Earning Her Stripes Pt 5 (Patreon)

Part Five: The Real Thing

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

Team Base

One Week Later

Emma

Madison cleared her throat. “Okay, I know I called you in at short notice, but I’ve been working on both offensive and defensive items for you, Emma—”

“What’d you do with ’em?” interrupted Sophia, leaning against the wall with her arms folded.

“What?” Madison looked guiltily around at the dark-clad girl. “What did I do with what?”

“Not what, who. The Merchants who crashed the party. Remember? Last week?” Sophia uncrossed her arms and took a few steps toward Madison. “I can’t hear their bitching, and there’s no fast-food bags lying around anymore.” A nasty grin spread across her face. “Holy shit, did you finally woman up and do what had to be done?”

“Oh, no.” Emma shook her head, a feeling of dread sweeping down her spine. “Madison, what have you done?”

Madison looked from one of them to the other, panic building in her voice and on her face. “I didn’t have any choice!” she blurted. “We couldn’t keep them locked up in the shipping container forever, and I was running low on money to buy them fast food! Besides, no matter how many wet wipes I gave them, they refused to keep themselves clean! It was horribly unhygienic in there!”

Emma stared at her friend, hoping against hope that her horrible suspicions were unfounded. Madison hadn’t seemed to be taking after Sophia’s bloodthirsty ways, but she could never be sure. “Madison, you didn’t … did you?”

Sophia bared her teeth. “You did, didn’t you?” She seemed to be positively gloating over the moment.

“I had to let them go!” wailed Madison. “I’m sorry! I couldn’t see anything else to do!”

Emma blinked, unsure about what she’d just heard. “What.”

Sophia stared at Madison, apparently even more taken off guard than Emma. “You’re shitting me.”

“They would’ve died in there!” protested Madison. “Or gotten really sick and then died! I’m not a murderer! I didn’t want to let them go, but—”

She was cut off when Emma grabbed her in a tight hug. “You did the right thing, Mads,” the redhead told her fervently, relief surging through her entire body. “We couldn’t hold them forever, and killing them out of hand would’ve made us worse than them.”

“What the fuck?” Sophia’s voice overrode Emma’s. “Have the both of you gone fuck-knuckle crazy? Am I the only sane one here? Letting them go was the worst thing you could’ve done! Had you forgotten that the Merchants have fucking capes? They’re probably on the way back here right now, and it won’t be to fuckin’ say thank you for letting our guys go. If they get their hands on you, you’ll be lucky if you just end up on the street, turning tricks for your next fix!”

Emma let go of Madison. She opened her mouth to snap at Sophia, but Madison got her oar in first. “That’s exactly why I called you guys in,” she said crisply. “I’ve got basic motion sensors set up for three blocks around, and if that blinking light on my screen is right, they just hit the outer perimeter.” She headed off to one of her work benches.

“So what do we do?” asked Emma, following her.

“Well, I’ve been working on something for you.” Madison picked up something from the bench and held it out to her. “This wristband goes on your right wrist.” With a grunt, she pulled a near-identical band off a metal disc that was lying on the bench. “And this one goes on your left wrist.”

Emma examined the wristbands. They were more like bracers, long enough to cover her forearms altogether. Made of linked metal, they were heavy, but not so heavy that she couldn’t handle it. Putting the appropriate one around her right forearm, she pressed it closed and felt it click into place. She repeated the action with the other one, then swung her arms around to test the weight. As she’d thought, she could handle it. As a bonus, her forearms were now protected, and she could bash targets with them.

“Nice,” she said appreciatively, then looked at the discs Madison was now holding. “And those attach to the bands?” She’d already taken note of the bracket on the back of each forearm.

“Got it in one.” Madison handed Emma the discs and the redhead clicked them into place on her arms. They added noticeably to the weight, but Emma thought it was still acceptable. Plus, the discs now gave her much more protection against incoming attacks.

“I like it.” Emma took hold of the left-hand disc with her right hand and figured out how to detach it. Hefting it a couple of times, she turned to face the nearest wall. Pulling the disc back, she gave it a sharp flick. It blurred across the intervening distance, then rebounded sharply with a loud clang. Reaching up, she snatched it out of the air and reattached it to her left forearm, all in one motion. “Scratch that,” she said with a wide grin. “I love it.”

A red light started flashing and a low tone sounded. Madison looked around. “That’s the near perimeter alarm,” she said. “They’re on the same block as us.”

“I fuckin’ told you,” Sophia said viciously. She waved her hand at Emma while focusing her attention on Madison. “All the bouncy throwing discs in the world aren’t gonna make up for the fact that you can’t fight. We’re good, but there’s only two of us.”

 “Who said I can’t fight?” Madison headed over toward a metal crate that was almost as high as she was.

“What are you gonna do?” Sophia wasn’t letting this go. “Hide from them?”

“Not exactly.” Madison slapped a panel on the crate. It began to unfold, then stopped. Madison climbed up into it, then hit another panel. As it resumed the process, Emma watched as Madison was sealed in behind a couple of inches of the shimmering gray metal the Tinker called ‘good steel’. By the time the articulated suit finished rearranging itself, it was eight feet tall, angular arms and legs flexing and moving around as Madison activated them. A blocky ‘head’ with glowing red eyes looked down at them. Heavy-duty rubberised hoses led from connectors in the shoulders to halfway down the ‘biceps’. Similar hoses connected the ‘thighs’ to the ‘calves’.

“Power armour.” Emma finally found her voice. “You made power armour.”

“Mark One,” Madison’s voice was gravelly and metallic over the speakers. “This one’s pretty minimal compared to what I’ll be able to make with real resources, but it should do for the time being.”

Sophia spoke up. “Those hoses on the arms and legs are a weak point. You do know people will target them, right? Your fancy-dancy power armour won’t be worth shit if you can’t move your legs or arms.”

Emma hated to admit it, but she had a point. The hoses did look extremely vulnerable. When faced with a Brute-style opponent, capes were notorious for going after any weak points they could see. And those hoses, even as thick and reinforced as they were, shouted ‘target’ to Emma’s fighting instincts.

“Why don’t you let me worry about that.” Even with the electronic distortion, Madison’s irritation was clearly audible.

Just then, a bulky vehicle smashed in through the front roller-door. A resounding BOOM came from the door at the far end of the warehouse, and Emma spun around.

“Shit!” she blurted. “They’re coming at us from both directions!” It was a classic military pincer manoeuvre, and she cursed herself for not anticipating it. Just because the Merchants were perpetually drug-fucked didn’t mean they couldn’t accidentally pull off something like this.

The front of Squealer’s vehicle split open, the two sides hinging apart to allow the exit of a huge shambling vaguely humanoid mass of trash. Several men armed with pipes, chains and clubs followed him out.

“Fuck,” Sophia said. “That’s Mush.”

“I know,” Madison said. “You two go deal with the others. I got this.” She started toward the animated trash heap, her long metallic legs eating up the distance.

“Shit,” Emma said, agonising over the need to protect her friend and the equally strong need to defend their base. The yelling as Merchants flooded into the building from the far end decided her; if she stood and did nothing, they’d win automatically. Turning, she sprinted toward the incoming wave of invaders. She couldn’t see Sophia anywhere, so she figured the more experienced vigilante had gone to shadow and was working around for a flank attack. It was what she’d do.

The first Merchants she met were not the ones she’d encountered on their first foray. They saw a teenage girl running at them and came to meet her. This didn’t go well for them; her throwing discs packed a real punch at close range, and while she avoided head shots (she didn’t want to kill them after all) she found that body hits put them on the ground just as fast. Leg shots were a little harder, but a broken femur or kneecap was ideal for removing them from the equation. It was also possible, she found, to backfist someone with the wristband while waiting for the throwing-disc to return. The heavy metal packed a very gratifying impact, almost as good as hitting someone with the discs.

Finally, she saw Sophia, perched on top of a shipping container (one of the few remaining in the base) as she shot arrows at the Merchants. Some of her targets were down and screaming, while others were ominously quiet. Emma gritted her teeth; it seemed that the harder she pushed Sophia to tone down her aggression for the heroic image, the more Sophia was determined to push back. Sophia was her friend and teammate, but they were going to have to have words about this at some point. Sooner rather than later.

Abruptly, she felt her traction vanish as her feet went out from under her. Looking down as she kicked herself into the air, she saw a field covering the ground, blue fading to violet. With the last of her upward impetus, she tucked into a roll then dropped a disc on the ground and landed on it with both feet. Upright, bending her knees for maximum flexibility, she surfed Skidmark’s field to where it petered out rather than being spat out like trash.

At the far end of the field, the Merchant leader himself invited her to do something anatomically impossible (not to mention disgustingly perverted) while he dumped a bucket of gravel into the skid-field. Emma kicked up the disc and caught it as she dived out of the way; crouching, she hid behind the discs, catching the few pieces that came her way on the shields.

“Fuck you, Skidmark!” yelled Sophia, levelling her crossbow at the costumed villain. Emma made the calculation on the instant; Sophia was going for a headshot. A lethal attack. Not on my watch.

In another instant, she had both throwing-discs in hand. One went upward at an angle, soaring in front of Sophia just as she triggered the crossbow. The other whiffed past Skidmark, making him duck and curse. The arrow hit the first disc and shattered on impact, while the second disc hit the wall behind Skidmark and bounced back to smack him solidly (but not too solidly) on the back of the head. The field dissipated as he collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

“What the fuck?” yelled Sophia. “I had him! What the hell was that?”

“I just saved you from a murder charge,” Emma retorted sharply. She headed forward and checked his pulse; it was strong and steady. A large squared-off roofing beam lay just inside the doorway. She guessed he’d used it as a battering ram to get the door open.

 “Make yourself useful and secure him. And make sure the others are still alive. I’m gonna go help Madison.” Both her throwing discs had fallen nearby (by design, not accident) and she took the time to retrieve them before heading toward the other end of the warehouse.

She wasn’t sure what she would find when she got there. Madison’s armour had looked sturdy enough to take a bit of punishment; with any luck, she would’ve kept Mush busy until Emma got there to deal with matters. Firmly, she kept herself from imagining the worst. The armour disabled and cracked open, with Madison as a hostage or dead. No. She builds better than that.

A few moments later, she learned just how true that was. When she negotiated the intervening obstacles and came in sight of the intruding vehicle. Madison was nowhere in sight, and Mush was gone as well … no. He was still there. A skinny little bald man was lying groaning in among several large heaps of trash. He looked more than a little red in the face and chest, for what reason, Emma had no idea. The few other Merchants who had come in with the vehicle looked like they’d been clubbed to the ground with each other.

Sounds of complicated destruction came from within the vehicle, while the engine revved loudly. Caterpillar tracks attempted to drag the monstrosity back out of the hole, but the doors that had swung wide open in the nose were now stuck in that position, bent far back and jammed. As such, they prevented the vehicle from retreating.

As Emma prepared to enter the vehicle, the engine cut out altogether. “Uh … M?” she called out into the resulting silence.

“Call me Blockade,” Madison’s electronic vocaliser replied. Heavy footsteps sounded from within the darkness of the vehicle. Emma saw the glowing red eyes before the rest of the suit emerged from the shadows. Once Madison came fully into the light, Emma saw that she was carrying a trashily dressed woman by the scruff of the neck. The woman looked somewhat dazed, and her goggles were shattered. Both of Madison’s shoulder hoses were detached at the bicep end, and flopped around loosely. This didn’t seem to be impairing her movement in any way.

“Did you want me to reattach those?” asked Emma, pointing at one of the hoses.

“Nah.” Madison tossed the feebly moving Squealer onto a pile of garbage next to Mush. “They’re only decoys anyway. Mush pulled them loose and got a face full of live steam.” As Emma watched, the hoses straightened up, aimed briefly at her, then reconnected themselves to their attachment points.

“Live steam?” she couldn’t help asking. “Why do you have live steam in your suit? What do you need that for?”

“Smartasses who think they can cheat by hitting my weak points.”

Emma wanted to burst out laughing but she couldn’t afford to, right then. “Okay,” she said bemusedly. “We seem to have captured the Merchants. What do we do now?”

Madison made a motion like cracking her knuckles. “Only one choice. We go live as a superhero team, and hand them over to the PRT. Two birds, one stone.”

“Hey, that is not your damn decision!” Sophia, sounding pissed off (as usual) came stomping in from the far end of the warehouse. “They’re secured. Now we gotta decide what to do with them. Not just one person deciding for all three of us.”

“That’s easy.” Emma grinned. “I vote we do what Blockade just said. Now we’ve got a majority voting for that.”

“Whoa, wait just a second.” Sophia tried to stare her down. “I’m more experienced. I should have more say.”

Madison made a rude noise via her speakers. “What was that about ‘not just one person deciding for us all’?”

“She’s right,” Emma decided as Sophia gave Madison’s battle armour a death glare. “The vote’s in. Two to one.”

“One question, though.” Madison sounded thoughtful. “What are we gonna call ourselves?”

“I think we’re moving way too fast with this, but if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna need a good name,” Sophia declared. “We need to show people we’re the real thing, not some bunch of wannabe losers, even if some of us are luckier than they’ve got any right to be.” She divided her glare evenly between Emma and Madison.

“Got it!” Emma exclaimed, snapping her fingers and ignoring Sophia’s bitching. The girl, she was learning, hated to lose, even to teammates. “That’s the perfect name.”

“What?”

“What?”

“The Real Thing. That’s what we’ll call ourselves.”

There was a pause, then Madison nodded. “I like it.”

“Sophia?” asked Emma. There was no point in picking a name that all three of them didn’t approve of. Of course, given that Sophia had said it first …

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Sophia waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not a terrible name.”

“Great! It’s settled.” Emma looked over at Madison. “How fast can you help me throw together a costume?”

“Depends.” Madison headed over to her nearest workbench. “What did you have in mind?”

Emma went with her, leaving Sophia to secure the prisoners. “Well, the bad guys have already seen my hair, so I was thinking of a flame-themed costume to go with it, and maybe call myself Firebird, but with a wig over my hair that’s longer than my normal hair …”

“Doable.”

“And can you put a flame motif on my throwing discs? They’re amazing, by the way.”

“Easily.”

Emma clapped her hands. “Okay, then. Let’s get this show on the road.”

 Part 6