Duellist 37 (Patreon)

(AN: Didn't want two Alices in the fic as it breaks my three brain cells. Bakuda's name is Grace now - no other changes)

"You don't have to hurt on your own any more." I look soulfully into Bakuda's eyes. "I'm here now. For you. And I'm not going anywhere. So, how about it - Grace? Can we be friends?"

She looks back at me, eyes alight with unspoken emotion. I could read her like an open book. The fear of being vulnerable to someone who truly cared. The shame of the path she'd taken to get to this point. The desperation with which she clung to what little pride remained. The yearning for connection that had been denied to her for so long. Slowly, softly - she opens her mouth and says-

"As if I'd fall for that, fool! Get blown to smithereens, moron! Ex-" She raises her gauntlet to the sky with an exultant expression.

"Don't you dare you crazy fucking bitch-" I lunge at her. Too late.

"-plosion! Bahahaha-" Her laughter is interrupted by the shockwave sweeping us both off of our feet as half of the campus, along with around two-hundred lives - vanishes in an eruption of heat, light, force and sound. "-I am the greatest Tinker in the world!"

"Fuck you!" I scream as the world fades around me, leaving the laughing Tinker as the last thing to disappear. "Let me win already you bugshit insane-"

FAILURE

I don't voice my discontent with the result, I simply pull back immediately - before my eyes start displaying the real world again. My shadow state times out a moment later, but now there's cover between me and my target. I can still hear her, but I can just wait for all of my shadow state charges to recover and vanish back the way I came.

"-etter be the last time, or do I need to find my own form of 'encouragement' for you to do your jobs and stop your boys from telling the entire world our location?" Bakuda seems to be getting into the face of one of her apparent guards.

"That won't be necessary, we understand the assignment." I slink away, leaving the voices behind. I didn't want to be seen. I was Greg right now, not Void Cowboy - so it was pretty important that the core rotation of guards didn't notice the same white boy hanging around every location that they moved Bakuda to. The demographics of the shoppers, workers and general pedestrians in this area of the city weren't tilted enough that any white guy was automatically suspicious, but I definitely stood out more than usual.

Her obvious frustrations with the frequent moves are clear.

And, oddly, not entirely my fault? Oh, I'd leaked her location twice already - but then someone else in the ABB thread claimed to have 'spotted' Oni Lee and Bakuda nearby. Three times in a row.

The third time, Tattletale had stopped pretending that it wasn't her. In normal circumstances I would have said it wasn't smart for her to antagonise the ABB, but I'm pretty sure that there's no salvaging that relationship any more. I can't blame her for doing her best to keep the hypothetical neon-arrow-sign hovering over the pair. The odds of getting the new power-duo of the gang killed by doing that for long enough were pretty good. Even the Protectorate, as sluggish as they were, would eventually act on good intel - and the Empire would be champing at the bit for the chance to kill the new enemy Tinker after yesterday's showing, once they were happy that it wasn't a trap.

That's good and bad news for me. Good news, because the fact that a legitimate Thinker was actively fucking with them and leaking their location made it a lot easier for my own tracking and stalking to go undetected - Bakuda and her underlings were more focused on knocking down CCTV in the area and moving around by different vehicles to try and confuse her, and didn't seem to have any care that someone in the crowd of market-going civilians might have line-of-sight on her.

Bad news, because every spot she moved to ended up being more secure than the last. More guards, more guns and a location ever-deeper into the heart of their territory.

But that last part is a problem for Void Cowboy. Not Greg.

When you're a Cape, or when you're an avid PHO shitposter trying to sound more informed than you were, it's really easy to hyperfocus on the reality of a city as a Cape sees it. Territories carved out of the city like warlords slicing up Africa into their own fiefdoms. No-go zones where hordes of gangbangers wait around every corner to shoot everyone of the wrong ethnicity, and Capes lining up to wait for you at the border.

I wouldn't say it's entirely wrong. It's the kind of assumption that would cause you to live longer, having an understanding that this was an area that wasn't as safe for you as the middle of the Boardwalk.

But it's also... just a city. People live here. Have businesses here. Families. And grow up with the general expectation that, even in Brockton Bay - notorious for its Cape population - the majority of the people here will never knowingly meet a Cape in person outside of a deliberate choice to attend a public event, rush to watch a Cape fight or join a gang. The average civilian's association with the criminal element is a quiet 'I wouldn't get involved with them, they're a dangerous sort' to their children - perhaps an awareness of where gangbangers tended to meet up, and how to avoid them. An understanding that some businesses paid protection money - and may even be happy about that, considering the most likely alternative was the same arrangement except done by literal Nazis who hated them and wanted them to go out of business already.

Which means that it's perfectly fine - normal, even - to walk around what is generally accepted as ABB territory as civilians, even if I wasn't Asian.

Or rather, even if 'we' weren't Asian. I glide back out of the alleyway and rejoin my partner as if nothing had happened. "Moving again. No trouble, I hope?"

"Unfortunately, plenty." Sophia responds. I straighten, casting a concerned glance around at the uncaring crowds around us and not finding the hostile gazes of the local enforcers I was looking for. I glance down with mild consternation, but the bags I had left her with are untouched as well. "Not that kind of trouble."

I glance around. Still plenty of civilians, but a little less activity than there was when I had left her. "Gang activity around here too? I heard gunshots and explosions in the direction of Empire territory, but I assumed it was just a distraction while they moved Bakuda."

"I wouldn't complain about that. It's- People keep trying to flirt with me." She looks irritated at even having to say it out loud.

"Oh." I nod. "Understandable." Still makes me want to put my fist through their face on general principle for flirting with one of my girls, but I do, at least, understand.

"The fuck do you mean, understandable?" Sophia grabs my arm and settles it around her waist. "Make yourself useful and ward them off, or I swear I'll break the nose of the next guy to make a pass at me."

"Don't tell me you've never gone out incognito before. I know neither of us lose if we get into a fight here, but I promise that it won't be the actual cops that reach us first to break things up - and we're both the wrong skin colour for them to be on our side anyway, so I'm pretty sure neither of us get out of that fight with a secret identity intact. Save the beatings for when the action starts." I pull her closer, stealing a kiss before she can react. "I'll make sure everyone knows that you're taken, don't worry."

"Stop being embarrassing." She verbally objects, but doesn't actually do anything about how I'm unsubtly copping a feel. "And it's nothing to do with being out as a civilian. I go out literally all the time, I just don't do it dressed like a- like this! I feel naked." Sophia complains again. "They keep looking at me. If a fight breaks out-"

"Nobody is planning to rob you. They're only looking at you because you're fidgeting so much. You're not fitting the part of a cute girl out in town with her hot boyfriend." That was a lie. It was definitely because her of her outfit. The booty shorts a bit too tight, the cleavage a bit too sheer and the shirt a bit too small. The entire outfit both exposes and clings to her in a way that perfectly accentuates every curve of her toned body, while also teasing the possibility that at any second now a rogue thread, slight slip of the fabric or a particularly weak button could give way at any second to give everyone a show.

But if I told her that, she'd get mad and run off, probably coming back in something that was more Taylor's original style - and I'd lose the appeal of walking around with my hot girlfriend who genuinely didn't even register the fact that she was hot. Understandably so - she wasn't a fashionista, she was the pragmatic sort. If she wasn't in her costume, then she was generally in some variant of sportswear or sports-related casual clothes - she would never think twice about lining up on a track in front of a crowd wearing compression shorts and a sports bra, so why should she be bothered about regular clothes that basically did the same job - or arguably, covered even more?

The true depths of male perversion was lost to her. The percentage of skin exposure was never the decider of how lewd an outfit was. Lewdness was an idea. A dream. The secret whisper in the back of your mind that said, maybe this time - if she bends over just a little bit more - the promised land will come into view. If the outfit fails for an instant, if she just moves like this-

"I'm not cute." She growls cutely, trying to sound menacing. "I swear, if you're thinking something weird-"

"Never." I lie again with the most suspicious answer possible. "I'm taking your concerns seriously. But you need to relax. These are just people like you and me. Look, this place does takeout - let me order something for us." I divert our course.

"They're nothing like us." Sophia snorts. "We're surrounded by gangbangers and their supporters. And even for those that aren't directly involved, they're practically livestock-"

"Careful, they'll make you an honorary Aryan for words like that in this city-" She hits me in the arm. Maybe I deserve it.

"-because they just sit here and take it from the gangs." She stresses the rest of her sentence in a quiet hiss. "They welcome them, accept them - let them shit all over them and tell themselves it's for the best. Nothing like us." She pauses. "It's not a racism thing."

I really got under her skin with that one, huh.

"You think? I'm not sure about that. You should take some lessons from the master of cultural acceptance and ethnic relations over here." I pat myself on the chest as we approach the counter and the welcoming smile of the staff member greeting us. "Ni Hao! I would-o like-o-" What the hell is a Kimchi Jigge? Japchae? They were just making names up at this point. I scroll the menu to find something good, and keep scrolling- aha! "Triple-u Chocolate-u Swirly-u Milkshake-u, kudasai~". I pause and look at Sophia, who is glowering at me for some reason. I shrug and hold up two fingers. "Two?"

A minute later, two plastic cups with straws poking out are placed on the counter.

"Arigatou." I tell the lady solemnly. "I'm sorry about Leviathan-"

"Please make way for other customers, sir." She replies.

"Right. Sensitive subject." We move away. I lean into Sophia. "You know, she seemed kind of... standoffish. Was it just me?"

"I wonder why." She rolls her eyes at me.

"Fine. Maybe you're right this time. She was probably just racist." I agree, earning a twitch from the ebony-skinned girl. "But I think that's just a broken clock being right twice a day situation. You can't write them all off just because of their skin and where they live-"

"I'm not- That wasn't even anything to do with me- That was you being-" She glowers, then forcibly calms herself. "No. I'm not falling for it."

"What?" I give her an innocent, bewildered look.

"No." She tells me simply, then takes a sip of her new drink.

"I'm just ask-" She pinches my mouth shut.

"No." She insists. We stand on the street in enforced silence for a few minutes. "Now get back to the important stuff. Where's-" She glances around at the pedestrians nearby and lowers her voice. "-that person? Did she stop somewhere yet?" Bakuda.

I consider my administrator-assigned bug, almost perfectly still just a few hundred metres away. "Not driving anymore, but not exactly settled down either. And the direction... hm."

She jabs me in the side as I don't immediately continue. "Don't leave me in suspense here." Sophia glowers at a pedestrian coming in the opposite direction until they scramble to the side to avoid us at the last second when it was apparent that she wasn't going to move aside. "Spill."

"Unless I'm mistaken, I've actually already been pretty close to where she is already, before you arrived. She had a meeting on the same street to eat and interact with some-" How do I say ABB lieutenants without being too obvious to a nosy passerby? "-people in charge of distributing her products. Makes me wonder if most of that street is, you know." I'm not saying ABB in the middle of the street like this. "Occupied."

"Probably not a good idea for us to show our faces at the front door then." She muses.

I incline my head. "No, and I don't remember seeing much up there that would give us a real excuse to loiter around as civilians either."

She lets out a relieved sigh. "Finally." She smacks a fist into her palm. "Then let's find somewhere to get changed and get to business-"

"We're not going now." I send her a confused look. "Got to wait. Remember the plan? And we're still missing our third member."

She looks back at me with equal confusion. "Then what do you want us to do?"

"Us? Nothing. You were the one who wanted to meet up early. I was planning on walking around all day like this until the meeting time, tracking her moves and noting all of their different hidey-holes and familiar faces. I never said anything about kicking things off early." I slurp my milkshake.

"You're not going to do anything? Just sit here and watch?" I see her twitch out of the corner of my eye. I slurp louder.

"Yep." It's probably a surprise to her, but I never really explained exactly how my power worked to her - so she couldn't know that the few times I'd seen Bakuda come into sight through a window, or hurrying into a waiting taxi, or just impatiently wait at the door for an incoming delivery had all resulted in me taking a swing at her current challenge. Still just her first one, but... I was getting somewhere. Refining my approach. Slow going, but... I needed the attempts now. That's why I had to be here early, if our big move in a few hours ended up with a face-to-face meeting and I failed then? Boom. She'd definitely try her best to blow us up, and I'd probably just have to kill her for it.

Her voice raises slightly, even repressed down to a furious whisper. "You dragged me out here, dressed like this- for nothing?"

"You dragged yourself. You did say that you were bored. I just said where I was, you assumed I was starting without you - and I suggested an outfit when you decided you were coming." I tell her merrily. "And you wore it. You look great, by the way." An Emma purchase? Probably.

That fact should probably annoy me, but if nothing else - Emma had great taste in fashion. Just, not so great taste in life priorities.

Yet, somehow? The thought of her name didn't quite dredge up the fury it did a few days ago. Maybe... maybe resolving things with Taylor had just taken the wind out of the whole Emma thing. The 'threat' she represented only really related to my relationship with Taylor and the secrets I had, so now that was stable... she was just a girl. A girl with a whole host of issues, but that wasn't unusual for me. I've forgiven worse. I've fixed worse.

...but it was still personal. Things couldn't go back to the way they were so easily. I'd been as genuine as I possibly could with her, and she'd prioritised her grudge over me. I couldn't get past that so easily. Sure, I could see myself using her as a cock holster again at some point - an image half-fuelled by lust, and half-fuelled by the anticipation of the envy and regret she'd feel at what she'd thrown away. If nothing else, I could easily picture Taylor pushing for that with her current mindset. But she'd remain firmly at the bottom of the hierarchy that she'd spent her school life championing. I'd make that clear. Even beyond what I had with Sophia.

I just had to make sure I didn't repeat the same mistakes again. Emma and Sophia had been petty bullies, but Bakuda was a genuine supervillain - one who might have debuted with the death of hundreds if events had gone differently yesterday. Never mind Emma not being able to move on from her bullying ways, what if I couldn't get Bakuda out of her megalomaniacal mindset? Even if she sincerely loved me, I don't know if I could tolerate someone in the harem that continued to be an unrepentant killer of innocents. Not without cause or justification. I wasn't some paragon of ideals, I didn't need villains to stop being villains when they hitched up with me - or even to pay for their past crimes. I'd argue that my power rewrote them enough that it wasn't even possible to punish the original perpetrator of those crimes, and I was petty and selfish enough that, for my girls, I'd prioritise myself and my own sense of justice even if that wasn't the case.

But... same scenario as Emma. Maxed out challenges. Asking Bakuda to not blow up some school, she giggles and says she has to do it for our reputation and it will help me in the long run? All too plausible. And all too unacceptable. I'm not that kind of villain. If I had to kill her-

-well. I could- I could probably do it. In that scenario. Right? Maybe. It was easy to think now, faced with a Bakuda who didn't care about me at all - but not so easy with a hypothetical Bakuda who loves me more than anything, but just isn't compatible with the rest of the world. Even as furious as Emma made me, the idea of actually killing her makes me a little sick. That's someone who loves me, there. Even if it's all twisted around in her head.

...got to get it right. Got to take it slow. Build the relationship properly. My only objective today was to clear the first two challenges, and get the metaphorical foot in the door. Forestall the potential nuke-builder and give myself more time to work on her. Even if I could press a button to max out her challenges right this second, I would not, could not - take it. I needed perfection. Someone as perfectly shaped in their loyalty as Taylor, Amy or Sophia.

"Hey, are you even listening?" My foot slides out of the way to avoid a spirited stomp and I pull back from my spiralling thoughts. Focus on the now, Greg.

"What was that?" I blink.

Sophia glowers. "I said, I thought it was important! Part of the plan!" Right. Her clothes. Date outfit.

I smile. "I mean, it is. In a way. You need it to look the part. It's just that the plan is... just keeping an eye on things around here. And partaking in the local culture, of course." I wiggle my drink meaningfully. It's good. Tastes like a cultural victory. "I mean, if you want to kill some time-"

She forms an X with her hands. "I'm not following you into any alleyways. Or hotels. Or dark storage rooms, or anything. I'm not rewarding this- this deception."

"You'll just have to enjoy our date then." I shrug, noting how she shuffles uncomfortably at the wording - hands plucking downwards on her outfit in a failed attempt to stretch it, as if it had only just became apparent to her what this looked like to anyone else. Classic Sophia. Wild monkey sex? Normal. Masochistic defeat fetish and borderline recruiting herself as a sex-slave? The natural order of things. Exposing your submissive streak to a teammate just to get a minor edge in an argument? Nothing wrong with it. An average romantic date in the city like any other girl her age? Now that was embarrassing. "That person isn't coming out any time soon if her usual trends hold up, so we don't need to stick too close to the scene - just enough to find a good spot to spy on her from when I feel her moving around." I hadn't shared the full details of my power with Sophia, and she hadn't asked - but I'd left enough hints that I needed to keep seeing Bakuda as part of the plan.

I'm sure she was speculating in her head what power I could be using on her, she doesn't have an exact list but she's smart enough to guess wrong. If I were in her place... I'd assume Victor, maybe. Sapping away some kind of 'skill' at arguing, willpower, something like that? My current version didn't work like that, and didn't touch anything quite so esoteric anyway - but I'm pretty sure something similar was in his feats page on the PHO Wiki. If not that, then I would guess something from the Undersiders after last night. Tattletale's mysterious Thinker power, to unearth some secrets or insights that could help later. A ranged variant on Regent's powerset would be a distant third, because that power also wasn't known in it's entirety to the PRT.

I certainly wouldn't be able to guess that the original 'power copying' power was actually a master effect that I was trying to spam on cooldown. It was too strange, too odd to guess. Too much of a leap from what was known.

But whatever her thoughts are, she's keeping them to herself. More than that, she's actively avoiding lines of conversation where it might come up - even if flailing in the dark annoys her. And I know why. It's the same reason I hadn't told her everything that I had told Taylor.

It wasn't about trust. I trust Sophia. I did. But she was still working for the heroes. She had far more potential exposure to Thinkers, pre-cogs and potential interrogations than Taylor did. More public patrols and appearances, a home address that was probably noted in plain-text in some comically-unsecured PRT database. Blackmail, master powers, bribery, torture - there were a host of credible reasons why, in the right circumstances - she might give up information on me. I wouldn't particularly hold that against her, but especially not if the information she had on me just... wasn't that problematic if it got out. Oh no, the PRT might find out I'm overly violent with criminals and even made friends with some of them... except, I already know that they'll forgive that and put even relatively weak - sorry, Sophia - Capes on probation just to pump their numbers up for such minor issues.

I get a one-time get out of jail-free card by not joining the Wards right away. They must be desperate to get me onboard by now, now that they're starting to understand my growth rate.

So, there it was. I hadn't given her all the same details that Taylor had gotten. When I had some influence in the PRT, or perhaps if I pulled her into my team permanently - then maybe I could tell her more. For now, the fewer details she knows, the better. A fact she must agree with, because she very rarely questions my power's mechanics at all.

"Fine." She mumbles around her straw, keeping her voice low despite the lack of nearby pedestrians for the moment. "I guess, we can at least scout the surroundings out a bit. No need to look for snipers or guards, Arachne will sniff them all out in seconds. Just need to find a safe spot for her to be. She was undecided on if she should try to go out of costume at first, right? In that case, the most useful thing that we can do is find out how close she can get before the people around her turn from bored civilians into thugs with pointed questions. If you make them move later and we start to recognise people out of uniform at the new place, they're probably on the payroll in some way." She frowns. "Of course, we'll be a lot more recognisable to them than the other way around."

"Doesn't matter if we're not trying to hide." We cross the road together. "Think about it, their number one concern right now? Empire busting down their front door and blowing the new girl's head off. What do they see when they look at us? Interracial couple, very obviously dating-" I let my hand roam as we walk to highlight my point. "-and madly in love. Hardly the typical Nazi spy playbook. In fact, dare I say - it's absolutely critical to our disguise that we are as affectionate as possible with each other to avoid suspicion-"

"I knew you were going somewhere ridiculous with that line of thinking." She sighs, sounding too exasperated to manage her usual growling complaints.

"This could be a matter of life or death, you know?" I object, stifling a grin. "If we aren't lovey-dovey enough, the whole operation might come tumbling down around us!"

"The more you talk like that, the less I'm interested." Sophia sniffs pointedly as our conversation is muffled by music blaring from a nearby... something. I don't know, I don't speak moon runes. Some place with a sign.

I tap my head, waiting for her to lean in out of reluctant curiousity before bestowing my brilliant counterpoint upon her. "You can't fool me, just a second ago you were eager to find some dark corner where you and I could get out of these clothes-"

"That's it." Sophia decides, reaching for her phone. "I'm telling Arachne to get her ass over here right now before I snap."

"If it were that easy for her to get away from her family, I'm sure she would have asked for an earlier meetup time. She doesn't have a mover power-" I fall silent as a family of three walk past us. Can't be too careful. "-so she'll be delayed coming here no matter what anyway. And it really would be best if we scouted the new location as best we can in our civilian guises first. This isn't the kind of friendly atmosphere where we should risk rooftop hopping, even being spotted in the distance could ruin everything."

"That's cute. You actually think she was sitting at home twiddling her thumbs while the gangs are squaring off against each other. She'll already be pretty close, I promise you that much." She rolls her eyes at me. "Not that we would even need her if you agreed to just put a bolt in the bomb bitches head." She mutters, typing something into her phone quickly anyway before tucking it away. "So, for now - what. Wait? That's your answer again?"

"At least until we've scouted everything useful in the area." And seen Bakuda stick her head out of the doorway to yell at the deliverymen a few times.

"And then when she moves again, wasting all of our time and effort?" Sophia probes.

"Time isn't wasted if you're having fun." I nod sagely. "We'll be enjoying our date, of course." I smile as she glares mutinously. "And it's the end-result that's important. Even if she moves a dozen times up to the time of our planned get-together, as long as at that final location we've mapped out a rough look at the more obvious guards, checked out possible entrances and exits, found the obvious pack of armed guards waiting in a building nearby and perhaps found an empty house that we can use as a changing and staging area... arriving early would have been worth it."

"All things that you could have done yourself. Probably without even being here in person, and Arachne would have done the rest in a blink from a block away." Sophia sighs. "I know you're not telling me everything, and that's fine. I'm curious, but if it's a problem I'd rather just be ignorant than spend my life double-checking my words everywhere just to try and dodge Armsmaster's new lie detector."

I freeze for a moment at that, and make a mental note before continuing. Interesting. I had to assume that was Tinkertech, not just a regular piece of kit. That could... be problematic if I didn't have a way to spoof it. I needed to be prepared for the possibility that any future interactions with the protectorate might get increased scrutiny. Identifying lies with no context wasn't a huge concern, as long as I didn't ping on a simple statement like 'I'm not going to master you ahaha' or 'Nooo, I don't want to hurt you' or 'No sir, as far as I know my power doesn't have any side-effects on the people I copy - why would you think that?'.

Yeah. Better watch myself the next time I run into the guy.

That's my GOAT though. All those assholes on PHO saying that human conversation was his weakness? Bang. Now he's the one you've got to watch your words around. Masterclass.

She huffs. "Whatever. Let's go then."

"That easy?" I probe.

"You're the leader, you've obviously got a plan. I trust you." She flicks her hair back behind her. "And for all the jokes, you're obviously taking it somewhat seriously just by the fact that you're here rather than trying to stick your dick into the first vaguely female thing that moves."

"I'm not sure I agree with the implication, but I'll take it." I bob my head in agreement. "Off we go. On our lovey-dovey-"

"We still aren't calling this mission anything like that." She stops very suddenly and sends me a warning look. "I will hurt you if I have to."

I wiggle my eyebrows at her. "We can skip to that part if you want, but maybe you should look for some suitable empty houses first-"

"-which I won't be following you into. I'm here to fuck up the gangs, not to fuck you." She shuts me down. "Don't pull that face. It's been, what. Six, seven hours since I left you with Arachne? If it wasn't for your power you'd be some dried out little husk of a man who could never get it up again after all you've been up to these last few weeks."

Six, seven hours for you, maybe. For me, it's been closer to thirty hours of either abusing WRLD modifiers to learn everything there is to know about this area and get some insight into the local ABB while experimenting with my new powers and Tinkertech designs, or trying desperately to stall out a hostage situation as best I can so that I can maybe just clear Bakuda's first challenge. I even quoted the exact transcripts from the original Cornell hostage situation to try and get through, and that ended up being my least successful run today. This is high stress stuff, isn't it totally fair that I get some stress relief every now and then?

Sophia ignores my plight and checks her phone. "She's on her way, by the way." Arachne? Does nobody respect the schedule I'd made? The entire point was that we drop in on Bakuda when she's mostly alone and about to go to sleep. With the added benefit of being long after I'd had the entire day to sneak in challenges to get her past both of her first two challenges.

My fault for baiting Sophia over here when she started complaining about how her patrol had been in the complete opposite direction of the sporadic 'border conflicts' between the Empire and ABB. Being a Noctis Cape just meant that I didn't get tired, it didn't make waiting around for my target to move around every hour or so any more exciting.

Honestly, I can't claim to be too upset. The situation was a bit hotter than I'd expected. My prediction had been that both gangs would take a few days to recover before going on the offensive, but PHO had been flooded with news of minor skirmishes already as the ABB pushes out - Empire Capes doing hit and run appearances, making sure to be long-gone from the scene by the time the now-vastly-more-feared Oni Lee arrived on the scene. Looking around at the civilians here, you wouldn't think it was anything other than a normal day - I guess you get used to gang activity when you live in an area like this, and knowing that 'your' gang is the one having a resurgence has to be a confidence boost. Makes sense. If I was just Greg, and the Empire took over my neighbourhood - I wouldn't exactly be afraid for my life. Sure, it would be a bad thing overall - but they're on my 'team', whether I want them there or not.

I pout. "Fine, fine. Let's hurry up and think of good excuses to walk past the guards again. I'm thinking we need to find a gift shop or something, something selling overpriced tourist-trash traps that all the locals already know to avoid."

"You can't be serious." She deadpans.

I hold a finger in the air. "No, it's great - think of what it looks like to the guards. The boyfriend being used as a throwaway wallet by his high-maintenance girlfriend, dragged out on a trip that he has no interest in - all in the vague hope that this ends in a night of-"

"Get a grip." She interrupts. "No matter how much you hint or suggest at the idea, we have actual priorities here. It's not happening-"

---

"I'm glad to see you waited for me." Taylor's voice emerges from the phone. A circle of butterflies floating in the room around us to signal her presence in spirit, even if not physically.

Sophia smooths down her clothes, inspecting herself in the mirror for a moment. "Y-yeah. Wouldn't want to start anything without you."

"You tracked us down fast." I note. "I thought you were further away, and would need our coordinates to find us - especially inside a building like this."

"I have my ways." Taylor sounds amused.

Sophia levels a suspicious look at the bugs in the room. "...which are?"

Taylor pauses. "Ignorance is bliss."

"...can you see through these bugs?" Sophia guesses, hand halfway to covering her face.

"No. Recently I've been experimenting on hearing through them, and if there isn't much background sound I can even-"

"[-do this.]" A cacophony of chittering from around us, under the floorboards and within the walls enunciates the words. I raise my eyebrows. She's turning into even more of a horror-movie villain. Hero. Whatever.

"That's creepy." There's an impressed look on her face, despite the words. "But really, I've never seen you track us down for a patrol this quick with so little to go off. What's the trick?"

"Fine. You asked." Taylor sounds indifferent over the phone, but I can hear the undercurrent of amusement in her voice. "I have everyone in this approximate area tagged. I knew I was only looking for two people together, a boy and a girl. That eliminated the majority of the area. There were one-hundred and thirteen pairs that you could have been, but that fell to twenty-one when I filtered for approximate height and build. Of those, I just tracked them all to work out what activities they were up to-"

"Makes sense. Let's think about our next moves-" Sophia starts.

Taylor continues undeterred. "-which let me eliminate another half quite easily. I had some ideas about what I expected the two of you to be doing-"

"Yeah, yeah. We get it, you're a perverted little voyeur and you've been watching us for god knows how long." Sophia snips. "Got anything to say about it, or should we get on with what we actually came here for?"

"No complaints from me. In fact, it's great to see how attentive, energetic and enthusiastic you are today before the big-"

"Why don't you show your face, huh?" Sophia barks at the phone. "You've gotten really comfortable saying shit from across town, huh? I hope you didn't forget that after all this shit is over with, you and I have some scores to settle - I'm looking forward to it, believe me."

Taylor tries and fails to hold in a short burst of laughter. "I'm closer than you think, but are you sure that's what you want? With your costume still sitting in that bag of yours?"

Sophia throws her hands up in annoyance. "My sealed bag, that I haven't opened once since coming here? Go on then. I can tell you're itching to gloat. How do you know about that, creeper? Miss 'I totally can't see anything'?"

"There are lots of dark, hidden parts of your costume that I had some very distinct breed and lay eggs in. The lifecycle and their movements are quite predictable, so as soon as I got in range I recognised the breed and the pattern I arranged them in right away." Taylor stops talking for a moment. "Which was also how I found you right away. I mean, everything else I mentioned was also a good way to deduce it - but this too."

"Hang on." Sophia stares at the phone with wide eyes. "You put bugs in my costume?" She shakes her head sharply. "No, hold on. First of all, if you have a perfect method of tracking me then why did you have to mention that you were watching us- watching us wait for you? You could have just led with that and said nothing about the rest! Second, why the fuck are there bugs in my costume at all? Third, why are there bugs in this costume in particular? I didn't even wear this one to our last meeting. It's been washed!"

"Let's see. For the first point, I thought you'd be less concerned about the fact that I spotted you fucking Void in a variety of interesting positions-"

"How long have you been watching?" Sophia mutters. "Wait. Do you- are you dropping random bugs on me, us, when we're naked just to work out exactly what we're doing? That's not normal, you know that?"

"Do you want to know the answer to that?" Taylor takes the interruption in stride. "And does it matter if you don't notice?"

Sophia has a faintly appalled expression on her face. "...just move on."

"Right. I thought the bugs might be a little more disturbing to you, so I thought I wouldn't mention it unless it came up - just to be nice." Sophia scoffs. "Secondly, it's a useful way to track you. I'm controlling every bug individually, so when I have a swarm attack an entire area - I'm really just telling one bug to fly towards this area and dig, or spew threads or whatever it is that they do - times a few million. Having a clear picture of 'you' gives me something to avoid, rather than having to slow down and double-check I'm not hitting a friendly. Thirdly... yes, that is a different costume to the one you had on earlier." She doesn't elaborate on that last part.

She doesn't need to. "...if you're about to tell me that all of my costumes are literally infested, I am going to lose it." Sophia threatens the phone.

"Infested is such a strong word." Taylor protests innocently. "I deliberately picked a species that wouldn't spread out or overpopulate, it's important that they don't leave the area that I put them in to stay recognisable - so most of them are actually just crippled aside from the ones acting as a food source. And of course, I made sure to not cause any issues with the look or functionality of your costume either."

I raise a hand for no particular reason. "Uh. Arachne? You haven't been doing this to me, have you?" I ask hopefully.

"It's a little harder to do the same because you just use normal clothes for patrols a lot of the time. And I haven't seen you with your new costume yet." She tells me.

"A 'little' harder?" A concerned tone enters my voice as Sophia smirks at our now-shared discomfort. "That isn't an answer."

"I love you, Void." She tells me warmly. "Let's talk about Bakuda."

"As if we'd let you off that easy-" Sophia starts, then stops - turning to my accepting face with no small amount of betrayal. "-Void?!"

"Girls will be girls." I nod wisely. No sense getting wound up about minor yandere tendencies when the fault was probably because of me and my power in the first place. I already knew she was tracking us anyway, even if the apparently-recently-developed method was new to me. Once my bug control power improved, I'd probably find myself a selection of elite, super-poisonous bugs to hide in a container in my costume and that would be all the tracking that Taylor would need for me.

"We are not moving on from this." Sophia insists.

"If you could wipe this entire conversation from your mind, you would do it." I point out. "Digging any deeper is just going to be more of the same. Do you really want the details?"

"I want the bugs gone!" Sophia hisses.

"If I told you I'd moved them away, would you believe me?" Taylor asks.

"No!"

"Well then." I could hear it in her tone. That was that. I'm pretty sure she was enjoying this.

"We'll talk to her about other arrangements later. For now, just remember that she's even worse for our enemies." I pat Sophia's shoulder with commiseration.

"Much worse." Taylor agrees. I decide not to linger on that statement.

Sophia mumbles out a reluctant agreement, sending her sealed bag a look of pained distaste - as if expecting a swarm of ants, worms and beetles to emerge at any second. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do need a redesign... I wouldn't have this problem if I was in one of those glorified swimsuits..."

She'll be okay.

I think.

I back away slowly before Sophia can find a way to blame this on me. "I think I feel Bakuda moving around, I'm going to see if she's going to-"

"She's looking for some specific phone parts." Taylor confirms. "But the guards won't let her disassemble theirs. It sounds like she's going to make a run to one of the stores nearby. Loot the place clean."

I nod slowly. "Just recently experimenting on hearing, huh?" I quote at Taylor.

"Quite successful experiments." She agrees. "It's a work in progress though. It needs a lot of bugs in the area..." The entire swarm 'turns' to Sophia. "...or for the subject to be very, very loud. Like, for example-"

Sophia snarls and jabs the phone, hanging up the call. "If I hear one more sex joke out of that perverted-"

"[It wasn't a joke.]" The walls speak to us in the roaring tones of skittering chitin.

"Take a hint that the conversation is over. You've been downgraded to a GPS." Sophia gestures for me to join her. "Point the way to wherever the bomb bitch is going, butterfly girl."

There's no retort to that. As the two of us phase through the wall and back into the alleyway, a swarm of wasps are already waiting - circling the air in front of us and forming an arrow to follow before dispersing in that direction.

Convenient. Taylor was really settling into her role as nigh-omniscient battlefield controller. And even if some of the details were a little gross to think about... even Sophia was going to have to admit that this was power. A unique edge that not even the Protectorate or the gangs could boast about.

Good. Keep thinking that. I had no intention of holding any of my team members back. My team should be the strongest in the Bay. They should be unassailable, their powers should be unfair. I'd been completely serious about my intent to form a power-bloc of my own earlier today - and bashing Bakuda over the head a few times would take me a long way towards achieving that.

---

"Back off or I'll kill them!" Bakuda screams at me.

"Not if I kill them first!" I scream back, brute-enhanced hand wrapped around the neck of one teacher and half-choking them with it.

"W-what?" Bakuda looks confused.

"Huh." I glance at the teacher. "Didn't expect that to work."

We awkwardly stare at each other for a moment.

"You think you can ignore the other hostages and that they'll be safe? Then let me show you just how serious I am!" Click. Boom.

FAILURE

"Good strategy." I mumble to myself. In all my experiments, keeping her off-balance had worked best. Shifting the scenario absurdly enough that she almost forgot it was a hostage situation. I'm sure if they do hostage negotiation classes, they probably dress this up as a legitimate strategy somehow - probably talking about removing the emotional weight of the confrontation, reframing the conversation in a way that moves past the idea of two opposing sides fighting each other.

And I'm doing it without a drop of training. Fucking genius, that's me.

"Robbing their own store?" Sophia misunderstands the target of my statement. "I guess. Insurance probably covers it this way, and it isn't quite so obvious that it's for a Tinker."

I spare a glance at the masked figures waving guns around at the surprisingly-unfazed store clerk, while a balaclava-clad Bakuda - dressed as a normal robber rather than herself - directs half-a-dozen men to gather up electronics into their bags.

"Are you done? Should we leave?" Sophia prompts as I consider the scene quietly.

"No. Let's wait for them to leave. Nothing wrong with a few bystanders sticking too close to the excitement." I tilt my head at the other pedestrians watching the scene, some with phones out - either to record, or to call the police.

Bakuda and her crew work fast, they're heading back out the door with loaded bags shortly after we arrive - cramming themselves into their unmarked van as fast as they can. A clean job, in and out - the police would never have gotten here on time, if they even intended to come out in the first place.

But as fast as they are, the first challenge cooldown is faster. Right as Bakuda makes to close the door, the timer vanishes. "Challenge."

Put it all together now, Greg.

Step one. Cause a scene.

Head straight to the assembly hall, where Bakuda is lecturing a few specific teachers about all of the grudges she's built up. They're the emotional core of all of this - and I've found that she really doesn't want to 'just' kill them. It's pretty clear that she blames them specifically for her trigger event, and she wants them stewing in fear, regret and shame for as long as possible before the end.

"A hero? If you know what's-"

I pinch space to stand next to her preferred hostages. Yoink. "I'll be taking these ones, if you ever want to see them alive again - you'd better keep your distance!"

"Huh?" I ignore her, instead scuttling over to the stairs right away - one hostage carried under each arm. "Wait- how dare-" One stair, two stairs, three-

Something beeps, and a light goes out.

I half-turn to note Bakuda frantically disarming the bombs in my path while half-jogging to keep up with me.

Perfect. I should have tried this sooner.

"Get back here! I, the greatest-" Not even a threat to blow me up yet, and I was halfway to the roof. Four flights of stairs. "-the Tinker-" She gasps. "-the-" Actually, is she going to take herself out? She's breathing hard, pausing her run to double over and stop at the fifth flight of stairs for a breather. "-the number- number one Tinker-" I guess exercise was never her strong suit, back in her student days. It's not that she's fat. She's just... weedier than her future self. And short. Kind of reminds me of... well. Me. You don't need muscles to use a computer. Guess she develops her build a little bit thanks to the physical work of Tinkering for herself and Lung.

She'll be fine. I continue to scurry up to the rooftop. Need to keep her off balance... and I liked to think I was pretty good at that kind of thing.

"You-" Bakuda, or the girl who would one day be called Bakuda, finally emerges onto the rooftop - pointing an accusing finger at me. Then, with some confusion, to the giant of pebbles, smashed concrete and shattered fenceposts behind me - my knight, indelicately swinging my two 'acquired hostages' over the edge of the rooftop to the sound of their sweet, sweet screams. "-you?"

"Come to stop me? Sorry, but I have my own scores to settle with these two." I nod to myself. "They thought that they could get away with lowering my scores, just to artificially inflate their favourite students! Only, they didn't expect that my raw genius would choose this moment to awaken and punish them for their hubris!"

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't going to win an acting award anytime soon. But, I didn't really need to. In all of our conversations, Bakuda - Grace - had never really struck me as... much of a logical thinker. Or a social animal in any sense of the word. She was out of place in a normal conversation in the same way Taylor would be out of place at a party - cycling through her favourite responses in the hope of making it through to the other end of the conversation without looking stupid. Except, where Taylor would just shrink in on herself and mumble out half-agreements - Bakuda would respond with statements about her unrivaled intellect, or her imminent rise to power, or the folly of everyone who had once tried to keep her down.

The easiest thing to do... was just agree.

And be just like her. Her trigger event was hardly a unique one. Academic sabotage, favouritism, all of that. I'd clashed with Grace a few times already, gotten most of the details - but crucially, I had barely said a word to her in this attempt. And I was saying everything that she wanted to hear, vindicating every complaint and flare of emotion that had led her to this point.

Grace purses her lips, looking from me to the screaming teachers I had 'liberated' from her grasp. "So, I'm not the only one to be wronged by this institution. Interesting, but I'm not inclined to forgive you for interrupting my vengeance-in-progress and cutting in line with your... brutish methods."

"Ah, shall I take it these fascinating bomb collars are your work then? A radio-controlled signal, not to detonate - but to prevent them from detonating. Controlled by that device on your arm, I assume. Brilliant work, those heroes outside won't have a clue if you don't spell it out for them." I nod to myself. "Apologies for disrupting your plans. My trigger event has made me... somewhat emotional."

"You can tell all that just from a glance? And they're not that good, it's amateur work, really. I was pressed for time." She squirms. "And, you're forgiven this once - I suppose. Trigger events can be... difficult." She trails off, looking around her. Introspection, maybe? Realising this might have been an overreaction? Maybe I was just being hopeful, but this felt like great progress.

"Why don't you take a seat?" I tap the edge of the rooftop next to me. "You can tell me about your design while these idiots, who couldn't understand even a fraction of your work if they listened to you all day, experience what it feels like when they no longer have the power and authority that they abused so much."

"If you intend to push me off, I will warn you that the entire campus is set to blow-"

"-and deprive the world of a generational genius, on the same level as myself?" I inject a shocked tone into my voice.

It's not cheesy if it works.

"So long as you understand." She sniffs, taking a seat next to me with her legs dangling over the edge - eyes locked as my knight drops one of the teachers and catches them in another hand before they hit the ground. Was that a trail of vomit? Eurgh.

Our brief exchange turns to a longer one. She disables a few timed bombs as we talk, me swapping through my Tinker powers and leaning on my previous experience with this challenge and the real Bakuda to stumble through the Tinker-talk.

One hour becomes two. Two becomes three.

"They're just..." Grace shakes her head as I discard the teachers onto the ground, and we watch them stumble away in fear - falling over multiple times as they try to get their legs under control. "...so small, compared to us."

"They can't help it. Jealousy must come easily when they lack our natural talent." It sounds egotistical, but she loves this stuff. As it to prove my internal thought, she nods in agreement. I wet my lips. "You know-" I place one hand on her thigh. "The two of us, we have a great deal in common."

Her eyes drop down to my hand, and a look of realisation settles onto her face. That's not anger. That's a win in my book.

I continue. "I think today could be the start of something special for both of us. A partnership of two brilliant minds, working together - uniting their brains, and hearts, together as one to form an unstoppable duo known all over the world."

"You really think so?" She murmurs quietly.

"I don't think." I assure her. "I know."

"In a romantic way?" She echoes softly, as if to clarify.

"If that's what you want." Go for the home run, Greg.

"It would never work-" I open my mouth to interrupt, only for her to continue. "I'm just... so much better than you."

"Well, that's- uh. Huh?" I reply eloquently.

She looks a little flushed. "I mean, you actually think you're on the same level as me - which, is a little embarrassing for me, really. It shows my first creations were utterly lacking. You have the spirit, I'll admit - but the difference between our intellects is like that of a normal human and a... particularly stupid but entertaining goldfish." She continues. "I could do, so, so much better than you in a romantic partner - and I hope you don't take that personally. I like your attitude, and you are somewhat smart by the standards of anyone apart from me - there's definitely a girl for you out there somewhere. One with self-confidence issues, probably."

"I mean-" I regather myself, brain rebooting at how utterly shameless all of the words that crawled out of her mouth just now were. "-we could still work together, the exact specifics of it don't need to be-"

"I could keep you around, like a pet rock of sorts." That is not what I said. "But, no matter how attached you might get to a pet rock - at a certain point, you just need to grow up and acknowledge that the rock never had any real value." She says solemnly, as if she had said something meaningful. "And, if nothing else, this school has taught me a valuable lesson: When lesser minds are exposed to a true genius, jealousy is the inevitable outcome. I don't want to see you twisted by inadequacy, so I think we should part ways here." She stands. "I'm sorry, I cannot return your feelings."

"This might be my lowest moment." I tell the air.

She nods, agreeing for some reason. "I can't imagine how it feels, just enough intelligence to understand your own inadequacy. If you had been just slightly more incapable, you might have gone your entire life believing that you could have made it to my level - a large fish in a small pond, the mountain climber that never broke through the clouds to see the true height of the peak." Is she crying? I think she's actually crying. There's definite dampness in the corner of her eyes.

Fuck this.

I flip her off. "You know what, just kill me at this point. I don't even want to win this round anymore. Blow something up, whatever."

"No, I don't think I will. The world deserves to see me debut at my best, this stage isn't big enough for the greatest Tinker to ever live." She shakes her head. "Thank you for the conversation. And... sorry, again."

SUCCESS

Reward: Tinker: Single-Use Effects [1]

What just happened?

Three hours of Tinker babble and sincere conversations, interspersed with a bit of its-not-torture-if-we-don't-need-to-know-anything to lighten the mood - all to result in...

...that?

"Maybe we really should kill her." I muse.

Sophia clasps her hands together and looks to the sky. "Thank you! This is what I've been saying the whole time."

A light pinch on my finger draws my attention, a serious-looking beetle digging in before turning to me with what I can only interpret as a disapproving expression. "I was kidding." Beside me, Sophia yelps as the same complaint is issued to her too. "Mostly."

A trio of wasps circles us, then slowly weave through the air in the direction of the house we had left earlier.

"We're coming, we're coming." We both trudge backwards, shouldering past civilians still taking pictures of the 'robbery' - and sidestepping the half-dozen red-and-green figures that soon made their presence known in the crowd and dispersed it around them without saying a word.

---

"Alright. Good news!" I begin. "I've got a basic version of her power now. Bad news, no chance I'm going to be able to improve it without talking to her in person." I tap the armrests of the chair I have borrowed. "The label on the power isn't bombs, but rather 'single-use-effects'. That makes her potentially more versatile than we had guessed, but it also helps in other ways - her specialisation probably isn't going to help much in the way of delivery methods. Just the payload. And as long as she keeps doing grenades and bombs, we only need to remember that we don't want to get hit by them - just assume they are all lethal no matter what defensive methods we have."

"Single-use? That sounds... vague. How did the Clockblocker thing work. I read the report, that was a continuous effect I'm sure. And half of the bombs I saw kept exploding multiple times too." Sophia challenges. "You sure you didn't misunderstand?"

I turn my new Tinker sense to the examples. "She applied the zone of slowed time, once. She used one effect that temporarily turned an area into one where flames would emerge periodically."

"Sounds like a bullshit power-" Sophia complains.

"-perfect to join forces with." I nod in agreement.

"-we should definitely kill her." She finishes.

"We're not killing people just because they have a strong power, Shadow Stalker." Taylor pauses. "I know you'd be safe, but-"

"You really think you're funny, don't you?"

I shake my head as the two devolve into light-hearted bickering again.

I didn't mention the other bad news, because it was about the hidden side of my power. I didn't get the chance to try her second challenge. Still, puzzle-based challenges were often followed up by 'basic' combat ones - I'm pretty confident that I can roll through it if there isn't an annoying gimmick.

"If you're done, does that mean we don't need to run around like paparazzi any more?" Sophia asks - returning to the subject before Arachne can bait her again.

"It isn't entirely useless to keep going, but I've got... most of what I wanted out of it." I admit. "The issue is that there isn't anything better to do that doesn't risk too much. Lung and Oni Lee aren't pinned down in any fights, as far as I know - they could be on us in seconds if we fumble things early, and Bakuda is busy enough and making enough tools that people are in and out of her workshop constantly. We'd never find a quiet moment to reach her if we went now."

"I know that, but I still think we should move up the schedule." Taylor begins. "And I'm not saying that because I'm bored - I'm saying that because the Empire are gearing up for something big. I've been watching the Empire side for a while now, they're grouping up - I see trucks full of armed gang members at nearly every street at the edge of their territory, almost to the end of my range. I see Kaiser, Fenja and Menja are crammed into a car with someone else I don't recognise. They're not doing anything or responding to anything the ABB is doing - they're just waiting."

"Just how close are you, if you can see both sides of the conflict?" I frown. "The frontline isn't a particularly safe space to be when it properly kicks off."

"I'm being safe, don't worry. My range is big enough that I don't need to use my eyes, my costume is under my clothes and I don't have my mask on yet - just in case Oni Lee passes by and takes his chances. I'll mask up and keep my head down once the fighting starts." Taylor assuages my concerns. "The real worry is this build-up. At any second, this is going to turn from a few warning shots into a full-blown war. I'm sure that there are more Capes around that I just haven't identified yet too."

"ABB must be feeling real stupid now. If they'd kept their Tinker quiet for a few more weeks, the Empire wouldn't dare to even breathe in their direction - they overplayed their hand, the entire city knows that there's a window to strike before the bomb bitch builds something scary." Sophia mutters. "The PRT might even have enforced some kind of status quo themselves, rather than whistling and looking the other way in the hope that someone tags Oni Lee with a bullet to the head or that Hookwolf gets turned into a glass statue."

"Thankfully, none of us expected the PRT to do anything useful anyway." Taylor responds bitterly.

"Oh, they'll respond. But that's all they'll do." Sophia shrugs. "I'm not sure I even blame them for it this time. I'd let the gangs kill each other too, even if it wasn't for the fact that each of the gangs is probably stronger than the PRT right now. You want a more proactive PRT that smashes the gangs? Move to another city where they're actually the top dogs."

"They'd usually try, but Oni Lee's new equipment changes things." I grimace.

"No Tinkertech suit or Brute power is going to let you ignore him now." Sophia agrees, but I shake my head.

"It's not just that. Yes, the grenades are more exotic than usual - but it's the fact that he can use grenades the way he does now at all." I think back to the rush of challenges I cleared on him yesterday when he faced off against Vista and I. "With a normal grenade, his ash clone still has to throw it - because when it explodes, and kills the clone - the grenade and shrapnel fades to ash too. So he can't 'suicide bomb' as effectively, and if he does a carpet-bombing and hits himself with shrapnel, or hits the next clone along with shrapnel... it ruins the attack. He prefers knives for a reason. Reliable. But these grenades, for the most part, have a set range that they don't exceed. I've seen a few form literal perfect spheres with their effects - and those effects don't fade just because the clone got killed. It's not just that the effects are more powerful, but he gets to be so much more aggressive with how he uses his clones too - before, a clone that latched onto your back and tried to blow itself up would take itself out and leave you with a scorch mark and superficial bleeding. Now, you let him explode on you and you're suddenly made of cotton candy."

Both girls are silent at my matter-of-fact breakdown. I continue. "The problem the PRT has is that the number of people they have who can get out of that scenario safely can be counted on single-digits. Dauntless, Velocity, Armsmaster-with-prep-time and maybe Clockblocker could do it by technicality but he dies to round two. The only victory condition anyone else has is to kill Oni Lee first, and he both doesn't have a kill order and is pretty good at what he does anyway. If the PRT loses even a single person against him, they'll be raked over the coals for it by the public and their bosses, and probably half of the paper pushers will lose their jobs. A lot of risk, for very little reward. They just don't have the right Capes to handle him unless Dauntless catches him napping."

"A lot of words to say that they won't do anything. It's all up to us, again." Sophia yawns.

"If we waited long enough and it became enough of a problem, I'm pretty sure they'd get reinforcements in to handle it. Maybe even someone from the Triumvirate. Oni Lee is slippery and has firepower now, but he's not actually a high-tier Cape - he's just found a good synergy." I think for a second. "Yeah. Legend or Eidolon would handle him in an afternoon if the ABB gets too rowdy, and Lung knows it. You can tell by the fact that Medhall is still standing right now, if they used that combo to its full potential the Empire would be on its knees right now - but there would also be three kill orders posted on the ABB. Of course, an all-out attack from the Empire changes things. They'll be able to retaliate harder if they get attacked first, and the scarier the retaliation looks - the harder the PRT looks the other way."

"Well, whatever the ABB is planning - I don't think they're ready for an attack of this magnitude." Taylor insists. "I know you wanted to wait until later in the evening, but the Empire isn't going to wait that long - if you want to do something, you need to decide now."

"The way I see it, there are three options. We hit the ABB and ensure they lose, we hit the Empire to send them home - or quietly help someone shoot Bakuda and the entire thing blows over in a few weeks when all of her remaining Tinkertech needs maintenance." Sophia adds her two cents.

"I'm biased, but I like the original plan." I admit. "I think the Empire are just hoping to get lucky against Oni Lee. They can't hope to actually beat Lung, so it seems like bluster to me - he's going to be able to respond to whatever they do. I don't know, what do you two think?"

"I'm still voting for shooting her." Sophia offers. "Hey, Arachne. Any chance you can just get some bugs to pull the pin on the next grenade she makes while she's sitting in her chair?"

The other end of the phone is silent.

"Sorry to hurt your feelings, it was a joke. Mostly." Sophia fills the awkward silence. "I-"

"Someone's posted Bakuda's location again." Taylor interrupts.

"Fucking Tattletale." I groan. "Stealing my good ideas, except she doesn't care if the ABB freaks out." I push myself to my feet, reaching for the teleporter beacon in my bag for the first time this afternoon. "Fine. Maybe we stop trying to be subtle. Wherever she moves, maybe we just force our way in. Screw the guards, screw the alarm - the Empire might actually help us if they launch-"

"The Empire just started moving. All of the trucks at once." Taylor interrupts.

"Why now?" I groan. "If they waited one day, we would be all set."

"On the plus side, even a bitch that crazy can't be mad if we end up saving her from some Empire goon with a shotgun." Sophia is already changing into her costume, I mirror her - my costume appearing in a flash of light on the floor next to me.

"You haven't met her yet and it shows-" The entire building shakes at once, the doors shake in their frames, the windows rattle and both of us practically fall over mid-sentence. "-the hell-?"

"Purity!" Taylor yells over the phone, heavy static and thunderous noises coming from her end. "Purity is here! Sh-" The phone cuts out as another series of thundering booms ring out.

"Arachne!?"

The ever-present swarm buzzes in affirmation. "[Fine.]" I breathe a sigh of relief. "[Bakuda targeted.]"

I check my senses and frown. "I don't sense my tracker bug, I'm guessing Bakuda got blown to smithereens." Taylor doesn't immediately correct me, so she doesn't know otherwise.

"First good deed she's performed in her entire life." Sophia quips, I send her a withering look.

That's... something. I don't really know how to feel about that. The ending of the last challenge left me kind of wound up, and it wasn't like I'd ever had so much as a positive interaction with her - but I'd already kind of considered her as inevitably on my side for a while now.

I don't even know what to call this feeling. Not loss, because I didn't have it to begin with - but... a certain sense of incompleteness.

But now isn't the time for introspection. One prize was gone, but I had heroics to do - and plenty of 'new' Capes to encounter while doing them. I glance out the window, the blinding light in the skyline isn't far from us - the Bay's strongest Blaster clear for all to see as another barrage of beams hurls down onto the streets below. Annoyingly, my power didn't register that light as Purity herself - and refused to bring up a challenge box. Distance isn't usually an issue, I just need her to glow less. "For fuck's sake. Purity hasn't done a thing with the Empire since January. She was telling people on PHO she was an independent hero now!"

"And you believed the Nazi?" Sophia snarks. "You fell for the impeccable disguise of pretending to be a hero that only attacks 'the wrong sort' of people?"

"I mean. Yeah, a bit. When you say it like that..." Maybe it sounds stupid now, in hindsight - but what was even the point in lying? Just to make me look dumb online? I have a reputation as a renowned, accurate source of information and she's ruining it!

Sophia crosses her arms, already in her costume. "Alright. Now that your dream girl is a blood smoothie, what are you planning?"

"Try not to sound too happy about this." I reply sourly, then shake my head. "Just... fuck them all up. Arachne, stay safe and hidden - but send the Empire packing as best you can. There isn't anything that most of them can do about you, just make sure you don't give yourself away by letting them know the extent of your range. You don't want Purity dropping a laser on the centre of the big circle all the people getting attacked make. I'm going to find some Capes and start a fight. I could really use someone to beat on right now. Shadow Stalker..."

Even with her mask, she looks pained. "I'm really, really not supposed to be at the site of a gang war. I want to just start shooting, don't get me wrong - but I need to be a bit more subtle about how I help."

"Probation, we get it." I nod. "Just- just do whatever you can without getting caught. I know you were hoping for a quieter confrontation, but it's not to be this time. You know what you can do best, use your judgement." Sophia and the swarm hum an affirmative in unison.

Just like that, I'm alone in the room. Even the swarm is mostly gone, cramming itself through the windowsill and floorboards to be redeployed somewhere more useful.

What a waste of my entire day, in the end. I phase through the wall with a sigh. At least I'll be able to grab a few powers from the Empire, so it isn't a complete loss. A distant explosion shakes the ground, then another, and another and another-

Yep. Oni Lee is mad. I'd bet Lung is still out of sight, just building up his size for now and waiting to emerge at any moment - he wouldn't want to give the Empire a chance to skewer him while he was 'weak'. Not weak enough to matter, I'm sure - but Lung hadn't survived this long by being stupid about his power. It didn't really matter. I didn't want to run into Lung anyway, Bakuda's power was great against him - but his current challenge didn't open up the possibility of making Tinkertech mid-fight.

I summon my ash clone and move in that direction. Oni Lee was a good matchup for me, I might be able to practically end the conflict right away if I took him down. I'd definitely-

I pause, looking back at my ash clone - my hand trailing across it in a gesture so practised I didn't even need to think about it any more.

Administrator? Assign Mush's power? Hello?

No, wait. Why is my administrator power still active? It was on Bakuda's tracking bug before the bombardment had cut it out, and I couldn't feel any of the usual feedback from the power indicating that there was something on the other end.

But it wasn't dead, apparently. Because that power slot was still firmly 'on' in my list of mental switches.

Well now.

Isn't that interesting?

Because if my administrator bug wasn't dead, but in some... state, where it wasn't able to be interacted with - then that might imply Bakuda is still alive too.

I could see it. If I was a Tinker - primarily a Tinker, that is - the first thing I would make is a personal safety device of some kind. But, even if she hadn't done that - the bombardment was almost certain to have blown up Bakuda's stockpiled explosives. She's already demonstrated an ability to copy Clockblocker's ability, who was to say she hadn't done it again? Converted herself to smoke, like Shadow Stalker? Thrown herself into a dimensional pocket in some ripoff of Circus? Even Grue's power might mess around with the senses of my bugs, although I wasn't convinced it would have no-sold Taylor's type of control.

Clockblocker made the most sense. Potent, offensive and defensive utility - and something she'd clearly already researched in advance in preparation for her debut.

After a moment of hesitation, I yank my administrator power back to me, shove it into my ash clone and start running - the knight rising to life behind me. The bug would die without it, now or later - but I needed it now, and Bakuda's exact location wasn't important to me anyway. If she was alive, I already knew the building she would be in. I just had to go there and dig her out of the rubble.

Which was perfect, really. I could completely skip the pseudo-threatening speech at the start by literally saving her life. That was exactly the kind of helping hand my power needed to shape a growing relationship around.

"I'm going to check on Bakuda. I'm getting some weird interaction on the bug I had tracking her." I say out loud, to nobody in particular. I'm pretty sure Taylor was listening, somehow.

I cross one street, two streets - heading towards the plumes of dust and smoke in the near-distance. A pair of ABB thugs exit a building in front of me, I send them a warning look and move at an angle that made it clear I wasn't looking for a fight with them.

They raise their rifles and start shooting anyway. Bad move. I can see the palpable regret on their face before I'm even halfway to their position in a smoky rush of movement, one throwing down their rifle and running - the other desperately firing into me to no effect. Browbeat's power boosts me as I slam the latter into the ground, where he stays in a limp mess - and the runner...

He might wish he had stayed put. He stumbles back towards me, clawing at his face as insects surge over every inch of his skin as his gun clatters to the floor as his hand spasms wildly under a barrage of stings.

...poor guy. I would only have broken a bone or three, I'd bet that would have healed a lot faster than the mental trauma of being on the receiving end of Taylor's 'proportional force'. But then again, it could be a lot worse. I'd lost to Taylor's challenges enough to know that Taylor was still being nice when she sent bugs crawling into orifices to block breathing and such. The real agony started when she had them start digging and eating at the same time.

I move on.

An Empire truck is the next thing I run into, the occupants had half-gotten out to start blind-firing into nearby buildings - only to realise that the speed of their travel and mostly-sealed vehicle had been protecting them this entire time. Taylor's already at work, going by the flailing of the men inside - only the fact that the driver has refused to stop has saved them from being taken out completely, both because Taylor doesn't actually want them to crash and the simple fact that most bugs aren't as fast as a real motor vehicle.

My knight solves that problem by turning the speeding truck into a stopped truck. The occupants are all too happy to surrender before long, kept in check by a swarm of angry critters surrounding them even once my knight leaves them to follow me.

It was unfair, really. This kind of wide-area assault with grunts was exactly the kind of thing Taylor's power was best-suited to shut down. The Empire probably knew that by now, after their last two run-ins with her - but they'd certainly anticipated that she had no particular reason to be here, today. A zero-second response time was just horrible luck on their part.

I have my knight backhand four Empire thugs into a wall without slowing down, their bullets utterly ineffectual against the main body - and nobody paying any notice to the shadowy form of my ash clone clinging to the side of the street and doing it's best to stay hidden as I move.

...the Empire was serious about this, weren't they? It was obvious now that this wasn't just a simple operation to try and take out Bakuda - but to actually try and break the back of the ABB in a single move. Even if Lung didn't go down, he was still reliant on an entire apparatus of henchmen and leaders to keep the gangs running - and 'trading' casualties like this would always favour the larger party, the Empire.

The death toll from this was going to be bad. Not just the gangbangers, but the Capes letting loose in an area where they didn't really care about collateral damage - if they ever did in the first place. Purity was the worst so far - if only because I hadn't seen Oni Lee at work yet. Even if she hadn't been totally indiscriminate - passing a few of the flattened buildings I could see gun-toting figures and red-and-green figures shakily pulling themselves and each other from the debris - there was no way that regular civilians weren't getting caught up in her attacks, never mind the likelihood that some of the other Capes would be fine with some deliberate casualties too. Oni Lee and Hookwolf most of all, but I didn't expect anyone to bother holding back against the other side.

I should probably be horrified and shaken at the scenes I was passing, but... that isn't really me, any more. I don't feel much of anything at the destruction around me or the screams - I've immersed myself in worse. Done worse personally in my challenges. I just... didn't know these people. It sounds like a shitty thing to say, but it has the same emotional impact as hearing that another civil war broke out in Africa. I'd like it to stop, objectively speaking - all life has value and all that. But the people I truly cared about right now were all of the Capes involved.

Shit like this was why it was easier just to mentally accept the label of villain sometimes. I was never going to be a pure-hearted saviour, donating his time and effort for nothing but the gratitude of the people. I was selfish and egotistical. I knew it. All those times I went to heal at hospitals, I didn't actually care about doing good like Amy did - that was just a happy accident. I went there to establish a positive reputation, to put myself in proximity to Amy and to reassure people that random healing was just something I did and therefore it wasn't weird at all that I kept running into Amy. I didn't go on patrol because I was actually worried about keeping crime low, I went because my reputation as a vigilante requires eyewitnesses and sightings.

And I wasn't here to stop a gang war. I was here to gain power.

And the best way for me to gain power, in the short and long term? To stop these stupid all-out fights until I've snagged every last power in the Bay. Funny how that works, isn't it? A villain's power, but optimal usage needs me to be a hero that tries to save everyone. I don't hate that. Everything lining up to have me be known as a hero is something I want too. It's just that I don't want the label for altruistic reasons.

And I don't think that's so bad. When I'm the strongest in the Bay - in the World - there won't be gang warfare in the streets like this. That's heroic enough in my books. The reasoning and method doesn't matter, only the objective result. As I've said before, if heroics is a game of numbers - stopping even a single Endbringer will make me the greatest hero to ever live. That would apply to anyone. Even Jack Slash. If he took down Behemoth, he could go his entire life hacking and murdering to try and out-kill the people he'd saved over time in that one act and never come close to succeeding. And while I might be a bad guy, I wasn't even close to the level of Jack Slash.

One thing of note catches my attention. Just because I'm not particularly afraid or concerned, doesn't mean that the fleeing civilians I'm passing aren't. And while usually I wouldn't even see the need to pay them a second thought... one particular power was resonating in my head right now.

Oh. So that's how Gallant's stupid power variant works. It's not exactly like the real version. Absorb, store and release. This crowd feeling a single, shared emotion - fear - must have crossed some threshold, and now I have it stored. A... fear bomb. Missile? I'm not sure if it's single-target or AOE, or what other properties a 'complete' attack has.

I'll take it, I suppose. At least now I have some ideas on how to fuel the power properly, just go to locations where I can find a mass of people with an excess of that emotion over all others. Now I just need to find out how good the actual 'shooting' part of the power is. Probably pretty useless, it does come from Gallant after all.

A pair of lights streak across the sky towards Purity. Must be some of New Wave. I didn't expect them to win outright against the Empire's Blaster, but if they just kept her busy - that would be enough.

Purity's primary blasting site was getting close now, I could actually cut through some of the streets because of the way certain buildings had been targeted and levelled. Ground zero was... mostly on fire. Purity's blasts weren't too focused on heat, they were more about kinetic force - the flames were just a natural consequence of an entire, rather flammable building being pummelled into the ground and something catching fire in the process.

Perhaps 'natural' wasn't quite the right word for all of the flames though. As I come level with the ruined street, I consider the purple smoke emerging from the site Bakuda had been working from. Pretty easy to guess where the burning Tinkertech was, looking at that.

I bring my knight forward, it was naturally suited to clearing away rubble while strengthening itself in the process. Some ABB and Empire gangbangers are around the area, looking very, very suppressed. Good, if Taylor could just handle every regular thug with a gun I'd be able to be a bit more liberal with my defensive powers.

That doesn't stop me from finding the most defensible-looking wall and keeping Glory Girl's shield up full-time. I'm sure Taylor was doing great, but this was still hostile territory. Got to be safe. Purity alone was worth being cautious, the aerial battle overhead could end at any moment in either side's favour.

I watch my knight work, and after a mental push to my ash clone - watch it change tactics entirely. Rather than scooping and digging like a normal person, I had it act more like moving treads. The tentacles of Mush's power naturally gathered rubble into themselves, so it was simplicity itself to just abandon that same rubble at a dedicated pile and simply go back to absorb the next layer. It did make my knight look like a rotating, biblically-accurate angel rather than a credible human shape - but it was fast and effective, and that's what I needed right now.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite fast and effective enough. I get some early warning from a mass of bugs nearby, shaping themselves into letters to form the word 'INCOMING'. But I would have noticed it anyway, the new arrivals were hard to miss. A shadow blots out both the sun and the light-show in the skies for a moment as an enormous, flattened boulder courses through the air and lands in the middle of the street. Rune's power and preferred method of travel.

And Stormtiger. Krieg. And... I think that's Hookwolf. The man turns, and his mask glints in the sun. Yep. Hookwolf.

They step down from the boulder and approach my knight. Four Capes. A buffet for me, but hopefully it wouldn't come to a fight.

Something inaudible squawks around them. A radio or speaker somewhere. As one, all four turn and look around - Krieg spotting me first, pointing me out to the others as all four step towards me.

"I see you-" Krieg starts. Or, more like 'I zee you'. There's no way that accent was real. He was LARPing for sure.

"Ew, ew-" Rune flails at the air. "Get these fucking bugs away from me! What's the point of wind powers if you aren't going to use them?"

Stormtiger awkwardly repositions himself, the billowing aura around the four becoming more apparent in purpose.

"I see you also believe that Bakuda survived the bombardment." Krieg continues. "Our purposes align, and we would be pleased to work with someone of your...calibre."

I'm... not sure I win this. In real life, specifically. Challenging them is a given, but I don't know if this fight is good for me - Rune was a non-factor, but Hookwolf and Stormtiger was a combo that was sure to exhaust my defensive options - even without adding Krieg to the mix.

I shrug cautiously. "I'm not sure exactly what the situation is, but I haven't seen a body yet - I'll leave it at that."

"Everyone wants the chink slut gone-" Hookwolf rumbles. "-looks like you're doing a good enough job clearing the path, but we'll take it from here. You can leave, hero. Or we'll make-"

"Let's not be hasty-" Krieg calms the man before turning to me. "Victor spoke highly of you before, and your contributions to the struggle against the lesser races have not gone unnoticed in our ranks." I suppress the twitch. Slander! That was slander! Sure, I hit the Merchants and the ABB and they had some disproportionate representation in them - but that didn't mean that my vigilantism was ideologically motivated! "This is a rare opportunity to work together, to see what we have in common in our vision for the future of the city."

I force a smile onto my face. "A temporary truce works for me. Why don't we see if there's anything worth discussing once we get down to the basement?" I stall. I could have started challenging right away, but I don't really know what these people are like in person - if I blinded myself for a few seconds, would Hookwolf attack me? Stormtiger? Could I even use the shadow state to escape against Krieg? I'm not sure I could, I'd just be pulled back towards him.

Dangerous. Against Lung, I'd always had the knowledge that I could probably escape it it started to look too bad for me. Against these four... I'm not sure that's as true. I'd have to go on the offensive, maybe take Rune as a hostage? I hadn't managed to fully restock my teleport beacon's grenades, but I still had a few I could use. But, again - only Rune was vulnerable to that kind of damage. I'd wager my mechasword would win a direct fight against Hookwolf if he didn't dodge, but not Krieg.

Taking out Stormtiger would take out Rune because Taylor would just drown her in bugs without the cutting winds continuously blasting her minions away.

"Fine." Some tension leaves my shoulders at the word. "Assist him - find the slanty-eyed whore and put an end to this already." Stormtiger decides for the group, turning away abruptly.

"Hn." Hookwolf turns away, practically gliding across the ground as he enters his changer state - tunnelling a path of his own through the debris as Rune hastily moves to join him, dragging Stormtiger with her to shield her from the bugs.

"...the bug controller, she is your partner - is she not?" Krieg notes.

"She is." I nod.

"A useful power. If she's... qualified, you should extend our offer of combining our forces to her as well. It is easy to think that our previous interactions with her are disqualifying factors against joining us, but the Empire is very capable of forgiveness in the face of competence. Results are more important than the wounded pride of yesterday - we would be happy to welcome you both with open arms. We fully understand what it's like to do your best for the city - for your country - and lack the support required to deliver on it." He inclines his head. "Today is no exception. A mad bomber threatens the city, and the PRT is nowhere to be seen. The Empire stepped up to handle it. And so did you. We won't forget that."

Thanks, dude. I want to throw up in my mouth a little now. "Let's just get on with the digging. She was in some multi-layered basement that's collapsed in on itself. I've started to make a tunnel, of sorts. A little unstable, but it won't be a problem with your power."

"Quite. I don't suppose you can tell your companion..." He trails off as he allows one angry wasp to get close, only for it to be buffeted away by his power as it nearly reaches his skin.

"Not sure exactly where she is. We weren't expecting all of this-" I wave a hand out at the destruction in general. "-to happen so suddenly."

"Unfortunate, but manageable." He turns away at last, joining the others in their search. Kind of surprised he didn't push the issue there, but I guess everyone aside from Rune can just shrug Taylor's basic swarms off - he probably hasn't seen the mess she's made of his rank-and-file troops.

Plan? Plan. Plan. Think. If Bakuda is in the basement somewhere, I'm either going to have to give up on the rescue and let her die - or start a fight. If I want to start a fight, I need the capability to...

...escape, or split them up. That's it. Escape is the easiest one to plan. I probably can't level up enough in melee in the next few minutes to handle the combined Brutes, but if I could fly - or had Runes power and used that to fly - it would no longer be 4v1 but 2v1. Arguably 1v1, because Rune isn't going to do anything and it's just Stormtiger who could chase me. Out of all of this, I need Rune or Stormtiger's powers at the end of it to be confident in my safety. That would normally change the order I challenged people in... but, perhaps not, in this case? Rune was surely the easiest target here, Brutes remained my weakness as long as I didn't have access to my Tinkertech - even with my knight as an option.

Hookwolf

Villain 1/6

(CAGE)

Expected. And on-brand for him too. Brutes just love their CAGE modifier.

Krieg

Villain 1/6

(ALRT) (HUNT)

As expected. Perhaps if I had seen some EVNT or WRLD modifiers, I might have given it a try - the promise of an indirect victory condition or the possibility of backing off and building my mechasword for the fight would have been too much to resist. But what looked to be two, very simple stat-checks? No thank you. My odds were better than they were against Lung's current challenge, but I still wasn't trying it first thing. Not until I'm happy with everything else.

Flight, or just the ability to throw around concrete slabs - might help against Krieg or Hookwolf. But being more of a Brute wouldn't really help with the reverse. Let's leave Krieg and Hookwolf for the moment.

Rune

Villain 1/6

(PREP) (REAL)

That's... I wanted to say easy, but Rune with REAL and full knowledge of my arsenal is probably just going to decide that she doesn't want to do anything except drop rocks on me from the sky and never get close enough for Vista's power to close the gap. I was obviously vastly superior in a fight, she'd never beat me without the anti-stalling measures - but that didn't matter. Real didn't just copy the targets mannerisms and normal behaviour, but also their fighting style and habits to a far greater extent than the usual simulations. I could imagine a 'normal' version of the powerset might focus on an overwhelming assault that leaves her open to attack, but normally, Rune just didn't do that. She always prioritises her own safety, always leaves the area to 'reload' her missiles if they get destroyed and she might come under any threat when inscribing her power.

Stormtiger

Villain 1/6

(TIME) (REAL)

Everyone has six challenges now? I guess I can appreciate some consistency to plan around.

TIME though. That's a good one. By now, it was longstanding wisdom for me that the TIME modifier was fraudulent on anyone who was willing to come and fight me in the field. At best, it was a 'please don't use Tinkertech' clause - most real fights wouldn't last long enough for it to matter. The modifier was a menace for people who would never dream of coming to fight me in person, like Amy - but I would never dream of putting Stormtiger in that category.

"Challenge."

I spawn in on an unfamiliar street, looking around to- oh-shit-here-he-comes! I weave backwards as the aerokinetic propels himself from a building to charge directly at me, aero-claws extended. I duck under one swipe-

-shift to Glory Girl's forcefield-

-and effortlessly tank the explosion of wind as the condensed air in his claws is expelled all at once right next to me. I shift to Browbeat and land a clean punch, not landing an instant victory for the sole reason that Browbeat's power takes a few seconds to fully dial up - and Stormtiger, even as surprised as he was, reacts fast enough to at least try and meet my fist with rush of opposing force to slow me down.

Still a good hit. He staggers, blood spraying from his mouth and nose. I can see gathering winds around his foot, preparing to propel him away to recover at a safe distance - and that's precisely when my newly-summoned ash clone dives at him. He feels it coming, of course - and spins around to blast it away, but that's fine too.

"I've watched all of your fights!" I laugh exultantly, stepping into his range again. "I know all of your moves!"

My ash clone is re-summoned again, brushing up against my leg as it appears from a crawling position - the two of us working to harass him together. I keep the majority of his attention, and leave my clone to be a non-threat.

"And I know you need time to charge up-" With Browbeat's power fully active, I just press through the next blast of hurricane-force wind. Convenient. Fake-Brute powers - the ones that let you act like a Brute, but didn't actually do anything for your body - really were supereffective here. If Glory Girl's shield or Browbeat's field actually responded to the physics of the attack normally, I'd go flying - but Glory Girl just ignored the attack entirely, and Browbeat distributed the wide-ranging effect out from the point of impact - and if the point of impact was essentially my entire body, then it just buffets me from all directions at once and I don't actually go anywhere. A narrower blast of air would do better, but I didn't expect the man to understand the niche mechanics of the latest Ward. "-for all your best techniques!"

He changes tactics. Not bothering with the air blasts, and going straight into bringing his claws back. The correct move, Browbeat's power wouldn't do much against those - or sharp cutting or piercing attacks in general.

But I'm good in a melee fight. I'm really, really good in close-quarters-combat. This is where I live. Every day. The claws are neat, but not too different to a knife fighter or some other weapon - and as much as the man does cheat by manipulating the air to sense, speed himself up and slow me down... he isn't a real specialist like me. He's a ranged fighter who thinks the claws are badass and that the manly thing to do is jump his opponent just like Hookwolf. Every drop of blood he earns when I knock his blades away is another boost to his confidence, another signal that he could surely beat me if he just landed a decisive blow.

Good. If I kept him on the back foot, I'm not sure I could pin him down in time to beat the TIME modifier. I'd hoped that my ash clone would be able to sneakily trap him with Clockblocker, or sneak away and set up a Parian missile - but he seems to have settled into a routine of blasting wind everywhere every few seconds. My ash clone is just a distraction at this point.

If our roles were flipped... I could win against me with his powerset. My ranged options were weaker than his, his stronger hits would pop my ash clone accidentally all the time if I tried to use the knight heavily. I wouldn't even need the TIME mechanic to kick in. I'd just need to avoid the ego and stick to my win-conditions.

I weave in and out of his strikes, letting myself be pushed back a bit - only to be mildly disappointed as he doesn't pursue. No easy victory by making him walk into an echo, complete accident on his part - he's just being cautious and keeping his reach advantage. I'm getting used to his rhythm, and unlike a normal fistfight - he's really trying to abuse the range of his claws which takes a lot of potential complexity out of his attacks. Very telegraphed. Stab, swipe, aero-blast, claw-explosion. Those were his four moves. And he won't be using the last one again after I ignored it right at the start of the fight and punished him for it.

That makes predicting him dead simple.

I raise a hand to block the overhead stabbing motion - a flicker of triumph appearing on his face as I finally give him a chance to test my skin against his claws. An expression that immediately devolves into an agonised wail as his wind-assisted strike crashes brutally into the timelocked pebble concealed in my hand. Not quite to the 'timelocked object inside your body' extent that the trick had achieved against Glory Girl all that time ago, but it would have been an agonising hit even if it had simply been an entire wall - let alone something acting as a speartip. He wasn't a Brute, but he was still using his power to hit harder and faster - and that has consequences when his skin hits something that refuses to move.

I grip his twisted, slightly-mangled arm and grin at him - pulling him towards me even as he tries to blast me away with more and more air blasts - I shift hands, taking a hit to the torso at the cost of securing his only working hand.

Sorry, Mr Tiger. My now-spare hand clasps around his throat. "That's enough out of you."

SUCCESS

Reward: Aero-Kinetic Claws (1)

Really, power? That is not what his ability is. The claws are just decoration! I want to be a free-ranging aerokinetic, and use it properly! Let me fly already!

Actually, Stormtiger can barely fly but 'barely' is a lot better than I can currently do. I'll take a very enthusiastic glide, that's fine.

Stormtiger

Villain 2/6

(GANG) (TIME)

...maybe. But it wasn't really a fight where I wanted any distractions. Even simple gunmen might be an issue, and while I could hunt them down first - that played into the TIME modifier.

I'll leave it for now. For raw power, the first challenge is the most important. I'd only get a relationship boost from this next one.

"I hear something." Stormtiger announces. "Over here. Dig." He indicates a spot on the ground.

Hurry up, Greg. If I'd been a bit slower on the digging at the start, I'd have had loads of time to get these challenges done.

Rune. Rune next. "Challenge."

Situation check? Regular streets of Brockton Bay. Target check? It takes a few moments of searching to spot a concrete slab, decorated with markings from wherever she had torn it from - gliding through the air above me as if she was on an oversized version of Kid Win's hoverboard.

A pretty small ride, by her standards. I guess I usually only see videos of her playing taxi, where she needs something bigger? I'd compare the standing room on her ride to an elevator. And not a particularly big one, at that.

Not aggressive. She hasn't seen me yet. That's nice. My power had gotten really comfortable with not giving people ALRT modifiers, and placing me in their line of sight anyway. Defeats the whole point, doesn't it?

...but doesn't this make things so much easier for me? I still think I'm completely correct about how difficult her fighting style would be for me right now - but if she's just going to circle overhead, I've got all the time in the world to plan how I'm going to come up to her.

Or, even better, down on her. There's no ZONE here. No TIME modifier to worry about. I can just speed-state to the nearest tall building, glide off and get ready for an airborne ambush the moment she circles nearby.

And that's exactly what I do. Medhall is close, so that's my target of choice. Rune may be an aerial threat, but she doesn't usually fly high. Above the rooftops, certainly - but you almost never see her willingly take to the skies to the extent that New Wave or Purity might.

Probably because she can't actually fly, she's just riding something that can. I'm sure the fear of hitting the ground does a lot to temper her aspirations on that front.

But she's still an aerial combatant. She's used to being above the field of battle. Untouchable to all but a handful of Capes - and even then, the heroes would certainly take a light touch. Most of them were blasters, and would probably be all too aware of the possibility that damaging Rune's ride would send her tumbling to her death.

So is she really the kind of person who ever looks up?

Probably not.

The biggest problem I have is that she isn't standing still. I've done aerial assassinations before on still targets. I'm okay at it, a little unpracticed by my standards but I can make it work. A moving one? Trying to time that weaving motion against my terminal velocity? And how would the shadow state even interact with her rock of choice? Sophia's power had a strong understanding of 'the ground' and if I didn't want to sink through it, I wouldn't - no matter the momentum. Would that hold true for an object that size?

No, I don't think so. This might be harder than I thought.

I've used Clockblocker's power to 'stall' myself mid-air before, but that's not going to be ideal unless she settles into an extremely predictable route.

Ah. Got it.

Skidmark, time to make yourself useful.

Initially, I hadn't liked my 'variant' on Skidmark's powers. Where Skidmark could place his movement vectors anywhere, at range and with few limitations - I was weaker on all fronts, but the most important of those was that I needed to put them on objects. I couldn't just set up a field in mid-air like he could. That sucks, but the object-centric vectors can still be useful to play around with. The 'arrows' that I paint on respect the direction that they're currently in - which is helpful for making things like wheels and gears turn, but not quite as useful when it comes to manhandling an opponent and sticking them helplessly to the floor like Skidmark prefers.

But it also means that, if I had a target with enough surface area to 'paint' on - I could make enough 'up' arrows to counteract the weight of both the object and me. And then steer it in a certain direction to descend diagonally. As long as I didn't fully lose control of the direction and tilt the object upside-down and have my up-arrows all acts as down-arrows hurtling me into the ground - I would... float. Fly, even.

I start practising right away. An office chair seems promising at first, a suitable place to sit - and then a semi-convenient way to steer by rotating the chair, but the rotation of the chair was too easy and went out of control too fast. My test flights around Max Anders' office go poorly, and I settle for a more rigid, wooden chair with a cross motif. Better. It takes a lot of effort to throw my weight around just perfectly enough to tilt the flying-chair in the right direction without throwing myself off or losing control, but this is actually pretty good.

I should do this more often. I'm a bomb-Tinker now too, this could be a viable delivery method. It wouldn't even have to be me guiding it, my ash clone could do it. Hell, my ash clone might be better at it - my administrator had a good track record of being able to make inhuman microadjustments that were near-impossible to me, as shown by how much better it is at Mush and Taylor's powersets.

But today isn't about my ash clone. It's about me.

And I don't need complex aerial maneuvers to tag someone who wasn't even trying to dodge. Rune is utterly blindsided as I silently pull alongside her and, with no small amount of amusement - sharply jut my leg out to kick her off of her ride and tumbling down to the street below.

She reacts fast, to her credit. Her ride swerves mid-air, racing down to catch her. Except, her low-altitude habits are working against her this time. She doesn't have time to catch herself, because she hits the nearest rooftop first. Dead? No. Paralysed or unconscious, one of the two. Her ride immediately shudders and enters a more natural freefall state - a state it only entered after she had guided it to follow her path in an attempt to overtake her fall.

In other words, the rock was following almost the exact path that she had.

And both paths ended at the same location. I wince as the rock pulverises Rune's body, immediately painting the rooftop a dark red before the tell-tale signs of a simulation shutting down strips all colour from the world.

SUCCESS

Reward: Bound-Object Telekinesis (1)

"What the hell is this?" I hear Rune before my vision fully returns. "A shield? Actually, it lets my finger go straight in-"

"Don't touch it, Rune." Hookwolf growls. I step up to inspect the shimmering, translucent bubble that seemed to encompass half of the caved-in basement.

Krieg sweeps more debris aside to widen what we could see of the bubble, making it more apparent that this Tinkertech - because what else could it be - had either kept the inside entirely safe from the bombardment and resulting collapse, or had simply pushed the debris out as it expanded.

"I see you've found me." Bakuda steps forward, coming into view. "I suppose you must be-"

CRACK

Bakuda falls backwards immediately, a blood splatter hitting the wall behind her as a spherical hole forms in her head. I turn a brief, stunned look towards Krieg - who has a smoking revolver in his hand. It had happened so fast that I hadn't even had time to consider what time I should kick off my sudden-yet-inevitable betrayal of the Empire and rescue of the grateful, blushing maiden of the ABB.

...might need to redo that last description. A bit too much of a stretch, even for me.

"-be wondering how it is that your futile attempts-" I turn back as Bakuda's voice continues from where it left off.

And stops again, as a barrage of cutting winds flies from Stormtiger's hands and presses her bleeding and broken body against the wall.

This time, i don't turn away. After a few seconds, the room seems to flicker - the blood vanishes from the wall and floor - and Bakuda picks herself out of the wall with a disgruntled expression. Except... there was no option to challenge her. "-your futile-" She lingers on that word deliberately as she continues her monologue. "-attempts to strike down the greatest-"

Krieg's radio crackles. "It's Alabaster's power. Or, some attempt at replicating it. That isn't really her, it's like a... projection that reloads itself every few seconds. Imagine that she's just 3D printing herself without any injuries, and replicating the actions the real version of her is taking from some pocket dimension."

Tattletale? That's... bad. For me. I'd really underestimated how badly she wanted Bakuda dead, for her to be actively supporting the Empire like this.

Had she spotted me making my way over to Bakuda, realised I thought she might be alive and fed that information straight to the Empire? That would explain their late arrival. And if she was the voice on the radio from earlier, that explained why they'd initially approached my knight and only afterwards looked around to spot me.

I shouldn't attempt any second-level challenges in front of her. Her power was good. Probably the best Thinker in the Bay. My power had been... pretty good recently at not screwing me over with it's retcons now that I'd become more disciplined at spreading out challenges, but I'd like to avoid putting it to the test by changing someone mid-conversation with the Thinker.

Bakuda twitches. "The brat from the Undertakers. What an unpleasant surprise. I see you haven't learned how to keep your mouth shut after your... experience with us."

"Undersiders." The radio corrects. "I'd say the same to you, but seeing you in this position is anything but a surprise to me. The only surprising thing was how easy it was to arrange, everybody already wanted you dead - the only way you could have survived is by running and hiding. And I'm very good at hide-and-seek." Malice drips from her voice. It's not a tone I've heard from her before. There's a visceral hatred here that wasn't even present at the bank challenge when she realised what I was up to. There was fear and bravado there, but now - there's nothing except spite and fury. The cat toying with the mouse.

"This position? Oh! Ohoho! I see! You think you've won? You think that you've seen even a fraction of the brilliance that I, Bakuda, have to show the world? That is funny." Bakuda laughs back at her. "Imagine your sole power being to 'think' and still having a lesser intellect than me! Embarrassing. Humiliating. If I was in your position, I might have just killed myself before revealing that fact to the world. You're so brave!"

"You're nervous, Bakuda. Don't have many options left? I'd have liked to put a bullet in you yesterday if it wasn't for Lung and the PRT breathing down our necks - and that nasty little bomb of yours - but this works just as nicely. What was it you said before? How consequences have a way of catching up to you?" Tattletale lets out a harsh bark of laughter. "Well. Here you are now, in a room full of them. How long is it going to take them to find the device keeping you alive? What is it, a projector - like at the gala? Or is it simply a timed effect? Actually, don't tell me - I wouldn't want this to be too quick."

"Your attempts to goad me are as pathetic as your power. The joke of the century." Bakuda spits back. "Did you really think that I would simply... sit here? Like a prisoner? While you puffed out your chest and pretended that you had any power at all?" Bakuda waves her hand, almost dismissively. "It took a fraction of my brilliance to become immortal, but why did you think for a second that the same protection would extend to my attackers? You've played exactly into my hands, bringing your obedient puppets here to die. The Empire ends today, Toddletails - and I'll come for you last of all, once you fully understand how your plans were doomed from the start."

"Tattletale." The voice on the radio corrects again. "You-"

"I don't remember the names of my lessers." Bakuda dismisses. "I-" She cuts off as Hookwolf strides into the bubble and drags her outside of it. A few seconds later, she fades into a ghostly afterimage and reappears in a snap within the bubble. "-do you really think you could circumvent my genius with such a pedestrian solution? I'm amused enough at the audacity to try that I'll spare your life, this time."

The radio crackles again. "She can't attack you. Her Tinkertech won't work- no. Her Tinkertech would work, but it might disrupt the thing that's protecting her. Dig around, clear the debris out - there might be some way to switch off the effect. The bubble is safe to enter, it's separate from the Alabaster-effect."

"We should spread out." I reason. "The projector at the Gala was on an entirely different floor compared to the effect that hit Armsmaster. It could be in a neighbouring building just as much as it could be in this room, or within that bubble."

"He's not entirely wrong, but he's trying to split you up..." Tattletale trails off. "Fuck! He's not here to kill her, he's here to rescue her! He's not on our side!"

"Can you fuck off, Tattletale? Trying to keep everyone alive here! I'd do the same for you!" I swear as Hookwolf turns to me. But I was ready for this outcome too. My knight hadn't followed us inside, it had seeped into the debris all around us. The pseudo-tunnel that we had formed to even get to this deep basement room was made of the exact materials that my knight loved so much - and now it was utterly under my control.

So before Hookwolf's lupine form can reach me, the tunnel collapses around him and shunts him away. Krieg no-sells the same effect while Rune and Stormtiger step inside the bubble for protection - where the debris can't seem to enter. Krieg is a disappointment, I'd hoped to banish both Brutes from the fight and handle the weaker half of the group. I should have expected it, the weaker 'limbs' of my knight in this form were just insufficient to break through his power - I'd have to condense the tentacles again to create a level of force that could overcome it, but having my knight manhandle Hookwolf was a valuable use of it for now.

"So generous of you, keeping us alive so you can copy our powers." Tattletale snarks.

The remaining three enemies straighten at Tattletale's words, peering at me with a sudden look of distrust. Didn't they know that already? I just assumed everyone did by this point, not that I'd updated my powers on PHO - but it didn't take a genius to see my shadow state and take a guess at what was going on. Unless they had just been ignoring me? Or... don't tell me they were serious about viewing me positively because of how I'd targeted the ABB and Merchants more than them. They didn't really think I was an ally who would never fight them, right? Just what had Victor reported back about me?

She continues. "If you could use your brain to think rather than your dick, you'd understand that the bomb-crazy bimbo down there is fucking insane and needs to die. She fully intended to kill everyone in that gala- you already know that. Of course you do. You just like them crazy, that's it? That's it. You just saw some complete nutjob and thought it would a real boost to your ego if you could fix her with your dick. That's- Actually, I was trying to insult you just now - but no, that's really just the plan. Wow. What can I even say to that?"

I send Krieg a tight smile as his radio falls silent. Neither he or Stormtiger are making an aggressive move yet. Hookwolf...currently doesn't know what direction 'up' is and is finding out that my knight is much better at pushing debris around with him inside than he is at tunnelling through it.

I clear my throat. "Why don't you say 'Oh, maybe I shouldn't be helping the Empire' or 'Hang on, the Empire is just going to wipe us out the moment they're the only gang left in the city?'. That would be a good start. Does Grue know that you're on this call? I have a feeling he might have some objections. Just a hunch." Should I be talking to Tattletale this much? Maybe not. But the bank challenge had shown me that her power wasn't infallible - and the user wasn't either. It could be wrong, the assumptions made could be incorrect and the guesses that came out could compound into ever-larger mistakes and assumptions. Sometimes, if she thought she was onto something - she'd chase a dead-end long all the way to the bottom.

I wasn't arrogant enough to think that she'd never get onto me, but I also had to accept that withdrawing into myself and fleeing from the sound of her voice was a lot more suspicious than appearing to be an easily-read book with some problematic, but not overly-concerning secrets on top of some violent, lustful tendencies.

"Grue knows that Bakuda isn't going to rest until we're all dead. Look at her, you think she's the type to ever let a defeat go?" She pauses. "You know she isn't. Of course you know that, so why- is this genuinely all about your dick? She genuinely hates you, you know? From the bottom of her heart - even if you did save her from this position, the first thing she would do is stab you in the back."

"Average woman moment." I quip.

"...why do you actually believe that? And if you know that, then why-" She cuts herself off and attempts to steady her voice. "Listen. It's her, or us. If we miss this opportunity, the only safe place is going to be on the other side of the country. She'd blow up the entire city if it meant that she could get someone who wronged her. We need to take her out, before she takes us out. Do you at least agree with me on that?"

"I hear you, Fraulein." I eye up Krieg, daring him to make the first move. Gotta watch the gun. It was pretty rare for Capes to carry, it just wasn't usually done - outside of my challenges at least. I've died a few times to unexpected concealed carriers. "I don't suppose you can tell your new best friends to leave?"

I can almost hear Tattletale grinding her teeth. "I'm the flexible sort, a Thinker-" She pauses. "-you already know that, fine. I'm willing to lend my power out to you for a bit, if you just don't interfere with these assholes killing off this one crazy bitch who is one signature away from getting a kill order anyway!"

"Counterpoint, nobody dies, everyone goes home. I talk to Bakuda about burying the hatchet with you. Peace and rainbows forever." I offer.

"Apologies, but if you insist on getting in the way of our work here - we will take your life." Krieg interrupts.

"You will try." I correct. "And we're having a conversation here."

"The Thinker is not here. I am. Your quarrel is with us. I would appreciate it if you took a moment to think about the situation. Your teammate will be devastated at the sheer waste of your death. Reconsider, for her sake." He states bluntly.

"Dying would make her sad, I've got a duty to avoid it." I concede. "But doesn't the same go for you? Kaiser might cry if I send your corpse to him in two pieces, just because you couldn't understand the simple message of 'stop killing people' and 'go home'. Seems pretty simple to me."

"We have a duty to the city." He replies simply. He raises his gun to point at my head. "Any last words?"

"You don't really expect that to work, do you?" I'm pretty sure Browbeat's power would stop it from killing me, just leave a massive bruise - but I have no reason to even allow that much. I step forward and slap the gun in his hand. One bullet pings uselessly off of Glory Girl's forcefield, and then the gun is frozen in time. "Wait, those would be terrible last words. People would laugh at my gravestone."

"If you would like some more years to consider, you are welcome to leave." Krieg says blandly. "Or assist us. The offer remains open, despite your duplicity."

"Don't bother, he won't go for it." Tattletale interjects unhelpfully. "It would hurt his ego to join another gang, and hurt his ego even more to be a literal Nazi. He's not all bad, I suppose." Did she mean to say that last part out loud? Krieg was ignoring her.

"I don't know, I'd look pretty good in uniform." I grin and switch powers, my mouth turning damp and wet as I'm forced to quiet my voice and speak through muffled lips. "The trouble is my German is a little sloppy. I only know a few words, you see." With that said, I spit down at my feet - a heavy glob of white-orange liquid erupting from my mouth to the ground below.

Stormtiger correctly assumes that the move is an attack and launches a barrage of wind at me as I phase backwards.

I phase in at the entrance of the tunnel at exactly the same time as Spitfire's power showcases why she named herself that, effortlessly igniting the debris making up the tunnel as the Nazis realise that fire and wind is not the best combination for them in such an enclosed space.

"Achtung - Feuer!" I call out merrily, and with a flex of my knight - the entire tunnel shifts and contracts, the entrance closing and the blazing pyre of napalm is abruptly shoved towards Krieg and his friends. I cast my gaze over my shoulder, my last foe clawing out of the debris pile being spotted by my ash clone hiding on a nearby balcony. "Don't think I forgot about you, doggy. Just the two of us, for now."

This was more like it. One on one. I wasn't stupid enough to believe that Stormtiger and Krieg would go down from my attack. Krieg would muscle his way through eventually no matter how much my knight tried to confuse and disorientate him with the unorthodox 'form' that I'd forced it into.

But I didn't need long. I just needed time. This wasn't sustainable for the Empire. Lung would beat... what would be the team? Fenja, Menja, Kaiser and Crusader - with Othala buffing the twins? Yeah, that sounds right. He would win there eventually. Oni Lee would eventually finish turning Empire vehicles into convertibles and move to rescue either Bakuda or Lung, depending on how much he knew of the situation. And the heroes... well, they were around. Probably. It hasn't been long since all this kicked off, so they're probably en-route. Probably headed towards Lung though, he's a bit more eye-catching than my fight over here.

And even aside from that, longer, drawn out fights gave me more opportunities to challenge. Hookwolf on his own didn't have the coverage to threaten all of my defensive options in the way that he did when he had Krieg or Stormtiger behind him, so I could afford to test a few things in real life just to make my challenges more successful in the time I had.

"I'll let you in on a secret." His voice in his wolf form is grating, clanking and scraping that somehow forms coherent sound. "The only reason they're here, is to protect punks like you from me. The brass is worried I'll get a kill order if I kill too many more of you wannabe heroes." A series of clanks and groans emerges from the hook-filled 'mouth' that I eventually realise is his laugh. "But I get the feeling one more isn't going to make a difference. Try not to die too fast, I'm looking forward to seeing you scream."

"Weirdly enough, that last part? I was thinking exactly the same about you." I smile, stretching the space between us with Vista's power and triggering my teleport beacon. A moment later, a familiar block of materials is piled next to me - and one Paste later, my mechasword is pointing directly at the charging mass of blades and hooks. "But I know you won't understand what I mean by that for a little bit longer."

Just be patient, Hookwolf.

I've got a collar and a leash waiting with your name on it.

Bitch.