[TARA POV]
Every eye in the workshop turned toward me, and for a moment I felt small again—like that broken girl in the cage, the one who couldn't speak, couldn't fight back, could only wait for the bad people to decide what happened next.
But I wasn't that girl anymore.
Kaiser had given me a name. A home. A family. And Clara whispered in my mind constantly, teaching me, guiding me, showing me that the power flowing through my veins wasn't something to fear—it was something to master.
You can do this, Clara's voice was warm, encouraging. Trust your instincts, Tara. Trust what you feel.
"I should go with Kaiser," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected. Strong. Like it belonged to someone who mattered. "On the mission to rescue Morgana. I should be there."
The workshop exploded.
"Absolutely not," Hawk said immediately, moving toward me with that protective intensity that made her both scary and safe at the same time. "Tara, this isn't—you're not ready for something like this."
"She's a child," Karin added, her analytical voice carrying an edge I rarely heard. "A child with powerful traits, yes, but still a child. Sending her into Tartarus is—"
"Insane," Jerry finished, his usual manic energy replaced by something more serious. "Kid, I love your enthusiasm, but this is warlord-tier combat we're talking about. Rambo and Irene aren't training dummies. They're apex predators who've killed people with decades more experience than you have."
Kane's massive frame shifted, drawing attention. "The girl stays here. Protected. That's not negotiable."
Even Dr. Molloy—gentle, understanding Dr. Molloy—looked troubled. "Tara, sweetheart, I know you want to help, but the psychological trauma of witnessing that level of violence, at your age, with your recent experiences..."
Their words washed over me like rain, each objection well-meaning but missing the point entirely. They saw the scars. The missing pieces. The girl who'd been broken.
They didn't see what Clara saw. What I felt building inside me with every passing day.
I looked past them all, focused on the one person who hadn't spoken yet.
Kaiser.
He stood apart from the group, golden eyes studying me with that particular intensity that saw through masks and pretense straight to the truth underneath. Not looking at the damaged child everyone else saw. Looking at me—at who I was becoming, who I could be if someone just gave me the chance.
"Kaiser," I said, and something in my voice made the others go quiet. "I've been practicing. With Clara's help. The teleportation—I've mastered a tiny bit of it now. I can blink short distances, can feel the spatial dimensions, can sense where I'm going before I arrive."
Show them, Clara encouraged. Let them see what you've learned.
I closed my eyes, felt for that peculiar sensation that meant space was malleable—less like moving through distance and more like convincing distance it didn't need to exist between two points. The workshop floor beneath my feet. The workbench fifteen feet away. The space between them folding, compressing, becoming irrelevant.
And then I was there.
One moment standing near the group. The next, perched on Jerry's workbench like I'd always been there, golden flames flickering around my fingertips as other traits responded to my will.
The workshop went silent again, but this time it was different. Surprised. Impressed.
Good, Clara praised. Now tell them what you really feel. The instinct that brought you to this conclusion.
I looked at Kaiser across the distance I'd just casually erased, and felt something settle in my chest—certainty that went beyond logic, beyond tactical assessment, beyond anything I could properly explain.
"I'm not sure how," I said, voice carrying across the workshop with surprising strength. "But I can deal with Rambo."
"Tara—" Hawk started, but I kept talking, the words flowing like Clara was feeding them directly to my consciousness.
"Not fight him. I'm not stupid—I know I can't match him in combat. But when I think about him, when I imagine what Kaiser described..." I paused, searching for words to explain the intuition that felt more like precognition. "There's a way. Something about his speed, his augments, the way he moves through space. My teleportation, my other traits—they can affect that somehow. I can feel it."
Your mythic-tier abilities interact with reality differently than standard traits, Clara explained privately while I spoke. Rambo's speed is impressive but ultimately physical—bound by mechanical augmentation and enhanced reflexes. Your teleportation operates on quantum principles that supersede conventional movement. And your nullification...
Understanding bloomed.
"My nullification," I said aloud, watching realization dawn on the others' faces. "It doesn't just cancel traits—it disrupts enhancement effects, mechanical augments, anything that alters baseline . Rambo's speed comes from augmentation. If I can nullify that even for a second—"
"He becomes just a man with a lot of guns," Jerry finished, his tin-aug eyes whirring as he processed the implications. "Still dangerous, but no longer impossible to fight."
"It's a theory," Karin objected, but I could hear the uncertainty creeping into her tactical assessment. "Untested. Based on instinct rather than empirical data. We'd be risking her life on a feeling."
I looked at Kaiser again, and this time I let everything I felt show on my face—the gratitude for being saved, the determination to prove I was more than broken pieces, the desperate need to be useful, to matter, to repay even a fraction of what he'd given me.
Please, I thought, hoping he could read it in my expression even if I couldn't quite say the word aloud. Please see me. Trust me. Let me be strong for you like you've been strong for me.
[KAISER -- POV]
Tara looked at me with those mismatched eyes and I saw something that made my chest tight with emotions I'd been trying to keep locked down.
Hope. Determination. The desperate need to prove that she wasn't just something to be protected, but someone who could stand beside me.
It was the same look I'd seen in the mirror years ago, back when I was Tyler Wayland and the world had just finished taking everything I loved. The look that said I'm more than my trauma, more than my scars, more than what was done to me.
The look that had eventually transformed me into Kaiser.
Every tactical instinct I had screamed that bringing an eight-year-old child into Tartarus was insane. Reckless. The kind of decision that ended with psychological damage that no amount of healing could fully repair. Dr. Molloy was right about the trauma risk. Hawk was right about her inexperience. Karin was right that we'd be betting her life on unproven theory.
But.
But.
I'd seen what Tara could do when pushed. The way her mythic-tier traits had manifested to protect me when I'd been vulnerable. The raw power she'd displayed—teleportation, nullification, resurrection pulses that had leveled an entire clinic. And more importantly, I'd seen her determination—that core of titanium wrapped in a child's frame that refused to stay broken.
Clara's voice whispered in my neural link, private communication that bypassed the room's attention. Her instinct is correct, Kaiser. I've been running combat simulations since she proposed the theory. Her nullification field, properly applied, would disrupt Rambo's augmentation systems long enough to create tactical openings. Combined with her teleportation, she could serve as a highly effective support unit.
She's eight years old, I thought back.
She's mythic-tier, Clara countered. And more relevantly—she needs this. Psychologically, developmentally, for her sense of self-worth and agency. You saved her from being a victim. Don't trap her as one by refusing to let her grow.
The words hit harder than I wanted to admit.
"No," Hawk said into the silence, her voice carrying absolute finality. "Kaiser, you can't be seriously considering this. She's a child. A traumatized child who we rescued less than a week ago. Bringing her into a combat situation against apex-tier warlords is—"
"—giving her a choice," I interrupted quietly, still looking at Tara. "Something nobody else has ever done."
"Choice?" Jerry's voice cracked slightly. "Boss, she doesn't have the experience to understand what she's choosing. This isn't picking between ice cream flavors—this is life and death against opponents who've killed people with decades of training."
"I know exactly what I'm choosing," Tara said, her small voice somehow cutting through the protests. "I'm choosing to be useful. To help the person who saved me. To prove that I'm more than just another person Kaiser has to protect."
She hopped down from the workbench with casual grace, Clara's enhancements making her movements preternaturally smooth. Walking toward me, she maintained eye contact the entire time—no hesitation, no doubt, just pure conviction.
"Everyone keeps saying I'm too young, too damaged, too inexperienced," she continued. "And maybe they're right. Maybe I am all those things. But I'm also the girl who awakened mythic-tier traits through sheer survival instinct. I'm the one who fought back against Baron Varn even when I could barely stand. I'm the person who brought you back when you were dying."
She stopped in front of me, small hand reaching out to take mine.
"I'm not asking to lead the charge or fight the warlords alone," Tara said, squeezing my fingers with surprising strength. "I'm asking to be there. To help. To use what I can do in service of something that matters. And I can deal with Rambo—not by fighting him, but by disrupting him long enough for you to do what you do best."
She's making a compelling argument, Clara observed with what sounded like approval.
You're supposed to be the voice of reason, I thought back.
I'm the voice of optimal outcomes, Clara corrected. And optimal outcomes sometimes require accepting calculated risks. The question isn't whether there's danger—there always is. The question is whether the potential benefits outweigh the costs.
I looked around the room at the others. Hawk, radiating protective fury barely held in check. Jerry, genuinely distressed at the idea of sending Tara into danger. Karin, running probability calculations with her analytical mind. Kane, stone-faced but clearly disapproving. Dr. Molloy, worried about psychological consequences.
And Scourge.
The kingpin had been quiet throughout the debate, watching with those predator eyes that missed nothing. Now he stirred, a slight smile crossing his scarred features.
"Kid's got balls," Scourge observed. "More importantly, she's got conviction. I've seen soldiers with decades of experience who had less certainty in their own capabilities."
"That doesn't mean—" Hawk started.
"It means," Scourge interrupted with casual authority, "that maybe we're looking at this wrong. We keep seeing the broken child from the cage. But that's not who she is anymore—that's just where she started. What she's becoming is something else entirely."
He stood, moving with that particular grace that came from a lifetime of violence, and approached Tara. Studied her with the same intensity he'd use evaluating a potential weapon or worthy opponent.
"You really think you can handle Rambo?" Scourge asked directly.
"Yes," Tara replied without hesitation.
"Based on what? Instinct? Hope? Mythic-tier traits you've barely begun to understand?"
"Based on knowing what I can do," Tara said, golden flames flickering around her free hand. "Based on Clara's analysis. Based on the same certainty that Kaiser must have felt when he decided to walk into Baron Varn's territory alone, or when he confronted Killmonger, or every other time he's made a choice that looked insane but turned out to be exactly right."
The flames intensified, casting dancing shadows across her determined face.
"I'm not saying there's no risk," she continued. "I'm saying the risk is worth it. That I'm worth it. That maybe—just maybe—everyone should stop treating me like fragile glass and start treating me like the weapon I'm learning to become."
Silence descended again, heavier this time.
[HAWK -- POV]
I wanted to scream. To shake Kaiser until his brain started working properly again. To lock Tara in a safe room until this insanity passed and everyone returned to rational decision-making.
But I couldn't, because Oracle-Eye was showing me something I didn't want to acknowledge.
Probability cascades. Combat simulations. Tactical assessments that accounted for Tara's unique capabilities and how they might interact with Rambo's known abilities. And the numbers—gods damn the numbers—actually supported her theory.
Not guaranteed. Not safe. But possible in ways that conventional assault wouldn't be.
"She goes in with full protection protocols," I heard myself saying, even as part of my brain wondered when I'd lost this argument. "The adaptive weave dress, emergency extraction beacon, Clara maintaining constant monitoring through their neural link. At the first sign that things are deteriorating beyond acceptable parameters, we pull her out. Non-negotiable."
Tara's face lit up with hope so pure it physically hurt to look at.
"And," I continued harshly, needing to make this clear, "if anything happens to her—if she takes even one serious injury because of this decision—I'm blaming you, Kaiser. Personally. With extreme prejudice and probably several sharp implements."
"Understood," Kaiser replied quietly, accepting the terms without hesitation.
"This is still a terrible idea," Jerry muttered, but I could hear resignation in his voice. "For the record, I want it noted that I officially object to sending children into combat zones."
"Noted," Kaiser said. Then, turning to Tara with an expression that mixed pride and concern and something deeper: "You understand what you're agreeing to? Once we're inside Tartarus, there's no backing out, no safe withdrawal if you change your mind. It's going to be terrifying and violent and probably traumatizing regardless of how well things go."
"I understand," Tara said solemnly. "And I'm ready."
"No you're not," Kaiser corrected gently. "Nobody's ever ready for something like this. But you're willing, and you're capable, and sometimes that has to be enough."
He squeezed her hand once before releasing it, then turned to address the room at large.
"Alright. New plan. Tara comes with me into Tartarus. Her primary objective is disrupting Rambo if we encounter him—nullification field applied to his augmentation systems, teleportation for rapid repositioning. She stays close, follows Clara's tactical guidance, and retreats at the first sign of danger we can't immediately handle."
"And Irene?" Karin asked.
"Irene is my problem," Kaiser said with cold certainty. "If we encounter her, Tara ports out immediately while I handle the engagement. No arguments, no heroics, just immediate extraction. Understood?"
Tara nodded, though I could see the reluctance in her expression—the desire to prove herself warring with recognition that some fights were genuinely beyond her current capability.
"Which brings us to the fun part," Scourge said, that predatory smile returning to his scarred features. "How exactly do you plan to infiltrate Tartarus? Because while your Ghost toxin is impressive psychological warfare, Rex is going to have the facility locked down tighter than a virgin's—" He glanced at Tara and course-corrected. "—tighter than Fort Knox after your last little performance."
"I've been thinking about that," Kaiser admitted. "Standard infiltration won't work—they'll be expecting it, watching for it, probably tripled their chemical sensors specifically to counter the toxin. Which means we need a different approach. Something unexpected."
"Such as?" Jerry prompted.
Kaiser's smile was sharp and entirely without humor. "We don't sneak in. We get invited."
[SCOURGE -- POV]
I saw where he was going before anyone else did, and I had to admit—the audacity was beautiful.
"You want to go in as a prisoner," I said, not quite a question.
"Not just any prisoner," Kaiser corrected. "A VIP. Someone valuable enough that Rex would want to interrogate personally. Someone whose capture would be worth celebrating, worth letting your guard down over."
The implications clicked into place like a well-oiled weapon being assembled.
"You want me to 'capture' you," I continued, working through the logistics. "Bring you to Rex as a prize, claim credit for taking down the infamous trait-thief who's been making kingpins look like amateurs. In exchange for what—territory? Resources? Political favor?"
"All of the above," Kaiser agreed. "You deliver me to Tartarus, collect whatever reward Rex offers for my capture, and in the process, you get me inside his most secure facility with a legitimate excuse for being there. Once I'm in, I break out, retrieve Morgana, and extract before anyone realizes the trade was a setup."
"Using a child as backup," Karin added pointedly.
"Using every available asset in the most efficient configuration possible," Kaiser countered. "Tara's involvement isn't about throwing her into danger—it's about utilizing her unique capabilities to solve a problem that conventional tactics can't address. Rambo's speed makes him nearly impossible to fight. Tara's nullification makes him merely difficult. That's not risking her unnecessarily—that's smart resource allocation."
Dr. Molloy looked like she wanted to object again but couldn't quite formulate an argument that held up against the cold tactical logic.
"There's one significant problem with your plan," I pointed out. "Rex isn't an idiot. He's going to verify the capture, probably try to suppress your traits immediately, might even torture you just to confirm you're genuinely his prisoner and not some elaborate infiltration attempt."
"I'm counting on it," Kaiser said, and something cold flickered behind his golden eyes. "The more convinced Rex is that he's won, that he's finally contained the threat I represent, the less attention he'll pay to other variables. Like the fact that suppression fields don't work properly on mythic-tier traits. Or that his facility's security systems are designed to keep prisoners in, not to prevent prisoners from moving freely once they're already inside."
"You're insane," Jerry said, but it sounded more like admiration than criticism.
"Probably," Kaiser agreed. "But insanity seems to be working so far. Besides—" He glanced at Tara with something that might have been affection. "—I've got a secret weapon this time. Several, actually."
The child grinned up at him with pure adoration, and I found myself wondering—not for the first time—whether Kaiser's greatest trait wasn't the ability to steal powers, but the ability to inspire absolute loyalty in the most unlikely people.
"Fine," I said, making the decision that would either cement my alliance with this magnificent lunatic or get us all killed in spectacular fashion. "I'll set it up. Contact Rex's people, arrange a meeting, offer to deliver the notorious Kaiser in exchange for appropriate compensation. Give me forty-eight hours to establish credibility and make the arrangements."
"Forty-eight hours," Kaiser confirmed. "That gives us time to prepare, finalize tactical protocols, ensure Tara's ready for deployment." He looked around the room at each person in turn. "Any final objections? Last chance to tell me this is the stupidest plan in a long history of stupid plans?"
Silence greeted the question, though I could see varying degrees of concern on every face present.
"Then we're committed," Kaiser said with finality. "In two days, I become Scourge's prisoner, Tartarus's newest VIP acquisition, and—if everything goes according to plan—the last person Rex the 3rd ever underestimates."
I stood, already running through the communication protocols I'd need to establish with Iron Fang territory. How to phrase the offer so it sounded genuine rather than suspicious. What price to demand that would be high enough to be believable but not so high that Rex would smell a trap.
"Yeah, Kaiser," I said, letting anticipation color my voice. "Get ready. I'm gonna get you in as a VIP prisoner, complete with full verification procedures and enough legitimate documentation to convince even a paranoid kingpin that the capture is genuine."
I paused at the workshop door, glancing back with a predator's smile.
"Just try not to actually die during the torture verification, yeah? Would hate to have gone through all this setup just to deliver a corpse instead of a living weapon."
"I'll do my best," Kaiser replied dryly.
As I left to begin making arrangements, I could hear the others starting to discuss tactical details, equipment needs, emergency extraction protocols. The sound of professionals preparing for an operation that could reshape the entire balance of power in the fifteen zones.
Or get them all killed in increasingly creative ways.
Either way, it was going to be one hell of a show.
END OF CHAPTER 24