Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 8: The Empire I (Patreon)

I rushed over to Lisa as the poor girl collapsed in front of me. It didn’t look like she’d just passed out for no good reason, something was up. I was sworn to heal everyone, and I wasn’t going to let a kid die in front of me.

I snapped my fingers a few times, changed [The World Around Me] to see inside of people, then rapped on her skull.

She had some weird stuff going on in her brain. I wasn’t going to touch it - I rarely touched anything that wasn’t a traumatic injury, concussion, or similar obvious trauma in brains, that road led to madness - but there were some elements that were clearly just wrong. 

I carefully massaged them around, then stood up.

“Alright! She should be better.” I announced, then pointed a finger at Skitter.

“And you. Please. Better threat evaluation. Your gathering swarms aren’t going to help if I wanted to inflict violence, but they’re letting everyone know that this building is interesting.”

Grue glared at the girl, who went from being completely emotionless to looking embarrassed.

Tattletale groaned and started to come back to life.

“Welp! My job here is done. Remember. No shenanigans, or I’ll have to take the stick route. Bye!”

With one last cheerful wave, I headed out.

It was getting late, even by ‘we’re pretending we’re not nocturnal’ superhero standards, and I was ready for bed. I started to zip over to The Rig - an oil rig reconverted to the Protector’s main base - when I was intercepted by a blonde missile.

Well. She tried.

Glory Girl was a member of New Wave, an ‘independent hero team’. AKA mercenaries, or best case, a protective detail for the only healer Brockton Bay had. From what I was gathering, the second best healer for several hundred miles around.

I was as modest as I was humble.

Glory Girl had enough complaints filed against her - as a teenager! - that if she were a Ranger, we’d be having a long, long talk about her future in the program. 

The tiara was a nice touch, though. I might want to try one at some point.

“Villain!” She shouted, speeding after me with frankly terrible form. I just went a little faster, and the look on her face as I started to peel away was priceless.

No fighting, no banter, no acknowledgement. Just… stepping on the gas a little harder than she was, and the girl was left flailing.

Waaaait a minute. The girl.

At this time of night.

On a school night.

I put my hands on my hips and paused. Predictably, she came screaming past. I only needed to do a little backflip in midair, and she missed entirely. No follow-up foot, no kick, nothing.

She was a kid, she was still learning. I could give her some grace. On her fighting technique, not poor life decisions. It took a village, and all that. 

It wasn’t my village, but that sort of attitude led to problems.

“Excuse me.” I said, which got her to half pause. Only half- she was still barrelling towards me for a follow-up punch. “Does your mother know where you are right now?”

The look of spluttering indignation on her face, combined with her missing entirely - without me moving - gave all the answer I needed.

“Uh huh.” I said. “Look, I think we need to go and have a talk with her.”

She went pale, then grinned.

“Ha! How? I’m invincible!”

I raised an eyebrow at that proclamation.

“Really?” I said. “Want to test that?”

With the way she flinched - yeah. With an incoherent shout, she tried to tackle me again.

Did she have no other moves? Was she just a flying Brute? Seemed like it… and I was a brutier-Brute, with more skill. That type of fight only ended one way.

As she sped past, I dodged again, then executed a lightning-fast rabbit punch to her ribs. It was stopped by a barrier, but hitting it let me ‘see’ it flicker out of existence. It popped back on a second later, then vanished from my sight.

Okay, one-two punch it was.

She tried to hit me again, but this time I was ready. A second rabbit punch took down her shield, then I snaked my hand around and grabbed her ear and twisted.

“Owe, owe, owe, FUCK, owe that hurts!” Victoria - Glory Girl - swore.

New Wave had this whole ‘public accountability’ thing going on - good for them! No masks! - which also meant their address was public.

“Now,” I patiently explained the facts of life to Glory Girl. “We’re going to your home, and you’re going to explain to your mother exactly what you were doing.”

She tried to wriggle, protest, and fight. She was clearly fairly new at this, and didn’t have the necessary gumption to properly fight me. Glory Girl would totally wash out of Ranger training on the first day. She had immediate access to an excellent healer - all she needed to do was rip free of my grasp, losing part of her ear in the process, and she could keep fighting me. Or she could show she surrendered and cooperated. Instead, she was ineffectively fighting me, and whimpering when I turned her ear the slightest bit.

She did help a bit with directions, and got a smug look on her face.

We landed in front of her house, and I politely rang the doorbell. Lights turned on, thumping noises were heard, and soon the door opened, revealing a pissed woman.

I mean, I'd be mad too if someone woke me up at this hour.

“What do you - VICTORIA DALLON!” She shouted, spotting her daughter standing sheepishly next to me. “Just WHAT are you doing!?”

“But mom, she’s a-”

“No buts! You are grounded! Get in here this instant!”

“But-”

The two continued to argue for a minute. I jumped in on a minor pause.

“Mrs. Dallon, that was my only business here. I’ll leave the two of you to it, alright?”

“Yes, thank you.” She said, distracted. “Ordinarily, I’d-”

“Mom! You can’t! She-”

“What do you mean, I can’t? I’d expect this sort of behavior from Amy, not from you! I am your mother, and…”

I let the two keep arguing, and made an exit stage left, my good deed for the day done.

============

“Hi Armsmaster!” I called out to the obsessive Tinker. “I’ve got a tiny little request for you.”

“What.” He asked, all heart and love.

“I want you to stab me!” I told him with a cheerful grin.

“What.” Different tone, same question.

“Well. I’m about to turn in for the night. You should as well, it’s not healthy to be up so late, but I’m not your mother. Anyway. Classic escape move - stab me a bunch in my sleep. It doesn’t work, but it’s hell to get the blood out of the sheets. Anyway, way I’ve figured it, you stab me now, in a more controlled setting, you see it doesn’t work, you don’t end up stabbing me in my sleep and making a bunch of laundry.” I paused, thinking about what I knew of the man so far. “It’s efficient.”

He stared at me, clearly thinking.

“My tools aren’t ready yet. It’s more efficient for me to continue working on them.” He said, turning back to his work.

I shrugged.

“Okay, great! See you tomorrow!”

======

After a late-afternoon breakfast of sausage, eggs, and toast, I got back to work. I could just go on a visible tour of Brockton Bay, getting pictures taken, kissing babies, and showing off fantastical powers… or I could go straight to the biggest problem there was.

The Empire 88.

It had been about 36 hours since I arrived here, and it was long enough. Fascism wasn’t a part-time job, nor was being a Sentinel, and I saw absolutely no reason to wait until nightfall to give them a headache. Heck, it was probably the time of day when they were all awake, which was exactly what I wanted!

I quickly got dressed in my Sentinel gear, leaving off my helmet and throwing on my blood-red cape. Proper visibility and style - only if they proved difficult would I get properly dressed.

That’s if they survived that long.

I’d gotten a good look around, and while I didn’t know where or who all of the important Empire people were, I did have a good grasp on where their supplies were. How likely was it that warehouses of guns, drugs, and money guarded by skinheads sporting swastika tattoos weren’t Empire?

But first! I needed to make a quick pit stop at the local big box store, where I made a few purchases.

The big one was a megaphone.

Then I started skipping through the middle of Empire territory, headed to the first safehouse I knew about. I turned on the megaphone, turned it to max, and started broadcasting.

“Yoohoo! Empire! A bisexual non-Christian foreign woman is busy stealing all your stuff! Hellooooo! Empire! I’m off to rob your warehouse! I even have a tan!”

On and on I went in that vein, trying to push on all their various buttons. People started to pop up, recording me with their phones. I couldn’t tell if they were smart or dumb - my healing field really changed the math on a lot of this, but they were in Empire territory, they had to live here. I didn’t even make it to the first warehouse before a jeep came screeching around the corner, several masked people in it.

Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket. The first one was apparently one of the Empire’s heaviest hitters, and turned into a wolf made out of whirring metal blades. Basically a blender in wolf form. Stormtiger was an aerokinetic, AKA a Wind [Mage], and a body build that suggested he was also good at hand to hand fighting. Cricket… had really good reflexes. And a pair of kama.

Truly, I was quaking in my boots.

One of these capes was not like the other. However, my plan didn’t involve fighting them at all. No, that’d just put them on alert, and get them to lock down, plus the rest of my plan would get ruined by the three neo-nazi’s getting arrested or killed.

I stopped, smiled, and waved.

“Hi! I’m Elaine!”

Hookwolf spat on the ground, as the other two fanned out. 

“Bitch, you don’t know what you’re getting involved in.” He threatened. “But we’re going to make you pay.”

I looked around.

“Hey! Camera phone people! Make sure you’re recording, yeah? Get lots of good images!”

I made sure to smile and look directly at everyone filming. Never knew who would get the critical video! If such a thing existed. 

Hookwolf started to talk, but I interrupted him. He let me banter.

By Ciriel, they were all idiots here. Never let the enemy act uninterrupted. They were playing right into my hands, and I was an idiot with this stuff!

“Hookwolf! Are you familiar with the legend of the Green Knight?” I asked him, pulling out an axe and a bough of holly.

“You making fun of me?” He asked, cracking his knuckles. “Cause I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

I smiled at him, then turned to the crowd.

“The legend of the Green Knight!” I proclaimed, in my best storyteller voice. “Hookwolf here gets one free shot at me! But he’d better make it count, because I’m going to return it to him in a week!”

I lied as naturally as I breathed. The one free shot part was completely accurate.

The rest of it? I wasn’t going to do anything like that.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Come on!” I taunted him. “Or are you scared? Maybe we should have Cricket do it, she looks like she has more balls than you.”

With a roar, Hookwolf lunged at me. I rolled my eyes at top speed.

Fascists. So predictable. With incredibly fragile egos to boot.

I swapped out of my good armor, replacing it with total rags, then took a deep breath. I was going to need it. 

As Hookwolf lunged towards me, his body shifted and blurred, turning into a bus-sized murder wolf-blender. His paw went through my chest, and started to spin like a chainsaw.

Naturally, I healed about as fast as he hurt me, which resulted in an absolute explosion of gore. He was taking out a sizable chunk of my torso, from my pelvis to my heart, and wasn’t stopping. At the same time, I could regenerate that much easily.

I’d seen massacres with fewer body parts, and the force he was applying was painting the street from the apartment all the way across the street to the store next to me. The entire block was sprayed red, with my regenerated internal organs, skin, bone, viscera, and flesh flying around.

I started shouting.

Naturally, I still had the megaphone. On the loudest setting. And an adoring audience of recording cape-fans.

“Barbeque! Barbeque! The Empire’s hosting a long pork barbeque! Get your barbeque now! Free long pork, courtesy of the Empire!”

I’m not sure which part annoyed Hookwolf the most, but he tried to bite down on my head. I teleported away.

“One free shot!” I proclaimed. “Alright, my turn next week!”

I then chained teleports with the invisibility rune, and hovered a dozen feet above Hookwolf. After looking around a bit, the man reformed back into his human shape, and the three capes started to confer.

Yes, yes, good, all according to plan. Next, they’d need to report back to their boss, at which point I’d get the central meeting point, and be able to follow-

All my plans went up in frustrating smoke when Stormtiger pulled out a cell phone.

Damnit!

A plan never survives first contact with the enemy.