz soaking into the glass on my body and sealing up the cracks. The bullets were pushed out to tinkle on the ground as I sprouted spikes from my shoulders and raised my fists.
  
  An arrow thudded into the guy"s chest, knocking him over. He screamed in panic, one hand going to the shaft, but drooping before he was even able to get a grip.
  
  "We really need to get more tranquilisers," Tactical said as the guy went limp. "Damn useful stuff."
  
  Shadow Stalker drifted down to the ground, light as a feather. "Sorry about that," she said nonchalantly.
  
  "I thought we agreed you"d tranq those guys," I said, annoyed. I stooped to grab the gun off the ground- a cheap revolver, poorly maintained- and stuck it to my leg with a bit of shaped glass wrapped around it.
  
  "Check on the victim," Flinch reminded me. I turned to check the guy with bloodsight; a lot of bruises, but his heart was beating strong.
  
  "You alright?" I asked, putting my hand by his mouth. The glass on my palm quickly fogged up with his breath.
  
  ""nk you," the man managed, shifting slightly to hug his ribs.
  
  "No, you said I should tranq those guys, then jumped before I could say anything," Shadow Stalker said, stabbing bolts into the remaining thugs as they groaned on the ground, quickly knocking them out. "I was going to say we should wait in case they said something else, or got distracted and gave us an opening."
  
  "She"s got you there," Needler pointed out mildly.
  
  "Still could have shot them," Tactical pointed out. "I reckon she just wanted to see you fight."
  
  I huffed, but didn"t pursue the argument. "Fine." I made to pick the gunman up, then paused. "Is it safe to take the arrow out?"
  
  "Yeah, go for it. It"s got some kind of safety so it can"t give them an overdose or hit anything vital."
  
  I carefully plucked the arrow out, then hauled the gunman"s limp form over my shoulder in a fireman"s carry. "How long are they going to be out?"
  
  Shadow Stalker shrugged. "Like an hour. It depends how much they"ve had, how tough they are. But these bolts are top quality. They could even knock out a Brute with a full dose."
  
  "Shit, that"s good."
  
  "That"s what Armsmaster tells me anyway. They don"t let me anywhere near the big villains to try." Shadow Stalker slotted the bolts back into the cartridges on her forearms, and raised a finger warningly. "Word of advice- you want to see some real action, don"t join the Wards. It"s the kiddie table for capes."
  
  "Is it really that bad?" I asked, setting the gunman down next to the other goons.
  
  Shadow Stalker snorted as she pulled zipties out of a pouch on her belt. "It is. It"s all Public Relations and talking to kids at schools, console duty and lectures about appropriate force." She quickly bound the goons at the wrists and ankles. "Can"t wait until I"m done with it."
  
  I frowned as I went to check on the victim. Now that I was focusing on him, I could see he was bigger than I"d thought- a burly man with a huge brown beard and a leather jacket. He didn"t seem to be concussed, just severely winded from a hard beating.
  
  I noticed a patch on his shoulder as I leaned back, and peered at it. The lighting was poor, but after a second I made out the pattern- an old-fashioned highwayman, like Dick Turpin, in black and white. Underneath it was the legend Brigands M.C.
  
  "The Brigands," Butcher said in surprise. "I didn"t know they were still kicking."
  
  The Brigands were a biker gang from back in the 90s and 00s- small potatoes, no capes to speak of. The worst they did was some violence and low-level drug deals. Butcher had hoped to join them at one point when he was young, and had been planning on saving up to buy a bike and earn a patch.
  
  "Sir?" I asked, holding a couple of fingers up. "How many fingers do you see?"
  
  The biker managed to raise his head and peer at my hand. "Two?"
  
  "That"s good- you don"t seem to have a concussion. Can you tell us what happened?"
  
  The biker coughed a bit and sat up. "Bastards jumped me. Said this was their turf now, and I had to pay the white guy tax." He sneered at that. "Assholes."
  
  "Kinda surprised you didn"t fight back," Shadow Stalker said noncommittally, leaning back against the wall with her arms folded.
  
  The biker scowled and shifted. "Four on one ain"t good odds. I landed a few, but then they got my arms."
  
  "Well, they"re dealt with now." I offered a hand. "Do you want help getting up, or are you okay sitting?"
  
  The biker took my hand, grunting in surprise as I easily pulled him to his feet. "Thanks," he muttered, gingerly bending down to brush some dirt off his knees.
  
  Something fell out of his jacket and fell to the ground; A clear plastic bag filled with white powder.
  
  There was a pregnant pause.
  
  "That"s... not mine?" The biker tried.
  
  Anchorage burst out laughing. "Gotta give him points for trying."
  
  Shadow Stalker leapt forward, swinging a fist. The punch landed right on his nose, and the biker fell back with a shout and a spurt of blood from his nostrils.
  
  She followed up with a kick to his stomach, doubling him over, and then drew her crossbow.
  
  I slapped it aside. "What the hell is your problem?" I demanded, forcing myself between them.
  
  "Little shitstain," Anchorage seethed. This situation was half a step from police brutality, and that was a surefire way to anger her.
  
  "Me?" Shadow Stalker asked incredulously. "He"s a fucking drug dealer!"
  
  "He"s already had the shit kicked out of him, and you"ve got tranquilisers. You don"t need to keep hitting him."
  
  "Fucking nose," the biker groaned, slumping against the wall and flinching as he touched his squashed-looking nose. Blood was rapidly soaking into his beard.
  
  "Wise up, kid- they don"t learn if you"re soft on them. We beat up the bad guys- that"s the whole fucking point of being a hero."
  
  "That is basically what you"ve been doing," Stoneknapper pointed out.
  
  "I don"t think Taylor"s ever kicked someone while they"re down," Vladimir countered.
  
  I glared at her for a moment, then stepped aside. "Just tranq him and leave him be."
  
  Shadow Stalker tossed her head, like she was rolling her eyes under the mask. "Fucking fine." She shot a bolt into the biker"s thigh without another word. He yelped and then flopped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
  
  "Great," Shadow Stalker snorted, holstering the crossbow. "Not a single other hero in this city who"s not a pain in my ass."
  
  "Sure you"re not just being a bitch?" I retorted, stepping forward to lay the guy on his side.
  
  "Ooh, cape catfight," Rotter said gleefully.
  
  "Hey," Nemean warned as I finished putting the biker in the recovery position so he didn"t drown in his own blood.
  
  "Shut it," Shadow Stalker snapped, pulling a phone out of her pocket. "I"m calling this in."
  
  "Christ, what a little asshole," Quarrel cursed as Shadow Stalker called for police to come and take the guys in.
  
  "She wasn"t this bad the first time we met her," Tock Tick muttered.
  
  "Yeah, but that was in broad daylight with Triumph standing right next to her. Plus she was talking to the popular hero Elpis, not some schmuck wearing old bottles." Bearskin shrugged. "Guess this is what she"s like when she"s not trying to be nice."
  
  Shadow Stalker ended the call. "Cops"ll be here in a couple minutes. You can go."
  
  I looked at her, then at the prone, unconscious bodies. "I think I"ll wait a few minutes, just in case," I said flatly. I directed bugs to set up a perimeter at the edge of my range for an early warning.
  
  Shadow Stalker huffed. "Whatever." She leaned back against the wall, arms folded, deliberately not looking at me.
  
  Going through their phones with her right next to me was out of the cards. I fiddled with my glass for a second, drawing out patterns and symbols. I felt like I was forgetting something-
  
  "The grenade!" Firecracker shouted.
  
  I jolted, snapping my head around. Bugs crawled across the ground in a grid pattern, trailing lines of silk between them. In a second, I found where the grenade had rolled into the shadows, and strode over to pick it up.
  
  The grenade looked a bit more polished than the ones I"d seen before- instead of uneven cylinders made out of sheet metal or soda cans, this was a smooth sphere of metal, a small seam around the middle, and a red button on top, protected by a clear plastic cap. 399 was drawn on the side in red marker.
  
  As much as I hated to agree with Dirty Rotter, I kind of wanted to find out what the grenade did. After all, I might be facing it some day. However, considering the other stuff Bakuda"s tech had reproduced, a narrow alleyway full of prone bodies was absolutely the wrong place to try.
  
  "Hey," I said reluctantly, crossing back over.
  
  Shadow Stalker turned her head. "What?"
  
  I held out the grenade. "You should probably take this back with you. Let a Tinker look at it."
  
  Shadow Stalker glanced down at the grenade. For a brief second I saw something flicker in the eyeholes of her mask. Then she shrugged and took the grenade, tucking it into a pouch. "Fine. I"ll pass it on."
  
  "What did your mask do just now?"
  
  "Hm? Tinker stuff. Helps me with the phasing," she said. "See where I"m going."
  
  "I wonder if all the Wards are so well equipped," Muramasa mused.
  
  "Cool. Armsmaster"s stuff?"
  
  "Mm."
  
  "Well, at least there"s one other hero you can put up with," I said.
  
  Shadow Stalker snorted. "Guy does good work, gives me some tech- I can respect that. Still doesn"t mean I like him. Guy"s got a stick up his ass the size of a telephone pole."
  
  "And none of the Wards?" I asked, now morbidly curious. "You don"t like them either?"
  
  "Nah. They just go on and on about clothes and dating and movies, like we don"t have a fucking job to do."
  
  "New Wave?"
  
  "The same. At least I don"t have to see them as much."
  
  I decided to indulge myself. "What about Elpis and the Undersiders?"
  
  "God, you"re like those people who google themselves," Quarrel said with a laugh.
  
  Shadow Stalker pushed herself off the wall. "You want to know something? I actually did used to think Elpis was cool."
  
  "Oh, I don"t like where this is headed," Flinch muttered.
  
  "And then she went and pulled in the Undersiders, acting like they"re fucking heroes! Especially fucking Grue. I"ve been trying to nail that bastard for months, and now people are acting like he"s not a total piece of shit!"
  
  "I mean, they did help take out Hookwolf," I began.
  
  "So fucking what? They"re still a bunch of freaks."
  
  "You"re not going to... hunt them down or something, right?"
  
  Shadow Stalker kicked the ground. "I fucking wish. Piggy"s got us all ordered away."
  
  "Piggy?" I asked, confused.
  
  "Director Piggot. Big fat bitch in charge. Says we"re supposed to avoid the Undersiders for now. Some kind of investigation."
  
  "...what?"
  
  Tactical hissed between his teeth. "The beginning of the end," he said ominously.
  
  "Yeah, they"re not giving us the details. Just that we"re not supposed to go near them "unless explicitly ordered to". Armsie got some kind of tip-off about them, so the Protectorate"s trying to dig up dirt on them."
  
  Butcher"s laugh was deep and unpleasant. "It was never going to last forever, girly," he said smugly.
  
  "What kind of dirt would they even need to dig up?" Needler asked. "The Undersiders are publically known villains, for god"s sake. Bitch is still wanted for murder!"
  
  "Yeah," Dirty Rotter agreed, "the only ones who don"t have a rap sheet are Ironclad and... Oh,"
  
  "Fuck," Anchorage said succinctly.
  
  "Hey, hang on a second," Stoneknapper interrupted. "It can"t be that bad, right? If they knew we were in here, they wouldn"t be trying to investigate quietly, they"d be calling in reinforcements."
  
  "Do..." I cleared my throat and tried again. "Do you know what they"re looking for?"
  
  Shadow Stalker snorted. "Fuck if I know. And I don"t care. I just hope they find it and get them out of my way."
  
  Not helpful. I couldn"t really expect much more- I"d been lucky that Shadow Stalker had been willing and able to tell me this much.
  
  It struck me as vaguely funny that I was getting valuable intel from a disgruntled teenager who wanted to vent about how she disliked her coworkers.
  
  Movement from my insects; tyres moving over the asphalt. Some of the insects caught flashing lights.
  
  "Sure feels like a cop car," Bearskin said.
  
  "Not before time," Vladimir said. "We should cut tonight short- this information requires careful planning."
  
  "Yeah, talking this over with the Undersiders sounds really fucking good right now," I admitted. I wasn"t sure if they"d have any ideas of how to proceed, but at least I wouldn"t be alone with it.
  
  I waited until I could hear the police approaching with my own ears to visibly react. "Sounds like company."
  
  Shadow Stalker pushed herself upright with the bare minimum of effort. "Alright. I"ll get these guys bagged. You can take off," she said generously. "Maybe we can team up again some time."
  
  I gave her a long look. "Maybe" I said neutrally. Saying "hell no" to her face would have just caused problems. "I"ll help you get these guys loaded."
  
  Flashing lights flared down the alleyway as the police wagon pulled up. I saw the officer in the passenger seat staring wide-eyed out the window.
  
  "Mind his ribs," Flinch warned me as I went to pick up the biker.
  
  "Right, thanks," I replied, changing my grip. Instead of throwing him over my shoulder, I slipped my hands under his shoulders and knees and deadlifted him in a bridal carry.
  
  The cops had stepped out of the police wagon- they seemed astonished as I walked out of the alleyway. "This guy got jumped by the other four," I said without preamble. "No signs of a concussion or broken bones, but he could definitely use a check-up. His nose is broken too- I think the bleeding"s stopped, but probably better make sure he won"t choke.
  
  "Uh, yeah," the man from the passenger seat said, scratching his head. "If you could set him in the back?"
  
  His partner guided me around to the back of the wagon, where a medic sitting in the back helped me strap him in and reset his nose. The tranquilisers impressed me again, because he didn"t even twitch in his sleep.
  
  "Nice work," she said once we"d got him secured.
  
  It took maybe another minute to get the ABB goons secured as well, and another minute after that for me to give a statement as Cullet. The male officer seemed a bit awestruck by me and Shadow Stalker.
  
  Finally, I turned away to the wall, sprouted claws from my fingertips, and dug them into the brickwork, starting to climb.
  
  "Hang on," Stoneknapper said, making a request.
  
  I paused halfway up the wall. "By the way," I said, turning back to the cops and Shadow Stalker, "When my name goes in the report, it"s spelled C-u-l-l-e-t."
  
  Once the male officer nodded, I threw myself up to the top of the wall and over, sprinting away to the Docks.
  
  I needed to get back to the Lair. I needed to pass this information onto the others, especially Lisa, and see what we could do about it.
  
  And if the worst case scenario was really, finally happening...
  
  I was going to need to start preparing for the end of things. To run, to disappear, or to fight.
  
  I still wasn"t sure which option I would choose.
  
  9.3
  Morning of Friday 8th April, The Boardwalk
  
  "This is Quinn Calle, attorney at law. He specialises in criminal defence, especially parahuman cases."
  
  The man displayed on Tattletale"s phone screen was Latino, handsome and well-groomed; slick-backed dark hair and shaped eyebrows, long eyelashes and a cleft in his chin. Incongruously, a scar stretched from one nostril to his cheekbone- it was puckered around the edges like a burn.
  
  "I suppose one of his clients did that," Muramasa noted.
  
  "Just makes him more sexy," Firecracker purred. "I"d like to get in his briefs."
  
  "You think he"s worth a shot?" I asked, handing Tattletale"s phone back.
  
  "I"d say he"s our best shot," Tattletale confirmed, tucking the phone back into her belt. "He"s represented villains before- worse than the Undersiders. Ever heard of Bambina?"
  
  I frowned inside my helmet. The name vaguely rang a bell. "I want to say Las Vegas?"
  
  "Oh yeah," Dirty Rotter said. "I think she"s that one who"s stuck looking like a kid. Shitty luck- anyone who wants to shag you is either a kiddy or a kiddy fiddler."
  
  "My heart bleeds," Quarrel sneered. "At least she can masturbate."
  
  "Quarrel, can you not?" I asked.
  
  "We haven"t got laid," Quarrel seethed, "IN FOUR FUCKING MONTHS!"
  
  I silently conceded the point, even as I pushed her down a bit.
  
  "Plus members of the Elite, and there was this one guy called Conglomerate-"
  
  "I know who that is," I cut her off with a grimace. "I don"t need the details."
  
  Shadow Stalker"s helpful little gossip the other night had set us all on edge. The PRT might just be investigating me for my various acts of bending the law, or to get leverage on the Undersiders through me.
  
  Unfortunately, if they really started digging, they could probably figure out I was a lot more than a heroic Tinker who"d just popped up out of nowhere.
  
  Once I"d told the Undersiders, we"d hashed out our plans. Grue and I had considered cancelling our community service plan and laying low. Tattletale had countered that more good publicity could be critical to keeping the authorities from actively trying to haul us in.
  
  Whirlygig had chimed in that she"d actually been looking forward to the beach. Cerberus was indifferent to the whole thing.
  
  Ironclad had unfortunately not been able to come along- while I had a free period first thing that let me sneak out of Arcadia, he was stuck learning Geography.
  
  So the Undersiders and I were working our way up the beach, Cerberus leading Judas and Angelica in dragging a plough I"d assembled from sections, and Whirlygig following behind, looking like the world"s biggest dust devil.
  
  "Man, we should give her some sand to fight with," Butcher said. "She could fucking sandblast people to the bone!"
  
  I grimaced at the thought, even as I watched Whirlygig shoot a stream of accumulated garbage into the steel bin that was being dragged along by Brutus. Grue gave her a thumbs-up from Brutus"s saddle, and I made out Whirlygig returning the gesture through the sandstorm around her.
  
  The cleanup was going better than I"d expected. We"d got started early, tearing our way along the shoreline, Whirlygig building up momentum and gradually getting the hang of filtering out anything bigger than a grain of sand. The sand behind her was visibly smoother and cleaner than the greyish mess ahead of us.
  
  In addition, the public were taking notice. People were gathering on the Boardwalk above us, peering down with wide eyes, some of them taking pictures. We made sure to look up and smile or wave every so often.
  
  I opened my helmet and raised a hand to the audience, bouncing my eyebrows. There was a chorus of oohs and aahs, and a few flashes from cameras.
  
  Once I"d given them a big toothy smile, I turned back to Tattletale. "How much do you think we should tell him?"
  
  Tattletale waved a hand negligently. "We"ll tell him about our stuff first. I"ll use that to gauge his reaction. If he"s okay with it, then we"ll see if you"re okay with dropping the big bomb."
  
  I grimaced. "I don"t know if I"ll ever be okay with it," I admitted.
  
  "Taylor," Flinch said softly, "You"re running out of time. You need more allies."
  
  I sighed. "You"re right," I conceded.
  
  "Call him as soon as we"re done here," I told Tattletale. "We"ll scope him out."
  
  "You got it, boss," Tattletale said, pointing fingerguns at me.
  
  The cooing of the crowd above changed in tone- I glanced up and saw some of them were starting to turn away, moving towards something.
  
  I focused on my bugs- underfoot, hiding in the unseen places- looking for movement. Someone was approaching, someone I didn"t have bugs directly on. People were reacting to them as they made for the railing with long, bouncy strides.
  
  "I think our time"s up," I muttered to Tattletale. "Get the others ready to run. I"ll head this off."
  
  Tattletale nodded and started over towards Cerberus and the dogs.
  
  "Be careful," Needler advised me. "If a fight starts here, your reputation will be in tatters."
  
  "Dozens of civilians taking pictures and videos of you and your team of -not-quite-ex-villains in the hottest spot in the city as you talk with a government hero," Bearskin said. "Woof. Rather you than me."
  
  "Thanks for the encouragement," I snarked, raising my arms and twitching my fingers to activate the grapplers.
  
  I could have just climbed my way up one of the Boardwalk"s supports, but I didn"t want a picture of me in a koala pose making it onto the internet. So instead I fired both grapplers into the top of a support beam, then reeled myself in at top speed. The crowd hastily parted as I shot up and tumbled over the railing, landing in a crouch on the wooden boards.
  
  A few people clapped; somebody whooped. And Assault, who was now bouncing to a stop in front of me, gave me a cheer. "Nice job!"
  
  "Assault," I said cordially, opening my helmet. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" I added, raising an eyebrow.
  
  Assault gave me a cheeky grin. "Well, when we heard there were giant dogs and a sandstorm down on the beach, I thought I"d drop by and see what"s what. Soooo... What"s what?"
  
  "We figured out that Whirlygig"s power could let her sort through all the garbage in the sand and clean the beach," I explained, gesturing down to where the Undersiders had slowed, but not stopped, their work; awkwardly glancing up at me as they continued.
  
  "We"ve already collected plenty, and we can get a lot more done before the bin"s full. Then we"ll drop it off at a recycling centre."
  
  Assault peered over the railing at the sand and whistled. "Clever," he said admiringly.
  
  I stepped in a little closer and lowered my voice. "Are you going to try and arrest us?" I asked, quietly enough to avoid being overheard.
  
  "Nope," Assault replied in a similar tone. "I think I get what you"re trying to do with these kids. Besides, this isn"t exactly a good place for a fight." He motioned slightly to the crowds of eager civilians, and the expensive shops and upscale boutiques around. Tourism was one of Brockton Bay"s biggest sources of income- I knew that from how often my dad had lamented the mayor"s refusal to try and rebuild the ferry or the shipping industry.
  
  I nodded a fraction. "Thanks."
  
  "For what it"s worth, you"re starting to change minds. Going up against the Travelers impressed people."
  
  "Oh right, because taking out Coil, giving them Hookwolf on a platter, and handling Tinker bombs wasn"t enough?" Anchorage asked sarcastically.
  
  I felt a smile work its way onto my face.
  
  "Don"t get comfortable," Tactical warned me. "They"re still investigating you, remember?"
  
  "That"s why I"m trying to impress people," I replied.
  
  "Have you guys found out anything about the Travelers?" I asked out loud.
  
  Assault shrugged and made to reply, but paused just as he opened his mouth, raising a hand to his ear instead. A second later he glanced up and to the side.
  
  I followed his gaze, and spotted something coming through the air towards us. For one brief terrifying second, I thought that white glow was Purity; but it swiftly resolved into Dauntless, boots crackling with white energy.
  
  "Trap," Nemean said at once.
  
  Under the Boardwalk supports, out of sight of the civilians, I"d hidden a couple of crabs away. Now they began to wave their claws in unison, then held them up in a cross.
  
  It was the signal I"d worked out for the Undersiders that meant "Be ready". I"d hoped we wouldn"t need it.
  
  Dauntless slowly lowered himself to the ground with a muted thump, then strode forward. People rushed forward, shouting for an autograph or to take a picture, but Dauntless simply smiled and politely waved them off as he advanced. A space cleared around me and Assault as Dauntless continued towards us.
  
  "They can"t possibly be willing to start a fight here," Vladimir insisted. "There are dozens of civilians around us!"
  
  I agreed with him, but that little bit of fear in the back of my head compelled me to bend my knees slightly, ready for action. My hands drifted towards my weapons.
  
  Dauntless stretched his arm back over his shoulder, clipping his Arclance to the back of his armour right before he reached us.
  
  It was about as good a signal of peace as I could hope for. I let myself relax a little, straightening up.
  
  "Dauntless," I greeted him. "I wasn"t expecting two Protectorate heroes to show up."
  
  "I was in the area," Dauntless said simply.
  
  "Looks like the kids are doing community service," Assault said, pointing a thumb down below. Dauntless leaned forward to glance down.
  
  Tattletale gave him a wave and a cheeky grin. When he leaned away, she quickly looked at me and tapped her ear repeatedly, then waggled her fingers downward.
  
  "What"s that mean?" Tock Tick asked. "Is she telling us to listen, or that Dauntless has something in his ear?"
  
  "Maybe someone"s talking to him through his earpiece," Flinch suggested.
  
  "I"m pretty sure that was puppet strings she just did," Stoneknapper said. "Somebody"s ordering him about."
  
  "Whatever you say, make sure it"s not anything suspicious," Needler said.
  
  Dauntless rolled his shoulders for a second. "You"ve been doing good work," he said at last.
  
  "There"s a "but" coming," Stoneknapper predicted.
  
  "The Protectorate"s still debating how to handle this situation. You have to admit it"s a bit unusual."
  
  I nodded, feeling the tension coming back.
  
  "Anyway, I personally believe you and the Undersiders are on the level about wanting to make up for the past." Dauntless hesitated. "But..."
  
  "There it is," Stoneknapper groaned.
  
  "We do need some concrete answers about you. We wouldn"t normally press for details, obviously; you have a right to privacy-"
  
  "But normally people don"t adopt a bunch of teenage hoodlums," I finished. "That about the size of it?"
  
  Assault gave Dauntless a searching look. "This feels a little sudden, considering you were just "in the area"," he said challengingly.
  
  Dauntless looked uncomfortable. "I was close enough to get here in time, that"s all."
  
  It sounded innocent enough, if you didn"t take into account the fact that Dauntless was the only member of the local Protectorate who could fly, meaning he could move around the city a lot faster than anybody except Velocity.
  
  I didn"t think the Protectorate had planned this encounter, but they"d certainly taken advantage of it. I was backed into a corner, surrounded by scores of innocents, with two of the Protectorate heroes that I personally liked the most, who were also great counters to my usual fighting style. And if I refused to answer the questions and left, it"d look suspicious as all hell.
  
  "I can answer a couple of questions," I said carefully. "We"ve still got a way to go before the bin fills up."
  
  Down below, the crabs lowered their claws to the sand. A quick glance over my shoulder let me see Tattletale relax a little, before heading over to the others to pass on the message.
  
  Dauntless sighed with relief. "Thank you," he said earnestly.
  
  Assault looked dubious, glancing between the two of us, but said nothing.
  
  "So, what do you want to know?"
  
  "Careful," Firecracker warned. "No way this isn"t a setup."
  
  "For starters, why did you take the Undersiders in? You"ve explained bits before, but a full answer would help."
  
  I shrugged. "Well, for starters, they asked. Coil"s still out there somewhere, and he made it pretty clear he wanted payback. And they"re not terrible people. They"ve done some pretty crap things, I"ll admit that- but they"re trying to make up for it. I know the Protectorate doesn"t take in villains, so this was the best shot they had."
  
  Assault suddenly coughed, thumping himself on the chest dramatically. "Sorry," he wheezed. "Choked on some spit."
  
  I eyed him for a second, then dismissed it. "Spitfire was just some kid off the streets, and if I"d left her alone, she"d have probably been forced into a gang, or worse. Instead, she"s the cool new Ward in town, even though I made some pretty big mistakes with her. People need to have second chances, or else they"ll never get better."
  
  Assault looked oddly serious as I said that. "Damn right," he murmured. "And for what it"s worth, you did okay with Spitfire."
  
  Dauntless nodded slowly. "Alright," he admitted. "How about your Tinker speciality? Mechanical systems, right?"
  
  "Yep," I said truthfully. "It does the trick for me."
  
  "And how long have you had your powers?"
  
  I forced myself not to move a muscle, even while Quarrel jeered "Oh, they"re on to you now!"
  
  "Honestly, it feels hard to remember what it"s like without powers," I deflected. "Let"s say less than a year. Or do you need me to be more specific?"
  
  Dauntless hesitated. "That"s enough. But did you have any training before you got your powers? Martial arts or something? You made a lot of progress in such a short time- it"s impressive."
  
  Another question edging dangerously close to topics I didn"t want to talk about. I decided to try and use a little truth, just enough.
  
  "Strictly speaking, no. But I did a few courses as a kid, and a lot of research once I got my powers. Other than that, I don"t know what to tell you."
  
  "You gonna talk about your crazy relatives teaching you stuff?" Dirty Rotter snickered.
  
  "I"m not calling you Uncle Barney," I retorted.
  
  Dauntless"s expression was dubious, but he didn"t call me on it. "What about your long term goals?"
  
  "What is this, a job interview?" Assault broke in. "Elpis, where do you see yourself in five years? Elpis, what strengths do you think you bring to Brockton Bay?"
  
  I went along with his joke, snapping my fingers. "Damn. I forgot to print out my resume."
  
  Assault chuckled at that, and Dauntless managed a small smile.
  
  I schooled my expression again. "Long term? I guess I just want to help my hometown as much as possible; reduce the gangs, get the Undersiders fully legitimate- maybe do something to help local business. If I run out of villains to fight, I might just start trying to clear the Boat Graveyard."
  
  Of course, it was hard to imagine running out of villains to fight. Even if I cleared out all the gangs and their supporters, new ones would arrive to fill in the vacuum. That was what Quarrel had tried to do, after all.
  
  And frankly, having villains to plan and spy and fight against was the perfect outlet for all the Butchers" power and rage; to keep myself pointed in the right direction.
  
  Assault shook his head in amazement. "Elpis, you are one hell of a good kid."
  
  Dauntless nodded. "That"s pretty impressive." His expression changed, distracted for a moment, before he re-focused.
  
  "Orders from whoever is advising him, I imagine," Muramasa said.
  
  "One more thing," Dauntless said, shuffling a little closer and lowering his voice. "Panacea mentioned something about Grue having suspicious injuries when she healed him on Monday."
  
  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Assault wincing.
  
  "Yeah," I said lowly. "He said Shadow Stalker shot at him with a lethal arrowhead. I"ve seen the scar, and it"s pretty convincing."
  
  Dauntless grimaced. "Alright. I"ll pass that on." He straightened up. "So how much longer are you and the Undersiders going to be?"
  
  I made a show of glancing down over the railing, where the dogs had come to a halt and Whirlygig was sinking to the ground.
  
  "Huh. I think we"re done." I waved to Whirlygig, who saw me and waved back, making a series of bizarre gestures that managed to tell me that the bin was full of crap, and that we should go.
  
  I glanced back at Assault and Dauntless. "If you"ve got nothing else to ask, I think we"ll head on out."
  
  Dauntless opened his mouth, hesitated, then slowly closed it. "Alright," he said at last. "I guess we"ll see you around."
  
  I gave both of them a nod, then put my hands on the railings and swung myself up and over, dropping the ten feet to the sand below with a muted thump. That got another round of cooing and camera flashes.
  
  "Alright guys, let"s pack up and roll out," I called, loud enough for the crowd to hear us.
  
  "Good," Cerberus grunted, hopping to the ground to unhitch the plough from Judas and Angelica"s harnesses.
  
  I motioned for Tattletale to come over while I pulled out a wrench and started unscrewing the bolts on the plough. "What was Dauntless doing?" I hissed as I got the first bolt loose.
  
  "Someone was talking through his earpiece the whole time," Tattletale said. "Pretty sure it was Armsmaster."
  
  "Any idea why?"
  
  "They didn"t tell Dauntless why- I saw him looking at me. They deliberately kept him out of the loop so I couldn"t get any details from him. Which means it"s pretty serious." Tattletale"s smile had an edge of nerves to it.
  
  I tugged the last bolt free and folded the plough up in a few movements. "Great," I muttered. "Well, let"s get the hell out of here before anything else happens."
  
  
  
  Afternoon of Friday 8th April, Arcadia High School
  
  By the time fifth period had rolled around, I"d managed to work through the paranoia of the morning. There was nothing like Mrs Williams" English class to dull the nerves.
  
  I"d overheard lots of gossip about the Undersiders throughout the day, even as we finished a round robin of badminton- photos going around, a few forced attempts at memes theories about what Dauntless said to Elpis.
  
  "I bet you there"s people thinking Dauntless is sweet on you," Anchorage said.
  
  I faltered halfway through rolling up one of the nets. "Why would you say that to me?" I groaned.
  
  Anchorage shrugged. "People see two celebrities together, they think they"re hot for each other. That"s how the mind works."
  
  "I"m pretty sure Dauntless is at least 10 years older than me."
  
  "The point still stands. And don"t tell me you wouldn"t ride that."
  
  I finished rolling the net in silence and jogged over to Coach Pelt to put it back in the equipment closet.
  
  A couple of other girls were gathering up the nets, the rackets- one girl with a ponytail was chasing down the last of the shuttlecocks.
  
  "God, this is the wimpiest sport ever," Butcher said in disgust.
  
  "Butcher, you think any sport where there"s no risk of broken bones is wimpy," Bearskin pointed out.
  
  "Because it is!"
  
  Personally, I was happy with it. Despite the various complaints from the Butchers, it was a sport that involved no physical contact and didn"t need a lot of strength, so I didn"t have to worry about slipping up and trying too hard. Plus, being one of the taller girls gave me an advantage- unlike Madison, who I"d spotted once or twice as she flailed around.
  
  Amy was waiting for me by the door to the girls" locker room as I finished up. "Took you long enough," she said teasingly.
  
  "Didn"t see you hauling anything," I teased back. Honestly, I loved having someone who I knew wasn"t trying to be cruel when she said friendly jibes like that. It was a far cry from Winslow.
  
  Amy and I usually partnered up in Gym these days. It just felt easier to hang around someone who wouldn"t get suspicious if I slipped up or said something weird, and Amy appreciated that I didn"t act weird about her powers or fame.
  
  The fact that I could easily win every game we played if I felt like it was a factor as well, but not a large one.
  
  "So, looking forward to tomorrow?" I asked, referring to our little shopping trip to the Lord"s Street Market. Amy had eventually decided to come along with us after all, after much deliberation.
  
  Amy tossed her head back. "Oh yeah. This actually sounds good to me." She hesitated as we reached our lockers. "Are you sure the others are going to be okay with me tagging along?"
  
  I snorted as I pulled out my regular clothes and shut my eyes to change by feel. "They"re fine with it. Besides, you"re not tagging along; this is your thing as much as theirs."
  
  "It"s just weird," Amy said vaguely. "How did they take it when you told them?"
  
  I made the mistake of shrugging while I was trying to fit my bra back on and messed up the hooks. "Well, Lisa already figured it out," I admitted. In fact she"d already come up with some ideas to help disguise Amy so she wouldn"t be recognised by fans while we were all out together.
  
  Amy snorted. "Of course."
  
  "Brian"s on board- and not just for pragmatic reasons. Isa"s stoked to meet you casually."
  
  "And Rachel?" Amy asked suspiciously.
  
  I huffed as I shifted my hands to try and pull my bra off and start again. "Sulked a bit, but she"s not going to be a problem."
  
  "How the hell did you make such a mess?" Amy said, her voice coming closer. "Hold on, you"ll snap something."
  
  Warm hands ghosted over my back as Amy untangled the twist in the straps and clicked hooks into loops. A shiver went down my back at the brush of her fingertips.
  
  "Thanks," I managed, grabbing my t-shirt out of my locker, shoving Needler down as she cooed soppily.
  
  "No problem," Amy said. "Anyway, it"ll be good to get out of the house. Carol"s been weird lately."
  
  I frowned, pushing my head out of the collar and rooting around to get all my hair out. "Weird how?" I asked, glancing back over my shoulder.
  
  Amy"s expression was somewhere between confusion, concern, and irritation. "She barely wants me leaving the house. Last couple of days, she"s been calling me to check in whenever I go to the hospital, which she hasn"t done in ages. And she spent all last night trying to get me to take Vicky along tomorrow. Like she"s not the one who kept telling me to make new friends and be more sociable," she groused.
  
  "I"d say that"s an overprotective mother," Nemean said. "But Brandish never seemed particularly motherly."
  
  "I mean, we"ve never really seen her with her kids," Vladimir pointed out in a tone that said he was advancing the point just for argument"s sake.
  
  "That is kind of weird," I admitted. "But my dad"s been kind of worried lately too. I mean, last weekend there were bombs going off. Dad"s even talked about getting me a cellphone."
  
  Amy frowned. "Why"s that such a big deal?"
  
  I slipped my shoes on while I tried to think of how to respond.
  
  "You don"t have to tell me if you don"t want to," Amy said hastily, obviously picking up on my mood.
  
  I shook my head. "Mom died in a car accident two years ago. She was on her cellphone. Dad and I didn"t want them after that."
  
  Quietly, Amy murmured, "Fuck."
  
  "Yeah." The Butchers offered comfort with words and emotions as I stood up and grabbed my bag. "But we"re getting better. Anyway," I said, changing the subject, "tomorrow! So choice of films- there"s the new Planet of the Apes, Scream 4, or there"s some vampire-hunter thing called Priest."
  
  Amy perked up. "Ooh, definitely Scream."
  
  "Wait, really?" Tock Tick asked.
  
  "Really?" I asked.
  
  "Yea, I love horror. Usually I"m more into monster movies, but I like the Scream movies. All that meta-commentary on the cliches of the genre."
  
  "Huh. I didn"t know that," I admitted as we both started towards the exit.
  
  "Really? I thought I told you."
  
  "So what"re your favourites?"
  
  "Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, The Earth Stood Still-"
  
  "Klaatu barada nikto," Stoneknapper droned.
  
  "-The Thing, The Blob, Alien- but just Alien, I hate the sequels."
  
  "Ever seen Hack/Slash?" I asked. "It"s based on this comic book where people sometimes come back as horror movie monsters, and there"s a girl called Cassie Hack hunting them down."
  
  Amy turned to me, big brown eyes full of awe. "That sounds awesome," she said fervently.
  
  "Something to keep in mind." I pushed the door open, and held it for her to walk through.
  
  "So you remember where we"re meeting up?" I asked as we reached the boundary wall.
  
  "Yep. I"ll see you tomorrow- assuming Carol doesn"t try to keep me home," Amy added, rolling her eyes.
  
  I snorted. "Let me know if you need me to break you out."
  
  Amy snickered. "So long, Shawshank." She turned and walked off to her bus stop.
  
  I watched her go for a moment, until I felt my cape phone buzz through the ant I"d placed on it. Curious, I pulled the phone out, walking the ant off, and checked the screen.
  
  -Armsmaster has a lie detector program
  
  My blood went cold. But there was more from Tattletale.
  
  -Works through audio and visual. He was listening in through Dauntless today
  
  -He"s onto us
  
  "Well," said Tactical. "Fuck."
  
  9.4
  Saturday 9th April, The Lair
  
  A quarter-turn clockwise, a half-turn counter-clockwise. A click from the lock, and several silent movements as the booby traps disarmed themselves.
  
  Amy pushed the door open tentatively, stepping into the lair and flicking her hair out of her hoodie, sneakers scuffing on the threshold. One hand clutched at the strap of her backpack.
  
  "Hey," I said awkwardly, waving a little. That seemed kind of dumb, so I set my hands on my hips, and then changed my mind and shoved them into my pockets instead.
  
  Luckily, Amy didn"t seem to notice, staring around at the ground floor of the lair. "Okay," she admitted, "This is a lot cooler than I was expecting."
  
  "Really?" I said, unexpectedly pleased.
  
  "Yeah. I mean, I guess I still thought this was going to be some burned-out husk with a pile of skulls and bags of coke laying around."
  
  My good mood evaporated as the Butchers burst out laughing at Amy"s frank admission.
  
  "She knows what we"re about!" Dirty Rotter cackled.
  
  Stoneknapper laughed nostalgically. "I could really go for some coke."
  
  "Well, we"re fresh out of hard drugs and human remains," I said sarcastically. "All we"ve got is Tinker tech and shitloads of bugs."
  
  Amy leaned to the side. "Wow." She walked forward, staring at the glass tanks of insects along the wall. "So you"re controlling all of them?"
  
  "Yeah." I directed some ants to flick a hair-trigger switch, and the hatch on one tank opened. I marshalled a swarm to seep out- ants and beetles flooding across the floor, while the flies and wasps and bees spread out through the air.
  
  The crawlies arranged themselves into a grid pattern at my thought, while the fliers sketched a cube, rotating in the air with the low buzz of a thousand wings. I often did stuff like this in the background when I was alone in the lair, just to practice. The Undersiders were put off by it, so I tried not to do it in front of them; I doubted Amy would be any different.
  
  Amy"s gaze flicked back and forth between the grid and the cube, before she took a sudden step forward. I hastily rearranged the grid around her feet so she didn"t get dozens of crushed bugs on her sneakers.
  
  Amy stared down at her feet, slowly shuffling from side to side as I shifted the bugs around her. Her movements became bolder, going from small steps to wide bounces as we figured out a rhythm together.
  
  Amy suddenly hopped to the side, giggling as the insects parted around her. Another hop, another sudden landing space, and Amy burst out laughing, launching into a bizarre game of hopscotch.
  
  I realised I was smiling wide enough to stretch my cheeks, and hopped into the grid myself. The flying cube dissolved at my command, spreading out into a ring that hummed around us as Amy and I jumped about, the bugs forming ripples and patterns around us from moment to moment.
  
  Eventually Amy came to a halt, hands on her knees as she caught her breath. "That was so dumb," she giggled.
  
  "You started it," I retorted, directing the insects back into the tank. "Don"t act like you weren"t enjoying it."
  
  "No, it was fun," Amy said, watching as the tank locked itself. "I just never really saw you use your bugs... at all, really. It"s cool."
  
  "You don"t have to flatter me," I said, scratching my ear.
  
  "No, seriously," Amy insisted. "I can"t think of any power that"s got that kind of fine control for so many subjects."
  
  "Well-"
  
  "Taylor," Bearskin interrupted, "Take the fucking compliment."
  
  "-okay, I guess it"s cool." I made all the flies buzz at once for a brief moment, producing a loud hum.
  
  I gestured to the stairs. "Ready to meet the Undersiders?"
  
  "Lead on."
  
  I called up the stairs as we began to climb: "Look alive, folks! We"ve got company!"
  
  Everyone was gathered at the kitchenette, grabbing drinks; except for Rachel, who was sitting on the couch with her dogs on the rug as we made it to the loft. She looked right past me to scowl at Amy.
  
  Amy awkwardly raised a hand. "Hi?" she tried.
  
  Rachel snorted and went back to scratching Judas behind the ears.
  
  Lisa bounded over, ponytail waving behind her as she came to a halt in front of us in a dusky rose dress and grey tights. "The one and only Amy Dallon," she purred, seizing Amy"s hand to shake. "Great to finally meet you with the masks off. You can call me Lisa."
  
  "Okay?" Amy managed as Lisa let go of her hand. I was a bit bemused by Lisa"s sudden enthusiasm myself. Maybe she was just trying to place nice with the healer.
  
  "Talk about a charm offensive," Vladimir said.
  
  Tarquin strolled up, hands laced together behind his head. "Sup?" he said nonchalantly.
  
  Brian and Isabella came along together, Isa stuffing soda cans and snacks into the pockets on her denim overalls and faded green coat. "Hi," she said, sticking her hand out. "I"m Isabella, but you can just call me Isa."
  
  "And I"m Brian," said the man himself, gesturing to himself rather than going for a handshake. The movement showed off how casually well dressed he was- soft sweater under a felt jacket, and his boots were shined.
  
  "Good to meet you all," Amy said, finishing her handshake with Isa. "So do we need to grab anything, or what?"
  
  "Nah, just bags to carry stuff," Tarquin said, turning slightly to show off his rucksack.
  
  "Quick question," Lisa said. "How are you going to avoid getting spotted? People are going to wonder what famous Amy Dallon is doing with some random kids."
  
  Amy flipped her hood up to cover her hair, then produced a big pair of sunglasses from the front pocket of her hoodie and slipped them onto her face.
  
  There was a quiet moment as we all took in Amy"s "disguise". Firecracker began to snicker.
  
  "Yeah, this isn"t going to be enough," Lisa said frankly.
  
  "Why not?" Amy asked. "I"ve got half my face covered. I"ve gone out shopping like this before."
  
  "Yeah, when you"re shopping with your sister and want to casually avoid the media. We"ve all got secret identities that are going to get blown away if we"re seen hanging with a celebrity. The hair, the freckles, your posture; all giveaways."
  
  "What about my posture?" Amy asked suspiciously.
  
  "You slouch. Stay right there, I"ll get some stuff from my room." Lisa turned and zipped off before Amy could object.
  
  Amy turned to me. "It"s not that bad, right?"
  
  "It"s cheap," Tock Tick said.
  
  "Paper thin," Quarrel said.
  
  "It"s dumb," Rachel said from the couch.
  
  "Excuse me?" Amy demanded.
  
  "I said it"s dumb," Rachel repeated, without a trace of sarcasm. "You still look the same."
  
  "And what"s your brilliant disguise?"
  
  "Don"t have one. I"m not coming anyway."
  
  Amy blinked. "Alright." She cocked her head, staring at Angelica, who was scratching behind the stump of her missing ear with her hindpaw. "What"s with the little dog?"
  
  Rachel glared at Amy. "Her old owner hurt her."
  
  "Right." Amy clasped her hands together for a moment, then turned to me and jerked her head in Rachel"s direction. "Think I should offer?"
  
  I glanced over at Angelica- one eye, one ear, scars under her ragged fur. "I mean, if you want to."
  
  "If it gets her to stop scowling at me, I"ll try it. Hey, Cerberus," Amy said, "Want me to fix your dog"s face?"
  
  Rachel pulled herself off the couch. "What"s that supposed to mean?" she demanded, starting over.
  
  I quickly stepped between them. "Rachel, she"s offering to heal Angelica"s eye."
  
  Rachel stopped a few paces away, scowling. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brian shift his weight slightly. Amy folded her arms and met Rachel"s scowl with one of her own.
  
  Rachel jerked her chin at Amy. "You can do that?"
  
  "Sure."
  
  Rachel worked her jaw for a second. "Angelica, come."
  
  The ratty little terrier immediately trotted over to sit at her master"s heel. Amy knelt down and stretched a hand out-
  
  I caught Rachel"s wrist as she tried to smack at Amy"s arm. "Christ!" Amy yelled, pulling her arm back. "What"s your problem?"
  
  "Don"t touch my dogs," Rachel barked, trying to pull free of my grip.
  
  "Rachel," I snapped "Don"t hurt Amy. She"s trying to help, so stop being an asshole."
  
  "Goddamnit, Rachel," Brian groaned.
  
  "Maybe walk her through it?" Anchorage suggested. "I remember when I took Sandy to the vet, it was a lot easier with the vet telling me what he was doing."
  
  I slowly let Rachel"s wrist go, and she snatched her arm back, rubbing her wrist.
  
  "Hey Amy," I said without taking my eyes off Rachel, "You know how you ask permission before healing someone? Does that apply to pets too?"
  
  Amy opened her mouth, paused, then shut it. "Probably?" she hazarded; then she sighed. "Alright, fine. Do I have your permission to touch your dog so I can fix her eye?"
  
  Rachel worked her jaw some more. "Don"t hurt her."
  
  "Is that a yes or a no?"
  
  "Yes," Rachel growled, crouching to hold Angelica by the sides. The terrier seemed to accept it calmly.
  
  Amy discreetly rolled her eyes, then crouched as well and slowly reached a hand out to Angelica"s head, setting her fingertips on top of the dog"s skull. "Oh wow, she"s been through it. I can fix this, but you"ll want to give her some extra food after this."
  
  "Do it."
  
  The first sign that something was happening was when Angelica started to wriggle. Rachel tightened her grip and whistled a command as Angelica jerked her head from side to side, whining.
  
  "Almost done, almost done," Amy said. "Aaaaand- there. One fresh eyeball." She took her hand away, and Rachel released Angelica, who wobbled on her feet, whipping her head around to look at everything.
  
  "Holy cow," Isabella said, gawking at the sight of Angelica"s face, now with two big eyes staring about.
  
  Rachel caught her by the collar to peer intently into the bright shiny eye now occupying Angelica"s left eye socket, before gently releasing her and running a palm down Angelica"s pack. "Good," she said, nodding to Amy.
  
  Without another word, she stood up and clicked her fingers for Angelica to follow her back to the couch.
  
  "You could say thank you," Amy grumbled.
  
  Rachel paused. "What?"
  
  Amy sighed. "Forget it."
  
  Lisa came out of her room with an armful of bottles and other stuff, barely glancing at Rachel. "I was wondering if you"d try that," she said cheerfully, dumping her stuff on the counter. "Have a seat, Amy," she said, pulling out a pair of hair straighteners. "This won"t take a moment."
  
  
  
  Lord"s Street Market
  
  Just about anything that could be bought in Brockton Bay could be bought at the Lord"s Street Market. It was open all week, but most people only bought a stall on the weekends. People sold everything from knick-knack handicrafts put together by crazy old cat ladies, to overstock from fashionable shops with a slight markdown. Food stalls, pet stalls, tourism junk, cape merchandise both official and unofficial, clothing, books, posters, or just the stuff people were trying to clear out of their attics.
  
  The sights and sounds of it all were intoxicating to me and the Butchers, through bloodsight and enhanced hearing and through the thousands of bugs letting me keep track of things.
  
  I tossed my hair back over my shoulders, feeling the fancy earrings I"d put it swing with the movement. "Okay guys," I said to the Butchers, "Everybody gets spending money, but I"m not eating anything gross and I"m not buying anything illegal. If I can"t explain it to my dad, it goes in the lair. No arguments."
  
  "Fair enough," Needler acknowledged.
  
  "Very well," Muramasa agreed.
  
  "Are pin-up posters allowed?" Butcher leered.
  
  Amy took a deep breath beside me. "It"s been way too long since I"ve come here," she admitted.
  
  I gave her a considering look. Lisa had attacked her frizz with straighteners and sprays and oil until it had transformed into straight, glossy locks, and then put it up in a neat little bun. She"d also loaned Amy a fancy blue scarf, and got me to make a pair of half-moon spectacles out of an old bottle and steel wire. Now Amy looked like a fashionable college student instead of a high school girl messing around with friends.
  
  "Me too," I admitted.
  
  We set off into the best the north end of Brockton Bay had to offer. The Butchers began making requests within minutes.
  
  
  
  The guitar was beautiful- a Hartwood Libretto with Grover tuners. The nice woman selling it also included the case, the leather strap, and a collection of picks.
  
  "Try it out," Tactical pleaded.
  
  I gingerly picked it up, fingers following Tactical"s muscle memory, and strummed a chord.
  
  "Sweet," Isa said admiringly.
  
  I frowned. "Hang on." I fiddled with the G string for a moment, then tried the chord again. This time it sounded right.
  
  "Very good," the lady said admiringly. "So you interested?"
  
  "I"ll take it," I said, smiling at Tactical"s delighted whoop. "And can I get some of those songbooks?"
  
  
  
  A few minutes later, I noticed a weird tricycle thing with a fridge mounted on the front, next to a sign that said Homemade Ice Cream and Mochi.
  
  "Oh fuck yes," Quarrel said.
  
  "" I said to the old Asian man perched on the seat of the fridge-trike.
  
  "" he rumbled. ""
  
  ""
  
  "" he added as he used a pair of tongs to pick colourful little balls out of plastic tubs in the fridge and arranged them on a paper tray.
  
  ""
  
  ""
  
  "Country girl," Muramasa teased.
  
  "City boy," Quarrel shot back.
  
  ""
  
  The old man set the paper tray down, a dozen ice cream mochi on it. ""
  
  I pulled out a $20 bill, and added a $5. ""
  
  "What is that?" Tarquin said, coming over with a new pair of sunglasses.
  
  "Mochi-ice," I said, popping one into my mouth and chewing greedily. Quarrel had always had a sweet tooth, and mochi was one of the few things she and Muramasa didn"t argue about. "It"s sweet rice cake wrapped around a little blob of ice cream, and it"s sooo good."
  
  "Can I try one?"
  
  I swivelled my body to shield the mochi from him. "Get your own."
  
  
  
  It was a few minutes after that, when Amy, Lisa and I had split off to go for clothes, that I smelled something unbelievably foul. It was like someone strained vomit through an old gym sock and mixed it with rotten onions.
  
  I pinched my nose at once. "What the hell is that?" I asked, looking around.
  
  "What smell?" asked Amy. "Is it bad?"
  
  "It"s awful," I said, moving some flies around to try and find the source. A gust of wind blew a fresh waft to me, and I had to fight back my gag reflex.
  
  One fly landed on something that registered as similar in smell. It was round and covered in blunt spikes. When I looked over, I saw a stall piled high with fruits of every description, especially the more exotic stuff- pineapples and dragonfruit and papayas and lychees and-
  
  "Durian fruit!" Needler exclaimed. "Oh, I haven"t seen that in years! We have to buy some!"
  
  "Fucking no," Nemean protested. "You want us to eat that?!"
  
  "Oh, it tastes completely different," Needler assured her. "It"s soft and sweet and rich- it"s like custard."
  
  Covering my mouth as well as my nose, I moved closer. The fruits in question were at the very end of the table, and there were only a few of them- they were big, each almost a foot long and half as wide, greenish-brown and covered in blunt spikes.
  
  The matronly Asian woman managing the stall noticed me looking and bustled over. "Ah, a connoisseur!" she said, flinging her arms out in welcome. She had so many bangles and bracelets and beaded wristbands that the movement sounded like a brass band tumbling down the stairs.
  
  "Durian fruit! Nothing quite like them in the world! Don"t mind the smell, dear, the flesh is the only bit that matters, and it"s a life-changing experience. These ones are from Indonesian- usually they"re harvested in the summer, but I know a man who got me some early. Thinking to buy one?"
  
  "Oh please," Needler insisted. "I haven"t had durian in years! And it"s from home! You have to buy it, Taylor, don"t make me beg!"
  
  I groaned and pulled out my wallet. "How much for one?"
  
  Once I"d bought it, I headed back over to Lisa and Amy, still holding my nose. The seller had cut the durian open for me, and the inside was full of creamy yellow flesh.
  
  Lisa sniffed, and then recoiled. "Oh, what the hell?"
  
  "Needler insisted. I remember that it tasted nice for her, but I"m not sure about me."
  
  Amy sniffed, then made a face. "Well, at least we know you can"t get poisoned."
  
  I took my hand off my nose to dig around in my back pocket for a piece of steel I"d left there. I shaped it into a spoon, pulled it out, and gingerly dug a piece of the flesh out.
  
  "Eat it already!" Needler moaned.
  
  I took a deep breath, and stuck the spoon in my mouth.
  
  
  
  An hour later, I was still smacking my lips from the sweet, smooth taste of durian fruit flesh. I idly considered going back and buying another one some other time.
  
  "You sure you don"t want me to carry some of that?" I asked Amy, who was straining to carry the bags of clothes that Lisa had talked her into trying on and buying.
  
  "I"m fine," Amy insisted, glaring at the bags I was holding. Thanks to the Butchers" strength powers, I was carrying twice what Amy was without issue.
  
  "We"re almost there," Lisa said encouragingly, her bags dangling back over her shoulders by the straps. I got the feeling that massive shopping hauls were a regular enough thing for her to have acclimated.
  
  We"d decided on Fugly Bob"s for lunch, a local burger shack close to the Market, right on the edge of the sand. Anyone who"d lived around Brockton had probably eaten there at one time or another. Anyone sensible had then waited a year for their arteries to recover. If you ordered takeout, the paper bag would be see-through by the time you got home.
  
  Brian, Tarquin and Isabella had claimed a large table outside in a sunny spot, and we sat down with them as soon as we"d dumped the bags, Amy in particular slumping into the seat next to me with a sigh.
  
  Tarquin looked at our bags in surprise. "How much stuff did you buy?"
  
  "In my defense, this is mostly for the roommates," I said, tapping my temple.
  
  "Yeah, but," Tarquin poked at the bag I"d set between our chairs. His eyes widened, and he pulled something out, "What the hell is this?"
  
  "What." Brian said flatly. Lisa burst out laughing. Amy flushed like a fire hydrant.
  
  The something was a novelty lamp in the shape of a woman"s leg- stiletto heel, fishnet stocking- and the lampshade was supposed to look like a frilly petticoat.
  
  "Rotter insisted," I shrugged. "So what do people want to eat?"
  
  It took a minute to convince Tarquin to stop gawking at the lamp, but eventually everyone got their orders in. Lisa and Isa split a bacon cheeseburger, Brian got a portobello-beef double-decker, Tarquin got a chicken burger. I managed to shout the Butchers down from trying the Challenger, so we went for a double-everything burger and cheese fries.
  
  "If we ever do the Challenger, we should do it on a day when we"re not planning anything else that day," Flinch said. "Even our powers might have trouble handling that."
  
  "Totally worth it," Nemean said, drooling at the thought of all that beef.
  
  When the food arrived, we shuffled it all around so everyone could pick at the sides, which would have been enough for a meal all on their own. The burgers practically covered the plates.
  
  While Isa and Lisa carefully cut their burger in half, I simply cranked my jaw open, cheating a little with Nemean"s fangs, and took a huge bite out of it.
  
  "Don"t tell me you"ve got a power that keeps you skinny," Isa said as I chewed thoroughly.
  
  "Nah," I managed, before swallowing and explaining. "That"s just genetics. Both sides of my family are skinny. I have to work to put weight on."
  
  "Skinny genes," Tarquin snickered.
  
  Isabella regarded her portion of burger. "This is going to be hell on my skin."
  
  I decided not to mention that I hadn"t got any zits since inheriting. Probably Needler"s regeneration- or maybe my skin was simply too tough to develop acne anymore.
  
  Amy shrugged. "I can recommend some stuff. Vicky got breakouts all the time until she found the right facewash."
  
  "Oh, thanks."
  
  "You don"t get zits?" Lisa asked.
  
  Amy shook her head, holding her burger with one hand to gesture at her face. "Zits are mostly caused by bacteria reacting to the oil in your pores. I can just kill the bacteria on me, stop them from causing problems."
  
  A thought suddenly occurred to me. "Is that why you always smell so clean?"
  
  "Come again?" Amy asked, giving me a weird look.
  
  "Yeah, maybe want to explain that," Stoneknapper suggested with a snicker.
  
  I flushed. "It"s just- I can kind of pick up people"s scents, and you always smell clean. Not like "just stepped out of the shower" clean, but like you just don"t get BO- and this is getting weird..." I trailed off awkwardly.
  
  Amy avoided my eyes. "Yeah, it"s kind of like that."
  
  "It"s always weird when you pick up things like that," Lisa said sympathetically. "I"ve pretty much sworn off anything intimate. Being able to look at someone and know all the weird sexual stuff they"re thinking of makes it impossible."
  
  "Better than having people in your head thinking the weird sexual stuff about everyone you look at," I grumbled.
  
  "Spoilsport," Dirty Rotter said cheerfully.
  
  "And we"re still not getting laid!" Quarrel pointed out angrily.
  
  "You have no idea how many people don"t wash their hands," Amy countered. "I used to just announce it to shame them into washing up, but eventually I just gave up."
  
  "Bacteria don"t even affect you," Lisa pointed out. "Whereas I get flashes of random people fantasising about me as I pass them on the street."
  
  "Two words," Amy said. "Public. Bathrooms. There"s strains of bacteria in there that would give you nightmares."
  
  "Don"t play power drawbacks with me," I warned. "You"ll lose."
  
  "Oh really?" Amy asked challengingly.
  
  "I can"t even take a shit without over a dozen spectators," I said flatly, taking another bite of my burger for emphasis.
  
  "Hey, we"re not happy about it either," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  Amy and Lisa exchanged looks. "You win," Lisa said.
  
  "I thought guys were supposed to be the ones talking about gross bodily functions and weirding everyone else out," Tarquin said, looking queasy.
  
  "Yeah, let"s change the subject to literally anything else," Brian said. "Anybody find anything good today?"
  
  Tarquin brightened up. "Yeah, some lady was selling off a bunch of her son"s old video games, and I snagged a couple. Old hidden gems and stuff. You?"
  
  "Found a few decorations for my apartment," Brian said proudly. "It"s almost finished- I just need to put some furniture together at some point, and it"s all good."
  
  "I found a bunch of little figurines," Isabella said, delving into her bag and producing a cardboard box. She pulled the lid, rooted around through the tissue paper inside, and set a bunch of little pottery animals on the table. A cat, a frog, an owl, an elephant...
  
  "You really like those, huh?" Brian said.
  
  Isabella nodded. "My aunt used to collect them. Far back as I could remember, we had a ton of little guys stuffed onto the shelves."
  
  "Ooh, idea," Stoneknapper said.
  
  "If you want, I could make you some. I got some cool seashells that Stoneknapper wants me to use- I could mould something out of them."
  
  Isabella perked up. "That"d be really cool."
  
  She rocked the owl figurine back and forth with a fingertip for a second, clearly thinking of something, before abruptly coming to a decision. "There"s something I"ve been meaning to ask," she said. "I don"t know if this is a sensitive topic, but I want to know."
  
  Lisa shot me a look, raising her eyebrows. I nodded back. "Shoot."
  
  Isa took a deep breath. "Where... do powers... come from? Exactly?"
  
  "Well, she certainly isn"t fucking around," Firecracker said.
  
  "That"s the billion dollar question," I answered. "And to be honest, nobody"s a hundred percent sure. What we do know is that there"s a growth in the brain called the Corona Pollentia, right between the lobes. It"s present in about one in every thousand people or something- about five for every active parahuman. Nobody knows what causes it to develop."
  
  "I can tell you for certain it"s not genetic," Amy added. "I"ve had my hands on dozens of parahumans, and nothing popped up."
  
  I noticed Lisa looking at Amy with interest, as if she was just now realising that Amy might know as much about parahuman biology as anyone else on the planet.
  
  "Wait, if it"s not genetic, how come your entire family"s powered?" Isa asked, confused.
  
  "I don"t know. There"s case studies about us, and none of them have any solid ideas," Amy said. "Other parahuman"s kids have gotten powers too, and a lot of the time there"s a shared theme to the powers, but it"s not in the genes. Parahumans DNA is the same as any other human DNA."
  
  "Much as Kaiser would have liked to think so," Bearskin groused.
  
  "We don"t think the Corona"s the actual source of powers either," I added. "There"s been attempts to remove someone"s powers by surgically removing the Corona, but that just removes the parahuman"s conscious control over their powers.
  
  "Actually, the Butchers have a theory that all the mass and matter and processing power is coming from some kind of extradimensional source. That"s the only way to avoid violating conservation of mass and such."
  
  "Okay, that"s an awesome theory, and I"d love to talk about it more later," Lisa said, "But back to the initial topic?"
  
  "Right. What we know for sure," I said, "Is that the Corona is just another lump of grey matter unless the person in question goes through some extreme emotional event. Something that pushes you to the absolute limit and beyond. And it"s usually a really, really bad experience."
  
  "It"s called a Trigger Event," Lisa said. "Although some people call it "the worst day of your life"."
  
  "There"s actually some studies suggesting that the type of trigger influences the resulting power," I said, recalling all the Harvard materials the Butchers had sampled over the years. "Physical trigger, physical powers; mental trigger, mental powers. Changers come from identity issues, Movers want to escape, Strangers want to hide- shit like that." I pointedly did not remark on Strikers, Thinkers, or Shakers, which most of the table fit into.
  
  "That"s about what I heard," Amy confirmed. "Vicky"s the cape nerd, but I picked some stuff up."
  
  "Anyway, the fact that powers come from something traumatic is probably why villains outnumber heroes two to one. Or why third world countries have higher densities of people with powers. Hell, slightly more women get powers than men- that"s probably related."
  
  Isa fiddled with the little clay owl again. "Right."
  
  "None of you have to talk about it," I said quickly. "Even the Butchers considered trigger events off-limits." We knew each other"s triggers thanks to sharing a head, but we all agreed not to talk about it if we could help it.
  
  Isa took her finger off the figurine, and it rocked in place a little before coming to a stop. "I think I want to get it off my chest."
  
  "Only if you"re ready," I said gently.
  
  Isabella took a deep breath, wiped her hands on her overalls, and swept her hair back over her shoulders. Inanely, I thought that the burger grease on her hands couldn"t be much worse than how her hair usually was.
  
  "So for most of my life, I was raised by my aunt and uncle. I don"t really remember my parents. It was a pretty good life, but my aunt was more the parent. She used to help me with my homework, we"d do little trips together, stuff like that. My uncle and I just lived in the same house.
  
  "Anyway, she died a couple of years ago, and things were just," she waved a hand, "Kind of meh for a while. Then my uncle started getting weird. Staying out late, coming home late, stuff like that.
  
  "I found out later he"d started doing cocaine.
  
  "One morning I came downstairs, and he was just lying there on the couch. Turns out if you mix coke with alcohol, there"s greater effects. The doctors said his heart just stopped while he was asleep.
  
  "I was in a kid"s home for a while, and there was all this talk about where I"d end up, if I"d inherit anything, if I"d still be able to go to school. I hated the whole thing. So, one night I snuck out to the old house. I figured I"d grab some stuff like my aunt"s figurines, pictures of my parents- so I"d have them no matter what happened.
  
  "Except I wasn"t the only one going there that night. Turns out the guys my uncle was buying from had heard he was dead, so they figured they"d loot the place now that nobody was around. I hid in the closet upstairs, and I could hear them downstairs, laughing and smashing stuff just because they could.
  
  "Then one of them came up the stairs. I remember he was coming closer and closer..."
  
  She trailed off for a second, then abruptly started putting the figurines back in the box. "And then I got my powers. Made a storm that beat the crap out of them, saved my ass- and broke just about everything that could break. All my aunt"s figurines, the good vase, the windows. And I just ran like hell. Bumped into the Undersiders a few weeks later, joined up- and here I am."
  
  "Poor kid," Tock Tick murmured.
  
  "That"s rough," Amy said quietly. Her expression was a muddled combination of confusion and sympathy.
  
  "Yeah," Isabella said. "Anyway, I"m just glad I got it off my chest. Couldn"t exactly talk to anyone else about this."
  
  "Does anyone else want to share?" Brian asked after a moment.
  
  "Oh, no, you don"t have to, I wasn"t expecting anyone else to talk about it," Isa said hastily.
  
  Lisa gave a pained smile. "I"ll have to be very drunk to talk about my trigger, sorry."
  
  "Uh, can I take a raincheck?" Tarquin asked uncomfortably. "I need to think about it."
  
  "Nobody has to if they don"t want to," I said. "Trigger events are personal, private."
  
  Amy snorted. "Lucky you."
  
  I winced. The kids of New Wave had all had their trigger events publicised to some degree. "Sorry, I didn"t think-"
  
  "No, it"s okay. I"m used to it." Amy popped the last bit of her burger into her mouth and chewed, swallowed, and then spoke. "I might as well tell you guys, since I"m halfway there already."
  
  "You probably heard a couple of years back, there was a group of villains called the Chorus who"d moved into town. New Wave put a lot of effort into forcing them out- especially Vicky. She was still new to actually having powers, she wanted to prove herself. She was always 100% onboard with being a hero- I was never crazy about it, but Vicky was, so I supported her.
  
  "We weren"t even looking for them when it happened. We were just at the mall, and a bunch of them smashed in and started robbing the place. Vicky jumped in to fight, and she was doing pretty well- but she wasn"t as experienced, and there were a bunch of powers being thrown around.
  
  "Someone managed to get past her forcefield. And she just dropped. I could tell right away it was bad, and I ran over to her- and there was nothing I could do. My sister, bleeding and hurt on the floor...
  
  "And then my powers kicked in, and I could sense every cell in her body. I could see what was working right, what wasn"t, and I could fix it all perfectly. My sister needed healing, and I became the most powerful healer on the planet. And I haven"t stopped since."
  
  Lisa was staring at Amy intently. "I"m sorry," she said quietly.
  
  Amy sighed. "Thanks."
  
  I debated whether to give Amy a pat on the shoulder, or if that would make it weird. "Family"s hard," I said eventually.
  
  Amy snorted. "Oh yeah."
  
  "Truer words were never spoken," Muramasa said bitterly.
  
  There was a moment of silence as people picked at the last of the food. Even if we"d had room for dessert, I was pretty sure the conversation had killed what was left of people"s appetites.
  
  Honestly, with the amount of research and experience I"d inherited from the Butchers, I could hazard a guess at most people"s trigger events by their powers. Isa triggered in an unsafe environment while people were smashing her stuff, and got a power to pull in and smash objects from her surroundings- it made sense.
  
  "You know what I"m wondering?" Butcher said. "If it was anyone else in her family that got hurt, would Amy still have triggered?"
  
  "Goddamnit Butcher," I snapped.
  
  "Look, I"m just saying, we all know she"s adopted, it"s fucking obvious. And if Brandish is a warm cuddly mommy type, I"ll eat my own feet. But we know she"s close with her sister."
  
  "That is certainly one way of looking at it, Butcher," I conceded. "But it"s also really tasteless, so you"re in a timeout." I pushed him into the dark without another word.
  
  Unfortunately, Butcher had a knack for getting into peoples" heads. So now I was thinking about my own Trigger Event, against my will. I"d never told anyone the full details- never had the chance to say it without risking my secret, never felt the need since I had 14 people inside my head who knew it better than I could ever say it.
  
  "If you want to tell them, I"m sure they"ll listen," Flinch said softly.
  
  I cracked my knuckles, took a deep breath, and sat up.
  
  "I was being bullied, back at my old school."
  
  "Hold on," Isa said, sitting up in her chair. "You. You. Were being bullied?"
  
  "I wasn"t always the hardened badass I am now," I said with a hint of irony. "I used to be just a normal teenager. Well, normal-ish."
  
  The Butchers kept quiet, even as I could feel them paying attention.
  
  I continued, "These three girls decided to pick on me specifically, for whatever reason. I"m still not entirely sure why- and in the end it doesn"t really matter. As soon as we started high school, they started going after me in different ways, never letting up.
  
  "Last year, around November, things started to ease off. Like they got bored or something. I didn"t believe it at first, but the pranks stopped, the taunts, the hate mail... I thought things were finally looking up."
  
  I snorted. "And I was wrong. First day back after winter break, I opened my locker, and I found they"d stuffed it full of filth. Used tampons."
  
  "Jesus Christ," Tarquin murmured. Amy"s jaw had fallen open, and Isabella looked nauseous.
  
  "One of them shoved me into the locker, and then they locked me in there. I couldn"t get out, I screamed as loud as I could... And nobody tried to help. A whole hallway full of people saw it happen, and nobody even called a teacher.
  
  "That"s when my powers unlocked. I didn"t have any sense of proportion or scale- I didn"t know what I was sensing. All of a sudden my head was filled with thousands of crawling things, and all the sounds and light they could sense. It was like a kaleidoscope of filth, and I didn"t know how to turn it off."
  
  I shifted around some of the bugs in my range. There were plenty hiding in the grass, burrowed under the sand, a few crabs in the water. Very few near the kitchens, which I was grateful for.
  
  "The thing is, around the same time, the Teeth were making their move. Quarrel was the Butcher, right in the middle of it, having the time of her life. She went toe to toe with Hookwolf for a bit, she put a couple of bullets in Fenja- or Menja, we"re not sure which. She even took Gargoyle"s leg off with a manhole cover. Just," I made a tossing motion, "Flicked it at him like a frisbee."
  
  "And all that noise- the teleport explosions, the gunfire, the screaming- that was the loudest thing I could sense. And I panicked. I lashed out at it."
  
  "Bitch," Quarrel muttered.
  
  I couldn"t fault her for saying that. I could still remember it from Quarrel"s perspective- a hissing, buzzing mass of insects appearing from every direction, converging on her, darkening the sky with sheer numbers. She"d teleported around to get away from them, but they"d kept homing in on her, more and more clinging to her, covering her face, the fear and panic as they began crawling up her nose and down her throat, stinging and biting-
  
  "And then, suddenly, there were voices in my head, screaming at me. I was too far gone to understand. I just pushed them, on instinct- and then everything went quiet.
  
  "Thing is, one side-effect of me suppressing the Butchers is that it also suppresses my emotions. When someone finally got me out, I was basically catatonic. Good thing too- if I"d had an ounce of emotion, I would have burned Winslow to the ground.
  
  "My dad went ballistic on the school, yelling about how they"d not only let it happen, but left me behind during a villain attack. They must have realised Dad could have sued them into oblivion, because they got me transferred to Arcadia within 24 hours."
  
  I shrugged. "And I realised I was the Butcher. With all that implies."
  
  The table was silent. Nobody said a thing. Brian picked up a fry, and then tossed it back down.
  
  "Fuck," Amy said at last. I was startled to realise her eyes were tearing up. "What happened to the bullies?"
  
  I sighed. "Not much. If I"d drawn attention to it, someone might have put two and two together and started to suspect me. If they never bother me again for the rest of my life, I can call that a win."
  
  "Now, I"m not necessarily advocating anything or urging you to any particular course of action," Needler said. "But one upon a time, we used to kill people like that."
  
  "We used to kill people like everyone," Anchorage pointed out.
  
  "So you went from no powers at all to being Butcher XV in one day," Lisa said.
  
  "Yep. The parahuman equivalent of zero to sixty in five seconds."
  
  People were starting to come into the restaurant- the lunch rush, I supposed. Tables were filling up, inside and out.
  
  "I guess we should head out, if we"re finished," Brian said. "I can tell my story on the way."
  
  We paid the bill without incident and grabbed our stuff. Amy finally let me carry some of her stuff for her, which let us move a little faster with me taking most of the weight. Brian started on his story once we were far enough away from the vendors and shoppers.
  
  "So for context, my parents split up when I was thirteen. I went with Dad, and my sister Aisha went with our mom. We stayed in touch, but she"s four years younger, so we never had a lot in common. I"d text her about school, she"d text back a couple days later about a cartoon she liked.
  
  "We weren"t close. It wasn"t really possible- I was living at the south end and Aisha was living up here. But one night, I got a text from her. It just said "Help me". I tried to call, but the line was busy. I don"t know what made me take it seriously, but I got over there as fast as possible. Ran out the door, sprinted two blocks, jumped in a cab, and burst into my mom"s place to get to Aisha.
  
  "She"d been crying, but she wouldn"t say why. I was about to carry her out when someone got in my way. My mom"s new boyfriend. And right then I knew," his knuckles clenched around the handle of his bag, "That he"d been hurting her. And I just went cold."
  
  He turned to me. "I don"t know if I told you that my dad was a boxer in the Army. Well, he"s a hard man. Most of what passed for father-son boxing with us was him and me working in the gym, on the punching bag or sparring in the ring."
  
  "Shit," Tactical said. That could have described him and his own Da.
  
  Brian turned to face down the street again. "So I was tall for my age, I knew how to handle myself. So I set Aisha down, and beat my mom"s boyfriend to within an inch of his life without saying a damn word. And then I picked her up, we took the cab back to my dad"s, and we went to the police station in the morning.
  
  "Thing is, when you punch someone with your bare hands, it"s not clean. The bones in the face, the teeth- it tears the fuck out of your knuckles. I was washing the blood off at my dad"s place when I realised there was something else coming out of the cuts. Pure darkness.
  
  "You hear about trigger events, you might think it"s all rage and fear. But I was the opposite. I didn"t feel a fucking thing."
  
  Stoneknapper shifted uncomfortably. "Uh," he said hesitantly. "Does anyone else think that sounds too good to be true?"
  
  I bit my tongue. To be honest, Stoneknapper had a point. Brian"s story definitely hit the major points of a trigger event- but it seemed just a little too impressive, too controlled and successful. In our experience there was despair, for a long time before and in the moment.
  
  "Maybe he fudged the details a little," I suggested. "We"d all do it."
  
  Stoneknapper paused. "I guess."
  
  "So... Did you get in trouble, for hitting him?" Amy asked. "I mean, I can understand it, but..."
  
  Brian sighed. "It was a close call, but he"d violated his probation by not going to narcotics anonymous meetings, and Aisha backed me up. He got six months of jail, I got three months community service.
  
  "After that, I decided I needed to take care of Aisha myself. The whole reason I got into the business was to get enough money to get custody of her. My dad"s not going to fight it- he barely knew how to raise me, let alone a little hellion like Aisha- but my mother made it clear she was going to fight every step of the way. So I need a private investigator to prove my mother"s drug habits and shitty boyfriends. I need money for the court case. I need an apartment that"s suitable to raise Aisha in. And I need to present myself as someone who"s financially stable and responsible enough to be a better option than Aisha"s own mother."
  
  "Coil set Brian up with a fake job and paycheques from a legitimate company as part of the deal," Lisa explained to Amy. "We managed to keep it going even after we forced Coil out, so Brian"s basically set there. And before you ask, yes, it"s technically money laundering, but is that really worse than sending a vulnerable young girl to live with a clearly unsuitable parent?"
  
  Amy mulled it over. "Touche," she said grudgingly.
  
  "I think it"s noble," I said to Brian. "Going that far for your sister."
  
  "No," Brian sounded almost insulted by the idea. "I"m just doing what I have to. She"s family."
  
  "True." I could understand how family was a priority.
  
  It took us just under an hour to get back to the lair, and I unlocked the door with an insect-operated mechanism rather than bother pulling out a key.
  
  "That"s very cool," Amy said as the door swung open in perfect silence.
  
  Rachel was sitting on the rug when we got up the stairs, tossing a ball for Angelica to chase. The little terrier raced after it, grabbed it in her jaws, and carried it back for her mistress to throw it again.
  
  Possibly it was an exercise to help Angelica adjust to having two eyes again, I supposed.
  
  I dumped my bags on the ground and started rooting around in one. "Hey Rachel, I found something at the Market," I said, pushing aside a rolled up poster and a couple of wristbands to find- "Aha."
  
  I held up the toy I"d found, which looked like a series of red rubber balls smushed together into a tube. "It"s hollow in the middle, so you can stick treats in for the dogs to try and get to," I explained, holding it out to her.
  
  Rachel took it and turned it over in her hands, squeezing it between her palms experimentally. Then she held it out to Angelica, who sniffed it, then gave a bark.
  
  Rachel nodded. "Yeah, this"ll do."
  
  Amy was rooting through her shopping, folding things and stuffing them into her backpack. "Can I leave some of this stuff here and take it home later?" she asked. "I don"t think I can carry all of this around the rest of the day."
  
  "No problem."
  
  Rachel stood up and moved towards Amy. "Hey."
  
  Amy looked up halfway through shaking out the spare costume she"d brought with her. "Uh. Hey?"
  
  "You did good. With Angelica"s eye."
  
  "Uh. You"re welcome?"
  
  Rachel nodded, and went back to her dogs without another word.
  
  "That was weird," Rotter said.
  
  "I think it"s sweet," said Nemean. "Close as Rachel"s ever got to saying thank you."
  
  "We"ll work on it," I decided. Out loud I asked "So is everyone still up for a movie?"
  
  
  
  Evening, Hebert House
  
  "I"m just saying, bringing powers into the franchise was a bad idea," Vladimir insisted. "Scream worked best when it was on a more human level. Adding in someone with Thinker abilities takes you out of that."
  
  "Vlad, give it a rest," Bearskin groaned. "It was still a decent movie."
  
  We had decided on Scream 4, in the end, and Amy had waxed lyrical about the movie and its commentary on the genre conventions, as well as satire of movie remakes and internet fame. It had been surprising for her to be so knowledgeable about it.
  
  After that, Amy had headed off for a shift at the hospital, and I"d headed home to have dinner with Dad and give him a slightly edited version of how I"d spent the day.
  
  He was still impressed that I was friends with a real-life cape. I"d almost bitten right through my tongue when he"d said that. Luckily, Dad had accepted my excuse that I was tired from all the socialising, and hadn"t questioned it when I"d gone up to my room.
  
  I was just debating whether to go on a patrol as Elpis or take one of my other identities out for a spin when my cape phone vibrated.
  
  Frowning, I pulled it out of my bag, checking to make sure Dad was still downstairs before answering it.
  
  "Elpis? Can you come in?" asked Miss Militia,
  
  "Can you be more specific?" I asked, feeling dread crawl up my spine.
  
  "We need your help. You, and the Undersiders. It"s an emergency."
  
  "Fucking trap," Firecracker sneered. I was about to agree with her when Miss Militia"s next words hit me like a bolt of lightning.
  
  "Panacea"s been kidnapped."
  
  9.5
  Late Saturday 9th April, Brockton Bay General Hospital
  
  It had only taken a couple of quick calls to a panicked Glory Girl and a shocked Tattletale for me to confirm that Miss Militia was telling the truth, and then I jumped out the window and managed to almost break the speed limit on my bike getting over to the lair, rousing the Undersiders and harrying them into costume.
  
  Now I was standing in the parking lot of the hospital, in a ring with what felt like every other hero in the city, listening to Armsmaster go over the facts of the situation.
  
  "Amy Dallon left her house at approximately 4:39pm, arrived at the hospital at 6:04pm, and began healing critical patients as per usual. At 9:07pm she finished her shift and exited the hospital to wait for her sister to pick her up."
  
  He nodded briefly in the direction of Glory Girl, who was floating six inches off the ground next to her parents and looking distraught. Her costume was rumpled, her tiara was askew, and her face was blotchy.
  
  "Oof," Anchorage hissed. "Can"t imagine what she"s going through."
  
  "Security cameras show that at 9:08pm, Perdition of the Travelers pulled up to the front entrance in a van, jumped out, and threw a vial of an unknown substance in Panacea"s face. She lost consciousness quickly, and Perdition carried her bodily into the van before driving away. A few bystanders attempted to intervene, but Perdition used his power to rewind them several seconds, preventing them from stopping him.
  
  "Police pursuit was likewise thwarted when Perdition rewound one of the pursuing vehicles during a turn. The result was a three-car pileup, allowing Perdition to escape."
  
  Armsmaster looked around the circle; at Miss Militia, whose eyebrows were drawn together in consternation; at Velocity, who was shifting from foot to foot; at the entirety of New Wave, hastily costumed and visibly worried, with Brandish clutching Flashbang"s hand and Laserdream wringing her fingers; and at me, standing alone as I clenched and unclenched my fists. Ironclad was next to me, his armour rustling and scraping faintly as it reshuffled itself over and over.
  
  "We"re bringing in the rest of the Protectorate ENE roster as soon as we can, and contacting the Wards for additional help. The police will also be joining the efforts to locate and rescue Panacea as soon as possible." He gave me a look. "Elpis, where are the rest of the Undersiders?"
  
  "Hanging back," I replied. "Wanted to make sure they wouldn"t get arrested for offering to help."
  
  "I don"t think they"re that stupid," Tactical admitted. "They know how bad things will get if the best healer in the state isn"t recovered soon."
  
  Armsmaster clenched his jaw. "Under the circumstances," he ground out, "We are willing to accept their help."
  
  "I"m not," Brandish snapped. "How is it going to help if Amy gets rescued from one set of villains and- and taken by another?" Her voice broke halfway through her accusation, and Flashbang drew her close to put an arm around her shoulder.
  
  Lady Photon put a hand on her other shoulder. "Carol, we need all the help we can get. I know it"s not great, but it"s the better option."
  
  "They took her," Brandish hissed. "Amy"s all alone, and she- she-"
  
  "I know, Carol," Lady Photon said softly. She raised her head to look at me. "Call them."
  
  I stuck two fingers in my mouth and whistled sharply.
  
  The Undersiders were just past the edge of the parking lot, hiding down an alleyway with a patch of Grue"s darkness to conceal them. Now they trooped out and hustled over to the group.
  
  Tattletale raised a hand as she stepped up next to me. "Can I get a look at the security footage?" she asked.
  
  Armsmaster pulled a wafer thin tablet out from his armour and handed it to her. Tattletale took it and began flicking her fingers across it, skipping back and forth through the video with a thoughtful expression.
  
  "Cerberus, do you think your dogs could track the scent?" I asked.
  
  "If they left in a car, it"s going to be harder," she answered. "If I had something she wore, that"d be better."
  
  "There was a scarf left behind," Velocity volunteered. "I can go grab it." He accelerated into a blur and zipped off.
  
  "This wasn"t a planned attack," Tattletale said, turning the tablet around. On the screen, Perdition jumped out of a beaten up van, taking the steps two at a time as Amy backed away. I felt my nails itch at the panic in her body language.
  
  "Perdition was on edge, making it up as he went. The only thing he was really sure of was whatever he splashed Amy with. Can"t have been organic, Panacea"s immune to that sort of thing."
  
  "She"s immune to microorganisms, not organic compounds," Glory Girl said suddenly. "Regular tranquilisers could work on her."
  
  "Point," Tattletale said. "But whatever this was, it wasn"t a normal tranquiliser." She turned the tablet back around. "Can I see the route Perdition took?"
  
  Armsmaster leaned across and tapped the screen a few times; behind him, Velocity zipped back over. My heart clenched when I saw he was holding the blue satin scarf Lisa had loaned her.
  
  "We"ll get her back," Flinch said reassuringly. "Don"t worry."
  
  "And then we"ll destroy those fuckers for this," Nemean growled.
  
  It was telling that Flinch didn"t actually disagree with her.
  
  While Cerberus took the scarf and held it out for the dogs to sniff, Tattletale fiddled with the tablet. "Pretty sure that Perdition was doing a feint," she announced. "That chase scene was to get attention, make us think he was heading west out of the city. Once he shook the police off, he would have doubled back, maybe switched cars, headed for," she tapped the screen, "The Docks. Plenty of places to stash someone, not a lot of people who will pay attention to a weird guy in a crappy van."
  
  "You"re certain?" Armsmaster asked.
  
  Tattletale wiggled a hand. "Reasonably sure," she admitted.
  
  "It"s a start," Armsmaster admitted. "We"ll divide into ones and twos, break up the city between us and search in a grid pattern. Everyone will be added to the Protectorate console system for the duration of this emergency. If you find any clues or leads, call it in and hold position if possible. The Travelers are powerful and desperate; I shouldn"t have to tell you that is not a good combination."
  
  "They"re going to be a lot more desperate in a moment," Needler said darkly.
  
  "We also have to remember that they"ve been shown working with Uber and Leet. Those two aren"t usually capable, but that"s more powers in the mix, making things unpredictable. Once we"ve confirmed Panacea"s location, we"ll move in as a group. We don"t want to take any risks with Panacea"s wellbeing. We should also make every effort to capture the Travelers for interrogation."
  
  "Taking them alive? Boring," Dirty Rotter said.
  
  Muramasa snorted. "A man can still answer questions with broken legs."
  
  
  
  The Docks
  
  Unfortunately, New Wave hadn"t thought to bring the scanner I"d loaned them, and even if they had, it would have taken too long to repair.
  
  Grue and Whirlygig had taken the Chariot to search through Downtown, while Tattletale and Cerberus went west on the dogs, following Perdition"s trail to see if they could catch a scent or a clue. Ironclad was driving along with Miss Militia up near the Trainyards.
  
  I"d been chosen to search around the south end of the Docks- maybe because the Protectorate trusted me a little more than the rest of the Undersiders, maybe because I was fast enough on my bike. It didn"t matter.
  
  I had my senses stretched to the maximum, trying to balance what I saw and heard with all the sensations from my bugs. My range had extended to at least two and a half blocks, and the information I was getting from that all felt crisper, clearer. I swore I could catch snatches of recognisable sound at random moments.
  
  "Sechen ranges," Stoneknapper said. "You"re stressed, so your power is reacting, increasing to compensate-"
  
  "Shut up, Knapper," Quarrel snapped. "Let her focus!"
  
  Unfortunately, I had to keep my speed lower in order to get a proper impression of the interiors of the buildings I passed; otherwise I could have roared through the Docks at 100mph. Bloodsight helped a little, but it didn"t provide a lot of detail at distance.
  
  "What do they even want her for anyway?" Firecracker wondered sotto voce. "I mean, we kicked the shit out of them but it wasn"t anything permanent, right? They shouldn"t need a healer."
  
  I had wondered that myself, but I"d put it aside. Frankly, I didn"t care why the Travelers, or Perdition, had taken Amy. I just wanted to get her back safely, and make them suffer for it.
  
  My phone buzzed in its belt compartment. I pulled over to answer the call through the headset in my helmet. "Elpis."
  
  "Boss, it"s Tattletale. I, watermelon."
  
  "A, Grass. What have you got for me?"
  
  "Cerberus and I picked up Perdition"s trail. He ditched the van and switched to another car. The dogs can"t find the scent again, so the Protectorate"s trying to get traffic camera access to see where it went."
  
  "Shit."
  
  "Satan"s asshole, why can"t it be easy?" Vladimir cursed.
  
  "But I found a couple of clues. There was a little piece of loose asphalt that fell out of the treads of Perdition"s boot- asphalt from a road. Broken down, needed maintenance."
  
  And the Docks were well-known for the poor road quality. "Alright. Pass it on to the rest, and call me if you get anything else."
  
  "Perdition"s not looking to hurt Amy- camera in the parking lot caught him switching her, and he was being careful. He"s smart enough to know he"s in deep shit if she gets so much as a scratch."
  
  "He"s already in deep shit," I countered. "Head downwards."
  
  I hung up without another word and hit the accelerator, turning to go down a side street and continue the grid search pattern.
  
  The search continued, with a couple more updates after an hour or so. The other heroes hadn"t found anything, but they"d tracked Perdition"s second vehicle going into the Docks, so now they were tightening the net.
  
  I kept up the search, making my way from south to north, searching for some sign of Amy.
  
  Then, a flash in my mind. A paralysed spider. It was so brief I drove right past it before I realised what it meant.
  
  "Her spider!" Tock Tick yelled.
  
  I threw the bike into a skid and forced it back the other way, gasping as I felt that one little point come back into my range. It seemed to be inside an old factory- the sign outside told me it had once produced mattresses and bedspreads. Other than that, there was little to distinguish it from the dozens of others throughout the Docks.
  
  "It"s just another factory," I said, disappointed. "We"ve got to move on."
  
  "Yeah," Bearskin agreed. "Although, that definitely feels like Amy"s spider in there."
  
  "That"s true, but it"s just another factory," I repeated. "We"ve got to move on and keep looking."
  
  "Why else would there be a paralysed spider in there?" Tactical asked.
  
  "I can"t think of a reason," I admitted. "It"s just another factory though-"
  
  "WAIT!" Needler shouted. "Nice Guy! This is like with Nice Guy! We keep thinking it"s just another factory, but that"s definitely Amy"s spider! Taylor, drive forward."
  
  Dubiously, I rolled the bike forward onto the lot, passing through the remains of a chain-link fence. I was still doubting Needler"s idea- it seemed like just another factory, nothing remarkable about it, and certainly not what I was looking-
  
  Awareness and focus hit me like a bucket of cold water. "Fuck," I said out loud, staring at the factory. Amy"s paralysed spider was clear in my head, and when I switched to bloodsight, I could count nine different silhouettes in the building.
  
  "I fucking hate Stranger effects," Anchorage complained.
  
  I also spotted six more silhouettes around the side of the building- several of them bizarrely shaped. One was morbidly obese, one had a tail, and one was several feet off the ground, with wriggling blobs instead of limbs. I had a suspicion about who they were.
  
  I stepped off the bike and drew my air cannon, pulling my phone from its compartment.
  
  My arm jerked out of my control, and the phone slipped from my grasp to clatter across the lot.
  
  "So this is where the little bugger ran off to," Dirty Rotter sneered.
  
  "Hello Regent," I said, tightening my grip on my air cannon. I started moving insects around, through the lot and into the building.
  
  "Sup?" drawled the former Undersider, stepping out from around the corner. "Gotta say, I figured the others were nuts for trying to turn hero, but you"ve definitely made an impact. It"s actually kind of cool." He tossed his sceptre in his hand casually.
  
  "Cool enough for you to get out of my way? You and the rest of Palanquin?"
  
  The Butchers had heard of Palanquin, the mercenary crew that operated out of a trendy nightclub. Faultline was their leader, a woman with the power to break non-living materials and a reputation of impressive competence. Her team were oddballs even by cape standards- Case 53s and one girl whose power left her disconnected from reality.
  
  Faultline came around the corner next; a woman in a costume resembling a cross between a dress and riot gear, loose fabric mixed with body armour and belts of equipment. She wore a welder"s mask with a stylised crack, and her dark hair was up in a ponytail. "I"m afraid we can"t let you come any closer to the building," she said. "We"re under contract to protect it and its occupants until morning." She spread her hands apologetically. "Nothing personal."
  
  The rest of the team came after her; Gregor the Snail, fat and translucent, with barnacle-like growths on his skin; Newter, bright orange and bare-chested, his long tail slung over his shoulder.
  
  Last was someone new- a man in a large set of power armour that blew gentle clouds of steam and smoke from exhaust on his back. It ran surprisingly quiet- or maybe it was the Stranger field that had kept me from noticing him immediately. I thought his name was Trainwreck, from what I"d read on PHO. Only his face was exposed, and he wore large goggles that covered his eyes.
  
  The smallest silhouette remained hidden around the corner. A few insects caught impressions of a slight figure in a long robe. Labyrinth, at a guess- the team"s Shaker.
  
  "The Travelers have kidnapped Panacea," I said flatly, feeling my teeth sharpen as I said it. "She"s in there. I"m going to get her out. Stay out of my way."
  
  "We"re under contract," said Faultline, stepping forward and around, circling me until she was directly between me and the factory. "We can"t be seen breaking a contract, or our professional reputation will suffer. I"m certain that our clients wouldn"t dare to harm Panacea, in any case."
  
  "Not good enough," I said. "Move."
  
  "No."
  
  I jerked the cannon up and fired at Faultline.
  
  At the same moment, a row of fluted stone pillars burst up out of the ground between me and Faultline. The net round hit one and burst open, uselessly wrapping itself around the pillar in an instant.
  
  Labyrinth"s power. The girl was reputed to be an incredibly powerful Shaker, capable of warping reality around her like a funhouse mirror. I aimed the next round at her as the ground beneath me became grass littered with fragments of broken stone and statues.
  
  Trainwreck barrelled forward, exhausts chugging, passing through the pillars and statues like they were mist. I closed my helmet and fired a pepper round that hit him square in the chest, but he barely slowed, swinging at me with a fist the size of a bowling ball.
  
  I jumped back, drawing a sword and slashing at his hand as he swung back. Muramasa"s sharpening coated the blade to gouge deep into the metal, almost taking one of his fingers off.
  
  Newter climbed one of the pillars and began hopping back and forth, while Gregor the Snail circled around behind me. I spread bugs through the grass and in the stone fragments, as well as on everyone else around. The bugs that clung to Newter"s skin dropped as soon as they touched him, sending bizarre sensations of colour, so I stuck a few flies onto the back of his basketball shorts instead.
  
  I also slipped bugs onto the people inside. The skin-tight suit must have been Sundancer, and there was someone in a wheelchair I didn"t recognise, but Amy was still wearing her robes, so it was easy to pick her out.
  
  Sundancer had her sun out- I felt it when a fly got crisped getting too close. She had it in some kind of metal framework, about the size of a beach ball. And there was a man I didn"t recognise sitting in a metal chair bolted to the floor, with a dozen or so cables and wires attached to it.
  
  One end of the building was given over to a massive metal box with more cables leading into it, sealed entirely shut.
  
  There was something very weird going on here.
  
  "Just get to the phone and call for backup," Flinch said. "They can"t hold out against everyone at once-"
  
  Faultline stamped her foot down on where my phone had landed. There was a snap.
  
  "Don"t you ever get tired of being wrong?" Quarrel asked Flinch.
  
  I fired off pepper rounds at Faultline, Trainwreck and Gregor as I turned, leaning away from Trainwreck"s swipe and slashing a shallow cut across his chest. Trainwreck grunted in surprise and kicked out, and I was forced to jump back to avoid it.
  
  "Too much armour," Stoneknapper said. I agreed even as I pulled out the sonic spear and threw it up in the air. It unfolded at the peak of the throw, and whistled down to land a few feet shy of Labyrinth and Regent. I cocked my head to activate my ear covers right before it began screeching at maximum volume.
  
  The effect was immediate- everyone covered their ears in pain. I sprinted for the factory; I didn"t need to fight these idiots, I just needed to get to Amy. I could see the silhouettes inside, one of the girls waving her arms. That must have been her. I could almost hear her voice through the insects I"d slipped inside.
  
  Danger sense warned me, and I stepped sideways to avoid a stream of slime shot from Gregor"s hands.
  
  Trainwreck extended an arm, and his fist fired out on a chain with a bang and a steam-whistle noise, smashing into the spear and snapping it in two. The noise cut out as suddenly as it had begun.
  
  Faultline charged me, running through the pillars. I threw myself away from her knifehand, and into a leap that let me bring my sword down on Trainwreck"s chain as he reeled his hand in. My sword cut it clean, and then I threw it at his foot, sticking into the metal.
  
  As he yelped and flinched, I grabbed the spare chain and yanked on it. Anchorage"s power lightened it, and let me heave that wrecking ball of a fist around like an Olympic hammer to crash into his side. Trainwreck staggered and stumbled to one knee, and I made for the factory again, firing at Faultline without turning my head.
  
  My leg folded underneath me as Regent waved his arm. I turned the tumble into a roll and pushed to my feet without losing momentum.
  
  A fountain mushroomed out of the ground in my path. I jinked right to avoid it, but walls started growing on either side.
  
  Faultline came through the wall just as I started to climb it. I retreated from her swipe, trying to get enough distance for my cannon.
  
  I felt Newter"s approach, and caught his tail as it cracked at me like a whip. I yanked on it, and he yelped as he lost his grip on the pillar above. I kicked him as he fell, and he crumpled to the ground.
  
  Faultline snarled and pushed me back with another swipe, before crouching to check on Newter. A new wall pushed up between me and them.
  
  More statues and walls were pushing their way out of the ground, turning the lot into a labyrinth just for me. I felt my hand twitch and almost lost my grip on the air cannon.
  
  "Really ought to make a strap for that," Tock Tick muttered.
  
  "Stop holding back," Nemean ordered. "Smash through them and get to Amy!"
  
  I drew my flail, letting some cable out as I began spinning it. As Gregor poked his head through the wall to aim, I fired a net round before flicking the flail forward at full discharge.
  
  The wall shattered on impact- the stone was far more brittle than I thought. I caught Gregor and Trainwreck"s startled faces before I fired a pepper round through the hole.
  
  No time to mess around. While they coughed and flailed, I fired a grappler upward to the roof, and started reeling myself in.
  
  My hand spasmed, but I didn"t stop. I had to remember that fighting them wasn"t the priority, as much as the Butchers were enjoying themselves.
  
  "But we can fight them after, right?" Firecracker asked.
  
  Danger sense behind me as Trainwreck raised his good arm at me. He must have had two of those chain-fists. I turned in mid-air to bring my flail around and bat it away.
  
  My grappler hand spasmed, and then my entire left arm went wide. Trainwreck"s hand shot out- bang, whistle- and smashed right into my chest.
  
  My armour dented, and I felt something in my ribcage crack. Worse, Trainwreck got a grip on me, fingers digging into the steel and increasing the pressure.
  
  My grappler hand was still twitching and jerking without my control- and then, by horrible luck, it hit the release gesture. The grappler came loose, and I dropped like a brick.
  
  Trainwreck was reeling me in the second I hit the ground, until I hit the wall and couldn"t go any further. Trainwreck could pass through Labyrinth"s walls without issue, but I was stuck pressed against it, struggling.
  
  Amy"s spider had moved- now she"d passed into the big metal box at the end, for some reason. Whatever they"d taken her for was starting. I needed to hurry.
  
  I smashed my flail into the wall, and managed to crack it before my arm jerked again; I almost hit myself in the head.
  
  I swung again, furiously, focusing on the point of Amy"s spider, nestled in her pocket. I was at my limit- my teeth were sharpening, my nails were lengthening, the Butcher powers were straining for release. I had to get Amy out quickly, before-
  
  The spider disappeared from my senses. So did the other bugs I"d slipped onto her costume.
  
  A second later, I heard a sound, with my own ears and through the distorted senses of the insects.
  
  A gunshot. Tactical"s power identified it as a handgun.
  
  "No," I whispered.
  
  I dropped my weapons and seized Trainwreck"s fingers. Stoneknapper"s fizz bled into the metal, and I peeled them off me like wet clay, dropping to the ground and whirling around. My cape snagged on one of his fingers- I just tore myself free, letting it fall behind me.
  
  The silhouettes in the factory were recoiling as one of the men fired another round into the figure on the ground. The insects felt a top hat- Trickster.
  
  "No," I said again, stumbling forward in shock.
  
  The figure on the ground crumpled- a teenage girl, a few inches shorter than me. I could see blood spreading out into a puddle on the floor.
  
  A third shot, to the head. The figure jerked, and was still.
  
  "NO!" I screamed. "NO!"
  
  I didn"t even feel it as Trainwreck stomped up behind me and caught me in a bear hug, lifting me off the ground. All I could think of was the corpse in the factory, that I hadn"t been good enough to help.
  
  Amy.
  
  The Butchers were screaming inside my head.
  
  "Holy fuck!"
  
  "Motherfuckers!"
  
  "Get them! Fucking get them!"
  
  "Taylor, hold on!" Flinch yelled. "You have to stay in control!"
  
  "Shut up," I hissed, shoving him down.
  
  Amy was dead. I was never going to see her again. Never going to see her laugh, or smile, or smell her impossible, perfect scent.
  
  "Genesis," Tactical tried, though his tone said he didn"t believe it. "It could be a trick-"
  
  "Shut up!" I snarled, forcing him into the dark.
  
  I didn"t want reasoning or comfort. I didn"t want to be told to calm down. The anger was all-consuming, turning my teeth into razors and my claws into meat hooks.
  
  "Shit, she"s losing it. Taylor-"
  
  "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" I howled, thrashing in Trainwreck"s grip. He yelled as I whipped my head back and smashed a dent into his armour.
  
  Butcher spoke to me- and he sounded so close, like he was whispering in my ear, so close I could almost smell his breath.
  
  "Kill them."
  
  I screamed at the top of my lungs. Trainwreck"s arms bent and broke as I tore myself free- a metal panel morphed into an axe in my grip.
  
  I turned my gaze to Trickster"s silhouette. Firecracker"s teleport came to me as easy as breathing.
  
  9.6
  Chapter Notes
  
  This has been posted the day after the previous chapter, so if you haven't read 9.5 yet, make sure to go back and read that first to avoid spoilers.
  
  Late Saturday 9th April, The Docks, Uber and Leet"s Secret Lair
  
  The world flickered. The insects had all changed position, the silhouettes inside the factory were screaming and flailing about, and Palanquin were all backing away from me.
  
  Perdition"s time rewind power.
  
  I pulled in every insect inside my range, and they answered in a tidal wave of chitin and venom. They swarmed over the ground and hummed through the air, converging on the factory, slipping in through the air vents and cracks in the wall, choking the air with their bodies.
  
  "What the fuck," I heard someone say. I turned, and saw Trainwreck backing away. His one hand was a mangled mess, and his arms were bent and torn. Steam vented from his exhaust pipes, and from concealed nozzles all over his armour- I felt the bugs die from the heat.
  
  I sprinted forward, danger sense steering me away from his frantic kick. I leapt onto his front and gouged my fingers into his armour, tearing through the metal with matter shaping and raw strength. My gauntlets sharpened into claws that mimicked my own, shearing through mechanisms and plating.
  
  Trainwreck"s arms scrabbled at me as he screamed in terror, trying to pull me off. I swung the axe into one, hacking it off above the wrist. The Butchers cheered me on, savagely.
  
  Gregor shot a stream of something at me. I threw myself off as Trainwreck staggered back, but lost my footing as I hit the ground.
  
  "Slime?!" Stoneknapper yelled. "They think that"s going to stop us?!"
  
  I clenched my toes to activate the spikes in my soles, drawing a sword to match the axe. The grass and soil tore beneath my feet as I advanced.
  
  Fautline had a pistol in either hand. "Stop this!" she cried, aiming at me.
  
  "Your fault!" I screamed back. "She"s dead!"
  
  One leg folded underneath me as Gregor sprayed me with both palms. The gunk splattered all over me, rapidly hardening and tightening. I poured Dirty Rotter"s cloying decay into my hands, and felt the glue fall apart just as quickly, rising to my feet again and advancing, cloaking myself in stinging things.
  
  Regent yelled as more bugs aimed for him, biting at his hands and burrowing into his hair. He flailed about with his sceptre, stupidly running into the battle-
  
  Not stupidly. He took shelter against Trainwreck"s back, the clouds of steam slowing the insects as he frantically brushed himself down, getting most of the bugs off.
  
  Newter had climbed up a pillar, watching me from above. He leapt down just as Faultline fired the right pistol.
  
  A flare gun. Blinding light. I shut my eyes and switched to bloodsight as it hit me in the chest, then smashed Newter to the ground with my sword.
  
  I"d forgotten to bring the edges out, but the blow still sent him screaming to the ground as ribs shattered.
  
  "Finish him later," Anchorage bellowed. "Get the bitch!"
  
  Bullets flattened against my armour as I stalked forward- semiautomatic pistol, 9mm. Not nearly enough.
  
  Fautline wasn"t fast enough to escape. Gregor stepped forward, spraying ooze like a firehose.
  
  I teleported around them. Faultline was thrown forward from the burst of flame, then yanked back as I grabbed her ponytail.
  
  The hair came away in my hands, and I felt metal spikes in my grip. A fake ponytail, meant to goad someone into grabbing at it and hurting themselves.
  
  "Cheap trick," Bearskin snarled.
  
  Anger boiled out of me and spread into the two of them. I opened my eyes again in time to see Gregor"s translucent face twist with fury, to see Faultline raise her guns like clubs and throw herself at me.
  
  Their punches and kicks did nothing. I dropped the sword, twisted Faultline"s pistol out of her hands, then hit her with pain. She screamed through gritted teeth and sagged as I drove a knee into Gregor"s bloated stomach.
  
  It was like hitting a sack of tyres. Gregor grunted, but didn"t stop, raising a hand to spray me again. I opened my helmet as I dodged my head to the side, then sank my fangs into his wrist.
  
  That got a scream. I dug both rows of teeth in as I siphoned blood out of him with Vladimir"s power.
  
  Needler"s weakness sensing found a vulnerability- I jammed the spike of the axe head into a point on his foot, driving right through and into the ground.
  
  That got a bigger scream.
  
  For a brief, mad moment, I wondered about the effects of being impaled by an object of one reality while standing on ground from another reality.
  
  I released his wrist and headbutted him for good measure. Another rubbery feeling to the impact, but it knocked him down, screaming again as his fall pulled on the wound in his foot.
  
  I stuck the pistol in my teeth as I kicked the sword back into my hand, making sure to pop the edges out this time. I tugged the axe out of Gregor"s foot as well, getting a yelp for it.
  
  Danger sense flared, and the insects felt things emerging from the ground. I dodged the first spike before I saw it appear, hacked through the second with the axe, and sliced through the third with my sword as it hummed with Muramasa"s sharpening.
  
  The area around me was rapidly shifting from a statue-strewn garden to a prison yard, all bare earth and steel fencing, topped with razor wire. Labyrinth must have decided to play hardball.
  
  My teleport had recharged. I appeared with a bang a few feet behind her, enough to avoid setting her on fire. Labyrinth turned around just in time for me to backhand her to the ground.
  
  She seemed so small, crumpled in a heap on the ground. There was a flicker of conscience for a moment.
  
  "Amy," Firecracker hissed.
  
  That was all it took to bring the anger back. Labyrinth was a waste of my time. Besides, the insects inside the factory were now thick enough to blind everyone inside.
  
  I jammed the pistol into my belt and teleported inside, insects around me roasted in an instant. A problem there- a negative power synergy.
  
  Tactical"s power unfolded- I"d fought the Travelers, Uber and Leet before; read their files, seen their powers first hand. That was enough for me to accurately predict their next move.
  
  Perdition would try to rewind me out of the factory- so I"d teleported into cover, behind a rack of shelving, with clouds of flies blocking me from view. Plus he was busy dealing with the hornets going for his soft spots.
  
  Genesis must have been the girl in the wheelchair- she"d formed her projection, a wide, flat amoeba-like thing that wrapped itself around her real body and steered her over to the man in the metal chair, covering them both. The projection extended down to the floor, covering them like a tent. Its outer skin was electrified, killing my bugs like a fly zapper.
  
  Saved me the trouble of disabling them myself.
  
  I"d got a few good stings and bites on Leet, before he"d grabbed something off a shelf and activated it. Now he was inside a glowing forcefield dome, frantically fiddling with what looked like a cross between a sieve and a crystal radio.
  
  Trickster, Perdition, Ballistic and Uber were all facing my way like a firing squad, aiming in the direction of the teleport while they tried to keep the bugs off them. Trickster had the worst of it, with his mask open to the eyes and mouth. Both he and Perdition were holding sci-fi looking guns.
  
  Uber had some kind of sealed metal armour covering every bit of him, and something that looked like a mutant vacuum cleaner without the hose. Bugs got sucked into the hopper on top and whirled around some kind of internal chamber.
  
  Sundancer was off to the side, her sun placed inside a spherical frame. There was enough heat coming off there to make it hard for the bugs, but it wasn"t nearly as hot as it should have been.
  
  And on the floor on the south side-
  
  "Don"t look at her," Muramasa ordered. "Don"t remember her like that."
  
  I forced my gaze back, just in time for the men to start firing at me. A handful of nails from Ballistic, and golf balls from Uber"s gun. Trickster"s gun shot balls of green light, while Perdition"s fired blue laser beams.
  
  I had a couple of bugs on each of their hands and weapons, and Tactical"s power extrapolated their lines of fire from that. I bobbed and weaved away from the rapid-fire pieces of junk like a boxer, brushing aside shrapnel and debris as they shattered shelving and objects, and even cracked the wall behind me.
  
  Faultline"s pistol barked- three rounds to Perdition"s chest. I hurled the axe overarm into Uber"s head, right through his helmet.
  
  Both dropped- both reset a second later, still firing. The axe was back in my hand, the gun regained the bullets.
  
  One nail clipped my shoulder- I thickened the screen of bugs in front of me, obscuring me more from their sight.
  
  "Got it!" Leet shouted, holding his device above his head. I shot at him, and heard Sundancer scream as the bullets pinged off.
  
  The device pulsed with energy, spherical waves of light expanding off it to fill the whole room. It felt like a gentle breeze to me, but it pushed all the bugs away, clearing them to the walls and ceiling, taking away my cover.
  
  "Did he build that on the fly or did he just have that lying around?" Tock Tick began.
  
  "Who fucking cares?!" Nemean snarled.
  
  I pulled on Vladimir"s blood rush, felt it heat me from the inside out. Everything slowed to a crawl, tinged with red light, as I burst from cover and sprinted forward.
  
  The firing squad shot at me as I came, but it was like they were moving through treacle. Dreamlike, I slammed my axe through Uber"s shoulder, taking his arm off entirely, and shot Perdition in the stomach.
  
  Trickster suddenly swapped with Leet, who appeared still protected by his forcefield. My axe bounced off the shield without even affecting it, besides making Leet scream girlishly.
  
  Ballistic shot me point blank- a hockey puck or something. I felt my knee give way entirely, steel and flesh bent backwards by the impact.
  
  Meaningless. It"d fix itself soon enough. Stoneknapper"s fizz began reshaping the armour, straightening the metal and forcing the shrapnel out, while the regeneration began mending the bones and meat.
  
  I hit him with pain, swung the axe back around- hit the forcefield again as Trickster swapped him.
  
  Danger sense warned me to lean back, and a laser cut through the air right in front of my face. Perdition was winded, but alive. Body armour, probably.
  
  The blood rush flickered, faded, and then cut out entirely. Sound came back, full of screaming and gunfire. Uber"s screams suddenly stopped as Perdition reset him, but he was off-balance from the change, turning to face me. Too slow.
  
  I was aiming at Perdition"s helmet when the world blinked. I was standing where Uber was, and Uber was behind me. I kicked back, felt something crunch; turned and shattered his crumpled gun with the axe. Perdition got swapped with Leet as Uber swung a textbook haymaker at me.
  
  I took it on the chin, surprised by the strength of it. The armour was heavy, powered, made him stronger.
  
  That wasn"t the same as being stronger. And being desperate and fighting for your life wasn"t the same as fighting to kill.
  
  I emptied the gun at Trickster, bullets curving through the air to hit him centre mass every time. With the gun empty and useless, I dropped it, caught Uber"s next punch, and squeezed. His scream was muffled and metallic as I crushed his hand.
  
  Ballistic and Perdition were backing away- I swung Uber around as a human shield, then teleported behind them. I almost fell, forgetting to compensate for my still-healing knee, but they were tossed aside by the explosion.
  
  Stiff fingers jammed into the base of Perdition"s neck, just under the helmet, compressing the artery there. He dropped, and I grabbed Ballistic"s wrist as he tried to fire.
  
  A fat steel bolt tore past me and shot a hole in the roof. I jerked my hand and snapped his wrist, then crushed his other hand underfoot.
  
  I left him screaming on the floor and turned to Trickster, who wasn"t bleeding nearly enough. That stupid ringmaster costume must have had some armour in it too.
  
  An incandescent light blocked my path. Sundancer had stepped away from the machine and was holding her sun in front of her, trembling in every limb.
  
  Pathetic. I hit her with pain and limped forward as her sun winked out, elbowing her in the sternum on the way past. I felt something crunch on impact.
  
  The amoeba-thing draped over Genesis and the man in the chair rippled, reared up, and lunged at me. I sliced through it without turning my head, letting it fall apart in a puff of greasy smoke.
  
  Trickster was on his belly, trying to crawl away. I reached down and grabbed him by the head, a fizzing touch sealing his mask shut. No more swapping around with his eyes covered.
  
  I lifted him up by the scruff of the neck, snarling, forcing my teeth closer to human so he could understand me. "You killed her," I roared, shaking him. "You murdered her! Why! What possible reason could you have!?"
  
  Trickster gurgled a bit. I jammed a finger into one of the bullet wounds, and he screamed.
  
  "Answer me! Why?! Why did you kill AMY?!"
  
  "Di... didn"..."
  
  I snarled and grew my claws to full length. I"d tear his guts out in one vicious move.
  
  "Oh fuck fuck fuck," Leet chanted inside his bubble. I heard a couple of clicks and an electronic beep.
  
  The metal box at the end of the room gave an answering beep, and a loud mechanical clunk.
  
  The paralysed spider suddenly popped back into my range, inside the box.
  
  The door swung open, and I heard the words "What the hell was- WHAT THE FUCK?"
  
  My head snapped around at whiplash speed. I dropped Trickster to the floor, not hearing his pained moans.
  
  The six-inch thick door had swung open, and standing in the doorway with a shocked expression was-
  
  "How?" Vladimir asked breathlessly.
  
  "Amy," I said, crossing over in a few long strides to cup her face in my hands, staring at her, hardly daring to hope.
  
  Even though I"d destroyed Genesis" projection, this could still be a trick. But there were Amy"s tawny brown eyes; her freckles scattered across her face, splotchy at the cheekbones; and-
  
  I pressed my nose to her hairline and sniffed. There- her impossible scent, never a trace of stale sweat like everyone else. Just... Amy.
  
  "Amy," I said, folding my arms around her. "Amy, Amy, Amy." I realised I was crying. "I thought you were dead."
  
  Amy shoved a hand up between us to push me back. I moved at her touch without complaint, taking in the sight of her again. Her hair was starting to frizz up again after Lisa had oiled it up, and her costume looked rumpled.
  
  Amy"s eyes went past me to the Travelers groaning on the floor, and widened. "Did you do this?"
  
  I glanced back at Trickster, groaning on the floor; at Perdition, crumpled; Genesis and the mystery man, huddled together in their seats; Sundancer clutching her fractured sternum, Ballistic crying from his demolished hands; Uber"s muffled sobs as he stared at the mess of his left hand. Leet was the only one really unscathed, and he didn"t look like he was coming out of his forcefield any time soon.
  
  "Hah! Yeah you did! I knew we"d make a monster out of you eventually!" Butcher cackled.
  
  I forced him down into the dark, horrified at how right he was. I"d come so close to killing people. If it hadn"t been for Perdition and Trickster"s powers, I"d have murdered the Travelers without a second thought.
  
  I"d been completely ready to gut Trickster when I had him at my mercy. It felt so easy in the moment; the grief drowning out the guilt, and the anger drowning out the grief.
  
  I let go of Amy"s face and stepped back, suddenly afraid to touch her. I realised, too late, that there was blood all over my hands, and I"d smeared some on her. I felt like I might be sick.
  
  A girl"s voice echoed from inside the box, close to the ceiling. She sounded afraid, tense. "What"s going on? Krouse?"
  
  Amy whirled back around, sticking her head back into the box. "Everything"s fine, Noelle," she said quickly. "Just had a, um, a misunderstanding. We"ll just clean up out here real quick, don"t worry."
  
  I took my first real look inside the box.
  
  "What the fuck?" Rotter breathed.
  
  "That"s... yes, that"s a "what the fuck" alright," Needler agreed faintly.
  
  Looking at the source of the voice, I saw a young white woman with straight brown hair. She was wearing a grubby sweatshirt, and she looked poorly, like she"d had the flu. I would have called her 10, maybe 20 pounds underweight. If I"d been really uncharitable, I"d have said she looked like someone who"d just started drugs.
  
  From the waist down was a mass of flesh; half of it was angry red, wrinkled or blistered. The other half was smooth tissue, dark greens, dark browns and pale grays. There was a head at the front, like a cross between a cow and a wolf; but the head was the size of an entire horse, from the back of its skull to the tip of its flaring nostrils; and there was another head, half-formed, emerging from the flesh to the left of it.
  
  Two forelegs extended to either side of the heads, packed with taut muscle, ending in something that looked halfway between hooves and claws, but certainly dangerous.
  
  Something like a hand extended from her back right, each digit thicker around than my body, with another, smaller limb extending from the palm. The rear left was all tentacles, some of them with bits of exoskeleton, some long enough that they had to wrap around the other limbs or the heads or coil across the whole room.
  
  I strangled the urge to turn on bloodsight. I was genuinely afraid of what I"d see.
  
  "Fuck me... Is this why they took Amy? To fix this?" Quarrel asked.
  
  "Is this even fixable?" Anchorage wondered.
  
  I realised I was staring. "Hello," I managed, forcing my voice to sound friendly. "Sorry to pop in unannounced. Um. I"m Elpis. And you"re... Noelle?"
  
  The flesh shifted a little, some of the tentacles curling and waving. The girl nodded her head slowly. "Yes. Hi."
  
  "We just need to straighten a few things out," Amy said. "Do you want us to close the door again?"
  
  "Yes please," Noelle said, hugging her arms around herself.
  
  "Okay. See you in a second."
  
  Amy shoved me back out and hauled the door shut. It shut with a clunk, and some lights set in a panel next to it turned from red to green as Amy turned the handle.
  
  "It"s some kind of time field," Amy said vaguely, already heading for Trickster. "Stops time while the door"s closed."
  
  That must have been why I couldn"t feel Amy"s spider- she"d been frozen in time.
  
  "But I saw- I saw them shoot you," I said, pointing back at where I"d seen her fall.
  
  Amy looked back at that, and her face twisted with nausea. "Yeah, I want some answers too." She slapped her hands down on Trickster"s chest, ignoring his groan. "Do I have your permission to heal you?" she asked loudly.
  
  "Y"s," Trickster managed.
  
  "Okay, Trickster; you said Noelle"s power was changing her. You didn"t say anything about whatever the fuck that was. Explain, now."
  
  "It"s a clone."
  
  I turned as Genesis wheeled herself closer. She was surprisingly average in person, with a mop of auburn hair and thin legs. I didn"t miss how she stared at Amy.
  
  "That"s far enough," I said when she came within a few feet. Genesis grabbed the wheels of her chair to stop.
  
  "Sorry. Noelle spits out clones of anyone she touches. We couldn"t figure out how to help her until we came to Brockton Bay."
  
  "So that was another Amy?" I asked, reeling at the concept. Clones weren"t unheard of- Blasto down in Boston specialised in doing horrible things with DNA, cooking up plant-animal hybrids with bits of cape DNA mixed in for extra power. But a full clone was seemingly out of his reach.
  
  "Not exactly," Genesis said. "The clones have the powers and the memories, but they usually come out kind of mutated. And they"re all nuts. First thing they try to do is kill whoever the original cares about."
  
  I forced myself to look over at the body. For a second I saw frizzy brown hair and freckles, and the grief came back in full force.
  
  "Ew, gross, it"s got extra toes," Firecracker said.
  
  Sure enough, the left foot was wider, with eight toes at the end. One of the elbows was swollen and rigid, and the notches of the spine were protruding from the back like rivets. The whole thing was sickening, like a funhouse mirror version of Amy.
  
  Amy"s head snapped around. "She makes evil clones of people?" She looked back at Trickster, and slapped him across the face. "You knew she was going to cough up an evil clone of me, and you didn"t tell me?!"
  
  Trickster groaned and slowly sat up. "In my defense, it wasn"t my plan to bring you here. That was all Perdition."
  
  "Yeah, I got that part," Amy said, getting to her feet and heading over to Sundancer. I followed automatically. "But you still fucked up." She put a hand to Sundancer"s face and frowned. "Jesus Christ, Elpis, what did you do to her?"
  
  "Uh, I elbowed her."
  
  Amy glared at me. I shrank back from the anger in her eyes.
  
  "Sheesh, there"s gratitude for you," Stoneknapper muttered.
  
  "Hey, so, you"re not trying to kill us anymore, right?" Leet asked from inside his bubble.
  
  "No," I said shamefully.
  
  Amy smacked my shoulder. I took it without complaint.
  
  Leet hesitantly tapped a button, and his forcefield faded away.
  
  "Okay, so since Plan "Let"s-Kidnap-The-Healer" went fucking awful," Leet said sarcastically with a glance at Perdition lying on the floor, "I guess we"re back to plan A."
  
  "What"s plan A?" I asked as Amy stood up and pulled Sundancer to her feet.
  
  Leet pointed at Noelle"s box. "I"m going to cure Noelle."
  
  9.7
  Late Saturday 9th April, The Docks, Uber & Leet"s Secret Lair
  
  We were all gathered inside the factory as Trickster finished explaining the situation to Faultline. The Travelers were on one side, and Palanquin were on the other. Amy was right in the middle, along with the man in the chair, who was apparently named Oliver. Leet was off to one side, tweaking the sun machine, and I was in the opposite corner, watching quietly.
  
  Faultline"s mask slowly turned from Leet, to Oliver, to the now-closed time fridge, to me as I stood next to a stack of shelving, and at last to Amy, who was currently healing Newter"s ribs.
  
  I"d worried about the effects of his hallucinogenic sweat on her, but apparently he could choose whether or not to sweat, which was useful. Running a wet wipe over his stomach to clean off any residue was enough for Amy to get to work on him.
  
  "I feel I was denied," Faultline said slowly, "Critical, need-to-know, information."
  
  "To be fair, we weren"t aware of all of this either," Trickster began.
  
  "You did know about her," Faultline retorted, jabbing a finger at Noelle"s box. "You knew there was a possibility of, and I quote, "deranged mutant cape clones", appearing and attacking everyone within range."
  
  Involuntarily, I glanced over at the heavy sheet Uber had draped over the dead clone. Blood had stained most of it a reddish brown. I looked away again as I felt my gorge rise.
  
  The Travelers had graphically described how the clone had launched itself out of the time fridge, screaming all the way, flesh shifting and stretching in impossible ways before Trickster had shot it. Some sort of inversion of Amy"s own power, maybe- self-directed mutation instead of outward healing.
  
  "You paid us to guard you while Leet worked, and escort you out of the city once it was finished; fair enough. You paid the additional fee for working within Brockton Bay; well and good. I accepted your offer for exchange of information and technology as part of our agreement.
  
  "This," Faultline said emphatically, "was not covered in our agreement. Bad enough your idiot teammate decided to abduct Panacea of all people, but you deliberately withheld the fact that you"re concealing a giant, clone-producing monster!"
  
  Trickster stepped closer to her. "Do not," he growled, "call Noelle a monster."
  
  "Alright; how about "breach of contract"? This job isn"t worth the money. As soon as everyone is healed, we"re leaving, and I will make sure the PRT knows we walked away from this mess."
  
  "We had a contract!" Trickster exploded.
  
  "A contract with a get-out clause in case of extraordinary circumstances," Faultline said. "You"re on your own."
  
  "Sucks to be them," Firecracker shrugged.
  
  Tactical frowned. "Why would they need extra protection anyway, if they weren"t planning on kidnapping Panacea?"
  
  I frowned too. That was rather strange. I cleared my throat.
  
  Everyone present flinched. Faultline"s hand went to her pistol, Trickster"s head snapped around, Gregor"s hands came up, and Leet ducked his head.
  
  I had all my weapons back, located by teams of insects and picked up with a few moments work- the sonic spear was inoperable, but everything else was okay. My armour was scuffed, dented in places, and the paint was peeling where Gregor"s slime had splashed me. My cape was tucked into my belt, a bit stretched at the end where Trainwreck had pulled it off.
  
  Usually, I would think myself worn-looking, unimpressive.
  
  Not now though.
  
  I gave everyone a second to realise I wasn"t doing anything aggressive, then spoke. "Why did you hire Faultline in the first place, if abducting Panacea wasn"t planned?"
  
  Leet raised his head a little. "This baby"s going to take all the power we"ve got," he said, patting the top of the machine fondly. "When we get started, we"re going to have to shut down everything else in the building to get enough juice- and keep from frying all the wiring. That means the SEP field"s going to be down for a bit."
  
  "SEP?"
  
  "Someone Else"s Problem," Leet clarified. "And this is going to be a bit noticeable- so the plan was for Palanquin to help get the Travelers somewhere safe if the good guys come a-knocking when this place starts a-rocking."
  
  "Fair enough."
  
  "Well, you"ll have to come up with a new plan," Faultline said as Newter groggily sat up. "Because we won"t be part of it." She placed a hand on Gregor"s shoulder and nudged him forward for healing. In the process, it let me get a clear look at Labyrinth for the first time.
  
  I winced at the sight of her- her mask was all cracked on one side from where I"d hit her. The least threatening of the bunch, a slip of a girl half my size, but I"d backhanded her without a moment"s hesitation. It made me question how much control over myself I really had.
  
  "Look, there"s got to be something we can work out," Trickster tried.
  
  "Like what?" Faultline demanded, helping Newter to his feet. "You barely had enough money to hire us to begin with. Now you"ve put us at the centre of a city-wide manhunt, next to a ticking timebomb," her hand swept out to indicate Noelle again, "and-" she broke off as her other hand came to point at me, realising she was close to tossing an insult my way.
  
  "Bit late for that," Anchorage said.
  
  "Information," Trickster said. "The offer still stands."
  
  "I very much doubt that," Faultline replied.
  
  Trickster hesitated, glancing back at the rest of the Travelers, who were standing behind him; except for Perdition, who was still unconscious on the ground.
  
  "I don"t know how much help I could give them," I said to the Butchers, "But I think I should try to help them get this done."
  
  "Are you fucking kidding me?!" Quarrel shouted. "You finally grow a spine, and now you"re just bending over to help these morons?! You-"
  
  I pushed Quarrel down into the dark next to Butcher and addressed the rest of the Butchers. "I"m still angry," I began, "But I know what"s going on now. And leaving Noelle like that is just asking for trouble. So I"m going to help them, if only to make sure they don"t screw up again."
  
  I didn"t say that it might be my last heroic act before my secret got out. Two teams of villains had seen me use all the powers of the Butcher in quick succession. At this point the only way I could guarantee their silence would be to kill them- and despite my recent rampage, I couldn"t bring myself to kill for my own convenience.
  
  One last heroic deed, before I had to run or hide or whatever contingency plan I"d decide on.
  
  "Honestly, I"m for it," Vladimir said. "Nipping this in the bud seems sensible."
  
  "Agreed," said Stoneknapper. "Although I want to try and find out more about how the cloning process works. I mean, do the clones have the original"s memories as well as their powers?"
  
  Trickster turned away from whispering with the rest of his team to face Faultline again. "We can tell you about the vials that give people superpowers."
  
  "What?" Amy asked, looking around from Gregor"s wrist.
  
  "What?" Faultline demanded, her body language screaming shock.
  
  "What?!" I shouted, stepping forward.
  
  Again, everyone flinched at my outburst. I forced myself to a stop and clenched my jaw shut until I could be sure my teeth were normal-looking.
  
  "Pardon me," I forced out. "Did you say you"ve found proof of some substance that can grant powers?"
  
  "Yeah," Trickster said. "Little glass vials about yay big." His hands sketched out a shape the length and width of a pen. "Whoever drinks them winds up getting powers."
  
  "You got any proof?" Trainwreck asked. Even with big chunks of his armour ripped off or mangled, he was still able to stand and loom impressively.
  
  Trickster pointed to the time fridge and Oliver"s chair. "That"s what happened to them. They were the only ones in the group who didn"t have powers, but we only had the one vial for them. Noelle drank one half, Oliver drank the other- she got too much, he got too little."
  
  "Yeah, that"s how I"m going to fix her," Leet said without turning away from the control panel.
  
  "That"s... useful," Faultline admitted. "Can you tell us anything else?"
  
  "Well," said Trickster, pointing to Newter"s bare chest, "The case we found the vial in had that symbol on it."
  
  Heads turned towards Newter"s tattoo- a black symbol like a Greek Omega turned upside down, or a stylised capital U. Every Case 53 recorded had that symbol somewhere on their body. Nemean had it marked over her navel, where her fur was thin enough to see it clearly.
  
  "Oh my god," Nemean said faintly.
  
  "If you help us finish this, we"ll tell you where we found it, where we hid the case. Hell, I"ll lead you there if you like."
  
  Faultline traded glances with Gregor, Newter, and Trainwreck, who all nodded emphatically. Regent shrugged laconically, and Labyrinth gave a hesitant thumbs up.
  
  "Very well," Faultline said. "But one more mistake or withheld secret, and we"re gone."
  
  Trickster sighed. "Fair enough."
  
  Oliver twisted around in his chair. His face was ridiculously good-looking- chiselled yet delicate features, shining eyes, amazing blonde hair. Apparently his appearance constantly shifted to be more and more attractive. "I think we should let Panacea leave, since she"s not... er, not necessary for this. Plus, we did kind of kidnap her."
  
  Amy took Regent"s outstretched wrist; I could see the bug bites on his skin fading as she spoke. "There"s no "kind of" to it. This asshole," she pointed her foot at Perdition"s prone form, "threw something in my face, and when I woke up, I was here.
  
  "But," she added grudgingly, "If I can help fix Noelle, I can stay a little longer. That"s pretty fucked up."
  
  "She"s taking this pretty well for someone who got kidnapped," Needler noted.
  
  "I mean, I did get some good readings from when you touched her," Leet pointed. "And you might be able to finish up anything leftover when the Para-Fusion Engine"s finished."
  
  "Perfect," Trickster said. "And... Uh..."
  
  He looked my way uncertainly.
  
  "Until Panacea"s home safe, you"re stuck with me," I said flatly.
  
  "Right, right," Trickster said as Amy gently took Labyrinth"s hand.
  
  "Is there anyway we can send them a message to let them know I"m safe? I don"t want my family more worried than they already are."
  
  Uber lifted a finger on his left hand- the unarmoured one. I"d had to use Stoneknapper"s power to peel the metal off so Amy could heal the snapped bones and pulped flesh.
  
  "I think we still have the Untraceable Phone somewhere- we used it for a phone-call prank video a couple months back."
  
  "No, it broke," Leet said. "Shame, really."
  
  "Well, how much longer is it going to take?" Amy asked as she let Labyrinth"s hand go and knelt next to Perdition. I was surprised she was willing to heal him, even if she"d left him for the very last.
  
  "Well, the power"s almost charged, so if Sundancer gets back on that, we can get going in about five minutes-"
  
  "God damn it, Elpis!" Amy shouted. "How hard did you hit him?"
  
  I stared at Perdition, flicking to bloodsight. "I just whacked him in the neck, nothing serious."
  
  "Oh really? There"s a hairline fracture in one of his vertebrae! You came this close to paralysing him!" Amy held up her thumb and finger an inch apart, glaring at me furiously.
  
  I opened my mouth to defend myself, hesitated, and closed it. "I"m sorry," I said instead. "I wasn"t thinking."
  
  "Clearly," Amy scoffed, poking a finger into Perdition"s neck.
  
  Some of the villains present glanced at me or Amy. Regent in particular looked like he was about to say something when Perdition stirred, coughed, and sat up.
  
  "What happened?" he asked, looking around. When his helmet turned to me, he yelped and scrambled back on his ass.
  
  "Welcome back, moron," Trickster said, stepping over and smacking him on the back of the head. "You"re lucky you didn"t get us all killed."
  
  Perdition pointed a finger at me. "She tried to kill us! You killed him, I saw it!" The finger jabbed towards Trickster. "I rewound you both, but his head was everywhere!"
  
  Amy shot me a furious look. I shrank away from the judgement in her eyes.
  
  "Any of us would have done the same," Muramasa said.
  
  My heart didn"t sink at his words. It was already as low as it could get. But it did curl up and clench in shame.
  
  "If we"re all finished freaking out," Leet said, "I could use some help." He pointed to a bunch of what looked like little satellite dishes, and a pair of crowns covered in wires and diodes. "Get the sensors set up and pointing at Noelle, and put one of the crowns on Oliver. Sundancer, I really need the generator charged."
  
  Sundancer eyed me uneasily, then crossed over and held her hands in front of her, watching me from the corner of her eyes. A spark flickered, then grew into a tiny flame, which she guided into the centre of the spherical frame. The heat from the little sun dropped dramatically- presumably the frame helped contain the heat and channel it into the machine.
  
  Sundancer stepped back as the sun steadily grew to fit the inside of the frame. Lights on the console lit up, and Leet nodded approvingly. "Alright. Let"s get the star of the show."
  
  He produced his remote control from the pocket of his grimy labcoat and tapped a button. The time fridge beeped, and then the entire face of it separated into panels that folded themselves away, leaving the whole side open for Noelle to hesitantly step out.
  
  Her front legs made heavy clomping sounds as she slowly made her way forward. She was clearly making an effort to stay low, but she still towered over everyone else. Her tentacles writhed and coiled restlessly, and the cow-wolf head at her front slowly turned this way and that, taking everything in.
  
  "Fuck," Newter breathed. Faultline quickly elbowed him in the side.
  
  "Noelle, we"re going to set up some sensors around you for the machine, okay?" Leet said, barely glancing up from his console.
  
  "Okay," Noelle said quietly.
  
  Ballistic, Trickster, and Uber each took a couple of sensors and began setting them up in a circle around Noelle, Leet occasionally directing them to move the sensors a little to the left, or angle them up a few degrees.
  
  I sidled up to Amy as Uber passed the second crown up to Noelle, who gingerly set it on her head. The crown lit up and contracted to fit her scalp perfectly.
  
  "Amy," I said quietly. "Can we talk?"
  
  Amy shot me a poisonous look and grabbed my wrist, dragging me over to the side of the room. "I can"t believe you," she hissed.
  
  "Amy-"
  
  "No, shut up. All this time I thought you were in control- I thought you were safe. And then you just go berserk and start massacring people!"
  
  "Amy-"
  
  "I"ve seen you hold back! You fought off Vicky"s aura, you pulled back from Lung, the Empire- you should have been able to-"
  
  "Amy." I shucked my gauntlet and took her hand in mine, so she could see the truth of my words. "I"m sorry."
  
  Amy stopping, staring at me wide-eyed.
  
  "I"m not trying to weasel out of it, I know I fucked up. I just... I thought I"d lost you."
  
  Amy dropped her gaze to our hands. Her fingers squeezed mine, briefly.
  
  "I know you"re mad, and that"s fair. Just promise me you"ll send the letters when it all comes out."
  
  Amy"s head snapped back up. "The letters. The letters? No. No, you"re not- you"re still-"
  
  "Amy, two whole teams of villains saw me using all the powers," I said softly. "At this point, the only way I could stop the secret from getting out is by killing them all. And if I did that, I"d really have lost myself."
  
  "There has to be something," Amy said, even as I saw the realisation on her face.
  
  "If there is, I can"t think of anything. Just send the letters for me. Please?"
  
  Amy swallowed and squeezed my hand again. "Okay," she whispered.
  
  "Thank you. And thank you for being my friend." I gently pulled my hand away.
  
  Amy slowly lowered her hand to her side, then jammed both hands into the pockets of her robe. "Sure," she mumbled.
  
  I cleared my throat awkwardly. "I guess we should get back. Not every day you see something like this." I gestured back towards the group in an "after you" sort of way.
  
  Amy muttered an agreement and started back to the group. I fell into step a half-pace behind her.
  
  Bearskin sighed. "Well, it was fun while it lasted."
  
  "Okay," Leet announced, "We"ve just hit the minimum power requirement, sensors are aligned, I"m getting readings from Noelle and Oliver." On a pair of screens I could see 3D models of their brains, with the corona pollentia present in each.
  
  "Is this going to hurt?" Noelle asked.
  
  Leet shrugged. "Hell if I know."
  
  "There"s no nerve endings in the brain, Noelle," Amy said reassuringly. "You won"t feel a thing. Although..." She turned to the others. "We should probably find something to hold her down, in case she has a spasm or something."
  
  "That"s a very good point," Trickster admitted.
  
  "We"ve got some cables and stuff over here," Uber volunteered.
  
  It was the work of a few minutes for people to grab chains and ropes and begin binding Noelle"s limbs to the walls and floor. I used Stoneknapper"s power to scoop out large hollows in the floor for her to fit her front feet into, then moulded the concrete up and around her legs. Pretty soon Noelle was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
  
  I noticed Amy talking with Genesis out of the corner of my eye as we worked. Amy said something that made Genesis"s whole face light up and hold her hand out, which Amy took.
  
  "Huh. Kind of her," Tactical said.
  
  "Alright," Leet said. "Let"s light this candle." He grabbed a massive Frankenstein-style knife switch on the console and hauled it upright. The console chimed, and an electrical hum filled the air as Leet grinned manically.
  
  "Power"s charged, readings are clear, subjects are prepared. Yeah..."
  
  There was a long moment as we waited for Leet to push the switch the rest of the way.
  
  "Leet?" Trickster asked.
  
  "Wait a second."
  
  "Leet, I thought you said-"
  
  "Wait. A. Second," Leet snapped, rounding on him. "I"m about to use the power of a miniature sun to fuse together the powers of two people who got mixed up in a fucking conspiracy theory, while Panacea and the motherfucking Butcher are in the audience!"
  
  Leet paused for breath and adjusted the massive black rubber gloves on his hands. "This is the coolest thing I have, or will ever do. Let me enjoy it for a moment."
  
  "Damn," Tock Tick said admiringly. "He really is a Tinker."
  
  Leet grasped the switch firmly, adjusted his goggles, licked his lips, and took a deep breath.
  
  Then he roared "AND LEET SAID: LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
  
  He threw the switch. The hum built to a screech as every light in the building went dark. A second later, the lights on the crowns and the sensors blazed with light, illuminating the scene.
  
  Oliver, strapped into the chair, impossibly handsome, was directly opposite Noelle, a towering bulk of misshapen flesh. Static made their hair stand up, and I swore I could see the skin of Noelle"s lower body rippling.
  
  "Krouse," Noelle said suddenly, in a panicked tone, "I think I can feel something-"
  
  And I was somewhere else. I"d seen this before, but I"d forgotten. So many times.
  
  Huge creatures filled my perception. Somehow I knew they were two, even as they existed in multiple parallel spaces at once, folding and unfolding and expanding and shifting without taking more or less space.
  
  I remembered something similar- a tesseract, a four-dimensional analogue to a cube. In three dimensions it would appear to shift constantly, each side folding or reshaping so each side could be a perfect cube.
  
  They moved in a double helix across the void of space, gradually moving further and further apart. And when they were too far apart to see each other, a third appeared. Smaller and somehow gnarlier than the one it approached.
  
  They communicated in bursts of energy as powerful and violent as a supernova. An offer to trade, to exchange pieces of themselves, and the knowledge and power within.
  
  "-happening-" Noelle"s voice trailed off as she slumped to the ground. One of the ropes snapped under her weight.
  
  Everyone was staggered, like we"d been struck by something. Leet was slumped over the control panel, half the Travelers were in a heap, Genesis was nearly falling out of her wheelchair.
  
  I was on my knees, and Amy had fallen against me. I quickly cupped her chin and flicked to bloodsight to check her. No visible injuries, luckily.
  
  "We saw that before," Flinch spoke for the first time since I"d entered the factory. "Th-those things..."
  
  "We gotta remember it this time," Dirty Rotter said. "Draw something, or..."
  
  The details were already fading from us though. The experience was so bizarre that my mind couldn"t hold onto it, the impossible... What had I seen?
  
  "What the hell was that?" Trainwreck asked. He was the only one of us who hadn"t slumped over or fallen, his armour remaining upright. Good thing, too- if he"d fallen on someone he would"ve killed them.
  
  "Nearby parahumans get affected in the vicinity of a trigger event," I breathed, cradling Amy as I stood up.
  
  "They"re alive," Amy murmured. "They"re parasites, a colony organism..."
  
  "Amy," I said, patting her face, "come back to me. We need you right now."
  
  "A trigger event?" Faultline said, patting her hips and arms and waist in a way that would have been funny if I hadn"t known she was checking all her equipment. "Does that mean..."
  
  I stared at Noelle and Oliver as they began to stir. "I think it does."
  
  "Ho-lee shit," Stoneknapper whispered.
  
  Everyone was starting to come to- Newter levered himself up onto all fours, while Gregor carefully helped Labyrinth off the floor. Trickster was mindlessly brushing himself off, staring at Noelle.
  
  Amy blinked and looked around. "Um."
  
  I lowered her to the floor. "Back with us?"
  
  "I think so-"
  
  There was a noise like a whipcrack. Noelle was rising to her feet, and another length of rope had snapped as she stretched out, until her head was close to the ceiling.
  
  "Noelle!" Trickster shouted, stepping around the console and jogging towards her. "Noelle, how do you feel?"
  
  Noelle"s arms were wrapped around her, and I could see her tentacles writhing without pause. "I don"t feel so good," she managed, right before the wolf-cow head on the front of her gurgled and vomited a stream of filth all over Trickster.
  
  "Leet," Uber said, shaking his partner"s shoulder. "Buddy, you gotta see this."
  
  Noelle"s skin was writhing now, bubbling in places like a boiling pot. Noelle was moaning, jerking about against the restraints, which creaked like an old staircase.
  
  The mutant head coughed up another stream of vomit, less than the first. Trickster hastily stepped back, futilely wiping the mess off his jacket.
  
  "This can"t be good," Quarrel muttered.
  
  "I mean, it might be a good sign," Firecracker said optimistically. "Like, you"re supposed to puke when you"re sick, get all the poison out, right? Maybe her body"s just-"
  
  Noelle screamed and jerked to the side like she"d been stabbed. Two more ropes snapped, and I heard a crunch as the concrete around her front legs began to give way. Her tentacles lashed out, slamming into shelves and gouging the wall.
  
  "Noelle!" Trickster screamed.
  
  "It hurts!" Noelle screamed back. "It hurts! I"m dying!"
  
  Another spasm, and chunks of concrete broke off around her legs. Then, with a sucking noise like a drain being unclogging, Noelle reared up, and I saw her legs stretch and squeeze out through the restraints like she was made of jelly.
  
  "Aw fuck," Vladimir groaned.
  
  I pulled Amy behind me and closed my helmet as the rest of the cables snapped off Noelle. All that was left was a chain around her circumference, and that didn"t look like it was going to last long either.
  
  "Someone get me out of this chair!" Oliver screamed, thrashing against the restraints. I could see his body changing too, bloating and widening. His hair was lank with sweat, and his features were changing before my eyes.
  
  Ballistic ran forward and started ripping the restraints off him as Noelle screamed again. Oliver had just stood up when Noelle"s tentacles lashed out at them like whips.
  
  I teleported between them without thinking, and the tentacles slammed into me, knocking me back. The force was incredible- I feel my armour dent slightly from the impact. If either of them had taken the hit, they would"ve been sliced in half.
  
  Unfortunately, the tentacles weren"t done, writhing past me to grab at everyone else. Ballistic was seized by the ankle and dragged in, while Oliver barely dodged a swipe from a chitinous tendril. More stretched past to grab at the rest.
  
  Regent batted at one with his sceptre, and Gregor stuck another to the ground with a burst of slime. Uber threw Leet back and punched one tentacle with his armoured hand before it wrapped around his wrist and yanked him off his feet. Trickster was already being dragged along by an arm and a leg.
  
  "Cut them, quickly!" Muramasa ordered. I leapt to my feet and drew my swords, slicing through the tentacles near me. They leaked viscous grey fluid as they parted.
  
  Noelle screamed again, and Trickster and Ballistic were hauled right up to Noelle"s body. Trainwreck grabbed Uber"s leg before he could get pulled in, and fired a blast of steam that scalded the tentacle.
  
  Trickster was absorbed into one of the legs, but Ballistic managed to fight his way free, grabbing ammo out of his belt. The monster head gurgled and opened its mouth, and another stream of vomit burst forth. Two large shapes hit the ground with a wet slap, stirring weakly.
  
  "Oh fuck!" Perdition yelled, grabbing at his waist. "Where"s my gun?"
  
  Faultline pulled her pistol just as the smaller lump raised its head. The next thing I saw, Faultline was standing in the middle of the pile of vomit, and the naked Trickster clone was standing in the middle of the Palanquin mercenaries.
  
  I grabbed my sword- and hesitated. I was already thinking of killing again. The situation was different, but-
  
  The clone immediately kicked Labyrinth in the stomach, then swapped Newter with Genesis before Gregor grabbed the clone in a headlock. Meanwhile the Ballistic clone tackled Faultline into Noelle"s body, and she sank into the flesh like it was quicksand. The clone turned and held up something it had pulled off Faultline"s costume, and shot it right through Gregor"s shoulder. He went down with a yell as blood spurted from the wound. Newter slapped the Trickster clone full in the face to knock it out.
  
  Labyrinth wailed, and I saw the ground around her feet begin to change into dark earth. Steel fencing topped with barbed wire began to grow out of the floor.
  
  No time to hesitate. I pulled my insects into the building as I hit the Ballistic clone with pain. It staggered and screamed, then dropped as the real Ballistic shot it in the head with a coin. I set the insects to attack the remaining clone.
  
  More tentacles were whipping all over the place. I backed towards Amy as they reached out, grabbing at everyone in the room. Trainwreck put himself between the tentacles and his team, raising his battered arms to cover his face. I saw Regent throw his arms to the side, and a bunch of tentacles veered away, crushing a shelving unit instead.
  
  The monster head vomited again, three lumps this time- two Faultlines and another Trickster. Sundancer was replaced by a screaming, vomit covered Faultline that leapt at Gregor.
  
  I threw a sword into its stomach before it could touch him, and grabbed it by the throat to start draining its blood. It struggled weakly, then slashed its hand across my forearm. There was a flash of red-blue light, and my arm went dead.
  
  I felt something warm and wet leaking into the undersuit.
  
  "Holy shit," Anchorage screamed. "It"s reverse-power! She cut through our fucking arm!"
  
  "Amy!" I shouted, breaking the clone"s neck. "Are you okay?"
  
  "The fuck kind of question is that?" Amy shouted back.
  
  People started swapping at random as both Trickster clones worked in tandem. I found myself swapped with Uber, right next to Amy and Leet.
  
  "We need weapons!" I shouted, grabbing the wall and moulding a hatchet out of the concrete with my one working hand. "If we don"t stop them now, there"ll be too many of them!"
  
  "There"s a ton of stuff on the shelves, we just have to get to it!" Leet said.
  
  I sliced the tip off a tentacle that was creeping up on us. "Easier said than done!"
  
  There was a crack as the last chain snapped off Noelle, followed by another rush of vomit. I threw the hatchet at the newest clones, instantly killing the middle one. The others leapt to their feet- one formed a ball of fire in her hand, the other swapped with Leet.
  
  The Trickster clone was dark-haired, with a hook nose. I spread rage over it before it could do anything, and punched it in the head as it tried to attack me. It went over like a tree, its skull dented inward.
  
  I grabbed the corpse and tossed it at the Sundancer clone, bowling her over. Her sun didn"t go for us like I expected- instead it ploughed right through the wall, blasting an opening to the outside.
  
  Noelle stumbled towards it, wailing in pain. Her body was too big for the hole, but she somehow squeezed herself through it and out into the parking lot, trailing tentacles behind her.
  
  "We can"t let her escape!" I yelled, drawing a sword.
  
  "Where"s Leet?" Uber demanded, looking around wildly.
  
  A skinny man leapt in through the hole, hopping over the scattered debris and grabbing something off the floor. "Fuck you!" he screamed in Leet"s nasal voice. He hefted the something and threw it at us.
  
  Regent waved a hand, and the clone"s arm went the wrong way, tossing the grenade straight up. At the height of its arc it exploded into a dozen mini-grenades that clattered to the floor. The Leet clone was lost in a rush of fire and thunder as I threw myself in front of Amy.
  
  I could feel my arm reattaching itself as the regeneration took hold. I managed to bend my fingers enough to pull out my air cannon. "Amy, I need you to stay down and keep out of sight. I"ll keep everything off you, but I need to stop these clones before they do any more damage."
  
  Amy"s face was pale and frightened, but she nodded. "Go."
  
  I teleported outside to the parking lot, and immediately had to throw myself to the side as a sun the size of a softball swooped at me. Another Sundancer clone was controlling three little suns at once, flicking them out in wide arcs that scorched anything they came near.
  
  "Oh, come on!" Bearskin complained.
  
  Noelle had collapsed on her side, limbs thrashing as she screamed. More clones were being vomited out even as I watched, twisted and deformed, and looking even more monstrous by the light of the suns the Sundancer clones were creating.
  
  I called insects in as I circled around, directing them towards the clones- Tricksters and Faultlines and Sundancers and Leets. I sent a bunch of flies to attack the Leet that was trying to get to my bike- hell only knew what it might create from the parts. More insects formed a cloud around me, hiding my movements.
  
  Genesis came out of the hole in the wall- it must have been her, shaped like a massive gorilla covered in spiky crab shell. She barrelled toward the clones, too heavy to be swapped and armoured enough to handle the heat. She dispatched a Trickster clone with a backhand and smashed a Faultline to the ground with her foot.
  
  Ballistic and Uber followed after her, Uber holding a fat gun. They both started firing into the crowd, drawing blood.
  
  Ballistic got replaced with an oversized Faultline, who slashed at Uber with a hand and cut a huge line through the metal on his arm. A massive chunk fell off as he backed away; the Faultline cut the barrel short with a swipe, before getting a hole blown through its stomach as Uber shot it point blank.
  
  I charged in to rescue Ballistic before he could get absorbed, funnelling insects into the area. One of the Sundancers positioned a sun high above, burning all the insects in the air, so I hit it with pain first, then activated Vladimir"s blood rush and beheaded the clone with a swipe. I waded into the crowd, cutting a path and absorbing the blood that splashed onto me as I reached Ballistic. He was on his hands and knees as a couple of clones clawed at him.
  
  I flipped my air cannon around and smashed the stock into a Trickster"s face, stabbed a Faultline through the heart, and shot the Leet with an air blast as it tried to run. It tripped, and I set insects on it, biting and stinging.
  
  As Noelle vomited again, I slung Ballistic over my shoulder and sprinted back towards the building. I could feel how Amy had knelt to heal Gregor"s shoulder, with the rest of Palanquin stood protectively around him.
  
  Danger sense made me throw myself aside as one of the fresh clones fired at me- Ballistic must have touched Noelle after all. A lump of flesh shot past my shoulder and splattered against the wall.
  
  "Oh, that is disgusting," Needler groaned.
  
  Tactical agreed. "Taylor, if you get yourself killed by supersonic meat, I"ll never forgive you."
  
  Genesis leapt at the Ballistic clone and bore it to the ground, clawing at it. A second later there was a noise like a cannon, and Genesis"s projection disappeared. I spotted something shooting off into the sky, about the size of a melon.
  
  "I think that was a head," Nemean commented.
  
  "Is Leet still alive in there?" Uber asked, taking out the last clone and aiming at Noelle as she rolled around on the ground, screeching and wailing. Ballistic scooped handfuls of nuts and bolts from his pockets as I set him down, and started firing handfuls into the clones, pulping them into mincemeat.
  
  I switched to bloodsight. Noelle"s body was a mess of asymmetrical muscles and extra organs, but I could make out sacs with human figures inside.
  
  "He"s in there. So"s Faultline, Trickster and Sundancer. We need to cut them out before Noelle makes any more clones."
  
  My insects picked up movement coming up the street. A red blur zipped close and came to a stop a few feet away as Velocity slowed to normal speed. He stared at me, then turned to gawk at the mess of corpses and blood around Noelle.
  
  "What the fucking hell is this?" he demanded.
  
  "Giant monster, makes evil clones of whoever she touches," I said curtly. "She"s absorbed a couple of people, we need to extract them somehow. Good news is that Panacea"s okay. She"s inside."
  
  Velocity looked between me and the mess. "Jesus Christ," he managed, pressing a finger to his ear. "Velocity to all points, I"m at Greenwood and Lox, there"s some kind of... creature, with the Travelers. Elpis has confirmed Panacea is unharmed. Don"t touch the creature, it creates minions. I"m calling A-Class threat protocols."
  
  I put the cannon back on my belt and drew my other sword. "Sorry, Ballistic, but I think we"re going to have to-"
  
  Noelle spasmed and vomited again- and not just vomit; I saw two clones pop out from the reddened parts of her body like burst zits.
  
  The clones immediately scrambled for cover behind Noelle"s bulk as Ballistic and Uber opened fired. A Faultline got shot in the ankle, but the rest made it to cover.
  
  "Hey!"
  
  Glory Girl came swooping out of the night sky, tiara askew and fists raised. "Where"s-"
  
  Glory Girl appeared right next to me, while Velocity appeared 20 feet up in the air. I saw him start to blur as he fell, but he still hit the ground hard and fell over on a smashed ankle, howling in pain.
  
  A Ballistic clone leaned around Noelle"s hoof, gripping tight to her body, and shot something big. It splattered against Glory Girl"s forcefield in an explosion of red.
  
  "I think that was a leg," Dirty Rotter said.
  
  Glory Girl screamed as blood dripped down her legs; then there was a Ballistic next to us with handfuls of mess. Glory Girl was touching Noelle at once, and being sucked in- I saw her struggle, but her flight and strength weren"t enough to stop her getting absorbed. She screamed as her face went under, and I saw her legs kick weakly for a moment before being drawn in.
  
  Uber took a lump of flesh to the stomach and collapsed- his armour had saved him, but that had to hurt. I took the clone"s hand off with a slash and ducked away from its next shot before Ballistic shot it in the stomach. The clone staggered, and I rammed a sword through its brain, draining the blood that gushed over my hand.
  
  Noelle produced more clones, and this time the clones had long blonde hair. They were warped and deformed, misshapen faces and fused fingers and crooked bones, but they were unmistakably Glory Girl.
  
  All four of them shot towards us like bullets from a gun. Ballistic fired handfuls of debris at them, and I blasted one with pain. One went down bleeding from its eye, one got hit in the shoulder and kept going, and the one I hit ploughed into the ground.
  
  I threw up a cloud of insects to blind them, but it wasn"t enough to stop them. The bleeding clone grabbed Uber by the armour and tossed him towards Noelle like a frisbee. Ballistic shot at the uninjured one and broke its forcefield, which let me reach past him and ram a sword into its back. I twisted the blade to nick its aorta, then yanked it out, and the clone collapsed.
  
  The bleeding clone rounded on me, then reeled as a red blur pummelled it from behind. Velocity was balancing on one foot, firing a flurry of punches into it. In the moment the clone was distracted, I rammed one sword into its gut and the other up through its throat and out the top of its skull.
  
  The clone I"d hit with pain was recovering- I yanked my swords out and swung, but it flew backwards, up, and over, charging into the factory.
  
  "Get after it!" Flinch shouted.
  
  I teleported inside to try and intercept it, while I directed all my insects to attack the clones outside. Palanquin, Oliver and Amy were huddled together now, fully healed and armed with whatever weapons they could bring to bear. Labyrinth was raising stone walls around them, but it was slow going.
  
  The clone swooped low and grabbed chunks of debris to throw at them. Regent waved a hand and the clone"s first throw went wide, but Regent gasped and clutched his arm.
  
  "Oh great, now the kid"s got performance issues?" Rotter shouted.
  
  The second throw was aimed at Amy- Trainwreck yanked her aside before a chunk of brick could pulverise her, but the clone followed with a dive. I accelerated into bloodrush to bodyslam it-
  
  Fear. Pure, unadulterated fear, like I was back in the locker. I stumbled, slashed wildly, and the clone just flipped past me and grabbed Amy by the wrist, hauling her into the air as she screamed.
  
  I shoved the Butchers down, muffling my emotions, and fired a grappler into the ceiling to pull myself up after them. I could make out the clone screaming something at Amy as she struggled, but the words were indistinct through bloodrush.
  
  A kick to the ankle to break the forcefield, and a sword through the head to kill the clone. I dropped both swords and grabbed Amy by her other hand as the clone fell to the ground, reeling us back down to the floor.
  
  More clones were being coughed up outside, thick and fast. There was some kind of shouting going on, and then most of the clones climbed onto Noelle"s body while the rest grabbed her limbs and lifted her into the air, slowly carrying her off.
  
  I could feel the Butchers raging at me, wanting me to pursue the fight, but I had to focus on Amy as her legs gave out and she collapsed to the floor, cradling her arm.
  
  Amy"s wrist was one big bruise where the clone had grabbed her, and bent at an odd angle. She was sobbing in big heaving wails, staring at the clone"s body. "Vicky," she wailed, "Vicky!"
  
  I grabbed her head and forced her to look at me. "Amy, don"t look, look at me. I"m sorry, it"s going to be okay." I grabbed my cape off my belt and unrolled it, flicking to bloodsight to check her wrist. Her radius was broken, but it wasn"t complicated.
  
  "I"m sorry," I said, grabbing her wrist and twisting. Amy shrieked as I reset the bone with Butcher-experience, and then wrapped the cape around her forearm and locked it into place with a switch.
  
  "I"m so sorry," I said, guiding her back towards Palanquin as Velocity speed-hopped into the room, un-blurring to regular speed.
  
  "Elpis, what the fuck-"
  
  "It"s exactly what it looks like," I said, too angry to care. "We need backup. And somebody get some painkillers for Amy."
  
  Newter hurried over. "Here," he said, spitting in his palm and touching the back of Amy"s hand. She immediately went limp without a sound. I checked her breathing and pulse, then nodded.
  
  "Shouldn"t we have kept the healer conscious in case somebody gets hurt?" Regent pointed out.
  
  Newter swore. "Never mind," I snapped. "Glory Girl"s been absorbed, and the clones of her just flew Noelle off."
  
  "I don"t understand, she should have been able to pull herself free," Velocity said, utterly bewildered.
  
  "We think Noelle"s body messes with powers when you touch her. It makes it harder for you to escape," Oliver said, now looking dumpy and average compared to his former beauty.
  
  "Oh that"s just great. A giant monster, crazy clones of capes, and there"s a shitload of bugs-"
  
  "Forget the bugs," I said. "Does the PRT know which way Noelle"s heading?"
  
  Velocity stared at me. I snapped my fingers in front of his face. "Velocity! Do they know which way she"d heading?"
  
  Velocity blinked. "Uh, yeah, I called it in, she"s heading north. Wha-"
  
  "You can"t move fast enough to keep up with her, and you won"t be able to handle most of the clones," I said, kicking one of my swords into my hand. "Amy," I said, turning back to her, "I"ve got to go after Noelle. Velocity"s going to keep you safe, okay? I"ll be right back. Everyone else, you"re with me. Grab whatever weapons you can, we"ll going to stop Noelle before she digests your boss or something."
  
  "Wait, what?" Regent asked. "We don"t take orders from-"
  
  I opened my helmet and snarled at him with a mouthful of fangs.
  
  "Shutting up."
  
  9.8
  Chapter Notes
  
  Man, writing this thing kicked my ass. Longest chapter yet, and it's more complex and fast-paced combat. I don't make it easy for myself.
  
  Early Sunday 10th April, The Docks
  
  As it turned out, the vast majority of the Leet Tech wasn"t suitable for the purpose of hunting a crowd of homicidal clones.
  
  For starters, lots of it was broken from the fight, or had a little label on it saying something like "Fart Gun- glitchy".
  
  For another, what was left was clearly designed to be non-lethal, or less-lethal as Tactical insisted it be called. It made sense- Uber and Leet were tasteless pranksters, not monsters. If they"d gone around toting deadly weapons, the heroes would have come down on them like a sack of bricks.
  
  Still, there were a couple of things worth taking; A big silver rifle called the Zap-o-Matic, which was labelled as being "Painful but not lethal"; A Metroid arm cannon, which Newter had called dibs on, on the basis that its orange paint job matched his skin; A Halo Jackal energy shield, which Gregor strapped to his wrist and nodded in approval at the glowing purple disc that appeared from it.
  
  I checked on Amy as I slung an oversized sword onto my back. She looked like she was sleeping, breathing quietly as I examined her wrist again.
  
  "I"ve called in backup. They"ll get her to the PRT safe and sound," Velocity said, crouching awkwardly next to me. "I"ll be keeping an eye on her too. Not like I can help much with this," he indicated his ankle, which had been bound up. He"d tried eating something called a Health Mushroom off a shelf, but it mostly seemed to act like a painkiller.
  
  I breathed out. "Alright. Make sure they know about the Glory Girl clones. They might try to come after her." Learning from the Travelers that the clones tended to target the near and dear of the original had given an extra dimension of fear to the whole debacle.
  
  Velocity gave me a long look from behind his visor. "You really do care about her, don"t you?"
  
  I shrugged. "She"s a good person. She doesn"t deserve any of this." I hauled myself to my feet. "Alright, let"s move out. We"ve got monsters to kill."
  
  "A-fucking-men," Bearskin agreed.
  
  We were all loaded for bear as we crammed ourselves into a van and headed off. Oliver was driving, with Perdition in the driver"s seat, checking his pistol.
  
  The rest of us were in the back. Gregor, Labyrinth, Regent, Genesis, and me. Trainwreck was holding on to the rear fender and following with wheels built into his suit"s feet, and Newter was riding on his back so he didn"t accidentally drug anyone else.
  
  Genesis was running her hands over her thighs, eyes wide as she squeezed and poked. I"d suspected that Amy had healed her earlier, and this seemed like confirmation.
  
  "Sooooo," Regent asked, fiddling with his sceptre and the wooden shield he"d picked out, "What the hell"s the plan?"
  
  I considered as I pulled on Tactical"s power for some strategy. "The Trickster clones are the big problem. They could swap us around, push more of us into Noelle. So we"ll need to reduce visibility, obstruct lines of sight.
  
  "Then there"s the Sundancers and the Ballistics- they can do a lot of damage at range, but I should be able to get close. How much do the clones care about friendly fire?" I asked Genesis.
  
  Genesis started. "Uh, I don"t know. We"ve never had this many clones running around before. I don"t think they ever attacked each other though."
  
  "No, they definitely didn"t," Perdition said from the front seat.
  
  "So if I can get inside their reach, they"ll have trouble hitting me without risking each other," I concluded.
  
  "I wouldn"t bank on that," Needler warned. "These things are clearly unstable- their hate might be enough to let each other die if it stops you. They"ll know you"re their biggest threat."
  
  "Noted," I admitted. "The real problem is the Leet clones. You know how Leet can only make one of anything? We need to hope the clones have all his stuff locked out- otherwise they could pump out all the most dangerous stuff."
  
  "But that takes time, right?" Oliver said nervously from the driver"s seat. "It hasn"t even been an hour- they can"t just put together a robot army or whatever out of nothing."
  
  "That"s true," I admitted. "But Tinkers are good at improvising- and we"ve seen how Leet was able to use Sundancer as a power source. That opens up a lot of possibilities."
  
  The insects I"d spread out around the van picked up something- vehicles parked across the road. Oliver came to a stop.
  
  "Uh, guys? There"s PRT guys out there."
  
  I stood up and opened the back door. Trainwreck shuffled out of the way as I stepped around, keeping my hands visible.
  
  The squad of troopers did not look entirely reassured. Maybe it was because I had a massive sword hilt poking over my shoulder, or a sci-fi gun on my hip. Or maybe it was the bandolier of knives and axes I"d formed out of scrap and wreckage that stretched across my chest.
  
  Maybe it was because I"d rolled up with a van full of villains.
  
  "It could also be because you"re splattered with blood and mud," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  "Easy fellas," I said, walking forward. They didn"t exactly raise their foam sprayers, but they didn"t lower them either. "We"re here to help."
  
  "Stand down," said a familiar voice. Miss Militia came up, her power in the form of a pump-action shotgun cradled in her arms. "A-Class protocols. We"re letting them through."
  
  The troopers moved aside slowly, and Oliver inched the van forward. Miss Militia gave me a long look. "I heard you ran into some trouble."
  
  "You could say that," I responded, just as flatly.
  
  "Velocity called ahead, passed on the relevant information." Miss Militia"s eyes tightened slightly. "To be clear, you are going to help with the situation?"
  
  "You have my word," I said as sincerely as I could manage.
  
  Miss Militia nodded. "And afterwards?"
  
  I hesitated. "I don"t know. I"ll still want to help, if that"s possible."
  
  After a pregnant pause, Miss Militia turned sideways. "Follow me."
  
  I fell into step just behind her as she explained. "The clones seem to have holed up in a building up ahead. A silent alarm was tripped, and we matched its location to Velocity"s call. We"re currently assembling and working out a strategy to get inside."
  
  I reached out with all my senses. Insects gave me a map, filling in the surrounding landscape with a more upscale part of the Docks- office buildings and factories. Some of them showed signs of recent damage- broken windows and holes smashed in the roofs.
  
  Bloodsight let me see the gathering before we turned the corner. I was relieved to see Ironclad"s mass, along with Grue and Whirlygig next to the chariot, and Tattletale and Cerberus standing by the dogs.
  
  Armsmaster was standing over a crude map scratched into the road surface, gesturing with the tip of his halberd. Lady Photon was stood by him, along with Dauntless. Laserdream, Gargoyle and Aegis were a little way away, looking uncertain.
  
  "Elpis," said Armsmaster. "I see you"re alright."
  
  I was surprised by the civility of it. I"d kind of expected people to grab weapons and shout "Oh my god, it"s the Butcher!"
  
  "More or less," I said, crossing over to the Undersiders to check on them.
  
  "Amy and Vicky," Lady Photon asked worriedly. "Are they-"
  
  "Amy"s on her way back to the PRT building. Velocity"s watching over her. Unfortunately, Glory Girl"s been absorbed. Good news is I don"t think she"s actually hurt, so as long as we can get her out of there, she should be okay."
  
  Lady Photon and Laserdream didn"t look at all reassured at that, but they didn"t push. I turned to Armsmaster. "Do we have any intel on the clones?"
  
  Armsmaster pointed to the side. "Their hiding spot is over there. We believe they cut their way in through the roof and placed the mutant inside. Unfortunately, further attempts to scout the building haven"t gone well. At best, they fire on us.
  
  "We found multiple civilian corpses around the area; we think the clones killed them to try and hide their presence- or possibly just because they could. While investigating,Triumph was caught by one of the Trickster clones before we were able to pull back. His transponder is still active, but we don"t know his condition beyond that."
  
  I grimaced as I reached out with bugs. It wasn"t hard to find which building- the roof had been smashed in, and the inside was a flurry of activity. Clones were running around, smashing up the furniture and ripping holes in the wall, gathering up piles of junk and moving them around.
  
  "Well, the people stuck inside Noelle are kept unconscious," I explained, thinking back on how they"d all gone still and curled up as they were absorbed. "The trick is going to be cutting them out of there. I suggest we make that a priority to prevent any more clones being created."
  
  "Agreed," said Armsmaster as the van pulled up, disgorging Palanquin and the remaining Travelers.
  
  Regent glanced at the Undersiders as he walked up. "Hey guys. I"m starting to see why you traded up."
  
  "Regent," Tattletale said cordially. "I assume Faultline offered a pretty hefty benefit package to poach you."
  
  Regent shrugged. "Parties, travel, and cooler shit than just petty theft. Plus I"m not having to scrape dog shit off my shoes every day. No offense," he said to Rachel, insincerely. She growled in response.
  
  Tock Tick snorted. "I"m glad we didn"t manage to get this kid."
  
  "Well, you won"t have any of that if we don"t get your boss back, so let"s focus," I said. "I suggest we start with Grue blacking the building out to keep the Tricksters from swapping anyone else in. Then we send in the flying artillery," I pointed out Lady Photon, Laserdream and Dauntless, "To strafe the place and soften up the defenses. Meanwhile, close-combat specialists will break through and clear space for others to move in- Obviously Armsmaster, plus myself, Trainwreck, Aegis and Gargoyle. We"ll need a couple of people on cordon in case the clones try to scatter."
  
  "I can handle that," Miss Militia volunteered. Her power flickered from shotgun to assault rifle to sniper rifle to minigun in two seconds.
  
  "I"d also suggest Labyrinth, Cerberus, Ironclad and the troopers. Ironclad and the dogs won"t fit well inside, and Labyrinth"s power is best used when stationary. Genesis is variable, so she could probably fill any holes in the strategy."
  
  Armsmaster"s jaw clenched for a second. "Well thought out," he admitted. "We"ll reinforce the cordon with other heroes as they arrive- we"re expecting Brandish and Flashbang to get here soon."
  
  "Oh joy," Anchorage snarked.
  
  "But I want to make something clear to everyone present." Armsmaster looked around the circle, meeting all our eyes in turn. "This is not going to be like any fight you"ve ever experienced before. We are going to have to resort to lethal force first, or risk death. That means you cannot hesitate in the moment. Not today.
  
  "Furthermore, if this situation gets even slightly worse, I will be upgrading this to an S-class scenario. For now, this operation falls under the same rules as the Endbringer Truce."
  
  That got a few mutters from the group. The Endbringer Truce was the closest thing to sacred for capes. You didn"t break it on pain of death. For Armsmaster to be invoking it now really brought home just how high the stakes are.
  
  "Other nearby PRT departments have been contacted, and they"re ready to send over reinforcements at a moment"s notice, up to and including the Triumvirate. Dragon"s sending a suit over at maximum speed as well. In the event that we can"t contain this, she"s been given full authorisation to destroy the building and all its contents. That means if you hear a warning, evacuate the area immediately."
  
  "What about the people still inside?" Gargoyle asked hesitantly.
  
  Armsmaster"s jaw worked for a second. "Let"s hope it doesn"t come to that," he said quietly.
  
  Tactical whistled. "That"s cold."
  
  Laserdream gasped. Lady Photon stepped forward, rising up into the air. "My niece," she thundered from a foot above his head, "is in there!"
  
  "And so is Triumph," Armsmaster fired back. "A man I happen to know personally, who I have known since he first joined the Wards. It gives me no pleasure to make this call, but it has to be done, and you know it."
  
  Lady Photon glared at him for a long moment. Finally, she began to sink back down, though her feet still didn"t touch the ground. "If Victoria doesn"t get out safely, I will never forgive you."
  
  "Understood."
  
  As people started to group up, I turned to the Undersiders. "Are you guys alright?" I asked.
  
  "Evil clones?" Whirlygig demanded shrilly. "Really?"
  
  "Really," I said. "Look, this is going to be a meat grinder of a fight, and I mean that literally. If you want to hang back, there"s no shame in it."
  
  "Don"t think I didn"t notice how you got all of us positioned away from the direct fighting," Tattletale pointed out. "I"m staying. Maybe I can figure out some kind of weakness."
  
  "Same here," Grue said. "I saw the clone that got swapped out for Triumph. I don"t want those things running around the city."
  
  "I"ll stop them," Cerberus said. "Fuckers hurt Amy- they need to go down."
  
  I didn"t hide my surprise. "I didn"t know you cared."
  
  Cerberus reached out and patted the nearest dog. It took me a second to realise it was Angelica, what with her having both eyes now. "She healed Angelica. I owe her for that. And she seems good."
  
  Ironclad swallowed- the sound echoed oddly from his armour. "I don"t know if I"ve got it in me to kill something that looks like a person."
  
  "That"s fair. You can just hang back and protect people if you want." I pulled a white block off my belt, stymied for a moment before I remembered how to unfold it. "This might help," I offered, flipping parts out in a way that shouldn"t have been physically possible until I ended up with something about the size of a boogie board.
  
  "What is it?" Ironclad asked, taking it by the handle that stuck out of one side.
  
  "Apparently it"s a Pong paddle. It"ll bounce back anything that hits this side," I explained, pointing. "Think it"ll help?"
  
  "Can I keep it?"
  
  "I mean, the Protectorate"s probably going to want it after all this is over, but until then, go nuts."
  
  Ironclad took a deep breath. "Okay. I think I can do that."
  
  I noticed Perdition watching us off to the side; he turned away after a second, huddling close with Oliver and Genesis. I was still getting flashes of sound through my insects; I heard him say something about getting milkshakes after this was all over, "at that one place you liked".
  
  "Bloody optimistic," Rotter said.
  
  I looked over the Undersiders. "One last order to all of you," I said seriously. "Stay alive. Or I"ll kick your asses."
  
  Ironclad coughed. Then Tattletale snorted. Then Whirlygig broke into giggles, and then we were all laughing, with a slightly manic edge to it.
  
  "We who are about to die will laugh at anything," Stoneknapper said fatalistically.
  
  
  
  Once we were arranged, the assault began.
  
  It started with Grue flooding the entire block with darkness, controlling it so that it faded to just around the tower.
  
  I sent the swarm I"d gathered through the darkness, fliers carrying the ground-bound species in through windows and vents, aiming for eyes and necks and groins. I wasn"t exactly happy to be getting flashes of that through their senses, but the Butchers had largely numbed me to stuff like that.
  
  I was still keeping the insects mostly hidden from the outside, largely because it was hard for me to tell who had been told I was the Butcher. Judging from the looks they gave me, Miss Militia and Armsmaster knew, but New Wave hadn"t seemed any different. And if worst came to worst, a few seconds of hesitation could be vital for me.
  
  The fliers began their attack- Lady Photon, Laserdream, Dauntless and Aegis each took a side of the building and began firing into it, Aegis using an energy blaster that Regent had grudgingly handed over.
  
  Bloodsight let me see how many of the clones were falling- but there were still more in there, and they were starting to rally.
  
  Miniature suns bloomed, shooting out through the windows and lighting up the night sky. The fliers quickly dodged and evaded, still firing. The suns were moving randomly instead of chasing them, which helped.
  
  Then the Glory Girl clones came out in droves, aiming directly at them. I saw Laserdream and Lady Photon falter at the sight of them, hesitating to fire.
  
  That almost cost them- one got within a few feet of Lady Photon before two shots rang out and the clone dropped in midair. Miss Militia didn"t pause- she just reloaded her rifle and kept firing, picking clones off one at a time. The troopers alongside her were also using live ammo, foam sprayers left aside for this fight.
  
  Genesis leapt into the air, shaped like a four-winged bird with bronze feathers that reflected the light like mirrors. She barrelled into a Glory Girl clone, clawing and slicing. The clone"s forcefield held up for a few hits, then all of a sudden blood was raining to the ground.
  
  Armsmaster waved his halberd, the signal for the melee fighters.
  
  I was standing in a pool of shadow, concealed as I watched everything through bloodsight and insects. Which meant nobody would see me disappear.
  
  I picked a spot on the second floor and teleported into a knot of clones, knives drawn. The Sundancer clone toppled over from the force, and I threw a knife into its neck as it hit the floor, ducked a punch from an Uber, clawed its stomach open with one hand and shattered a Faultline"s knee with a kick, then snapped her neck and stabbed him through the temple, absorbing the blood as it gushed out.
  
  "Three down," Nemean growled, "Many to go."
  
  "Better hurry then," I said, drawing an axe and throwing it just as a pair of Ballistics came around the corner. The first one caught it full in the face and toppled back.
  
  The second one howled and spread his palms wide. I had a split second to realise he wasn"t holding anything before danger sense flared.
  
  The air smashed into me like a brick wall. I was thrown back through a couple of cubicles, smashing the desks and scattering papers everywhere. I threw a knife overhand, but the Ballistic just blasted the air again, and the knife was thrown back.
  
  "So he can shoot the air at you, what the fuck?" Firecracker complained.
  
  "Let"s see if this works," I said, pulling the Zap-o-Matic off my belt and pulling the trigger.
  
  A bolt of lightning lanced out, striking the Ballistic in the chest. He shrieked and jittered- and so did the Glory Girl coming around the corner as the lightning arced from him to her.
  
  "Huh," Quarrel said. "Neat."
  
  The other fighters had made it to the building- Trainwreck simply ploughed through the ground floor and started laying about with fists and blasts of steam, while Gargoyle and Armsmaster leapt and grappled to the first floor. I pulled the bugs back a bit to keep their vision clear, sending them up to the higher levels.
  
  There was a floor close to the top that felt off- Firecracker"s teleport couldn"t aim at it. Presumably one of the Leet clones had cooked something up to keep me from just bursting in. I couldn"t get insects in either- as they passed the threshold they felt a burst of heat before dying painfully.
  
  "The old fashioned way then," Muramasa said as I flicked another knife into the Ballistic to finish it off. The lightning danced around the metal in weird ways.
  
  Then the gun flickered and sputtered. The lightning cut out, and the gun sparked and popped. I hastily dropped it.
  
  The Glory Girl clone groaned and floated upright, limbs hanging loosely, twitching occasionally. Her eyes drifted to me, and then focused.
  
  I threw the gun at her- she smashed it aside and came at me with a scream. I dodged backward from her first strike, blocked her clumsy kick with an elbow, then threw a flurry of jabs into her stomach. Her forcefield broke halfway through, and the next punch folded her over. I extended my claws and raked them across her stomach as I pulled my arm back.
  
  Intestines spilled out of her in loops- the clone screamed bloody murder before I leapt up, grabbed her neck, and twisted. Her neck snapped with a single jerk, and she fell to the ground.
  
  I let her drop, and then knelt on impulse to close her eyes. It was too disturbing to see Glory Girl like that otherwise.
  
  "Wasting time," Butcher sneered.
  
  Outside, the fliers were preoccupied with trying to keep themselves alive. Miss Militia and the troopers were popping the clones like shooting skeet, and Dauntless was making good progress, but the rest were holding back, probably hamstrung by the sight of multiple Victorias coming to rip out their spines.
  
  One of the dogs leapt up and seized a Glory Girl in its jaws, biting down hard. The clone howled and punched it in the snout, but my insects heard Cerberus shout something, and the dog bit again. The clone jerked and went still.
  
  Another clone grabbed Genesis, shrieking as the razor-sharp feathers cut into it, but it got a grip and simply tore Genesis"s head off. Her body dissolved into greasy smoke, and the clone dove towards the ground cordon, ducking a hail of shrapnel from Whirlygig.
  
  The second wave of melee fighters began to advance to the building- Newter, Regent, Gregor and Perdition, all packing Leet tech. Newter cut a path with his Metroid gun, Regent diverted the clones with flicks of his wrist, and Gregor sprayed them with goo or acid or whatever concoction he was using. From the bug on the back of his helmet, Perdition was glancing about, in time with clones popping from one place to the next.
  
  I grabbed a few pieces of smashed desks and brought them together with Stoneknapper"s fizz, forming them into a labrys- a double-headed battle axe. Dirty Rotter"s oozing feeling spread up the shaft and along the blades and I broke into a run up the stairs, drawing yet another throwing knife.
  
  The next floor up was criss-crossed with copper wires and strips, unspooled from electronics and torn from the walls. I saw a Leet clone and a Sundancer working feverishly on something made out of computers and a copy machine, placing a miniature sun into a crude cage. The machine lit up, and so did the grid of copper along the floor, crackling with electricity.
  
  There was a thump, and then I felt a pulse of energy race outward, up and down the building from that point. Fully half of my insects died- the fragile stuff, like flies and spiders.
  
  That still left me the hardier stuff- beetles and wasps and cockroaches. I flooded them up the building, crawling up legs and gnawing at soft spots. The Glory Girls could withstand them, and the Sundancers were burning them away, and some of the Leets had weapons to counter them, but it was cutting the numbers down.
  
  I hurled the labrys at the Leet next to the machine- it ricocheted off an unseen shield. I caught the axe as it spun through the air, and exhaled rage over the two of them as they snarled at me.
  
  Their faces changed to pure hatred- without thinking, they ran out of the field, the Sundancer, forgetting her sun to punch me in the face.
  
  I slashed the Sundancer"s throat, absorbing the blood as it sprayed over me, and smashed the labrys into the Leet"s skull. The blow split him from head to groin, falling into two very messy pieces.
  
  The sun died as the Sundancer did, and the machine quickly dimmed. To be certain, I morphed the labrys into a spear and hurled it through the centre. The machine didn"t make any more noises, so I decided it was dead enough and drew my swords.
  
  Bloodrush took me up to the next floor, full of all the usual clones, plus some new ones- muscular men that must have been Triumph. There were still a few Tricksters standing in the corners of the room, though they were in poor shape. The Sundancers were looking out the windows, aiming their suns at the fliers outside. The Faultlines were busy breaking up furniture and walls for the Ballistics to use as ammo, who were holding shrapnel in between their fingers, tucked into their elbows, behind their ears, and even held in their teeth.
  
  "Well, ain"t this a welcome party?" Dirty Rotter said gleefully.
  
  I could see their expressions just starting to change as I came up the stairs- shrapnel flew at me from the quicker Ballistics. I spun to the side, ducking behind a wall, and then teleporting to the corner, stabbing a sword backward.
  
  The Trickster behind me was gutted instantly, and I beheaded two Ubers before they could react. One of them was holding a crude club, which I kicked into the crowd as it dropped.
  
  Then it was a slaughter- I pulled insects in yet again, but this time I surrounded myself with them too, making them crawl over my armour. I was the eye of a storm, hidden by thousands of insects. The Tricksters couldn"t teleport me, and attacks went wide as the clones guessed wrong.
  
  Vladimir offered a suggestion, and I split some of the swarm off, arranging them into thin figures, vaguely resembling humans. The clones began firing on them, pinching great holes in the swarm, wasting their ammo.
  
  "Useful," Vladimir said. "We"ll have to remember this."
  
  I threw my swords at two of the more troublesome clones- an Uber who had assembled a crude crossbow, and a Ballistic that was scooping handfuls of ammo from a mop bucket. The sword that hit the Ballistic was Quarrel-assisted, so he died instantly. The sword that hit the Uber was just strength and skill, so it stuck halfway into his stomach instead of somewhere immediately lethal.
  
  My hand went to the oversized hilt at my shoulder, and I ripped the sword free- Cloud Strife"s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy. I couldn"t deny Leet and Uber had taste, even if they"d only made it a blunt prop. It was still five-and-a-half-feet of decent steel.
  
  Stoneknapper"s fizz drew the blunt edge out into something dangerous, and Muramasa"s sharpening drew it out further.
  
  I spun on the ball of my foot, lashing out with all my strength. The sword carved a circle through the clones around me until I hit a Glory Girl.
  
  The sword stopped at the forcefield- I hit her with pain and slammed a punch into the side of her head. She staggered, but didn"t fall, until I followed up with an elbow that cracked her skull.
  
  Things became a blur- I spun the sword like a majorette"s baton, tossed knives at enemies beyond its reach, countered the Trickster teleports with teleports of my own, and set insects and rage to break up their formations. Blood sprayed across the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and me- I drank it in and burned it on speed to get more blood for more speed, and on and on.
  
  A Faultline split the top of the blade off even as I pushed it through her back. A Glory Girl clipped my shoulder with a punch that dented the armour and tore the muscle. A Sundancer got dangerously close with her sun, enough to scorch my legs before I threw my last axe into her chest. A Triumph hit me with a shout that blew me back and ruptured my eardrums. And an Uber leapt onto my back and wrapped himself around my head for a few precious seconds, which left me open for the last three Ballistics to fire the big stuff at me.
  
  A sharpened chair leg went through my shin; a snowglobe hit me straight in the chest, fracturing my ribs; and I managed to throw my head to the side as the thermos hit me, so it only clipped my jaw and sent my teeth spraying instead of decapitating me.
  
  That shook me- realising how close I"d been to actual death, to being stuck in the head of a psychotic copy, condemned to watch as they used my powers for horrible purposes. The fear ran down my spine and into my stomach, where it boiled over into rage.
  
  The broken sword went right through the middle Ballistic as I threw it. I tore the Uber off me and hurled him at the Ballistic on the right. And the left was hit with pain as I threw myself forward on my one good leg, ramming a claw-tipped knifehand up through his stomach and into his ribcage. I tore my hand out once I"d felt something burst, and came down on the Uber and right Ballistic with a knee and an elbow that snapped a neck and crushed a skull.
  
  I stayed there for a moment, panting for breath through a smashed jaw. I used Stoneknapper"s fizz to reshape my dented and broken armour, but there was nothing to do but wait for Needler"s regeneration to repair my shoulder and put my jaw back together. I managed to tug the chair leg out of my shin, and then there was nothing to do but feel flesh and bone twist itself back to normal. The feeling of my jaw shuffling fresh teeth to the front was especially disturbing.
  
  And it was still better than thinking- thinking about how those clones had managed to hurt me more than any other fight. I couldn"t be reckless- I had to stop the clones before they hurt more people, but I couldn"t let myself die in the process. I couldn"t inflict that on the world.
  
  "Oh my god, that was such a rush!" Butcher crowed. "Fuck, girl, when you let loose you really let loose!"
  
  "Goddamn," Bearskin agreed. "I mean, we"ve had some fights, but this..."
  
  "A little cruder than I would prefer," Muramasa admitted, "But I am very impressed."
  
  Something caught my eye as my jaw popped back into place at last- an Uber clone. Dead, obviously- split from shoulder to hip by a sword blow. Its eyes were looking in my direction, glassy and still.
  
  Abruptly, I wanted to throw up. I put a hand to my mouth, but it was covered in gore all the way to the elbow. I snatched it away in disgust and gagged.
  
  "Oh no, goddamn it, don"t puke, we don"t need that," Anchorage whined.
  
  The room was full of corpses upon corpses, chopped and hacked and broken. Blood was leaking into the carpet, entrails were splattered up the walls. And now that I"d paused, I was suddenly aware of all of it.
  
  What really disgusted me was how little I was freaking out. I was disgusted, yes- I was kneeling in a pile of corpses and surrounded by plenty more, but I wasn"t feeling the sheer horror that I should from making a double-digit kill count in a matter of minutes.
  
  There was no guilt, no matter how hard I looked.
  
  "You don"t have time for guilt!" Needler barked, urging me to my feet. "They"re not even people anyway."
  
  And it was so easy for me to accept that.
  
  I took a deep breath, and ripped the dangling remains of my jawguard off my helmet. It was basically two-dimensional at this point, but I could at least salvage the metal later.
  
  I retrieved my swords from the mess, and a couple of knives, and the remains of the Buster Sword. I reshaped that into a thinner blade, closer to an actual weapon, with a heavy crossguard protecting my hand.
  
  The fighters below were just about finished with their clones, and making their way up. I wasn"t too keen to be in the room when they found all the mess, so I focused upstairs.
  
  With the remaining suns extinguished, the fight outside was going better. I could detect other heroes arriving- Assault and Battery, from the feel of their movements- and the Glory Girls were being whittled down.
  
  Which meant the knot of bodies up above, with the enormous form of Noelle lying prone on the floor, was all that was really left. An honour guard maybe, with a heavy knot of skinny Leets working on a bunch of tech.
  
  I could feel the other heroes coming up the stairs, working their way across the floor below. Trainwreck shook the floor with his footsteps.
  
  No sense in a single angle of attack.
  
  I tested my injured leg, nodded to myself as I found it adequate, then broke into a run at the nearest window. I turned as I hit the glass, flying out with my back to the ground and my left arm up.
  
  I fired the grappler up to the edge of the roof and started reeling myself in, swinging myself between the rows of windows so the clones would have a harder time seeing me.
  
  Unfortunately, the remaining clones outside could see me- a Glory Girl broke away from smashing against one of Lady Photon"s forcefields to power up towards me like a bullet.
  
  I released the grappler right before impact, dropping six feet before I managed to catch myself on a ledge. Stoneknapper"s fizz sculpted better handholds as the Glory Girl jerked to a stop and rotated to glare down at me.
  
  "You sick fucking monster!" the clone shrieked, charging at me again.
  
  I hit the clone with pain and threw myself to the side, hanging by one hand six stories up in the air. As the clone tumbled past, I swung a kick into her face, breaking her forcefield, then dropped onto her as she tried to fly out of my reach.
  
  Claws dug into her kidneys, and a headbutt smashed her nose. I butted her again, and again, sending her flight careening all over the place. She shrieked and spat blood at me, clamping her hands onto my head and squeezing. I felt the metal start to bend.
  
  I pulled one hand off her, taking strips of flesh with it, and rammed my claws into her armpit, puncturing the major artery there. Hot blood gushed from the wound and over my hand, quickly absorbed into me. The clone went pale and veered to the side, crashing down on the roof of a nearby building. I rolled off and kicked myself to my feet, drawing a sword in one hand and a throwing knife in the other before reaching out with the teleport.
  
  The no-teleport zone extended across the entire fifth floor, but not much more than that. And there was a hole cut through every floor above that.
  
  I focused the teleport to just above the zone, and stepped forward.
  
  I fell down the central hole into an open space filled with machinery. The clones must have dragged most of their spoils up here- I could see desktop computers, laptops, a disassembled vending machine, yards of wiring, and two Sundancers pulling duty as power sources.
  
  And then I passed some kind of threshold, and hit the floor with far too much force.
  
  Not the floor- I couldn"t feel anything with Stoneknapper"s power. This was smooth and impossibly durable- a forcefield. And every part of my body felt too heavy, like I"d been turned to lead. I could feel my heart clenching just to try and pump super-heavy blood through my veins.
  
  Some kind of hyper-gravity. The Butchers had fought someone like that once, but it hadn"t been this strong.
  
  "Shit," Tock Tick cursed. "This is a really good trap. Didn"t expect a clone of Leet to be quite so competent."
  
  "We"ve got her," said a familiar nasal voice. A Leet clone stepped closer to where I was pressed against the floor. My vision was starting to turn red, but it was definitely him. He was nude but for a wristband with some kind of remote control on it.
  
  And past him, I could see Noelle. She looked even worse than before- her human half was pale and drawn, covered in sweat and flopped forward over her monster half; and the monster half didn"t look any better. The flesh was oozing pus in various spots, and her overall bulk seemed to have decreased. As I watched, another clone was vomited out of her monster mouth- another Faultline tried to stand up, and floundered. She was missing her entire left leg. An Uber stepped over to help her away.
  
  "You"re so stupid," the Leet clone said, kneeling down to look at me. The move brought some parts closer that I would"ve liked. "Did you really think we wouldn"t have some kind of countermeasures set up for you?"
  
  I tried to say something witty and cutting and brutal, but all I could get out of my mouth was "Unk."
  
  The Leet sneered and gestured to the others around him- a dozen or so Leets, frantically working away on a bunch of machines set up around Noelle. It looked a bit like the setup the original Leet had used when trying to cure Noelle. Everything else was a side piece to this, I could tell- there were other machines off in the distance, but they clearly weren"t the big project.
  
  "Leet hurt Noelle, but we"re better than him. We can fix her, make her whole again. And I think you"re going to help us to do it. The Butcher"s a unique cape- powers layered on top of each other somehow. I reckon if we get some scans of you, we can make a breakthrough. You"re part of the puzzle- like a corner of a jigsaw, that lets you figure out where to put everything else.
  
  "And once we"ve got Noelle fixed, then we can really start. We"ll kill this whole city as a warmup, pick the best capes for her to clone, and then we"ll go to war with the planet. Leet never made doomsday weapons before, but I think we can take a shot at it.
  
  "Of course, first we need to deal with the heroes that you brought to our door. So we"re going to need more reinforcements."
  
  I managed to force the words out in a passable manner. "Yuh. Ca"t. Ki". Th"m. All."
  
  "No. But you can."
  
  Two sets of hands seized my arms and hauled me up. I could feel my armour denting around the fingers as they dragged me forward. My sword and knife dropped from my hands like they were anchors.
  
  Clones of me? What would that even be like? Insane copies with all the powers of the Butchers? Would the Butchers be in the clones" heads too?
  
  "Fuck no, absolutely not, we are not having two of us," Butcher shouted. "Get us out of here now!"
  
  I forced my head up, even as I felt muscles in my neck tearing from the sheer strain, until I could make out one of the Glory Girls carrying me.
  
  Pain lanced out from me like red hot wires, jabbing into her. She screamed and lost her grip on me. The other clone"s hands slipped as I fell, until she got a grip on my wrist and hand instead.
  
  Rotter"s power bubbled up like tar and oozed over her hands. The second clone screamed as her skin began to rot- fat pus-filled boils swelled, burst, and collapsed, while the skin darkened and shrivelled. I extended my claws as she let, and the claws caught on her fingers, scraping against the forcefield and slicing into her hands as it broke. Even once I broke contact, the rot kept spreading as Dirty Rotter"s power worked its way up her wrists.
  
  "Fucking brutal," Nemean approved.
  
  I fell sideways onto something warm and wet- or so it felt. The forcefield was still underneath me, keeping me from actually touching Noelle"s body.
  
  Firecracker"s teleport was recharged- I grasped it and aimed madly, looking for anywhere that wasn"t here.
  
  No good- whatever anti-teleport they had also meant I couldn"t leave. I activated bloodrush and felt the world become thick red syrup, slow and steady. If I could only crawl, then maybe this would get me moving a little faster.
  
  As I forced my hand flat against the floor and began pushing myself up, feeling the bones in my hand grinding against each other, I saw the Leet clone hold up his wrist and, achingly slowly, press a button.
  
  The forcefield disappeared- I felt the floor under my fingers, and the heat of Noelle"s oozing flesh. My mouth was only a hair"s breadth away from it, and I forced myself up and away with fresh desperation. I could just tunnel my way to the next floor down if I got far enough away from Noelle.
  
  Danger sense flared as one of the Glory Girls lunged at me- the one with the rotten and bloodied hands. Her foot came down on my head, and I felt my skull crack as she forced my head down into-
  
  -The locker.
  
  I was being forced in again- my hands gripping the edges of the door like my life depended on it, hands pushing on my back to drive me forward. Someone kicked me, and that made me lose my grip, sending me into the foul, filthy darkness.
  
  Total darkness, filled with rot and liquid.
  
  I could still hear though, even if I couldn"t see. I could hear my mom, saying she was just going out in the car. I could hear my dad, yelling at my mother"s body for being so stupid to die. I could hear Emma from two years ago, telling me she was sick of me moping, and that she didn"t want to be friends any more.
  
  "-The fuck is happening?!"
  
  "-all went crazy! They"re head... -up there!"
  
  Every insect in the building converged on my location- I could feel them flooding up the stairs and through the vents in a tidal wave, abandoning their other targets to come to me.
  
  The Undersiders emerged from the darkness, walking slowly. They were splattered with blood, or had their stomachs ripped open, or their faces rotted.
  
  "Hey boss," said Lisa, her cheek clawed open. I could see her teeth and tongue move through the hole as she asked, "Why did you kill us?"
  
  "I thought we were friends," Isabella said, staring at me with empty eye sockets. Blood ran down her face like tears.
  
  "I guess we should have seen it coming," Tarquin said with a shrug that made his head bob on his broken neck. "You"re the Butcher after all."
  
  "-bug zapper!"
  
  "I"m... ying! There"s too... of them!"
  
  The bugs were dying in droves as they forced their way through, but some were slipping past, briefly shielded by the corpses of their fellows. And one in ten of thousands was still enough to hurt people with.
  
  The Undersiders faded, and Amy was standing there, blood in her hair from where I"d touched her, her arm splinted with my cape.
  
  I stepped towards her and seized her by the arms, holding her desperately. "Amy," I said, but it came out as Butcher"s deep husky voice, "I don"t understand-"
  
  Amy screamed. Her arms were falling apart under my fingers- dissolving into dust before my very eyes. I let go, but the destruction spread up her body, cutting into her chest and creeping up her neck. I saw her face begin to flake away as she fell backwards. She hit the ground as dust, pouring out of her clothes.
  
  "-out of here! We"ll... the job!"
  
  The clones raced about- some were frantically working on Noelle"s machine, others were trying to kill the bugs. A Sundancer could burn them away, and a Triumph pulped swathes with a shouts, but they kept coming without fear of death, attacking from every angle, exploiting every opening.
  
  Some of the bugs disappeared off in the corner as a machine beeped and pulsed- more died as an Uber sprayed the air with air freshener and a lighter. A Leet was huddled at the feet of a Sundancer, working feverishly as she shielded him with heat.
  
  There was a crash as the door was kicked in.
  
  The corpses stood around me in the circle. My mom and dad, holding hands. The Undersiders, huddled together, even the dogs. My friends from school, mutilated in unique ways. The heroes, some impaled on their own weapons for irony. Amy, weeping and bleeding.
  
  "You"re going to kill everything you touch," they said, shouted, accused and wept. "You cannot do anything else."
  
  The darkness- flowed. Suddenly I was submerged, floating along in thick, warm liquid.
  
  "What the hell was that?" Vladimir shrieked.
  
  I sat upright, my head breaching the surface. Light hit my eyes, and I blinked.
  
  Then I realised what my mouth was full of, and vomited. Hot acid gushed out of my mouth, expelling the ooze I"d almost swallowed.
  
  Noelle had given up the ghost. I was sitting in a pile of pink-grey-green gunk with the consistency of porridge, which was rapidly pouring across the floor. A few other forms were struggling weakly to get out.
  
  "Oh fuck me, this is so disgusting," Stoneknapper groaned. I vomited again, splashing into the spreading ooze.
  
  The heroes were battling the remaining clones- and they were doing well. Armsmaster was wielding his halberd one-handed, splitting an Uber from shoulder to hip, breaking a Glory Girl"s forcefield on the backswing and activating his plasma cutter to set her hair on fire. Trainwreck simply picked up two clones and crushed them in each hand, while Perdition and the Palanquin mercenaries were laying down angles of fire with reasonable accuracy.
  
  The clones were bug-bitten, half-blinded, caught off guard. But more than that, they were demoralised. Noelle had burst like the world"s biggest zit, and I could see them weeping as they tried to fight back. One or two didn"t even manage that, not moving as the heroes cut them down.
  
  I pushed to my feet, retched again, and grabbed the nearest body in the gunk. When I pulled it up, I recognised the cracked welder"s mask- Faultline. She gasped for air and reached for her weapons.
  
  I grabbed the pistol out of her hand and used every bullet to drill a hole through a clone"s head. Armsmaster glanced back at the Uber that had been sneaking up on him, and then got back to work, cutting down the last of the Glory Girl clones with a vertical slash..
  
  A Leet stepped out from around a support pillar, holding something with a wide barrel and a spaghetti tangle of wires poking out of it. "Fuck you!" he screamed, pulling the trigger.
  
  Bolts of crimson energy rattled out of the gun, spraying across the room. Gregor howled as one hit him in the shoulder and punched a hole. The rest quickly drove for cover- Trainwreck simply turned around and covered his head with his hands, becoming a human shield as bolts rattled off his armour. Perdition quickly reset Gregor and yanked him to safety.
  
  Other clones were cut through by the shots- they fell in twisted heaps, screaming.
  
  "Friendly fire"s a bitch," Tactical managed.
  
  Some of the bolts splashed into the flesh puddle, sending up little puffs of steam near the victims as they tried to rise. I quickly pushed Faultline to the side, in the lee of Trainwreck"s armour, and raised an arm to cover my face while I drew a knife- my last knife.
  
  The impacts scorched my armour, rattled me. I was still unsteady from the hypergravity, still reeling from the nightmares- but the Butchers had fought through worse conditions. I flipped the knife around so I was holding it by the tip.
  
  Quarrel"s power came to hand like an eager pet, forming a channel in the air between the knife and the clone. I hurled it overarm.
  
  The knife didn"t just land in his forehead- the impact caved the bone in, denting inward. The clone dropped, and the gun clattered to the ground with him.
  
  The room was suddenly silent. Every clone was down for the count- I could see them greying out through bloodsight.
  
  "Holy. Shit," Regent breathed.
  
  I coughed, spat out something foul, and turned back to the puddle. I reached down and pulled out the next person- they grabbed my arm frantically and pulled themselves up, shaking their head violently, sending splashes of gunk spraying everywhere. I saw glimpses of gold and white underneath.
  
  "We"ve got Glory Girl," I announced, letting her go and moving on to the next. Armsmaster stepped up to help me- the Palanquin mercenaries all rushed over to Faultline, frantically checking on her.
  
  I grabbed the two biggest figures, which turned out to be Uber and Ballistic. Uber frantically pulled out his helmet and vomited into it, moaning pitifully. Ballistic wiped at his eyes- I pulled my canteen off my belt and passed it to him without comment, moving on to the next.
  
  Triumph was recognisable by his golden lion helmet- I stepped back a little as he bent over, giving him a moment. I thought he was fine when the vomit stopped, until he started gaspoing and clutching at his throat.
  
  "Shit, he"s choking," Bearskin said. I quickly wrapped my arms around Triumph"s chest and hauled him upright. I vaguely remembered from somebody"s memories- you put one hand here, and the other on top, and then you squeezed up and in-
  
  Triumph coughed as I tried the Heimlich, then suddenly puked, Exorcist style. The stream ended in spluttering coughs and gasping sobs. At least he was breathing now. I gently let him go, and he fell to his knees in the slop, still coughing.
  
  Armsmaster folded his halberd up and clipped it to his back as he knelt down and gently pulled a feminine figure out of the ooze with a horrible sucking noise. When he wiped the filth off her face, I recognised Sundancer"s visor.
  
  A scrawny man turned out to be Leet, who yanked off his goggles and spat over and over. Uber pulled him over by the shoulder and passed him the canteen.
  
  "I"m just going to say it," Firecracker said. "This is the single craziest thing we"ve ever done."
  
  "No argument," Dirty Rotter said as I grabbed the next victim and hauled her to her feet. "I mean-"
  
  I realised something- Noelle only absorbed two women.
  
  The figure wiped the gunk off her face, revealing a misshapen skull that bulged at the temples, and a shrunken lower jaw that drooled a little. Curly dark hair hung from the scalp in patches, and the eyes, even bulging out of their sockets, were a familiar dark brown.
  
  The clone hissed at me. "It"s your fault. You ruined everything."
  
  "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," Quarrel chanted.
  
  I stepped back so fast I almost fell over, scrambling for my sword with panicked fingers. I fumbled to draw it in front of me as the clone wiped more filth off herself.
  
  "Are you going to kill me? Of course you are." Her head turned towards the rest of the capes, who were staring at her in sheer naked terror. "It"s what she does. Did you know she killed-"
  
  The shot went right through the clone"s chest, leaving a neat little hole. As the clone fell back with a splat, Perdition lowered the pistol in his hands. "Uhm."
  
  I dropped to my knees and grabbed the clone, checking its pulse frantically. As if it would do any good- the bullet had hit the heart, through and through. Blood was leaking into the pool of gunk beneath, and I could see its brain greying out.
  
  "You goddamn idiot!" Uber shouted, punching Perdition in the shoulder as the clone gurgled. "What the hell were you thinking?"
  
  Perdition threw the pistol to the floor like it was a poisonous snake. "Oh fuck."
  
  The clone twitched a little and exhaled one last time. I saw its heart stop as the last of its blood flowed into the puddle around it, tinting it red. Its brain faded from bloodsight completely.
  
  Everyone took a step away from Perdition- except Glory Girl, who was too busy wringing the gunk out of her hair to notice anything at all, and Triumph, who was still on his knees and barely aware of anything.
  
  The moment continued as Perdition frantically patted his head, looked at his hands, patted his chest, and then looked at the clone again. "I don"t feel any different."
  
  I looked down at the clone, and carefully closed -her-its- eyelids. I was glad it was so mutated- I don"t know what I"d have done if it looked more like me.
  
  There were two more figures in the flesh. This time I made sure I had my sword ready before I pulled the next one up.
  
  Trickster came out of the puddle like a stick out of mud. I knew the second I saw him that he was dead- he didn"t show up on bloodsight at all. When I turned him over to tip the ooze out of his mouth, he didn"t even twitch.
  
  "Is he..."
  
  "Dead," I answered Perdition"s question. "I"m sorry."
  
  The two times I"d met Trickster, we"d fought. I couldn"t say I liked the guy. But he"d died trying to cure his friend of a horrific disease. I had to respect that.
  
  "Well," Perdition sighed, rolling up his left sleeve and fiddling with his glove, "That makes this easier."
  
  He clapped his hands to Ballistic and Sundancer"s shoulders, and they disappeared in a flash of purple light.
  
  "What the fuck?" Newter shouted.
  
  "Crap," Leet exclaimed. "That was the Mark and Recall glove, from Morrowind. He must have gone back to our base- bastard!"
  
  Armsmaster raised a finger to his ear at once. "Get troopers over to Uber and Leet"s base at once- the Travelers are attempting to escape."
  
  "Can"t exactly blame them. No way they"re getting out of this one without some hard questions," Dirty Rotter pointed out.
  
  I heard a pop-pop of little bubbles. I turned and glared down at the last figure under the ooze.
  
  This time I had my sword at the ready. I reached down, grabbed their shoulder, and hoisted them up into the air.
  
  The melted flesh poured off long brown hair and a grimy t-shirt; the face underneath was painfully thin and sickly looking. But the brain was fully active, and the heartbeat was strong. She coughed and sucked in a breath.
  
  And dangling off the ground were two perfectly healthy standard issue human legs.
  
  Interlude 9
  Early Hours of Sunday 10th April, PRTHQ, Downtown
  
  Carol checked her watch and stifled a groan at the time. 3am. She"d never had a good day with two 3 o"clocks in it.
  
  Still; late-night studying, diaper changes, and crime-fighting expeditions had never been as stressful as this.
  
  Everyone crowded into the conference room looked like death warmed over, no exceptions. At the far end of the table were the Protectorate"s heroes- Armsmaster at one side and Director Piggot at the other. Miss Militia, Gargoyle, Aegis and Battery were on Armsmaster"s side, while Velocity, Dauntless, Triumph and Assault were on Piggot"s. Every last one of them was tired, stained in places, or sitting in ways meant to avoid pressing on injuries. Triumph and Velocity had the worst of it- one reduced to grey sweats and a temporary mask after almost being drowned in unspeakable fluids, the other wincing at every movement of the cast on his ankle.
  
  The Protectorate were apparently sustaining themselves through a shared pot of coffee and pastries, talking in low voices among themselves while occasionally glancing at the enormous TV screen that sat on the wall. They"d at least had the good grace to share the food and drink with the rest of the room- Carol knew she was going to be useless in the morning; Thank God she wasn"t going to be needed at the office until Monday.
  
  New Wave was arranged along Piggot"s side of the table, huddled together around Victoria. Carol had her free arm wrapped around her daughter"s shoulders as she sat, over the blanket someone had found for her; a poor substitute for her white cape, but that costume would need to be burned after tonight. For now, soft pants and a t-shirt from the gift shop were the best they could get her. Mark was sat on Victoria"s other side, holding her hand uncertainly as she huddled between her parents.
  
  Brandish still couldn"t quite believe how things had happened- when Amy had disappeared, her first thought had been the Empire, coming to hurt her for her father"s legacy. That a relatively unknown gang had taken her had been unexpected to say the least.
  
  And then- calls about a monster, about Victoria being taken by the monster, about clones of Victoria and the other capes who"d been taken. Carol was actually glad she hadn"t been able to get to the fight in time- she wasn"t sure if she"d have had the nerve to cut down copies of Victoria.
  
  Sarah was sat right next to her, and she still looked shaken, holding Crystal"s hand as they both stared into space. Neil and Eric were next to them in uncomfortable silence.
  
  Sarah had been the one to tell Carol the biggest shock of the night, after she"d helped clean the filth off Victoria and get her a change of clothes from her ruined costume- that Elpis, the headstrong girl who ran around listening to nothing but her own conscience, was actually Butcher XV in the flesh, hidden away behind an obscure Tinker power and false smiles. It horrified Carol to think that her family had been so close her without ever knowing what was really hiding inside that armour.
  
  It was almost enough to distract her from the last two groups in the room- Faultline and her mercenaries had declined seats at the table, instead choosing to stand in a huddle at the end of the room, gathered around their leader. The biggest one, Trainwreck, was hunched protectively over her in his battered armour like some mechanical wall, almost close enough to hide her from view entirely.
  
  Without them sitting down, there were several empty seats between the heroes and the last group- the Undersiders. In the absence of their leader, they"d spread themselves over the chairs at the end in a mess. Hellhound had her helmet off and her chair turned to the side as she scratched her dogs behind the ears, while Ironclad had simply collapsed the armour he"d brought into the building into a heap. Grue was sitting next to Whirlygig- his arms were folded, traces of darkness leaking off him, while she was wringing her hands in her lap.
  
  Tattletale was slouched in her seat, looking pensive. It wasn"t an expression that sat right on her face- Carol would have expected a sneer or a smirk. Instead she was fiddling with a pencil, occasionally doodling something on the notepad in front of her.
  
  There was a buzz from the intercom in front of Director Piggot- she clicked a button, and the door to the conference room opened.
  
  Carol hadn"t seen Amy since she"d headed off for her shift at the hospital earlier, lit up with a rare enthusiasm from spending time with friends and friends-of-friends. She"d come back with a few bags of shopping, her hair nicely groomed for once, verging on peppy all through dinner.
  
  The contrast to now was enormous. Amy was shrunken in on herself, left arm in a sling, right arm folded across herself protectively. She didn"t look up or meet anyone"s gaze as she shuffled into the room, heels dragging on the carpet in a way that Carol had scolded her about a dozen times. She was clutching something blue to her chest- a blanket, maybe? Odd that she hadn"t wrapped it around herself.
  
  Then the last person entered the room, and there was a series of creaks and scrapes as everyone present straightened up in their chairs.
  
  Without the sky-blue cape, with the decorative paint scoured off, with her armour scorched and scratched and dented, Elpis didn"t look like the earnest young hero Carol had met her as, but more like a warrior of old, fresh off a battlefield. Her jawguard was gone entirely, showing the thin line of her mouth as she looked about. Dots of water glistened on her armour in places.
  
  A dark thought occurred to Carol- given what Sarah and Crystal had told her of the aftermath of the battle, Elpis might have had to literally hose the blood off herself.
  
  Tattletale leapt to her feet, hurrying around to pull out the chair at the end of the table and patting the seat invitingly. To Carol"s surprise, Amy threw herself into it at once, curling up into it like she was trying to burrow into the fabric.
  
  Carol felt a stir of irritation- Victoria had been absorbed by a monster, and was visibly unwell. Amy should have come over at once, offering to heal her and comfort her. Too wrapped up in her own problems.
  
  "Amy?" Neil asked, leaning over in his seat. "Are you alright sweetheart?"
  
  Amy leaned back, bringing her feet up onto the seat cushion. Neil backed down without a fuss, giving her space.
  
  Tattletale gestured to another seat for Elpis, who cautiously sat down. The chair creaked, but held the weight of all that armour.
  
  Director Piggot pressed another button, and the door swung shut, locking itself with a loud clunk. A few other clicks and whirrs from around the room told Carol that the room was being secured- possibly some Tinkertech to contain sound and prevent anyone else from listening in.
  
  The TV screen at the far end lit up- first with a blue page that read "Standby", and then splitting into video boxes of two different women.
  
  The woman on the right was dark-haired, Hispanic, with the kind of face that could be late twenties or early forties, set in a stern expression. She wore a dark suit jacket with a crisp white blouse underneath.
  
  The other woman was more nondescript- dark-haired and brown-eyed, but not in a way that hinted at any particular ethnicity. She was wearing simpler clothing, which combined with her face made her possibly the most average woman Carol had ever laid eyes upon.
  
  Subtitles appeared on the screen for both of them- Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, and Dragon.
  
  Mark glanced at Carol, eyes wide. She returned the look. For the head of the PRT and its greatest tinker to attend this meeting, this must be a lot more serious than she"d imagined.
  
  At the end of the table, Tattletale nudged her teammates, who sat up and looked attentive with various degrees of enthusiasm. Elpis" steel eyebrows drew together in consternation.
  
  "I"ve already read the initial reports," the Chief Director said crisply, not bothering with pleasantries, "So let"s get right to it. Emily, what"s the status on the villains?"
  
  Director Piggot leaned forward slightly. "The girl, Noelle, is currently in a maximum security cell, undergoing a medical examination. She"s still unconscious, but preliminary reports say she should wake up soon. We"ve confirmed the presence of a Corona Pollentia and a gemma, but if she has powers and what they might be are yet to be determined. We"ve ordered the medics to avoid skin contact just in case.
  
  "Uber and Leet are also in custody- they"re shaken, but cooperative."
  
  "And the Travelers?"
  
  "In the wind," Piggot admitted. "The troopers we had stationed at Uber and Leet"s hideout were overwhelmed, and they escaped. Apparently the rest of the group kicked Perdition out before they left, so he"s on his own. We"ve put out an APB to the other departments and regular law enforcement- roadblocks are set up along the major roads out of town."
  
  "They"ve probably already slipped the net," Costa-Brown said without judgement. "Still, I"ll see about setting a task force on them. As for the clones, do we have confirmation that they"ve all been dealt with?"
  
  Piggot visibly hesitated. "We"ve checked all the bodies and confirmed their deaths. However, one piece of Tinkertech they created appears to have been a teleportation booth."
  
  A few people gasped. Carol tightened her grip on Victoria. If there were more of those things around...
  
  "We haven"t seen any sign of further activity in the city- possibly they teleported to a different state entirely, or even to another country."
  
  "I"ll get some Thinkers on it," Costa-Brown said. "At least with the progenitor dealt with, they won"t be able to increase their numbers. Now, what about the Tinkertech?"
  
  Piggot gestured to Armsmaster, who answered "Confiscated and secured, all of it- the machine Leet built, his lesser creations, and everything his clones created. I assume you"ll want Dragon to take custody of the important pieces."
  
  "Correct- keep the lesser tech in-house, it"s not important. All the confidential items will be shipped to a secure facility for study."
  
  "I"ve got a suit en-route to you now," Dragon said with a touch of Newfoundland accent. "I"ll take it off your hands before sunrise."
  
  Armsmaster nodded to her. "Understood."
  
  "The bodies will also be taken away," Costa-Brown said. "We"ll have them examined- what few bio-Tinkers we"ve got might be able to get some answers out of them."
  
  Armsmaster nodded again. "We have them bagged in the morgue, ready for transport. Even the-" he hesitated, "-pieces."
  
  "Very good." The Chief Director"s expression hardened. "Now. I want to make things explicitly clear regarding how we go forward from here.
  
  "Armsmaster declared this situation an A-class event. I"ve chosen to retroactively upgrade it to an S-class threat, as it should have been declared from the beginning."
  
  Armsmaster"s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
  
  "This means that every aspect of this is being classified. Noelle, the Tinkertech, the clones- all of it."
  
  Triumph raised his head. "What about-"
  
  "All of it," the Chief Director said. "Elpis"s abilities will not be discussed by anyone not in this room."
  
  "Chief Director-" Armsmaster began.
  
  "This is not up for discussion." Costa-Brown"s eyes looked around the room. "Let me be clear- all the information could have disastrous consequences if it becomes known. Bio-Tinkers have done horrible things with parahuman DNA before now, but creating a full duplicate of someone, with all their powers and memories, is completely unprecedented. The last thing we want is for that little tidbit to get out, or we"ll have people trying to create clone armies within a week.
  
  "Likewise, Leet"s machine. Leaving aside the idea that there is some substance out there that can give a person superpowers, being able to alter powers on that scale is an enormous undertaking. We"ll be studying this extensively, and, I repeat, privately.
  
  "Uber and Leet will be offered probationary positions in the Toronto Protectorate, where Dragon can keep an eye on them. Noelle will be transferred to a power testing facility that can contain her. And everybody else involved in this will keep their mouths shut. You will not breath a word of this to your families; to your friends; to your fellow heroes or coworkers, or you"ll face severe consequences."
  
  Carol glared at Costa-Brown"s face with impotent fury. The woman was sheltering Elpis, and the Undersiders, from their well-deserved consequences; allowing them to continue lying to the world about who they really were, continuing the farce of pretending to be heroes!
  
  "With all due respect," Carol said, "I don"t think we can trust everyone in this room to keep this information secret." She nodded significantly at the Undersiders, and at Faultline"s group at the back of the room.
  
  "Hey-" Whirlygig began, before Elpis laid an armoured hand on her shoulder. The girl subsided quietly, still looking irritated.
  
  "We"ll keep quiet about this," Faultline said hoarsely, coughing a little. "I can understand the repercussions. That said," she continued, "We are planning to investigate the rumours of power vials on our own, if that"s agreeable."
  
  "Very well," Costa-Brown said. "If you do learn anything significant, consider informing the Protectorate. We"ll be conducting our own investigations into this."
  
  Elpis sat forward slightly, resting her elbows on the table. Carol noticed the Protectorate collectively tensing up.
  
  "The Undersiders will keep the secrets. News like this would only start a panic."
  
  "Good. Allow me to thank you for your assistance in containing this matter," said Costa-Brown matter-of-factly.
  
  The Undersiders all reacted to that- Tattletale"s mouth curved into a small smile, while Grue unfolded his arms. Even Hellhound sat a little straighter.
  
  Carol gritted her teeth. "That"s rather self-serving, considering a lot of the panic would be about you, Elpis."
  
  "Brandish, that"s enough," Piggot barked.
  
  "I hardly think," Carol said hotly, "That a team of villains wanted for theft and murder, are fit to be trusted with important information."
  
  Sarah sat forward next to Carol. "I have to agree with Brandish. This is," she paused, "This is too far."
  
  Costa-Brown was silent for a moment. "I think," she said deliberately, with the air of someone playing a winning hand, "That a government-approved team of independent heroes can be counted on to maintain discretion in these difficult times. Especially the team that contributed far more to solving this problem than you."
  
  Carol"s chair slammed back into the wall as she shot to her feet- Sarah was a second behind her. At the end of the table, Armsmaster rose to his feet with a look of controlled fury.
  
  "You can"t be serious!" Carol shouted, gesturing furiously at Elpis. "Are we forgetting who she is? What she is? Are we just going to pretend we don"t all know? She"s the Butcher!"
  
  Everyone flinched at her words; heads turned to look at Elpis.
  
  Elpis laid her hands flat on the table. "I suppose it"d be stupid to deny it," she said at last, her voice full of sadness so fake Carol wanted to slap her for it.
  
  "Enough!" Chief Director Costa-Brown barked, an edge of anger creeping into her voice. "Sit down, all of you."
  
  "Chief Director-"
  
  "All of you," Costa-Brown said to Armsmaster pointedly. "Now."
  
  Armsmaster slowly sank back into his seat. Carol remained standing, even as Costa-Brown"s eyes turned to her.
  
  A hand tugged on her sleeve. "Mom," Victoria whispered.
  
  Carol glanced down at her daughter, clenched her hands into fists, and unwillingly pulled her chair back to sit down.
  
  Costa-Brown glared at Carol for a few more seconds before addressing the entire room. "To reiterate; every aspect of this incident is classified. Anything you learned over the course of tonight will be kept to yourself. That includes Elpis"s abilities.
  
  "Elpis and the Undersiders responded to this situation quickly and efficiently, even while under suspicion. That is enough for them to officially be given the benefit of the doubt. So long as they continue their discretion," she added severely.
  
  Elpis nodded quickly.
  
  "And I"m sure I don"t have to explain to anyone in this room that publicly outing the city"s latest hero as having a powerset that transfers to her hypothetical murderer would result in anarchy. No doubt various groups and individuals would head for Brockton Bay to take a shot. The Teeth, for instance."
  
  Carol noticed uneasy looks among the Protectorate- Gargoyle in particular looked vaguely nauseous.
  
  "However you handle this revelation, you will do it quietly. Now, if there"s nothing else, I will leave you to it. Emily, I"ll expect regular updates."
  
  Costa-Brown"s side of the screen went black. Dragon frowned apologetically and signed off as well, letting the screen turn itself off.
  
  Director Piggot sighed- or maybe it was a groan. "Well. You heard the Chief Director. Since that"s apparently the final word, I think it"s past time everyone went home." She hit a button, and the door clicked as it unlocked.
  
  Faultline took a step towards the door- and when nobody moved to stop her, she led her group out of the door at something faster and more nervous than a walk.
  
  Carol got to her feet, pointing a finger at Elpis. "Don"t come anywhere near our family," she hissed.
  
  The wounded look on Elpis"s face was almost comical. "I-"
  
  "Let"s go, kids," Sarah said, putting her hands on Crystal and Eric"s shoulders. "We"re all tired."
  
  Neil put a protective arm around Eric as they rounded the table, keeping his eyes on Elpis. Poor Eric just looked lost, like he was a little boy again, trying to understand something the adults were explaining to him. Crystal was leaning against Sarah, little flashes of red flickering from her palms.
  
  They were almost to the door when Carol realised Amy hadn"t got out of her chair. "Amy. Come on."
  
  Amy curled further in on herself, knees to chin. She said something too faint to make out.
  
  "Amy, don"t mumble. It"s time to go home."
  
  "...I can"t..."
  
  Vicky slipped out from Carol"s arm. "Ames, let"s go already," she said tiredly, reaching for Amy"s shoulder.
  
  "DON"T TOUCH ME!" Amy shrieked, almost toppling out of her chair. She leaned away from Victoria"s hand like it was radioactive.
  
  "Glory Girl, for god"s sake, listen to her," said Tattletale urgently, standing up. "Don"t ask, just back away."
  
  "What the hell do you know?" Victoria snapped, rounding on the Thinker.
  
  "Butt out," Crystal added furiously, pointing a finger threateningly. "This is none of your business."
  
  "If you touch her now, you"re going to make everything so much worse," Tattletale said ominously.
  
  "She"s my sister," Victoria retorted, turning back to Amy.
  
  Elpis"s gauntleted fist closed around Victoria"s wrist like a shackle. "Listen to her," Elpis ordered.
  
  Carol stretched her fingers out, pulling on energy, ready to form weapons. She could slice her arm off and get one of her legs if she was fast enough. Behind her, she felt Sarah move into a fighting stance, ready to act. Mark and Neil shifted their weight, herding Crystal and Eric to the side.
  
  But Victoria was too close, and the room was too crowded. She could see past Elpis to the Undersiders, who were slowly standing up- Ironclad rose until his helmet brushed the ceiling. And behind them, the Protectorate were on their feet, holding weapons at the ready.
  
  Amy sniffled piteously; Elpis"s head snapped around, and she let go of Victoria"s wrist without hesitation. "Amy?" She asked uncertainly, taking a half step forward.
  
  "Don"t," Amy whimpered. "Just... Don"t."
  
  "Okay," Elpis said softly, stepping a little closer; then, in a move Carol would never have predicted, Elpis slowly took a knee on the carpet, her back exposed to New Wave; arrogant enough to dismiss them as a threat. "Nobody"s going to touch you, I promise. Just... can you tell me what"s going on? Please?"
  
  Amy uncurled a fraction and swallowed heavily- Carol could see her eyes now, poking over her knees, red and watery.
  
  "The clone," she whispered.
  
  Elpis said nothing, letting the silence stretch out. Carol would have pushed, asked a follow-up question, made Amy elaborate. But a tiny trickle of doubt was beginning to enter her mind. She"d never seen Amy act like this. Even when they"d brought her home for the first time, she"d been demanding and fussy and angry, but never- never this frightened wretch.
  
  "The clone, the other Vicky," Amy said. "It- it grabbed me, and it squeezed so hard, and I felt my arm break, and it lifted me up. A-and it said... things."
  
  Tattletale made a small noise. Victoria"s face was rapidly turning pale.
  
  "H-horrible things. And I could feel it- it felt like Vicky, it had her face and her bones and her DNA," Amy babbled, the words pouring out now, "and it had her brain, but it was all twisted and wrong, a-a-and I could feel the h-hate. Sh-she hated m-me."
  
  Amy raised her head from her knees, and Carol saw the fat tears trickling from her eyes and down her freckled cheeks, snot leaking from one nostril. "And I felt her die," Amy wailed. "I-I felt the knife in her head, I felt the lights go out! I can"t- I can"t-"
  
  She dissolved into sobbing, ugly wails mixed with heavy gasps for breath.
  
  Elpis seemed to shrink into herself. "Oh fuck," she said. "Amy, I... I"m so fucking sorry..."
  
  "Jesus Christ," Carol heard someone say. She wasn"t sure who, she could place the voice. Not that it mattered.
  
  Amy looked so pitiful now. Scared and wounded and helpless; a victim. There was no trace of resemblance to her father anymore- just a little girl, like Sarah had looked to her when they"d stumbled out of that dark house, all those years ago.
  
  "I can"t go back, I can"t, I can"t," Amy repeated.
  
  Victoria stepped to the side, around Elpis. "Amy," she begged, "Please. We can fix this together. I need you too," she admitted, on the verge of tears.
  
  Amy mutely shook her head, hair flicking around her.
  
  "Amy, please..." Victoria made to reach out again. In an instant, Elpis was on her feet, one arm blocking Victoria from moving forward.
  
  Her head turned- Carol saw her face in profile, looking over her shoulder. "Tattletale?"
  
  "She needs space," the Thinker said quietly. "And time."
  
  Elpis nodded, slowly, and turning a little more so she was side-on to New Wave. "If there"s anything I can do to help," she said quietly. Her head turned back to Amy. "Anything at all," she finished, barely above a whisper.
  
  Sarah put her hand on Victoria"s shoulder, gently pulling her back into the fold. "I think you"ve done enough," she said simply.
  
  Someone cleared their throat at the far end of the table. Piggot levered herself out of her chair with a distinct lack of grace. "Miss Dallon. If you need a place to stay- for the interim," she clarified, "The PRT would be happy to offer you a room for as long as you need. We can also set you up with a therapist, if you want."
  
  "Have you no shame?" Neil thundered. "Of all the times-!"
  
  "Neil." Carol recognised Piggot"s display of sympathy for the transparent ploy it was. Obviously the Director was hoping to convince Amy to join the Wards in her moment of vulnerability- you didn"t need to be a lawyer to see that.
  
  Any other day, she"d have been just as furious as Neil. More, even.
  
  But she looked at Amy, and for the life of her, she couldn"t even begin to think of how to help the girl.
  
  "Amy," she said, trying to be gentle. "it"s your choice."
  
  After a second, Amy raised her head a fraction. "I need gloves," she mumbled. "I don"t want to touch anyone right now."
  
  "We"ll get you some gloves," Director Piggot promised.
  
  Carol swallowed. "Call us if you need anything."
  
  "Mom," Victoria pleaded, on the verge of tears.
  
  Carol couldn"t meet her eyes. "I think we should give your sister some space," she said haltingly.
  
  The tears spilled over; Victoria"s expression was pure betrayal, and it almost broke Carol"s heart.
  
  Sarah rubbed Victoria"s shoulder comfortingly. "It"s just for a little while," she said consolingly. "Let"s go home. You can check on Amy in the morning."
  
  Victoria looked back at Amy, still curled into a ball. Finally, she swallowed heavily and nodded, wiping her tears with her sleeve.
  
  Elpis was still looking at Amy. Carol couldn"t see her face, but she heard her murmur "I"m sorry, Amy."
  
  Amy sniffled and brought her right arm up, still clutching that blanket. She uncurled her fingers from it, and it slipped off her lap and to the carpet with a surprisingly heavy flop.
  
  Only when Elpis knelt down to pick it up by the corner did Carol spot the white amphora bleached into the centre of the cloth. Elpis gathered up her cape in a bundle, holding it with both hands.
  
  Tired and wrung out, New Wave trudged out of the conference room into the corridor, shoulder to shoulder, holding one another for comfort.
  
  A few seconds later, the Undersiders slunk out behind them, heading in the opposite direction.
  
  Someone cleared their throat. Carol turned to see Elpis, still awkwardly holding her cape in a scrunched-up ball.
  
  "I meant what I said. If you need anything..." She drifted off.
  
  "And for what it"s worth," She raised her head to meet their eyes, "Thank you, for all your help."
  
  Finally, she turned, walking away, her team following her into the night.
  
  Interlude 9.V
  Afternoon of Sunday 10th, PRTHQ, Downtown
  
  Robin had never had a good day with two 3 o"clocks in it. Not in the army, and not in the Protectorate.
  
  Director Piggot had called the entire Protectorate team into her office, along with Aegis and Deputy Director Renick. She"d then hit a button to lock the door and close the blinds. Armsmaster had put some Tinkertech thingamajig on her desk, the size and shape of a tuna can, which displayed a little light going in a circle around its edge before beeping cheerily.
  
  "We"re secure," Director Piggot said, leaning forward. She looked better than she had last night- or earlier today- probably because she"d got her dialysis, a meal and some sleep. Still, her expression was grim as she looked at the assembled heroes.
  
  "I trust you all remember the PRT file on the Butcher, yes? And you will hopefully have had a chance to go over the reports of last night"s... incident."
  
  Robin shifted on his chair. Dauntless had pulled it out for him when he"d limped into the room, and Robin had gratefully accepted without a trace of ego.
  
  A speedster with a broken ankle- about as bad as a crocodile with toothache or a giraffe with a sore throat. Oh, Robin could still shift into his Breaker state and perceive the world as moving at a fraction of its usual speed, but that didn"t change the fact that he still had one leg in a fracture boot. He"d barely been able to get his costume over it this morning, and he"d been removed from the patrol roster until the doctors gave him the all clear, which would be weeks.
  
  If he hadn"t witnessed Panacea falling apart in front of his eyes, he"d have been tempted to pester her for a few minutes of healing. But that girl had crumpled like a deck of cards hit by a firehose. Not even Teddy Sorenson, who"d washed out of boot camp, had broken down like that.
  
  Abruptly, Robin remembered that Director Piggot was speaking, and forced himself to look attentive. Luckily, she didn"t seem to have noticed his lapse.
  
  "We have conclusively proven that Elpis is the Butcher- and after working through the PRT files, we are reasonably certain that she is Butcher XV, the original user of the insect swarm. The Tinker power appears to be from a Boston Tinker called Tock Tick, whose disappearance fits the timeframe between Butchers VI and VIII, and whose speciality of clockwork mechanisms matches Elpis"s mechanical devices."
  
  Aegis awkwardly raised a hand. "Uh, Director, did I miss something? It sounds like you thought there were extra Butchers we didn"t know about."
  
  "Since there were no obvious matches to the known Butcher powers, we did consider that whoever was responsible for the swarm was killed by another cape before they could be found. Tock Tick was relatively low profile, and was never directly implicated in the Butcher succession. At least this means Elpis is only the fifteenth Butcher, not the sixteenth or even seventeenth.
  
  "That said, this is still a severe problem that must be addressed. Elpis has shown a willingness to kill and the ability to massacre dozens of capes by herself. We need to devise countermeasures for her, and quickly."
  
  "Wait, what?" Triumph sat forward on the other chair. He was out of costume, wearing one of the temporary masks. Apparently he"d caught some nasty bug from the incident, which his healing factor was slowly working through. Of course, slowly healing for Rory meant a couple of days at most before he"d be back to his peak. "Director, I thought we were leaving Elpis alone. I mean, she saved my life."
  
  "You thought wrong," Piggot said. "Elpis has done plenty of good, even I can admit that. But the woman is a ticking timebomb in this city. How long will she last before she slips up and uses her other powers in a way that she can"t hide? Kaiser, Purity, Lung- any of them could force her to get serious, and then she"ll be outed to the general public. Which means the Empire will go to war with her, the Teeth will show up to try and get their leader back, and assorted crazies will come looking for a chance at a permanent powerup.
  
  "And that"s assuming she"s completely trustworthy. We"ve seen she has a volatile temper- if I understand correctly, she tried to slaughter the Travelers when she thought they"d killed Panacea. What if something else sets her off and she decides being a hero is just too much work?"
  
  Miss Militia cleared her throat. "Director, with respect, Elpis"s reaction then was under significant emotional distress. And her record over the last few months speaks for itself. She stopped the Merchants, helped drive out the Teeth, she"s made great strides against the Empire. She seems genuinely intent on being a hero."
  
  "Yeah, and what happens if we start treating her like a villain for something she hasn"t actually done?" Assault pointed out. "Self-fulfilling prophecy and all that. I mean, why are we treating her differently now, after every bit of good she"s done?"
  
  "She killed half a building," Gargoyle said with a disturbed look.
  
  "Precisely," Piggot said. "Half a building full of cloned capes, by herself. It needed to be done, yes; but that kind of ability is not something to be taken lightly. We will not be acting against Elpis until I deem it necessary; Militia is right- she has achieved a lot of good so far, and her intentions seem good. However, we"ve also seen her potential for destruction, and just because she"s lasted this long doesn"t mean she"ll last forever."
  
  Piggot"s steely gaze swept the room like a scythe- most folded rather than meet it. "Elpis appears stable. For now. It"s our job to plan for a future where she isn"t."
  
  "So we"re supposed to attack her after she saved our collective asses?" Assault demanded, shrugging Battery"s hand off his shoulder as she tried to pull him back. "The Chief Director ordered us to leave her alone."
  
  "No, Assault, the Chief Director ordered us to handle this quietly. Which is why we"re here- to decide our plan going forward."
  
  Armsmaster cleared his throat. "I was able to get some scans of her while the Noelle incident was ongoing. I"ve developed a partial profile of her abilities, and some data on her swarm power. It seems to have much finer control than we thought- she was able to direct thousands, possibly millions of insects simultaneously, attacking the clones without obscuring our vision. Given time, I might be able to build a device to counter or block her control, but I"ll need more data to make it effective."
  
  "How close would you have to be to get that data?"
  
  "Right now, at least 10 feet, although I might be able to upgrade the scanners in my halberd to work at greater range, say 50 feet."
  
  "You"ve scanned other villain"s powers from further away."
  
  Armsmaster"s jaw clenched. "Elpis"s power is... intense."
  
  Piggot nodded. "Understood. Work on the upgrade, and we"ll see about getting you close enough to use it."
  
  Dauntless stepped forward. Velocity had rarely seen the man look so pissed off. "Director," he said with a tone of forced calm, "How exactly are you planning to contain Elpis if something happens?"
  
  Piggot fixed him with that steely gaze- Dauntless didn"t even flinch. "Not the Birdcage, if that"s what you"re implying. That"d be like throwing tuna into a shark tank- an absolute bloodbath. No, we have Leet to thank for our best solution."
  
  Robin blinked. He"d never thought he"d hear that particular sentence, especially not from the director.
  
  "You"re going to change her powers?" Assault asked in a horrified voice.
  
  Piggot snorted. "Good God, no. I was referring to the "time fridge" that he built to contain Noelle. We still have the components on the Rig, being studied. If we can replicate that, we can trap her in a field of stopped time until we figure out a more permanent container. Or perhaps just leave her there, if the power requirements aren"t too steep."
  
  "You"re going to just lock her in there?" Triumph asked. "Director, that"s messed up."
  
  "On the contrary. I"d argue that it"s as humane as possible. Nothing will really happen to her after all."
  
  "Except the fact that she"ll be separated from the rest of the world until we decide to let her out," Assault snapped. "It"s barbaric!"
  
  "Ethan," Battery protested, pulling on his shoulder again until he took his hand off the desk.
  
  "What do you want from me, Assault?" Piggot snapped back. "There is no perfect solution to this- the Butcher"s very existence is a philosophical nightmare. As I recall, they were one of the few villains you refused to associate with during your misspent youth."
  
  Assault glared at her furiously, but he didn"t say anything. Ethan had once told Robin over beers that he"d had some standards as Madcap. The Teeth did not meet those standards- "Spherical bastards," he"d said. "No matter what angle you look at "em from, they"re still bastards."
  
  "We have plans for how to take down everyone- villains, allies, even our own. The only thing that makes Elpis special is the sheer level of force she can bring to bear. That and the inheritance- tell me, what do you think will happen to this city if someone like Lung kills her?"
  
  Robin shuddered at the thought of that. From the looks of it, so did most of the others.
  
  "We will not move openly on Elpis. We will not engage her in public, we will not provoke her, we will do everything we can to keep things stable and avoid setting her off. But if things go to hell, if she gets outed or killed, then we have to take the Butcher off the board.
  
  "The fact that she"s able to control the Butchers and make her own decisions makes her more dangerous than any of her predecessors. The Teeth never had any great ambition beyond roaming and raiding, but Elpis has been making serious waves in the city ever since she first appeared on our radar. If a real villain gets hold of that sort of power, things are going to go all to hell."
  
  "My latest generation of tranquilisers should be able to put her down for some time," Armsmaster said. "The trick will be actually hitting her- I believe she"s able to sense through her insects to some degree."
  
  "So we"d have to disable her insects first, then sedate her," Piggot said. "Difficult, but doable. I believe Leet had some tech that countered her insects- any chance you could adapt that?"
  
  "I believe so," Armsmaster said with a note of injured pride.
  
  "Good. Meanwhile, I want eyes on Elpis and the Undersiders at all times. If they poke their heads out, assume they"re up to something. We"ll dig into their files, look for weaknesses and possible angles of attack, countermeasures, whatever. Dealing with Elpis alone would be hard enough, but with the Undersiders supporting her she"ll be a nightmare."
  
  Abruptly, Robin realised what this situation reminded him of. They were up against another power that was a potential threat to them, working quietly to try and undermine her, drawing up plans to eliminate her, investigating her allies for ways to isolate and weaken her.
  
  Brockton Bay was entering its own Cold War, but with Butcher XV instead of Russian nukes.
  
  Thinking about it, Russian nukes would be easier to stomach- Scion had put a stop to nuclear testing long ago. Plus, you could disarm a nuke, and once it exploded, it was over.
  
  Still, he couldn"t help remembering the panic on Elpis"s face, under the fury, as she"d splinted Panacea"s broken arm and lowered her to the ground with stunning gentleness. Not to mention how she"d spoken to her at the meeting, soft and careful. The horrified guilt in her voice when Panacea had talked about feeling the clone die.
  
  "We should also consider her other associates," Armsmaster said. "Spitfire may know something after working with her. She"s also been seen with Parian several times- it"s possible she confided something. And then there"s Panacea."
  
  Assault"s head whipped around. "You prick," he seethed.
  
  Robin winced. Even for Assault, that was way past what was acceptable in the chain of command. Aegis looked shocked that one of the adults was resorting to swearing; Armsmaster looked like he was about to start shouting back. He opened his mouth-
  
  Piggot slapped the table. "Assault, enough. Your objections are noted, but unless you have anything useful to contribute, I"m ordering you to keep your mouth shut."
  
  Assault"s hands clenched into fists for a moment, before he managed to visibly rein himself in. Armsmaster still looked quietly angry, but he wore it better.
  
  "Good. Now we can"t get anything out of Panacea yet- the girl"s fragile to say the least. However, keeping a closer eye on Spitfire and Parian is a good idea. Renick, can you handle that?"
  
  Deputy Director Renick nodded, the first thing he"d done all meeting. Velocity almost forgot he was in the room.
  
  "Easy enough."
  
  "Good. Armsmaster, I want you running point on this. You"re our best shot for developing countermeasures to whatever Elpis could throw at us. Keep me updated."
  
  "Of course," Armsmaster said, nodding, losing some tension from his posture. Robin would have bet his back teeth that the man was aching for the chance to develop some new gadget or doodad and take down a notorious villain to improve his rep.
  
  "Everyone else, we"ll be organising group training sessions. Our best shot at handling a Butcher is as a team- that means being able to coordinate as a large group. We"ll match our strengths to her weaknesses. For instance, Gargoyle, your power should make you resistant to her insects, and her Striker powers."
  
  Gargoyle wasn"t in his Changer state, so Robin was able to see the colour drain out of the new guy"s cheeks. Last time he"d fought on the other side of a Butcher, he"d had a leg smashed off- and he probably wasn"t happy about a repeat performance.
  
  "We"ll bring New Wave in on this too- the Pelham"s forcefields will be especially useful."
  
  Piggot turned to the Ward in the room. "Aegis, since you"re still in the Wards, I need to ask- will you be willing to pitch in if or when we need to neutralise Elpis?"
  
  Aegis nodded without hesitation. "Yes, ma"am."
  
  "Does anyone else have anything to add?"
  
  Triumph raised a hand. "I want to go on record as saying that I"m not comfortable with this."
  
  Assault raised a hand as well, and Dauntless after him. After some thought, Robin did too. Miss Militia shifted, but said nothing.
  
  Piggot sighed, suddenly looking tired and worn. "I understand. But this is the job. It"s going to take all of us to deal with whatever happens. I need to know I can count on your support."
  
  Robin wanted to object. But at heart he was a military man, even if he"d chafed under the slow-moving nature of it. And maybe by sticking with this, he and the others could help steer this in a better direction- or at least a less terrible one.
  
  "Yes, Director," he said reluctantly. Triumph made a murmur of assent- Assault just grunted.
  
  "Good." Piggot sat back in her chair. "Let"s get to it, people. Remember, Elpis will probably be working on plans of her own, so we need to move fast and try to anticipate her.
  
  "And let"s just pray that nothing happens to provoke her before we"re ready."
  
  10.1
  Sunday 10th April, The Undersiders Lair, The Docks
  
  The Undersiders barely managed to shuck their costumes before falling into bed, mentally and physically drained. Tarquin flopped onto the sofa, since he had never got a proper room here. I draped a blanket over him before I headed downstairs.
  
  I didn"t need to sleep, thanks to Nemean. And I didn"t want to sleep. The Butchers had caught some shut-eye every once in a while, but I"d avoided it entirely. The one time I"d tried, about a week after I inherited, I"d woken up screaming from all the horrible memories that came with it. At least Dad had been out at work at the time. I"d still had to throw away the sheets, torn from my claws and rotted in places.
  
  And now I had horrible memories of my own- the horror of thinking Amy had been murdered, Noelle"s twisted body, and the endless hordes of the clones. I could still feel their blood under my fingernails.
  
  So I went with the Hebert family method of dealing with shit; I threw myself into my work. I lit the forge, gathered my tools, laid my armour out on the workbench, and pulled out plans I"d carefully hidden in case of emergency.
  
  The swords needed the edge sections replaced, and a good cleaning. The air cannon had been battered about. My grapplers were in terrible condition. The sonic spear would need to be rebuilt entirely. At least I could straighten out the dents in my armour easily enough.
  
  Insects filled the air around me- my range was still greater than normal, and I was pulling in every insect I could, funnelling them into the great glass tanks, and the other terrariums I"d begun excavating underground. The less useful stuff became food for the spiders and wasps and hornets- the flies and beetles and cockroaches could eat the garbage around the lair. I left behind enough that I was pretty sure I wasn"t causing an ecological disaster, but the rest was fair game.
  
  And I could hear through them- not always clearly, but I was practicing, and I was making progress. I had a few moths upstairs keeping track of the Undersiders, listening to their breathing and the rustling of their sheets. Isabella snored amazingly, like someone was cutting logs with a rusty saw.
  
  I could see through the bugs too- again, not clearly, but it was better with large amounts of bugs working together. I set little swarms of them to run patrols around the area, checking the streets and alleyways, finding nothing but a couple of homeless people.
  
  It was how I eventually noticed the sky getting lighter as dawn broke. Anchorage convinced me, gently and patiently, to go home. Just for a little while, just so that Dad wouldn"t worry.
  
  I cycled home through the darkness, crawled in through the window, and lay in my bed, waiting for the sounds of Dad stirring. He was always an early riser, even on the weekends.
  
  I should have let him see my face, but I couldn"t bring myself to see him just yet. I knew that if he ever found out what I"d done last night, he"d never see me the same way again. So I crept downstairs while he was in the shower, scribbled a note saying that I was out with friends for the day, and pinned it to the fridge.
  
  The city was beginning to stir as I cycled back to the lair- I stopped in at a mini-mart that was just opening and bought a bunch of snack foods- donuts, muffins, chips, and a bag of apples as a concession to basic nutrition.
  
  There was also a sports supplies store that I checked on a hunch. The clerk looked like he was going to question why a teenager was buying a bunch of carbon fibre fishing rods, but one look at my expression shut him up.
  
  The Undersiders were still asleep when I arrived, so I left the food on the table and started on other projects, grinding lenses and stitching fabric, fusing little bits of bent pipe together and sharpening a blade. The fishing rods were stripped of their reels and threads and all the useless stuff I didn"t need, and piled up next to the suspension springs I"d stripped off that white supremacist"s car months ago.
  
  By the time they started to stir, I"d finished all the little simple projects, so I started on the bigger stuff. It was time to upgrade my armour, and make what the Butchers called a War Chest.
  
  Some of it was simple- studs on the knuckles and the tips of my boots for extra striking power, rebuilding the jaw guard stronger and more secure.
  
  Some of it was nastier- retractable blades in the forearms, shins and boots.
  
  And then there was the worst- using Tactical"s Thinker power to improvise explosives out of household chemicals, adding switches to my grapplers to disable the safeties, adding sections under the armour plates and in my utility belt for me to store insects in.
  
  I didn"t want to- I"d enjoyed playing the role of Knight in Shining Armour, pulling my punches and beating my enemies through creativity and skill. But now, sooner or later, someone was going to try to kill me. And I was going to have to be ready to kill them right back.
  
  I was directing spiders to line up before a fine glass capillary tube when Lisa shuffled out with a jaw-cracking yawn, heading straight for the coffee.
  
  The smell wafted through, and as Lisa sat at the table and began tearing into the muffins, the rest of the group gradually assembled, one by one. Isabella"s hair was a rat"s nest, Tarquin splashed water on his face, and Brian had morning stubble for the first time since I"d met him.
  
  I stepped over Tarquin"s discarded metal and climbed the stairs, emerging just as Rachel was setting bowls down for her dogs. She spotted me first, nodded at me, and slid a packet of chocolate doughnuts across the table to me.
  
  "Thanks," I said, popping a claw to slit the packet open and spearing a ring. It was gone in two bites.
  
  Tarquin picked up an apple. "So last night actually happened, right? That wasn"t just... the worst fucking dream I"ve ever had?"
  
  "I wish," I said honestly.
  
  "You and me both," Vladimir admitted. "That was... a lot."
  
  Lisa looked up from her coffee. "So what do we do?"
  
  I sighed. "This is the beginning of the end. The PRT won"t just wait around for me to slip up and reveal myself. They"ll start making plans. That means we need to plan too."
  
  "Are we fighting them?" Rachel asked. She didn"t sound happy about the prospect.
  
  I shook my head. "No. If we fight them, we lose legitimacy, and they can call in everything on us. We"re going to use however much time we have left. We have to get ourselves established as heroes, get the public on our side. We have to upgrade our equipment, sharpen our tactics; and most of all, we need contingencies.
  
  "You guys need to prepare to operate without me."
  
  "What?" Isabella asked in a small voice.
  
  "When I get outed-"
  
  "If," Tarquin tried.
  
  "When," I said firmly. "When I get outed, I"ll have to leave. You guys will have to get used to not having my powers, my tech, and so on. Sort out your finances, keep your loved ones safe, and get your stories straight. If things look bad, just blame everything on me- the PRT will believe just about anything about the Butcher."
  
  "Yeah," Bearskin admitted. "We"re like the Mike Tyson of capes- sex, drugs, violence, biting someone"s ear off... We"re in the Tyson Zone."
  
  "You"re asking us to throw you under the bus?" Brian asked.
  
  "Exactly. Tell them I threatened you, tell them I hit you, whatever it takes to save yourselves."
  
  "You can"t ask us to do that to you," Tarquin said. "You can"t."
  
  "You have to."
  
  "What about you?" Rachel asked.
  
  "I"ll leave," I repeated. "Leave the city, maybe even the state. Travel. I can still do a lot of good on the move- just pass through a town, slap the piss out of some of the worst villains, move on, rinse and repeat."
  
  "At least it won"t be boring," Firecracker said with forced cheer.
  
  I didn"t want to leave, but I couldn"t see another way. Kaiser held a burning hatred for the Butcher ever since Needler had killed his wife, and I wasn"t quite strong enough to take on the entire Empire at once. Not to mention, people would guess that I had remained stable after inheriting, and rush to Brockton Bay to try and challenge me. I couldn"t let myself be the catalyst for dozens of villains descending on my home.
  
  I"d considered giving myself up if the PRT had some way of keeping me contained. But then I"d thought of what that would mean- locked in a cell for weeks, months, years, my powers boiling over inside me until I lashed out and hurt someone, broke out and ran. Or maybe I wouldn"t break out, and I"d spend the rest of my natural lifespan in a box.
  
  The thought was horrifying.
  
  "Absolutely not," Butcher said. "We"d really go insane that way."
  
  "Lisa, I want you getting in touch with that lawyer. Make sure he comes up with a strategy to clear you guys, and make sure you"re all on the same page if you have to testify. Brian, I need you to grab me some supplies." I handed him a list.
  
  Brian took one look at it before jerking in shock. "Are you kidding?"
  
  "Not even a little. Legal or illegal, I don"t care, so long as there"s no paper trail.
  
  "And from now on, if we go out, we go out in force. I can"t say I"d blame the PRT if they tried to snatch us off the street, but that doesn"t mean I"m willing to let it happen. Buddy system from here on out, plus new equipment to help out. Let me know if you need any help sorting out stuff like a safehouse or a go-bag or whatever."
  
  Rachel raised a hand. "I"ve got more dogs. They"re in a shelter in the Docks."
  
  "Seriously?" Quarrel asked.
  
  "How many?"
  
  "20."
  
  "It"s probably not safe for them there anymore. Can they be moved?"
  
  "I"ll need a truck or something. They"re not all trained yet."
  
  I nodded. "We move them closer to here, set up some security to keep people out. Sound good?"
  
  Rachel nodded. "Yeah."
  
  "Good." I turned to the rest of the team. "Come downstairs when you"re finished eating- I"ve got some stuff for you."
  
  With that, I turned and headed downstairs to double-check my projects.
  
  
  
  "So? What do you think?"
  
  Lisa adjusted the dials around the lenses of her goggles. There was a very faint clicking as the lenses moved in their housing, changing the magnification and focus.
  
  "I think Isabella needs a different pore scrub."
  
  "Fuck you," Isa said without heat.
  
  Since Lisa"s power was information gathering, I figured telescopic goggles would help her. She could pop them on or off easily, and use them for long distance observation or close-up details.
  
  I picked up her crossbow from the workbench and handed it to her. I"d altered the stock so it could fold out to rest against her shoulder, and upped the gear ratios for extra power. "Try this."
  
  Lisa took it, pointed it at the blank dummy I"d set up at the end of the ground floor, and pulled back on the slide underneath. The string pulled back, a bolt from the magazine was nocked, and she pulled the trigger.
  
  The bolt thudded into the dummy, a little off-centre, but still a respectable shot. Lisa lowered the crossbow and whistled. "Damn, boss."
  
  "Honestly, I think I"m proud of her stuff the most," Tock Tick admitted. "Lovely bits of work."
  
  Brian clenched his hands into fists, nodding appreciatively before doing some shadowboxing. I"d lined his gloves with extra silk, and stitched pouches full of metal filings over the knuckles, giving him some extra padding and weight to his blows. He also had a telescoping baton- basic, but effective.
  
  Isabella poked at the piles of ammo I"d given her- small lengths of copper pipe, bent at angles and fused together at the bend to create vicious caltrops. They"d be a pain for anyone who stepped on them, and almost certainly lethal for anyone she shot them at.
  
  Tarquin had to put his armour on to lift his weapon- a thick metal pole for a staff, with a knob at one end and a blunt spike at the other. "This is pretty cool," he said, turning it over in his metal hands. "But what"re these for?" He pointed out the screw threads just past the spike.
  
  From under the workbench, I pulled out a block of steel the size of a loaf of bread, with a short tube sticking out of the top. "For this." I slid it across the floor to him.
  
  Tarquin cocked his head, looking comically small sticking out of his armour without his helmet. Then he poked the spike into the tube atop the block and gave it a couple of good twists until it was locked on tight.
  
  Then he lifted it up, and I saw on his face the exact second that he realised. The block"s handle was long enough on its own to be an oversized one-handed hammer, but combined with the staff, it was a wrecking machine.
  
  Tarquin tapped the end of his new warhammer against the ground, staring at the head. "Holy hell."
  
  "Damn right." I turned to Rachel. "How about yours?"
  
  Rachel pulled the trigger on her spear, popping the blade out again. Another pull and it slid back in as easily as a cat"s claw, leaving only the prongs of the taser. It was long enough for her to use it even riding on her dogs, and I"d plated the shaft with bronze to match her armour. She grinned nastily. "I like it."
  
  "Oh, she"s definitely going to stab someone," Nemean said approvingly.
  
  "Good," I said to both of them.
  
  "So what are we doing next?" Brian asked, peeling his gloves off.
  
  "Resting. Maybe some more PR stuff- I think we could get away with a hospital visit as a group. After that, once we"re back to 100%, we"re going after the gangs."
  
  "Empire or ABB?" Tarquin asked, flipping his hammer around to rest the head on the ground, then stepping out of his armour.
  
  "We"ll alternate between the two," I said, plotting it out in my head. "If we focus too much on one, the other side will try to take advantage of their weakness. So we"ll switch back and forth, whittle them down evenly so neither one gains an advantage."
  
  In theory we could have split our forces, but I wanted to keep the Undersiders together as much as possible. Now we had the heroes to worry about as well.
  
  "They"ve probably noticed something happened last night," Lisa said. "I checked the news sites and PHO- people know Amy got kidnapped, all the heroes went after her- and then suddenly everyone"s tight-lipped and a bunch of villains have gone totally dark, Faultline"s crew have left town- Leet put some kind of self-destruct on their video channel with an "If we"re dead, avenge our deaths" kind of message."
  
  "Of course he did," Stoneknapper groaned.
  
  "Well, that"ll either make the gangs keep their heads down, or decide to do something reckless and take advantage of the situation. Either way, we just came off our biggest fight yet, so let"s take a few days, okay?"
  
  "No arguments here," Lisa said, massaging her temples. "I used my power so damn much in that meeting."
  
  "Right. Brian, you and Rachel go get the dogs. There"s an old textile factory three blocks south of here that should work- I salvaged a lot of metal out of there, so I know it"s clear. We"ll see about buying it to make sure no inspectors come sniffing around. Lisa, Isa; I want you getting some target practice in with your new stuff. And T," I paused, "Won"t your parents know you didn"t come home?"
  
  "Nah, I texted them this morning, saying I was going out early, forgot to leave a note. They just want me home for dinner."
  
  "Good. I"ll work on some other projects, and then I"ll teach you some tricks with your hammer. Although now that you mention it," I pulled my phone out of my pocket, "I should probably make some calls myself."
  
  
  
  I moved a couple of streets away from the lair before I dialled. I wasn"t sure if the heroes would start trying to track my phone calls and narrow down my location, but I sincerely doubted that they were actually going to just let me run around without any oversight. Better to be safe than sorry.
  
  "It"s not paranoia if they"re really out to get you," Tactical said.
  
  I pulled up my contact list. When I saw Amy"s name at the top, I hesitated.
  
  "Hey," Needler said gently. "Don"t beat yourself up. None of us could have seen that shit coming. All you did was save her life."
  
  I understood that, on some level. But I still didn"t think Amy needed me to talk to her right now. She probably didn"t want me to talk to her either.
  
  I scrolled down the list, then hit the call button. It took a couple of rings for the call to be answered.
  
  "H"llo?" Spitfire said groggily.
  
  "Hey," I said. "Did I wake you up?"
  
  "No, I just," Spitfire broke off to yawn long and loud, "Just got up a few minutes ago. Wassup?"
  
  "I don"t know if they told you about what happened last night..."
  
  "Uh? No, nothing really. I heard Panacea"s staying with us now, but I haven"t actually seen her. And the Travelers left the city, and Uber and Leet got caught- that"s about it."
  
  "Well, there"s other stuff. A lot of other stuff. I"m not really supposed to tell you more, but I think you should hear the bits I can tell you."
  
  "Uh, okay? So, like, lunch?"
  
  "Not today. Tomorrow, 9:30? The usual spot?"
  
  "Yeah, sure."
  
  "And don"t tell anyone you"re meeting me. I don"t have time to explain, but the Protectorate"s not happy with me right now."
  
  Spitfire was silent for a moment. "You didn"t do anything bad though, right?"
  
  "Not exactly. It"s complicated."
  
  Spitfire sighed. "Okay. I"ll see you tomorrow."
  
  "Thanks. Enjoy your Sunday," I said, hanging up.
  
  "You think the kid"s going to take it well when she finds out?" Anchorage asked.
  
  Muramasa shrugged. "It is hard to say. She may feel offended that such a secret has been kept for so long. Then again, she was able to make amends with Elpis after their argument- perhaps she will simply need time to process it."
  
  I sagged back against the wall of the alleyway. "I hope you"re right."
  
  I"d have to make a lot of goodbyes. I had a letter written for Dad, but that was months ago. It could be worth it to rewrite it.
  
  The Undersiders already knew everything important- and I could probably manage to tell them anything else in person.
  
  My school friends? No, they"d be better off not knowing. It"d only make them targets- better to leave them blissfully ignorant.
  
  Maybe something for the Protectorate and New Wave, thanking them for their help and explaining some things.
  
  Which only left Amy.
  
  "Bastards are probably going to be reading her mail though," Anchorage pointed out. "No way you can send her a message without them trying to get some info out of it."
  
  "I"ll figure something out."
  
  
  
  Now that everyone was awake, I could start on the louder stuff, hammering metal or using power tools to get the heavy-duty stuff ready. My armour was repaired, reinforced and equipped with nasty surprises; my weapons were all fixed, even the sonic spear. I found time to show Tarquin a few moves with his new hammer, then moulded a couple of dummies for him to practice on.
  
  The girls worked on their marksmanship, and eventually they could reliably hit the target every time. Of course a firing range was very different to live combat, but it was encouraging.
  
  As for me, I moulded a compartment into the floor, then started making things to fill it with. The carbon fibre I"d salvaged would be a major part of it, but I also needed to draw some of my meagre stock of titanium out into filaments, then braid them together with silk lines to make the strongest cable I could.
  
  There were mechanisms too- gears and pulleys and cams that Tock Tick"s power readily guided me to make.
  
  I"d finished the basic structure when Brian called. "We"ve got the dogs settled in."
  
  "Good." I grabbed a box of parts. "I"ll be over in a second."
  
  It didn"t take too long for me to walk over there. I picked up on the shelter before I saw it- the presence of fleas, plus the sound of barking relayed through my insects.
  
  "Goddamn, hearing through bugs is gonna be so damn useful," Dirty Rotter admitted.
  
  Tactical nodded. "You never said a truer word, Rotter."
  
  The barking was audible to my own ears as I got closer- I"d have to work on that. It wouldn"t be hard for the gangs to hear a dozen dogs barking and put two and two together. A bit of Stoneknapper"s power would fix that.
  
  As soon as I opened the door, about a dozen dogs came at me like a tidal wave. All different shapes, sizes and colours. They milled around me, barking and pawing at my legs. I gingerly stepped through them, keeping the box of parts up where they couldn"t reach.
  
  The factory was in fairly good shape- a few broken windows, a lot of graffiti, dust everywhere; nothing major. Most of the machines had been removed when the original owners went bust, and I"d salvaged much of the rest. That left a wide open space with sunlight streaming through grimy glass or holes in the roof.
  
  Rachel was unloading sacks of dog food from the back of a rental van, while Brian was piling wooden pallets into a stack.
  
  "Need anything?" I asked as I crossed over.
  
  Rachel nodded. "Yeah. Couldn"t bring the trough with us."
  
  "Trough?"
  
  "For feeding the dogs," she said, holding up the bag in her hands. A happy cartoon dog was on the front, tongue lolling out.
  
  I set the box down and pressed my hands to the concrete floor. Stoneknapper"s power fizzed through my fingers and into the material- it flowed like thick mud, rose up, and hardened into shape.
  
  I gestured to the trough, six feet long with low sides. "How"s that?"
  
  Rachel looked grudgingly impressed. "That"s good." She opened two bags with a knife and poured them both into the trough, stepping back as the dogs flooded towards it and stuck their heads in.
  
  Some of them started fighting- a black lab snarled and chased a little dog around the trough, until a lanky dog with short fur jumped into help. Rachel didn"t seem worried.
  
  I considered stepping in, but this wasn"t my area of expertise. The Butchers had had dogs- Anchorage"s family had a lovely Golden Retriever, and Bearskin"s family went for a succession of pit bulls- but those were pet dogs. Rachel"s were fighting dogs.
  
  Something in my insect senses caught my attention- inside the black lab. Not fleas or ticks on his fur- a dense mass inside his body.
  
  "Oh shit," Anchorage swore. "Heartworm."
  
  I felt the memories wash over me- one of her neighbour"s dogs had got heartworm, and the poor thing had barely survived.
  
  "Rachel," I called. "This one"s got parasites. I think it"s heartworm."
  
  Rachel swivelled like a tank turret, and about as threatening. "Show me," she demanded.
  
  I traced my fingers over the labrador"s back. "Lots above the heart, and along his spine, but there"s more spread all inside him."
  
  "It is heartworm. Fuckers! Fuckers, fuckers, fuckers! Sirius, come."
  
  "What"s heartworm?" Brian asked, coming over.
  
  "Parasites," I began, before Rachel grabbed the labrador"s collar and began leading him to an empty space away from the trough.
  
  "Dogs are supposed to get medicine to prevent it, every month. Those cheap-ass fuckers at the shelter didn"t. This is the second dog I got from them that wasn"t taken care of."
  
  "I can try getting them out of him, but I don"t know how well that"ll go."
  
  "Get the chains," Rachel said to Brian, pulling a bunch of carabiners out of her jacket. She whistled for her main dogs- Brutus, Judas and Angelica trotted over obediently. I could see them starting to swell from her power.
  
  "What are you planning?"
  
  "My power keeps dogs healthy- burns out parasites and diseases. It"s faster than having a vet treat it. Safer too."
  
  I eyed Sirius. "So you"re growing an untrained dog."
  
  "Wait, what?" Brian was dragging a bundle of chains toward us. "Bitch, didn"t that get someone killed before?"
  
  "Yup."
  
  I chewed my lip. "Brian, give me the chains, then step back."
  
  Rachel quickly looped the chain through carabiners around Sirius, extending it around his neck, body and stomach, and between his legs. I could see how the chain would pass through the carabiners in a way that wouldn"t constrict him as he grew. She handed the other end to Brian, who reluctantly took it and attached it to a heavy machine across the room.
  
  Muscles swelled under Sirius"s coat- he yelped and struggled frantically. Rachel kept a hold on his collar, no matter how he twisted and thrashed. Brian circled back around, keeping his distance from Sirius as the dog began to grow.
  
  Brutus paced behind us, keeping the other dogs behind us. Judas and Angelica waited at the ready, flanking their mistress.
  
  "Judas, Angelica!" Rachel called out, releasing Sirius and backing away. "Hold!"
  
  The two dogs leapt just as Sirius lunged for Rachel with snapping jaws- Judas stepped in between to block his charge, and Angelica tackled him from the side. Soon they had him pinned, Judas holding his throat in his jaws, while Angelica lay atop his hindquarters. Even with two bigger dogs holding him, Sirius was putting up a struggle, now the size of a refrigerator and clearly not happy with this new experience.
  
  "Christ," Bearskin muttered. "And I thought my dogs were snappy."
  
  "The heartworm?" Rachel asked, glancing at me.
  
  I focused. I could feel the worms being churned up by whatever Rachel"s power did, disintegrating and dissolving them.
  
  "Almost gone."
  
  Rachel nodded. "We"ll give him a few minutes. When heartworms die, they release bacteria into the dog. Treating it needs arsenic injections into the muscles and lots of antibiotics. Like this, his body will kill the worms and the disease, and he"ll be fine by tomorrow."
  
  Sirius let out a long, mournful noise, like a mix of whine and howl. He struggled again, making Angelica shift a little, but he was still stuck between the other dogs and the chain.
  
  I picked up on something else through my insects- the machine Brian had anchored the chain to was shifting slightly as Sirius struggled. When I really focused, I could hear a faint creaking.
  
  "Taylor," Vladimir began, just as danger sense flared- not fast enough.
  
  No time to talk. I grabbed Rachel"s jacket and yanked her back as the handle Brian had clipped the chain to snapped off. The chain went slack, and Sirius"s next struggle sent him shooting out from under Judas and Angelica like a cork from a bottle.
  
  My first thought was to kill him- he was still small enough that I could probably stab my claws through his throat and hit something important.
  
  But reaching instinctively for violence made me flinch- like touching a hot stove. It made me remember the clones, and the fighting, and how horribly easy it had been to cross that line. I hesitated, and that was enough time for Sirius"s jaws to clamp down on my outstretched arm.
  
  I yelled, more in surprise than pain, and grabbed Sirius"s jaw with my other hand, trying to force it open. I could feel he"d already broken the skin, and the way he was worrying at it was doing more damage.
  
  "Brutus, hold!"
  
  Brutus bounded over, bigger than Judas or Angelica. He leapt on top of Sirius along with the other two, bearing him to the floor. I was dragged down as well, and I felt Sirius"s grip loosen as the breath was knocked out of him.
  
  I switched my free hand to his top jaw, and pushed up while I shoved down with my bad arm. Sirius"s jaw was forced open, and I quickly pulled my arm out, hastily stepping away as his mouth snapped shut again with a snarl.
  
  "Shit, that was intense," Firecracker said as I shook some of the mess off my arm.
  
  Brian jogged over as Rachel was getting to her feet. "Holy shit, are you okay?" he asked me.
  
  I regarded my arm, bleeding through my torn sleeve. "I liked this top," I grumbled. I"d have to throw it out- no way I could wear something this mangled again. Not to mention I was drenched in dog slobber- I needed a wash as soon as possible. "Rachel, you alright?"
  
  Rachel stared at my arm, then Sirius, then me. "Yeah."
  
  Sirius let out another whine as the last of the heartworms fizzled away.
  
  I checked the puncture wounds and torn skin again. "I"ll need to wrap this up before we leave. Can"t walk down the street looking like this."
  
  Brian gave me a disturbed look. "That"s what you"re worried about?"
  
  I poked my arm demonstratively. "Not like it hurts." Although it was worrying me that I"d managed to get injured less than 24 hours after the whole Travelers thing.
  
   For a second, the images of Noelle"s body and clone corpses flashed through my mind. I clenched my teeth and dragged myself back into the now.
  
  "Keep yourself busy," Muramasa suggested. "Distract yourself from work, get some distance."
  
  "I"ll keep Sirius pinned until my power starts to wear off," Rachel said, looking at the dogs. It seemed like she was avoiding eye contact more than usual.
  
  "Good idea." I said, grateful for the change of subject. "I"ll get started on fixing this place up a bit. Although-"
  
  I carefully circled around the dogpile towards the end of the chain. Up close, I could see that the handle looked fine from the front, but it was rusted on the underside, the bolts close to falling apart.
  
  I unclipped the carabiner and touched the floor again, forming a solid loop out of the concrete, before winding the chain through it and securing it with the carabiner.
  
  I gave it an experimental tug to be sure- it held up just fine.
  
  "There we go," I said, standing up. "Now, let"s get this place secure."
  
  
  
  I didn"t want to use too much Tinkertech on the dog shelter, in case someone wandered in and got suspicious. It was a lot faster to board up the broken windows, patch some holes, and put a new lock on the doors, which were also reinforced.
  
  I also spent a while sculpting things for the dogs- another trough for water, a couple of little kennel bits, some obstacles to run and jump and climb on.
  
  Once that was done, and my arm was healed up enough to avoid attention, I headed back to the lair to work on my armour some more. There were some things I couldn"t finish today, so I ended up repainting my symbol and stripes onto the metal, to make it a little more presentable.
  
  And then it was early evening, and there was nothing to do except go home before Dad got worried.
  
  Honestly, I wasn"t looking forward to it. The last time I"d seen Dad had been last night"s dinner, right before everything went to shit. After everything that had happened, I wasn"t sure I could keep myself on an even keel.
  
  Still, I hopped over the rotten step at the front and unlocked the door.
  
  Dad was sitting on the sofa, watching an old movie- he stood up as I came in and pulled my shoes off.
  
  "Taylor! There you are, I was starting to worry. Where"ve you been all day?"
  
  "Just out with friends," I shrugged awkwardly. It was even true- not that I was going to tell him I was friends with a bunch of ex-villains.
  
  "Yes, I read your note. Honestly, Taylor, you could have at least told me in person that you were going out."
  
  "Sounds just like my dad," Quarrel muttered.
  
  I hung my jacket up on its peg, tugging at my top. Lisa had loaned me a flowy green blouse with long loose sleeves, but it was a little short at the hem. I kept feeling a breeze on my belly button as the fabric rode up. "Sorry Dad, I was in a hurry, that"s all."
  
  Dad sighed. "Alright, but next time talk to me, okay? And we definitely need to get you a cell phone. After what I read in the paper this morning, I was afraid something might happen to you."
  
  I felt a horrible suspicion steal over me. "Uh, what was in the paper."
  
  "Some cape thing happened last night. The PRT"s not saying what happened, but a building"s been fenced off, a couple of people have been found dead- you know those pranksters, Uber and Leet? Apparently they left a video message saying "If you"re watching this, we"re dead". The PRT said they were just arrested, but it sounds fishy."
  
  "Wow, that sounds crazy," I managed.
  
  "Apparently it all started when someone abducted Panacea last night- now she"s staying with the Wards, and New Wave"s not saying anything either-"
  
  I couldn"t stop myself from tensing up at that. Dad noticed. "Oh, Taylor, I"m sorry- I forgot, she"s your friend. I"m sure she"s alright." He rested a hand on my shoulder.
  
  I shrugged it off. "I already knew about Amy," I muttered.
  
  Dad sighed. "I know it must be a shock. Do you want to call her, see if she"s alright?"
  
  I curled my fingers into fists. "No."
  
  "Are you sure? I could look up the number for the PRT, or if you"ve got her phone number-"
  
  "It"s my fault," I blurted.
  
  "Oh, Taylor, no," Nemean said softly.
  
  I was in no mood to accept comfort- it was a struggle not to let the truth tumble out. I settled for half-truths. "Amy got kidnapped right after we went out together. She got hurt because I was dragging her around all day, and then I didn"t- I couldn"t-"
  
  Amy"s words flashed through my mind again- "I felt the knife in her head, I felt the lights go out!"
  
  My fault.
  
  Dad"s arms wrapped around me as he pulled me into a hug. I buried my face in his chest. I thought I"d cry, but the tears just wouldn"t come.
  
  "It"s okay," Dad murmured, stroking my hair. "It"s okay, Taylor. It"s not your fault."
  
  "But-"
  
  "Sometimes... bad things happen. And we want to blame somebody for it. And sometimes we blame ourselves. But that doesn"t mean it"s true."
  
  Dad pulled back a little to look me in the eye. "Amy"s safe at the PRT now. They"ll have all sorts of people looking after her and helping her get better."
  
  Dad paused, then added "I"m sure she doesn"t blame you. You don"t have to talk to her right now if you want to give her some space, but she"s still your friend, right?"
  
  "Right," I said in a small voice.
  
  "There you go. So you figure out what you want to say when you see her again, okay? And remember not to blame yourself, okay?"
  
  I swallowed heavily. "Okay," I said, lying.
  
  The hug helped, and so did the advice. Amy probably had a whole team of doctors and therapists helping her get better.
  
  I did still blame myself though.
  
  Dad patted my shoulders. "There you go. Now come on, let"s get dinner started. You"ll feel better with some food in you."
  
  I couldn"t argue with that. "Okay."
  
  10.2
  Chapter Notes
  
  See the end of the chapter for notes
  Monday 11th April, Downtown
  
  Having a free period every other Monday made it a lot easier to have these little moments- quiet meetings or quick errands. This one was a little of both.
  
  Being able to see through my bugs made the experience of lying in wait so much more intense. I could see the people walking down the streets, I could watch through windows, I could peep through vents; I saw the entire two-block radius around me from a thousand angles, somehow both grimy and overly bright through the strange eyes of my insects.
  
  And it was from many different angles of bug vision that I saw Emily walking down the street towards the Pancakes Worldwide. She was wearing a jacket a little too big for her, a satchel hanging at her hip.
  
  I also caught the nondescript woman in sensible shoes following her at a discreet distance. It was the shoes that were the real tell- plainclothes officers always wore boots that could take or deliver a stomp.
  
  So the PRT were smart enough to try and exploit the friendship between Spitfire and Elpis. I wondered if they"d try to trace my phone next.
  
  I waited until Emily stepped in front of the alleyway I was lurking in, then whistled. She stopped and turned. "Wha-"
  
  "You"re being followed. Come with me."
  
  Luckily, Emily didn"t argue, just ducking in. I pulled her along, out the other end of the alleyway, draping my coat over her shoulders as the plainclothes officer hurried to catch up. We were around the corner and walking through the door of a greasy diner by the time the officer made it to the alleyway.
  
  "What"s going on?" Emily asked as I guided her towards the booth I"d claimed at the back of the diner.
  
  "Remember how I told you your bosses are mad at me?"
  
  "What, so they had someone following me?" Emily asked, outraged, dropping into her seat with a thump. I kept my eyes forward as I felt the plainclothes officer looking around to try and find where Emily had gone.
  
  Tactical tsked. "Ah, she"s not paranoid enough."
  
  "She will be after this," I said. "Yup. We should be okay here, but I"m going to slip out the back when this is over."
  
  "Seriously, what the hell did you do?" Emily asked just as someone came over to take our order.
  
  Once we"d ordered, and I was sure that the waiter was out of earshot, I leaned in. "Saturday night, the Travelers kidnapped Amy because they needed a cure for one of their members, one they"d kept hidden. I tracked them, but there was..." I hesitated, "A misunderstanding."
  
  "That"s one way to put it," Quarrel said snidely.
  
  "Anyway, we cleared that up, but then things went to hell. Their extra member started spitting out copies of everyone she touched."
  
  "Seriously?"
  
  "Seriously. We had to chase them and put down every single one of them- they were all crazy, all trying to do as much damage as possible." I swallowed. "So I had to... I couldn"t hold back."
  
  Emily blinked. "Oh shit. So you had to..." She trailed off.
  
  "Yeah. But that"s not the big thing." I took a deep breath. "I haven"t been entirely honest with you about what my powers are."
  
  Emily pointed a finger. "I knew you could do more than mechanical stuff. So," she asked conspiratorially, "What"s your real speciality?"
  
  "Excuse me?" Tock Tick asked, outraged.
  
  "That"s not it," I said. "The truth is, I have a bunch of other powers. I"m not just a Tinker. Brute, Mover, Striker, Blaster, Master..."
  
  "Master? What, can you control people?"
  
  "No, not people." I grimaced. "I can control insects."
  
  Emily pulled a face. "Ew. What, like that swarm that killed the Butcher?"
  
  I bit my lip.
  
  Emily"s face told a story. Her expression started at mild disgust and confusion, gradually slid into horrified comprehension, then abruptly twisted into anger as she sat back in her seat, pushing herself away from the table. From me.
  
  "That"s a sick joke," she said, folding her arms.
  
  "I wish it was a joke."
  
  "No, there"s no way you"re the-"
  
  "Don"t say it out loud," I said hastily.
  
  "Look, just tell me the truth, alright?"
  
  "Emily, it is the truth. That"s how I know so much about capes; why I"m so experienced; it"s how I"m able to take a beating from Brutes and recover so fast. Remember how I freaked out when Glory Girl used her aura? That"s another effect. And Hookwolf- it wasn"t just tech that took him down."
  
  Emily glared at me. "This is crap."
  
  I set my hands on the table. "Emily. Look. Please."
  
  I waited until Emily grudgingly lowered her eyes to my hands, then slowly extended my nails into hooked claws. I watched as her eyes widened.
  
  "There it is," Needler said with a trace of sadness.
  
  I drew the claws back in, and slid my hands off the table. "Yeah."
  
  Emily swallowed and looked up at me. Opened her mouth, then closed it again.
  
  "The PRT"s agreed to keep the secret, but there"s no way they"re going to be happy with having this," I waved a hand to indicate myself, "In their backyard. I thought you should hear it from me before everything comes to a head."
  
  Emily found her voice at last. "All this time?" she asked faintly.
  
  "The swarm was me inheriting."
  
  "So... the whole time we were working together?"
  
  I winced at the accusation in her voice. "Would it help if I said they thought you were cool?"
  
  "I mean, it"s true, but I don"t think it"s going to help," Firecracker pointed out.
  
  "No it fucking wouldn"t," Emily snapped. "You just- this whole time! Why didn"t you say anything?!" She was on the verge of shouting now- I was about to shush her when I realised that would probably just make things worse.
  
  "I didn"t say anything because," I hesitated, then took the plunge, "Because I was afraid."
  
  "Really?" Emily said sarcastically. "You punched Lung in the dick, and you were afraid? That"s your excuse?"
  
  "I mean, when you say it like that, it does sound pretty bad," Stoneknapper conceded.
  
  "I"m basically made for fighting. I"ve got the powers, I"ve got the memories, I"ve got them," I tapped my temple, "Shouting advice at me. But I don"t have a lot of experience with being open with other people."
  
  I broke off as I spotted the waiter coming over with our food- pancakes, plus a milkshake for me and a glass of water for Emily. I waited for him to set them down and leave before I continued.
  
  "You were basically the first friend I made since I ended up like this. I didn"t want to lose that. I"m sorry I wasn"t honest- I just wanted to try and pretend a little longer."
  
  "Pretend what?" Emily asked, sounding curious despite herself.
  
  I shrugged. "That I was normal? That I was alone in my own head? That I wasn"t some freak of nature? Seriously, you know the PRT"s actually got a whole case file on me? That"s how weird I am."
  
  Emily slowly unfolded her arms. "So who else knows?"
  
  "At this point, there"s a bunch. Amy figured it out after we chased the Merchants- she saw some of the alterations to my body. Then the Undersiders found out when I took down Hookwolf. And the Protectorate and New Wave found out with the whole Travelers thing.
  
  "If it helps," I added, fiddling with my fork, "You"re the first person I"ve actually told this to, instead of finding out in the middle of whatever shitstorm dropped on me."
  
  Emily thought for a moment. "That does help. A little," she said softly.
  
  I picked up my fork. "Is there anything else you want to know?"
  
  Emily hesitated. "When you took me in... Was that you, or was that them?"
  
  "Me," I said without hesitation. "They thought it"d be cool to have a fire-breathing partner, but they can only make suggestions, not demands. I wanted to help, and I tried." I winced. "Of course, us falling apart was me too."
  
  Emily quietly took a sip of water, then set it down on the tabletop. "What"s it like?"
  
  I paused with my knife halfway through my pancakes. "Can you be more specific?"
  
  "The- the powers? And having people in your head. What"s it like?"
  
  "Bit of a broad topic," Tock Tick said.
  
  Anchorage shrugged. "Gotta start with the big questions first."
  
  "The powers... you feel like you"re the most unstoppable thing around. Like there"s nothing and no-one you can"t break through, somehow. A power for every situation- you can feel the potential shapes in every object you touch, you can feel someone"s heartbeat when you touch them, you can smell people"s fear in the air. Strong enough that anything smaller than a car isn"t heavy; no pain, no need to sleep.
  
  "But you never get to be alone, for the rest of your life. There"s always people in your head, arguing and demanding and taunting you. They see and hear and feel everything you do; no privacy, ever. Not even in the bathroom."
  
  "That"s hardly pleasant for us, either," Vladimir pointed out.
  
  "And you know that when you die, you"ll end up in the head of whoever manages to kill you."
  
  Emily stared at me, aghast. "Holy fuck."
  
  I cut a slice off my pancakes. "Yup."
  
  "And you"re just... sitting here, eating pancakes?"
  
  "Might as well enjoy myself while I can."
  
  Emily glanced down at her own stack. Then, suddenly, she grabbed her knife and fork and started tearing into her pancakes like they"d insulted her. "So what now? I go back and pretend my friend"s not," she waved a fork in my direction, "And what do you do?"
  
  "The PRT"s probably figuring out counters for me, or whoever comes after me." Which reminded me- maybe I should pass them a copy of my power notes. More to screw over whoever eventually managed to get the better of me, than to help them capture me. Of course, anything that could deal with my successor could certainly deal with me.
  
  Hard to decide there- would the heroes decide to take me off the board now, or wait until I was gone and couldn"t do any more work on their side? I"d like to think they"d be pragmatic enough to let me keep working, but the Butcher legacy loomed large.
  
  "For now, the Undersiders are going to gear up and use whatever time we have left. I figure we can shake things up, throw the gangs off their stride and make a space for the Protectorate and New Wave to push in."
  
  Emily finished carving her pancakes into rough little chunks. "Anything I can do?"
  
  "For now, take care of yourself. And if the PRT does start asking questions, I"d appreciate if you don"t tell them anything huge."
  
  "Duh. But I meant, like, passing you information or something."
  
  "Ooh, a mole of our own," Dirty Rotter enthused.
  
  "Absolutely not," I said. "You"d only be putting yourself at risk. They"d figure you out, and you"d be associated with me and the others for the rest of your life."
  
  "You could ask her about Amy," Nemean said.
  
  I froze with a mouthful of half-chewed pancake.
  
  "Taylor?" Emily asked uncertainly.
  
  "Go on," Needler said gently. "You know you want to."
  
  I swallowed heavily and cleared my throat. "There is one thing you could do. Amy... she got caught up in all the shit. Last I saw, she wasn"t doing well. So can you just... be there for her?"
  
  Emily nodded. "Yeah. I can do that. Do you want me to pass anything on to her? Tell her you said hi?"
  
  I shook my head. "No. I don"t think she needs to hear from me right now."
  
  She"d been hurt because of me. I saw no need to add to that.
  
  "She"s alive because of you," Bearskin pointed out.
  
  I gave him a shove and a scowl.
  
  Emily watched me with a weird look on her face. "Was that one of them?" she asked eventually.
  
  I blinked. "Yeah."
  
  "So they"re always talking?"
  
  "Well, not always. And I can shut them out for a while, which helps. But yeah, there"s usually a conversation or two."
  
  Emily stabbed a bit of pancake. "So... When we met... What were they saying?"
  
  "Mostly they thought the fire was badass. And that they related. Firecracker was homeless for a while, Nemean started out on the streets- they know what it"s like."
  
  "Oh."
  
  We ate in silence for a while. I finished my pancakes before Emily and rolled back my sleeve to check my watch.
  
  "I should probably get going," I said reluctantly. "If you want to talk more, just give me a call and I"ll come."
  
  Emily paused with a forkful of pancakes. A few drops of syrup pattered onto her plate. "I"ll get back to you," she said noncommittally.
  
  I pulled out some bills and stuck them under the salt shaker. "Thanks for listening," I said awkwardly.
  
  Emily nodded. "Sure."
  
  I slipped away to the back, to the fire door that I"d specifically picked as a reason to have the conversation here. Emily"s tail was still wandering around, nonchalantly glancing into windows to try and locate her charge, which let me slip out unseen and jog along to where I"d stashed my bicycle.
  
  It was as I was unchaining it from a lamppost that I felt a stirring, and then heard Flinch say, "Sh-sh-she"s a good kid."
  
  I paused. Flinch hadn"t said anything since I"d pushed him down while I was trying to rescue Amy- I"d started to fear I might have undone all the progress he"d made.
  
  It was a major relief to hear his voice again. He was still the Butcher that I liked the most, the one who"d never screamed at me or made demands for violence and vice. I hadn"t realised how much I valued his input until I went without it for over a day.
  
  "Yeah," I said, swinging a leg over the saddle. "She is."
  
  I put my feet on the pedals and headed back to Arcadia.
  
  
  
  Arcadia High School
  
  The rumour mill ground ever onwards. Amy"s kidnapping was in the news, New Wave and the PRT had barely commented at all, and none of New Waves kids had come in today.
  
  In their absence, people speculated in the hallways, guessed in the cafeteria, swapped notes in class; and a couple tried to talk to me.
  
  I was in no mood- I thought I felt better after talking to Spitfire, but hearing people talk about Amy again had me back to being grumpy at best. I felt like I had months ago, when I"d started at Arcadia- like an exposed nerve, snapping at every touch. I had to walk away from one guy who couldn"t take the hint before I punched him.
  
  I even caught Madison giving me a speculative look from across the hallway. I bared my teeth at her and she quickly scurried away.
  
  It was a relief to make it out of fourth period Math and head for the cafeteria. I could at least count on my friends to show some sensitivity about everything.
  
  Everyone looked up as I slumped down at our usual table, next to Tarquin. Since he already knew everything, I was using him as a bit of a buffer.
  
  "So...." Callum said awkwardly, scratching the back of his head, "I heard about the weekend. Do you want to talk about it?"
  
  "No," I said flatly, stabbing a fork into my lasagna.
  
  "Cool, cool. That"s fine."
  
  Stacey reached over and patted my free hand. "I"m sure Amy"ll be okay," she said comfortingly.
  
  I wanted to snap at her, to say that Amy had got her arm broken by a psychotic clone of her sister, that I"d killed right in front of her, and that she"d had an emotional breakdown right in front of my eyes.
  
  But in the face of Stacy"s earnest expression, my anger dwindled away. "Thanks," I muttered, shoving a forkful of lasagna in my mouth.
  
  "Come now," Muramasa chided. "If you are so resigned to fleeing in the future, you should make time with your friends while you still can."
  
  "He"s got a point," Firecracker agreed.
  
  I conceded the point, trying to think of a new subject as I chewed.
  
  "At least we"re down a bunch of villains," Frankie said. "Nobody"s going to miss Uber and Leet. I still remember that Grand Theft Auto video they did." She pulled a face.
  
  "Yeah, beating up hookers is never a good look," Stoneknapper said.
  
  "Of all the things in the games they could have copied, they chose the most tasteless. Why not a car repainting station with a Stranger effect?" Tock Tick suggested.
  
  "Oh, right, like how you can get the cops off your back in the games," Quarrel said.
  
  "Yeah, and that Mario video," Callum added with a grimace.
  
  "What, where they broke into a mint for coins?" Tarquin asked. He was being quieter than usual as well too.
  
  "Uh, no. They did this other one where they went to a zoo and started jumping on turtles." Callum winced. "Ez cried just hearing about it."
  
  "Turtle stew," Stoneknapper joked, although his heart wasn"t in it.
  
  "You know what"s really wild?" Stacey said. "I saw somewhere that the Undersiders have had their charges dropped. Or suspended, or something. Point is, they"re proper heroes now."
  
  "That"s wild," I managed.
  
  "Makes you wonder what the hell happened," Frankie said. "I mean, you never hear about villains turning hero."
  
  I managed to finish my lasagna, but I barely tasted it.
  
  
  
  Late Thursday 14th April, Undersiders Lair, The Docks
  
  "They were really sweet," Isabella enthused. "This one little girl had a plush ducky, and she kept begging me to make him fly around the room."
  
  "That"s sweet," I said sincerely, not looking up from my workbench. One fringe benefit of my new bug senses was that I could now hold a conversation without having to look up from my work.
  
  "I had this idea of drawing stuff with my shadows," Brian said. "I"m still getting used to it, but the kids seemed to like it."
  
  "Yeah, except for that one kid who thought your shadow dog was a giraffe," Isabella said teasingly. I snorted in amusement, eyes still on my latest project, tightening the screws on one of the blades.
  
  The Protectorate were moving- Lisa had reported they"d tightened up their net security and changed all the passwords. And on their usual patrols, she"d examined pictures and footage, deduced that they moved like they"d come off a workout. Like they were training more than usual.
  
  New Wave had turned reclusive- no solo patrols, only going out in pairs or more. There were signs of training exercises in them too- the few times I"d glimpsed Victoria or Eric at Arcadia, they"d both looked worn.
  
  We weren"t standing still either. We were legitimate heroes now, so our public reputation could be improved. I"d tasked the Undersiders with visiting kids at the hospital, and now they were giving feedback.
  
  "Rachel, did any of the kids want to meet your dogs?"
  
  Rachel shrugged. "A couple. Lisa got them to listen first. Didn"t want them being stupid."
  
  "Kids are always kind of stupid," I pointed out. "As long as they petted the dogs right and nobody got bitten, I"d say that"s a win."
  
  "Mm. One of them said she missed her dog back home. She knew how to do it- she put her hand out right, let Judas come to her."
  
  "There you go," I said as I started slotting the segments together and closing up the outer casing.
  
  "We should not forget that a fighting dog is different from a lapdog," Muramasa cautioned. "If one of her dogs bites a sickly child, we will never hear the end of it."
  
  I grimaced as I stood up from the workbench. "Muramasa says your dogs are different from other dogs. Other people focus on training their pets not to bite."
  
  "My dogs are trained," Rachel said.
  
  "Yeah. But would you let them get adopted by a regular family?"
  
  Rachel paused, then shook her head. "No."
  
  "Something to keep in mind." I picked up the latest project, which looked like a circle broken into four curved sections, about the size of a dinner plate when unfolded. A couple of the Butchers called it a shuriken, although sheer size made it more like a chakram.
  
  I folded the blades in with a finger, clicking them into place, so that the weapon was shaped like a rounded hourglass, or a really lethal bowtie. A flick of the wrist separated the blades again. I held the tip of one blade between finger and thumb, then flicked it across the room.
  
  The shuriken whirred through the air, guided by Quarrel"s aiming power to curve in a wide arc, around and back to me. The rest of the team stepped hastily aside as it approached.
  
  I caught it between both palms and nodded. "Good balance. This"ll do."
  
  Footsteps from above as Lisa came downstairs to the workshop floor, laptop in hand. Tarquin trailed behind her, rubbing at his eyes, freshly woken from his nap. He took every opportunity to get some shuteye now, since he was the only one balancing school, heroics and a need to sleep.
  
  "Boss, it"s the ABB."
  
  "Ten bucks to me," Anchorage crowed to Dirty Rotter.
  
  "Yeah, yeah..."
  
  "What"d they do?"
  
  Lisa turned the laptop around to reveal a social media site, freshly updated. The picture was of half a car, the front end reduced to a pile of white powder.
  
  "Turned someone"s car into salt, but that"s not the worst part. The guy posting is an Empire sympathiser."
  
  "Which means the Empire"s going to respond," I said grimly, tugging on Tactical"s power for strategy. "Any word on their recruitment efforts?"
  
  Lisa shook her head. "They"re keeping it close to the chest. They"ve definitely confirmed some new muscle from one of their associate organisations, but I can"t be sure who yet."
  
  "Keep on it. Gear up," I said to the rest of the team. "We"re going to head this off before it gets out of control."
  
  The gangs had been quiet since Noelle. They had no way of knowing what had actually happened, with the information sealed at the highest level, but people knew that bodies had been recovered, that two Protectorate heroes had been benched, and that an entire building had been condemned. That was enough for the Empire and ABB to hesitate.
  
  Not enough to stop them entirely- We"d noticed the Empire"s chatter talking about getting new blood, and we"d spotted ABB members moving around their territory.
  
  For a moment, I wished we were still on decent terms with the PRT- we could have shared information and come up with a united response.
  
  "We"ll just have to work with what we"ve got," Tactical said. "We"re used to working without allies in any case."
  
  Unfortunately, he was right.
  
  "Y-You should call the PRT," Flinch said.
  
  "What?" Tactical demanded.
  
  "So we d-don"t surprise them."
  
  Nemean nodded. "We don"t want them to do something stupid."
  
  I considered it. The PRT wouldn"t be happy to hear from me, but they"d be even less happy if I just turned up unannounced. And I didn"t want to risk someone panicking and firing on us because they thought we were trying to ambush them.
  
  I picked up my phone and fired off a quick text to Miss Militia- Heading out to help with ABB situation. Will coordinate if required.
  
  With that done, it only took a few minutes for me to shrug into my undersuit and put my armour on. I checked all the joints were moving freely, slotted my weapons into place, and cracked my knuckles.
  
  The Undersiders were all suited up in good time as well. Ironclad hefted his hammer and nodded to me as Bitch started growing her dogs to riding size.
  
  "Let"s go already," Butcher growled. "They"re playing our song!"
  
  "Undersiders, move out!"
  
  Chapter End Notes
  
  Just a quick heads up to people, I'll be dipping my toes into NSFW works at some point. It's up to you if you're into that. This fic will remain at its current rating, no hanky-panky.
  
  10.3
  Late Thursday 14th April, The Docks
  
  Judging from the shocked face of the truck driver we passed, the Undersiders made a fearsome sight- three massive dogs with riders and a suit of armour zipping along on wheels.
  
  I was up front, with Tattletale clinging behind me. Grue and Whirlygig were on the second dog, and Cerberus was third by herself. Ironclad"s steely mass made an excellent rearguard.
  
  I felt like the eye of the storm, images and sounds from my insects flickering through my mind. I still wasn"t perfect at parsing them all, especially when I was moving so quickly, but it was enough to steer the team along.
  
  When we came to the salt bomb, someone had beaten us to it. Battery was helping some PRT troopers cordon the area off with tape. She glanced up at the sound of us, and it didn"t take bloodsight for me to see her face turn pale.
  
  "I suppose we should have expected that," Vladimir admitted as we came to a stop and dismounted.
  
  Still, Battery walked towards us with a firm stride. "Undersiders," she said lightly. "I heard you were responding."
  
  "That"s right," I said, keeping my hands away from my weapons. "This is going to rile up the Empire- we were hoping to get out in front of it."
  
  Battery nodded. "Alright. The other heroes are coming soon- we"ll try to scatter along the gap between Empire and ABB territory."
  
  I let Tactical"s strategy power unfurl over a mental map. "We can split into two teams. I"m thinking me, Tattletale and Cerberus for one team, and Grue, Whirlygig and Ironclad for the second. One heavy hitter each, plus support and mobility. We"ll run back and forth along the border to intercept any attacks from either side. Does that sound good to you?"
  
  "Good plan," Battery said, obviously relieved that I was playing ball. "I"ll relay that to everyone else. We might need your help with disarming bombs, since you and Armsmaster are the only Tinkers."
  
  "Can"t you just send in some bomb disposal guys?" Whirlygig asked.
  
  Battery shook her head with a grimace. "If they were ordinary bombs. Bakuda"s bombs are too complicated or esoteric, and there"s no telling what effect they"ll have until they"ve already exploded."
  
  Tattletale cleared her throat. "Any word from New Wave?"
  
  "I hope not," Needler said.
  
  "We could use their power," Muramasa argued.
  
  Anchorage sneered. "We don"t need their attitude."
  
  Battery shook her head. "Not that I"ve heard."
  
  "Alright." I gestured to the Undersiders. "Grue, you take your team north, we"ll work south. When you hit the end, turn back. We"ll meet up back here to check in. Call if you need backup or anything."
  
  "Got it, boss."
  
  
  
  We came to our first bit of trouble within a few minutes. A tight knot of people were huddled near the light of a little shop, some of them smoking, some of them texting or talking on their phones. They all looked worried, in their faces and stances.
  
  When we drew close, they looked up. Most of them were Asian, but not all.
  
  "Everything alright here?" I asked, opening my helmet to look more approachable.
  
  A man at the back spoke up. "There"s bombs going off. Of course it"s not alright."
  
  "We"ve only heard of one so far, but we"re doing what we can to keep the peace."
  
  All that got me were sceptical looks. I held back a shrug and said, "It might be safer to get off the streets for now, just in case."
  
  I moved my insects around as I said it, to fill in the gaps of my awareness, see if I"d missed anything.
  
  There was something weird in a trashcan across the street- there were a few flies and such in there, and they felt a hard shape between the plastic bag and the bottom of the steel can itself. A roach crawled over it to measure its dimensions- it felt like a cylinder, about three or four inches long...
  
  "Oh crap," Tock Tick sighed.
  
  I turned in the saddle towards Tattletale and made a fractional nod in the direction of the trashcan, bouncing my eyebrows.
  
  Tattletale"s eyes widened, and then she quickly slipped out from behind me. "Just a second boss," she said cheerily, taking a few steps towards the trashcan.
  
  "What"s up Tattletale? Have you figured something out?" I asked, trying to sound genuinely curious. I directed some roaches to gnaw through the trash bag so I could examine the object more directly.
  
  "You gonna thank the Academy next?" Quarrel snarked. "You suck at acting."
  
  Tattletale tapped her chin. "Hmmmm," she droned. "I think my mighty Thinker power has detected something."
  
  "...I take it back; she sucks at acting."
  
  The roaches had made a hole big enough to slip through now- and although the object was about the size and shape of a drinks can, it was made of thicker metal, with weld lines along the edges, and a coil of wire sticking out of one end next to an LED. Definitely a Bakuda bomb.
  
  I bounced my eyebrows at Tattletale, who nodded slightly, then pointed a finger at the trashcan. "There"s a bomb hidden inside that trash can," she announced. "Someone must have put it there so it can be remote detonated as a booby trap."
  
  "Bombs in bins," Dirty Rotter said with a wince. "Sounds like, er..." He trailed off with a glance at Tactical.
  
  "No, you can say it," Tactical said. "Feels like something out of the Troubles."
  
  I pulled my spear off my belt and snapped it out to its full length- about eight feet now that I"d upgraded it from Trainwreck snapping it in half. "Everybody get back," I said, turning to the crowd, who were now looking frightened. One young man was bent over his phone, frantically typing with a panicky look. "I"m going to try and remove the bomb so nobody gets hurt. Tattletale will call the PRT so they can safely dispose-"
  
  There was a sound like a whip cracking, and my danger sense flared right behind me. I felt the bugs on the bomb die in an instant of tremendous pressure, and a sensation like I was facing into a strong wind.
  
  I clenched my toes to activate the drill bits in my boots, attaching myself to the asphalt. "Grab onto something!" I yelled, grabbing Tattletale by the belt as the pull began to increase in intensity.
  
  Some of the people fled into the shop, while a couple grabbed hold of the bike racks outside and one woman wrapped her arms around the parking sign on the pavement.
  
  The pull was still getting stronger though- I could see some of the stuff on the shelves inside the shop sliding off towards the pull, and I could feel my insects getting dragged in. Stray bits of litter whipped through the air- a flowerpot tipped over and tumbled towards the effect, spiling soil and petals. One girl shrieked as her feet slipped out from under her, leaving her clinging to the bike rack with her fingers.
  
  Rachel was bent double over Brutus"s saddle, hanging on grimly. The dogs were digging their claws into the ground, but even with their mass and strength it was clearly taking effort for them to stay in place. Tattletale was latched onto my arm like I was gripping her belt, her legs now streaming out parallel to the ground.
  
  All of a sudden, the girl on the bike rack lost her grip. She fell back with a shriek, tumbling towards the effect, clawing at the ground desperately.
  
  I swung the spear out, blunt end towards her. It hit her in the stomach, and she managed to get a grip, shrieking again as she rolled over until she was stretched out across the road, hands wrapped around the spear. I could feel the shaft starting to bend from her weight on the end, almost to a breaking point-
  
  All of a sudden the effect cut out, and I almost fell forward from the sudden lack of resistance. Everyone who"d been hanging on flopped to the ground. The girl I"d caught with the spear let go and curled into a ball, sobbing.
  
  Clouds of dust were drifting towards the point the bomb had gone off. I could even see that a couple of cars parked along the street had been dragged along, leaving rubber marks on the road surface.
  
  And in the centre of the area was a perfectly round sphere, about the size of a softball and dark grey-brown in colour
  
  "What the fuck was that?" someone demanded, sitting up.
  
  I let go of Tattletale and flexed my fingers to work out the stiffness. "Some kind of gravity effect. Like a miniature black hole. Everything was crushed into that sphere. I don"t think anyone was caught in it at least." I flexed my toes again to retract my drill bits, and stepped towards the girl on the ground. "Are you okay?"
  
  She rolled over onto her back, clutching her hands to her chest. She had tears running across her face. I could see that her top was marked with blood where she was gripping the fabric. I suddenly realised that she"d ripped the skin of her fingertips trying to grab onto something.
  
  "Damn," Bearskin said. "I guess that"s a no."
  
  Tattletale had a phone to her ear. "I"m calling the PRT now, but boss; That bomb didn"t go off all by itself."
  
  "Could have been a proximity sensor," I said, though I didn"t really believe it. I cast an eye over the civilians, looking for any sign of guilt.
  
  "No, there"s been people passing by all day, someone would have set it off. That was remote. So either Bakuda decided to randomly set off a bomb in the exact place we were standing, or someone told her where we are." Tattetale paused, then turned away to talk to whoever was on the other end of her call.
  
  Just as I was about to step forward and start asking some pointed questions, a phone rang. It was the young man who I"d seen typing right before the bomb went off. He fumbled with his phone for a second before tapping the screen and putting it to his ear.
  
  A second later his face drained off all colour, and he held the phone out to me with a shaking hand. "It"s for you," he whispered. Tattletale"s head snapped around, ignoring her PRT call.
  
  I took the phone from him and looked at the screen. It was a video call, showing a figure in a black metal mask with a gas filter and red lenses. Under a red jacket, there was a braided cord of black, yellow and green wires slung over one shoulder, and bandoliers of grenades criss-crossed the torso, with more slung around the hips.
  
  "Bakuda," I said.
  
  "Elpis," said the Tinker. Her voice through the mask was a metallic, monotone hiss of menace. "So glad to finally chat, just the two of us. I"ve been following your work- nice stuff so far."
  
  "I"d say I"m flattered, but you did just try to kill me with a black hole bomb."
  
  "Oh, is that what that was?" She began to pace around, the camera following her as she walked. I wondered if she had a minion holding the phone for her or if she had built some gadget to move it for her. "Honestly, I just handed out the bombs at random. From one Tinker to another though, were you impressed?"
  
  "More like horrified."
  
  Bakuda made a noise like she was choking. It took me a second to realise that she was laughing. "Well, it got a reaction from you, even if it didn"t kill you. I"ll call that a win."
  
  Bakuda stuck her hands in the pockets of her jacket as she continued to circle. I tried to focus on the background, to see if I could get some clues to her location, but all I could make out was a windowless room stuffed with tools and materials.
  
  "See, Lung"s taught me a lot of things, but the lesson I really took to? Is that fear is power. Career like ours, people won"t respect you, won"t follow and obey you, unless they fear you. Enough fear and they stop whining and worrying about their own interests, and focus solely on making you happy. Or at least, not unhappy."
  
  The Butchers didn"t say anything, but I could feel their silent agreement and fascination as Bakuda"s voice continued to drone out of the speakers. Flinch"s revulsion was almost palpable. Everyone around was stock still, hanging on her every word.
  
  "It"s part of why Lung went out of his way to recruit me. He phrased it so elegantly; true fear is a blend of certainty and the unpredictable. My enemies know, now, that if they cross me, I can kill each and every one of them. As for the unpredictable part- well, they don"t know just what manner of fucked up fate I"m going to inflict upon them. Burn them to ash, dissolve them into a puddle of goo, mutate them into some freaky mutant that can"t even beg for death, you name it. That"s why I like to mix up my arsenal, keep things fresh."
  
  There was a boom from off in the distance. Everyone flinched- some screamed. It was outside my range at least, to the north.
  
  "The other part is that you have no idea where my bombs are," Bakuda said, suddenly leaning into the camera until the screen was filled with those blank red lenses. "And you don"t know when I"ll set them off, or what they"ll do. Every step you take from here on out, you should be pissing in your steely boots, Elpis. Because it might just be your last."
  
  The call ended suddenly, and I was left staring at a blank screen.
  
  "God. Damn," Butcher said breathlessly. "We should have recruited her ourselves!"
  
  I rammed him into the dark in disgust and tossed the phone back to the young man, who barely caught it. "So. You called Bakuda. Tell me what you know."
  
  Everyone else shuffled away from the young man as he gave the impression of a deer in the headlights. "I, uh, I can"t..."
  
  I was already out of patience. "Hey, Cerberus," I called. "Your dogs can bite on command, right?"
  
  Cerberus looked down from her perch atop Brutus. "Yeah."
  
  "Good." I turned back to the man, who"d found new shades of pale. "You can talk to me, or you talk to her. Your choice."
  
  "I never met her, I swear," he gabbled desperately. "They just gave me the bomb and told me to hide it somewhere on the street, they said they"d forgive my debts. I swear I didn"t know it was gonna do that."
  
  "It"s a bomb, it"s not like it was going to be anything good," I snapped. "If you don"t have anything else, you better start using your right to remain silent."
  
  "PRT"s been alerted," Tattletale broke in. "They said if there"s no other bombs and no injuries, we should keep moving. They"ll send someone to pick up whatever the hell that is," she gestured to the ball, "And the cops will take dumbass here." She gestured to the young man with the same dismissive air.
  
  
  
  We left Dumbass secured to one of the bike racks with zip ties and a crowd of very angry bystanders making sure he wouldn"t try to break loose, and continued south. When we reached the edge of the border, we stopped to check our phones.
  
  Grue reported that they"d come across the remains of a bomb site that had somehow magnetised all the metal in its radius to repel other metal. The real damage had been done when the car caught in the blast had ripped itself apart, pieces flying in all directions. Several people had been hurt, and they"d stopped to give aid, while Ironclad had managed to absorb the pieces of metal into his armour and force the effect to wear off faster than the rest of the shrapnel. I guessed that his magnetism/metallokinesis overrode the magnetism of the bomb.
  
  "Smart move," Stoneknapper praised. "Plus it"s always good to take trophies."
  
  More explosions were reported by the PRT and the heroes. Most of them came from concealed bombs, and after our report they were questioning witnesses to see if any of them had sent off any messages beforehand.
  
  It was hard to tell, in some cases. One bomb had gone off in a cooking class, creating a bubble around several people and filling it with microwave radiation, literally cooking them to death. Another bomb had created a pool of lava at an intersection. Three cars had been reduced to slag, with two confirmed deaths and one man who probably wouldn"t make it to morning.
  
  There were also sightings of ABB goons tossing some smaller bombs around, either to drive off supposed Empire scouts or just to throw their weight around.
  
  The PRT were also updating their profile of Bakuda based on what Tattletale had relayed. They described her as a megalomaniacal narcissist with delusions of grandeur, with a massive yet fragile ego, with little to no empathy and a high capacity for violence.
  
  "Just the sort of person you don"t want tossing bombs around," Flinch groaned.
  
  On the other side of things, the Empire were definitely moving. There"d been reports of their capes spotted moving towards ABB territory. Bakuda had thrown down the gauntlet, and they"d picked it up.
  
  "Shame we can"t just toss all of them into a field somewhere and let them kill each other in peace," Nemean said.
  
  "I think you and I have a very different definition of "in peace"," I responded, tucking my phone back into the compartment on my belt.
  
  Heading back up, we saw some of the aftermath. We had to stop and help a few times- the PRT and police were doing their best, but the bombs were so scattered that they were stretched to the maximum, and often we"d relive them just so they could rush off to another situation. Clearing debris, moving an unexploded bomb someone had stumbled upon, freeing a bunch of people who"d been trapped by some sort of glue bomb...
  
  And lots of injuries. Some of them were minor, small burns or ruptured eardrums. Some of them were more serious- shrapnel wounds or broken bones.
  
  And there were some that were just gruesome. One woman had lost most of her leg to a bomb that evaporated everything in its radius. I helped with the tourniquet and helped load her into the ambulance, but the paramedics didn"t seem optimistic.
  
  I felt utterly ghoulish absorbing some of the spilt blood, but Vladimir had insisted I might need to use his power in an emergency, and it wasn"t like I could scoop it back into her. We"d just have to hope she could make it on her own.
  
  Plus, there wouldn"t be a miracle from Panacea. Amy had been holed up in the PRT building without any trips to heal people, and the public was starting to worry.
  
  "Boss? I think I"ve got something."
  
  I shook my head, clearing away the dark thoughts like cobwebs in the corner. "Yeah, Tats?"
  
  "I"ve been checking the map of explosions," Tattletale said, holding up her phone. "If we remove the explosions from hand-thrown bombs, there"s a pattern." She turned the screen to me, showing a map of the Docks, spotted with little red dots.
  
  It took me a second to realise- every dot was at an intersection, thickest near the border of ABB territory and gradually trailing inward. Blocking off points of entry in a grid pattern...
  
  "It"s a minefield," I realised.
  
  "Bakuda"s not as unpredictable as she thinks," Tats said with a grin. "I already sent the map to the others, the PRT should get it in a minute."
  
  "Good work." I glanced around at the street we were on- other than the steaming patch of road where the bomb had gone off, and the blood puddle where the woman had lost her leg, there wasn"t much else for us. People were milling about, worried and scared, but we didn"t have time to hang around.
  
  A flicker, further out. I focused on my insects, moved bugs into groups to improve the clarity of their sight. There was a crowd gathering, shouting, with an Asian woman at the centre. She was being pushed back and forth as she tried to get out, trying to defend herself, but her voice was lost in the din.
  
  "Let"s ride," I called, swinging into Judas"s saddle and pulled Tattletale on after me.
  
  It only took a few frantic moments to get us to the crowd, but that was enough for it to get worse. People were lashing out at the woman now- as we pulled up, I saw someone slap her in the face. And behind her, a man with a shaved head was pulling out a baseball bat.
  
  I stood up in the saddle and raised an arm. The grappler shot into the bat with a crack, splintering the wood as it drilled in, before I yanked it straight out of his hands.
  
  "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!" I roared. I could feel my teeth lengthening- my nails were getting sharper too as I hopped off Judas and strode forward, cape flapping behind me.
  
  The crowd parted like the Red Sea as I yanked the bat off my grappler and snapped it in half, then crushed the pieces between my fingers. Splinters poured from my hands as I came to a stop in front of the woman, who"d collapsed to her knees, cradling her cheek and weeping.
  
  "Somebody explain," I snapped. When people hesitated, I shouted "NOW."
  
  "She"s working for the ABB," someone said. "She was sending messages in Chinese."
  
  "Do you have her phone?" Tattletale asked, coming up behind me. The crowd yelped as Cerberus and the dogs padded up as well, surprisingly quiet for their size.
  
  I knelt in front of the woman and offered her a hand. "It"s okay," I said. She took my hand with a sniffle and got to her feet with my help.
  
  Tattletale passed me the phone. I glanced at the messages on it briefly.
  
  "Okay, first, this is in Japanese. Secondly, it"s checking in with her sister. Third, even if she"s working for Bakuda, why are you guys crowding her instead of calling the cops?"
  
   I looked around the crowd- most of the angriest people in the middle were white. Looking closer, I could see the little signs- tattoos, jacket patches, patterns in the jewellery.
  
  "It"s a fucking lynch mob," Anchorage fumed.
  
  "Get lost, all of you," I snarled. I pulled out my air cannon and pointed it upwards.
  
  The crowd backed away a few steps. Some at the back turned and hurried away.
  
  Behind me, Tattletale pulled out her crossbow, pointing it at the ground. Cerberus drew her spear, triggering the taser with a menacing crackle of energy. The dogs growled, a deep bass rumble that I felt in my chest more than heard.
  
  Suddenly, everyone turned and ran, some pushing each other out of the way in their haste. The guy who"d had the bat stopped and pointed a finger at me. "You"re gonna get yours, bitch!"
  
  I levelled the air cannon at him. He immediately turned and sprinted away.
  
  "Alright," I said. "That"s enough of that shit. Do you need help getting somewhere safe? Have you got somewhere to stay?"
  
  The woman sniffled and rubbed her cheek. "My sister"s a few blocks away, I was going to stay with her, get away from all the mess."
  
  "Smart move," Tattletale said.
  
  
  
  We"d barely dropped her off before we got a call. Gargoyle had just found a bomb, and it was beeping. Armsmaster was occupied with another situation.
  
  "Man, they must be really desperate if they"re asking for help," Firecracker said.
  
  Sure enough, when we arrived at the tiny little parking lot, Gargoyle was all on his own, wringing his hands and hopping from foot to foot, less nervous and more on the verge of total panic.
  
  He didn"t look very relieved to see us either, if the way he flinched back was any indication.
  
  "Gargoyle," I said, sliding off Judas and slowly walking over, keeping my hands in view. "What"s the situation?"
  
  Gargoyle swallowed and pointed. "There"s a bomb under that car," he said, pointing. "Someone called it in, I came to check it out, and then it started beeping. It speeds up if I get too far away. I don"t know if it"s a countdown or anything, but..."
  
  "Okay, I get it." I sighed and pulled my belt off, then shrugged my shoulders to retract my cape. "I"ll take a look."
  
  I wasn"t confident that I could disarm it. I only had a partial Tinker power, and I was up against someone who specialised in bombs and appeared to have it out for me specifically.
  
  Still, I carefully approached the car, pulling out some tools and lowering myself to the ground. The bomb was the same shape as the others I"d seen, but someone had duct-taped it to the underside of the car.
  
  "God, I was supposed to have backup for this," Gargoyle fretted. "I had some troopers riding with me, but they had to split off. And I just finished up with another booby trap, and then I walk right into this!"
  
  "At least people can"t see us crawling around," Vladimir grumbled as I rolled onto my back and shimmied my way under the car. The parking lot was tucked away, surrounded by the backs of buildings, and there were no windows around or people looking. Hopefully that would minimise the damage if anything went wrong.
  
  The bomb was beeping about once every second. "Gargoyle," I called. "Try standing closer."
  
  Gargoyle shuffled closer. As he did, the beeping slowed down. He stopped about a foot away from my boots.
  
  "Okay, I"m going to try removing it. Hang tight."
  
  I carefully brought a small blade up to the tape and started cutting through it, slowly and cleanly, while I held the bomb in place with my other hand. The tape parted like water, thanks to Muramasa"s sharpening.
  
  Once I"d got both sides of the tape cut, I slowly began to lower the bomb to my chest so I could start moving out.
  
  The bomb made an electronic squawking noise, and danger sense flared.
  
  "Fuck!" Needler shouted.
  
  "Run!" I bellowed. I kicked Gargoyle in the chest, sending him flying back, and then grabbed Firecracker"s power.
  
  I was upright at the edge of the parking lot in an instant, the flames around me flickering out. I"d scorched the brickwork a little and set fire to some garbage.
  
  Gargoyle had crashed into the wall, and was groaning as he tried to haul himself up. "What the hell-"
  
  There was no sound, and no warning. A pillar of light suddenly appeared before us like a lightning bolt. I was blind in an instant as pure white light scorched my retinas. I heard the others shriek in pain, and the panicked howls of the dogs.
  
  Then, a second later, the light cut out. I blinked hard and fast, feeling my eyes start to heal up, and tried to focus past the purple spots in my vision.
  
  The car was gone- or at least most of it was gone. There was a hole cut right through it, a circle five feet wide. When I sent some insects to investigate, they saw the hole extended all the way through the car"s chassis and down several feet into the ground.
  
  "Fuck," Tattletale swore, rubbing her eyes. "What the hell was that?"
  
  "Some kind of vertical laser bomb," I said. "I hope that car was insured."
  
  "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Cerberus chanted. "I can"t see anything!" The dogs were turning their heads this way and that, barking loudly. "Heel! Quiet!" Cerberus shouted, and they subsided, though still unsettled.
  
  "Just keep blinking a lot- you should start to get better in a minute or two."
  
  "What, suddenly you"re an optician?" said Gargoyle, drifting to his feet. He seemed unaffected, possibly because his eyes were currently made of stone.
  
  "Something, something, stony look," Dirty Rotter quipped.
  
  "No, but I"ve got a lot of experience with this sort of thing. Flashbangs and stuff like that."
  
  Gargoyle paused, then nodded slowly. "Right."
  
  "We should call that in," I said. "Probably half the city saw that shit. You guys take a breather, let me know when your sight comes back."
  
  "Uh, can you help me find a wall or something?" Tattletale asked, waving her arms in front of her.
  
  I guided her to rest against the same wall Gargoyle had crashed into, and helped Cerberus get her dogs to lie down and be calm. The PRT console took the message stoically and said they"d note it down, but Grue had a problem when I called him.
  
  "Angelica"s shrunk down to almost nothing," he explained. "She"s too small to ride on, and I don"t think it"d be a good idea for Ironclad to carry us."
  
  "Probably not," I admitted. "Keep up the patrol, but pull back from the border a little in case there"s trouble. We"ll meet up with you as soon as we can and check in."
  
  "Got it."
  
  Gargoyle got called away shortly after, since his eyesight was fine. He certainly didn"t look conflicted to leap away from me at top speed.
  
  Which left me, Tattletale, and Cerberus to wait as their eyesight slowly recovered. Brutus and Judas were slowly shrinking- Cerberus had said that it took effort to make them grow, or keep them big, so she was saving her strength.
  
  I had little to do but keep an eye on our surroundings with my insects and chat with the Butchers. People were poking their heads out of their windows after the bomb, and I caught someone sneaking a peek at us around the corner for a second, but otherwise we were all alone.
  
  "Well, I can count my fingers just fine," Tattletale announced after a while. "How about you?"
  
  "Getting better," Rachel said. She"d taken her helmet off a while ago. "My eyes still feel dry though."
  
  "That"s normal," I said distractedly. I felt like there was something I was missing.
  
  "We didn"t forget anything at the lair, did we?" Tock Tick asked.
  
  "No, I am certain we did not," Muramasa answered. "We brought all the weapons, the tools..."
  
  I"d filled the PRT and the Protectorate in on everything, New Wave wasn"t coming- but something was itching at my mind, something important about this situation.
  
  Abruptly, I felt something step on a bug, a few yards inside my range. I hadn"t sensed them approach.
  
  I was on guard immediately, even though it was over a block away. I started moving bugs to them to get visual.
  
  I was just wondering if New Wave had decided to show up after all when another person appeared closer to me, with enough bugs around that I could see them properly. The first figure crumbled into ash and dust as a third appeared, only a few rooftops away.
  
  It was a man, dressed in a black bodysuit, with belts and bandoliers stuffed full of knives and grenades. He wore a Japanese-style demon mask, a leering thing, fanged mouth grinning ear to ear; crimson red with two green stripes running down either side.
  
  Oni Lee- Lung"s loyal lieutenant and assassin, a teleporter; likely armed with half a dozen knives and Bakuda"s grenades; and most crucially, heading our way.
  
  I could have kicked myself. That laser bomb was so obvious we might as well have sent up a flare with our location- and then we"d hung around waiting for the girls" eyesight to come back instead of moving to safety.
  
  "We"ll call you an idiot later," Quarrel said. "First thing"s first, battle up!"
  
  "Oni Lee incoming!" I barked, yanking my cape off and switching it to shield mode, before tossing it to Tattletale. "Weapons out; Rachel, get your helmet on!" I snapped my helmet shut for good measure.
  
  We had a bad match-up for this- Grue could have blinded Oni Lee in an instant and left him pinned; Whirlygig"s telekinetic tornado would have given her attack and defence to prevent him from getting close; and Ironclad was too massive and too armoured for a knife to do anything.
  
  Instead I had Tattletale and Cerberus, neither of them close-ranged fighters, and both barely able to see.
  
  I drew my air cannon with one hand, setting it to pepper rounds. With the other, I pulled out the shuriken I"d built. This would be one hell of a field test.
  
  I tossed the shuriken in the air, drew my spear and extended it, and stabbed the tip right through the shuriken as it fell. The shuriken locked onto the spear, and the blades clicked together to form a double-headed battleaxe.
  
  "Hell yeah," Bearskin said as Tattletale fumbled with the shield. Cerberus grabbed it off her impatiently, shuffling in front of her and levelling her spear. The dogs perked up with a whistle, steadily swelling to full size again. The way they cast their heads around, I figured Cerberus"s power had helped their eyes heal faster.
  
  Danger sense flared right behind me- I kicked backward and felt my foot connect with a stomach, heard a gurgle of pain as Oni Lee fell to the ground. I moved insects around to concentrate them in a ring around us, giving me 360 awareness.
  
  Another Oni Lee appeared to my right, knives in either hand. I flexed my arm and popped the elbow blade out to catch one knife while I deflected the other with the cannon"s barrel.
  
  A third Oni Lee popped up on my left even as I threw the second off, ducking low to slice at my gut. I drove him back with a swing of my axe that almost shaved his scalp.
  
  If Oni Lee had just been a teleporter, I probably could have finished this fight in a few seconds. Unfortunately, his power had an extra trick- when he teleported, he left behind a duplicate of himself that could act autonomously for a few seconds, before crumbling into dust; which meant that I couldn"t know for sure I"d downed the real deal unless I waited a few seconds.
  
  More duplicates popped up in my blind spots- I flipped the air cannon around to punch one with the stock, and split the other one from shoulder to hip. They both crumbled into ash before they hit the ground, replaced by fresh clones.
  
  I tensed my arms and legs- blades extended from my elbows, my knees, and my toes. The next Oni Lee to attack me got disembowelled by a knee to the gut, an elbow to the head downed the next, and a third let out a shriek as I kicked him in the groin. Ash whirled around me as I rained punishing blows down on the clones- I held back on whichever I thought was the original, but the rest were fair game.
  
  The next clones all appeared far away, standing on the roofs of the surrounding buildings.
  
  "Alright, you"ve scared them," Nemean praised me. "Now you"ve just got to take him out-"
  
  One of the Lees pulled a grenade off his bandolier, yanked the pin, and tossed it down.
  
  I aimed the cannon and managed to clip it with a shot, sending it spinning off course to land next to the wrecked car. The explosion ripped past me with the most intense cold I"d ever felt.
  
  Ice was spread across the lot like a blanket, freezing the clouds of ash and dust into abstract swirls and spirals, engulfing the car"s remains entirely and spreading up the walls. About half of my insects were dead from the cold, and my armour was splashed with icicles so tiny and fine they looked like eyelashes.
  
  "Jesus Christ that"s cold," Tattletale yelled. I glanced back and saw she and Cerberus had weathered most of the effect behind the shield- ice sloughed off Cerberus in sheets as she stretched, while Tattletale brushed frost from her hair. The dogs simply snarled and shook themselves, sending flakes of ice flying through the air like snowfall.
  
  I stared up at the Lee clones, tried to guess, and gave up. I raised the cannon and fired one pepper round up to each side of the parking lot. They burst one after the other, choking the roofs in stinging white dust. The Lees shied away from the clouds, some batting at their eyes.
  
  The latest Lee tossed another bomb down, between me and the girls. I leapt forward and smacked it with the flat of the axe, like it was a hockey stick.
  
  The bomb exploded just as I touched it- there was no flame or heat, no esoteric effect. Just a wave of concussive force that smashed the girls back into the wall and sent me reeling back someone had punched my entire body. Ice cracked and shattered, sending a fresh cloud of frost into the air, pieces raining down all over.
  
  Another bomb clattered down. This time I grabbed it, and Stoneknapper"s fizz let me crush it in my fingers like wet clay before throwing it aside. The bomb sparked once, and did nothing else.
  
  "Hah! Suck it!" Stoneknapper crowed. "Doesn"t matter how fancy the tech is if it"s tied in a knot!"
  
   I moved insects to the parts of the roofs that weren"t coated with chalk and pepper, planting them on the ankles of the Lees. It let me react immediately as one behind me hurled a grenade right at my head.
  
  The axe came up, and sliced right through it. The halves clattered to the ground, spilling bits of wire and circuit boards.
  
  I felt one set of insects suddenly appear in a different spot, even though I could sense identical ones directly ahead. That set disappeared as the Lee they were clinging to as he crumbled to dust.
  
  "Which means he takes the insects with him when he teleports!" Tactical realised. "We"ve got him now!"
  
  I sensed the next teleport, and the next, tracking Oni Lee as he left copy after copy behind. All I needed was a clear shot.
  
  Then three of the Lees pulled bombs off their bandoliers and threw them down in unison.
  
  "Oh, for fuck"s sake," Firecracker groaned.
  
  I dropped the air cannon and flexed my fingers. The grappler shot out, snagging the bomb closest to the girls, and I managed to whip it away from them.
  
  I flicked the spear with my other hand; the shuriken shot off and hummed through the air, smashing into the second bomb mid-air, burying itself halfway through. The bomb clattered to the ground, inert.
  
  The third bomb was furthest from us, bouncing off a ridge of ice to clatter into the corner.
  
  There was a sound like a power chord on God"s own guitar, and the ground, the ice, the wall and a corner of a dumpster suddenly turned glossy gold in colour.
  
  "...did that bomb just fucking Goldmember all that shit?" Anchorage asked.
  
  "You mean Goldfinger," Flinch corrected.
  
  "Goldfinger"s the Bond villain- Kind Midas is the Greek myth who turned whatever he touched into gold," Vladimir said.
  
  "Not the fucking point!" I bellowed, throwing myself into a diving roll across my air cannon, coming up with the barrel pointed at the latest Oni Lee.
  
  The insects duplicated just as the Lee pulled a grenade. I couldn"t risk taking my eyes off him while he had a bomb, but I needed to deal with the original or this fight would never stop-
  
  There was a twang and a whistle as a crossbow bolt missed the Lee clone by inches. The clone didn"t even flinch, just kept calmly pulling the pin.
  
  The second bolt caught the clone in the stomach- he doubled over, dropping the grenade and crumbling to ash.
  
  I spun around to catch the original. As I turned, I spotted Tattletale standing behind Rachel, aiming the crossbow over the top of the shield.
  
  The last Oni Lee- the original, the real one- was standing at the edge of the roof. For a second, I thought I could see his eyes through the mask- dead eyes, with nothing behind him.
  
  The pepper dust round hit him right in the teeth- he toppled back with a yell and muffled swearing as white dust fountained around him.
  
  "Get him!" Needler shouted.
  
  I fired my grappler and reeled myself up, hurdling the edge of the roof in a rush, spear at the ready. Oni Lee was rolling on the floor, pouring something out of a flask onto his face.
  
  "No you don"t!" I shouted, knocking the flask out of his hand with my spear. Oni Lee rolled onto his stomach and started crawling desperately away, fumbling blindly.
  
  I leaned down and grabbed him by the harness, hauling him up off the ground. "You"re done," I said, putting my cannon away and clapping a hand over the eyeholes of his mask. A common weakness of teleporters- once they couldn"t see, they were powerless.
  
  There was a click, and Oni Lee held up a hand. A metal ring dangled from his middle finger, tauntingly.
  
  "...What?" Butcher managed.
  
  I couldn"t believe it. It had to be a bluff- who"d be crazy enough to blow themselves up rather than face capture?
  
  A beeping sound came from Oni Lee"s vest, getting louder and faster-
  
  Apparently he was crazy enough. I spun on my heel and threw him across the roof, out over the street. There was nobody around- hopefully the bomb wouldn"t be something too terrible.
  
  There was a thunderclap, and Oni Lee vanished, replaced by a disk of concrete about six feet in diameter, curved at the bottom. It hit the road and shattered into pieces.
  
  I stared down at the pieces. A chunk of concrete? What the hell was that supposed to be? And what happened to Oni Lee?
  
  Bearskin groaned. "I don"t believe it. The fucker had a teleport bomb!"
  
  "Wait, what?"
  
  "Look! That"s a chunk of floor! It must have swapped the space he was in with the space he arrived at- and brought some of the landing spot to us."
  
  Dirty Rotter groaned. "Well, that"s just perfect! We got rid of Trickster, and now Bakuda"s copying his schtick!"
  
  I groaned and slapped a palm to my face.
  
  10.4
  Late Friday 22nd April, South Downtown/Docks Border
  
  After the initial chaos, things had settled into the parahuman equivalent of trench warfare between the Empire Eighty Eight and the Azn Bad Boyz.
  
  Bakuda must have been churning out bombs like a damn factory- every intersection, every entrance, every critical point in ABB territory had bombs hidden somewhere, waiting to be activated by Bakuda"s remote control or by whoever was stationed there to watch.
  
  The Empire regularly attempted to break in, their capes leading the charge with various techniques. Kaiser could generate blades to set off the bombs at a safe distance and shield himself: Crusader"s ghosts could ignore the effects entirely and simply walk right over them to attack; Jotunn froze a couple of bombs to uselessness.
  
  Even Othala helped once, gifting invulnerability to some foot soldier who"d earned himself a punishment and making him walk down the street as a minesweeper. When he"d been hit by a bomb that turned the surrounding matter into acid, he survived the initial blast and the following tidal wave of liquid, only needing a change of clothes afterwards.
  
  Three times they attempted an aerial assault, flying on one of Rune"s platforms, or with Othala"s gift of flight, or carried by Crusader"s ghosts. The first two times, Oni Lee had popped up to respond, lobbing grenades or teleporting into mid-air for a suicide attack. The third time, some of the ABB forces responded with grenade launchers loaded with airburst rounds.
  
  Then the Empire tried a massed assault- all their capes in one group, marching down a main intersection.
  
  Lung had responded personally- the Protectorate had forced the Undersiders to stand back while Lung grew to an enormous size. He must have been thirty feet tall by the end, fully draconic, with massive batlike wings spreading from his back. The fight had ended in a stalemate; The Empire retreating after too many injuries, Lung choosing not to pursue. The area had been devastated- the road was impassable, the sidewalk was rubble, the buildings had either been gutted by fire, speared with Kaiser"s blades, or just smashed all to hell.
  
  It wasn"t long after that that we got intelligence of Purity returning to the Empire, if she"d ever really left. Bearskin was despondent when he heard that, while everyone else had a mixture of fear, anger, and a sort of resigned exasperation. As Stoneknapper put it, "Of course. Not like we weren"t in trouble already." Now the Empire had a flying Blaster who could demolish entire buildings back on the roster.
  
  And the cyanide cherry on that dog turd sundae was that she"d brought friends with her. Nacht and Nebel, better known as Night and Fog; a pair of capes who"d joined the Empire directly from Gesellschaft in Europe. Even Butcher was willing to admit that he was disturbed by them. Fog turned into a cloud of toxic gas, while Night could become some kind of monster when not being directly observed. The Butchers had caught a glimpse of her Changer form with bloodsight once- lots of legs and sharp bits.
  
  I"d been out every night since the bombs had first gone off, running around like my ass was on fire to put down skirmishes, defuse the bombs I could, and help with rescue and rebuilding for the ones I couldn"t.
  
  So finding Krieg and a handful of Empire soldiers approaching the border, armed and eager for battle, was simultaneously a moment of frustration, and a much-needed opportunity to blow off some steam.
  
  "So what"re we doing?" Grue asked from his place next to me in the alleyway we were watching from. It was me, him and Whirlygig teamed up tonight, while Cerberus was patrolling with her dogs up north. Tattletale was resting at the lair after overusing her power to predict Bakuda"s next moves, and Ironclad had run himself ragged trying to keep up until I"d ordered him to sleep the entire night and recover.
  
  "This time, we"re not letting Krieg get away," Quarrel hissed. "You"ve got no excuse this time- you"ve got the numbers and the tech."
  
  "I know," I replied. "Ambush," I told the others. "Wait until they get closer, then go dark. You guys take out the chaff, I"ll handle Krieg. Make sure to leave some space- this is going to be big."
  
  I slipped bugs onto every one of them as they walked closer, arrogance in every step. I could see around the corner that Krieg had updated his costume- spikes on the knuckles of his gloves, a heavier gas mask, a vicious trench knife at his belt.
  
  I had my flail and axe in hand, powered up and ready. Grue and Whirlygig waited silently behind me.
  
  When Krieg"s foot passed the threshold into ABB territory, I flicked my flail down. Grue"s darkness flooded the street in an instant.
  
  To give the bastard some credit, Krieg immediately dropped into a defensive stance as I sprinted out from the alleyway, the others behind me. Krieg"s soldiers were silhouetted by bloodsight, cursing and groping their way through the dark. A few of the cannier ones found each other by touch and formed a circle, back to back, ready to fight.
  
  "Don"t lead with the axe," Bearskin advised. "Get a few hits in first, then blast him once you"ve lost the element of surprise."
  
  I obligingly dodged to the right as I approached Krieg, practically running on tip-toe as I circled around him. Then in one move, I flung the flail back, letting the cable play out, and then swung forward to smash it right into the back of his knee.
  
  Even with Krieg"s kinetic field slowing it down, the impact knocked Krieg"s leg out from under him. He fell backwards with a hilariously undignified scream that echoed strangely through Grue"s darkness, then rolled to the side to narrowly dodge my follow-up strike.
  
  I levelled the axe and hit him with a blast of sound- he stumbled as he tried to get to his feet, and I whipped the flail into his stomach for his lapse.
  
  Off to the side, Grue and Whirlygig were wrapping up the Empire goons well- Whirlygig could pummel them just by walking towards them, while Grue flattened them with unseen blows, or chokeholds for the more stubborn ones.
  
  Krieg suddenly jumped high, sailing up to grab the fire escape of a nearby building. Crucially, this put him out of Grue"s darkness.
  
  I activated my grapplers as he pulled himself up and made a second jump to the roof, following him with a whir of cables as I reeled myself in and leapt over the edge of the roof.
  
  Krieg straightened his peaked cap and shook out his black leather coat. "Elpis," he hissed, still doing that fake German accent.
  
  "This has been a long time coming," I spat back, smacking the flail against the ground to absorb some energy.
  
  "You think I have not waited for this?" Krieg demanded. "After you accosted me and my comrades, so many worthy soldiers of the cause sacrificed for your misguided ideals? While the Asian filth tears this city apart, you obstruct our efforts-"
  
  If he hadn"t suddenly leapt backwards, the flail would have hit him right on the chin.
  
  "Shut up and fight!" I roared, throwing myself forward.
  
  Krieg quickly gave ground, retreating from the flail and wincing as I kept the axe trained on him. It wasn"t as effective as I"d expected- maybe he had earplugs? Still, I had the advantage this time.
  
  "Don"t lose control," Tactical warned me. "It"s not over until it"s over."
  
  I acknowledged the advice with a grunt, feinting and then bouncing the flail head off the roof to ricochet into Krieg"s gut.
  
  That got a gasp from him- he shoved the flail away from him, and blocked my axe swing with his forearm. I pulled the axe back, slicing the blade along his sleeve. The leather of his coat parted, but I didn"t manage to draw blood.
  
  "Still a hit though," Anchorage praised me.
  
  Krieg"s kinetic field intensified, increasing the sense of resistance around him. It was starting to get harder to breathe now, his power slowing the air around us.
  
  It slowed my weapons too- my next attack with the flail was slow enough for him to sidestep and grab the cable, yanking on it to try and get me off balance. I just let the cable reel out, then pulled harder. Krieg"s arm jerked, and he dropped it with a snarl.
  
  I reeled the head in, switching to mace mode, and came at him again. He was running out of room to retreat- maybe he was going to try and jump, take the fight to the ground.
  
  And then danger sense flared as Krieg snatched the trench knife from his belt- a serrated blade with a knuckleduster grip. He punched the flail away as I swung it, grabbed the axe with his free hand, and stabbed at my gut.
  
  My knee came up, a blade sliding out of a concealed sheath to catch Krieg"s. The serrations worked against him as he tried to pull back in shock, keeping his knife locked in place.
  
  Then I straightened my leg and kicked him in the crotch.
  
  Even with his kinetic field slowing me, it was enough to make him yelp and loosen his grip on the knife. I dropped the axe and the flail, grabbed his wrist and elbow, and twisted his arm so the knife was pointing back at his chest. The other blades extended from my elbows and toes as I forced the blade towards him.
  
  "Fucking get him!" Rotter cheered.
  
  Krieg grabbed the knife with both hands, straining furiously to push it away. I gave ground a little, then shifted my grip and twisted. The blade was now pointing towards the floor, and Krieg"s arm was twisted painfully in front of him.
  
  I suddenly stopped pushing- the lack of resistance made Krieg jerk towards me, one leg out; and I snapped my head forward into his face.
  
  Krieg"s kinetic field both reduced the effect of other people"s movements and increased the effect of his own. So it was really his own momentum that let something go crunch against the steel of my helmet.
  
  Not that it was without cost- that impact had rung my bell. But I let my knees fold a little as I bore down on the knife, driving it right down into his leg.
  
  Krieg screamed and punched me in the shoulder. The blow spun me around, denting the pauldron. I used the momentum to deliver a back-kick to his chest, then tackled him as he staggered.
  
  We tumbled across the rooftop, grappling and striking at each other without finesse. Krieg was furious now, fighting to kill- but I had blades on my joints and didn"t have a knife in my thigh; crucial advantages in a fight.
  
  Finally, Needler"s power let me find a weakness as Krieg got on top of me and slammed blows into my arms. When his next punch crashed down, I let it slide off to the side, and drove my other hand up into his throat.
  
  Krieg gagged, but his other hand was already aimed at my head. I kicked his leg wound, and as he screamed, I hit him in the throat again.
  
  Krieg"s scream abruptly cut off. I shoved him to the side, and he collapsed on his back, weakly groping at his face and neck.
  
  "Bad time to be wearing a gas mask," Firecracker observed without sympathy. I grunted as I pulled myself to my feet, blades retracting at my movements, and grabbed my axe and flail off the floor.
  
  Krieg was still wheezing painfully as I dusted myself off and secured his arms and legs. I thought for a second, then drew a knife and carefully cut open the filter of his mask. His wheezes became a touch fuller as he greedily sucked down the air.
  
  "That"s good of you, Taylor," Flinch said with quiet warmth.
  
  "It"s not like I care about the bastard," I said awkwardly, putting the knife back.
  
  "I know. That"s good too- making a habit of mercy, even for people you hate."
  
  Once I"d winched Krieg down to the ground and helped Grue and Whirlygig secure the other prisoners, there was nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs for the five minutes or so it took for reinforcements to show up. Specifically, a PRT van for Krieg, a police van for the foot soldiers, plus Glory Girl and Assault.
  
  I"d bumped into Assault a couple of times over the week, and he"d been perfectly civil, friendly even. All of New Wave had kept their distance from me since the Travellers incident though, so this was the first time I"d seen Glory Girl outside of a few glimpses at Arcadia.
  
  Simply put, she didn"t look well. Her posture was slumped, her face was downcast, and her skin was pale, with a few breakouts of acne near the temples. She mustered the strength to help load the prisoners and ensure Krieg was secured and sedated, and then settled onto the ground with a sigh as they drove away, leaving the five of us standing in the empty road, a few blobs of Grue"s darkness around us.
  
  "Nice job," Assault said blithely. "That"s two Empire lieutenants you"ve taken out now. All we need now is Kaiser himself."
  
  "That"d be nice," Butcher rumbled. "Bagging Buckethead Junior himself."
  
  "You"re telling me," I said.
  
  "I"m more worried about Purity," Grue admitted. "At least Kaiser can"t fly."
  
  I pulled a face. "True."
  
  "You"ve fought them before," Glory Girl said suddenly. It wasn"t a question.
  
  "Years ago," I admitted. "I"ve got ideas for how to counter them, but they"re both powerful, and almost as experienced as me."
  
  Glory Girl cocked her head. "Wait, do you consider the experiences of," she hesitated, then waved a hand, "them... your own?"
  
  "Sort of? I inherited their memories, their skills. It"s hand-me-down experience, but it"s still mine now."
  
  "Hand-me-down?" Vladimir declared with mock outrage. "Why, our knowledge should be considered priceless heirlooms!"
  
  "Huh." Glory Girl perked up a bit. "I mean, I"ve heard theories that the Butchers could share memories, but I always assumed that was just the previous Butchers talking to the current version."
  
  "It"s a bit of that too, to be fair."
  
  "So how old does that make you?" Assault asked with a grin. "Should I be calling you kid or old lady?"
  
  "Cheeky," I smiled. "Honestly, it varies from moment to moment. I definitely feel older when I"m fighting, maybe because I"m drawing on the memories more. When I"m relaxed, when I"m with friends, I feel more like myself."
  
  Something in Glory Girl"s expression sharpened. "Like with Amy?"
  
  "Ah crap," Firecracker said.
  
  "I"m not sure what you"re implying-"
  
  "You know what I"m implying. You and Amy were close. You hung out, you talked... And I"ve had that fucking meeting running through my head for days, and you know what"s funny? Even with all the shit she went through, Amy didn"t seem surprised by you. She wasn"t even scared of you. Hell, she was holding your cape like it was a security blanket!"
  
  "Victoria," Assault tried, but she was in no mood to listen.
  
  "Just say what you mean," I said, feeling my nails itch.
  
  "How much did Amy know? What did you tell her? Did she know what you were?"
  
  The word "what" bounced around the inside of my skull like a red-hot pinball. The dismissive, callous way she said it felt worse than if she"d called me a monster.
  
  "I became her friend," I said as flatly as I could manage. "I spent time with her, and I cared about her. Anything else, you can ask her yourself."
  
  "I can"t ask her," Glory Girl snapped. "You think I haven"t tried? I came over to the PRT building with a bunch of her clothes and stuff on Wednesday, figured I"d help her be comfortable, remind her of home.
  
  "And you know what she did? She just locked herself in her room and screamed at me to go away! So I can"t ask her anything. I just know that my sister"s hurt, and she was in on all," she gestured wildly at me, "This!"
  
  One hand whipped out and grabbed my belt. "So I want answers! No more secrets, no more lies- I want the truth!"
  
  "I fucking failed her!" I roared back with a mouthful of fangs. "She got hurt because I wasn"t fast enough, and that"s on me! Is that what you want to hear, does that make you feel better?!"
  
  "Are you serious?!" Glory Girl demanded. "Boo hoo, Butcher blames herself- I got swallowed by that thing! Stuck inside, force-fed nightmares while copies of me were attacking everyone I love, and then I finally get out and my sister"s treating me like I"m poison!"
  
  I stopped, utterly poleaxed. I hadn"t considered that, at all. I"d barely thought about Glory Girl"s experience of the incident, too focused on preparing for my big reveal as Butcher, or handling the current crisis.
  
  "I"m sorry," I managed, pulling my teeth back in. "I didn"t think... But I can"t betray Amy"s trust."
  
  Glory Girl"s pretty face twisted into a rictus of fury. One hand snapped out and grabbed my belt.
  
  Darkness washed over us in an instant.
  
  I forced Glory Girl"s hand off my belt and stepped back, strangling the urge to smack her for laying a hand on me. After a moment I waved a hand, and the darkness cleared.
  
  "Sorry," Grue said. "I just thought..."
  
  "No, you did the right thing."
  
  Glory Girl was glaring at me, but it didn"t seem like she was angry at me. More just angry in general, and she happened to be looking at me.
  
  "Can"t you tell me anything?" she asked, voice on the verge of cracking.
  
  I sighed. "Look. Everyone"s fucked up from this. I think we all need time to heal up a bit before we start poking at the wounds. When Amy"s ready, I"ll ask her what she"s willing to share, and I"ll let you know everything I can. But she doesn"t need me blabbing behind her back any more than she needs to be forced out of her comfort zone. Alright?"
  
  Deep down, though, I wondered if Amy would ever be ready. She"d only been hurt because of me. I hadn"t had the guts to try and contact her at all after that meeting, where she"d curled in on herself and broken down sobbing.
  
  What if she never wanted to see me again? The thought was like ice water in my veins. Slowly, without realising it, Amy Dallon had become my closest and dearest friend. I wasn"t sure I could bear losing her.
  
  "She"s alive because of you," Flinch said firmly. "If you hadn"t been there, those clones would have killed her. And she cares about you- she won"t let you go that easily."
  
  "I hope you"re right," I muttered. The thought of Amy turning me away, of never chatting with her over cafeteria food, of bitching about cape nonsense or talking about movies, felt like a brick in my stomach. Never hearing her laugh, seeing her smile, smelling her unique, impossibly clean scent...
  
  "I need her too," Glory Girl said suddenly. She was looking away from me, hands balled into fists. Then she opened them again, flexing her fingers. The tension slowly drained out of her body. "I don"t know what to do," she mumbled, more to herself than any of us.
  
  I felt a sudden rush of empathy for Glory Girl.
  
  "Fine," she said at last. "Fine. But one day I"m getting the whole story."
  
  "Whatever."
  
  Glory Girl rose into the air again. "I"m going. I guess I"ll see you around." She turned and flew off into the night without another word.
  
  After a moment, Assault cleared his throat. "You feeling alright?" he asked awkwardly.
  
  "Honestly? Not really."
  
  Whirlygig shifted from foot to foot. "Do you know how Amy is?" she asked.
  
  Assault gave a one-armed shrug. "I haven"t really seen her a lot- you know, we"re all rushing around, trying to keep a lid on things. But she"s seeing a therapist. Apparently she"s a little better- talking with the Wards a little."
  
  I sighed. "That"s good."
  
  "Don"t beat yourself up," Nemean said. "She"s tough. She"ll get better."
  
  I wasn"t sure how much I believed that."I wish she didn"t have to."
  
  
  
  Saturday 23rd April, Weymouth Shopping Centre
  
  I turned the phone over in my hand. "Looks nice," I said at last.
  
  Dad looked pleased. "I think this is a good choice. Let"s get a case as well. Better safe than sorry."
  
  It was a huge change for Dad to buy me a phone, and one for himself. We"d avoided them ever since Mom had died, relying on the landline or Dad"s office number. It wasn"t like I"d had any friends I wanted to call.
  
  But he"d picked out a nice smartphone with a camera for me, and a sturdy brick for himself. We spent a while with the sales assistant, going over different payment plans and browsing the range of cases. Apparently phone charms were back in fashion, and the Butchers briefly considered getting one that looked like a little candy skull.
  
  "Alright," Dad said once we"d got out of the phone store. "Anything else you want to get while we"re here?"
  
  I shrugged. "I hadn"t really thought about it."
  
  Dad looked me up and down. "There"s a music store over there," he said, pointing to the other side of the mall. "They"ve got a lot of old records, classic rock, metal, punk, that sort of thing."
  
  "Uh, okay?" I said, nonplussed.
  
  Dad shrugged. "I just thought, with the new look, maybe you"d want to try the music."
  
  "Ha! He"s got you there!" Tock Tick said.
  
  I couldn"t deny that Dad had a point. Maybe because the last week had put me in an aggressive state of mind, maybe because I was tired of seeing it hanging in the back of my closet, but I"d decided to wear Butcher"s choice from the Undersiders" little shopping trip.
  
  It was a black leather jacket, with heavy buckles at the waist, the cuffs and the collar, and a dozen metal studs poking out of each shoulder. It was dark, scary, and very punk rock. I"d told Dad I got it cheap at a second-hand stall, which was broadly true.
  
  I curled my fingers to touch the buckle on my cuff. "Yeah, okay." We started circling around to the music store, dodging around a bit that had been roped off. It seemed like forever ago that the Travellers had robbed this place, but there were still signs of damage being fixed around the mall. "Did you listen to a lot of that?"
  
  "I still do," Dad said. "I"ve got a bunch of albums in the truck. Pink Floyd, The Ramones, Black Sabbath, The Sex Pistols- you can borrow some of it if you like."
  
  "Thanks." The Butchers were pretty pleased too- their tastes in music were varied enough that someone was guaranteed to like anything I listened to, and while I"d filled an MP3 player with songs, they never passed up on more.
  
  "Any time." Dad grinned. "Bet you didn"t know your old man was cool, huh?"
  
  "Dad, I"m your teenage daughter. I"m contractually obligated to never think of you as cool."
  
  Dad burst out laughing; his good mood was so infectious that I ended up joining in.
  
  "Well, if this is you starting your rebellious phase," Dad said once he"d got his breath back, "At least I"ve got some warning."
  
  The music store was impressive when we made it inside- lots of CDs, plus a respectable collection of vinyl records too. Firecracker demanded to see the latest pop album; Tock Tick stopped me to look at a Weird Al CD; Muramasa insisted I dig through the foreign music section until I found something Japanese; and so on.
  
  "Ooh, Janis Joplin," Needler cooed. "And Joan Jett! I remember I used to be obsessed with them."
  
  "I wonder why," Muramasa said drolly.
  
  I found myself chatting about music with Dad long after we"d left the store- he told me about concerts he"d been to as we browsed through a book store, and how he and Mom had playfully argued over control of the radio as I picked up some pencils and notebooks for school.
  
  It felt nice to spend time with Dad like this; to just connect. Talking about Mom was still bittersweet, but it didn"t hurt anything like it used to.
  
  Even the presence of police officers at the mall didn"t sour my mood. I could understand it; a week"s worth of explosions had heightened tensions across the whole city. Kids at school went straight home rather than spend time on the streets, and adults were much the same.
  
  Bakuda had at least avoided population centres or critical infrastructure- she seemed more concerned with enforcing and expanding the borders of ABB territory. Or, as Lisa had suggested, Lung was keeping her on task so that she didn"t escalate things enough for the authorities to justify calling in the national guard.
  
  Still, it was bad enough that we"d had to wait in line and get our bags checked before entering the mall, and there were officers patrolling around to keep an eye on things.
  
  The upside was that the mall had organised major sales in pretty much every store to keep business going. Maybe not the smartest thing to do, but plenty of people around here couldn"t afford a long period without profit. They hadn"t even closed down for a day after the Travellers had robbed the place.
  
  "We"d have more spending money if someone had snagged some of that gold," Butcher complained. He"d been bitter about the results of that transmutation bomb all week.
  
  I rolled my eyes when Dad wasn"t looking. "Butcher, for the last time, that gold was radioactive!"
  
  "Big deal! We"d heal from it just fine!"
  
  "I"m not using radioactive gold, for goodness" sake!"
  
  "Right," Dad said, hefting his bags. "What now? Lunch?"
  
  "Sounds good to me," I said. "Might need a moment to decide what I want though."
  
  "Pizza," Stoneknapper said at once.
  
  "You really think mall pizza"s going to be any good?" Quarrel said. "There"s a sandwich place there, we can get something there."
  
  Dirty Rotter indicated a small stand at the side of the food court, directly below us. "How about pasta?"
  
  I breathed in deep through my nose. In a crowded space with a bunch of different foods, it was hard to pick out individual scents, but the smell of tomatoes and garlic and pork came through pretty well. "That does smell good."
  
  Dad suddenly stopped. I almost ran into his back. "Zoe," he said. "It"s been too long."
  
  "Danny!" said Zoe Barnes, shifting her own bags around to hold out a hand. "Oh, it"s been too long," she said warmly as they shook hands. "How"ve you been?"
  
  "Pretty good. There"s been a lot of work for the Dockworkers lately- cleanup and reconstruction, that sort of thing."
  
  "Well, I"m glad there"s a bright side to all this mess," Mrs Barnes said. She still looked as good as she had the last time I"d seen her. She"d welcomed me into her house for sleepovers and birthday parties so many times I could have identified her at a glance; same auburn hair, same pearl necklace that she never took off, same gentle smile. She"d basically been an aunt through most of my childhood.
  
  "And Taylor!" Mrs Barnes said suddenly, as if she"d just noticed me. "Goodness, look how tall you"ve got. That"s a lovely jacket too- where"d you pick that up?"
  
  "Got it at the Market," I said, trying to keep the discomfort out of my voice. I didn"t have anything personal against Mrs Barnes, but being around her was bringing back all sorts of memories.
  
  "How about you?" Dad asked. "Is Alan around?"
  
  Mrs Barnes shook her head. "Sorry, he"s back home, trying to sort out the TV. I"ll tell him I saw you though. We should get together some time- maybe a barbeque? The weather"s getting warmer."
  
  "That"d be lovely."
  
  "Oh God, save us from boring small talk," Anchorage groaned.
  
  I agreed, looking around for any excuse to move along.
  
  Unfortunately, that let me see who was coming up behind Mrs Barnes.
  
  Emma Barnes had changed her hairstyle a little, so now she had bangs hanging down and framing her freckled face. She was dressed nicely- pretty blouse, skinny jeans, heeled shoes; plus a fashionable handbag slung over her shoulder. She looked surprised to see me, but the surprise quickly gave way to a smile. If I didn"t know her, I wouldn"t have known how much venom was in that smile.
  
  Next to her, Sophia Hess was dressed more casually- hoodie, baggy jeans, sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had a rucksack slung on her back. Her smile had a lot more teeth in it.
  
  Deep in the back of my head, Butcher started laughing, low and horrible.
  
  Bloodsight activated without me thinking about it. Emma and Sophia"s circulatory systems glowed inside their bodies as maps of pulsing red, their hearts at the centre. It would be so easy to pop my claws, jam a hand up under the ribcage, and yank-
  
  "Make an excuse," Tock Tick said. "Say anything, just get out of here."
  
  "Say you need the bathroom," Tactical suggested.
  
  "They"ll just follow her, dumbass!" Firecracker snapped.
  
  I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted blood. I felt paralysed, pulled this way and that by my own thoughts and the Butchers" suggestions.
  
  "Punch her," Vladimir said suddenly. "One quick shot to the face- it"ll break her attitude forever. I should have fought back against my bullies."
  
  "Not in front of the parents," Nemean countered. "Get them away from here, and then hit them. They need to feel consequences."
  
  There was no malice to her suggestion- she honestly felt that Emma and Sophia needed a good hard smack to help them see the error of their ways. I actually found myself considering it for a moment.
  
  But it wouldn"t just be one blow. It"d be two, then three, then five, ten- I could picture myself losing control as my anger over the thousands of little torments erupted.
  
  Would I stop before I killed them? Would I stop even after I killed them?
  
  "I"m going to get in line for food," I blurted, interrupting Dad and Mrs Barnes in mid-conversation. "I"ll see you later."
  
  "Oh. Okay," Dad said, clearly puzzled. "If you don"t want to stay-"
  
  "I"d rather stick my foot in a bacon slicer." I bit my lip, too late to stop the words. Dad"s jaw slackened. Mrs Barnes"s sculpted eyebrows disappeared into her fringe.
  
  I gripped my bags and took off, passing around Mrs Barnes to keep my distance from Emma and Sophia. I didn"t dare to look back, afraid of what I"d see.
  
  I"d never really told Dad about the bullying. He knew something was wrong when I went to Winslow, he wasn"t an idiot; and we"d had to talk after the locker happened, there was no way he was letting go of that. But I"d never told him that my former best friend and her new best friend had picked me as a target for relentless teenage torment. Before I"d got my powers I hadn"t thought there was anything either of us could really do. And after I got my powers, I didn"t want to draw attention to my Trigger event.
  
  I swung myself down a set of stairs, taking the steps three at a time until I reached the bottom, and even then I still wanted to keep running. Out of the mall, all the way back home, or to the lair. Somewhere where I could be free of the shitty past that I thought I"d left behind.
  
  "Taylor," Flinch said firmly. "Step to the side, and take deep breaths."
  
  I shuffled away from the staircase and sucked in cool air. I hadn"t realised I"d started breathing harder like I"d been straining myself.
  
  "It"s okay," Flinch said comfortingly. "You"re safe, they can"t hurt you anymore."
  
  "Shit luck," Bearskin said sympathetically. "But Flinch is right- you got away from them. And it"s not like they can start shit with your dad and her mom around."
  
  I dropped my bags and put my hands on my knees, focusing on the itch of my nails until I was certain they weren"t going to pop into claws. "Okay," I said at last. "I"m okay."
  
  "Shit luck," Nemean said sympathetically. "But you did hold it in. Didn"t even say anything to them."
  
  I hated this- this feeling of vulnerability, the loss of control, and having my past dragged up. I tried distracting myself with thoughts of how I could have avoided this- I"d had to pull my insects far out of sight in public, hadn"t really been keeping an eye out for threats.
  
  I"d taken it for granted that Emma and Sophia were no longer a part of my life, that I"d never see them again after I transferred to Arcadia. Why had I assumed that? My dad and Mr Barnes were still friends, Madison was presumably still talking with the other two; if nothing else, we still lived in the same city. We probably would have run into each other at some point.
  
  Maybe I"d just wanted to avoid thinking about them anymore. I didn"t want to give them any thought at all.
  
  "Still running away, huh Hebert?"
  
  "Speak of the cunt..." Quarrel said.
  
  "...and the cunt shall appear," Dirty Rotter finished.
  
  I pulled myself upright and looked over at Sophia, who was leaning on the railing at the bottom of the stairs without a care. "Still being a bitch, Hess?"
  
  Sophia snorted. "Oh, trying to act tough now, huh?" She pushed herself upright and swaggered a few steps closer. "Even with that crappy jacket, you"re still the same crybaby queef you always were."
  
  Now that I really looked, I realised I was actually a little bit taller than her. Not a lot, only half an inch at most, but it was something. I"d never noticed it before- or maybe I"d grown in the four months away from her.
  
  That realisation gave me some boldness, and the Butchers murmured encouragement and whispered suggestions as I set my shoulders. I couldn"t hit her- but I could push back for once. The Butchers were masters of trash talk.
  
  "That"s rich coming from you. Being a bully in high school doesn"t make you tough." I knew that from Vladimir- he"d drained his bullies dry when he"d triggered. They"d screamed the whole time.
  
  Sophia snorted. "You fucking let yourself get bullied, you wimp. If you had any backbone, you would"ve done something."
  
  "Let myself? Every time I tried, you guys just went harder. Or did you forget that stuff so you can tell yourself that you"re a big girl instead of a walking sack of shit?"
  
  "Don"t you talk to me like that!" Sophia hissed, lunging forward. "You don"t know a damn thing!"
  
  "I know that punching down on one girl with a bunch of hangers-on is pathetic. Did you seriously not have anything better to do? Were you just so insecure that you had to keep pushing me down to be the queen bee?" At Needler"s suggestion, I cocked my head and sneered- one hand cupped the opposite elbow, her old habit. "Or was I just an outlet for your roid rage?"
  
  "The fuck?" Sophia demanded, a note of confusion in her voice.
  
  "What, are you not on steroids?" I asked. "I figured it"d fit- track star with anger issues. Or is your shitty personality 100% natural?" More suggestions came thick and fast- all I had to do was pick one at a time. "They say steroids can cause heart conditions, but I guess you"d need a heart for that to be a concern. Not to mention a lack of guts, not a lot of brain-"
  
  "Fuck you!" Sophia shoved me in the chest, both hands. I took a step back, into the shadow of the staircase. Heads were turning to look at us, drawn by Sophia"s shout.
  
  "Ooh, an audience," Anchorage cooed. "Keep going, maybe somebody"ll get this on camera."
  
  The thought of Sophia ending up on the internet as a video titled "Mall Girl Loses Argument" was appealing, so I spread my hands like I was inviting her to strike me, goading her. "Fuck you? Is that the best you can think of? Nothing creative?"
  
  "Taylor, don"t encourage her," Flinch warned. "Just grab your bags and go."
  
  Sophia jabbed a finger into my chest. "Listen, freak- I"m a fucking great runner, and you want to know why? It"s because I love to win, but more than that, I hate to lose. And I especially hate weaklings who don"t realise their place in the world, which is under my boot!"
  
  "I don"t see how that would be possible, given that you"re lower than dirt," I retorted, leaning in close. "At least things can grow out of the dirt. You? I bet you"ve never done anything good in your life."
  
  "Ooh, vicious," Vladimir said gleefully.
  
  "I"ve done more than you ever will, you thin streak of piss! What"ve you done, huh?"
  
  Drove out the Merchants, toppled Coil, sent Hookwolf to the Birdcage, reformed the Undersiders, prevented an S-class event in the making. Visited kids in the hospital, made friends at school and as a cape, built Parian a security system for her peace of mind, helped Spitfire join the Wards. Started talking to my dad again.
  
  Not that I could say any of that. The urge to make Sophia"s jaw drop with all the things I"d done was unbearable. As if she could ever imagine what it was like to be a cape, fighting for your life against the worst of the worst.
  
  "Well, I"ve never harassed someone just because it seemed like fun, so I"m ahead of you without doing anything. I"ve got impulse control. You? I bet you"re just going to do dumber and dumber shit until you finally bite off more than you can chew, push the wrong person too hard. And when that happens, I hope like hell I"ll be there to see it." Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a girl who had her phone out and pointed at us.
  
  Sophia snarled and cocked a fist back.
  
  I considered. If I took the punch, people might notice I didn"t bruise; but Sophia could get in trouble. If I dodged, I"d just make her look stupid.
  
  "Probably don"t want her breaking your glasses," Tock Tick pointed out. "Your dad"ll definitely notice if you fix them yourself."
  
  "Good point. Dodge it is."
  
  "What"s going on here?" A pair of security guards were pushing their way through the crowd- there was a crowd now, people gawking at our argument- and came to a stop, hands at their belts, ready to draw a taser or a nightstick.
  
  "They took their fucking time," Stoneknapper grunted.
  
  "I was hoping this"d turn into an actual fight," Firecracker admitted.
  
  Sophia pointed a finger at me. "She took something off me. I was trying to get it back."
  
  "And what did I take?" I asked, folding my arms.
  
  Sophia hesitated.
  
  That was apparently all the security guards needed. "Alright miss, raise your arms to shoulder level, spread your legs," said the larger one.
  
  "The hell?" Sophia demanded, backing away.
  
  "We need to do a pat down, make sure you"re not hiding anything."
  
  "That makes no sense," Muramasa said.
  
  "Oh crap," Bearskin said with a wince. "This is profiling, isn"t it?"
  
  I blinked. Two white guys, one black girl. In Brockton Bay, home of the Empire Eighty Eight.
  
  Much as I hated to help Sophia in any capacity, I spoke up. "Hey, she obviously didn"t steal anything, I just want her to leave me alone."
  
  "Can"t be too careful," the smaller one said. "If she"s done nothing wrong, there won"t be any trouble." The slight sneer on his face told a different story.
  
  "But you don"t see a need to be careful with the white girl?" I asked. I nodded to the girl who had her phone out. "Is that official policy, or just your policy? Say it nice and loud, so everyone can hear. Let them know if the whole damn mall"s racist, or if it"s just you."
  
  The guards seemed to realise just how many people were watching- there were multiple phones pointed at us now. I could see the smug certainty sliding off their faces like water off a duck"s back. Sophia looked at me like I"d just grown a second head.
  
  "Maybe we can let this pass," the smaller guard said slowly.
  
  "I think so," The taller one agreed. They both turned and walked quickly away, pushing through the crowd.
  
  Sophia was left staring at me.
  
  "The fuck?" she said eventually.
  
  "Piss off," I said flatly.
  
  Sophia glared at me. "This doesn"t change anything." Then she turned and stomped off, shoving through the crowd. People began to drift away, disappointed at the lack of a show.
  
  A few seconds later, I heard footsteps on the stairs. This time, I looked up to see it was, and saw Dad descending, looking worried.
  
  "Taylor? What was that all about?"
  
  "Just an argument, Dad," I said. Even as I said it, I knew it wasn"t convincing.
  
  Dad looked in the direction that Sophia had gone. When he turned back, there was a sharp look in his eyes. "Was she giving you trouble? At Winslow?"
  
  "I..." I couldn"t think of an excuse. And I realised I didn"t want to make an excuse. "Yes."
  
  Dad nodded slowly. "Do you want to talk about it?"
  
  "Not right now," I admitted. "Can we get something to eat?"
  
  "Anything you want," said Dad.
  
  10.5
  Afternoon of Sunday 24th April, Downtown, PRTHQ
  
  "This is a bad idea," Tactical said yet again.
  
  I rolled my eyes. "Your opinion has been taken on board, Tac." I formed a mental image of taking a sack marked Tactical"s Opinions and tossing it off the side of a ship.
  
  Dirty Rotter cackled as the sack sank beneath the waves. "Brutal."
  
  "We"re walking into enemy territory," Quarrel said flatly, "to deliver a fucking pie. This is stupid."
  
  "Hey," Anchorage snapped. "Don"t you be talking about Grandmaw"s Famous Peach Pie like that!"
  
  Taking out Krieg, shouting with Glory Girl, and running into Emma and Sophia, all within 24 hours, had shaken some emotions loose in me. I"d ended up giving Dad a bare-bones explanation of how Emma and I had fallen apart and how she"d started bullying me. I"d barely managed to talk him down from going round to the Barnes house to shout at Emma"s dad.
  
  I"d explained it as wanting to close that chapter of my life entirely, which was mostly true. I also didn"t want to draw any attention to the locker incident, especially now, with the PRT undoubtedly closing in on me.
  
  But I"d still had time to think. I didn"t have much time left before I"d have to leave town. I"d left things for Dad- letters explaining the truth, stashes of cash that I"d skimmed over my career, a few contact methods for when I was no longer at home; but I wanted to finish things with Amy too. She was the first true, honest friend I"d had in years. I wanted to at least give her a goodbye.
  
  Unfortunately, she wasn"t responding to calls or texts. I"d wondered if it was like Spitfire, with her phone destroyed, or if she just didn"t want to talk. I"d briefly entertained the idea of using a team of roaches to sneak a final letter to her through the air vents of the PRTHQ, before the Butchers had pointed out how ridiculous that sounded.
  
  It was as I was brainstorming over a project that involved repurposed car suspension springs, fishing rods, and enough cogs and cams to choke a horse, that Anchorage finally took pity on me, and offered to let me use her Grandmaw"s Famous Peach Pie recipe.
  
  The capital letters were important; Grandmaw had been the undisputed, if mild-mannered, matriarch of the family. She"d made damn sure that her children and grandchildren knew how to cook, citing that good food was one of the best things in life.
  
  And she"d also said that good food was perfect for invitations, thank-you"s, apologies, condolences, and just about every form of human interaction. She"d probably never meant it to say "I"m sorry for being responsible for your emotional breakdown, hope we can still be friends, I"ll miss you when I"m gone", but Anchorage had admitted that Grandmaw would probably still think it could pull it off.
  
  So I"d spent the morning with sifted flour and softened butter and fresh peaches, because canned peaches were only for regular pies, plus lemon zest and cinnamon and nutmeg and cream of tartar and a whole bunch of other stuff, and had produced a golden-brown pie, dusted with sugar and smelling perfectly peachy.
  
  And now I was carrying it in a paper box, with a second box underneath, into the PRTHQ. When they had a rough description of me from my clone, and were actively looking for me.
  
  It was kind of stupid. But then, I was the Butcher, not the Baker. Who would expect me like this?
  
  The PRT building was all windows from the outside- only a shield logo with PRT written on it set it aside from the other buildings of downtown.
  
  I passed through the doors, and the disguised metal detectors, with the pie held in front of my chest in a paper box. I could see four PRT troopers stationed around the lobby, each standing at different areas. All in layers of Kevlar and chainmail with full-face helmets; two with grenade launchers, two with containment foam sprayers.
  
  Off to one side was the gift shop, stuffed full of posters and action figures, video games and clothing. And there were large pictures of the local heroes spaced regularly all around the walls of the lobby.
  
  "I"m so glad we never had a Protectorate hero in here," Vladimir said. "Can you imagine having your face on crappy action figures?"
  
  I approached the smartly dressed woman at the front desk, noting the security cameras and the seams in the ceiling that indicated hidden surprises. The Butchers had assaulted the Boston PRT building a couple of times, and they"d found the secret turrets and whatnot the hard way.
  
  "Can I help you?" The receptionist asked politely.
  
  "Uh, yes. I heard Amy Dallon"s staying here? I know her from school- I don"t know if it"s allowed, but," I held out the pie, "I was hoping I could drop this off for her? I don"t know if you guys have to test it for poison first or something, but so long as she gets it..."
  
  The receptionist looked at the box with an utterly flummoxed expression. "I"m sorry, what is it?"
  
  I flipped the lid open and tilted it so she could see inside. "Pie. Homemade. I"ve got some other stuff," I tapped the second box underneath, "But the pie"s the main thing."
  
  The receptionist paused, then turned to the computer screen in front of her and tapped a couple of keys. After a brief pause, she looked up. "Well, there are protocols for donating food to the Wards. I"m afraid it"s harder for civilians to do it- there"s more steps to the process. I"m afraid we"ll need someone to authorise it."
  
  Honestly, that was about the level of caution I expected. "That"s okay. Is there somewhere I put this for testing, or should I just leave it here?"
  
  Off to one side, a complicated-looking door didn"t so much open as it unfolded in multiple sections. Standing there was a figure I recognised- a boy about my height, in, wearing a full-body white suit. The armour pieces on the suit had clock symbols on them- the ones on his chest, shoulders and the backs of his hands actually moved as a digital display. His helmet covered his whole head, with a blank white visor over the face.
  
  Clockblocker- the resident time manipulator of the Wards. The Butchers hated going up against time powers, especially thanks to tangling with Epoch down in New York. Clockblocker could freeze people or objects in time for random durations- he was one of the few people that could immediately take me out of action if he laid a hand on me.
  
  "Don"t forget to look impressed," Firecracker said. "This is supposed to be your first time seeing a cape in costume, remember?"
  
  I took her advice; eyes wide, jaw slack, beginning to point before I yanked my hand back. It seemed to do the trick- the receptionist looked indulgently amused at my reaction.
  
  Except Clockblocker glanced over at the desk- I wasn"t sure, but he seemed to look at me specifically- and then ambled over, thumbs in his belt like a cowboy. Possibly the costume didn"t have pockets for him to stick his hands in, and this was the closest he could do.
  
  "Afternoon," he said cheerily. "Never seen someone bring pie in here before."
  
  I tried for a mild stammer. "Uh, um, yeah. It"s for Amy. Amy Dallon. Panacea, I mean. I heard she"s staying here, and I know her from school, and I thought she could do with some comfort food, so..." I closed the pie box lid and shrugged.
  
  Clockblocker was still for a moment- that suit did not do him any favours in being expressive. I was starting to wonder if I"d said something wrong when he pointed a finger at me.
  
  "Right. Yeah. I remember- Anyway. I can take that pie in if you want."
  
  The receptionist piped up, "I"ll need you to sign for it, if you don"t mind."
  
  "No problem." Clockblocker took the touchpad she handed him and quickly scrawled something on it with the attached stylus.
  
  Then he paused, and looked up at me.
  
  "Do you want to come in and see her?"
  
  This time, I really did stammer. "What-I-Uhm... I don"t... Is that allowed?"
  
  "I can sign you in as a guest if you want."
  
  "Jesus, it can"t really be that easy," Stoneknapper said.
  
  "I... I don"t want to be pushy." I didn"t want to be a walking reminder of her recent trauma, actually; but there was no way I could just come out and say that.
  
  Clockblocker leaned in a little and lowered his voice. "I think she could use someone to talk to who isn"t a cape. Worst case scenario, you get to see the Wards HQ for a bit, you drop off the pie, and if Amy"s not up for visitors, you can try another time."
  
  "Yeah, no," Butcher said. "Walking in through the front door in civvies was bad enough- now you want to go underground and be surrounded by the junior squad? Fuck that."
  
  I shoved Butcher down into the dark, just in time for Needler to talk. "Taylor. Go to her."
  
  I didn"t really have a rebuttal to that.
  
  "Avoiding her is hurting both of you," Flinch agreed. "I"m sure she doesn"t blame you. And if you still think you have to apologise, you can do it to her face."
  
  I gave in. "Okay," I said to Clockblocker.
  
  It took a minute for the receptionist to take a picture of me and program a special visitor"s pass, which Clockblocker and I both had to sign for. But once that was done, Clockblocker led me to the special elevator I"d seen him step out of, a plastic card hung around my neck on a lanyard, with my picture and the word GUEST in bright blue letters.
  
  "This goes right to the Wards HQ," he explained as the door irised shut. "Bits of Tinkertech to make it more secure- and make it look more impressive."
  
  "Wow," I said. I barely felt the elevator start to descend with my body- it was the relative distance between me and my insects changing that really clued me in.
  
  "Thanks for doing this, Clockblocker," I said awkwardly, shifting my hold on the boxes.
  
  "No problem," Clockblocker said easily. The elevator"s stop was as gentle as a feather"s fall, and the door quietly irised open again, revealing a long corridor of chrome steel.
  
  "To be honest," Clockblocker continued, leading the way out of the elevator, "I think everyone"ll be better off if Amy gets some help in putting herself back together. I mean, she"s freaking Panacea. She cures HIV babies before lunch, and handles cancer patients-" his voice wobbled for a second, "-before dinner."
  
  I felt a stir of irritation at him admitting his reasoning so shamelessly. Then again, I could see why people would think like that. If I wasn"t so close to Amy, I"d probably be thinking in terms of getting the miracle healer back to work.
  
  We came to a terminal at the end of the corridor. Clockblocker leaned towards a camera set at about eye level, which whirred for a moment and beeped. On the other side of the door, I heard an abrasive noise, muffled by the metal alarm.
  
  "That"s the mask alarm," Clockblocker explained. "Lets people know to put their masks back on when we"ve got tour groups or something."
  
  "Right."
  
  "Wait," Tock Tick interrupted. "That thing"s got to be a retina scan, right? How"d it scan him through the visor?"
  
  "That"s a very good point." "Hey," I asked out loud, "How"d that thing scan your eyes when your eyes are covered up?"
  
  Clockblocker shrugged. "Something about polarised polymer, I don"t know." The door beeped, and he gestured for me to follow him in as it opened.
  
  The Wards HQ had curved walls and ceiling that made me think it was roughly dome-shaped, but there were walls dividing the space up into private rooms, or framing doorways labelled Showers, Filing, and Meeting Room.
  
  The section we were in had a bunch of computers and large monitors linked together at one side of the room, surrounded by a bunch of chairs. One of the monitors had a countdown to the next tour group, while others showed grid maps or camera views of parts of the city.
  
  The other end had a little kitchenette, a sofa and a TV with a game console.
  
  I recognised Aegis at the computers, in brick-red and silver, swivelling towards me; he had flight and adaptive biology that let him push past any sort of injury. Vista was next to him, a small blonde in a sci-fi looking green-white dress and a green visor that covered her eyes; the youngest Ward, but her ability to warp space around her made her arguably the strongest.
  
  There was a guy I didn"t recognise at the kitchenette, his mask rolled up to drink from a can of soda. His costume was a blue bodysuit that hung off him in folds, like it was meant for someone twice his size.
  
  And sitting on the sofa, adjusting her firefighter"s helmet, was Spitfire, gawking at me. She didn"t have her big fireproof coat or powerframe, so she was just in an orange bodysuit, heavy trousers and big boots.
  
  "Hi," I said quickly. "Sorry to drop in like this, I- uh, I just came to drop off a pie for Amy, but Clockblocker said it was okay for me to come in-"
  
  "Who the hell are you?" Vista asked rudely.
  
  "Vista," Aegis said warningly.
  
  "Taylor Hebert. I know Amy from school."
  
  "I figured Amy might want to talk to someone who"s not a cape or from the PRT," Clockblocker said. "I filled out all the forms and everything, so it"s all legit."
  
  Aegis drummed his fingers on his knee. "Alright," he announced, "That sounds doable. We"ve got plenty of time until the next tour group comes through- I think you can stay for a while."
  
  "Are you serious?" Vista asked.
  
  "I"m with Vista," Spitfire said, standing up, her coat flapping around her ankles. "I mean, this girl"s a total stranger." She gestured widely at me. "I don"t think we should let someone none of us know in here just because they brought pie." She gave me a look as she said that, which gave me an impression of "I"m a little miffed that you"re dropping in unannounced, but I"m not being personal about pretending we don"t know each other".
  
  I shuffled the boxes in my hands so the pie was on the bottom, and opened the other. "I also brought chocolate fudge-swirl brownies."
  
  "I"m with Aegis; She can stay for a while," Spitfire said without changing her tone even a little.
  
  Nemean gave a sharp laugh. "Good kid."
  
  Clockblocker cackled. "The ayes have it. Someone grab some plates- I"ll fetch Amy."
  
  For a moment, I"d forgotten Amy.
  
  I marched myself over to the kitchenette and set the boxes down, next to the new guy. "Do you guys have a knife I can cut this with?"
  
  New Guy tapped a drawer. "In here."
  
  "Thanks, uh... I"m sorry, I don"t know your name."
  
  He shrugged. "I haven"t had my debut yet. Call me Browbeat."
  
  I nodded. "Right. Cool name. So do I have to keep quiet about that, not spoil the surprise?"
  
  Browbeat shrugged. "Preferably."
  
  I busied myself with carefully cutting the pie into even slices. I decided 12 slices would work for all the Wards, plus a few extra.
  
  "So what kind of pie is it?" Spitfire asked, leaning on the counter next to me.
  
  "Famous Peach Pie," I said, levering the first slice onto a plate that Browbeat had helpfully set out. The peach pieces were golden, oozing thick juice onto the plate. "Old family recipe, in a way. It"s all up here," I said, tapping my temple.
  
  I could see Spitfire"s mask shift at the edges, and I knew her eyes had widened a little. "Right. Cool."
  
  "Taylor?"
  
  I jumped so hard I almost cut my finger off- not that I could have with a blunt knife and my super-durable skin, but still- dropped the knife and spun around.
  
  Amy was standing just outside the door of one of the little rooms. She was almost lost in a big fluffy hoodie that couldn"t have belonged to her- it was way too big, coming down to her thighs, and it was navy blue with Armsmaster"s emblem on it. Someone must have got it from the gift shop for her.
  
  I hadn"t felt her usual paralysed spider- hadn"t felt it at all, in fact. Sloppy- I"d been too caught up in my thoughts to notice.
  
  Her hair was the usual frizzy cloud, settled around her shoulders. Her eyes had dark circles under them, but the eyes themselves were bright as she stared at me in shock.
  
  "Hi," I blurted. "I brought pie. I thought you might be hungry, after whatever- and there"s brownies too. I tried to text but you didn"t answer, so, I..."
  
  This was a bad idea. Amy was staring at me like I was speaking in tongues, and I was babbling like an idiot. Why had I thought a pie was enough?
  
  My nerve broke. "I can leave if you want me to- if you want your space. I"ll just," I gestured vaguely towards the door, "I"ll just get out of your hair-"
  
  "No," Amy said suddenly.
  
  I froze mid-step.
  
  Amy looked as surprised as me that she"d spoken, but she continued. "No, it"s okay. I"m glad you came."
  
  "Oh. Okay."
  
  Neither of us spoke for a moment.
  
  "I"ve had my phone turned off," Amy said eventually. "Vicky keeps trying to call me, and I"m... I"m not ready for that."
  
  "Okay."
  
  "So... What kind of pie is it?"
  
  "Peach."
  
  "I don"t think I"ve ever had peach pie before."
  
  "Well, this"ll ruin you for everything else." I tapped the plate. "Want to try it?"
  
  Amy crossed over to the counter, Browbeat stepping back a bit to give her space. I"d forgotten how her heels dragged on the floor when she walked- never raised them high enough. Her scent drifted close to me- not a trace of sweat; just her natural pheromones, with hints of apple shampoo.
  
  I slid the plate across to her, along with a fork, keeping my hands a reasonable distance from her. Amy pulled her hands out of her hoodie pocket, and I saw she was wearing blue surgical gloves.
  
  She took the fork, carefully cut a piece of pie off, and popped it into her mouth. I waited as she chewed slowly, and then swallowed.
  
  "Holy crap that"s good."
  
  I broke into a smile. "You like it?"
  
  "I love it. Oh my god, it"s so sweet." Amy scooped another forkful into her mouth with obvious delight.
  
  "Well shit, I want a piece," Spitfire declared.
  
  The rest of the Wards chimed in, and there were a busy few moments of me cutting pieces and plating them up.
  
  "You bake a lot?" Clockblocker asked. His helmet was tilted back to free up his mouth, which made me wonder if he could actually see right now.
  
  "On occasion. I mostly learned from friends of the family." I gave Amy a glance as I said it.
  
  "Really?" Vista asked around a mouthful of pastry. She seemed to have totally forgotten her earlier reservations, more focused on cramming pie into her mouth.
  
  "Yeah," I said, thinking quickly. The Butchers offered suggestions for me to weave a working backstory, which was actually pretty close to real life. "Dad"s head of hiring at the Dockworker"s Association, and Mom was a college professor, so a lot of their work friends would come over when I was little, and I ended up picking up a bunch of weird talents."
  
  "Like what?" Browbeat asked, finishing his slice.
  
  "Well, there was this big hairy guy called Tony- lots of tattoos, and a beard like a wizard."
  
  "Thanks," Bearskin said with a laugh.
  
  "He taught me a bunch of card tricks, and how to play poker for keeps. I learned a bunch of Japanese legends; how to play the castanets; a bunch of Cockney Rhyming Slang..." I shrugged. "Lots of stuff."
  
  "Interesting," Aegis said.
  
  Amy set down her plate. "So did I miss anything? At school?" she asked casually.
  
  I caught her meaning. "Lots of work to do. Feels like the teachers aren"t letting up with the homework- I"m swamped most evenings. Still, I"m keeping on top of it. My study group helps a lot."
  
  Amy nodded slowly. "Right. That"s good to hear."
  
  Clockblocker slid his helmet back down. "So, Taylor. What do you do for fun?
  
  The conversation meandered from there. I talked about the music I listened to and the books I liked, which led to Spitfire talking about her comic books.
  
  "It"s these pirate fleets, and they all use magic to make their ships work," she explained, waving her hands around, "and they fight ghost ships and zombie whales and stuff. But the Ninth Fleet is almost gone- they"ve only got one necromancer and one swordfighter left. So when the Commodore calls the heads of the Fleets together, they"ve got to go and pretend that their Fleet is still strong enough to stand. And everyone"s got magic, and everyone"s got secrets, and it"s super creepy and awesome!"
  
  I promised I"d try to read it myself one of these days, and the conversation drifted again.
  
  Browbeat turned out to have started out as a vigilante, wandering the streets and looking for crimes to stop. But with the Merchants and Coil gone, and large patches of the city left unclaimed by the gangs, there were less random muggings and thefts to stop, so he"d eventually decided to join the Wards.
  
  "They say it"s a combination of biokinesis and tactile telekinesis," he explained, swelling until his costume was stretched tight over muscles like boulders. "I can change my body to become bigger, stronger, tougher- and with that I get a sort of field around myself that lets me push, pull, or lift whatever I"m touching." He demonstrated by lifting up Vista"s chair- with Vista still in it.
  
  "I"ll be glad when you"re patrolling with us," Aegis said as Browbeat set Vista back down. "I"m tired of being the only guy who can take a punch."
  
  "Excuse me?" said Clockblocker with mock offense. "Am I some dainty wilting flower then?"
  
  The conversation meandered some more, and so did we, migrating to the chairs in front of the monitors as we finished our pie and started on the brownies.
  
  "So usually we"ve got one of us at the console, tracking the cameras, the police band; even social media. You"d be amazed how fast people will post something they saw online," Vista explained. "Track the right tags, and you can keep up to date on all kinds of stuff."
  
  "I never thought about that," I lied. Tattletale did pretty much the same thing- although it was impressive that a girl several years younger with no thinker power was managing a similar level of information gathering.
  
  As for my information gathering, I was subtly moving insects throughout the building"s air vents and wall spaces, listening for anything that might be useful. I felt a little guilty about spying like this, but I needed an edge.
  
  It was that network of insects that let me know that Kid Win was in a lab upstairs, along with someone that I didn"t recognise- a black guy with a basic mask, who was working on the beginnings of what looked like a suit of armour- very streamlined and aerodynamic, with a lot of rockets on it.
  
  So not only did the Wards have a new Brute waiting in the wings, but apparently they also had a Tinker. The PRT wouldn"t be crazy enough to send children against the Butcher, but the new Tinker might provide tech to the adult heroes that could complicate things. I"d have to keep an eye out.
  
  My insect observation also let me know that someone had just taken the elevator down to the Wards HQ, and was now coming along the corridor.
  
  Two people- I didn"t have enough bugs for a clear picture, but I could make out silver with lights, and dark fabric. Gallant and Shadow Stalker, no doubt.
  
  I was expecting the mask alarm to go off like it had when I came in, but the door slid open without fanfare.
  
  "I suppose that alarm is for when guests are coming in where they may be unmasked, not when they are coming in to meet guests," Muramasa reasoned.
  
  "Yeah, that makes sense," I agreed. As footsteps approached, I swivelled around in my chair. "Hey, sorry to-"
  
  There was a crossbow bolt pointed at my heart. Danger sense shrieked in the back of my skull as a finger tightened on a trigger.
  
  "Fuck!" Muramasa blurted.
  
  I didn"t stop to think- I threw myself back in my chair, one foot kicking up to knock the crossbow up and away. The chair toppled back, and I brought my knees up, one hand grabbing the fork I"d been eating with. I heard a twang and a thud, plus a lot of shouting.
  
  I rolled with the momentum, slapping my hands to the ground as I came full circle, and pushed myself to my feet, the tines of the fork coated with Muramasa"s sharpening-
  
  To see Shadow Stalker, struggling and swearing in Aegis"s grip. He had her in an arm bar, twisting the crossbow out of her grip- the other was already on the ground. Gallant had both hands locked around her other wrist.
  
  "Woah, are you okay?" Vista asked. I barely paid her any attention, too focused on the immediate threat.
  
  "What the fuck were you thinking?!" Aegis roared.
  
  "Who the fuck is she?!" Shadow Stalker shrieked back, thrashing in his grip. "You let some random bitch into the fucking headquarters?!"
  
  "She"s Amy"s friend, Shadow Stalker!" Aegis pulled the second crossbow out of her hand and handed it to Clockblocker, who pulled the bolt out and tossed the crossbow aside. "And there"s no damn reason for you to point a weapon at a civilian!"
  
  "Heh," Rotter managed. "Irony."
  
  "Taylor, are you okay?" Amy asked. I glanced away from Shadow Stalker"s struggle, and saw Amy was staring at me with wide eyes.
  
  I hastily dropped the fork. "I"m okay. Just... spooked."
  
  "No fucking way she"s Panacea"s friend! I don"t believe it!"
  
  "She is- and even if she was some random kid, I"d still be shouting at you!" Aegis released her and snatched up the first crossbow from the floor. "Taylor, I"m so sorry," he said sincerely.
  
  I ran my hands through my hair. "God, that was intense," I said, intentionally breathing hard. "I get there"s a lot going on right now, but you could have asked something first." Something caught my eye, and I glanced up.
  
  The crossbow bolt Shadow Stalker had fired was stuck in the ceiling. Looking close, I could see a little liquid leaking out of it where the head had thumped into the plaster. A tranquiliser bolt then.
  
  "Still terrible trigger discipline," Tactical said uneasily. "We don"t know if that tranquiliser works on us, but we could have been left sedated in the middle of the PRT building."
  
  The thought made me wince. "I think I should go," I said, pulling my chair upright and grabbing my jacket off the back.
  
  Aegis nodded. "Clock, show her out."
  
  "Gotcha."
  
  Amy reached out and caught my arm as I was slipping my jacket on- her hand was warm through the latex glove. "I"ll turn my phone back on. Keep in touch?"
  
  I smiled. "Always." I paused. "Are you okay for a hug?" I asked tentatively.
  
  Amy blinked, then flushed a soft pink. "I don"t think so. Sorry."
  
  "That"s okay." I placed my hand over hers- her hand was warm through the latex glove. "Just focus on getting better." Something occurred to me, and I chuckled a little. "Physician, heal thyself."
  
  Amy snorted. "See you, Taylor."
  
  Clockblocker escorted me through the door and along the corridor, tension obvious in his posture.
  
  As I walked, I moved some insects into the Wards HQ- just enough for me to make out sound and get dim pictures.
  
  "-benched."
  
  "You can"t do that!" Shadow Stalker shouted. "I need this- and you need me out on the street!"
  
  "We don"t need someone who shoots first and asks questions never," Aegis snapped back as I got into the elevator. "You"re benched- no patrols. Armsmaster and the Director will hear about this, and I hope they throw the book at you." He clapped a hand to his forehead. "Your behaviour"s been borderline up until now, but this is absolutely too much. What even possessed you to react like that?"
  
  Shadow Stalker snorted. "Combat reflexes, from fighting," she sneered. "The fuck are you so worked up over that bitch, anyway?"
  
  Aegis stared at her. "Do you seriously not get what you did wrong?"
  
  "I did my job!"
  
  "Our job," Aegis thundered, "is to protect people! Not point weapons in their face! If you can"t understand that, then why the hell are you still here?"
  
  "This is bullshit," Shadow Stalker seethed. She stamped off to her door and slammed the door shut.
  
  At the same time, the elevator door opened at the ground floor. I stepped out, Clockblocker walking with me towards the door.
  
  I realised I still had the guest pass slung around my neck, bouncing on my chest. "Do I need to give this back?" I asked.
  
  Clockblocker shook his head. "They"re one-use only, for security reasons. You can keep it if you want."
  
  "Neat," Firecracker said. "Souvenir."
  
  "She"s getting worse," Vista said back in the Wards HQ. "This isn"t just bitchiness- she"s nuts."
  
  "I"m sorry about that," Clockblocker said awkwardly. "She"s..."
  
  "Under a lot of pressure?" I said sarcastically.
  
  Clockblocker did a full-body wince. "Okay, yeah, there"s no excuse for that. I"m sorry."
  
  I probably would have been more pissed if I hadn"t seen her immediately get slapped with consequences for her behaviour. "I just hope someone tries to sort her out."
  
  "Listen," Clockblocker said as we came to a stop by the door, "I really am sorry. But... can you not spread this around? I know it"s messed up," he said quickly as I turned to him, "but if people hear about this, especially now? They"re gonna start worrying- and we"re already on the verge of a panic as it is."
  
  I gave him a hard look. "Alright," I said. "You can deal with this quietly. But you better deal with it."
  
  I turned and strode out through the door without another word, heading down the street.
  
  When I was a block away, I ducked into a little corner shop and made a show of browsing for snacks, while I kept listening in on the Wards.
  
  "I say we complain to the Director," Spitfire was saying. "She"s a total bitch, she goes off on her own, she never listens to anyone- and now this!"
  
  Aegis sighed. I saw a vague image of him kneading his temples. "Shadow Stalker"s already being looked into," he said. "If we bring this up now, with her probation, she could end up going straight to juvie."
  
  Browbeat raised a hand. "I realise that you might be reluctant to punish a teammate, but she"s not really a part of this team, is she? The least hostile interaction I"ve seen her have with anyone here is a grunt."
  
  Clockblocker came back into the room. "Please tell me we"re doing something about Stalker."
  
  "We"re trying to," Vista said. "Look, Aegis- I get you don"t want her thrown in the slammer, but she"s out of control. Maybe they can transfer her away, make her someone else"s problem. Preferably someone who"s a massive hardass that can handle her shitty attitude."
  
  "Quarantine zone postings are used as punishment sometimes," Gallant said in a distant tone of voice, like he was thinking of something else. "She might even like a position where she can react more aggressively."
  
  Aegis sighed. "Alright. I"ll talk to the Director."
  
  Satisfied, I started pulling the bugs out of the room. I felt a little rude about spying on them like this- although I was looking forward to letting Grue know that Shadow Stalker was apparently on the outs.
  
  I kept one spider in the room, walking it along the ceiling to slip through the crack between the partitions that divided the Ward"s rooms.
  
  Amy had retreated to one room after I"d left, and was sitting on the bed. I made the spider let go, and it gently fell onto the bed, then crawled towards her.
  
  One spider wasn"t enough for me to see more than light and dark, but I got an impression of movement, and then the spider was scooped up on a warm, smooth hand that smelled like plastic.
  
  I made the spider turn on the spot, and then raise its forelegs and wave them cheerily.
  
  I made out more movement, and then one bare finger came down to gently tap the spider on its back. I felt the spider"s body lock up, out of my control, and then its forelegs waved the same way I"d made them.
  
  "She"ll be alright," Needler said.
  
  I smiled. "Yeah."
  
  I believed it now.
  
  
  
  Evening of Wednesday 27th April, Hebert Residence
  
  Fortunately the Empire/ABB conflict had simmered down. Possibly Lung wanted to consolidate his recent gains, possibly the Empire were thinking up a decent strategy. Or maybe both sides wanted to avoid seeing if the Mayor"s announcement of calling in the National Guard if things got worse was genuine.
  
  The heroes were still running around, keeping a lid on things, but there was now enough spare time for us to put our feet up.
  
  Which was why, after school, I was up in my room, talking on my phone like a normal teenager instead of working out patrol routes and thinking up countermeasures for supervillains.
  
  "I think I might be able to take a shot at healing someone in a while."
  
  I sat up on my bed, phone to my ear. "Really? That"s great to hear. That you"re feeling better, I mean," I added quickly.
  
  "I know what you mean," Amy said warmly. "Something my therapist said- powers need to be used, and there"s theories that they work better if you use them in a lot of ways. He said something about some Tinker who only made the same bits of armour over and over again, but when he got forced to make other stuff, his Tinkering got way easier."
  
  "Yeah, I"ve heard of stuff like that too," I agreed, sliding off my bed and standing up.
  
  "Well, apparently there"s a bunch of medical initiatives that could use my help. Drug trials, for example. I could just touch someone who"s taken a new drug and diagnose them better than a full round of scans."
  
  "Huh. That"s actually pretty smart," Stoneknapper agreed as I paced back and forth.
  
  "Or actually producing medicine. You know penicillin? Apparently back when they were still making it from mould, someone got some of the mould and irradiated it to try and mutate it to produce more. I could do that in a couple of minutes, no radiation needed. Or there"s insulin, or a bunch of stuff."
  
  I stopped pacing. "Holy shit. That"s amazing, Amy." I thought for a second, then added, "Bet big pharma"s going to be pissed with you though."
  
  Amy laughed sharply. "They can go fuck themselves. You have any idea what the markup is on some drugs? It"s nuts."
  
  "I know, right? Anyone, I"ve been messing with insects and stuff, and now I"m going to try with lab rats and stuff. Work my way back up to people, you know?"
  
  "Sounds sensible." I fiddled with the insects around the house as I talked- ant colonies buried in the backyard, spiders spinning silk in the secret room by the basement, a wasp hive in the tree by the side.
  
  Amy paused for a moment, then lowered her voice. "Pretend you didn"t hear this, but Shadow Stalker"s gone AWOL."
  
  "Really?"
  
  "Yup. They did a whole investigation on her after her little fit- they found a bunch of stuff on her phone that proves she violated her probation, but when they went to grab her, she jumped out a window and ran. She dumped her costume in an alleyway, her family hasn"t seen her- she"s on the run."
  
  "Holy hell," Quarrel said. "Guess she"s screwed."
  
  "The PRT"s still figuring out if they"re going to go public with it. You can imagine they don"t want this in the news unless they have no choice."
  
  "Can"t say I don"t understand their reasoning," I admitted. The Butchers were laughing themselves sick inside my head- the other villains in town would jump on that like rats on cheese. It"d be an awkward situation at the very minimum.
  
  Which reminded me. "Hey, Amy, I forgot to tell you," I said carefully, "I ran into Glory Girl when I took down Krieg."
  
  Amy was quiet for a moment. "Ah."
  
  "She was pretty worried about you," I added.
  
  "Mm."
  
  "I didn"t tell her anything about us, and I told her you needed time, but... If you want, I could be a go-between or something. Pass messages on so you don"t have to see her just yet. Or whatever you need."
  
  Amy"s breath was the only sound on the line for a long moment. "I"ll think about it," she said eventually. "It"s not that I want to avoid her, I"m just... not in the right place to see her."
  
  "Fair enough."
  
  There was a rustle from Amy"s end. "Well, I should go. I"ll leave you to it."
  
  "Talk to you soon," I promised.
  
  "Bye."
  
  "Bye.
  
  I hung up and tossed the phone onto my bed. Dad was cooking downstairs, and it smelled like it was almost ready. I headed downstairs, figuring I could at least set the table.
  
  I checked on the insects again. The spiders were either gorging themselves on fleas and flies and other bugs I didn"t need, or spinning silk like mad. I was thinking of adding more layers to the Undersider"s costumes- or just keeping some silk in reserve for anything that might come up.
  
  The ants were doing well- I had several queens laying eggs while the workers dug more and more tunnels under the backyard.
  
  And the wasps-
  
  I frowned. The wasps were bumping into something. One of them got swatted away by a gloved hand.
  
  I pulled more bugs to the area to get a clearer view, and saw a person in a hockey mask and a hooded black cloak, crouched in our tree, staring at the kitchen window where Dad was cooking.
  
  More bugs slipped over their body- I felt bits of padding, tough boots... and a pair of crossbows, loaded with bolts. I drew a few wasps together for precision, and saw one crossbow was loaded with a broadhead bolt, while the other had a bolt with a pronged head and cross-shaped flare, the shaft filled with liquid.
  
  "The fuck is Shadow Stalker doing here?" I asked, coming to a halt at the foot of the stairs.
  
  "Revenge," Butcher said immediately. "She probably blames you for fucking up and getting kicked out of the kiddy squad. Now she"s here for payback."
  
  "How the hell did she find out Taylor"s address?" Anchorage asked.
  
  "Questions later," Vladimir said. "Grab the phone and call for help."
  
  "Danny"s still downstairs," Flinch warned.
  
  I dithered for a moment- run back upstairs and call reinforcements, or ensure Dad was out of the line of fire?
  
  My worry for Dad won out- I couldn"t be sure what would set Shadow Stalker off, and I wanted him safe. I was reasonably confident that I could knock her out by making it look like a lucky accident- or just use silat. It wasn"t like she knew anything about Taylor Hebert.
  
  "Hey Dad? Do you want me to set the table or something?" I called, padding down the last few steps and into the kitchen.
  
  Dad straightened up from checking the oven. "Thanks, Taylor, that"d be-"
  
  Shadow Stalker"s hand came up- She squeezed the trigger, and there was a crack as the bolt smashed through the window and hit Dad in the shoulder.
  
  Dad roared in pain and shock, stumbling forward, catching himself on the table. I leapt forward and grabbed him as his legs gave out.
  
  "Dad!" I checked the bolt- glass and liquid, a tranquiliser, thank god- and hastily pulled it out. Dad jerked and yelped.
  
  "No no, Dad, stay awake," I babbled, checking the wound with bloodsight. He was going to have one hell of a bruise, but the bolt had stopped just past the skin. Not a serious wound.
  
  Dad"s eyelids were flickering. The tranquiliser was strong stuff- even with a small dose, he was losing consciousness rapidly.
  
  "Fuck!" I grabbed Dad under the armpits and dragged him out of the kitchen, towards the living room and the landline phone. I just had to call the PRT number and hold out- maybe I"d get lucky and Shadow Stalker would run rather than risk being caught.
  
  "Here"s hoping," Bearskin muttered. I acknowledged the odds with a grimace and pulled bugs into my room through the open window. If I had to use everything, I"d use everything.
  
  The insects on Shadow Stalker blinked out of my perception- I flicked into bloodsight on instinct. A second later, a shadowy figure came through the back door, firing bolts on the move. Danger sense screamed like a fire alarm.
  
  I dropped to the floor, throwing myself over Dad"s body to protect him. I felt both bolts whizz overhead and thud into the walls.
  
  I still had the bolt she"d hit Dad with- I hurled it at her, Quarrel"s aiming power sending it to centre mass. It passed through her without issue and buried itself in a cabinet door, but I was already moving.
  
  The problem with crossbows was that they took too long to load in combat. I grabbed a lamp off the side table and hurled it at her. Shadow Stalker dodged to the side, turning solid and grabbing bolts out of the holsters at her hips.
  
  "Come on!" Nemean roared.
  
  As the lamp shattered against the wall, I hooked a foot under the coffee table and kicked up. Remotes and magazines and coasters poured off it as it flipped towards Shadow Stalker, who shrieked and switched to her Breaker state.
  
  The table passed through her and lodged into the doorway, and I followed up by throwing myself at her, swinging a fist at her jaw.
  
  As long as I was attacking her, I could force her to stay in shadow state without being able to reload. Meanwhile, the bugs upstairs poured onto the bed, a team of ants air-dropped by wasps and flies to flip the phone over. Now I just had to figure out how to press the power button with insects.
  
  Shadow Stalker stepped back, floating lightly across the room, creating a gap. I kicked a fallen coffee mug at her- it went right through her head. I saw wisps of her smoky form spreading out from the back of her head, like an exit wound.
  
  "Keep at it!" Rotter shouted.
  
  I threw myself at Shadow Stalker, chaining punches, kicks, elbows- whatever I could. Passing through her body gave me a chill, like a cold breeze.
  
  Stalker kept jumping all over the place, trying to create distance, but I pursued, jumping off the couch, pushing off the walls, whatever it took.
  
  Upstairs, the bugs had grabbed a pencil and levered it upright, pressing the eraser into the power button at the bottom of the screen. Wasps and flies lined up along its length, then a second layer gripping onto them, and a third layer after them. At my signal, they all beat their wings, pressing down as hard as they could.
  
  Something clicked, and the phone"s screen turned on, a bright light through the eyes of my insects. I didn"t bother to hide the triumph on my face.
  
  Shadow Stalker came to a halt as my next punch went right through her head, up to the elbow. I got the distinct impression that she was glaring at me.
  
  Then she turned and threw herself at the kitchen doorway- which was blocked by the coffee table.
  
  Fuck.
  
  I threw myself at the phone on the side table- it had been knocked askew during the fight, but it was still plugged. I snatched up the handset, barely noticing that my nails had sharpened a bit, and stabbed the buttons with my finger; 9-1-1.
  
  I grabbed a bit of broken ceramic off the floor- a shard of the lamp. If Shadow Stalker came through the door, I"d go for the stomach.
  
  I could see her with bloodsight, hastily cocking and reloading her crossbows. The phone was droning in my air, dialling for a connection.
  
  There was a click. "911, what is the nature of your emergency?" asked a man in a flat, bored voice.
  
  "Fuck, I"ve never been so happy to hear the cops!" Tactical crowed.
  
  My phone was still on upstairs. I directed the ants to hold the pencil over the call icon and pressed down again. I remembered something when I"d been sorting my phone out- it had a redial function. I could double my chances.
  
  "There"s a cape in my house!" I shouted down the line. "They shot my dad with a crossbow, he"s out cold! Send somebody!"
  
  "Oh fuck!" the operator said. "Uh- shit, one second, I"ll contact the PRT. What"s your address?"
  
  I saw Shadow Stalker"s silhouette twitch at my words. She stood there for a second, crossbows at her sides- then, abruptly, she turned and walked away. I saw her form flicker away as she went to shadow, then flicker back on the other side of the back door.
  
  Safe. I rattled my address off to the operator, who promised that a PRT response was on its way.
  
  Upstairs, my phone was dialling Amy. I was about to cancel the call when the insects on Shadow Stalker moved.
  
  She wasn"t leaving. She was circling around the house, coming around to the front door. I swivelled to track her movement.
  
  Upstairs, the call connected. I heard Amy"s voice through the hundreds of insects on my bed. "Hey Taylor, what"s up?"
  
  As if on cue, Shadow Stalker took a running start and leapt through the door in shadow state, turning to point a crossbow at me.
  
  I was already ducking, flicking the ceramic shiv at her gut in return.
  
  Neither shot did a damn thing- her bolt missed, my shiv passed right through her. I dropped the phone, and we both leapt at each other.
  
  I swiped at her eyes, but she didn"t even flinch- she just stepped right through me. I whirled around, kicking out at her head, toes coming out through her face.
  
  Shadow Stalker dropped, and then shoved one hand into Dad"s stomach. The hand that was holding an entire crossbow.
  
  Stupid! I"d thought she"d focus on me, and I"d thought that Dad was out of sight, lying tucked away next to the couch.
  
  I snarled and started forward-
  
  "If I let go, this"ll fuse with your daddy"s guts. Want to see how long it"ll take to kill him?"
  
  Shadow Stalker"s voice was indistinct in her shadow form- echoing and muffled. But the sheer menace in her voice was clear as crystal.
  
  I forced myself to stop, even though I wanted nothing more in the moment than to crush her skull.
  
  "You can do it!" Firecracker shouted. "Just rush her!"
  
  "She can kill Danny on reflex," Stoneknapper countered. "She"s got us by the balls."
  
  "That"s right," Shadow Stalker crooned. "Now step back."
  
  I snarled at her, teeth on the verge of becoming fangs. I could hit her with pain, or teleport, or move a bunch of insects to her.
  
  And none of it would keep Dad alive.
  
  Hating myself with every millimetre, I took a step back. Then another, as Shadow Stalker gestured impatiently.
  
  "Taylor?" Amy asked from my phone. "Are you there? Is this a butt dial?"
  
  "Good," Shadow Stalker said. "Now don"t try to dodge this, or dear old Dad"s going to be as dead as can be." She raised the other crossbow- the one with the tranquiliser bolt.
  
  With Needler"s regeneration, I could probably hang on for a few seconds- long enough for Shadow Stalker to pull her hand out of Dad, and for me to kill her.
  
  The thought was still horrifying, but a lot less than it would have been with any other hero. Shadow Stalker had come into my house; had attacked my dad; had escalated to lethal force. I was pretty sure this wouldn"t be a blip on my conscience.
  
  Shadow Stalker pulled the trigger, and the bolt thudded into my chest, right under my left breast.
  
  "Oh no," Flinch gasped
  
  "Can"t believe she managed to hit such a small target," I thought inanely.
  
  The bolt had definitely broken the skin- I could actually feel the liquid seeping into me. I pretended to stumble from the impact, wobbling dramatically. I flailed my arms to knock the bolt out, and it clattered to the ground.
  
  Then my leg actually folded, and I dropped to all fours, the bolt snapping under my knee.
  
  Fuck.
  
  Colours were starting to brighten, turning the living room into a surreal painting. The edges of things were blurring, dripping and melting into each other. My blood was turning to lead in my veins, stiffening my body and weighing me down.
  
  And Shadow Stalker was waiting, patiently holding her shadow state while I wilted.
  
  "Fuck fuck fuck," Tock Tick chanted.
  
  "You have to act!" Muramasa shouted. "Get up!"
  
  I could still hear Amy"s voice upstairs, starting to echo weirdly. "Taylor?"
  
  I sucked in a breath, as hard as I could. Then I bellowed at the top of my lungs, hard enough that I felt my throat straining. I couldn"t form words- all I had was rage and despair.
  
  My arms gave out, and I flopped to the floor. With my cheek pressed into the carpet, I saw Shadow Stalker finally stand up and switch back to flesh and blood.
  
   I tried to teleport to her, but I couldn"t make it work. It was like trying to hold a greased balloon- it just slipped and slid right out of my grasp.
  
  Pain, decay, claws- even my insects weren"t responding, still stuck on my last order of dialling the phone.
  
  "There we go," Shadow Stalker crooned, hunkering down to look at me. "Sleep, Hebert."
  
  "Well," Quarrel said as my eyelids drifted close, "Looks like we"re getting a new ride after all."
  
  "Looks like it," Butcher agreed as I fell into darkness.
  
  End Notes
   I'm afraid I might have missed any last-minutes I made from the final draft to actually posting on Spacebattles. I guess I'll just have to double-check everything.
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