Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 20: Cleanup II (Patreon)

AN: TWO of these just went out. Cleanup I and II. Make sure you read I first!

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Part of me felt a little bad for going after literal children. Like, I hadn’t had an issue where I needed to come down on kids in quite a long time. Generally, they ended up being far too low level for them to cause real problems… but the times they were sneaky and caused issues, oh boy. Far more reckless than an adult. 

Either way, I was usually massive overkill for anything involving children. Even when I found issues, it was much better to hand it off to someone lower level who needed the experience.

Well. I had warned them, and I did think the local authorities would be able to set them straight. 

I started off with the Undersider’s base. If I was being extremely generous, I’d say the guy there was early to rise, and had a great attitude. I was more of a realist, and could easily see that he’d stayed up way too late, playing video games. Half-eaten slices of pizza were still in the box… on top of other pizza boxes that had never been cleaned up. 

Honestly. Some kids could hack it on their own, but these ones needed help. At least Rachel was sleeping.

I didn’t bother announcing myself. I simply teleported in a confoam grenade onto Regent’s lap and Rachel’s bed. He got a chance to look down.

“Oh sh-” He barely got out before the grenade exploded, coating him in foam. I whistled a merry tune as I picked up the sofa and dropped it off inside my [Manor], and kept whistling as I loaded Rachel next to him.

“No busting them out.” I firmly told Lisa, who was furiously working on some arts and craft project. I peeked just a hair, and - ah. She was writing out a petition why I shouldn’t be arresting her friends and turning them over to the authorities. ‘He’s doing it to gain custody of his sister’ was almost tugging on my heartstrings, but like… career criminals weren’t the best parental figures. A bad example, and all that. ‘Secretly an undercover agent’ okay, great. Dropping her off with the authorities wouldn’t be a problem then. I was judging them for using a teen- oh, nevermind. I wasn’t judging them anymore. She wanted to be an undercover agent, and the only one who knew was… Armsmaster.

Who I’d exiled to the Amazon.

… Good luck, kiddo.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to save or otherwise preserve what he was working on, but utterly failed. I stopped when I somehow managed to kill him in the game. 

Whoops. Okay, it was clear I was making things worse for him here.

I picked up the two other scents, and went for the stronger one first. Grue was living by himself in a 2-bedroom apartment, and was actually asleep. I wasn’t giving anyone high marks for being asleep at this time of day, but the place was neat and tidy enough that made me think he could hack it on his own. 

At the same time, he broke rule 1 of ‘follow through on a mercenary contract’, and was woken up by containment foam swallowing him whole. I whistled a merry tune as I loaded him up, slightly annoyed at the dark smoke slowly billowing out of the entire mess. I’d be worried if I didn’t see him generating it somehow.

Reminded me of Sentinel Tyrannus, in a way. Cloud everything, let your side see through it. Murder the heck out of our enemies while they couldn’t see anything.

Of course, Grue didn’t have an acidic component to his fog, nor was he reanimating dinosaurs to cause carnage. That’s why he was a grunt, and Tyrannus had been a War Sentinel.

Then again, Tyrannus was a name on my wall, and Grue was alive, so it was hard to say who actually won.

I shook my head.

Three down, one to go.

Well… make that two to go.

Skitter - the undercover agent one - was the last to go. She lived at home with her dad, and that warranted a short note.

Dear Skitter’s Dad

I’ve arrested your daughter on a variety of criminal charges. Like robbing a bank, robbing a jewelry store, and not having the good sense to take bars of gold to not cause trouble. The last one’s not technically a crime, just letting you know the levels of poor decision making she’s up to.

The gold’s in the coal chute, by the way.

I’m dropping her off in New York City along with the rest of the Undersiders, because half the time I arrest someone here and bring them over to the PRT, whoops! It turns out they’re well-connected to the PRT itself. With my luck, Grue’s secretly Emily’s kid or something, and they’d all avoid justice. 

I know it’s devastating news. No parent likes to hear when their child’s making a mess this large, and needing to face the justice system. At the very least, she’s been stopped, and will hopefully be able to turn her life around in a productive manner.

All the best,

Elaine, Sentinel Dawn of Exterreri

I drew a big pink heart on the envelope - to make it stick out - and placed it on the dad’s bedside table, next to his glasses. It should be impossible to miss, but I’d known oblivious people to miss more obvious things.

Me.

I was talking about me. I’d missed a literal giant sign in the sky once. The second time didn’t count, I was ignoring that one, I hadn’t missed it.

Okay!

With that handled, I dropped a confoam grenade in Skitter’s bed, same as the rest. Explosion of foam, wild flailing, and then a dreadful humming.

Oh shit.

That was a lot of bugs.

I cranked my speed, hauling Skitter into [Manor] before closing the door. Lisa just looked tired. Wait, what was she doing still awake!? Something to discuss with her later.

To my relief, the moment I closed the door the bugs went back to acting normally.

I briefly debated staying in Brockton Bay and picking up my last passenger, but no. That one required delicate finesse, not a bunch of muffled yelling.

A quick jaunt to New York City led me to the PRT building. I teleported into the cells, ignored the wailing klaxon alarms, and dumped everyone out. To their credit, the local troopers were on the ball. The nozzles in the ceiling rapidly activated and sprayed more of the wonderful, wonderful containment foam, trying to trap me inside.

If it wasn’t for my teleporting and shields, they might actually pose a problem for me. I was quick and agile, but I wasn’t really known for my brute strength. Which was… okay, wait, hold up, that was a really big strength number. Nevermind. I had modest amounts of strength, it just… I was completely off my train of thought.

I spun it off, and zipped back to Brockton Bay.

I wanted to talk with Uber and Leet, but I wasn’t sure how to find them. I’d need to drop off a request with Faultline and her crew, the actually good mercenaries in town, and see if they could arrange a meeting.

No, next up was Fog. The man had gotten away from me once before, and I didn’t need to leave a festering problem behind. I’d learned well from Artemis. I wasn’t quite as brutal as she was, but ignoring him was just asking for trouble.

I decided to start tracking him down by going to his house… and he was there. Asleep.

Oooookay. I wouldn’t stay in the same house I’d just been ambushed in, but it took all types. 

I poked my head into [Manor] first, where Lisa was blankly staring at a bookcase, questioning her life choices.

“Hey.” I whispered softly. She still jumped about a foot in the air. “Sorry. I’m about to conduct an operation that’ll require absolute silence. Can you do that for me?”

“Fine.” She muttered sullenly, going back to staring at the books like they contained the secret to life, the universe, and everything. Which they did, albeit only a small fraction of the whole. As was true of all knowledge.

“Thanks.” I said, popping back to Earth Bet.

I silently crept through Fog’s home, and made my way to his bedroom. I opened the [Manor] portal as large as I could. Then softly, carefully, using a fraction of my strength and all of my dexterity, sending an unheard prayer to Ciriel that the bed would hold, I lifted the bed with the sleeping man on it, and gently crept backwards into [Manor]. I managed to sneak him in, and gently put the bed down.

He started to stir. My part had gone off perfectly, but there was a change in the ambient noise and temperature that would wake someone up. Especially with the time - some people were already awake.

But the abduction was complete enough.

Making sure to use my anti-friction runes to not create a sonic boom that would wipe out half the glass in the city, I took off at full speed, heading… huh, I didn’t need to exile Fog. One fascist was easy enough to process, as opposed to the hundreds, bordering on thousands, from taking out the entire Empire.

Still… with my luck he’d be one of the Ward’s uncles or something absurd like that. I’d just dropped off the Undersiders in New York, so… ah! Boston! Perfect.

Fog was starting to stir as I opened the portal back to my home in the Boston PRT. Seriously, it looked exactly like the New York one, it was uncanny. Except for the lack of containment foam everywhere. I was tempted to sing a lullaby, but eh. He was about to no longer be my problem. 

I literally dumped him out of the bed, into the cellblock. I made sure to teleport his pillows, blankets, and mattress around so the landing was as smooth as possible. There wasn’t room for his queen-sized bed inside the cell, so I left it in [Manor].

Three quick teleports later, the klaxons were blaring again, and I was outside of the PRT, dusting my hands.

This was going to make an excellent case study when I got back home. I’d present it to the rest of the Sentinels as ‘look at how badly the local guards can bungle things, look at how a Sentinel coming in can hammer on the criminal element in a thoughtful way.’ I was fully prepared for negative feedback - that was the entire point. We were the only ones who did our job, we had to teach and learn from each other. Get ideas on how to do things better next time, or if someone else found themselves in the exact same situation.

Back I went! I always found it best to go to where the next day’s routine was. I could stay in Boston, but post-nap me would hate past-me. Better to just do things properly the first time.

Once in Brockton Bay, I swung by Faultline’s place. They were asleep - they ran a nightclub, no surprise, it was like 6 AM - so I just dropped off my request for a meeting with Uber and Leet along with a small chunk of gold.

It dented the table when it landed.