"After over a year of investigation and bureaucratic and political back-and-forth, the trial of parahuman Paige Mcabee, more commonly known by her stage name of Bad Canary, finally came to an end yesterday.
Miss Mcabee was on trial for the mutilation of her ex-boyfriend using her Master power. However, new evidence presented at the end of the trial revealed that the mutilation was an accident, as Miss Mcabee had no knowledge of the full extent of her own power due to being reticent to test its limits for fear of damaging her reputation.
Despite initial pushes by the prosecution to send Miss Mcabee to the Birdcage (in violation of the three-strikes rule as well as the fact that numerous villains with far worse crimes to their names haven't earned such a sentence, including other Masters), the verdict was a substantial fine, compensation to her victim for physical and moral damages, and a period of one year in a parahuman prison, during which Miss Mcabee will be closely monitored for signs of using her power.
However, several unconstitutional abuses took place during the trial, such as Miss Mcabee being denied the right to choose her own lawyer, or to meet with the one assigned to her, to say nothing of being presented to the jury bound and gagged, despite not being known to possess a Brute rating. This journalist believes this to have been caused by Miss Mcabee's physical mutations, which include feathers within her hair, and which reminded people of the Simurgh – making her a convenient scapegoat for political interests seeking an easy win to reinforce their position in the electorate.
While being wary of Masters is perfectly understandable, and of course all reasonable precautions should be taken, there's nothing which should have prevented Miss Mcabee to use some manner of text-to-speech device to speak in her own defense, to say nothing of her being cut off from her assets while the trial was still ongoing, in blatant violation of the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty'.
Such profiling and manipulation of the course of justice is an insult to the principles on which our great nation was founded, and not only risks pushing other unaligned parahumans against the rest of society, it may bring back the darkest days of our country's history at at time where, after years of struggle, the light of hope has finally reappeared with the death of the Hopekiller …"
From The New York Times, March 6th, 2011. Written by a journalist who found a USB stick on his desk one morning, with a note alongside it mentioning that this was calling in a favor owed and asking that the story inside be run as-is.
One week had passed since Lasombra had broken the Teeth, neutralized the Butcher, and wiped out the Slaughterhouse Nine – all in a single night. The news cycle, who after the last few decades was starving for any bit of good news, was still covering the events, as well as the various celebrations and speeches that had been made across the United States as a result. With the Slaughterhouse dead, the news were feeling a lot more comfortable talking about them, as there was no more risk of Jack Slash taking umbrage to the coverage and deciding to teach a lesson to the media by inflicting some unspeakable and very public fate on those responsible.
Unlike with the celebration at Canberra, Lasombra hadn't shown up at any of the ceremonies honoring the victims of the Nine, probably because there had been so damn many the Endkiller's schedule would have been filled just keeping up.
Things in Brockton Bay had mostly returned to normal, although 'normal' these days was very different from what it had been last year. For a start, there hadn't been a gunfight in ages. Every parahuman gang in the city was gone (the few minor groups with parahuman members who hadn't been swallowed up by the Empire or the ABB having either fled the city or been captured by the Protectorate now that they weren't busy keeping the city from falling apart), and regular criminals were wisely keeping their heads down out of fear of drawing Lasombra's attention to themselves. The only criminal activity on the rise was pickpockets preying on tourists.
In other words, it was a terrible city for a pair of parahuman villains with a long history of property damage and physical injuries to live in. And yet Uber and Leet were still there. Until now, the pair had avoided being defeated by the Endkiller and left for the PRT to arrest by the simple expedient of not going on any of their usual outings since Lasombra had shown up and not so much upended the status quo as broken it to pieces over his knee. They'd been able to afford it thanks to their last score, but the money from that was drying up fast. Soon, they would need to find a new source of funds or risk going out on another stream-slash-heist.
Technically, there was nothing preventing them from doing just that. Lasombra was only active during the night – unless you were the Simurgh, but they weren't crazy enough to think they were capable of anything that would warrant the same kind of response as an Endbringer. So they could have gone out on another heist while the sun was high in the sky and be confident they wouldn't face the Endkiller. But fucking Legend was in the city now, and the rest of the Protectorate didn't have the other gangs as a more important problem to worry about.
Packing up and leaving town was tempting, and there were plenty of people online thinking that was precisely what the duo had done, and that this was the reason for their silence. But it wasn't, because the moment the news of Canberra had begun to spread, Leet had gotten an idea.
For the past three weeks and change, the Tinker had been working on a special camera, one that should be able to capture Lasombra's image. Selling that would net them enough cash to move out of Brockton Bay and start operating elsewhere – hell, depending on who they managed to sell to, it might even be enough to retire. Lasombra was the most famous cape in the world at the moment, and people were scrambling for any shred of information on him.
Uber had checked online when Leet had first proposed this idea, and even the paintings drawn by people who'd seen Lasombra in Canberra (either during the Endbringer attack or the ensuing ceremony) were going for absurd prices. A whole bunch of enterprising Australian artists had made the trip to the capital just on the chance that Lasombra would show up, and they were making bank right now selling hand-drawn portraits of the Endkiller. They were also giving half the profits to help rebuild Canberra, because nobody wanted to be accused of taking advantage of an Endbringer attack to make money – well, nobody with any sense, at least.
The fact most people thought Uber and Leet had left Brockton Bay was definitely working to their advantage, too. Right now, with the Teeth taken care of, the two of them were the only villains in Brockton Bay, apart from the Undersiders, but one of their fans had told Uber about Tattletale walking into the PRT HQ and coming out the day after Lasombra's meeting with Alexandria, so clearly things had changed on that front. The Protectorate likely still knew they were in town, but nobody wanted to risk attacking a Tinker in his lair, so unless they did something monumentally stupid, they should be fine to finish the project.
Then, of course, they would need to find Lasombra, take the picture, and escape without being beaten up and left for the PRT to scrap off the pavement.
Alright, Uber had to admit that the plan had more holes in it than Swiss Cheese. Once Leet finished the device, they were going to spend some time refining it. Hell, for all they knew Lasombra would be game with letting them photograph him, if only to see whether there was a way around his Stranger effect … yeah, no, that wasn't going to happen. Leet's inventions had a reputation, and standing still while one of them was pointed at you wasn't something anybody smart would do, unfortunately.
But if nothing else, they could always sell the device itself; even with the … dubious reputation of Leet's work, there had to be at least one news outlet that would fork over a mountain of cash for the opportunity to be the one to present the world with its first, Tinkertech-enabled photograph of the Endkiller.
That assumed Leet could finish the device, but so far, the building process was going well. Bizarrely well, in fact. Uber wouldn't say that out loud in his friend's presence, but he'd gotten used to things exploding and otherwise going wrong while he Tinkered, and none of that was happening this time. It reminded Uber of when they'd just started out, in fact. Of course, Leet had never built anything like the camera – the Stitch was the closest thing he could think of – so maybe that was the reason. They'd figured out some time ago that Leet could only build any one thing once, which had been an … unpleasant revelation, especially for Leet, who'd realized his power effectively had an expiration date.
Uber was distracted from his wandering thoughts by a beeping noise. He went to check the computer put in a corner of the lab – far enough away from where Leet worked that it was relatively safe from being dismantled for parts, while close enough that Uber could hear the alarm.
"Someone's at the door," said Uber, frowning as he looked at the footage from the security camera.
"Hmm ? Who ?" Leet asked distractedly, half-buried inside the guts of his device.
"Don't know. It looks like … some old lady ? Huh, that's weird." He switched quickly between the different cameras they'd set up around the base, but none of them showed anything else strange. "She's alone, maybe she's lost or something. We got a lot of new people coming into town since Canberra, maybe she's one of them. I'm going to check it out. Don't set anything on fire until I come back !"
"Yeah, yeah, screw you too," Leet called back.
With a chuckle, Uber left the lab, making sure to close the door behind him (he'd learned that lesson the last time they'd needed to get the stench of some chemical spill out of the entire lair). He went to the entrance, where he tapped the twelve-digit combination that caused it to unlock, before pulling it open with ease thanks to the weeks he'd spent using his power to figure out the best way to bulk out not long after his Trigger.
The old woman was still there, looking up at him. This close, Uber saw that she wasn't that old : it was just that her hair was white and silver, and her face was emaciated like someone who hadn't been getting enough food for a long time. He would think she was a homeless woman if not for the clothes she was wearing, which were clean and neat.
"Hello ?" he asked tentatively.
"Ah, there you are, child," she smiled up at him. "I have been looking for you."
"Hmm, Mrs ?" Uber said, scratching his head. "I think you are lost. I don't know who you think I am, but I don't know you. Do you need help ?"
Shit, did he need to call 911 and tell them someone with dementia needed to be returned to her family ? He would if he needed to, but that would be, like, totally lame – what kind of villain called emergency services to his lair ?
"Oh, I assure you, I'm not lost," the woman said. "But it is kind of you to offer. I have been looking for you, Uber."
Immediately, Uber's back straightened and his gaze sharpened as he looked at the woman. He couldn't see any weapon on her person, but that didn't mean much. His hand moved toward the emergency button near the door : if he pushed it, it would slam a metal barrier across the threshold and activate the alarm in the base, loud enough to rouse Leet from his Tinker fugue.
"Who are you ?" he asked carefully.
"I am Christine Mathers," she replied, "but you can call me Mama."
Mathers … I swear I've heard that name before – fuck !
Back when he'd first decided to become a villain, but before he'd met Leet, Uber had spent a few days researching every known villain organisation in America, to see if there was one he felt like joining. His Internet research (boosted by his power) had led him to some wild places, which he'd only browsed out of some sick fascination – and one of these had been the Fallen.
There wasn't much information about the Fallen online that you could get without being put on all kinds of lists, but Uber had found out that they were divided in three clans, each claiming to worship a different Endbringer above the two others. And the clan-slash-gang which worshipped the Simurgh was called Clan Mathers.
It didn't take a Thinker to guess why someone with that name would be in Brockton Bay, or that their intentions would be anything but good for everyone living in the city. Uber went to press the door's emergency button, but his shock had delayed him too long, and before he could do so, everything around him suddenly disappeared. There was only a yawning abyss of pure blackness, which his inner ear insisted was utterly empty even though the part of his brain that wasn't screaming in terror told him he couldn't feel the air whipping against his skin. What he did feel was the solid floor beneath his feet, then the touch of fingers against his cheek – and then there was pain.
Now, Uber had been in the villain business for a few years. He'd helped Leet build his Tinkertech, been far too close to the devices when something went wrong for comfort more than once, and gotten the stuffing beaten out of him by heroes more often than he liked to admit. He wasn't a novice when it came to being hurt – but this pain went beyond anything he had ever experienced. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, could do nothing but hurt.
After an unknowable amount of time, the darkness receded, and the pain along with it. Uber found himself laying on the ground, looking up at the woman. His vision was blurry from the pain, but he could see she was smiling – a cruel smile, one that told him she was enjoying doing this to him. He wanted to get up and punch that fucking smile off her face, but he couldn't move – his body was shaking from the shock of the agony, and even breathing sent needles of white-hot agony through his chest.
"If you try anything, there will be more of that," the woman promised as she stepped across the threshold and over Uber's twitching form. "Now, where is your friend, Leet ?"
To his shame, Uber's first instinct was to tell her. To give her everything she wanted, just so that she wouldn't bring that horrible pain again.
But for all his flaws, Uber was no traitor. His loyalty to Leet was true, even though he was self-aware enough to know he could probably have achieved a lot more if he hadn't stayed by his friend's side over the years, could have been more than a joke villain regarded with a mise of derision and contempt.
With a snarl on his face, he pushed the pain and the fear down, and leapt to his feet, desperation pushing him to move faster than he'd ever had before.
Immediately, the darkness came back, as did the pain. But the woman's power, however it worked, couldn't stop the momentum of his body – and Uber hadn't aimed his lunge at her, knowing it would be useless. Instead, he slammed into the emergency button, and the alarm blared, loud enough that even a Tinker caught in a fugue wouldn't be able to ignore it while also blocked by the thick door that slammed right behind the woman.
A shame, that, Uber thought. If she'd been standing just a small distance further back, she'd have been crushed to pulp. That may have been somewhat anticlimactic, but Uber would have taken the win and gone to church every week for … at least a month or two.
"Oh dear," the monster tsked, shaking her head and looking annoyed at the noise. "That wasn't nice at all, Uber. I see you need to be taught what happens to disobedient children."
There was more pain. The sensation of cold needles plunging into his eyes, while red-hot iron nails raked over his back. He heard screams, and it took him a moment to recognize some of them as his own.
Eventually, the pain receded to a level that let him think. By then, the sound of the alarm had stopped. He heard hurried footsteps, and then the monster's voice :
"Ah, Leet. There you are. I need you to do something for me, dear."
"You crazy bitch," the voice of his friend snarled, "Get away from my friend or I'm gonna –"
Again, pain. Again, Uber convulsed and screamed.
"Fuck ! Okay, okay ! I'll do what you want ! Just stop hurting him !"
The agony receded, but not the darkness. Uber couldn't move, couldn't do anything but twitch and weep.
"What do you want ?" he heard Leet ask.
"We will have to work on your manners as well, I see." Despite himself, Uber shuddered as he half-expected another wave of pain, but none came, not yet. "For now, however, I need you to build me something that can kill Lasombra. You can do that for me, can't you, dear ? Because if you can't, then I'm going to need to … motivate you until you find your inspiration."
"Our medical exams of Riley revealed nothing untoward. She appears to be a completely ordinary nine-years old girl, apart from the developed Corona Pollentia in her brain indicating an active parahuman power. From our analysis, the changes to her appearance extend all the way to her DNA, which puts Panacea within the upper limits of our predictions for her power.
One of our memory readers has also checked her over, and confirmed Lasombra's work. Her memories were removed in a manner unlike any Master power we know of, to the point that there is no chance of them returning and Bonesaw making a comeback, barring Riley following in her previous self's footsteps for her own reasons. It is unclear whether the memories were destroyed or transferred over, which given the advanced knowledge of parahuman powers Bonesaw was known to possess, is a subject I advise we ask Lasombra about in the future.
I've planned to take her off her anaesthetics and let her wake up naturally by the end of next week, with our devices ensuring there's no muscular degradation between now and then. Contessa told me that the appropriate preparations will be complete by that point, and the girl will be your business, Legend. Given your stated intentions where she is concerned and stated opinion of my diplomatic skills, I believe it would be appropriate for you to be present for her awakening."
Extract from an internal Cauldron report, written by Doctor Mother on March 11th, 2011.
Elijah Mathers, known to most who were aware of his existence as Valefor, looked into the eyes of the people his brethren were bringing into the room, and reached out to them with his gift. There were three of them this time, two men and one woman, who were held in place by strong arms and the threat of the weapons the other faithful in the room were carrying. Under his gaze, they stopped struggling, their minds opened to the truths the Fallen parahuman spoke to them.
The Fallen had been doing this for several days now, even as more of the faithful arrived in the city, bringing with them weapons from caches scattered across the country. The entire hotel was under their control, with the staff having been illuminated and ordered to tell anyone who tried to get a room that they were full – which was true, as the entire building was used by the faithful in one way or another. To be safe, Valefor reinforced their orders every day; the risk of permanent brain damage was something he was more than willing to take.
Mama was elsewhere in this city of blasphemers (at least physically; spiritually, of course, she was always with him, just like she was always with every single one of her flock), making sure Leet and Uber wouldn't do anything foolish while they worked on the device they needed to bring down the Pretender. In time, they would learn the truth of the Holy Endbringers and realize Mama had been helping them all along, but for now, Valefor's mother had no choice but to enforce her will with the rod. All it would take was one phone call to the PRT before they were ready, and their entire plan would collapse – and unlike the thralls Valefor was creating, Leet needed to keep his wits in order to fulfil Mama's orders.
So Mama had made sure their two new blessed recruits knew that she was always watching, that she'd know the moment they tried to betray her, and that the punishment for such an attempt would be both terrible and shared. Against Elijah's advice, Mama had gone to recruit them alone, saying that they needed to catch them by surprise to avoid losing many faithful to the perilous task of assaulting a Tinker's workshop. It wouldn't have been the first time they did that, but while the faithful were never afraid to martyr themselves in the Holy Endbringers' name, doing so in Brockton Bay risked drawing attention to them, and that was the one thing they needed to avoid for now.
It was the same reason why they only acted during the day, taking people off the street and bringing them to Valefor or Mama, while making sure to avoid the Protectorate's so-called 'heroes' on their regular patrols (which was made very easy by Mama's blessing, which let her see through the eyes of her unaware thralls across the city and communicate with her flock without any risk of the communications being intercepted). It was the same reason why the visitors who came knocking on the hotel's doors weren't taken or harmed in any way, even if it would have been so easy to have them disappear. Fortunately, the Fallen had a lot of experience in finding people who wouldn't be immediately missed if they vanished, and Brockton Bay was overflowing with tourists come to partake in the city's heresy against the Endbringers.
It was said that Lasombra could smell fear and pain; that it was how he had sensed the presence of the Slaughterhouse Nine, all the way across several states. Mama thought it likely that the rumors were exaggerating, as they always were, and that Lasombra had instead been warned by some contact of his in Bluetown, but still, it was best to be careful. One of the few truths to be found in the false holy books of the unbelievers was that the divine helped those who helped themselves; the Endbringers only took the worthy as their servants, and that meant proving one's devotion through action, not just words.
So Valefor spoke to the people who were brought before him, and by the time they were given their instructions, along with their guns and their suicide vests, they weren't afraid anymore. They would never be afraid for the rest of their lives, until they gave them up in sacrifice to the Holy Endbringers – and then they would know no fear, only grace unending in the Kingdom of Heaven.
After years of slow, gradual, seemingly inevitable decay, the Dockworkers' Association was finally getting more work these days. Thanks to the rush of tourists coming to the City of the Endkiller, Brockton Bay's economy was booming, with a need for a lot more labor than before, and the Association's reputation meant that many would-be employers came knocking on Danny's door. There was even talk of the Triumvirate clearing the Bay of the wrecked ships which had blocked it for years now – according to one of Danny's co-workers, who had heard it from a friend in the PRT, Legend had mentioned that he was working on the possibility with his colleagues.
Danny wasn't sure that was true, and if it was, it was probably intended as a bribe to Lasombra more than anything else. Danny wasn't feeling too bitter about it : God knew there were a lot of things only capes as powerful as the Triumvirate could do, and they were constantly running around putting out fires. Spending however many cape-hours would be needed to ensure cleaning the Bay didn't go wrong would have been a waste of their effort until recently, what with the gangs' stranglehold on the city.
So instead, he'd decided to take it as another way things were going better, which sure made for a pleasant change – and it was all thanks to his daughter.
He knew that Taylor was still sending her projection out at night : to the vague surprise of pretty much everyone with a functioning brain, there were still people committing crimes in Brockton Bay at night. Now that Taylor talked with him about her nocturnal activities at breakfast, Danny knew that apart from the truly idiotic, these were mostly crimes of passion, where anger overcame the culprit's survival instincts – but not always. There were still people stupid enough to try robbing people and places, willing to gamble that Lasombra would have something more important keeping him busy. Which vaguely made sense until you remembered that Lasombra could cross hundreds of kilometers pretty much instantly and could end an encounter with an unpowered criminal in literal seconds.
Even worse, on two separate occasions, someone had deliberately sought to call forth Lasombra. The first time had been because the man thought the Endkiller was a demon who needed to be stopped before he dragged the entire world into darkness, which according to Taylor was something the original owner of her powers had intended to do eventually.
(Which sounded remarkably stupid to Danny, since the original Lasombra had been a vampire, and thus presumably required blood, and so would have starved in the utter collapse of the biosphere removing all sunlight would have caused. Even Taylor wasn't sure whether Lau-Som-Bheu had planned to have become something else by that point or just … hadn't thought that far.)
The other had been a would-be worshipper of Lasombra, and Taylor had not been impressed by his taking the customers and staff of a fast-food joint hostage and threatening to kill them if the Lord of Shadows didn't come. She'd been a lot more violent about him than the previous guy, if only to keep anyone else from following the idiot's example.
"Danny," said Kurt, not even bothering to knock as he walked into his superior's office. "You up for lunch ?"
Danny looked at the old clock on the wall, and started as he realized the time. The entire morning had come and gone without him noticing, and his stomach chose that moment to remind him of that fact.
"Yeah, I am coming," he said, locking his antique work computer and getting up from his desk.
Moments later, Danny, Kurt, and a couple other Dockworkers came out of the DWA building and into the March sunlight. There were a few food trucks on the Docks; a whole bunch had come to Brockton Bay following the influx of tourists, and some of them had decided catering to the dockworkers was as good a business as any.
Danny was trying to decide which one he'd go to today when he heard the sound of an explosion in the distance. He froze, as did Kurt and the others. This wasn't the first time any of them had heard an explosion in Brockton Bay; before Taylor had taken care of him, Oni Lee had combined his power and grenades to strike at anyone who defied Lung by turning himself into an immortal suicide bomber. But that detonation sounded louder than those had been.
Then there was another explosion, from another direction; and then another, and another. The sounds of distant screams joined them soon, as did sirens. Danny was still trying to decide what to do when a man he didn't recognize, with wide, crazed eyes, threw open his coat, revealing a bunch of wires and tubes wrapped around his chest, and screamed :
"GLORY TO THE ENDBRINGERS ! DEATH TO THE PRETENDER !"
Danny reacted on instinct. Before the man had time to activate whatever detonation system was connected to his suicide vest, shadowy arms erupted from the floor around the man and dragged him down, holding him in place like the very souls of the damned were reaching out to keep him from joining them. With a thought, Danny directed the arms to force the man's fingers apart, and the detonator he'd been holding slipped to the ground.
"What the fuck ?!" Kurt gasped, staring at him – or rather, at the shadowy arms erupting from the ground at his feet. "Danny, since when are you a cape ?!"
Ah, crap. He'd just outed himself as a parahuman pretty thoroughly, given that over a dozen people were staring at him right now. At least Kurt wasn't asking him if he was Lasombra, Danny reflected. That would have been awkward. But then, the stories about the Endkiller were very different from Danny's power – by comparison, his shadow arms were little more than a party trick.
He would deal with that later, though. There were more important concerns right now.
"Now isn't the time to talk about that !" he replied, before moving toward the downed man. His power was great to detain someone, but not so much when it came to more delicate manipulation – at least not with the small amount of practice he had with it.
"Glory to the Endbringers," the would-be suicide bomber was repeating, again and again. His eyes were wide open and bloodshot, and he wasn't reacting to Danny entering his field of view. "Glory to the Endbringers … glory …"
"Fuck," Danny swore. "Either he's been Mastered, or he's drugged off his mind. Someone get this vest off him, now."
Fortunately, the explosive device had clearly been put together by someone with only a basic knowledge of explosive, so they managed to cut it off the poor bastard with only minimal issues. Nothing they did made the man react, though; his fingers were curled as if still trying to press the detonator, and that was it.
This had to be a Master power, Danny thought, even as he directed the people around him to check on the rest of the Docks and prepare for an attack by whoever was bombing the city. This wasn't the first time the Dockworkers had needed to make a stand against an attempt by one of the city's gangs to browbeat them into submission, and there were a few caches of weapons that had 'mysteriously disappeared' after a bunch of goons had tried to intimidate them, only to be met with thick iron bars wielded by people who had spent their lives doing manual labor.
The rest of the city was in similar straits, according to the news they managed to get on the radio and on their phones. There hadn't been such chaos in Brockton Bay since the time the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Teeth had been in town at the same time.
Taylor, Danny thought, his blood running cold. His daughter wouldn't ignore this, even though it was still the middle of the day. He glanced up at the Sun, wondering how long it would remain visible.
Not long, he suspected. Not long at all. But he knew there was nothing he could, nothing he could say, that would dissuade her from battling those who'd brought violence to the Bay. So, instead, he went back to directing the defense of the Docks, sending a single prayer in the direction of his daughter :
Stay safe.
I was inside one of Lisa's apartments, receiving her report on her ongoing efforts to revitalize the Bay's economy. She was telling me about how, now matter how great of a Thinker she was, she still had limits, and that properly investing the enormous fortune I'd received in exchange for killing the Simurgh and the Slaughterhouse Nine would require more professional help beyond what she could secure by herself.
Then the first explosion shook the floor and rattled the windows.
"What the hell ?!" Lisa shouted, but I barely heard her. My hands tightened around the table at which we'd both been sitting, not even noticing the wood coming apart under my grip.
Everywhere across Brockton Bay, I could feel it. Hundreds, thousands of people suddenly crying out, in pain and afraid. It wasn't as bad as when the Simurgh had attacked Canberra, but the suddenness and proximity of it briefly overwhelmed me, as the surface layers of the Abyss churned from that abrupt outpouring of negative emotions.
"Lisa," I forced myself to say. "Talk to me. What's happening ?"
She looked at me, and whatever she saw in my face made her gulp before she pulled out her phone and began typing on it at incredible speed. I didn't know where she was getting her information from, but the more she did so, the paler she got, until after less than a minute (which seemed to stretch much, much longer), she lowered the device and looked back at me.
"It's the Fallen," she said. "They're attacking everywhere in the city. Suicide bombers, parahumans, gangers with guns, the works."
Ah.
Of course.
I should have seen this coming, I thought bitterly. I really should have seen this coming. Of course the Endbringer cultists would try to seek revenge for me killing one of their 'gods'. But I'd been to preoccupied, first with coming to terms with the revelation of my powers' true nature, then with dealing with the Protectorate, and then the Teeth and the Slaughterhouse Nine and …
Excuses. Excuses, nothing more. And now, because I hadn't thought ahead and realized that my killing of the Simurgh would have consequences beyond getting a bunch of money and the personal attention of a shadowy cabal manipulating the Protectorate, the PRT, and more, Brockton Bay had been turned into a battlefield by those who had openly aligned themselves with the enemies of Humanity.
"They are here for you," Lisa confirmed, having read my expression (her power didn't work on me directly, but she was still a smart girl even without it). "I don't know if they want to kill you or enslave you – it's known that they have ways of forcefully converting capes to their side – but this all stinks of preparation, which means they have some kind of plan they think will work … unless this is all some kind of martyrdom-seeking tantrum, which is also possible."
My guilt turned into rage at her words. How dare they. How dare they come here and do this. This city was mine. I had been born here, I had watched it slowly descend into ruin, and I had cleansed it of the evil who preyed upon it. It was only just starting to claw its way back toward prosperity, and now, this ?
The Fallen thought they could come and hurt my people, people who had already suffered the depredations of parahumans for decades, who were only just starting to look to the future with cautious optimism instead of grim despair ?
Fine. I would give these paltry pretenders a glimpse of what true divine wrath looked like. Lau-Som-Bheu had never met an angel himself, but he'd learned about God at the foot of Caine himself, and the First Murderer had known a thing or two about the One Above's fury. I couldn't match Him, not even if I let go of all my restraint and became a monster to match the Endbringers the Fallen so claimed to worship, but I could still make them regret ever thinking about coming to Brockton Bay.
"I will deal with it," I told Tattletale. "Keep an eye on my body while I do so."
Without waiting for an answer, I laid down on the floor and gathered all my power to myself, ignoring the gasp I heard from Lisa as she saw the shadows of the room stretch out and wrap themselves around me. What I needed to do would require all my focus, lest I cause a calamity that would make the Fallen's atrocities seem like an afterthought.
With the memories I'd ripped from the psyche of the broken Antediluvian, I now knew what I was doing, rather than following inherited instincts as I'd done in Australia. This was Tchernabog, a power available only to those members of Clan Lasombra who had been sired by Lau-Som-Bheu directly, or who had elevated themselves through the Blood by stealing the power and soul of one of the Antediluvian's childer. It was a power which had been used very scarcely in the Clan's long and infamous history. After all, it wasn't exactly subtle, and in a world such as the one the vampires existed in, using Tchernabog had been the equivalent of detonating a tactical nuke – sure, it was very useful in the short term, but it was also guaranteed to attract a lot of attention, including from people who had their own nuke-equivalents.
Humans, as a whole, didn't tend to react well to someone casually blotting out the Sun from the sky. The fear of the dark was atavistic to the whole species, a legacy of the times when there had been predators lurking out beyond the reach of our fires, hungry for human flesh. And even Lau-Som-Bheu, for all his power, had needed to be cautious about rousing the ire of the Herd, lest their priests and warriors come for him during the day with fire and faith.
But I didn't care about subtlety, and unlike Lau-Som-Bheu, I didn't have to worry about holy hunters coming after me as the spawn of the Devil. The world already knew I was capable of this, and I wanted to send a message to the Fallen and to anyone else who might think they could target my people to get at me.
"ALL WILL BE NIGHT," I declared, and forced my will upon Creation to make it so.
Lisa looked out the window as the sky went dark, and she shuddered.
It was one thing to know her boss was capable of causing an eclipse whenever she felt like it. It was another to see it with her own eyes, to watch the Sun turn black to the point there wasn't even the corona of light normal eclipses left, the reason why people needed to wear special glasses in order not to blind themselves while watching them.
Not that the darkness limited itself to blotting out the Sun. It spread further and further, until it blanketed the entire sky from horizon to horizon. She remembered from the reports on Canberra that the darkness had spread for miles around the capital city, but efforts to calculate its precise dimensions had been thwarted by inconsistent reports – in some directions, the cover of darkness had spread further than from others, but it hadn't been perfectly circular either. Parahuman 'experts' had been driving themselves crazy trying to figure it out on TV shows, and the same was probably true of government and criminal analysts worldwide.
Just looking outside was enough for Lisa to know in her bones that there was nothing natural about this, nothing which could be grasped and understood by human minds. Worse, her power was completely silent as she stared at the blanket of darkness. It wasn't telling her anything, which was almost a relief in a way – and yet she found she'd prefer the headache to this silence.
She tore her gaze from the darkness as public lights started flickering to life. Someone at the PRT must have contacted the company responsible for them since Canberra and quietly set up a protocol in case Lasombra decided to repeat his party trick in the city. That was good; plunging the city into complete darkness would have hindered the Fallen (although, as her power helpfully pointed out, they might have planned for this and brought flashlights and other nightvision equipment), but on the whole, it undoubtedly would have done more harm than good.
Lisa went to put a cushion under Taylor's head as she laid down on the floor of her apartment (she'd slowly fallen down from her sitting position after doing … that), eyes closed. If not for the slow rising and falling of her chest, the younger girl would have looked like a corpse : her face was paler than she'd been when coming into the apartment, and the veins under her skin pulsed black. Seeing her like this, it was hard to believe that someone like Taylor could wield such power, and yet she did.
And of course, the moment Lisa looked at her, her power finally started giving her information – but, as always where Taylor was concerned, it was all a jumbled, useless mess.
Trusts you to keep watch over her body while her consciousness directs her projection. Was too angry to think about being vulnerable. Isn't vulnerable at all; there is nothing Lisa can do to harm her even in this state. Regards Lisa as her minion. Regards Lisa as her friend. Could enforce loyalty with Master powers; is repulsed at the idea of doing so. Does not actually possess Master powers. Is not a parahuman …
Lisa shook her head and cut off the flow of contradictory information. Then she pulled out her phone and started typing. She needed to get in touch with the rest of her crew; they would already know Lasombra was out and hunting, but she needed to make sure none of them did something stupid before their boss dealt with the problem with her typical thoroughness.
"Armsmaster has engaged Eligos on Emerald Street; he's requesting assistance with the wounded –"
"Reports of some kind of chemical weapon being deployed at the central hospital; Panacea is on-scene along with Glory Girl –"
"City Hall is under attack; the main entrance has been blown up by a suicide bomber, Legend is deploying to deal with the situation –"
"The BBPD aren't responding to our calls –"
"911 is being overwhelmed; re-routing their calls to Boston –"
The command center of the PRT was a storm of activity as operatives coordinated the response to the sudden terrorist attacks across Brockton Bay. That already difficult task was made even worse by the Master powers the Fallen had deployed.
Emily had activated M/S protocols across the board the moment this had started and Miss Militia had started shooting up the troopers' quarters (until she was stopped by the containment foam sprayers), but they'd still lost some people to whatever this was. In addition to Miss Militia, a handful of troopers were down and had needed to be sedated for their own safety once they'd been extracted from the foam. Others were victims of purely visual hallucinations, which were still enough to put them out of commission.
Either there were several different Masters at play, or there were various levels of influence. Or, knowing Emily's luck, both. This wasn't quite the Director's nightmare scenario, but only because so far, there wasn't any bio-Tinkering involved. Examinations of the afflicted had revealed strange flickers in their eyes, which at least could be used to track who was compromised – although the moment they'd realized that, every afflicted who had been apparently safe had been assaulted by vicious hallucinations as the Master realized the game was up.
"The sun ! The sun is –"
At that last, shocked cry, Director Piggot looked up from the screen of her computer and out the window, and her breath caught in her throat.
She had seen the recordings of Canberra; while Lasombra was impossible to record, his power's effects had been so widespread plenty of people had been able to record it. But seeing it in person was … something else. The darkness spread across the sky from horizon to horizon, forming a cover darker than the darkest night she'd ever seen.
Nobody should have that power, the thought came unbidden. But then, she thought the same of every parahuman power.
"Armsmaster's surveillance algorithm is picking up disturbances matching Lasombra's Stranger effect," one of the analysts called out. "He … he is out there."
Despite the situation, the Director found herself smiling – or rather, showing teeth.
Give them hell, Lasombra, she thought, and then went back to working to keep her city from falling to pieces while their local demon lord went on a very enthusiastic patrol.
AN : Why did Contessa bother preventing Canary from being sent to the Birdcage and then plant the seeds of public opinion turning back in the singer's favor ? Well, the Simurgh is dead, so there's less of a need to manage people's paranoia against Masters everywhere to avoid societal collapse. Also, Cauldron is aiming to bring Lasombra into the fold at some point, and it's clear from what he did with Bonesaw that the Endkiller is something of a bleeding heart, so not sending someone who isn't an ireedeemable monster to Hell on Earth is probably a good thing.
I checked the timeline in canon, and while Canary was arrested in January 2010, she was sent to the Birdcage along with Lung and Bakuda following the latter's bombing rampage across Brockton Bay. That hasn't happened yet for the simple reason that we're still about a month before Taylor's canon debut on April 10th, 2011.
(Man, Taylor has been busy since her not-Trigger, hasn't she ?)
What passes for the Fallen's ideology/theology in this chapter was put together from stuff on the wiki. There might be some deviations from canon, especially from the Ward stuff, but I blame all of them on the fact that cultists who worship city-ending monsters aren't going to be particularly rigorous when it comes to doctrinal matters.
Or, to put another way : the crazies are coming up with whatever excuses they need to do things they wanted to do anyway. Those of you who also read my Ciaphas Cain : Warmaster of Chaos story might see some similarity with the latest enemies who appeared in that story.
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and look forward to your thoughts and comments.
Zahariel out.