It Gets Worse Pt 15 (Patreon)

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Sunday Afternoon, January 16, 2011
Uber and L33t's base
Uber

"Okay, bro, up you get." L33t dropped a familiar khaki bundle on the gaming sofa next to Uber. "Time for us to go out and get our hero on." He was already wearing his jumpsuit. Uber looked at the jumpsuit in confusion; had L33t actually laundered it? Who was this guy and what had he done with Uber's buddy?

"What?" Uber managed. "I figured yesterday was a once-off. I mean sure, we killed Shatterbird but there's such a thing as pushing our luck, you know?" With both luck guns discharged, he had hopes that L33t would've given up the idea of taking on the Nine. Yesterday he'd thought differently, but given time to consider it, the memory of Shatterbird arrowing in at them left him just a little weak in the knees.

"You gotta be kidding me, bro." L33t shook his head, chuckling. "Don't you remember the footage from the Snitch? Burnscar lighting Crawler's fart? That was no accident. We were supposed to get that footage. Haven't you figured it out yet?"

Uber hated it when L33t was three steps ahead of him like this. "Figured what out?" Yes, the fart explosion had been hysterically funny, but he couldn't work out what L33t was getting at.

"Our luck's working even when we're not doing anything," L33t insisted. "Either that, or the girl's luck is filling in for it. It wants us to go ahead and kick the Nine's collective ass. And I can prove it."

"Oh, yeah?" Uber felt himself to be on safer ground now. "Prove it how, exactly?" He had no idea what sort of half-assed 'proof' L33t had cooked up, but he considered it to be his personal duty to ensure his buddy didn't run off and get himself killed because he thought he was untouchable.

"Check it out." L33t plonked himself down on the computer chair and clicked on a tab. "You know how we thought nobody saw us kill Shatterbird? Well, we were wrong."

Uber sat up so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. "You're shitting me." He'd already kissed that money goodbye. What sort of trickery was L33t pulling now?

"I shit you not, o bro of mine." L33t's grin was almost manic by now. "See, there was a mugging up on top of Captain's Hill about a week and a half ago. Some rich visiting tourist wanted to look at the city by midnight, disturbed a bunch of Merchants who'd gone up there to drink and get high, and got his wallet ripped off. He complained to the chief of police personally so a couple days later, they wired up a security camera there."

Uber scratched his head. "I never heard anything about this."

"Nobody did." L33t smirked. "They probably didn't want to make the city look bad, so they must've asked this guy very nicely not to tell the papers about it. But … remember how you hacked into City Hall that one time, and got me feeds on the security cameras around town?"

"What few there were once the ABB and Empire got finished with knocking out the ones in their territory," Uber noted, then light dawned. "The feed's online? How come the cops haven't told the PRT about what we did, then?"

L33t held up a finger. "Because they haven't been watching it since that storm a few days ago. I'm guessing the camera wasn't secured too strongly, and the wind blew it all the way around so it looked out over the hills. Cops aren't interested in nature views, so they stopped looking at it. Couldn't be bothered switching it off or turning it back around."

Uber rolled his eyes. I swear. Brockton Bay in a nutshell. "And the mugging? How'd you learn about that?"

"That's where we lucked out, bro," L33t said with a grin. "Whichever genius at the precinct it was who filled out the police report thought they'd be smart and hotlink the security feed to it. But they screwed up; when I clicked on the footage, I got the report in my inbox as well."

" … why am I not surprised?" Uber shook his head, then he blinked as the import of L33t's words registered on him. "So we've got footage of Shatterbird biting it?" Jumping up from the game sofa, he moved to where L33t was sitting. "We're gonna be able to claim the reward?"

"Got it in one," L33t confirmed. On the screen was a series of thumbnails. He clicked on the one right at the bottom of the list, and it opened into a window of its own. At the top was an image of tree-covered hills and under that, row upon row of numerically labelled file icons. Moving the mouse over, he clicked on a specific one; Uber recognised the timestamp as covering the period when they'd been on Captain's Hill.

The image wasn't great and the only sound from the speakers was a persistent hiss, but it was possible to see the moving dot of Shatterbird, then the beam that had reached out to her from the luck gun. When she broke free and started in toward the camera, it was with difficulty that he resisted the urge to step back. He'd known the lightning was going to strike but when it did, it came almost as a surprise; for some reason, he'd thought she'd gotten a lot closer than that. All the same, as L33t moved the slider bar back, it was totally possible to see that it was Shatterbird in the image.

"All we gotta do is bring that footage in," L33t explained, "then demonstrate the luck gun. Show it was me that fired the beam."

Uber frowned, dire possibilities occurring to him. "They might just decide that the footage isn't enough to prove that we did it. Or that we were even there."

L33t moved the slider bar back again, then pushed the volume control all the way up. The hissing from the speakers turned into a rushing sound; Uber recalled that the wind had been brisk, up on the hill. Buried in the rushing sound were broken noises that became voices. Listening carefully, he could make out the conversation he'd had with L33t. Altogether too much of it.

"Uh, dude? If we take that to the PRT, they'll know we were gonna test out the luck gun on some random cape over the city." He grimaced. "The way I see it, they can either refuse to believe in the luck gun, and refuse to pay us; or believe that we killed her with bad luck, and then they'll be looking really hard at us every time some cape stubs their toe from then onward."

"No." L33t shook his head wildly. "There's an amnesty on people claiming kill orders. They wouldn't pull that shit on us."

Uber took a deep breath. "The only way I can think of to survive claiming the money is if we took out the rest of the Nine as well." He looked at L33t, fully expecting his buddy to protest. To him, not claiming the money would leave them poorer but with a much higher chance of living through the experience.

"Well, duh," L33t said. "Why do you think I got dressed up again? Like I said, it's time to get our hero on. Let's go out and kick some Nine butt."

Oh, crap. What was I thinking? It wasn't often that Uber found himself winning arguments when he didn't want to. He'd been fully prepared to debate the point but gradually lose to L33t's superior position in the matter. But when L33t agreed at once, he found himself in the unpalatable position of having to actually go through with it.

"Uh, yeah," he agreed weakly. "But how are we gonna find them? Drive around with a blindfold on until we run into them?" This time, he told himself, he wasn't actually trying to be difficult. There were many problems inherent in trying to locate a small group in a medium-large city; it wasn't as if they could just throw a dart at the map and …

His eyes widened.

If L33t wasn't spouting total bullshit about how the luck was still working for them, a dart in a map would be exactly how he and L33t could locate the Nine. And if it didn't work, it would have the upside of not encountering the Nine, and it'd be a good reason for them to rethink the whole thing. While he was thinking about it, a totally different problem came to mind. "So, uh, the luck guns. Weren't they out of charge or something?" Whatever his private opinion was on the sheer bullshit factor of a luck gun of any sort, there was no way he wanted to face any member of the Nine without L33t's bad luck gun covering his back.

"Oh, that's easy." L33t headed over to the bench where the two power packs were lying side by side. "Each one stores the kind of luck it doesn't shoot, so I've had them charging each other from the residue of what we used yesterday. The good luck gun won't have a full charge, but it should be enough for what we need."

Uber grimaced, but he got up from the sofa anyway. The luck guns had kept them alive so far. I suppose I should learn to trust in those things. "Okay, you've convinced me. I'll go get changed. In the meantime, get out the map. We're gonna be throwing a dart at it."

L33t's grin widened by a few notches. "Got it."

<><>

Empire Eighty-Eight
Crusader

 “Okay, time to take the vote.” Kayden kept her voice low, but Justin could still hear the strain in it. “Paul still hasn't budged an inch, and he's threatening anyone who comes anywhere near him. It's like he's daring us to try to kill him.” She glanced at Cassie. “I'll understand if you want to sit this one out, sweetheart. I know you get along pretty well with him.”

Justin leaned over slightly from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, and looked out into the living room. Paul was still tied up on the floor, though they'd found it necessary to gag him to stop him from shouting loudly enough to wake up Aster. By mutual agreement, they'd caught a few hours of sleep (having been up all night) and now they were ready to talk about the elephant in the room.

Justin had given Kayden and Cassie his bedroom, while Theo slept on the floor in the bedroom and Justin got the sofa. It hadn't been a pleasant sleep; Paul had delighted in kicking the sofa to keep him awake. He'd ended up having his ghosts pin the asshole down with the armchair just so he could get some rest. Paul, of course, never slept or even got tired. While this made for a useful ally, Justin would never have wanted him as an enemy. Which, apparently, he now was.

“No, I think sitting out would just be cowardly,” the teenage girl said. “So what are the options here?”

Kayden took a deep breath. “One, we put him on a bus out of town, with as much money as we can spare, on the condition that he never returns. Two, we turn him over to the PRT. Three …” She hesitated for a long moment. “Three, we figure out some way to kill him, or make sure he never threatens us again in some other way.”

“I can actually think of a couple,” Justin said. It had been a very long day. “We could dump him in a forty-four gallon drum and fill it with concrete. Once it sets, we drop it in the bay, a long way from shore.”

Kayden flinched. “That's horrible! We're not doing that to him.”

“I can't agree with doing that, either,” Cassie stated flatly. “He's saved your life more than once. He's saved my life at least once.” She turned to Kayden's stepson. “Theo?”

Theo Anders looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but there. “Do I have to vote? I'm not a cape. I'm not part of the Empire.”

Not without a certain amount of relief, Justin shook his head. “No, I guess not.” Keeping it to a three-person quorum was probably better, anyway. It would prevent deadlocks and arguments such as the one which had precipitated this whole debacle. “So killing him or otherwise putting him someplace he can't hurt us is off the table?”

Cassie nodded; after a moment, Kayden did the same. The older woman rubbed her hand over her eyes. “I don't like any of this, but deliberately executing him or putting him someplace he can't escape from forever … no, I can't do that.”

“Okay, then.” Justin held up two fingers. “We're left with bribing him to leave town, and turning him over to the PRT. Give me a second.” Getting up, he walked into the living room to where Paul was still trapped under the armchair. He untied the thick cloth bag from around Paul's neck, then pulled it off to reveal the albino cape's glare. “Paul,” he said. “We're trying to decide what to do with you. If we gave you money—a lot of money—would you agree to leave town and never return?”

Paul jerked from side to side, making the armchair sway, and made unintelligible noises through the broad strip of insulation tape that was covering his mouth; wrapped all the way around his head, in fact. He'd been very persistent in trying to make noise.

“I can't understand you, and I'm not taking the tape off,” Justin said patiently. “If you're willing to take the money and go, nod your head. If you're not, shake your head.”

There was a long, long moment during which Justin wondered if Paul would choose to make no signal at all, just to screw them over. Then Paul's features relaxed, and the white-skinned cape nodded slowly. Justin felt a little of the tension he felt ease out of his system. “Okay, then,” he said, briskly rolling up the bag to make an ad hoc pillow. “I'll just put this under your head then, and go back to talk to the others.” It had been the first sign of cooperation from Paul since this whole mess started, and he figured it rated some level of consideration in return.

Returning to the kitchen, he sat down and lowered his voice. “Okay, he says he's willing to leave town. How much money can we raise?”

“I can put in about ten thousand,” Kayden offered, then stopped. Lowering her voice even farther, she leaned forward so that only those at the table could hear her. “But I have a horrible feeling that he might take the money and then come straight back. He certainly seemed angry enough about it last night, and he's got to be even angrier with us now.”

Justin grimaced. The possibility had been lurking in the back of his mind since Paul had initially agreed to the idea, but he hadn't wanted to face it. Paul was his buddy, goddamn it! They'd gotten drunk together—well, Justin had gotten drunk while Paul just drank and stayed sober—they'd cruised meetings of the Empire's rank and file for girls, and they'd fought the good fight side by side. Well, Alabaster had been up front while Crusader hung back and sent his ghosts into the fight, but it was the principle of the thing. To fall out like this was bad enough, but to agree to part ways peacefully then turn around and backstab them … he didn't want to think Paul could do that, but …

“Empire wouldn't do that to Empire,” Cassie said firmly. “Paul's Empire through and through.” But Justin could see the concern in her eyes.

“But what if he decides we're not Empire any more?” put in Theo unexpectedly. “I mean, you guys. I never really was. But in his eyes, you attacked him and now you want to send him away. If he still considers himself to be Empire, that means he can just as easily decide you guys aren't.” He looked from Justin to Kayden to Cassie, mutely pleading with them to refute his logic.

Fuck. The kid, Justin realised, was correct. If Paul took it personally and decided they weren't Empire any more, he wouldn't see killing them as a betrayal. Or rather, he'd see it as retaliation in kind for betrayal. Either way, neither Justin's ghosts nor Cassie's floating rocks would protect them against a sudden and devastating attack from an unexpected angle. Kayden was the most powerful among them but she wasn't bulletproof, and if Paul decided to use Aster as leverage, she wouldn't even be able to put up a fight.

Closing his eyes, he leaned forward and bumped his forehead gently against the tabletop. “We can't trust him to stick to any deal we make,” he said from that position. In the back of his mind, he was fully aware that he'd been trying to repress that very understanding for the last few minutes. With that out of the way, he started trying to repress the knowledge of what he had to do next. It didn't help.

“You can't know that,” Cassie protested, giving Theo a dirty look. “If he says he'll take the deal—”

Justin overrode her, his voice harsh. “Right now, he'll say or do anything that'll get him out of here without being thrown to the wolves, just so he can come back at us later on.” It was exactly what he'd do, if the circumstances were reversed. He raised his head from the table and looked at Kayden. “You get that, right? He knows all our weaknesses, and he'll use every single one against us if he gets the chance.” Even your baby.

From the stricken look in Kayden's eyes, she got the message loud and clear. “Okay,” she said, the pain obvious in her voice. “I get it. But I still won't be a party to execution or putting him in a hole somewhere.”

Justin nodded; if they were to remain a team, he had to respect her wishes. “Then the only thing we can really do is turn him over to the PRT.” To say that he didn't like this was a vast understatement. He hated it. How they'd ended up at this juncture he wasn't exactly certain but in situations like this the only way through was forward, or something like that.

“What, just give him to them?” Cassie shook her head. “Okay, I get it we're going hero and we're gonna have to play nice with the Protectorate and stuff, but just handing him over to go to jail or the Birdcage or wherever they feel like putting him? Without even giving him the chance to defend himself? That's something a—a Merchant might do!” Her voice showed the utter disgust she felt at the idea.

“Calm down, honey,” Kayden said soothingly, putting a hand on her arm. “I know it seems like a big step, but he really is a danger to us all. From the way he was acting this morning, we can't really trust him to stick to any deal we made with him.” She looked at Justin. “So your vote is to hand him over to the PRT?”

Justin nodded. “Yeah. I can't see any other way. I guess you're voting the same way?” He gave Cassie a sympathetic look; this couldn't be easy for the girl. She was still young enough to value idealism over pragmatism.

“I am.” Kayden spoke firmly. “That settles it. I don't like it any more than you do, Cassie, but sometimes the only available options are bad ones.”

For a long moment, Justin thought Cassie was going to jump up and protest, but she didn't. Instead, she bit her lip and looked at the two adults. “That's it, huh?” Her voice was subdued. “We get to be heroes, and he gets to go to jail.”

“I'm afraid that's exactly it,” Justin confirmed. “Sh—I mean, crap happens, and sometimes all you can do is just keep going.” He looked closely at Cassie as she pushed her chair back from the table. “Are you okay with this? You don't have to come along—”

“No!” Cassie shouted the word as she came to her feet. The kitchen table bounced into the air, clipping Justin under the chin and ramming heavily into Kayden's midriff. “It's wrong and I'm not going to let you do it!”

Dazed by the unexpected blow, Justin went over sideways and sprawled on to the floor. He saw Kayden lying on her side, doubled up and holding her stomach as she tried to get her breath back. Cassie darted out the doorway into the living room, and the table followed her to form a makeshift door. Glowing on the underside was the rune she'd been using to control it. She must've drawn it there while we were still voting. The sneaky little cow.

Trying to get his head together long enough to send his ghosts out, Justin shakily sat up. His jaw hurt and his head was still ringing like a gong, but finally he managed to generate one. It blew through the barrier with ease, but what he saw through his tap into its eyes made him groan.

“What?” Kayden asked the question painfully. Theo, who'd been brushed aside by the table, helped her to her feet.

Another ghost rolled out of Justin, and a third; between them, they got him on to his feet. “She's gone,” he said, just as the table dropped out of the way to reveal what he already knew. “Door's open. She took the armchair and Paul both.”

With Theo's help, Kayden stumbled through into the living room and dropped on to the sofa. “Thanks, honey.” She looked around the room, and her face fell even farther. “And she grabbed his guns, too.”

Justin grimaced and he shook his head—gingerly, because the hit to the jaw really had really rung his bell. Walking over to the door, he pushed it shut. “That's just damn perfect. We're gonna have to go after them, aren't we?”

“Well, it's that or we wait until they choose to ambush us at the worst possible moment,” Kayden told him heavily. “Theo, get my handbag.”

Obediently, the heavy-set boy got Kayden's bag. She dug in it, opened her purse, and handed him some notes. “Take Aster, and all the formula we have. Get her to a motel room. Wait twelve hours and ring this apartment. If Justin or I answer, the safe word is 'mitigate'. If we don't use that word, or it's someone else, take her to the PRT and ask for safe haven. Got it?”

He nodded jerkily. “Motel room. Call this apartment. Mitigate. PRT. Got it.” He took a deep breath. “I don't know the number for Crusader's home phone.”

“Ah, yeah.” Justin searched around for a notepad and finally grabbed the one off the fridge with the half-finished shopping list on it. There was a pencil clipped to it, and he scribbled his home number on the pad. “There you go.” He turned to Kayden. “So how are we gonna find them?”

Her smile was a little forced. “Max is a controlling bastard, but I'm going to have to thank him for this one.” Digging farther into her handbag, she pulled out her phone. “When he issued phones to everyone, he made sure they had locator apps on them. And as one of his second in commands, I have access to those apps.”

Theo pulled out his phone and looked at it, startled. “I didn't know that.”

“Wait, what?” Justin was equally surprised. “There's a locator on my phone? I never noticed.”

Kayden nodded. “He paid top dollar and made sure it couldn't be spotted just by looking through the app list.”

“Because we'd take it out,” Justin guessed. It was what he would've done, after all.

“Because you'd take it out,” Kayden agreed. “He told me not to tell you, or take the app off my own phone. It was so you couldn't tell anyone or take it off and then be unable to be found. Theo, get Aster for me, please?” She fiddled with the phone, while Theo put his away and went into the bedroom. “Password,” she muttered. “Okay, phones … we took Paul's away, didn't we? Cassie … location … got it.”

She held up the phone as Theo came out of the bedroom with the baby in her carrier. “Okay, I have a location. Theo …” She took a deep breath and hugged him. “No matter what happens, take care of your sister.” Leaning over, she kissed the sleeping Aster gently on the forehead. “No matter what.” It would take a braver man than him, Justin reflected, to disappoint Kayden when she spoke in that tone. Grabbing his spear from where it leaned against the corner, he pulled his mask over his face.

“I will,” Theo assured her. “I promise.”

She hugged him again, then went to the window and opened it. “We haven't got much time. Cassie might realise she can be tracked with her phone at any moment. Let's go.” Her power flared to life and she launched herself out the window. Justin generated a few more ghosts and had them carry him after her.

<><>

Cassie

Empire doesn't betray Empire.

The thought kept running through Cassie's head, even as she crouched on the flying armchair. It was tilted back at a forty-five degree angle with Paul kneeling in it, his chest against the backrest. His hands were fastened behind him with three different zip-ties and no matter how she yanked at them, they wouldn't break or come off.

It had been perhaps the hardest decision in her life to go against Justin and Kayden like that, but turning Paul over to the PRT without even giving him a fair chance wasn't what the Empire was about. Even Hookwolf and Cricket gave their opponents a chance to fight back before eviscerating them. So really, I'm actually saving them from doing something they'd regret doing later, once they realise that I'm right and they're wrong.

The knowledge made her feel a little better. Not a lot, but some. She knew beyond a doubt that Kaiser would agree with her, and Paul obviously did as well. He'd probably want to get out of town now that he was parting ways with the others (she very carefully didn't call either side 'the Empire' even in her head, because she didn't want to confuse herself any farther) and he'd probably want her to go with him, but she really didn't want to go, and these zip-ties just wouldn't come free, no matter what she'd seen people do in the movies!

Paul grunted through the electrical-tape gag and pulled his hands away from her, which confused her even farther. Didn't he want her to free him? Then, when he swung his head back at her, nearly headbutting her in the face, she realised what he wanted, though the why was still a mystery to her.

Tracing a rune on the tape, she exerted her power on the end of it until it started to unwind from his head while she wrestled with the zip-ties. She could understand him wanting it off on general principles, but it wasn't as if he could turn his head all the way around and bite the zip-ties in half. At least, she was pretty sure he couldn't. When someone didn't care what damage they did to their body, it was pretty amazing what they could do.

The last of the tape came off of his face with a long rriipp sound and he drew in a deep gasp of air. "Finally," he rasped. "Stop fucking around pulling at the zip-ties. I've been doing that all night and I'm stronger than you. Get my guns and shoot the fucking things off."

"Oh," she said, enlightenment bursting in her, along with embarrassment. I should've thought of that as soon as we left! She'd dumped the gunbelt in the crook of the armchair so they wouldn't lose it, and now it was down between Paul's knees. The flush on her face deepened as she bent over, her face pressed against Paul's back as she fished down in the depths of the armchair. Her fingers brushed against the cold metal of a pistol, and she grabbed for it. The holster slid off it as it came up, although she was holding it the wrong way up. Turning it around, she pressed it against the zip-tie and squeezed the trigger.

The loud report of the weapon startled her and the heavy recoil nearly sprained her wrists, but that wasn't what made her drop the gun. The spray of blood from Paul's back was what did that, covering the front of her clothes and making her recoil in disgust. After a few seconds it stopped as Paul's body reset to the way it had been before, but she was still splattered in his blood. Two of the ties had been severed, which was a good thing, because she wasn't going through that again; she didn't know where the gun had gone and she didn't care. As she watched, Paul bunched his shoulders and heaved, and the third tie broke. He might've said something then, but she couldn't hear him through the ringing in her ears.

The chair wobbled as she did her best not to throw up. She'd seen blood before, but not all over her. Nobody had told her about the coppery reek, or the sickly warm feeling as a drop of the stuff ran down her face. Unsteadily, she guided the chair down to land in an alleyway between two decrepit buildings. In the back of her mind was the certain knowledge that Kayden and Justin would be looking for them; an armchair perched on a rooftop was as good as a bright neon sign saying, "We're down here!"

The chair crunched down into a pile of garbage that had spilled out of several nearby trash cans, but she didn't care; as soon as she didn't have to hang on any more, she frantically scrubbed at her face with her sleeve. The nausea receded, which was a good thing. She hated throwing up, whether it be in a grimy alleyway or a sparkling clean toilet bowl.

As she got herself back under control, she became aware that Paul was speaking again. Rubbing at her ears, she turned to focus on him. The ringing in her ears had subsided far enough that she could hear his voice now, albeit fuzzily. "You all right, kid? That was pretty ballsy, back there."

She felt anything but ballsy right at that moment. Her wrist hurt, her ears hurt, and she still wasn't quite sure that her stomach was going to stay in place. "I—I couldn't let them—" she began, but he held up a hand.

"Sh!" he said sharply. "There's something …" He looked up. She looked up, too. At first she wasn't quite sure what she was looking at, but then it clicked into focus.

Oh. Fuck.

<><>

Hatchet Face
One Minute Before

"Dibs!" said Hatchet Face, pointing upward. The shot had gained everyone's attention just as the armchair swooped into view overhead. Both the gunshot and the airborne furniture could've been the result of an extremely energetic domestic disturbance, but with the way it swerved and descended into a nearby alleyway, it was more likely to be an ad hoc flying craft. Which meant that one of the two people on top of it had to be a cape. Maybe both. This is my lucky day. "Dibs!" he repeated, just in case someone hadn't heard.

"You can't just call 'dibs'," Crawler objected. Mannequin made some signs with his hands, but Hatchet Face had no idea what they meant. Siberian just crossed her arms and glared at him. "Some of us want to kill someone, too."

"Capes," Hatchet Face said irritably. "You can kill everyone else. I want to kill the capes. At least one of those is a cape. Whichever one it is, I'm calling dibs on." He loved the look of confidence turning to terror as their powers faded away under his field, then the last expression on their faces as he chopped them to bits. He called it the "I'm fucked" face.

"Fine," groused Crawler. "But you gotta chase some at me when we find 'em. They run away too fast." He kicked at a bus stop and it broke.

"Deal," Hatchet Face agreed readily enough. Cutting peoples' legs off didn't count as killing them, right? Crawler could catch them real easy after that. "Give me a minute and then come in that end of the alley. I'm gonna get around the other end, and catch them as they come out."

"They might just fly away again," Crawler pointed out.

This, Hatchet Face thought, was a good point. Flyers had an unfair advantage; they could stay out of range of his power. Sometimes he could bring one down with a lucky throw of his axe, but that was always chancy. "Yeah. Okay." He turned to Mannequin and Siberian. "Can you get on top of the buildings and stop them flying away?"

With a resigned look on her face, Siberian nodded, then made three definitive hand motions. First, she pointed at Hatchet Face; then she made a circle with her finger and thumb; finally, she jabbed herself in the chest with her thumb. It was pretty clear what she meant, as opposed to Mannequin's weird finger-wiggling. You owe me.

"Yeah, and I'll pay up. Come on," he urged. "They'll get away!"

As the others moved to get into position, he loped away to get to the far side of the building. An anticipatory grin spread over his face, curling back his lip to expose a none-too-clean set of teeth. This was gonna be fun.

<><>

Alabaster

We are so very fucked.

The simmering anger he'd felt toward his erstwhile teammates had vanished, replaced by an intense calculation of the odds against them. Above were two members of the Nine, peering down at them with … well, the Siberian had a look of mild interest, while Mannequin showed no expression at all on his white contoured mockery of a human face. Those two were bad enough, but he knew the Nine well enough to understand that where there were two, more were sure to be close behind.

Paul was nigh-unkillable; he'd survived enough fatal hits to understand this. Under normal circumstances, he'd back his power against any cape he cared to name. But the Nine were a game-changer. The Siberian had ripped Alexandria's eye clean out of her head, where even the Endbringers had failed to harm her in a quarter of a century. Did that mean she could hurt him and make it stick? He didn't know. If that wasn't bad enough, the Nine also had a power-nullifier; Hatchet Face, if he recalled correctly. The guy liked chopping capes to bits with a big axe.

There was a loud crash as something shoved a dumpster over at one end of the alley. Paul looked that way, and saw a large pitch-black moving mass … with eyes. It was equivalent in size to one of Bitch's dogs, but it didn't look anything like one of them. And last he'd heard, Bitch wasn't a member of the Nine. That's gotta be Crawler. I just pretend to be unkillable; he's the real deal.

Which left the other end of the alley clear to escape from. Except … it wasn't. Every instinct he had told him they were being goaded to flee from the oncoming monstrosity. Which means there's someone waiting for us.

"Rune," he said, very quietly, "how fast can you make this thing go?"

"Pretty fast," she replied, her voice barely above a murmur. He had to hand it to her; the quiver of terror in her voice was hardly audible. "Which way are we going?"

Good. She'd obviously picked up on the blatant trap as well. "Out the front door. About one story up. Fast as you can. And spin the chair around so we're standing on the back."

A pile of trash cans scattered with a series of clanging noises. Over it rose a voice audible in multiple tones at once; "Comin' to get youuu ..."

If it hadn't been obvious before, it was now; Crawler was trying to spook them into running blindly into the trap. Cassie had dropped one gun, but Paul retrieved the second from its holster. He didn't bother grabbing the gunbelt. There was no time to strap it on, and he suspected he wouldn't be needing it in about thirty seconds. "Go, go, go!" he yelled.

The chair blasted out of the mound of garbage, turning as it went to present its solid base to whatever was waiting for it at the mouth of the alleyway. It wasn't likely to actually protect them fully, but every little bit helped. Up above, he was pretty sure he could hear running footsteps on the rooftop. They're making sure we don't fake them out at the last second. Okay, we do this the hard way.

This point in his life had been a long time coming. For the longest time, he'd gloried in being the guy who could face anyone and survive. First into the battle, last out. So long as he had some way to hurt the other side, he'd stay in there and keep shooting, stabbing, punching, kicking; even biting. Alabaster wasn't feared on the same level as Lung or even Hookwolf, but that was only because what he could do wasn't much more than what a normal could achieve. His trick was that he could keep doing it.

The trouble was, he worked best with backup. Multiple foes could surround him, pin him down and subdue him, exactly as Crusader had done the night before. Take away the Empire, take away his allies, and a majority of his strength went with them. Worse, he was invested in the Empire. They were a major part of who he was; what he was. Change didn't come easily to him. Not only physically—that was a given—but also mentally.

It was a tremendous effort for him to alter his outlook on anything. In his mind, the Empire was still the premier force in Brockton Bay. Their function in life was to keep the lesser races down. To keep them ground into the dust, where they belonged. That was heroic enough for Paul. As far as he was concerned, what he did was a public service for all right-thinking people.

Physical injury didn't cause pain for Paul in the same way it did for other people. There was only ever a sensation of mild discomfort, quickly alleviated when he reset. Where the real pain came from was within; this was the first he'd ever truly felt it. His so-called friends turning away from the path of the Empire sent a stab through the deepest part of his core; knowing they expected him to blindly follow along merely twisted the blade. Two choices, neither good; to abandon them, or to allow the Empire to vanish like fog in the morning sun.

Years previously, he'd watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and he'd scoffed at the idea of 'going out in a blaze of glory'. With his powers, he knew he could weather any volley the Mexican army would've been able to put up against the two fugitive outlaws. Even without powers, in a situation like that, he'd work to survive and not just simply throw his life away.

But now … now, he saw what people in a position like that saw. Sometimes, it was worth it. Sometimes, it had to be worth it. When the chips were down, when his back was against the wall (as it had been once before, all those years ago when he got his powers) … sometimes it was the only thing that could be done.

"If you get out of here alive, go back to the apartment," he said rapidly, then climbed up on to the front (now the top) of the speeding chair. As he'd expected, the trap revealed itself; Hatchet Face himself, standing on a dumpster, waiting for them. His axe looked very, very sharp.

"What are you doing?" demanded Cassie, but he wasn't listening. His entire focus was on the cape-killer of the Nine. Up came his pistol and he began to fire.

He wasn't aiming at centre mass. Hatchet Face was a Brute, and if a simple bullet could've taken him out, it would have done so long ago. His aim was directed at the man's face; specifically, his eyes. If you can't see, you can't fight. Both Cricket and Hookwolf had told him that at one point or another, but he suspected they were quoting some martial arts movie or other; it had that sound to it.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Cassie hunched down, muffling a scream as she covered her ears, but the chair never slowed or veered from its path. He was hitting the guy; he knew he was scoring hits. But he wasn't hitting where he wanted to hit.

They'd halved the distance to Hatchet Face, he only had a few bullets left, and the scarred monster was pulling back his arm to throw his axe. At this range, with the strength Paul suspected the man could muster, it would go straight through their cover and take out Cassie. It was now or never. "For the Empire!" he bellowed, and launched himself forward off the chair.

For a brief moment, he flew.

The look of astonishment on Hatchet Face's face was … gratifying. But Paul had more to do than appreciate the view. His gun was levelled, and Hatchet Face's attention was on him and him alone. He fired; once, twice, three times. On the third shot, his gun locked open. But that last shot was the charm; Hatchet Face's head jerked back as his right eye exploded in blood. The axe fell to the ground as Hatchet Face instinctively dropped it in favour of grabbing at his eye-socket.

An instant later, he slammed into the guy, knocking him backward off the dumpster. Several bones broke at the same time, and holy shit, that hurt a lot. If he needed any indication that he'd just lost his powers, the pain that blasted through his body would've served notice, in spades.

However, he didn't have long to appreciate it. Grabbing Paul's head with both hands, Hatchet Face proved that he didn't really need his trademark axe to do damage.

On the upside, following the wrenching crack, it didn't hurt any more. Nothing hurt any more.

For the Empire.

<><>

Justin

"She's over there!" shouted Kayden over the rush of wind. The statement was kind of superfluous, because Justin saw the flying armchair zoom out of the alleyway at the same time as she called out. She was alone, which raised questions. Her clothing was covered in blood, which raised more questions. As for the string of gunshots they'd heard earlier … he wasn't sure what was up with that, but if Cassie wasn't acting like she was wounded, Paul probably hadn't shot her. Which meant he'd been shooting at someone else. Someone who was stupid enough to take on Alabaster and Rune at the same time.

Just then, he spotted the two figures on the rooftop. One was a shining white and moved with a weird inhumanity, while the other was striped with white and black … and didn't seem to be wearing any clothes. There was only one cape he knew of who fitted that description and, despite his usual appreciation of the female form (the less clothing covering it, the better), he wanted absolutely nothing to do with this one. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

As he was opening his mouth to call a warning, a third figure flew out of the mouth of the alleyway. From the way it tumbled in mid-air, it wasn't flying under its own power. And from the way its head had been turned all the way around, it wasn't alive to fly under its own power. Worse, he recognised who it was; or rather, who it had been: Paul.

Cassie made it perhaps thirty feet from the mouth of the alleyway before Paul's body smashed into her, sending her flying off the chair. She seemed dazed by the impact, but Justin knew she'd be a lot more than just dazed if she hit the asphalt at that speed. He'd been using half a dozen of his ghosts to carry him along at his best speed, but now he sent four of those flying to intercept Cassie's ballistic arc.

The corner of his vision was dazzled as Kayden sent a spiralling beam at the tiger-striped woman, probably hoping to catch her by surprise. The Siberian ignored it as regally as she'd ignored every other time a Blaster attempted to hit her, even as chunks of the building exploded around her.

Two of Justin's ghosts swooped in and caught Cassie, inches from the blacktop. He generated more and more ghosts, surrounding himself with them while the ones on the rescue mission bore Cassie back toward him. Three more arrowed toward the Siberian, spears at the ready. He didn't know if they could harm her, but it was better to try and fail than never make the attempt.

His adrenaline surged as he saw Mannequin leaping off the building toward him. Instinctively, his ghosts brought their spears around to bear. Mannequin stretched out his arm, the hand detaching and extending on a chain toward a lamp-post. It latched on and began to retract, turning the armourclad Tinker's fall into a long swing.

Kayden fired again, this time at Mannequin. The armour let out more of the apparently inexhaustible supply of chain, dropping him below the blast. At the same time, Mannequin's other arm launched itself toward where Cassie was being carried back to Justin, blades unfolding and starting to spin up into a whirling blur of death. Justin knew the blades wouldn't harm his ghosts in the slightest, but nor would the ghosts be able to shield Cassie in any meaningful way.

When the blades were mere inches from Cassie, Kayden redirected her aim and fired once more, this time at Mannequin's hand where it clung to the lamp-post. The blast struck true, destroying that hand and dumping him on the ground. The other hand was halted for a vital moment, giving Justin time to realise what had to be done. As the blades on the arm slashed through the immaterial constructs toward Cassie, the ghosts did the only thing they could; they dropped her. At the same time, he redirected some of his other minions.

From the alleyway stomped Hatchet Face, carrying his oversized axe, blood running down his face from one eye. The injury didn't seem to be hampering him in the slightest, but the look of annoyance on his face as he looked up toward Justin and Kayden didn't make him look any prettier. "Dibs!" he bellowed, pointing at them.

As if stepping from one stair to the next, the Siberian jumped lightly down to ground level. Grabbing Hatchet Face by one brawny arm, she spun in place then made an almost casual throwing motion. Going against everything Justin had ever learned about physics in school, Hatchet Face was dragged off his feet then flung into the air like a frisbee. Axe spinning with the rest of him like a gigantic reaper blade, he hurtled toward Kayden.

Mannequin's arm hit the street just beyond Cassie then began to drag back to her, the blades ripping chunks from the asphalt as they continued to spin. The ghosts went to pick her up again, but Justin's attention was now divided three ways and it wasn't easy to concentrate.

Brute force moves were easier; two of his most recently-created ghosts rammed into Kayden from beneath, shoving her up and out of the way. Hatchet Face passed under her with mere inches to spare, his power-nullifying aura turning her powers off along the way. The light surrounding her winked out and she would've fallen had his ghosts not been supporting her. Onward arced her attacker until he crashed into a rooftop on the other side of the street.

At the same time, the three ghosts who had previously been moving toward Siberian slashed into Mannequin with their spears. His armour gave them no barrier at all, but there was living meat inside that shell, and they found it. Frantically, with all the force he could muster, he had them stab the Tinker again and again. The blades menacing Cassie came to a halt just before they would've torn into her; Mannequin fell to the ground, inert.

Holy shit, did I just kill Mannequin? Justin's mind ricochetted between terror and elation. Terror won out as Siberian looked at the downed body of her teammate, then up at the two capes, and snarled.

Oh shit, I just pissed off the Siberian. As if in a dream, he saw Crawler thunder out of the alleyway, a dumpster tilted upside-down over one eye like a particularly rakish hat. Without pausing, the Siberian ran toward the midnight-black monster. He could see what was going to happen next, as if it had already happened. Crawler as a missile would be a lot harder to dodge than Hatchet Face.

Cassie groaned and sat up, rubbing her head. Justin grabbed her with his ghosts and yanked her straight up off the ground, rushing her toward him. "Rune!" he yelled. Shaking what he hoped were the last traces of grogginess from her head, she looked around at the mention of her name. Her mouth opened but he cut her off, lowering his voice as much as he dared. "Put Hatchet Face on Crawler!"

She didn't stop to question him, for which he would be forever grateful. The armchair, currently lying discarded in the street, lifted straight up and headed for where Hatchet Face was eyeing the distance between himself and Kayden, flexing his leg muscles. The scarred murderer never saw the chair coming; it scooped him up and kept going, steering wide around both Justin and Kayden. Two ghosts went along for the ride, pinning Hatchet Face into his ride. All the way to the end of the line, asshole.

Before he got there, Kayden let go with another one of her blasts. It struck Crawler, but all it did was knock him back a little. Of course, it also opened up a hole in the street, into which Crawler fell. They didn't have long to wait before he surged out of the hole and Siberian grabbed him by what Justin chose to believe was his leg. She turned, performing that same insane ballet twirl that she'd done before; Crawler perforce spun with her. And then she let him go, like the world's deadliest (and ugliest) shot-put.

Cassie's chair came swooping in from the side, smashing into Crawler as he barrelled toward Justin and Kayden. With it came the ghosts—and Hatchet Face. "Now!" shouted Justin … and Kayden fired her devastating blast.

She timed it to perfection. The spiralling rays of destruction engulfed both Crawler and Hatchet Face and smashed them back into the hole the monster had initially fallen into. She poured it on, not letting up for an instant, gouging a hole dozens of feet across into the foundations of the building, until the structure itself collapsed into the hole thus created.

As dust boiled up, Justin tried to catch his breath, only to see the the black and white striped form stalk out of the fog of destruction. He'd hoped against hope that Purity's attack had somehow killed her too, but there was to be no such luck from that quarter. Slowly, but with increasing speed, the Siberian started toward them. Her pace was inexorable, her expression murderous. Justin had absolutely no doubt that she would never stop until she killed them.

And then a dilapidated car screeched around the corner with a weird (and somehow familiar) siren blaring discordantly. It rocked to a halt at the same time as Justin recognised the logo painted on to the doors. Said doors burst open and two men leaped out, dressed in khaki jumpsuits similarly decorated with the red-and-white logo.

No, he thought despairingly. Not today, of all days. We don't need Uber and L33t doing their thing here as well. If I'm going to die, I don't want to die on their goddamn show.

If there was one good thing about this, it was that the Siberian had stopped and was staring at the two newcomers in silent bemusement. Uber and L33t opened the back doors of the car and pulled out high-tech backpacks. They stepped away from the car and strode forward as each one put his pack on. "There's something strange!" shouted L33t, his voice high and tinny after the rumble of the building falling in. There was a whine as the packs charged up; even from where Justin was, he thought he could hear a certain familiar tune.

"In the neighbourhood!" Uber's voice was a lot more resonant. His rifle came to life, but he seemed to be a terrible shot. First, his beam hit his own foot, then he bathed L33t with the purple and orange beam.

"Who you gonna call?" L33t aimed his rifle at the Siberian, and fired. A crackling violet aura surrounded her. She looked at it, then at him, her eyes narrowing. With purpose in every step, she started toward the newcomers.

Uber unhooked a device from his belt and skidded it toward her, a cable unwinding from it. Justin had just enough time to register the black and yellow stripes on top before she went to bring her foot down to crush it. However, Uber's foot was faster; he slammed it down on the control unit at the end of the cable. The striped top folded back, and a coruscating energy burst forth to surround the Siberian.

To Justin's utter astonishment—and probably the Siberian's too—it wrapped around her and lifted her into the air. No matter how she struggled or struck outward, she couldn't break free of it. Slowly it began to swirl around and around, carrying the raging woman with it. And then, with an utterly improbable inevitability, it sucked itself back into the device, taking its unwilling passenger with it. Her hand clawed for freedom one last time before it, too, disappeared from sight. The top snapped shut, the device rocked a few times, then it lay still. Purple smoke drifted up from it.

The backpacks continued to play the tune; it took a few more bars before Justin snapped out of the state of shock and found his voice again. Several responses to what had just happened occurred to him, but he went with the one that had the least amount of swearing in it.

"You have got to be fucking shitting me."

<><>

Taylor
On the Boardwalk

The sea breeze was strong enough to make Taylor's hair whip around just a little, but she didn't mind. It was nice out here on the weekend, watching people rollerblade past or play frisbee down on the beach. It would be even better if I had friends to do it with, she mused, then dismissed the thought. After Emma, she wasn't going to go looking for friends; in fact, she had no idea how to even go about it.

She smiled as her father returned from a hot dog cart, bearing a greasy treasure piled high with fried onion. "Thanks, Dad," she said, accepting her hot dog. "It smells delicious."

"They always do," he said wryly. "It's why these guys sell so many." Proving the point of his own words, he took a bite from his hot dog.

She did the same, enjoying how the flavours flooded through her mouth. Wandering over to the rail, she rested her elbows on it as she looked out over the bay. Something caught her attention and she tilted her head. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" asked Danny as he joined her.

She listened intently, but it didn't happen again. "Some sort of rumble, but it's gone now." A shrug. "Probably my stomach."

"Well, you better eat your hot dog before we get a repeat. I've known you to hit ten on the Richter scale," he said with a chuckle.

She stuck out her tongue at him, then followed his advice.

<><>

Danny

Taylor finished her hot dog with a satisfied sigh. "That was good," she declared. "What are we gonna do now?"

"Not sure," he said. "Maybe a movie?" It seemed like a good way to round off the afternoon.

"Yeah, I like that idea," she agreed. "I—what's wrong with that man?"

The man in question was stumbling down the Boardwalk, arms reaching for something only he could see. People stepped away from him; even lacking Merchant colours, he could still be dangerous. In a city like Brockton Bay, he wasn't even the oddest sight to be seen.

"Where is she? What have you done with her?" The old man latched on to Danny's arms with surprising strength. "Why can't I find her?"

"Calm down, buddy," Danny said. The last thing he wanted was for the guy to get violent; Taylor could get hurt. "Who are you talking about, anyway?"

"Her," the man said, his voice cracking in its intensity. "My wife. My daughter." He yanked again, the motion pulling his sleeves up. On his wrist, Danny noted, was a tattoo of a white swan.

Oh, shit. He came out of a Simurgh zone.  In his opinion, the practice of tattooing a white bird on victims of the third Endbringer should never have happened; all it did was paint a target on their backs. Of course, in this circumstance, it did help to explain what was wrong with the man.

<><>

"Baker three to Dispatch, over."

"Dispatch."

"Yeah, we're on the Boardwalk with a ten-ninety-six. Simurgh vic. Concerned citizen flagged us down. Gonna need an ambulance, over."

"Are there any casualties? Do you need backup, over?"

"No casualties. It's a sad one. The guy's looking for his wife and kid. My guess is they died in an attack, and his mind broke when it happened. He's more of a danger to himself than anyone else."

"Okay, alerting the psych guys now. Do we have a name, over?"

"First name only. William. That's whiskey, india, lima, lima …"

Part 16