Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 22: The Butcher II (Patreon)

AN: The next Song chapter is coming out tomorrow at what was the usual time. It's a big one! Giving you a heads up, because chatter!

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I went shopping at the PRT. Disappointingly, they didn’t have as much confoam as they usually did. It was entirely possible they were stocking less to deprive me of munitions. Couldn’t say I blamed them. 

While I was doing that, I was trying to send one of my minions a ‘text message’. Innovative things, cell phones, but how did normal people manage to type!? The keys were tiny! I was a shameless ‘hunt and pecker’. I sent off a long message, explaining the situation and wondering if I should defer my morning Immortality appointments and get straight to hunting the Teeth, or not.

UGH! Stupid character limits! I’d gotten the ‘advanced plan’ or whatever with an 800 character limit instead of 160, but I kept running into it. Lots of short texts it was.

I had no ego in being ‘The Boss’. I had a whole staff now, and people to analyze the entire situation. I’d let them work out the reputational hit versus finance versus handling the local crime problem. 

By the time I was done with my shopping, I got a response back.

Let’s keep the morning appointments. The Teeth tend to stay up late and party hard, they’re likely all asleep right now and not causing problems. We’ll reschedule the appointment in Italy, everyone else today is in Canada.

Excellent!

I headed north for my morning work, getting texts the entire time confirming that things were running smoothly. People were paying, business was running, and oh! One sulky text from Lisa that I had a whole staff, and wasn’t horrifically abusing the teenager on the team, nevermind that she had superpowers.

A few fliers tried to intercept me near the border. I waved to blue visor and red eagle as I zipped past. It was practically a daily game.

For WHATEVER reason, the PRT also existed in Canada, nevermind that it was a US organization. I wasn’t going to touch whatever legal quagmire was going on there, and simply took the chance to top up my shopping with the Toronto branch. Loudspeakers, alarms, troopers running around, the usual - oh! This was new!

An invoice left inside the armory! For… everything I’d liberated so far.

That… wow. 

Confoam was expensive.

Well, if they were going to be polite enough to reasonably bill me, I’d happily pay up. I was taking it, and while it was legal for Rangers and Sentinels to liberate critical supplies, it was considered a poor-form last-resort thing. Giving me the chance to pay for it would dramatically reduce the amount of paperwork I’d need to do at home.

I was carrying some cash on me, but not enough, and not the right type of currency. 

Oh well, that’s what solid gold bricks were for. At roughly the current price… two ingots should be enough.

By Ciriel, I was glad I never got into the rest of Pallos’s mindset of ‘Gold? Eh… no magic properties. Pretty in some jewelry’. The arbitrage was obscene. I’d have to stock up some more when I got home… and pray I was never in a position to take advantage of said arbitrage again.

At the same time, I’d been throwing it around like candy. I was running out, and would need to start thinking of alternatives.

RIGHT! I needed to buy gemstones while I was at it. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds were all worth far more on Pallos than here. I sent a quick text off to my minions about it, needing three attempts to get it short enough for the dang thing to actually send. 

Letters didn’t have character limits! Books were barely limited on how many words could be in them! Sure… the instant communication part was pretty nice. 

Grumbling, I flew back to Brockton Bay, where I proceeded to scare half my staff by doing everything at top speed. Between my hair and my outfit, I was a whirlwind of brown and green. The not-scared half of my staff were more delighted at the blatant reminder that they had a SUPERHERO on the premises.

Once that was all done, I headed over to… I had no idea where the Teeth were.

I made a side trip - using cash - then I popped down to one of my favorite buildings that could be found in any civilized town, and plopped myself down into an empty policeman’s chair.

“Hi!” I said.

“Jesus Christ!” The officer swore, jumping almost a foot in the air and clutching at his chest. “Don’t do that!” 

I’d caused something of a commotion, but I shrugged it off. They’d live.

“Sorry! I’m -” I started to say, before I got cut off.

“Dawn, Elaine, yes, yes, I don’t think there’s a single person in the city who doesn’t know who you are. What?” 

Ah, the gruff, no-nonsense front, all while slightly trembling. I didn’t want to scare the pants off everyone I met… but I tended to scare the pants off anyone who knew who or what I was.

Such was life! At least there was a vague return to normalcy, where I said ‘Hi, I’m a Sentinel’ was met with the appropriate ‘how can I help’ or, alternatively, screaming, instead of blank looks and ‘who?’

“I’m looking for the Teeth! I want to kick them in,” I chuckled at my own joke. The officer stared deadpan at me.

Tough crowd.

“Do you know where I can find them?” I asked.

He looked at me incredulously.

“They’re in the Trainyard.” He told me. “Everyone knows that.”

I stared back.

“Clearly not.” I said. “Well, anyway, thanks! I got you a present. Here!”

I teleported out the boxes of donuts I’d bought before coming over.

“Thanks for your help! Don’t eat them all at once. Everyone, stay safe out there! Bye!”

The siren song of fresh, free donuts had most of the nearby officers heading over like sharks who’d smelt blood in the water. I scratch their back, they scratch mine. It worked the world over - I just had to be careful to deliver them after, otherwise it looked like a bribe. Which would mean - hang on, no. There wouldn’t be more paperwork, since I didn’t recognize the USA, and hence wasn’t recognizing the subsidiary governments. No ‘bribing a foreign official’ paperwork to fill out! I swore, sometimes it felt like there was more paperwork than missions.

I knew there was a reason I never got deep into law. What a pain.

Time for some old fashioned problems that I could handle in a straightforward way!

It took me about 20 minutes to find the Teeth, and even then I needed a minute to orient myself.

Just… what the actual fuck was in the water supply here?

They’d gone all in on a ridiculous aesthetic. Skulls on their shoulders, spikes everywhere, teeth necklaces, the entire thing was absurd. None of those spikes were functional. It’d be far too easy to grab them in a fight, but looked attached enough that they’d actually provide leverage. I got the whole ‘shock and awe’ idea, but at least make it secretly practical! My cape, for example, had a particularly weak string on the clasp. If someone grabbed it and gave it a good yank, it’d break apart before knocking me over.

And I didn’t bring it to a real fight!

Amateur hour. Amateur hour every hour here.

Right, then.

They weren’t asleep in their beds, but they weren’t up and about, causing mayhem. Instead, they were… day drinking and getting high.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. 

I was clearly somewhat complacent, in that nobody at this tier of competency ever ended up needing Sentinel attention. This… could actually be worth going into the AAR as an area of improvement. Maybe once every eight years or so, handle some absurdly minor issue to help us remember our roots and where we came from. Then again, finding some issue to handle might be a problem, the local guards should be sweeping in and dealing with the issue ahead of time.

Mmmmm… things to consider later.

I blanketed the five rooms where all the gang members were located with confoam grenades. It was quite satisfying to watch the brief moment of shocked surprise - on the ones sober enough to recognize what was going on - before they exploded like the percussion section of the orchestra.

Iona always did like hitting a drum.

Gods, it was so much fun being able to go on the offense. Generally, I had to wait for people to display a threat of some sort before I could act. Confoam though? It was entirely harmless, and I could use it with utter impunity. I wondered if I could bribe Dragon heavily enough to move to Pallos when this was all over… I could offer her Immortality, to herself, her boyfriend, and anyone she wanted to bring along. I knew the Senate would not only approve, but they might even give me another commendation.

I didn’t even bother displaying them anymore. Just chucked them in a box on a shelf.

I winced as things didn’t exactly go to plan.

The Butcher teleporting out in a fiery explosion? Completely according to plan.

Spree starting to multiply, only for the copies to get caught in the foam and start squashing gang members? Not according to plan.

Vex summoning hundreds of razor sharp forcefields and spinning them, some of them mauling people? Again, not according to plan.

I was glad I’d kept everyone except Butcher on the healing whitelist. I crinked my neck and got to it.

I couldn’t kill the Butcher. I couldn’t contain her with foam. 

Given her known skillset, I only had a few ideas. I teleported right in front of her with a cheery wave.

“Hi! I’m Elaine! You’re under arrest.” I said rapid-fire.

“Kill you!” The Butcher grunted, then tried to punch me. In her other hand, I could see that she was reshaping some of the spikes on her outfit into a blade.

Ah right, matter reshaping. Okay, I took back some of what I said about the Butcher’s outfit. It remained true for everyone else.

The Butcher had a Brute classification, among others. It meant she was stronger, faster, and tougher than a normal human.

I was far, far more of a Brute than the Butcher was. I was faster, stronger, tougher, and had better regeneration. I also had hundreds of thousands of hours in fights and spars, and I have full use of my mental faculties. The only thing the Butcher had on me was mass and reach, but who didn’t? I was used to fighting heavier opponents.

I redirected her punch, then smacked her wrist at an angle to disarm her. The Butcher tried a number of moves on me, but I effortlessly countered them and hit the Butcher back. Frankly, I’d been in more danger from over-enthusiastic toddlers, and she had about the same skill level. ‘Punch’, without any technique behind it. Who knew a dozen screaming voices in one’s head was bad for coordination?

To her credit, the Butcher soon realized that she was heavily outclassed. With one last slash of razor-sharp claws, she explosively teleported away. Which was her usual trick of evading capture - it was hard to follow someone who didn’t need line of sight to teleport a good distance away, along with the rest of her skillset.

Except I was a better teleporter, and I was right back in her face a moment later.

“Hi! You’re still under arrest!” I told her, hooking my foot behind her ankle and pulling her over.

We had an utterly one-sided exchange of blows before she teleported out again. I was hot on her heels - I was fairly certain that I outranged her, and had a shorter cooldown.

I had a few ways to escalate, and when the Butcher immediately tried to gut me, I gently retaliated.

I had barely needed to use my second element at all here on Earth Bet. I was constantly using my Celestial healing, and I used my Spatial class all the time, but I hadn’t needed to bring out my offensive skills yet. They seemed like a nice trick to have up my sleeve, and not using them helped remind me to reach for non-lethal methods.

Like confoam grenades. There were very, very few problems that couldn’t be solved by teleporting confoam grenades. It helped that the power level here was generally pretty low. Teleportation was a high-level trick, but most of what I saw was fairly low level stuff.

I kept it relatively subtle. I summoned eight razor-sharp feathers made out of Radiance, each aimed at a critical tendon. In a fraction of a second, they sliced through, burning and cauterizing the wound, right before I dismissed them. If anyone had been looking - possible, but unlikely, in the high-speed battle we were engaged in - they might’ve seen a brief flash of golden light.

Butcher hissed and teleported away into a store. I followed right after, getting caught in the explosive aftermath of her teleport. She had fallen to her knees, but was already getting back up. Shelves were crashing, people were screaming, and - ohhh, this was not a great place to be.

A gun aisle?

In the middle of a grocery store?

What the fuck, Walmart.

This was… annoying. Teleporting, regeneration, couldn’t kill her, and more skills than I could shake a stick at. 

Wait… this was basically what fighting me was like, except Butcher lacked a number of tools I had. Like ranged - oh wait, no, that was a gun she was picking up. And Quarrell - the woman before she became the Butcher - had a skill, or rather ability, with guns?

I punched her wrist hard, managing to break it, but she still managed to squeeze the trigger three times. The bullets started to fly in wild patterns. I knew they’d hit people - why else would Butcher start shooting? - but it was trivial to snap up annihilation shields in front of the bullets.

Then I remembered she couldn’t have a vitality-extending skill, and I teleported the gun out of Butcher’s hand. Then I teleported all the guns away from Butcher, and she fled. Again.

The battle raged, with almost no harm and minimal damage. I soon got into the habit of snapping up a shield at Butcher’s teleport location, and buffering her explosive entrance. Nothing she did to me stuck, and I soundly thrashed her every time she stayed still. Credit where it was due, the Butcher was mentally tough. The blows were landing, she was experiencing pain, but she kept going.

And going.

And going.

Exhausting the Butcher until she fell over was one of my plans, but I’d slowly been escalating various techniques to slow her down as time went on. I was going to hurt the Butcher, but I had to be very, very careful about it. In some ways, she was running away, and if she stopped fighting entirely, there wasn’t much I could do, besides grab onto her and try to hold on. I could only properly fight in self defense or defense of others - which was why I loved the confoam grenades so much. Someone purely running away? One of my biggest combat weaknesses.

I was content with it. It was a good reminder that my calling was medicine, not fighting. At heart, I was a doctor, not a warrior.

Still, while the Butcher fought - and with my very punchable face constantly teleporting right into punching range, she couldn’t resist - I could slowly escalate. Eventually, things reached a breaking point. My healing image was ready.

I drew a sword out of [Manor]. It was a particularly heavy and broad specimen, not at all what I liked to use, or the Legions. It was practically a decorative piece, although we kept it in the armory and not on display.

I planted my feet and swung. First down, then used the momentum to twist the blade, across, and back up.

It wasn’t my cleanest delimbing. I got her shoulders well enough, but only got through one knee and had chopped through the femur on her other leg. The blow back up was the worst - I’d just managed to get her wrist, not her entire arm. 

I immediately flashed healing the Butcher’s way. My prepared healing image carefully closed off her veins, handled the dangling nerve endings, and ensured that everything else stayed right where it should be. 

She still teleported away, and I groaned in frustration. Some people just did not know when they were beat… and man, teleporting was annoying. It had come up often enough, and I’d helped train people in dealing with teleporters, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to properly fight a teleporter, and I couldn’t use lethal force. 

Radiance moved at the speed of light. That generally handled most teleporters.

EXCEPT THIS ONE.

“Please surrender.” I said tiredly. The explosion buffeted me, and hit me repeatedly as it bounced off the shields I’d erected, eventually venting through the opening at the top. My hair was a disaster, and it’d take me at least five minutes with a brush to fix it.Or one really well thought-out teleport. Teleporting to do my hair was easily one of my favorite power stunts. Never failed to get outraged yells of ‘that’s not fair!’ from girls who saw me do it for the first time.

Butcher just snarled at me… and teleported away.

AGAIN.

Sixteen more rounds of this, and I went back to plan ‘exhaust her into submission’. Given that she was mostly laying there as a recent amputee and not burning too much energy, and how bad I felt over the whole thing, I healed her body back to pristine shape. Well, except rejuvenating her energy.

I still felt vaguely bad over the whole thing.

It took nine hours to wear the Butcher out enough that she just keeled over and passed out. Not in the dangerous way, in the utterly exhausted way. I dragged her onto a board, dropped a confoam grenade on it, and headed over to the PRT building. Dragon had one of her suits there, and I eyed it suspiciously. 

She was both there and not there, and for the life of me, I could not figure out what was going on with her. Some sort of Changer - someone that changed their body - was still my best bet, but how on Pallos had she survived dying!?

Well, at least I’d gotten the warning that Armsmaster was back. She probably wanted to visit her boyfriend. I hoped she had a more standard, elvenoid body for when she was visiting Armsmaster.

Andddd my perfect memory would never let me un-forget what I’d just imagined. Great. Thanks. 

The guards were as unfriendly as usual when I came in for a landing. ‘Hands up’ this, ‘you’re under arrest’ that… basically the same speech I’d been giving all day, except with fewer friendly greetings. And more requests for backup.

“One Butcher!” I said with a beaming smile, before it got wiped off my face. 

Wait. I might’ve forgotten something.

“Er. Did you guys manage to pick up the rest of the Teeth I foamed?” I asked them sheepishly.

I wasn’t getting a good answer, just a lot of foam nozzles waved in my face. 

“Alright, bye!” I said, before going off on a side quest.

PRT troopers were basically cops. They’d also like donuts!