Skill alone was pointless.
Those who lacked skill thought it would solve their problems.
Those who had it knew better.
With a gun or in hand to hand, Victor knew no equal — and if he ever did meet his better, he'd take their skill for his own as well. Nor were his skills restricted to combat: he could sail a boat, snare a rabbit, or stitch a wound (to name just three possibilities) with an equal degree of skill. There were were tricks available to him that he was convinced no human had ever tried before: very few people managed to spend a lifetime at parkour and a lifetime at judo, let alone a lifetime at marksmanship, and a lifetime as an aerialist as well. But Victor had all those skills, and could blend them and others in ways never before seen.
Not that he generally did — after all, skill wasn't the point, and simplicity had a virtue of its own. Skill without purpose, without judgment, was meaningless. Take Uber, the parahuman closest to himself in power. Their powers weren't quite the same: Victor needed time with a skilled person to acquire their skill and retained a fraction of it permanently while Uber instantaneously acquired whatever skill he could imagine… for as long as he concentrated on it.
Uber, literally, could do anything he set his mind to.
Anything.
What he chose to do with this unbounded power was run the 214th ranked YouTube channel, starring Leet and himself as they reenacted video game scenes… badly. He made no difference in the world. He wasn't even making money! No, the only thing honorable about Uber's life was his loyalty to Leet — and Victor honored that in him. It was a dog's devotion to a man-child unworthy of it, but it was a pure gift given unstintingly… and unwisely.
Victor had learned young that, ultimately, only your own kind could be trusted to help you — and not all of those. After he'd gained his powers, he'd done all he could to repay those who'd helped him. To help those who needed help. To clear out the wrong kind. To make a better world.
And when the call had come for him to go to Brockton Bay, he had gone. Empire Eighty Eight was the greatest gathering in North America dedicated to the cause; a summons meant you were being called up to the big leagues.
In a year, he had proven himself. There were more powerful superhumans in the Empire, Purity foremost among them. There were more ruthless ones — Hookwolf came to mind. But Kaiser did not rule through power or fear alone, nor because his father had been Allfather. Kaiser ruled because he knew how to lead: how to inspire loyalty and command obedience. And Kaiser had seen the same potential in him. Kaiser had gone out of his way to arrange a betrothal for him to one of Heith's many cousins, and then to arrange a second betrothal to Ophelia after Isolde died.
It brought Victor, quite literally, into the Imperial family.
Victor was sensible of the honor involved. It meant that Kaiser thought that, with time and after Kaiser died, Victor might lead the Empire. It also meant that Kaiser thought that Theodore would not, after all, rise to the occasion. This was likely true — but Victor knew what it was to have a father who would not teach you how to be a man. The man Theodore might become would have to be of his own making, for the flaws in Theodore that disgusted Kaiser were of Max's making. It was… unworthy.
The Empire was not.
That which Allfather had built and Kaiser expanded, bore study and respect. The Empire had survived the Protectorate, the Slaughterhouse 9, and the many, many, gangs that had tried to establish themselves in Brockton Bay over the years. And Max had even built a successful pharmaceutical company along the way, almost in passing — his talent as a leader was undeniable.
His personal life, however, was disastrous on almost every level. As a male, Victor could understand the appeal of Fenja and Menja very well indeed: blonde, tall, athletic, and twins. But a man ruled his desires, not the other way around. Nor had the damage stopped with his dysfunctional home life: Victor remained convinced that Max's interest in the twins cousin to — and raised by! — his first wife had been part of what had split Purity off, and she hadn't left alone. Even so, Max persisted in believing that Purity would return any week now in exchange for renewed purpose.
However chaotic his personal life became, his strategic judgment was real: for over a year, Kaiser had restrained his people from making war on the ABB. "They will destroy themselves" he had said. "We need only wait" he had said. And he had been right. Bakuda was dead and the ABB crippled in an internal power struggle. Victor could respect that judgment, and learn from it — just as he studied Max's mistakes and learned from them. His marriage to Ophelia would be founded on clear communication and shared effort, not fickle lust or illusory love. He would be the man his father had not been, the man even Kaiser was not.
With time, he might even be the man the Empire — the world — needed.
To get there, though, he'd have to survive the next hour. E88 had expanded aggressively into the confusion, taking corners and territory. The dealers and whores who'd served the ABB fled before the Empire's soldiers, cowards without the enforcers to stiffen their spines — within a week, E88 would own that territory, and the people and income that came with it.
And with the ABB gone, it would be time to settle with the Merchants. Or perhaps Coil. With both gone, Brockton Bay could begin to fulfill Allfather's vision of a pure city, one whose example would inspire the world. And with the Protectorate focused on disaster relief, there were only two who would contest the Empire's claim to ABB territory.
Lung. And Oni Lee.
Three times on Saturday Oni Lee had struck at E88 properties, causing havoc and death. The second time, Hookwolf had been present. Essentially invulnerable to grenade or knife, he had forced Lee to run, and pursued him until Lung in turn had ambushed Hookwolf. Hookwolf, to his credit, had withdrawn immediately, before Lung became dangerous enough to rampage throughout E88 territory.
With the ABB strategy revealed, Victor had picked out the next most likely target, assigned additional protection, waited for Oni Lee to strike… and watched as Lee slaughtered them. It had grieved him to do it, for protection must flow down even as loyalty went upward, but soldiers were made for battle. The information they had purchased with their lives had informed Victor's choice of this next battlefield: a cavernous factory now used only for storage, with a maze of shelving constricting access and sightlines at ground level but great windows on the third story, it would force Lee to come into melee to kill the E88 soldiers defending it — and come he would.
The bait would be all the more irresistible for Lee, for Victor himself would be there.
Twice before had they fought hand to hand, matching the skills Victor had taken against Lee's speed and clones. Once, one of Lee's clones had disemboweled Victor while he snapped its neck. He'd started wearing a breastplate after being left for dead like that.
Once, Victor had disoriented the real Lee with a temple strike and pulled the pin of one of his grenades... and Lee had survived anyway, somehow removing his harness and teleporting clear of the blast in time. Lee's reflexes were the fastest Victor had ever seen, Cricket included, but he'd stopped wearing his grenades wired to his harness after that. After losing his eyes to the shrapnel, Victor remembered his first sight being a look up at Othala, his head in her lap, seeing the worry on her plain face, and realizing for the first time how deeply she cared.
This third time should pay for all.
Already this morning, Lee had struck a different site, still within uncontested E88 territory. Perhaps Lung hoped to halt the move on what had been ABB turf? Regardless, it hadn't been properly defended, and people had died. Victor had planned even for that, and there had been a map put up on the wall of every E88 site last night, with this very location circled in red. Far too obvious a trap… except for the fact that Lung and Oni Lee were animals, both of them. Lee would come, and Lung would be waiting somewhere nearby.
If Oni Lee kept to his pattern from yesterday, he'd strike sometime in the next forty-five minutes. Given the long corridor formed by shelves two stories high, he could only come from one of two directions, north or south. Victor stood up from the floor and slipped into a Tai Chi moving meditation, leaving his attention everywhere and nowhere, all his concentration in the moment as he flowed through the forms. An endless time later, something drew his attention — someone walking quietly on concrete.
North, then.
Victor turned to face the northern end of the corridor, hands clasped behind him.
Lee looked him in the eye, and gave a deathshead grin.
A moment.
Victor drew his pistol from his belt holster a beat slower than Lee's knife emerged and then fired a single shot at Lee's scuttling charge, hitting the shoulder. He then dropped the pistol, spinning into a low sweep kick aimed behind him. Another Lee stumbled and gave ground, his intended stab only slicing along Victor's bicep before glancing off his breastplate. Victor rose and followed with a rapid combination to the solar plexus and throat, temporarily incapacitating this Lee. Victor leapt forward in a roll, coming up facing back at the two Lees coming toward him around the one clutching his throat. The one with the wounded shoulder puffed into a blinding cloud of ash covering half the distance between them, and Victor instantly launched a spinning backfist.
Nothing.
Coming around, he saw a grinning Lee erupt from the smoke and met it with an uncoiling spinning kick that caught it on the chin, snapping its neck and creating another ash cloud, this one enveloping Victor. The rotation from the kick gave him a glimpse of another Lee behind him, knives flickering out from his fingers, and Victor bent backward into a back handspring, felt a knife skip off the stomach of his breastplate and another trace a line of fire along his left calf as it came up. The handspring transitioned seamlessly through a cartwheel into a front handspring and from there into a dead run. He skidded to a stop twenty feet later, and turned to watch the ash cloud disperse.
And Lee walked right out, still smiling, knives sheathed, a grenade in one hand.
There.
After three clones with knives, Lee goes to grenades. Like clockwork. Of course, just because Victor knew it was coming didn't mean he could stop it — Lee was living proof that keeping it simple was lethal. He backed up into the shaft of sunlight slanting through the western windows and kept retreating.
This was what he was gambling everything on.
Lee closed the distance to ten feet, stepped into the sunlight, eyes glancing up and to the left before he pulled the pin and leapt forward. Victor immediately turned to his right and underbarred through the shelves, hitting the ground running, while the rippling explosions of a dozen daisy-chained claymores thundered from the roof of the building next door. Five seconds later, a dull thump announced the death of the remaining clone.
Planning. Preparation. Judgment.
Skill alone was never enough to be victorious.