Even so he couldn't break off to try and secure the prisoners. Even with three of their capes not in the fight they were more than evenly matched. Crusader's ghosts flew through the wall to his right forcing him to dodge, but he turned his momentum into a spin and activated his new flail launching it out like a comet. Cricket tried to do her usual trick of catching it by the chain only t received a hard impact to the ribs, likely breaking at least on of them, but she wasn't down yet.
Militia fired at the ghost that was chasing him and managed to disrupt the construct, it was one of the few positive power interactions his team had against the master class cape. Lunging forward and striking at Stormtiger with the haft of his polearm he pulled the head of the mace back through Alabaster taking him down for a precious few seconds.
Challenger got another shot off before two ghosts were upon her, forcing her to switch to her axe, cutting one down before blocking the other's spear. It was the other positive power interaction they had between his team and the specters. Stormtiger fended off his blow with an air claw but was almost struck by the returning mace head as well, his personal tornado protecting him by sending it off course.
Another burst of static from Velocity. "I'm fending off Victor, need immediate assistance." He was right. Of course he was only right when it meant things would get worse.
"Delta squad, redirect to the holding cells." Sending multiple squads would just clog the halls, and they were already on the move. He twirled the polearm, extending the flail again to knock aside Cricket's kamas while also detonating an air claw far enough that his armour plating could handle it. It was all he could focus on, the two pit fighters working in tandem to hold him back just barely with the occasional assistance from Kaiser or one of Crusader's ghosts getting past Militia or Challenger.
He wasn't sure how long they maintained that holding pattern, barely dodging blades underfoot, fending off ghosts coming through the walls, and a trio of desperate melees until the stalemate broke.
He heard a ghoulish scream. Battery was down, her foot pinned by a blade as Hookwolf plowed into her. If she hadn't been knocked free by his momentum she almost certainly would have died. Still fending off the two fighters he moved next to her and deployed an emergency containment foam canister to seal her wounds. Unfortunately it would also keep her out of the fight. Not like she was going to get back up anytime soon. Her husband, enraged, grabbed Hookwolf and hurled him out into the bay in response to his wife's injuries, but tore his own hands up in the process. He would also need medical attention fairly soon, but he likely wouldn't die of blood loss before it could clot.
Armsmaster had a coagulant gel just in case, but he would need a moment to administer it. Another shout of pain, Millita had been snuck up on by one of the ghosts and speared in the leg. Now she was hiding behind a pillar trying to apply one of his coagulants he'd given her, a slightly older formula that was painful, but might save her if he had struck an artery. It would definitely keep her in the fight thanks to the stimulants also in the gel.
The doors behind him were slammed open, a quick glance showing Blitz, Krieg, and Victor entering the fight. The next time he tried to deflect Cricket's kamas they sliced through his weapon, and without anything to deflect Stormtiger's follow-up it shattered his armour cutting into him. Both thanks to Blitz. Krieg swung a haymaker into Challenger's jaw dropping her to the ground as Alabaster fired a few rounds into her for good measure. Fortunately she was strong enough they likely weren't more harmful than punches to a regular person.
Velocity must have failed to keep the Empire from getting Othala to the prisoners, letting her healing bring them out of the chemically induced sleep. The Empire had stormed the castle and gotten everything they could have wanted. As he lay on the floor having little energy to do more than roll on his back to at least look them in the eye he heard a quiet pop.
"Heya bossman, I was wondering… wait, why didn't you call for reinforcements? You stubborn prideful man." Standing over him lightly shaking her head, with a grin that grew brighter by the second, she was here. Anima had arrived.
I sped up to get a handle on what was going on. Idly I began healing my fellow heroes as I looked into the villains minds and watched the battle in the past.
Apparently Kaiser was apprehensive about trying to fight me without knowing more, surprisingly smart move for a Nazi, and with my official file locked up tight he wanted to eliminate me from the equation. Then he got a message from an informant about the Heartbreaker operation planned for today. Somehow the operation had a lower security clearance than my own file, I wasn't sure whether to be proud or annoyed by that.
So they assumed that because for the whole day I was technically not on duty in the city it meant I had left the city already. In reality I'd had a nice breakfast with the kids before sending them off to the PRT building downtown. I'd popped by to ask if he or Dragon had any ideas for the new trajectories that I had for my going home project. But that could wait for later, I had Nazi's to crush under my boots.
"It was wise to try and escape my notice, for even together you're no match for me" I announced in my hero voice. I let them feel a growing dread as I stepped forward.
"Surrender now, or prepare to face the wrath of Anima." Yes I know my hero voice is cheesy, but it's fun, can you blame me?
"We have you outnumbered eleven to one, and your comrades are in desperate need of medical attention." In spite of the growing dread Kaiser's voice was steady, years of exposure to Glory Girl likely helped with that.
"Then it will almost be a fair fight." My grin only grew at that line. And so the second round of the fight began.
I amped up my physical speed a bit with my version of Velocity's Shard, not activating the safety that lowered his effect on the world in return for protecting him from what would otherwise be bone-shattering forces. I could go fast enough they couldn't perceive me if I ramped it up all the way, but I wanted a show of force and skill that the city, and maybe one day the world, would remember.
Cricket and Stormtiger were closest to me, earning them the honor of going down first. I punched Cricket in the throat faster than she could react and put a dime sized blunt edged forcefield directly in her windpipe, for Stormtiger I sent a burst of my own aerokinesis his way detonating the claws in his hands. He was resistant enough to it that nothing broke, not even his skin, but he'd need a moment to charge up another attack.
Krieg tried another swing to the back of my head but I sidestepped and elbowed him with the same arm that had punched Cricket, breaking several of his ribs. My other hand made a circular motion reminiscent of the ones Doctor Strange made, as I did a shield formed blocking Victor's last pyrokinetic blast before it ran out, the flames and smoke blocking Victor and Blitz's line of sight. That made Blitz's attempt to solidify the air around me instead create a black haze between us.
I sent off a spray of un-light beams to pop all of the ghosts in the lobby with my right as a purple lasso appeared in my other hand, wrapping around Stormtiger's legs and pulling him to the floor, his wind aura cushioning the blow. A spin and a kick saw him in the air heading towards Alabaster when the whip disappeared and he deflected the bullets for me while also taking both of them out of the fight temporarily. Rune had finished fishing Hookwolf out of the bay and deposited him on the platform to rejoin the fight.
I'd been ignoring Kaiser's attempts to spear me, dancing around them as if they weren't even there. With a stomp and a push similar to a certain Earth Bender I separated his blades from the ground and sent them back at him and the newly returned Hookwolf in a salvo of steel. He raised a wall in time to block but it would stop him from creating any more blades for a little while and Hookwolf would have to go around or through the barrier.
Behind me the smoke cleared and I grabbed Krieg around the neck, interposing him between me and a spray of high-calibre bullets from Victor which harmlessly tapped into him as his automatic defenses slowed them to a halt where they fell to the floor which would look great for the 'camera' as they plinked down one by one. A fresh ghost tried to come up out of the floor to stab me like it had Miss Militia, but my move to put Krieg in the way of the bullets also pulled me out of the way of his stab. I gave it a boot to the head for its efforts and it collapsed into nothingness.
A quick jerking motion that would have done nothing on its own saw Krieg collapse paralyzed as I disconnected the part of his spinal cord responsible for voluntary movements with biokinesis. Unlike a normal broken spinal cord though I left the senses from the rest of his body intact, which wouldn't do much but it would freak him out a little more. Cricket was fully passed out so I removed the shield in her throat and made sure she stayed asleep with another touch of biokinesis.
"He'll live." I said, once again for the camera. Hookwolf charged through the wall of blades heading straight for me. A wave of my hand and a portal opened in front of Alabaster linked to one right behind him, letting him shoot himself in the spine. Now able to see me Victor tried to siphon my skills about as effectively as trying to draw water from a stone, so I ignored him as he reloaded, not wanting to enter melee without his wife's invulnerability.
My eyes glowed brighter for dramatic effect as I held out one arm towards Hookwolf, creating what looked like a black hole in the palm of my hand as he desperately tried to abort his charge. When he pulled to a stop right in front of me I fired it like a railgun at him, creating purple arcs of lightning and a purple tracer behind the faux black hole's path as it sped out the front door before evaporating a few dozen meters away from the PHQ. It speared through him leaving a visible hole clean through him from snout to tail, which unseen to the camera had barely scraped his core, letting out a few little squirts of blood before he patched it up with steel sutures. He toppled over in pain and shock, he had a small chance of getting back up, it depended on the ratio of outrage to fear, so I let him realize with some subtle telepathy that I clearly hadn't missed my shot, I'd known where his core was and chose to spare his life, which I might not do again for the Birdcage bound Changer.
Seeming to harness the residual electricity in the air as sparks were still flying around the path of my shot, I pulled them together into a lightning bolt that took down Stormtiger and caused him to again detonate his claws, this time into Alabaster just as he reset. Blitz had tried to destabilize the apparent black hole but my control was absolute in comparison to him, especially when using my copy of his own Shard but fully unrestricted to counteract his efforts.
The frontal assault stymied for now I turned and launched myself towards Victor and Blitz in a blur, stopping on a dime just before I would have bowled into them, giving them a moment to panic at my sudden proximity to them before clapping their heads together and letting them drop unconsciously to the ground. With the usual biokinetic touch to ensure I didn't have to actually thread the needle between unconscious and dead, simply making it look like I had.
I loosed a pulse of rage into the minds of Rune, Othala, and Crusader bringing them out of their plan to escape with Kaiser and instead into trying to enter the building to retrieve their fallen comrades. A new wave of ghosts poured in through the walls and ceiling as the three of them rushed in through the front door past Kaiser whose cry at their all but suicidal charge to stop was silenced by some sound manipulation. A carefully tuned pulse of un-light erupted and dispelled the ghosts while leaving everyone else unharmed, if briefly hampering their vision.
"This is it Kaiser. The end of the Empire." I said with finality before launching forward again, briefly stopping at each of Othala, Rune, and Crusader, not even giving them the moment of fear I'd afforded Victor and Blitz. This show was purely for Kaiser and the camera. Three quick punches left three unconscious Nazis laying on the floor. I kicked Crusader's spear into the air and then launched it with a punch to the end of the haft into Alabaster, pinning him to the wall and with some subtle telekinesis made him lose his guns at the impact.
Slowly marching up to a seemingly stunned Kaiser my grin that had never left my face gained a slight edge to it that only he would see. I was giving him a special treatment with my biokinesis, letting him watch helplessly as I dismantled his Empire, unable to move or control his own power he was all too aware of what was going on. I was also taunting him with more subtle telepathy, letting him realize just how much I was playing with them, how I was almost certainly going to create another video like I had for all of the other villains I had taken down, and last but certainly not least how I wasn't even going to let him go down fighting.
As I reached him he collapsed to his knees, his head hanging in shame as his arms hung limply at his side. There would be no grand confrontation, or dramatic speech, his end would forever be immortalized as a pathetic and weak excuse for a leader, a whimper as the Empire faded into the night. He wasn't able to resist as I brought his arms behind his back and handcuffed him, nor as I roughly pulled him to his feet and marched him into the cells.
It was kind of terrifying how easily I was managing to kidnap so many people. I just appeared near them, stunned them with a weak use of a Master power, then teleported us to pre-chosen M/S holding cells where I would remove the manipulations Heartbreaker had instilled in their minds. All in all it took a few seconds each, these weren't people he'd ever intended to interact with again, just sleeper agents ready to sow chaos were he to be arrested or killed, so he'd done a pretty sloppy job in my personal opinion. God I must Master way too many people if I'm judging his 'craftsmanship'.
That aside, I made sure to be 'caught' or 'spotted' in a dozen or so cities, little moments like briefly flying by while someone was taking a picture of the skyline, or being seen by a chatty PRT agent while bringing in one of the victims. I wanted a little bit of online momentum and speculation leading up to the reveal that Heartbreaker was dead. There would be sightings of me practically everywhere, some so close together in time people would argue if I was in two places at once.
It was a little astroturfed by yours truly I'll admit, I'd have a sock puppet account recognize me in one thread, or another account comment that they just saw another thread asking the same question but about another city. All in the name of both spreading my name far and wide, but more importantly to build the anticipation for what was happening. It would pretty quickly build momentum, almost creating an ARG sort of experience as people were trying to connect the sightings threads together. A certain AI with a crush on Armsmaster would create a mega-thread for sightings of me with all the info from previous threads collected together to 'stop clogging up the various local boards' which would only spark more discussion as multiple proponents of different theories, that I totally didn't help create, would start debating who was right, in the usual internet fashion.
With how many people he had Mastered over the decades it still took hours at the rate I was going at. Fortunately Heartbreaker wasn't going to be waking up for another couple hours, not too surprised that a hedonist of this level wasn't an early riser. None of his people would see the threads and connect the dots before I got to them either. Again, they weren't a hive mind or even well connected with each other, it's a lot easier to hide them all when they're not constantly communicating with each other, so I wouldn't be risking the operation with my antics.
In the end my final destination was a sleepy little cul de sac on the edge of Montreal that he had taken over. None of them saw me coming, how would they with my Stranger powers, those of them even awake. None of them would get to notice either as I put both guards and early risers to sleep with my own Master powers. It would take a lot of time to deprogram most of these victims, many of whom had been by his side for years, especially the capes he had found useful. They had been made to suffer unendingly, some for decades. Worse, they were made to think they were happy while they had their minds and bodies violated. I wasn't even sure I could fix them fully. The mind was extremely complex. Perhaps my future copy of Heartbreaker's Shard would help undo the harm it had enabled him to do.
But before I called it in I had a little something extra I wanted to do. Fortunately Alec's swiftly growing emotional maturity meant he no longer actually wanted to watch his father die in a dramatic and painful manner, so I didn't have to make this messy for his sake. That isn't to say it won't be painful. A cruel smile spread across my face before I took back control. This wasn't a look I wanted to spread to the world, only the knowledge of his end mattered.
Here at my currently nonexistent mercy was a man who had inflicted one of the worst possible ends to so many lives. He could handle a few moments of suffering in return, right? It was only fair. A quick and painless end was too good for he who had sacrificed his own right to be afforded any decency on the altar of his lusts.
I woke him up, giving him a few moments where he thought everything was normal before he started noticing something was wrong. I'd removed the victims from the house he was in, so to him waking up alone for the first time in decades was eerie and off-putting. The lack of any sounds coming from the house was worse. Then I cranked up his paranoia as I watched him begin to frantically search the house, subtly keeping him from deciding to try looking next-door.
I calmly walked up to him as he tried to reach out to me with his power. Even if he didn't know what was going on or who I was, an attractive female cape was in his house. I let the panic build as he realizes that he can't feel my emotions much less control them. I merely gave him a cruel grin as I took full control of his body.
He dropped to the floor, clutching at his heart. People would later think he died pretty much right then, but unbeknownst to all but me, I was making him relive all the pain, horror, and suffering that he had ever caused, including that which would be experienced soon by his 'wives' once I freed them from his clutches. Sadly I couldn't truly capture all of it, there were decades of pain I was missing as they would have to try and rebuild their lives.
Were I not healing his brain constantly it would have burnt out completely dozens of times before it was over, with my tender care however he got to experience every horror anew, his mind unable to get used to the torment I was subjecting him to. I however chose not to heal his heart attack that the memories had brought on, only keeping him alive through my direct intervention oxygenating his brain so he could experience all of it. He even got to feel what it was like for your body to die before your mind expired thanks to my careful ministrations, a sinking cold feeling that brought a nice extra touch of dread as he could feel the tissues in his body dying without a supply of oxygen.
If he didn't want to suffer so much he shouldn't have been so awful to so many for so long. Every evil visited upon him was his own fault. Even now I might be letting him off too easy.
When the decades of pain were over I let go of his brain, letting him experience suffocating twice over as his dead lungs and heart couldn't pull in any air. It would be recorded that he died of a fear induced heart attack, which I found a fitting end to his legacy. Heartbreaker, dead to a broken heart.
I may not be able to free the women forced into whore houses in Brockton just yet, but I could save these ones from a similar torment. It would have to be enough. Now their suffering had been avenged.
A few hours after Heartbreaker's death the conversation online was dying down without any new sightings of me. Speculation could only go so far after all, so I threw some gasoline on the fire.
♦ Topic: Official Announcement: North America: Heartbreaker
In: Boards ► Earth Bet ► North America
Anima (Original Poster) (Verified Cape) (Protectorate ENE) (Verified From Another World)
Posted On Jan 8th 2011:
I see people have been wondering what I've been up to today, so here's the answer.
It's with great joy I bring to you news of the end of a stain on the wonderful nation of Canada. Heartbreaker's demise. Up until this point he has avoided a kill order solely because it would risk more capes falling to the Malicious Master. Even should they succeed it would have risked his network of victims causing havoc across both Canada and the United States, further spreading pain and panic.
But no more. As of today, thanks to new resources available to the Protectorate, an international scale operation across two countries with cooperation between nearly every single PRT branch has successfully defused his web of unwilling spies and saboteurs, alongside freeing the victims he held in his current residence just outside of Montreal Quebec. With no more leverage to threaten even more innocents than he has already harmed, Nikos Vasil, aka Heartbreaker, had his conditional Kill Order go into effect, which I carried out with as much speed and mercy as possible.
In addition, all victims are receiving the best care available to the Protectorate and Guild, where we hope full rehabilitation will be possible for all of them thanks to new options for healing and reverting Master effects.
The identities of any other heroes involved in this operation are being withheld at their request, please respect their privacy and let them remain anonymous.
You can find mirrors of this announcement on other sites and social media [here] [here] and [here].
With a post in the sightings mega-thread linking to the announcement I'd reignited the discussion, now mostly about the news itself, but the sightings thread got a little more action as people realized I must have been in all of those cities catching Heartbreaker's victims. That sparked curiosity, in spite of my request for privacy, on who else was involved in the operation.
Unfortunately for them it was a wild goose chase, I knew that line would get them looking for my nonexistent helpers. Mostly it was to keep it circulating in the public consciousness for longer. Good news was so rare on Earth Bet I wanted to make it last. This would keep it around until the reveals that heroes and family once lost to Heartbreaker's lust and greed were indeed healed and would be returning to their old lives where possible. Heartbreaker unfortunately purposefully ruined people's lives, cutting off connections, embezzling funds from their jobs, and breaking off relationships in a way that could be mistaken for natural.
It would be another week or two before that really began happening though as the PRT were going to extensively put them through M/S screening before they let them return home and before relatives were allowed to start spreading the good news. Not that this was enough to stem the tide of horrible things going on around the world and clogging up the news cycle but every bit of hope counted.
As I watched the feeds blow up with more optimism than pessimism I felt kind of good about today. For all that the Empire had been quite the performance they were still super-Nazis and even without my help the ENE weren't going to be losing them to just Fenja and Menja. Night and Fog were back in Europe right now, and Purity was an independent Nazi that hated her ex enough that she wouldn't try to spring them.
On the other hand, dealing with Heartbreaker was almost free of the usual pageantry my work involved. The only performative part to this was building that anticipation so more people would be able to appreciate the good I had done excising the cancerous growth that was Nikos. Even so it felt a little hollow, there was no challenge to any of it, no feeling of triumph, just a small satisfaction that people would be better off now than before I came to help.
I had healed his children as well as I could, but I hesitated to take them into my house as I had Alec. He had sought out an escape from his father's debauchery. Was it right to blame them for failing to escape? No, but I knew some of them hadn't wanted to leave. Those who did I almost did decide to take with me, but I was already straining my ability to care for six kids. These ones were mostly younger, so maybe it would be easier to rehabilitate them. I hoped I wouldn't have to come after any of them. Instead my direct parentage I found heroes who would be able to raise them best, partially because they were immune to their powers, partially because they were good people. Hopefully they would follow my recommendations
With that done I got back to work on curing another of his captives. It was slow going, but every time one of them was able to wake with tears of joy at their newfound freedom instead of grief at what had been done to them it warmed my heart just a little more.
The entity known to the world as the Butcher became aware of Anima when one of her Teeth mentioned that Heartbreaker had been killed by a member of the Protectorate. She'd taken his phone and thanks to enough of the collective being interested at least somewhat to hear about the demise of a bastard who had been around since the earliest days of the Teeth.
Alice figured there was no harm in reading up on some random hero offing him. They almost lost interest when the official posts had no juicy information on the kill, nor were there any unofficial posts either. Apparently somehow the fight with the whore-lord and his army of concubines against this Protectorate raid didn't spill out into the streets as they took potshots at the heroes. Probably whatever secret weapon they had. Not that she had to worry about it, the Protectorate pussies hardly bothered to fight her unless she was really causing havoc, they wouldn't want to risk anything like that against her.
Then one of them noticed that the pinned thread for NA said she uploaded a video of a fight against the Empire. Hopefully she iced Max, he was a prick even years ago that had only gotten more insufferable.
It opened on Max bloviating about how he was the good guy and was being nice offering them a way out. Then the brawl broke out. The film was clearly intended to show it as a valiant last stand, but she'd seen through the editing. There were seeming shifts back and forth between each side, but she was pretty sure some of that was shown out of order. She was also certain some footage had been stitched to add time to the fight. There wasn't anything to prove it, no easy to spot wounds disappearing or a clock in the background.
But any fight with two to one odds that didn't have someone like her or Alexandria on one side was basically a freebie for the side that won the numbers game that badly. She was kind of impressed how long they managed to stretch out a fight that had to have only been a minute or two at most.
Maybe it was more that they went through every hero's battles sequentially instead of showing clearly that they went down rapidly back to back. Effectively it just showed the Brockton Protectorate getting their asses handed to them while a couple Nazis broke out their comrades. The collective jeered at how the PRT had somehow let this film get out. It was interesting enough, and a couple cheers were had as the heroes went down but then Alice heard something hadn't heard in years when Anima made her appearance.
Silence.
"Wait, why didn't you call for reinforcements? You stubborn prideful man." In spite of the odds she was calm as she challenged almost a dozen capes all by her lonesome with a smile on her face. Somehow she made a stupid outfit look cool. Even in a video, which could even make the most badass suit look silly in bad lighting or some shit.
As the fight progressed and she unleashed power after power she could feel the collective's growing interest. The only things she seemed to consistently use were her speed and strength, not a single blow hit her as she danced between the raindrops.
They cheered as Brad got a motherfucking black hole shot through him before being disappointed when he didn't die to it.
Almost every blow of her own felled another foe, every move she made had no wasted energy yet still looked good. She almost blurred between opponents, capitalizing on their every mistake. Especially the mistake of trusting in their powers against her might.
What an excellent Butcher she would make.
The brief silence was once again filled with a cacophony as the Butchers agreed, she would become their host, one way or another.
Alice felt her dread grow. She knew being stuck as a voice in someone else's head was a horrible fate, she had thirteen voices that had told her so since the day she had inherited the mantle. Not to mention that even without pain dying was still distressing. She had two memories already of the sensation of fading into the blackness. She suspected she was about to get a third.
Then she would get to experience the un-life the Butchers were infamous for.
She knew the collective well after all these years, even before she inherited she knew them. When they got something they agreed on there wasn't a chance that the current host wouldn't end up doing it.
Fuck, fine. But I'm going out my own way! We're gonna have a party, then a road trip over to Brockton Bay, and then I'm going out in style if you fuckers are so dead-set on making her the next Butcher.