"You said you had to do some scans first… I thought you already scanned me back at the PRTHQ, though. Shouldn't you have everything you need?"
I shook my head, "It's not that simple. I only got a basic look at your biology; just enough to check for any abnormalities or issues. Even when I tried to scan your Gemma, I only got a peek at how it actually worked. I'll need a much deeper scan in order to build you a suit up to my standards."
"And how long is that going to take?" Missy asked impatiently.
"Don't know," I answered honestly, "Less than an hour for the scans. I don't know if we have enough time for that, let alone the suit. Your family wouldn't want you out too late, I'd imagine."
Missy flinched slightly, confirming my suspicions that she had not been entirely honest to me. Well, I didn't have any room to judge her on defying her parents' wishes. It was ultimately her own choice what to do with her time.
"It'll be fine," She said, losing a bit of her usual confidence, "Let's just get it done, so you can start working on the suit."
I raised an eyebrow at her, although she was unable to see my expression at the moment.
"Alright then," I told her.
Instead of saying anything else, I created a large opening in the front of my suit, exposing the tungsten core within its torso.
"Woah! Sorry, I just didn't expect that," Missy apologized unnecessarily.
I pushed on a section of the exposed core, causing it to fall outwards. I met Missy's eyes and waved to her, then scooted over to the left within the core.
"Jump in," I told her, "I'll show you what I've been working on so far."
"Umm…" Missy seemed a bit hesitant to enter my suit, but she gathered the courage to climb inside.
I closed up the core behind her and repaired the opening in the suit. Once that was all done, I headed for the shoreline.
This core had never been designed for more than one person, and I regretted not thinking of a better way to transport people within my suit beforehand. I had considered designing a 'passenger seat' on the front of the suit to enclose her in, but I had a feeling that Missy would object to the idea of sitting in what was essentially a baby carrier.
"It's kind of dark in here," She complained, "And humid. And cramped. Do you really pilot your suit from this?"
I frowned, "I link my senses with the suit, so I'm usually more focused on what's going on outside the core than inside of the core. This power-cord looking thing attached to my back is what actually allows me to pilot the suit; I never really considered the idea of a passenger joining me."
I had a few ideas that could help alleviate her concerns, but I was already submerging beneath the waterline by the time I had any actionable ideas. The Womb was only a short distance away, so it didn't make sense to start making serious alterations when I could just dump her out of the suit in a minute either way.
"You know… I didn't just come here looking for a suit," Missy began reluctantly, but her tone gradually gained certainty, "I came here for answers, too."
"I'll tell you what's going on," I sighed, "But I want to get out of this suit first, because this really sucks."
Missy's elbow dug into my side unintentionally, and I shifted to make the contact between us a bit less bothersome. I tried not to let it distract me from piloting as I trod across the bottom of the Bay, headed towards the entrance to the Womb.
"Brace yourself," I warned her.
"Wha-?" Missy said, then tumbled as the suit shifted to crawl through the narrow underwater opening which led to the Womb's interior.
I had gotten so used to the shifts in gravity that came with piloting a suit like mine that I had almost forgotten to warn Missy at all. I slowed the suit down a bit to give her time to recover, and she shot me a glare.
"You could've said that a bit earlier… I'm surprised you can't make some kind of perfect shock-absorber, or something to just stick us to the wall."
"I wish I could," I told her, "And I don't want to be stuck in place. Better to be able to escape the suit than be trapped in it, should anyone actually defeat me in a fight, you know?"
"I guess," Missy admitted.
We reached the airlock and I waited a few seconds for the water to drain from the chamber, stepping past some cave crocodiles as I exited it. They were getting bigger faster than I had expected, with the ample food supply and ideally crafted environment. Perhaps I would need to slow down their future offspring's growth.
Not long afterwards, we reached the end of the Womb's entryway. A complex web of tunnels lay ahead of us, but I knew exactly where I was headed. I sat the suit against the entryway's wall near where the cave crocodiles' pool of water ended, and re-exposed the core to open air.
"Not too much further, Missy. We can walk on foot from here," I said.
I pushed a section of the core aside and emerged from the suit, stepping onto the spongy floor of the Womb. I hummed in relief as I re-established a direct link to the Womb, running a quick scan on it to make sure all was well.
"Taylor… Where are we?" Missy said in a small voice, her head peeking out from the suit's interior.
"This is the Womb," I responded, "It's a work-in-progress. Trust me, I plan to have everything be much more navigable and spacious soon; I've just been a bit preoccupied the past week or so."
I watched Missy as she took the surroundings in. Her eyes darted from floor to ceiling, seemingly unable to pick any one detail to focus on. Finally, her eyes settled on one of the Womb's arteries, which was pumping a sizable enough volume of blood that the roaring flow of liquid was audible even from across the chamber.
"I… I genuinely don't know what to say," Missy blue-screened.
"I know, right? It's the culmination of like, three months' progress. I've been meaning to show it off to someone, but it's not the kind of thing you mention at parties, you know? By the way, I'm going to need you to keep this a secret; I don't think the PRT would like it very much if they found out."
Missy seemed too stunned to come up with a reply, so I gently took hold of her forearm and guided her in the direction of one of the larger and more well-lit passageways.
"I needed to come here in order to get the best possible scan, so it's not like I brought you down here just to show off," I comforted her.
"It's just, it's a lot to take in," Missy replied as I released her arm, continuing to follow me towards the central chambers.
"Yeah, well, you haven't seen anything yet. Come on, we're almost to the heart chamber."
The density of veins and arteries increased, and I began to hear the gentle thumping of the Womb's heart. Soon, we rounded the final corner and entered the heart chamber.
"What do you think, Missy?"
I turned to look at her, and was shocked to see that she was dismayed rather than impressed by my hard work.
"What the fuck," She said to herself in a low tone, quiet enough that I almost didn't catch it.
I couldn't help but be hurt that she didn't approve. I was sure that she'd be more understanding about my creations, but she seemingly couldn't help but fall victim to the same prejudice that everyone else seemed to feel about my work so far.
"It's, um, alive. I didn't expect it to have organs… Oh my God, is that a person!?"
Before I could clarify, Missy rushed further into the heart chamber towards the prone form of my proxy, which was still clothed in my spare hoodie and sweatpants. She rolled the proxy over, checking it for a heartbeat and pulling one of its eyelids back to look for pupil dilation.
"I need you to tell me who this is, right now, Taylor," Missy demanded.
"Oh, relax," I told her, "That's a proxy. It's just shaped to look like a human. I can put my consciousness into it, and it lets me use my powers at range. It's kind of hard to explain… I can show you, if you want."
Missy looked between the proxy's face and my own face before eventually asking, "So… this was never a person, it's just something you made that's designed to look like one?"
I nodded, "Exactly! It's like a puppet."
"Okay then," She said, reluctantly standing back to full height and leaving the proxy's side, "So, I have a lot of questions right now."
"Should I start with the secret I mentioned earlier, or did you want to ask something else first?" I asked Missy.
"I want to know about the secret first."
I wasn't sure how exactly to approach things in a way that wouldn't derail the entire evening. Missy needed to know, both as my friend and as someone with an immensely useful power both in general and for this specific situation, but I didn't want to alarm her. However, the truth in this situation was alarming.
It was taking a significant amount of willpower on my part not to immediately call upon the most influential Capes I knew to wipe the floor with Bakuda, regardless of the consequences to her potential victims.
I hoped that Missy would trust my judgement.
"I'm not sure where to start. Bakuda's in charge of the ABB now, as you probably know, and I ended up running into her this morning and, well, she's putting bombs in people's heads and using them as soldiers. Not an easy way to say it," I ripped the band-aid off.
"Shit," Missy cursed, "That's horrible. How much more did you find out about her?"
"I'm working with a Thinker to figure more out," I responded, "Bakuda's got her hands on about sixty people so far… and the bombs are remotely activated. I'm not sure exactly how she does it; she almost destroyed my proxy when I tried to use one of her bombs against her, and I had to retreat."
"Why not tell the Protectorate?" Missy asked.
"I'm going to talk to Dragon tomorrow afternoon. I need to figure out a few more details about Bakuda and the ABB first, so the Protectorate has the best chance of both defeating her and saving the hostages at the same time."
"But it'd be better if the Protectorate knew sooner, rather than later, no? What do you need to find out about her – what's holding you back?"
"A few things. I don't know where she's working out of now, or if she has multiple labs set up. If I can figure that out, it'll make me a lot more confident that the Protectorate will be able to disarm whatever else she's managed to set up, and maybe even disarm the bombs already in the hostages."
Missy looked conflicted.
"I still have time to deal with Bakuda," I reassured her, "It'll be tough to canvas the north end of the city, but I think I can get it done."
"Taylor…" Missy trailed off.
"Hm?"
"Are you asking me for help?" Missy asked me seriously.
"N-no! I mean, I couldn't ask you to put yourself at risk like that…" I stuttered, trying to deny her words.
"Taylor, I'm a Shaker nine. You literally can't find anyone who could get you around the city more effectively," Missy admonished me.
I felt a bit stupid for underestimating her; of course she would ask to get involved the second she learned about what we were up against. I had adapted my plans to not necessarily require her help, but she was powerful enough to turn the long night ahead of me into a much more trivial set of tasks.
"It's up to you. I can't stop you from doing anything, but… it would help," I admitted reluctantly.
"Then I'll do it," Missy said confidently.
I wasn't completely happy with the way the situation had developed. Missy was an asset, but I didn't really want to risk her safety. If she got hurt because of a situation I put her in, I didn't know how I would react.
"Look – I'll figure out how you can help. I just need time to think. Before anything else, we should get the scans out of the way, though."
I was struggling to decide on exactly what type of suit I should make for Missy. Most of my more impressive ideas were impractical to use during anything besides an S-Class threat, so I would have to scale them down for tonight.
"So, can we talk while you do these scans, or are they too complicated?" Missy asked.
I shook my head, "Not much talking I can do, unfortunately. I need complete focus."
"So I just have to sit here quietly for like, forty-five minutes at the least?" Missy asked, clearly not happy about the proposition.
"Well… I can have you take a nap, and wake you up when it's done, if you'd like. The brain scans will probably be easier to decipher if we go that route."
I would miss her company if she decided to take a nap rather than wait and talk, but I couldn't blame her. Sitting in silence for that long would be impossible for me, especially without actively using my powers. I had seen Missy's powers in use already, and I was pretty sure that I had a good enough idea of how to artificially open and close that connection in order to get a proper look at her Shard connection.
"Alright then. Put me under."
I was a bit surprised, yet again, at Missy's tenacity. She wasn't one to back down from a challenge or unusual situation, which I admired about her.
I put Missy to sleep, hooked myself directly up to the Womb's brain, and got to work on a set of extremely high detail scans. I had not used my power this intensely since my time working with Kenta. I was careful not to pry while scanning her memories, and managed to see only bits and flashes of the data my power was working to process, rather than seeing her full life story.
There wasn't anything out of the ordinary about her body, so I moved onto her Gemma. It had always been on the edge of my ability to understand; I could figure out how most of the pieces fit together, but not how those pieces turned into a cohesive structure. There were too many redundant or seemingly useless areas, yet without them, I could tell that the connection would be broken.
What does her Shard look like?
I prodded the connection, and Missy stirred in her sleep. I tried again, even more carefully, and felt for a split second as if I was being watched – no, it was as if someone was judging my very soul, although I could not see the watcher.
During that moment, I was temporarily able to sense an indescribable well of power, slowly trickling through the connection to her Gemma. I tried to access it again, but the window of opportunity had passed.
Despite the fact that my analysis was left incomplete, it had still brought me closer to the answer of how exactly powers worked. They – the Shards – seemed to pull on some kind of internal reservoir of energy.
I couldn't tell much without access to more Shards to compare it to, but I doubted that many of them would have power-wells anywhere near the size of Missy's. It raised an important question of how exactly powers came into being, and how their limitations were decided.
I would have to experiment on it further at some point, but Missy was waiting on me. I couldn't lose myself in my creative process; not until my Dad left for work tomorrow.
Tonight, I would settle for something much simpler. It was remarkably similar to my own Julia, although I had upgraded her version with a ridiculously effective healing factor. Missy could lose multiple quarts of blood or even entire limbs while wearing her suit, and as long as it had a bit of biomass left to pull on, it would rapidly heal Missy back to peak physical health or the closest possible thing to it, healing everything except for her scars. I couldn't do too much to protect her face and head on short notice, and had to stretch my powers' limits slightly in order to put something resembling a helmet together for Missy.
My first instinct was to make a helmet from bone, but its habit of splintering made it a pretty poor option. Instead, I resorted to using more exotic substances, alternating between layers of shock-absorbent materials which functioned similarly to containment foam and layers of the strongest non-metallic armor I could provide for her.
I would have loved to build her proper chainmail or shore up her armor with tungsten plates, but that process was delicate and time-consuming. Missy would prefer action sooner rather than later, and I was willing to oblige her at this point.
I began forming her suit around her body; it wouldn't normally be possible for her to enter and exit it without the aid of my own powers, so I programmed two 'modes' into it: active and inactive.
When her suit was switched from active to inactive, it would flay itself in order to allow Missy to easily exit the suit, should she feel the need to. I didn't plan for her to use this for more than a few outings at most, but it didn't hurt to work on my design principles, even for a temporary project.
Finally, everything started to come together. I reached out and tapped Missy, bringing her back into the waking world.
"Wha- Oh, hi, Taylor."
"Hi, Missy. Your suit's done; I haven't really decorated it at all, because I wanted to leave that up to you. Also, if your wrist feels sore, let me know. That's where it's connected to you; I can numb the area if it's causing you any trouble."
Missy's face, still visible beneath the edge of the helmet I had created, scrunched up in concentration.
"This is weird," She eventually said.
"Can you still use your powers alright?" I asked her.
"Yeah… that's the weird part. Normally, all this life contained in this bio-suit would get in the way. But, for some reason, it's just not having any effect?"
Good; I was worried that I'd have to keep making changes to the design if it ended up disrupting her ability to warp, but I had done a good job on the first try here.
"That's due to how your suit works. There's a little bit of you in it for however long you stay connected to it. Not enough of your consciousness to actually be a meaningful amount, but enough to spoof your powers into thinking that the suit is just an extension of yourself."
Missy looked down at her hands, most likely trying to figure out how the suit worked. I had given her suit similar proportions to Julia – excess biomass was mainly stored in desirable areas, while places like her hands and feet only had a few thin layers separating her skin from the open air.
"I'm not sure how to feel about this. It's cool and all, but I don't really know how it works as intuitively as you do. Besides, the suit's a bit… shorter than I expected it to be."
I frowned, annoyed that I didn't have the time to give her a better final product.
"It'll respond to your mental commands. If you want to take it off, feel free to at any point. It has a bunch of other, minor features, but we've kind of spent a long time down here already. I promise you I'll make you something better; I just need time to work on something fittingly impressive."
"Taylor, this one is more than enough-" Missy began, but I cut her off.
"You're my friend. If you want a giant, badass suit, I'll make you one. No strings attached."
"That does sound pretty cool," Missy admitted, "Can you make it shoot out bone spikes from hidden compartments? Or, you could make it able to camouflage itself, so if I stand still, I'll blend into the background. I'm starting to get why you designed this whole Womb thing now, Taylor – it's fun to think of new ways to use your powers, and I'm not even the one who has them."
I felt excited to be able to share ideas with someone else, for once. She thought of things that simply never would occur to me on a fairly regular basis, and not just in regards to her suit.
"I'm glad to hear that," I said, and truly meant it, "I can work your ideas into the final design. I have a feeling the big suit wouldn't be very stealthy, though. I could try that chameleon adaptation on your current suit, if you'd like."
Missy nodded excitedly, and I began work converting the entirety of her suit's surface to be covered in sacs of pigment, with enough variety to blend in against almost any background. They were interwoven with a network of basic light-sensing organs similar to eyes, which communicated with the pigments on the other side of the suit's body in order to create the impression that the suit was see-through.
I finished up the adjustments and stepped back, watching as the skin of Missy's suit seemed to blur, painting itself into a perfect copy of the chamber's wall behind her.
"Okay, this is pretty awesome. No room for the bone darts, though?"
I shook my head and replied, "If you're going out with me tonight, it's for a reconnaissance mission. Not a Cape fight. If we get into a situation where you're in danger, I'll be buying you time to get out – your suit isn't as armored as I'd like it to be, in order to properly fight any of the heavy-hitters. No need for bone darts; not this time. I'll put something based on it into the big suit's design, I promise."
"Okay, fine," Missy huffed, "I'm getting antsy. Can you tell me how exactly you want to find Bakuda's Tinker labs, so we can get started looking for her?"
"Do you remember how I tracked that attempted murderer, back during our first patrol? The scent of gunpowder is what led me to him. If the ABB have drug dens and labs across the city, then they'll have armed guards, which should make it fairly easy to figure their locations out, especially if I look for the scent of drugs too. I'm planning to take advantage of our abilities in order to locate the entirety of the ABB's operations, and the Empire's too, if we have time."
"That's ambitious," Missy said, "I like it. Anything else I need to know about the plan?"
I explained the specifics of the plan a bit better to her – hopping between rooftops, each a few blocks apart, in a west-to-east and north-to-south pattern, until the entire city was covered. While the ABB was contained to the north end of the Bay, as far as I was aware, it simply wouldn't do to miss any of Bakuda's labs, even if one was placed in an unexpected location. Better to cover the whole city while I was at it, and if it just so happened to expose the Empire's operations as well, that was just a happy side effect.
-
The trip across the Bay went better than expected, actually. There wasn't really much to get in our way or stop our progress; most of our time was spent investigating false leads – places such as gun stores, or pharmaceutical companies like Medhall. In a city as big as Brockton Bay, there were plenty of distractions making it difficult to narrow down where exactly criminal operations were based out of.
Despite the setbacks, Missy and I got the job done in just an hour or so. Her suit's camouflage allowed her to more easily spot any form of danger or risk before she could be spotted herself, and I thankfully didn't have to see a demonstration of her suit's healing factor.
"So, that's it?" Missy asked.
We were at the southernmost end of the city, not too far from Downtown. The two of us were sitting on the edge of a bridge, constructed for a long-since defunct railway line which ran across a small gorge.
The terrain was only dimly lit by the light of the moon, but it still illuminated a pleasant view. There weren't many spots like this in the Docks; whatever hadn't been poisoned with pollution had been built over decades ago. The southern end of the city seemed a bit less industrialized in comparison, with plenty of green-spaces and undeveloped areas.
"Yep," I responded to Missy, "Unless there's something out-of-town we missed, but there's not much either of us can do about that. Twenty-four suspicious locations, spread across the entirety of the northern and eastern half of the city. Less than half are likely ABB, and judging by the graffiti, those are mostly on the north end. Thanks, Missy – you saved me hours and hours of running around town."
"No, Taylor, you're the one who I should thank. I basically never get to use my powers like that – making changes faster, pushing further each time… And, it's taking us closer to taking down a psycho like Bakuda. I think… I think I could get used to doing things like this," Missy smiled at me from underneath her suit's helmet.
"We'll be working together over the next few days," I reassured her, "The Protectorate will need to help stop the Empire from trying to take advantage of the situation, once we manage to corner Bakuda. I'll try to bleed them a little bit in the meantime to keep them from being able to expand, but the Wards and Protectorate teams are going to have to do the brunt of the work."
"You want me to come along?" Missy asked hopefully.
I shook my head, "You've already done more than enough for tonight. You need to go home and get some sleep. I can handle things from here."
Missy pouted, and I was tempted to acquiesce. No. I had decided not to get her directly involved, and reconnaissance was one thing, but fighting was completely different.
I would give her a chance to fight, when the timing was better for the both of us. For now, she would just have to wait.
"Fine," Missy eventually said, "I'll go. Text me tomorrow and tell me how things went, alright?"
"I promise," I told her, "Sleep well tonight, Missy."
Her smile widened at my words, and she began to warp her surroundings as she prepared to leave.
"Wait," I called, "Can I have your suit back for now? I need the data from tonight to help make you something a bit better."
Missy looked down at her still-camouflaged suit, and moments later, it unfurled, nearly dropping from the bridge as it disconnected from her. I snatched it up and stored it within a temporary compartment within my suit; I would process its data once I got the chance to go back to the Womb.
"Bye, Taylor," Missy called once her suit was taken care of, and I waved to her as she stepped off the edge of the railroad bridge and onto a spot along the top of the gorge itself, a few hundred feet away.
Twenty-four locations, six of them which did not contain drugs of any kind. Any one of those six locations could house Bakuda, or she could be somewhere completely different for the night. Now that I had narrowed the scope of where exactly Bakuda could be operating in, it would be much easier to seize her labs and disable her kill-switch, and whatever else she might have made.
Well, I still had most of the night to burn until Tattletale would be able to wake up and give me insight on Bakuda's operations, and the Protectorate's likely response to them.
I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth; if I wanted to clean things up before Alexandria arrived, that meant dealing with all of the gangs, or at least humbling them.
The Empire may have had plenty of Capes, but their territory was geographically spread out. Their operations in the eastern half of the city seemed woefully under-defended compared to the volume of drugs traveling through each location. Whether that was because the Empire was not expecting an attack, or they were gathering Capes for something else… Well, it didn't matter.
I would make them pay for their poor preparation. Life was about to become much harder for drug dealers across the southern half of the Bay, along with their Cape bosses.
-
A/N 2: My bad, I probably shouldn't have watched Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory before writing this chapter. Taylor is scaling all her ideas up now, with Missy's encouragement.
I hope I wrote Missy and Taylor to have an interesting and enjoyable to read dynamic, and that they actually read as if they were teenage girls.
Did this chapter feel organic?
I was tempted to give even more time for dialogue and on-screen discussion between them, but this chapter is already really long already.
They'll chat more tomorrow. Taylor's schedule is becoming increasingly packed for the next few days, lol.
Gestation 4.2
April 14th, 2011
The first location on my hit-list barely qualified as more than a trap-house. It would give me an opportunity to test out some new non-lethal methods of taking people down. After my failure against Bakuda, I had committed to investing in different techniques to deal with threats besides making use of pathogens and brute force.
I approached the building at a casual pace, enhancing my suit's vision to look for any E88 members. Sure enough, a pale, bald man a block away had just pulled out a phone. I wouldn't be pleased if the criminals managed to escape before I could take care of them.
I ignored the lookout – he hadn't done anything illegal directly – as I sped up, launching into a dead sprint. The small house in front of me was covered in Empire graffiti, and I detected several illicit substances inside.
Rather than slowing down, I shattered the front door with my suit's momentum, using the obstruction to slow myself down as I stopped to examine my surroundings.
The entire building was empty of most furniture, except for a few lawn chairs and a low table. It looked like the copper wiring had been stripped out of the walls; this place had clearly seen better days. The drugs were most likely in the back room.
My attention was drawn towards a quartet of Empire members on the other side of the room, who proceeded to empty their guns' magazines into my suit. I stood there and let them; whatever caliber they were using wasn't even strong enough to pierce my suit's chain-mail.
When they were all lined up like this, they kind of looked like a bunch of eggs in a carton.
I laughed a bit at my own private joke as I launched a prototype grenade in their direction. It hit the floor in the middle of their impromptu defensive position and burst, releasing a relatively safe nerve agent within the midst of their group.
Within seconds, they had forgotten their weapons, and were no longer in a position to fight me. The men wheezed and coughed, struggling to suck in air. One after another, they dropped like flies, then began to seize violently on the floor.
Okay, note to self: reduce the potency in those grenades from now on.
I stopped their seizures before the men could start experiencing serious brain damage, then gathered them into a pile in the center of the room.
What to do with them?
Well, if I wanted to deal with the Empire, then I would need to drain them of their most precious resource: manpower. They had money in spades, and plenty of Capes across the city. However, their ideology only appealed to a narrow sect of the city's population. I doubted that transplants from other cities would be eager to rush in as replacement meat-shields if I did a good enough job over the next few days.
A week-long coma should sort out the problem. I tapped each of the men, ensuring that they would be physically unable to wake up through any means by temporarily stopping a few key areas in their brain from communicating.
Either they would make their way to the hospital through outside intervention, where I could eventually go treat them and get them into police custody, or the Empire would be stuck caring for them. For every two or three men I incapacitated, another would be left caring for them full-time, which would present new soft targets to me as the Empire set up guarded safe-houses for them.
When fighting an enemy with far greater numbers, it was always better to cripple or wound their forces as opposed to outright killing, in order to bog down any of their future actions. And if the Empire decided to leave their own men to die rather than care for them or take them to the hospital, well… I didn't feel all that sorry for them.
I left the unconscious men on the floor and made my way into the back room. Sure enough, there were a few drugs – not much money though. Most likely, someone had just come through to resupply them. Sadly, I couldn't really tell what direction they might have gone in.
I scooped up the money and stored it next to Missy's suit, then considered what to do with the drugs. I shrugged, then collected the men's weapons along with the drugs, dropping them into a pile before I started spraying it down with acid – not enough to fill the room with toxic fumes, but more than enough to completely ruin the product.
Well, that was a good start. Time to see how far I could go before they sent Capes after me.
-
Four drug dens were crossed off the list now, including a relatively large one which had taken me several minutes to clear out. The Empire seemed to be in the midst of trying to evacuate some of their locations, and I found the delayed Cape response quite odd. I had destroyed a substantial amount of weapons and narcotics, collected thousands of dollars, disabled at least a dozen men, and the most the Empire had to offer in return so far had been some high-caliber rifle rounds, which did nothing more than ding off my tungsten core.
At least I had gotten closer to perfecting my grenades – they were no longer an instant death sentence without my direct intervention, although I still made sure to flush out the nerve agent from the Nazi gangsters' systems before putting them into comas.
I was disappointed; the Capes weren't throwing themselves at me one by one, preventing me from whittling them off. I needed to begin expecting an ambush around every corner, and with Victor potentially in the mix, I had to be very wary. He was no doubt a skilled tactician, which killed any interest I may have had in a drawn-out engagement.
I heightened my senses as I continued north-east, towards the other end of Downtown. The police and ambulances had been busy for the past half-hour or so, but nobody had confronted me yet.
I had been mostly careful to stay out of sight, although there was nothing I could do if they deployed a flying Cape. If Purity, for example, showed up, I would abandon the rest of my plans for the night.
The fifth Empire location was a bit different from the others. Rather than being run-down, it was along a well-lit and maintained street, and looked the exact same as any other souvenir shop in this part of town. There were a few pedestrians still out in the late evening, which put me on edge.
Not all of the Nazis I had dealt with looked like the typical Empire members. Sure, plenty of them were bald and tattooed, but the scary ones were the ones that blended in. I couldn't rely on the element of surprise in a place like this. Instead, I began approaching the building from an alley which ran behind the row of stores, stopping when I encountered the store's back door.
I couldn't really smell much of anything from inside the building, even though it had contained enough drugs for me to mark it down as one of the highest priority targets to strike in order to hurt the Empire's revenue. Whether that was because the Empire had already evacuated or because of some other reason, I couldn't be sure.
It was only then that my enhanced hearing picked up a gruff voice speaking at the other end of the alley.
"Now."
A cell phone began ringing inside of the room closest to me, where the drugs should have been.
I leapt back instinctively, trying to avoid whatever trap had just been sprung. Then, everything around me went dark. The entire top few layers of my suit, down to the chain-mail, had been melted in a single attack.
My actual body slammed against the core as my suit was flung through the wall of the adjacent building by the force of the blast. Not much of the charred layer of biomass was easily recoverable, so I simply allowed it to slide off and began replacing the sensory organs which had been destroyed.
My hearing recovered just in time for to detect a second blast, different from the first, that shook the foundations of the building I was in. The roof began to cave in, sending heavy chunks of concrete and steel girders down on my head.
Tentacles erupted from my suit's back, deflecting the rubble. Car alarms up and down the street were going off, and I was able to vaguely hear the sound of screaming in the distance. The interior of my suit had become swelteringly hot, and I worked to create heat-sinks and vents to prevent myself from cooking alive.
"Is she dead?" I heard a different male voice ask.
I took that opportunity to launch a grenade in the direction the voice had come from, although a concentrated blast of air caused it to go off mid-arc. The toxins held within blew back towards me, but I was thankfully immune while within my suit.
The Empire had brought an aerokinetic, possible multiple, then. It wouldn't be a good idea to use any airborne pathogens or nerve agents until some of this smoke and dust cleared away at the very least; I could be unintentionally putting civilians in harm's way if I did that.
The building I was in hadn't been levelled by a spiralling helix of golden light, so I doubted that Purity had shown up to the fight yet. Still, I was on a timer. The longer I was held down here, the more reinforcements the Empire would be able to muster.
"Watch out – stay out of melee range," The first voice warned.
The smoke in front of me cleared momentarily, revealing a blue-and-white mask. I launched a pair of tentacles at the figure, ready to tear him apart, but they were severed by bursts of compressed air before they could reach him.
Shit.
I only had a limited amount of biomass to work with, already reduced by the damage caused by the Empire's first attack. I couldn't afford to launch pointless attacks like that – I needed to adapt to my opponent's abilities.
I injected more adrenaline into my system and pushed my suit to move with enough force to potentially damage itself as I directed it to launch an entire section of the destroyed roof at the man – most likely Stormtiger, if I was remembering the Empire's roster correctly.
I doubted that his aerokinesis was strong enough to deflect that much mass, and I was proven right as he chose to retreat, darting out of the way of the large slab of concrete.
I needed a better sense of the battlefield. I was a sitting duck like this, just waiting for the enemy to show themselves. To solve this problem, I adapted my suit to see in infrared, revealing several figures in the alleyway. I chose to retreat further into the building which I had been thrown into – some kind of clothing store, judging by the back room's inventory – rather than face them out in the open.
The heat radiating from the fires both in the former Empire property and in the clothing store was more than enough to prevent them from rushing after me as I burst through the thin drywall into the store's main section. It was difficult to navigate even with infrared vision, so I simply bulldozed my way through until I reached the front doors.
There, I encountered a heavy metal grate protecting the store from break-ins and vandalism. I pulled at it, but it was difficult to move, even for me. As I tried to work, I was continually distracted by slashes of compressed air which cut gouges into my suit's chain-mail layer.
"You can't run anymore, monster. I hope you know that we're not going to stop until you're dead. Not after this."
"Fuck you," I replied, hurling a shelf full of t-shirts at him.
"Juvenile. Stupid. Barbaric. You may have a strong power, but you're nothing without it, aren't you?" He spat, trying to get into my head.
"The little gang you're a part of rape and kill regularly," I countered, "You really don't deserve any more thought than that. All of you are scum."
I had a growing distaste for his arrogance. It reminded me of Emma; whereas Emma's clique was made up of teenaged bullies, the Empire's was made up of Nazi bullies instead. Different motivations, sure, but a similar enough end result. Stomping on the 'weak' to protect the feelings of the strong.
Another man appeared at Stormtiger's side – Alabaster. He was completely white – not racially, he was literally as white as a sheet, even his hair. It was a mistake for him to come into a close quarters environment like this with me, even if he could regenerate.
It was a wonder that the Empire had been allowed to survive in the city for so long. Kaiser had been around for what, ten years at least? Capes as brutal as the Empire's didn't deserve to have careers lasting longer than most Protectorate heroes got to experience.
Stormtiger's aerokinesis was annoying, but not perfect. He had not been able to deflect the concrete slab earlier, and I doubted that he had the power to withstand a strong or sufficiently complex attack.
I started by firing a pair of grenades at them, which Stormtiger deflected without much difficulty. At the same time, I finished creating a liquified form of a much more toxic nerve agent and sprayed jets of it at the pair from an opening within my palm. Stormtiger, being partially distracted, only managed to partially deflect one of the jets. A few drops landed on his bare chest, which was enough to cause him to stagger and begin to retreat.
Alabaster, on the other hand, had received a direct spray of the liquid to the face. Some of it had gotten in his mouth and eyes. He had fallen more quickly than I expected, convulsing violently. I sprayed more of the liquid at him, soaking it into his clothes.
He reverted and surged at me, pulling out a pistol, but fell within a second yet again. I turned away from the two of them and focused fully on pulling the metal grate aside. It came loose and I threw it on top of Alabaster, partially crushing him beneath its mass. He was still reverting, but now his limbs were pinned by the grate, rendering him immobile.
I launched a pair of tentacles out at Stormtiger, but he was still in good enough condition to cut them in two when they neared him. Instead of continuing to pursue him, I released a solution into the room which purged the nerve agent I had produced earlier. I didn't want to accidentally contaminate anyone innocent, after all.
Stormtiger had vanished somewhere further into the building, but I was willing to let him retreat for the moment. He didn't seem like he was in fighting shape, and I would have other opportunities to capture him.
Hopefully, Othala would have to waste her time healing him, rather than being able to assist one of the Empire's other Capes.
I exited the store, scanning my surroundings for any sign of danger. Thankfully, the streets were clear of people now, and I had a straight shot to the shoreline. I just had to make it a block or two; I had the advantage underwater, as it would negate Capes like Stormtiger's power completely.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten to look up. I only had seconds to react as Rune rocketed towards me on a flat slab of stone, not slowing at all as she banked low and hard to the left. A figure riding along with her dropped off of the boulder, transforming into an indistinct mass of iron chains, hooks, and barbs as he fell. He had fully transformed by the time he impacted the ground, leaving deep gouges in the asphalt.
In that moment, I realized that I had nothing to gain by fighting a pissed-off Hookwolf. I spat a glob of acid at him as I forced all four of my tentacles to weave together, lengthening into one giant, massive tentacle. It snapped forward and wrapped around Rune's boulder, dragging me out of Hookwolf's path. He had, of course, deftly avoided the acid, and glared hatefully at me as I took advantage of Rune's momentum to sail away.
Rune hadn't expected another passenger, evidently, and she shrieked in terror as she lost balance, falling a fairly significant distance as she lost control of her boulder.
I released my hold on the boulder and reverted my changes to the tentacles, using them to anchor myself near where Rune had fallen. She was moaning in agony; her pelvis was visibly fractured, rendering her completely immobile.
"Rune!" Hookwolf called out, sounding genuinely horrified at the sight of his teammate's injuries.
I looked between Hookwolf and Rune, thinking about what to do. Rune might actually die if I left her here, but I doubted Hookwolf would let me heal her. Besides, now that I got a better look at her… Rune was hardly older than Vista. Each breath of hers was short and clearly labored; she didn't even have the strength to sit up from the street below her.
My decision was taken from me as Hookwolf bull-rushed me. Reflexively, I wrapped Rune up with my tentacles and held her out in front of me, trying to ignore the crunching sound coming from her hips as I flung her body towards him. Rune let out another scream, nearly as loud as when she had first fallen.
Hookwolf ground to a halt, stalling out of fear of further injuring his own team-mate. I pulled her back towards myself, partially encasing her within the front of my suit. Only her face and a section of her costume were left exposed. While I did that, I worked on stabilizing the bones in the lower half of her body, and preparing her for the use of my powers.
"I'm leaving with Rune, and if you try to stop me, she dies," I told Hookwolf.
Well, I didn't plan to kill her myself, but he didn't need to know that. Besides, I was telling the truth. She was in pretty bad shape.
Hookwolf looked tempted to launch himself at me anyways, condemning his own teammate to a brutal death. However, the sound of approaching emergency vehicles prevented him from taking that step. He looked one more time at Rune, met her gaze, then turned away.
"N-no…" Rune protested weakly.
I was shocked that she was still conscious with a broken pelvis and more. She may have been a Nazi, but she had some serious willpower to still be awake. It didn't make me feel all that sympathetic for her, considering her beliefs, but I would try and be a bit gentler with her from now on.
Hookwolf bounded away, and I was quick to head in the opposite direction. Slingshotting off of Rune's boulder had brought me most of the rest of the way towards the Bay, and it didn't take long at all to approach the shoreline. I created a tube extending from my suit's lungs and covered Rune's face with it, providing her with oxygen as I dove underwater.
I hurriedly swam for the Womb's entrance, stopping only to adjust her position a bit within my suit.
Once we were within the Womb, I made my way to one of its deepest passageways and expelled Rune from the front of my suit. She had fallen unconscious at some point, but the pain had quickly caused her to reawaken. I exited my suit, ensuring my mask was on first, then strode over to Rune.
"Help," She managed to say.
I obliged her, leaning down to touch her cheek. My eyes widened as I processed the full extent of her internal wounds. If she had hit the ground much harder, her internal organs likely would have burst. Despite her 'good fortune' in avoiding outright death, it still took me a long time to heal her.
I knocked her unconscious before I started anything; keeping her awake while shifting the bones in her hip, spine, and other areas would have been unnecessarily cruel. She hadn't hit her head, so she was free from any brain damage, thankfully. I was tempted to push into her Shard connection; I got the impression that it would be far easier than it had with Missy, but my night wasn't over yet.
I sealed Rune up within her chamber; I'd hand her over to the PRT soon, but it couldn't hurt to use her as leverage against the Empire until I was done dealing with them. I also needed to go give the PRT all of the money I had confiscated from the Empire as well, but I planned on depositing it all as one lump sum, rather than running back and forth each time.
I returned to the Womb's entryway and finished up the repairs on my suit. I had struck the first blow, but I needed to follow up on it before they learned to adapt to my tactics. These kinds of losses had to be unsustainable; I just had to keep up the pressure for long enough to shatter them.
-
Gestation 4.3
April 14th, 2011
It was difficult to decide on where exactly I should target next. I couldn't make moves too close to ABB territory, as that carried the risk of spiralling things into a city-wide gang war.
The Empire was already weakened, but the possibility still existed that my message hadn't been received by them. If I stopped here, it might allow the Empire to say that they had 'driven me off', which would allow them to claim some kind of victory over me, even if it was limited.
I couldn't allow that. It was not out of a petty desire to win that I refused to stop now. Rather, it was due to the simple fact that my entire strategy was focused on targeting the Empire's unpowered members just as much, if not more than, the Capes themselves. The Empire's morale needed to be totally crushed in order to create the best conditions to permanently destroy the organization, and that required me to keep hold of the initiative.
Othala was the next logical target – taking down the enemy's healer never hurt – but she was undoubtedly going to be heavily guarded by other Capes. I would have to lure out and eliminate a few more of their Capes before she was vulnerable enough to go after.
The rest of the Empire's Capes were likely to be somewhere near the middle of the territory, ready to respond to any threats. I couldn't be certain about their plans; I hadn't fully anticipated that the Empire's attempt to assassinate me would come so soon, let alone through a method as simple as regular explosives, but it made sense in a way. My abilities were unknown to them. At this very moment, they were likely scrambling to create a plan to immobilize me and pierce my armor.
Allowing them too much time to think would be a mistake. I still had a few hours before sunrise, so I needed to act.
Having made up my mind, I exited the Womb and began to swim south, up one of the small rivers which fed into Brockton Bay. I did not step back onto dry land until I was within two blocks of my target, which perhaps served as a small enclave of Empire territory in the western half of the city.
Well, I would smother it out.
The area was surprisingly heavily tagged; despite the fact that the area wasn't even all that impoverished, judging by the quality of the buildings, the Empire seems to have entrenched themselves strongly here.
A few people fled from me as I approached my target. Most of the unpowered gangsters I had encountered didn't seem committed enough to their cause anymore to be willing to be put in a coma, unfortunately, but I let them run.
I was a bit excited to see what was actually within the location, which had turned out to be a large brick warehouse. It was clearly inhabited, with a logo displayed on the front of the building belonging to some company that I had never heard of before.
The surrounding area was filled out by other warehouses and tenements built sometime during the late eighteen-hundreds; it was widely considered a 'historic' part of the city, one which had since been gentrified. Many of the warehouses had since been converted into other kinds of businesses, including my target. Unlike the businesses around it, however, the target building didn't offer craft beer or iced coffees, nor had it been converted into open floor space.
Instead, the warehouse seemed to contain a truly huge amount of drugs – much more than I remembered there being during my scouting operation with Missy. I hadn't been sure where the Empire had been evacuating to, exactly, but it was good fortune that I had stumbled upon one of those locations.
It was probable that they didn't expect me to know about their positions outside of Downtown. Unfortunately for them, they would only be able to remove my intel advantage by abandoning every single property that they had been using to store drugs. Kaiser couldn't have been having a good night so far, faced with conundrums like these.
Maybe he was still asleep in bed, wearing his Swastika-themed pajamas with matching nightcap?
I couldn't be sure until I confronted him myself. I planned to read his memories when I got the chance, because I wanted to go after all of the Empire's suppliers and associates in the Bay once the organization itself was dealt with, in order to completely dismantle the rotten structure which had allowed the gang to thrive within the city for so long.
I had to restrain my impulses; Bakuda had to come next. I couldn't give her too much time to prepare, even if mopping up the Empire was in some ways just as important. On the other hand, the resources freed up by the Empire's demise would make an all-out move against Bakuda easier to carry out without negative consequences for the city, but I was able to accept a compromise between the two options.
The warehouse's front entrance and cargo bay were still guarded by Empire thugs; I decided to go for a frontal assault. The two men took note of my approach, and they shrugged off their leather jackets as I neared them, revealing that they were each armed with both a machine gun and bandolier of grenades. Those weapons were inconvenient, but they hadn't stopped me in the past.
I rushed towards the men as one of them leveled his gun at me, firing a spray of bullets in my direction. I did my best to dodge, but several of them impacted my suit. Unlike previous attacks against my suit with bullets, these shredded through my chain-mail layer and detonated against the core. Each on-target shot etched a groove into my core, and I couldn't afford to allow that damage to build up.
The other man had pulled the pin on a grenade and chucked it in my direction. I frowned at the sight of the object, deflecting it to the left of the warehouse's entrance with a tentacle idly, where the grenade finally detonated and sent shrapnel flying in all directions.
The men, evidently battle-hardened, still stumbled at the sound of a grenade going off. I took advantage of the opportunity by wrapping the man who had shot at me around the waist, crushing his gun into him, then tossing him directly into the man next to him. The two went down in a tangled pile of limbs, and I withdrew my tentacles.
Before they could gather their wits, I hit them with just enough nerve agent to leave them insensate. I couldn't spend too much time putting them in a coma; not when I still had a building to clear.
I burst through the front doors and shot all four of my tentacles out, reaching for anything within my grasp. One man holding a flamethrower found himself held up by one leg, shaken violently enough for him to empty his stomach. Another armed with a submachine gun had a hole punched through his lower abdomen as a tentacle snaked towards the gun of another man behind and to the left of him. Two other tentacles reached up and took hold of a metal walkway overlooking the floor of the warehouse, using it to catapult myself upwards and forwards in equal measure.
It collapsed under my grip, sending half a dozen armed men standing on it tumbling at least a dozen feet. The other men in my tentacles' grasp were slingshotted across the floor towards their compatriots, bowling some of them over and rupturing the flamethrower's gas tank.
The warehouse's floor was crowded with Nazis, all of them armed to the teeth. They did not verbally issue orders, instead making use of hand signals and squad tactics as they tried to adapt to my attack, sheltering behind rows of pallets and any other makeshift cover they could find.
This went beyond a normal gang. This was a straight-up paramilitary organization, and the implications of its existence was worrying. The Empire had managed to build up a solid enough ideological base within the Bay that all of these people had been fully brainwashed into being willing to throw away their lives for 'the cause'.
The weapons being used by them were impossible for the Empire to afford or get their hands on by normal means; their operations in the Bay simply couldn't support such all of these expenses. I was missing something important, but I couldn't focus on that thought.
One of the men had found a relatively open area within the building and used it to set up a rocket launcher. He took aim and fired, which took priority over dodging the dozens of other gunshots being sent towards me.
I latched onto a pair of forklifts with my tentacles and tugged, accidentally crushing the Empire soldiers underneath the machines as I slammed myself against the floor.
The rocket sailed through where I had been just a moment ago and detonated with a thunderous blast, shaking the room. The force of the explosion shredded dozens of bricks full of powdered drugs, which proceeded to fill a portion of the room and ignite. The resulting explosion dwarfed even the blast which the rocket had made, setting the flamethrower's spilled fuel alight and immediately filling the room with clouds of acrid smoke.
These morons were fully willing to kill themselves just to hurt me. I flooded the room with a weak nerve agent and began working to adapt my suit to the oxygen-starved environment. I needed to stop this situation from spiraling even more out of control.
A decent portion of the men had gas masks, and they quickly affixed them after the people nearest to me began to drop. Despite that, the smoky environment was quickly making it impossible for anyone to aim or tell what was going on. The fire in the middle of the warehouse grew, and I looked around for anything useful.
A large pipe ran across the building's roof, and I launched myself up towards it. My tentacles barely had enough range to grab onto it, but I successfully wrenched it free of its bindings, releasing a torrent of gushing water down onto the flames below.
A large amount of the water flashed into steam, making the conditions in the warehouse even worse. There was some good news – most of the fire had gone out, although the threat of it spreading remained. The toxic fumes from all of the burning drugs would be catastrophic for anyone caught in their range. I couldn't allow the fire to spread.
Most drugs were made from organic compounds, and that meant they could be converted into other organic compounds. My suit wasn't really designed to rapidly process and gain mass, but my Shard rushed to suggest several efficient mostly-external digestion systems.
At this point, none of the Empire's soldiers were still standing, so I was free to start shoveling pallets full of drugs towards myself. The process was slow at first, but quickly accelerated as I began to gain mass. My suit swelled, and I began to create larger organs designed to further process the rapid influx of material. I was careful to reinforce everything as I grew, increasing the suit's durability with its size.
It only took me a few minutes to absorb several tons of mass. By that point, I began to encounter fallen members of the Empire. They were all in pretty bad shape, and I began promptly absorbing each of them into my suit for impromptu medical treatment.
After all was said and done, my suit had grown to about twenty feet tall. I had punched a hole through the wall to begin clearing out the smoke, large enough for me to make my exit through. I had been careful to avoid triggering a full collapse with that action, supporting the surrounding walls and roof with my four tentacles, now joined by a half-dozen new ones.
My core was buried deep within the suit, nestled underneath hundreds of layers of organic armor. The suit itself was covered in thousands of small, thick scales, decorated with green, gray, and brown pigments in a chaotic mesh of patterns. Thick claws extended from each of my suit's fingers, each the length of my own hand.
My suit had grown to become more broad, filling out a significant amount of the warehouse's floor. In order to prevent the suit from becoming too unwieldy, I lengthened and reinforced the tentacles until I was satisfied.
I had also integrated Missy's bone-dart idea, modifying it a bit to maximize lethality. Bone was weak compared to what I had access to: I formed lumps of iron into a shape resembling an artillery shell, leaving a hole for the insertion of potentially explosive compounds into its base. Vents along the torso would be capable of sucking in air and shooting these bullets forwards at incredible speeds. The actual launchers were mounted near my suit's shoulders, each weighing two hundred pounds at the absolute least.
While I continued working on my suit, I was partially distracted by the process of healing the several dozen Empire soldiers that I had captured. While I normally would have had to personally heal each and every one of them, all of my excess biomass allowed me to generate stem cells in much higher quality, making use of a similar method used in Missy's suit.
They were all supplied with a steady amount of oxygen delivered from my suit's lungs, so they weren't at risk of dying. However, their presence was still annoying; it prevented me from completing my suit's design. I would have to deposit them somewhere, along with the astounding amount of cash I had found during a final sweep of the warehouse – nearly an entire pallet overflowing with money. I didn't have time to count it all, but it was a lot of cash.
My tentacles strained as they lifted my suit up and out of the building, placing me down on the truck yard which bordered the building. My height allowed the array of sensory organs crisscrossing my suit to observe my surroundings from much further away, although they had not been improved enough to keep up with Velocity as he rocketed towards me before coming to a halt a few dozen feet away from me.
"Placenta… What are you doing?" He hollered up at me.
"I'm fighting the Empire," I responded levelly, my voice booming out from my suit's head.
Its head was unchanged from my original suit's design, just… much, much larger. I had kept my original suit's components mostly intact within this larger suit, just in case I needed to exit it.
"This is the third time we've had to respond to explosions tonight. Your crusade against the Empire is putting innocents at risk," Velocity wasn't happy.
"The Empire is putting people at risk just by existing," I replied, which seemed to annoy him.
Before our argument could continue, Assault and Battery came launching themselves down the street, stopping near Velocity.
"Hi, guys," I said.
"What's up, Barney?" Assault asked.
I was grateful that he had injected a bit of levity into the situation.
"I just beat up a bunch of Nazis," I told the assembled heroes.
"And what did you do with them?" Velocity probed.
"Hold on," I told him, and began dumping the Nazis out of my suit one-by-one, until they had formed a pile taller than the heroes were, "I healed them. Nobody's left in that warehouse, by the way. It was an Empire front."
Battery and Velocity were both startled by the development, but Assault exclaimed, "Hallelujah, it's raining men!"
Battery rolled her eyes at Assault's antics and asked, "Seriously, how many people is that?"
"Thirty two," I replied, "They're lieutenants and stuff like that, I think. They seemed totally willing to blow themselves up to try and kill me. No one died, despite their best efforts."
Assault asked me, "How'd you manage to piss off the Empire that badly in one night? It took me at least a few weeks before I got them mad enough to start doing things like that."
I wasn't sure how much I should tell the heroes; they might frown on the fact that I hadn't taken Rune straight to them. I could tell them that it was necessary for me to heal her first, but they would still pressure me over the issue, no doubt.
I decided to tell them a limited version of the truth.
"I started hitting their drug dens across the Bay, including some pretty big ones. Fought Stormtiger, Hookwolf, Rune, Alabaster, and some other Cape about an hour ago, and managed to drive them off. They're just being sore losers about it," I told them.
"We know about most of that," Velocity responded before Assault could, "Alabaster's in Protectorate custody thanks to you, although it still doesn't excuse the collateral damage you've caused."
I sighed at Velocity's complaints. I had destroyed maybe three buildings, tops. The Empire destroyed more than that each month – multiply that by ten or twenty years and I really didn't think my actions were inexcusable in comparison.
It was great news that Alabaster had been captured, though. That was one less Cape for me to deal with. Assault and Battery had begun separating the Empire soldiers and tying them up with zip-ties, removing any weapons which I had not already disposed of from each of them.
"That reminds me," I began, "I've managed to collect a decent amount of money from the Empire. I know I'm supposed to turn it into the PRT, so maybe you guys could handle that?"
"That's not how-" Velocity began, but I had already begun piling up the wads of cash and loose bills collected from several Empire locations. It was quite impressive; I was tempted to keep some for myself, but I didn't have any justification to do that. The city needed the money more than I did.
"Holy shit," Assault blurted out, eyes wide.
Surprisingly, Battery did not chastise him for his profanity. To be fair, it was more money than I had ever seen in my entire life, dumped on a random Brockton Bay street. Hopefully, this would keep the heroes off my backs for a little while.
"Listen, you need to come into the PRT Headquarters and meet with the Director. We have more pressing issues, though. The Empire is headed this way," Velocity warned me.
"Yeah, I know. I'm kind of trying to lure them out," I replied.
Battery stepped forward a bit, craning her neck in order to make eye contact with my suit before speaking, "Maybe you misunderstand. Practically the entire Empire's Cape roster is coming, plus reinforcements from Boston. I don't think you want to take this fight."
"Oh, but I do."
The chance to get my hands on so many villains was too tempting for me to pass up. I began to adapt my suit further, making it denser and yet more resilient, adding as much armor as possible without hindering mobility. My tentacles began to gain an armored layer across their surface as well, somewhat resembling an armadillo's shell.
"By the way, where are they coming from?" I cut in before the heroes could speak.
"That way", Assault gestured behind him with his thumb, "If you're gonna fight them, then be careful, kiddo. My back's been aching, and us Protectorate heroes want the same healing treatment that the Wards got. Try to stay in one piece, alright?"
His words shocked me a bit out of whatever mood had overcome me. This was risky, if not downright stupid of me, to try and wipe out the Empire in one fell swoop.
On the other hand, the heroes knew what was going on now. I wouldn't be fighting alone, hopefully, and this suit gave me a feeling of power which I had never felt before.
"Can I count on reinforcements?" I asked.
I might have to choose a less direct tactic if the Protectorate wasn't willing to back me up. That would be unfortunate, but I still had other avenues available to me.
"Yes," Velocity said after a moment, although he didn't seem pleased, "Please, try not to cause more collateral damage. Director Piggot isn't a fan of your suit's 'upgrade', and to be frank, neither am I."
"Hey, I think it looks pretty cool," Assault interrupted, "But Velocity's right. We're stuck dealing with the guys you captured, at least until the cops can arrive. Do you know when they're gonna wake up, by the way?"
I shrugged, "A few hours. The other ones will be asleep for a week, unless I go ahead and heal them. They're spread over a few locations, and I'm not sure if the Empire dealt with them or not."
Velocity pressed me for more information, so I listed off the addresses to him. I couldn't spend much time chatting, however, as I spotted a flying ghost belonging to Crusader a few blocks to the west.
I left the heroes to deal with the downed Empire soldiers as I directed my suit to deal with the threat. My suit's organs went into overdrive, producing large stockpiles of useful or dangerous substances, as my suit crossed city blocks in a short amount of time.
I made my way to a large depot filled with school buses, stepping over the fence and staring at the other end of the depot. Gathered there at a distance of at least a football field away, arrayed in a semi-circle around Kaiser himself, were Krieg, Fenja, Menja, Night, Fog, Crusader, and Cricket. Fenja and Menja had both already grown to fifteen feet tall, and that height only continued to increase as the seconds passed.
Many of their abilities were already active, and they had seemingly already agreed upon a plan to face me. Hookwolf was not present, but I didn't trust him not to be lurking somewhere, waiting to spring a trap on me.
Kaiser was likely the most formidable opponent I was facing, although it would be dangerous for me to lose my concentration against just about any Cape, let alone ones as experienced as the Empire's.
I steadied my breathing and extended my suit's tentacles outwards.
Well, here goes nothing.
-