Alea Iacta Est Pt 18 (Patreon)

Part Eighteen: Whack-a-Lung

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

PRT Building ENE

Director Piggot's Office

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

10:45 AM

Emily clicked on the email and skimmed through it. As she'd thought, it was a cc from Maintenance, projecting next quarter's budget. None of the numbers jumped out at her and the bottom line didn't seem excessive, so she clicked away without leaving a comment.

Her phone rang, and she checked the name. It was Armsmaster, which meant it was the call she'd been waiting for. Swiping to answer, she tapped the 'speaker' icon. "You've got Piggot. Talk to me."

"The techs and I have finished scanning her, ma'am." Armsmaster's tone was matter-of-fact, as though he hadn't just been checking over a dangerous Tinker for booby-traps. "There's no sign of any implants. The gas mask and toe rings are currently sequestered in three different storage containers, all Faraday shielded."

"Bring her up," she said. "I'm interested in what she's got to say for herself."

"Understood, ma'am." His voice didn't change at all. "Just be aware, she's not happy with the situation."

"And I'm not happy that she's in my city, so she's just going to have to take a number and wait in line." Emily cut the call, then tapped keys on her computer. The dossier they'd been able to assemble on Takawara came up on her screen, and she ran her eye over it once more. Most of the information was publicly available; what little required warrants had been open to them once the phrase 'Cornell bomber' was mentioned to the judge.

Alice Takawara had a Japanese father and a Caucasian mother. She'd gotten into Cornell on a scholarship, but it seemed her grades had begun to slip in recent months. Emily figured this probably had to do with a combination of arrogance and spending more time partying than studying. She'd seen the type more often than not.

Looking at the grade in question, Emily pursed her lips in a silent whistle. What sort of stresses had the girl been under if she triggered because of a B plus? If I'd gotten straight B+ in college, my parents would've been celebrating. Slowly, she shook her head. This was someone who believed they could—and should be allowed to—do nearly anything, and lashed out against everyone else when they ran head-first into reality. So basically, the same as about seventy-five percent of capes.

So far, the indicators were not great. But she was under pressure from above to pull some sort of a win from her hat after the Stalker debacle, and Takawara was her best bet so far. Nobody had died yet, but a lot of property had been damaged, including a professor's car which had … melted. Fortunately, without the professor in it.

If Takawara had murdered anyone, Emily would've been able to justify sending her straight to holding and then to trial. But 'trigger trauma' was apparently a thing, these days. The latest directives suggested giving brand new capes the benefit of the doubt for any crimes they might have committed in the heat of the moment. Personally, Emily didn't think a protracted series of bombings over several days counted as 'heat of the moment', but she wasn't the one who made the rules.

There was a knock on her door, and she raised her voice. "Enter."

The door opened. Armsmaster came into her office, then stood aside as a petite woman with Asian features, wearing prison orange, was escorted in by a single trooper. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, with the heavy mittens used to constrain Tinkers fastened onto her wrists. While her legs were free, a short chain led from her cuffs to a heavy leather belt strapped around her waist.

Emily gestured at a single chair that had been placed in front of her desk. Made of molded plastic and metal, it would offer no pieces for a Tinker to prise off and sequester. "Ms Takawara, take a seat. Trooper, dismissed."

"Ma'am." The trooper stepped back from the door and closed it behind him.

Emily looked at the woman, who was still defiantly standing. "Perhaps you didn't hear me. Sit down."

Takawara stared back at her. The woman had brilliant blue eyes. "I prefer to stand."

So it's going to be like that, is it? "Very well." Emily's eyes narrowed. "Is there any particular reason why you choose to stand?"

"I don't take orders from you," Takawara stated, as if it were a law of nature. "Your heroes broke the rules, so you can go and get fucked."

Well, he did say she was unhappy. "How exactly did they break the rules?" God knew capes would be capes, Emily was fully aware of that, but she hadn't heard anything new about them acting up. The swearing, she would deal with later.

"They attacked without warning!" Takawara tried to wave her hands for emphasis. "I haven't even committed any crimes in this fucked-up city! One minute I'm heading upstairs to get a breath of fresh air, the next I'm right across town and a couple of your fucking stormtroopers are scraping me off the pavement and carrying me inside!"

That was information Emily hadn't been privy to before. "Where were you when you were attacked? And did you see your attacker?"

Takawara looked cagey. "I was home. Well, as close to a home as I've got in this shithole. And no, I didn't see shit. One second I was there and the next I was here." She tried to cross her hands over each other, but the cuffs wouldn't let her do it. "It was like I got teleported or something."

Sitting back, Emily clasped her hands together on her desk. "Well, to put your mind at ease, it wasn't any of the local Protectorate or Wards who brought you here. We received an anonymous tip, and the troopers sent to investigate found you right where the tip said you would be." Unclasping her fingers, she spread her hands apart. "And law enforcement officers are entirely permitted to take wanted persons into custody, if they happen to show up on our doorsteps under mysterious circumstances … so long as we didn't have anything to do with those circumstances."

"That's bullshit!" snapped Takawara. "Even if it wasn't your heroes who brought me here, whoever it was assaulted and abducted me! Fruit of the poison tree or something like that!"

Emily chose not to allow herself the tiny smile she wanted to show. She was already in charge of the situation; rubbing it in wouldn't make Takawara any more cooperative. "It doesn't work that way. Criminals can indeed leave other criminals to be arrested, and we will arrest them. We will investigate your allegation of assault and abduction, but we will also hold you for trial on the crimes we can pin on you."

"But—but I was basically taken from my home!" protested Takawara. "That's not allowed! The unwritten rules say so!"

This again? Emily hadn't encountered a cape this naïve in a while. She tilted her head. "I'm sorry, which rules are these?"

"The unwritten ones!" Takawara tried to wave her hands for emphasis but failed. "The ones that're there to protect capes!"

"Ah, yes," Emily replied blandly. "The 'rules' that aren't actually written down anywhere. The ones that aren't part of the PRTCJ, which are the rules I swore to follow when I donned this uniform. Those rules." She leaned forward slightly. "You are aware, are you not, that these so-called 'unwritten rules' are all in the legal system already? People aren't actually supposed to attack each other in their homes. People aren't actually supposed to rape or murder one another." She shook her head. "Capes sequester a few specific instances of the law and wave them around as if they're something special. As if the rest of the legal system doesn't actually apply to them. Do you have any idea how entitled that makes you appear?"

Takawara took a moment to respond. "You know, Lung's going to fuck you up for this. He'll burn this whole place to the ground. He went up against—"

"—Leviathan, yes, I know," Emily interrupted. "And he lost. Kyushu still sank."

"And then he came here and beat the shit out of your precious Protectorate and Wards, all at once!" Takawara continued, as if Emily hadn't spoken.

"No. He didn't." Emily's tone was calm and measured. "He fought the Protectorate, yes. After he got to a certain size, it was deemed better to allow him to disengage rather than continue to exacerbate the property damage. In short, they drove him off. Just as New Wave has also done. As he failed to do to Leviathan. He's strong, but not so strong that he'll even consider attacking the PRT building on his own. And he's just lost two of his cape henchmen in quick succession." She shook her head. "You're on your own, Ms. Takawara."

She paused a beat, more from distaste at what she was going to say than any desire for dramatics. "There is, however, a second option."

Takawara rolled her eyes. "Don't expect me to roll over on Lung for you. These lips don't snitch; and anyway, I barely got here. I couldn't pick out the building where he put me if you paid me."

"Did I say anything about snitching?" Emily wasn't being totally honest. If Takawara had offered to give up any information about Lung, she would've taken it, albeit with a large grain of salt. The girl's currently demonstrated level of arrogance hadn't altered Emily's initial impression of her. "You've already got a domestic terrorism charge hanging over your head, courtesy of the FBI. That's a Federal crime which, as soon as I handed you over to them, would put you behind bars in a nice secure Tinker-rated facility for a decade or two, easily. Or … we could do a deal, here and now."

From the widening of Takawara's eyes, nobody had bothered telling her until now just how badly she was screwed. Still, she tried to put on an uncaring façade. "Deal? What kind of deal do you think you could offer that I'd consider taking?"

"You rebrand." Emily had no particular love for this idea, so she didn't even try to pretend enthusiasm. Besides, she was shit at acting interested. Pitch the concept and when she throws it back in my face, too bad so sad. Next stop, Federal prison. "We try you and sentence you, then suspend the sentence on the condition that you take on a heroic identity. You get input on your name and costume, but we get the final veto."

"I'll do it." The words popped out of Takawara's mouth, so rapidly that Emily didn't actually register them at first.

"Yeah, thought not." Emily sat back in her chair and spread her hands. "You'll be transported from here—"

"I said, I'll do it!" Takawara stepped forward exactly one pace before Armsmaster's hand clamped on her shoulder. "I'll rebrand!"

Emily blinked. "You will?"

"Fuck yes!" Takawara's eyes opened wide again. "Do you have any idea what would happen to someone like me in Federal lockup? I'm not even twenty-one yet! They'd pass me around like a tasty meat snack! Gimme the form, I'll sign it!"

"Slow down. You haven't heard all the terms." Emily began to tick off points on her fingers. "We get the veto on costume and name. We test you comprehensively on what your Tinkertech is capable of. You only build what we sign off on, with Armsmaster double-checking all your work. Doing anything to violate your probation, up to and including constructing even an electric toothpick without express permission, will render this deal null and void, in which case the next stop would be whatever hole the Feds like to drop people into these days. And yes, you will be supervised twenty-four-seven."

Takawara nodded. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll do it."

"I haven't finished yet." Emily had saved this bit for last. "Being on probation, you will effectively rank lower than even the Wards on station. Literally anyone in this building will be authorised to give you orders, and you will be required to carry them out. If you believe this is being abused, you may bring a complaint to your supervisor or to me and it will be listened to, but I will look poorly on frivolous complaints. Do you understand all this?"

"What part of 'I want to stay the fuck out of Federal lockdown' did you not get the first time?" Takawara asked; rhetorically, if Emily was any judge. "I'll take the deal. Just give me the chance to read the forms over first."

"That's a wise move." Emily smiled coldly. "We prefer to avoid allegations of railroading. And one last thing. Your language."

"What about my language?" asked Takawara suspiciously. "Is this a race thing? My father moved to America before I was born, just so you know. I barely speak Japanese."

"No, it's a swearing thing." Emily looked her dead in the eye. "You've been cursing since you walked into this room; no doubt because you don't want to be here but there wasn't much I could actually do to punish you that wasn't already going to happen. But things have changed. From this moment on, you have to convince me that we both want them to stay changed. Which means you control your mouth around me, just like everyone else. Understood?"

"Absolutely!" Takawara nodded vigorously. "No more swearing, got it, uh, ma'am. Director. Can I call you Director?"

"You may." Emily had no illusions in her own mind that Takawara would be calling her 'Piggy' privately in short order—some of the Wards already were—but she didn't care what they said behind closed doors so long as they accorded her the requisite amount of respect in public. "Armsmaster will walk you downstairs and give you the step-by-step details. And Ms. Takawara?"

"Yes, uh, Director?" Takawara wasn't cowed, not by any stretch of the imagination. But at least she'd been smart enough to take the deal when offered.

"You've got one chance. Don't screw it up."

"No, Director."

At Emily's nod, Armsmaster escorted Takawara out of the office; the door closed behind them. Slumping back into her chair with a gusty sigh, Emily shook her head. She'd honestly expected Takawara to turn down the idea flat; to be brutally honest, she would've preferred it that way. But the girl had accepted the terms as given, so they had to give her a fair shake.

Now all we have to do is make sure she turns out like Assault, and not like Shadow Stalker.

Terrific.

<><>

Arcadia High

Lunchtime

Taylor

"Sneaking up to the door," Annette announced, "I check it for traps."

Lucy, the DM this week for our little gaming cabal, raised her eyebrows. "You didn't say you'd checked the space in front of the door for traps, but I'll take that as part of your intention." She made a couple of rolls behind her makeshift screen—cobbled together from a couple of Manila folders—then nodded. "Nothing goes off under your feet, but as you wriggle the handles, you feel the scraping of metal on metal, as if something's about to click into place."

"Oooh," murmured Annette, as the rest of us inhaled in sympathy. The last time she'd triggered a trap, she'd just barely managed the roll to avoid becoming crispy fried rogue. "Okay, then. Time to get out the trap-disarming kit. I warn everyone to get back out of the way, in case this thing has an area effect."

Just then, Lucy's phone went off. She glanced at it, then silenced the alarm. "Okay, ten minutes until class. We'll resolve this roll right now, then pull it up."

"Gotcha. Flavius kneels beside the door, every sense alert as he sets about disarming the trap." Annette rolled the d20 onto the table. It clattered across the surface and came to rest on my character sheet, showing a nineteen. "Yes! Score!" She high-fived me, then fist-pumped as she scooped it up again.

"Yeah, with your numbers, you locate the triggering mechanism, jam it, then disable the thing altogether." Lucy said. "If you'd tried picking the lock, it would've shot a poison needle into your finger. As it is, the door begins to open … and we'll wrap it up there. Good game, guys. See you tomorrow." She scooped her dice into the pouch and folded up the screen; both of which went into her backpack.

Annette and I both put our dice and character sheets away, then headed into the building. "That was pretty cool," I said happily. "Flavius is badass."

"Yeah, isn't he just?" Annette grinned at me. "So, how do you think we'll go with Mr. Big and Ugly tonight?"

"I'll be checking right up until go time," I admitted, "but the plan's solid. The trick will be to get him to be at the right place at the right time."

Annette nodded. "And that's Dinah's job."

<><>

06:05 PM

ABB Territory

Annette

Time for Operation: Fleeing Goblin. Let's hope it works in real life as well as it does in game.

The last of the evening glow painting the skies over Captain's Hill was fading toward burnt orange. All around the city, the street-lighting had come up, except where neglect or outright damage caused patches of darkness on the highways and byways of Brockton Bay.

Annette stood on a rooftop along with most of the other members of what she was starting to term 'the gang' in her own head. They'd have to come up with a better name sooner or later, but that was probably going to take a pizza and movie night, and lots of silly idea, before they settled on one they liked.

She hefted the two-way radio—Mr. Hebert's connections with the Dockworkers were handy for stuff like that—and pressed the button. "Juliet, are you there, come in?"

"This is Juliet. All good, over." Janet's voice came over the radio strongly. "Ready when you are."

Janet was situated a couple of blocks away, at the closest location Lisa and Taylor had been able to pinpoint where their proposed trap could be sprung. Instead of being on a rooftop, she was sitting in the car with Danny. His job, if things went sideways, was to get her the hell out of there.

"Good to hear. Stand by. Kilo, are you there?"

Kayden's voice, tense but calm, responded. "On site, and ready when you are, Golf."

Annette grinned and looked around at the rest. They'd considered giving her the callsign 'Delta' for 'Dungeon Master', but she'd nixed that because it might cause confusion with Danny (Dinah was 'Mike' for 'Management'). Instead, they'd gone with 'Game Master' as an alternate term. "I hear you. Stand by, all. Re-checking for final confirmation."

Taylor didn't need prompting. With Lisa holding the penlight over the rolling tray, she cupped her alphabet dice in her hand. "Is Kayden walking into a trap?"

The dice clattered into the small pool of light. Taylor grinned and shook her head in unison with Lisa. Even standing at the edge of the roof, Annette could see the letters N O.

Next, Taylor rolled four d10s. "How long after she starts will Lung show up?"

Clatter went the dice. Annette couldn't quite see what they showed, but Lisa spoke in unison with Taylor. "Eight minutes, forty-seven seconds."

"Damn," muttered Vicky. "He's close." Amy, next to her, didn't say a word.

"Theo did say he was likely to be patrolling this area of his turf after Oni Lee and Bakuda both got captured," Dinah reminded them. "Showing the flag, reminding them who was in charge around here."

"Yeah, I know." Annette scanned the city skyline again. "It's why I picked that particular drug house, once you guys identified it. Kayden will be able to draw him down this way, yeah?"

"She's the best person for the job, and she knows how to do it," Dinah confirmed.

Annette nodded. "One more thing. Is anyone or anything likely to interfere with the successful completion of this mission?"

Taylor rolled the number dice again. "Eleven point zero one nine percent."

That decided her. Eighty-nine percent is pretty damn good odds. Thumbing the radio button, Annette lifted the radio to her mouth. "All points, all points. ETA is just under nine minutes. We have a go. Let's make this count, people." She watched as Amy tapped her phone to start the timer.

"Just remember," Dinah said to Vicky. "It's got far better chance of working if you hold off until the right time. Not before. Jumping the gun on this sort of thing can lead to disaster."

"Yeah, yeah, got it—whoa …" Vicky whistled as light flared over the Brockton Bay skyline, and a distant boom reached them. "Is that Purity—I mean, Kayden—going full ham? 'Cause I've never seen her not holding back, before."

"Yup." Annette folded her arms, watching with justifiable pride. "That's our Kayden, alright."

<><>

Lung

As the cavalcade roared through the streets of Brockton Bay, Kenta growled with anger and frustration. This had to be related to the disappearances of Oni Lee and Bakuda, though he wasn't actually sure how. The cape who was demolishing the stash house was undeniably Purity; he'd gotten a positive ID from his men on site.

The last he'd heard of her was just rumours. One, that she'd injured Stormtiger and murdered Hookwolf after being stabbed by Kaiser. And two, that she'd clashed with the Merchants by blowing up one of Squealer's contraptions. How she'd survived being stabbed, he had yet to find out. Flesh wounds were a thing, he supposed.

It didn't surprise him that she and the remains of the Empire Eighty-Eight were on the outs. Kaiser had been a pompous blowhard of the highest order, and his death in that lightning storm had caused the entire ABB a great deal of laughter. Purity's split with him, in hindsight, had seemed virtually inevitable. Of course, she'd regularly targeted ABB assets before that point, so this attack was on brand for her, but it also meant she didn't have any Empire Eighty-Eight backup.

Maybe she's just heard about Oni Lee being captured and has decided to strike while she thinks I'm weak? She'll soon learn how wrong she is. Flame flickered from his nostrils. As she dies screaming.

The other consequence of her being no longer affiliated with the remains of the Empire was that nobody was likely to seek revenge for her death. Lung had little fear of retaliation, but the ABB barely consisted of sixty or seventy people at the moment; one angry cape could make significant inroads into that.

The upholstery was starting to smoulder as the car screeched around the final corner and slammed to a halt. It wasn't a choice to stop so much as to avoid the rubble from the building that Purity was methodically demolishing. Power glaring so brightly it was impossible to look directly at her without getting serious spots in front of the eyes; she was sending down blast after blast into the building. He could tell it wasn't going to last much longer, but the building was no longer his concern.

Also making the road impassable were craters, surrounded by rubble where she'd targeted his men, or at least blown rubble at them. Many were groaning and trying to stand, while the upright ones clutched injured arms or other wounds. Nobody was shooting at her; he suspected that anyone who tried got a blast in return.

Pushing the door off its hinges, he clambered out of the car and straightened up. By now he was already eight feet tall and ramping up faster now that his enemy was in sight. The flame flickered over his body as his armoured scales slid into place. "PURITY!" he bellowed. "I'LL KILL YOU!"

She yelled something in return that he didn't hear and sent a spiralling blast down his way. It missed him, but only by a small amount; the car was destroyed, and the men who'd been in it were sent sprawling. Rubble peppered him, merely serving to increase his aggravation.

Raising his hands, he sent a blast of flame up toward her, but it petered out before it reached her. A blindingly brilliant light against a black background like that made it very hard to determine distance. Snarling with frustration, he leaped up toward the roof of a building opposite the mostly demolished stash house, scrambling until he reached the roof. Moving sideways, she fired another blast at him; he had to leap out of the way before part of the building collapsed under his feet. His rage was growing by the second now, making him more and more determined to bring her down once and for all.

She was closer now, so he sent another fire blast at her, seeking to blow her from the sky once and for all. When the thermal bloom cleared, she was flying away down the street, but losing altitude. Fierce joy blossomed in his heart; he'd tagged her! Normally he needed to get to the point where he could grow wings to seriously endanger her.

Jumping from the building, he landed and rolled, then started loping in pursuit. She was still flying, but now she was down between the buildings, straining to move faster. When she landed, he grinned viciously in anticipation—as much as he could grin at that moment—but then she took off again, wobbling into the air.

She was injured, that much was certain. He didn't know how badly she was hurt, but she'd never retreated this quickly before. And while she could still fly (after a fashion) she wasn't moving much faster than he could run. He could keep this pace up all night, while she would inevitably weaken.

Purity was doomed. He just wished someone could be there to get footage of the final death-blow, but that didn't matter. Parading her mutilated body before his followers would do just as well. Up until now, she had been widely considered one of the most powerful Blasters in the city. When Brockton Bay saw the images of her destruction at the hands of Lung, he anticipated many of the Asian holdouts around the city would flock to his banner.

Her flight faltered again and she dipped down to the ground to make a few limping steps before lifting off once more; in response, he increased his pace, far outrunning the members of the ABB who were still battle-worthy. The kill was near. His talons, even now lengthening and sharpening in response to his bloodlust, would shred her body and drink deeply of her blood.

I will eat your heart.

Another block passed by beneath his pounding feet. Purity's pace flagged, but she must have known he was close behind her because she persisted in her futile attempt to escape him. She was limping worse now; even though he couldn't see her body directly, her burns must be troubling her greatly.

Not as badly as they will be.

She stumbled around a corner, then took flight to cross a street and attempted to duck out of sight around another corner. Lung laughed out loud at that, pursuing her relentlessly, each stride eating up two of hers. The Empire bitch couldn't outrun him, couldn't outfight him, and she certainly couldn't outlast him.

A little farther down the street, he saw her. She was staggering along, her power-glow flickering like a faulty strobe. If he wasn't mistaken, she was dragging one leg. And then, as he came toward her, she turned and faced him, her head bowed.

A cornered rat could still bite, he knew; even weakened, her blast could injure him. Of course, in his current state, he could shrug off nearly anything she could do to him. He had little to fear from her, and she had everything to fear from him.

Confidently, he strode forward. "I'm going to kill you slowly," he promised her.

She straightened up painfully.

WHAM

The spiralling energy blast took him full in the chest and sent him hurtling back down the street. Digging in his talons and sending asphalt flying everywhere, he brought his undignified tumble to a halt before scrambling to his feet once more. More rage suffused his body, even as his regeneration closed the wound her blast had opened in his chest. The silver scales slid back into place, as if it had never been.

She will scream before she dies.

His prey was limping away again, farther down the street. He gathered himself and threw himself after her. No more words would suffice, just a long drawn-out roar of fury.

As he bore down upon her once more, he saw her turn again. Her arm raised to point at him, then drooped. The glow built, faded and then intensified again. She can barely stay up. I have her now.

She'd taken her best shot, and he'd gotten right back up. He could almost taste her delicious despair. The ABB would boast of this victory for years to come, how he hunted her down like a beast of the field.

And then, as he closed with her, she fired her blast again. This time, she missed altogether, tearing a large manhole clear out of the ground. Whatever was beneath that manhole must have been important because a huge waterspout shot up, blasting him off his feet and temporarily extinguishing the flames that surrounded him.

Snarling, he regained his feet a second time. She was just on the other side of the brand-new fountain in the middle of the street! Fire burst out of him in all directions, evaporating the water clinging to him in a dramatic burst of steam.

Enough with these delays! He saw her shuffling sideways, as if to hide behind the upthrust of water that was already ankle-deep where he was. Gathering himself, he leaped over the hole in the street, and the water gushing out of it.

And that was where everything went badly wrong.

He was almost on her, his talons reaching for her, when the water reached upward and wrapped around him. Between one instant and the next, he was in a ball of it, ten feet off the ground, suspended with no footholds or handholds to go on with. Again, his fire went out as he stared around wildly.

What is this? How is this happening?

Enraged beyond measure, he exerted his power to force flame to surround his body anyway. Bubbles sprang up around him as the water boiled. At the same time, he thrashed powerfully with his arms, legs and tail; swimming for the edge of the blob of water that had the audacity to try to imprison him.

He almost made it, too. His hands reached the edge and found empty air, his head following shortly thereafter. But before he could draw in a breath of lifegiving air, there was a flash of movement and an impact that drove him back into the centre of the sphere of water. He tried to focus on it, but all he could see was a hovering figure. Not brightly lit, like Purity, but flying all the same.

He was going to need to breathe at some point. Also, his attempt to boil the water away wasn't working. Certainly, steam was rising from the top (an odd sight from inside the water, to be sure) but more cold water was flowing into the blob from the gaping hole in the street, sucking the heat energy from his body faster than he could replenish it.

This time, he tried to shoot a fireball from his hands at the flying figure. A huge mass of bubbles blasted from his hands to the edge of the blob, but were swallowed up by the cool water before they even got there. He tried again, to even less avail this time.

Air was definitely beginning to look like a problem. Or rather, the lack of it. It was odd; while he was blasting flame in all directions, he was able to breathe perfectly well. But here, under water, he was cut off from whatever oxygen supply fed him in the open air.

Marshalling control over his wandering thoughts, he threw everything into one last all-out effort to get to the edge of the ball of water. He was Lung. If Leviathan, the embodiment of storms and waves, could not force him to submit, then he would not give up here. Onward he struggled, digging at the water with both taloned hands and clawed digitigrade legs, swimming with powerful strokes that would leave Olympic athletes weeping tears of envy.

Through eyes dimming with oxygen starvation, he could see the surface rippling just there, just ahead of him. Within the ball, strong currents were trying to drag him back to the centre. He rejected them, tearing at the water, pushing harder and harder.

I am Lung.

I will prevail.

His head burst from the surface once more.

He opened his mouth to inhale.

A flashing impact, and he was sent tumbling back inside. Between the lack of oxygen and the stunning blow to the head, he could no longer focus. Slowly, reluctantly, his body began to shrink and slough off the Changes.

He was unconscious before he knew he'd lost.

<><>

Sergeant Patricia 'Sally' LaSalle, PRT

The PRT transports rolled to a halt, their wheels splashing through the copious water running over the road. Sally got out, finding her boots in ankle-deep water, and reached inside the transport for the radio mic. "Three four one to Console, come in Console. Over."

As she spoke, she kept her eyes tracing over the roofline, while other troopers covered the ones approaching Lung's unconscious body, half-floating in the water. It wasn't hard to ID the guy, even minus the metal mask. The dragon tatts were a dead giveaway.

"Three four one, this is Console, come in."

"Ah yeah, Console. We're on site where the tipoff said to come. Lung is down, I say again, Lung is down. We are securing him right now. Also, you're going to need to get onto City Maintenance, over."

"Three four one, this is Console. I copy Lung is in custody. What's the need for City Maintenance, over?"

Sally chuckled. "There's a damn great hole in the street. Looks like someone busted open a water main. Water's going everywhere. Lung looks like a drowned rat, over."

"I copy busted water main, three four one. Nice job. Notifying City Maintenance soonest. Console, out."

"Roger that. Three four one, out."

Sally put the mic back on its holder and returned her full attention to keeping her head on a swivel until they had Lung tranqued and in the back of the van. Exactly why the water main conveniently suffered a rupture right where Lung was, and how someone had managed to hold his head under water until he passed out, were both matters far above her pay grade.

But it was gonna be a beer and pizza night tonight, after they got back.

<><>

Taylor

I was still climbing down the fire-escape to ground level when Kayden came in for a landing where we'd parked her car. Dad and Janet pulled up in his car at that moment; they both got out and came to join the group.

Once she landed, I could see that Kayden was holding her arm and moving a little painfully, though not with as much effort as she'd put on for Lung. Also, her costume was a little singed here and there.

"Shit, did he actually get you?" exclaimed Amy. "I thought all that was for show! It was supposed to be for show!"

"Ow. No, not all for show." Kayden winced. "He tagged me with the edge of his last shot."

"Let me see." Amy laid her hand on Kayden's arm, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. It's not that bad. Barely even a first-degree burn."

"First-degree is bad enough," Kayden muttered. "It still hurt like crap." A moment later, her expression cleared. "Oh, that's better. Thank you very much."

"No problem." Amy grinned as she gave the older woman a quick hug. "You're the one who had the job of decoying Lung to where Janet could trap him."

"Which, I'm just gonna say, you did perfectly." Kayden added her approval to Amy's as they both looked at the blonde hydrokinetic. "Bringing in more water than he could boil away worked better than I expected, to be honest."

"You're the one who set him up," Janet said diffidently. "And Vicky kept him inside. All I had to do was keep the water circulating. I had the easy job."

Danny chuckled. "Okay, enough trying to pass off the glory to everyone else. We all did a good job. Lung is in custody, and the ABB is now officially without any capes on the street. I think we can all call tonight a rousing success. What do you say?"

"I say, when you're right, Mr. H, you're right." Vicky offered him a high-five, which he returned. "And thanks for bringing me along tonight. I would've liked to be able to play a few more rounds of whack-a-Lung, but I'll take what I can get."

"You did your part perfectly," Dinah told her. "Everyone did. We did good, tonight."

I hugged her. "Yeah, we did. I wonder if the PRT or the ABB will ever figure out what actually happened to him?"

She snorted with amusement. "That's up to you and Lisa to decide."

<><>

The Next Morning

PRT ENE Building

Director Piggot's Office

"Okay, this can't be a coincidence." Emily looked over the report turned in by the team that had collected Lung. The nominal leader of the ABB was securely ensconced in a high-security holding cell in the depths of the building, with static-shockers and containment foam ready to deploy if he started ramping up. He'd been half-drowned when they found him, though he'd recovered from that relatively quickly. Now, he was just pissed off.

"You're absolutely right, ma'am." Sitting in the reinforced chair before her desk, Armsmaster studied his own copy of the same report on a tablet. "Purity's presence and a strong water manipulation aspect. Three times, villains taken down and then left for us to take into custody." He frowned. "The water manipulation is missing from the Hookwolf incident, but perhaps it wasn't needed there. Or they hadn't teamed up yet."

Emily nodded. "I'm inclined to agree with you. It seems that since Purity made her definitive split with the Empire via disposing of Hookwolf, she's teamed up with this water manipulator and declared war on Brockton Bay's gangs. First the Merchants, then Coil, then Lung." She pursed her lips. "But she wouldn't have been able to nail down Lung so definitively if either Oni Lee or Bakuda had been in the picture. Do you think she had a hand in their capture as well?"

"That aspect does strain suspension of disbelief as a coincidence as well," Armsmaster admitted freely enough. "About the only part of Oni Lee's capture that I can link even tangentially to a water manipulator is the report of an unseasonal fog in that area of town around the time he was being captured. Bakuda, not even that."

Emily snorted. "Yeah, she just ended up on our doorstep, neatly tied with a bow saying Please arrest me. You attended the interview I had with her; do you recall any particular highlights?"

He nodded. "I'd have to check the appropriate recording, but all I personally recall is how she agreed to rebrand. As I remember it, she caved relatively easily."

Emily chuckled. "You might say that. She was playing the role of a dyed-in-the-wool hardcase right up until I mentioned Federal charges, whereupon she suddenly decided she had better things to do than play grab-ass with a bunch of lifers in Leavenworth for the next ten to twenty." Her expression creased with dark humour. "I doubt your bike could've pulled a quicker U-turn than she did, right about then."

Armsmaster nodded. "Very true. And she didn't mention Purity or a water manipulator, did she?"

"Not at all." She shrugged. "When she was brought in, she had a fading bruise to the face, consistent with whatever smashed her gas mask. Medical examination revealed a minor concussion, which means we'll have to keep her until she's fit to agree to rebranding as a hero before actually getting her to sign anything. But the last thing she recalls is going upstairs to get some air."

"Suggesting a rooftop ambush," he mused thoughtfully. "Well, whoever it was who captured her and Oni Lee and left them for us, it certainly wasn't Purity. Based mainly on the fact that we actually had something to take into custody and put in the cells. I still remember the mess she made of Hookwolf."

"I don't think anyone is going to forget the mess she made of Hookwolf," Emily said flatly. She shut the report down and dusted off her hands. "Well, however it was done, the ABB is officially off the streets—the capes, anyway. We can leave the police to handle the unpowered members. Lung still has a Birdcage sentence hanging over his head, so we'll expedite that soonest."

"And what about Purity and the water manipulator?" asked Armsmaster. "What do we mark them down as? Heroes or villains?" What he was asking was, do we leave them be or try to track them down?

"That's actually … a good question." Emily thought about it for a moment. "Purity's a known villain but she demonstrated she was on the outs from the Empire most definitively. Having Kaiser and Hookwolf try to murder her kind of puts a pin in that."

"We know she's got two children to care for," Armsmaster added. "The boy Theo and the infant Aster. Or at least," he added with his usual meticulous care for detail, "Kayden Russel has those children to care for."

Emily frowned. "You know how it goes. Unless and until we can pin down Ms. Russel as being absolutely and undeniably Purity, we can't arrest her for Purity's crimes. Even very strong corroborative evidence just won't cut it."

Armsmaster nodded. "Also, she's managed to be involved in more than half a dozen villains being taken into custody in the last few months, which is a better record than most of the Protectorate heroes in Brockton Bay at the moment." He tilted his head, conveying uncertainty with the gesture. "Maybe we should let her run for the moment. So far, she's doing our job for us, and making us look good in the process by not grabbing the headlines."

"Hmm." Emily intertwined her fingers, rubbing the extended index fingers over her lips. "I think that's not a bad idea." She gave a sharp nod. "Until we get further information, anyway."

Armsmaster returned her nod. "Until that, yes."

Part 19