One Bad Day Pt 15 (Patreon)

Part Fifteen: Day's End

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

Taylor

Just as Lisa sidled into the office, Taylor swore and ripped another sheet off the pad to lay alongside the others. This allowed her to extend the air duct onward with the assistance of a ruler. In the back of her mind, she kept pace with the skittering rodents and their accompanying bugs.

"How goes the search?" Lisa seemed pleased with herself.

"We were right." Taylor made another ruled line on the paper. "The official map isn't quite accurate. Oh, it looks good, if you don't pay too much attention to exact distances, but I'm pretty sure not all those angles are ninety degrees. And there are offshoots that could be missed if you're not paying attention."

"And you haven't located Circus yet." It wasn't a question on Lisa's part.

"Not yet," Taylor confirmed, "but I haven't found any more open air vents yet, and no more cameras have gone down. Better yet, even with the extra ductwork, I haven't had to leave any holes in the sweep, so she either has to kill the bugs and rats or get seen by them. Either way, I locate her."

"Excellent." Lisa slapped Taylor on the shoulder, but lightly. "When you do find her, let me know. I spoke to Amy, and she's on board with making more specialty critters to hunt her out. We were thinking of fireproof, knifeproof rats."

"Make sure they can't breed," Taylor cautioned. "If they leave my control radius, we do not want things like that getting out and causing trouble."

"More trouble than exploding pigeons?" retorted Lisa with a smirk. "Don't worry. I'll tell her."

With a final fingertip wave, she slipped out of the office again. Taylor growled another curse and filled in a little more of the air duct map.

"Where are you?" she muttered.

<><>

Circus

Coil had been lavish in supplying his little redoubt. The stored water was welcome after the breakout from the cell and the arduous crawl through the air ducting. Even more welcome were the protein bars; she'd spotted a crate of MREs, but decided she wasn't that hungry yet.

Gnawing on a protein bar and sipping from a square bottle of water, she sat cross-legged on the rubber matting and flicked through the selection of security feeds available to her on the small screen mounted on the low desk. There wasn't much to see in the area of the base she'd come from; not even the New Wave capes were back there right now. What's with that, anyway? What are they doing, chumming around with that skank Tattletale?

She shelved the question for another time, such as 'never'. The answers she wanted had more to do with how to get her hands on Tattletale, and how to extract her rightfully earned goddamn pay from that slippery little bitch. If Tattletale had access to Coil's money, and everything she'd ever heard about the supposedly psychic Thinker said that was a very strong fucking possibility, then the only obstacle standing in the way of getting her money was her unwillingness to threaten Tattletale's well-being.

Of course, it wasn't as simple as that, or she would've slithered out through the nearest air duct, put her hands around Tattletale's throat, and squeezed until she got what was owed to her. New Wave was on site, along with a couple of capes she'd never heard of before (at least, she assumed they were capes), and then there were the Toybox Tinkers down in the lower section, operating that weird chair. She knew enough to recognise Cranial and Pyrotechnical when she saw them, but she had no idea what they were doing here, or why Tattletale had seen fit to throw a fucking party in a goddamn supervillain base. Maybe the chair gave them some kind of Tinkertech high?

Did Tattletale blow my fucking money on a fucking party accessory?

She wasn't quite sure what the black girl with the purple streak in her hair was supposed to be able to do, but the tall skinny one with the black curly hair was definitely the Master who'd been setting swarms of bugs on her. She had a bone to pick with that one too; making spiders web her foot to the grating had not been cool. But Tattletale was her main target, and everything else was secondary.

The question is, do I wait for the party to finish and for everyone else to leave, or just come out now and kick Tattletale's ass until she ponies up the money I'm owed?

Nah, fuck that. If she leaves along with the normies, then I'm back to square one.

Let's fucking do this.

<><>

Cranial

With the engram completed, it still took two tries for Lil to anchor it to Glory Girl's tattered personality matrix. On the second attempt, she took extra care and double-checked all her readouts, then held her breath as she ran through the process, one step at a time. Finally, she was able to confirm that it was properly seated.

Next came the final stage in the process: running Glory Girl through a high-speed version of her life (that is, high-speed from the outside) to seal the engram into place, paper over any holes (because there would be holes) and generate an actual personality at the far end. While Lil had a certain amount of control over the process, she could only work with what she'd been given. Fortunately, Tattletale had managed to assemble a considerable amount of experiential data with which to assemble and adjust her very first entire-life engram, so she was confident she could pull it off.

Mostly.

This was the stage where if anything went wrong, it would have to be fixed or circumvented as they went. There was no question of stopping it and then restarting; the discontinuity that would inevitably occur would invalidate the entire process. And if she stopped it because something had gone sideways and tried to restart from scratch, the necessary removal of previously implanted memories would risk actual damage to Glory Girl's already-abused neural structure. Any kind of second attempt would be highly ill-advised.

Lil had never done something this ambitious before, but she'd gone over the specs for her equipment before agreeing to it. She could handle it. She would handle it. Glory Girl would be a hero again, and Toybox's rep would get another boost from people in the know.

Setting her teeth into her lower lip, she started the run-through. Glory Girl's eyes flickered back and forth as though she were asleep and dreaming, which was a good sign. Lil had generic memories queued for any holes that might crop up; with luck, they wouldn't even have to slow down as she slapped on the patch. Fortunately, she had plenty of images of Flashbang, both in costume and out. For anything else, she'd improvise on the fly.

As Victoria Dallon's early years whipped by, she narrowed her eyes and kept a careful watch for emerging problems. This wasn't just about the money anymore. Her pride was on the line.

<><>

Taylor

"Oh, what the fuck?" Taylor stared at her map of the air ducting as her rats milled around in the far corner from where they'd begun. They had traced every single air duct and even thrown their little bodies against each vent cover in turn to make sure said covers were securely screwed in place. They were all solid as a rock, except for the one that Circus had used to gain entry to the network. "How did she get past me?"

That Circus hadn't just turned around and left the same way she'd come in was patently obvious. People like Circus didn't just give up. Besides, that would've involved either squirming backwards with no way to see where she was going, or somehow turning around, something that Taylor felt would be nigh-impossible for anyone but a trained contortionist.

In any case, if Circus had done that, it would make her less of a problem. Taylor had to assume she was still dangerous, still on the board somehow. But what did she do? How did she pull that off? It's not like she can turn intangible like Sophia could, or invisible.

She paused. Waiiit a minute.

<><>

Tattletale

The party was going well, and so (Lisa hoped) was Cranial's work to restore Vicky to a recognisable semblance of her former self. She'd been leaning on her power a little too much, so she was reluctant to tap it now, but the Tinker appeared calm and unflustered as she worked on the screens attached to the chair. Even Vicky sat calmly under the oversized helmet, not even bothering to fidget.

Aisha had joined the party, her upbeat personality doing a great job at keeping the festivities going. In the meantime, Eric and Crystal had were also circulating while Manpower and Lady Photon were watching the unconscious Brandish. What they were going to do about Brandish, Lisa wasn't entirely sure yet. Excising this particular event from her memory would be prohibitively expensive, and Cranial probably didn't want her anywhere near the chair anyway.

Which brought her around to the last two players in the current little drama: Circus and Taylor. Circus being the problem, and Taylor being the potential solution.

Easing away from the rest of the group as Aisha did a manic (and somehow on-point) impression of Armsmaster trying to deal with hypothetical super-powered graffiti artists, Lisa snuck away into the office once more. It was her job to make sure everything was going well, she told herself. She wasn't micromanaging.

"How's it going?" she asked, once the door slid shut behind her.

"Problematic." Taylor didn't look up from the map she'd made. "I searched the air ducts that she could've gone through, from one end to the other. She's not there. Or she's figured out a way to hide."

Lisa blinked. "That's not good. That's not good at all. Please tell me you figured out a solution."

"Yeah." Taylor grinned. "Smell."

It took a second for Lisa to get it. "Oh. Rats can track by scent?"

"How do you think they can find where people hide their food?" asked Taylor rhetorically. "Damn right they can track by scent. They just don't normally track humans. But I sent them back to where she got into the air duct system, and they're on her trail right now. No matter what bullshit tactic she used to hide from them, they'll be able to find her."

"So, we've got her?" Lisa really, really wanted that to be true.

"Not yet." Taylor waggled her hand in the air. "But we're closing in on her, me and my beady-eyed minions."

Lisa shuddered, imagining trying to crawl through an air duct while a bunch of rats scuttled up behind her. It was only just preferable to being under Coil's thumb, and even that was kind of debatable. Still, it wasn't happening to her. Circus was another matter altogether. She wished the rats all the luck in finding the irritating cape.

If she'd just cut her losses from the beginning, we wouldn't be doing this.

<><>

Taylor

"Okay, this is weird." Taylor held up her hand just as Lisa was about to leave the office again.

"Weird good or weird bad?" Lisa did an about-face and stared at Taylor. "I can't handle many more unpleasant surprises today, just saying."

Taylor concentrated, trying to figure out what her rats had found. "There's some kind of … swinging panel in the wall of the air duct. I didn't see it before because I wasn't looking for it. But the rats smelled where she stopped and crawled into it."

"The fuck?" Lisa indicated the carefully drawn map of the air duct system. "You mean there's more to that shit?"

"Maybe." Taylor bit her lip. "The panel's pretty heavy. If I send a rat in there, it might be a one-way trip."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "So, send it in there. We need to know where she went to."

"Okay, then." Taylor had the rat push all the way through. It tried to hold onto the concrete and climb down, but the surface was too smooth, and it lost its grip. Fortunately, it only fell a short distance, as best Taylor could gauge, then landed on rubber matting. Being a rat, it bounced.

As it scuttled around, using its whiskers for guidance and sniffing everything it encountered, Taylor sketched out the layout of the space it had found itself in. She labelled each new section with her best guess at what it contained; protein bars, water bottles, a small desk with a computer screen … Fuck.

Lisa took one look at her face. "What? What is it?"

"Guns. She's got guns and ammo."

"Well, shit."

<><>

Circus

Okay, this is as good a place as any. She peered out through the grille at where the teen girls were enthusiastically partying under the tolerant gaze of (she presumed) their respective mothers. For some obscure reason, everyone was wearing a domino mask, even the publicly known heroes Laserdream and Shielder, who were also partying hearty.

The presence of the heroes served to damp down her immediate impulse to just jump in there and grab Tattletale. I'm going to have to be smart about this. There had to be a way to get her money and get away afterward, without being lasered to a crisp or beaten to a pulp.

Looking at the laughing crowd, gathered around the girl who was currently doing a standup routine of some kind, she grimaced. All those people could be problematic; once she revealed herself, they were likely to run around and cause more havoc, making it hard for her to keep an eye on where all the capes were. How to turn that from a problem into an asset …

A solution presented itself. Not one she usually went with; in fact, she preferred to stay as far away from bystanders as possible, but this situation just was not a normal one.

Fuck it, hostage it is.

<><>

Laserdream

As Aisha reached the climax of her improv Armsmaster skit, Crystal was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. How such a petite girl managed to pull off the 'Robomaster' growl so expertly she had no idea, but it was perfect.

The first inkling she had of a problem was when Aisha cut off halfway through a line of dialogue and stared at—no, past—her, eyes widening. And then, from behind her, the girl she knew as Bethany screamed.

She turned fast, a laser already powering up in her right hand while her left generated a force shield. Off to the side, she registered Eric doing the same, as they'd practised. But the situation was already problematic; there stood Circus, holding Bethany around the neck with a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. The villain looked a little the worse for wear, and had a glint in her eye that suggested she was no longer quite sane anymore.

"Okay, everyone, calm the fuck down." Despite the phrasing, Circus didn't look or sound like she was taking her own advice. "Nobody freaks and does something stupid, nobody gets hurt." She gestured with the pistol. "Everyone who's not a cape, get over here, right now."

"Wh-what?" quavered a woman, probably Bethany's mother; Crystal didn't know for certain. "Why? Please don't hurt my daughter."

"Not gonna hurt her, unless she does something stupid, you do something stupid, or someone else does something stupid." Circus bit the words off tightly. "Now, I don't feel like getting my face lasered off, so get over here before I do something regrettable to your kid." She gestured again with the pistol, keeping the knife close to some very important blood vessels in Bethany's throat. "Same goes for everyone else here who's not a cape. Get over here. The more of you who are between me and the New Wave laser folk, the less chance someone dies through friendly fire. Got it?"

Bethany's mother was the first to do what she was told, moving over to stand next to her daughter. One by one, the others followed her lead, looking around as though silently asking whether this was part of the 'cape experience' they'd been promised, or whether things had just gone drastically wrong.

"Circus …" Crystal spoke carefully, trying to hit the right note so she didn't set off the unstable villain. "You might want to think this all the way through. There's many ways this doesn't end well, and if you start hurting civilians, it will go bad for you very quickly indeed."

"Well, lucky for the civilians I'm not here to hurt them, then." Circus' eyes flicked from one point to another, then down at where Cranial was working with her chair on the next level. "What's that all about, anyway? Actually, fuck it, I just don't care. Every member of New Wave who can throw a laser or put up a force field, I want you on the other side of that door." Her pistol barrel indicated one of the heavy sliding doors at the far end of the room.

"If you think we're going to leave you alone with the hostages—" began Eric hotly.

"—you're absolutely right," Crystal cut him off. "Come on. We'll go." Carefully, she didn't look at where Aisha had been … or had she? Even after having known the quirky girl for several days, it was still difficult to actually remember her existence on occasion.

Gallant was another matter altogether. Out of costume, he was just another teenage boy in a domino mask. His armour might have given him a fighting chance against Circus, but as it was, his emotion blasts might or might not send her over the edge. At the moment, he was part of the crowd around Circus, but Crystal knew he had to be assessing the chances of doing something when he got the chance.

"What about me?" Amy chose this moment to speak up. "You know me. Everyone knows me. Take me as a hostage instead of everyone else. Nobody's going to do anything when my life is on the line." She rolled her eyes. "If I get hurt, I might have to miss out on healing someone, and wouldn't that be a fucking shame."

"You know what?" Circus tilted her head. "Normally I might've taken you up on that, but right now I'm reading levels of 'fuck-this' from you that I don't really trust." As she spoke, the pistol vanished from her hand, to be replaced by a set of handcuffs. She tossed them overhand toward Amy, to land with a clatter at the healer's feet. "Cuff yourself to the handrail there, just to make sure you don't try pulling off some stupid kind of sacrifice play that doesn't accomplish anything except getting people killed."

Amy glared at her, but grudgingly bent over and took up the cuffs. "Why don't you just fuck off?" she demanded as she clicked the metal into place on the rail. "There's nothing for you here."

"And that's where you're wrong." Circus was hidden behind her human shield, but Crystal could hear the smugness in her voice. "I'm fucking owed. Coil had millions when he was ganked, and I want what he owed me. Give me that, and I'm gone."

"Okay, sure." Crystal didn't know how legitimate the claim was, but she'd sat in on hostage-negotiation seminars. Gotta keep her happy until we can take her down. "You'll get your money."

"Yeah, as if you've got any say in that." Circus's tone went straight back to 'cynical' faster than an Empire thug thinking up a new slur. "I told you New Wave assholes, through that door. Now, or Panacea gets some business. Got me?" The pistol waved in the air for a second. "And take Glory Girl with you too. Don't think I didn't recognise her in that stupid fucking chair."

"No." Cranial's voice cut across the murmurs of fear echoing in the chamber. "Glory Girl is not to be moved. This is a very delicate part of the procedure. She doesn't leave this chair until I say so."

"And if she says Glory Girl doesn't move, I say Glory Girl doesn't move." Pyrotechnical hadn't spoken in Crystal's hearing up until this point, but the chk-hmmmmmm from the heavy rifle-like weapon he carried backed up his words with a certain amount of weight.

Circus must have heard it too, because she didn't bother arguing. "Ooookay, then. Not sure what's going on down there, but so long as you keep yourselves to yourselves, I honestly do not give two-thirds of a flying fuck. Now, New Wavies, time to wavie goodbye, or I am going to stab someone. Three … two …one …"

"Okay, we're going, we're going." Hastily, Crystal grabbed Eric by the arm. "Come on, let's go, like the nice lady says." Lifting into the air, she flew toward the exit, dragging him along with her.

As they flew, his force field enclosed them, then a second one inside the first. This was a trick he'd learned early on; how to create a soundproof barrier. "You can't just leave them alone with her!" he protested.

"We can't stay," she countered. "Anyway, we're the visible capes. Aisha and Lisa and Taylor and Dean are right there, and Mom and Dad are downstairs with Aunt Carol, so if shit goes sideways they can come up and kick her ass. Once we're out of sight, she'll relax, maybe let down her guard or something."

"Jeez, I hope you're right about this." But he didn't resist her pull anymore. Together, they flew to the door; he dropped the shields and she slapped the button to open it. It rumbled open and they stepped through.

<><>

Aisha

Come on ... come on …

Being able to make people forget she was there was all well and good, but the unwilling bunch of human shields Circus had gathered around herself meant that Aisha couldn't get to her. She was totes willing to stabbify the party-crasher until the beeyatch fell over—nobody threatens my friends!—but as she'd learned previously, it helped a shit-ton if they didn't actually move around. Or have people standing around them who didn't know Aisha was there and trying to help.

Wrapping her hand around the swastika-topped knife she'd used to kill Shadow Stinker, Aisha left it in its sheath as she prowled around the outside of the crowd, looking for a way through. No sense in accidentally stabbing one of the hostages, after all. Some of them were actually pretty cool, once they got into the party spirit. Also, Lisa would probably yell at her.

"Okay, no need to hurt anyone." Lisa stuck her head out of the office. "Come on in, and we'll discuss your recompense."

"About fucking time. Everyone, head for that doorway. Don't go in. I'm pretty sure the room isn't big enough for us all." Circus waved her pistol forward, like a baton or something.

This was Aisha's chance. Darting around the perimeter of the crowd, she ducked in through the open doorway into the office. Taking up a position in a vacant corner, she poised herself, ready to pull her knife and stick it into anywhere on Circus she could reach.

Circus came in next, and hit the button to close and lock the door, watching Lisa and Taylor carefully. Then she looked around the room; for a moment, Aisha tensed, wondering if Circus could see her anyway, but the villain's eyes skated right over her. Finally, Circus pointed at the air vent, which had a filing cabinet pushed up against it. "Get that open."

Aisha could understand why she was doing it—if things went to shit, it was always good to have a bolt-hole—but the only place for the cabinet to go was the corner Aisha had chosen to lurk in. Grumbling to herself, she shifted locations while Lisa and Taylor applied their shoulders to the cabinet and scraped it aside. It was short work for Lisa to unscrew the grille and set it aside. "That better?"

"Much." Circus nodded in approval. "Now, as for my money …" She flipped a knife in the air and caught it again. Aisha pulled her own knife and started stalking her, but every time she thought she had a proper stab lined up, Circus would move. It was very irritating.

"Okay. The money." Lisa leaned over the keyboard and typed in a command, and the screen changed. "I'm going to lay it out for you. Total honesty up front. Okay?"

Circus glowered at her, not ceasing the restless pacing. "That doesn't sound like 'I've got your money right here'. In fact, it's starting to sound like an excuse. I'm not doing excuses right now."

"The immediate problem," Lisa began again, "is that once the PRT discovered that Coil was Calvert, they froze a lot of his assets. I managed to recover some—in fact, I recovered quite a bit—but nowhere near his total holdings. However, I can put what money I have into generating a lot more. Enough to pay you off. All you need is patience."

"No." Circus pointed at the figures on the screen. "That, right there, is enough to cover what I'm owed, plus ten percent asshole tax. I'll be taking that."

Lisa didn't look at the screen. "I'm afraid you're mistaken. That money right there? That's already spoken for. It's going to Toybox. I can get more—like I said, with time and effort, I can definitely generate enough to pay you off—but that's not mine to give you."

The pistol had vanished somewhere—Aisha really wanted to know how Circus pulled that shit—but the knife was still in her hand. Moving like a striking snake, Circus grabbed Taylor around the neck and held the knife up under her jaw, the very tip pricking her skin. Aisha froze, watching the tiniest droplet of blood well around the point of the blade. If I stabbed her now, she'd kill Taylor before I could stop her.

"I didn't say you're giving it to me." The villain's tone could've been used to jump-start a new ice age. "I said I was taking it. You can tell Toybox you're generating the money for them. That money right there is mine, and I'm taking it, or your skinny friend here develops a sudden and fatal case of laryngitis."

She is not hurting Taylor. No fucking way am I letting that happen. Aisha was fond of the tall gawky girl, especially since they'd worked together to put an end to Shadow Stalker. Taylor didn't have that many friends, and Aisha was pleased to be one of them.

"You kill me, you'll never get your money." Taylor's voice was muffled, mainly because she was only moving her lips, not the rest of her mouth.

"She's right." Lisa spoke firmly. "And besides, she's not the one you're pissed at. You've never even met her before. I'm the one you've got a bone to pick with."

Aisha realised exactly what Lisa had in mind, and started moving carefully, while sliding her knife back into its sheath. Lisa was trying to goad Circus into taking her hostage, and thus take the heat off Taylor. And at the same time, she was banking on Aisha being in the room and being able to take advantage of the knife being moved between the two of them.

"That's true." Circus shoved Taylor away and made a grab for Lisa. "She can—"

She'd moved before Aisha was properly ready, but this would be her best chance. Launching herself forward, she tackled Circus away from both Lisa and Taylor, grabbing for the villain's knife hand. Taken off balance, Circus let out a loud whoof as they hit the wall, but she was still lucid enough to roll to the side and throw Aisha off.

"Okay, what the fuck was—" As Circus went to scramble to her feet, Lisa and Taylor tackled her, both wrestling for the knife. Circus produced the pistol in her other hand, and Aisha darted in to grab it, preventing Circus from pointing it at anyone. Screaming incoherently, Circus pulled the trigger anyway, deafening her; the bullet shattered the light, leaving the computer screen to illuminate the room.

Aisha wanted to pull her blade and stab the bitch, but both her hands were taken up with keeping the pistol pointed away from everyone (including her) because Circus was fucking strong. So, she did the next best thing, and bit Circus on the thumb as hard as she could. Circus flailed, and the pistol went flying across the room.

They wrestled across the floor, Aisha concentrating on making sure Circus couldn't grab anything out of her bullshit pocket dimension with that hand, while Taylor and Lisa kept her from stabbing them with the other hand. If anyone had told her before this point that it would be almost impossible for three teenage girls to keep one adult woman in check, she would've scoffed mightily. Three on one? There was no way anyone could beat that.

Circus, it turned out, could beat that. She was almost inhumanly agile, stronger than any two of them put together, and she was really good at fighting. She twisted, kicked, thrashed and applied moves Aisha never would've thought of—and she fought dirty. Although she should've still been imperceptible, Aisha found herself flung off the dogpile and skidding across the floor.

Before she could throw herself back into the fray, Circus used the now-free hand to apply some leverage. First Lisa and then Taylor ended up piling against the far wall, then Circus pulled some judo bullshit flip that got her to her feet. She'd lost the knife during the melee, but that didn't seem to bother her, as she pulled out a fucking machine-pistol from thin air.

"Okay, then," she snarled, the words barely audible to Aisha through the ringing in her ears. "That's it. I'm done with you assholes." She pulled back something on the gun, making an ominous clack-clack noise. "Sayonara, motherfuckers."

She raised the weapon, sighting down the barrel toward Lisa. Her intent was obvious: kill her main target first, then spray the rest of the room. Just because she couldn't perceive Aisha didn't mean the bullets wouldn't kill her just the same.

"W-wait," Taylor croaked. "Something you've … you've forgotten."

"The fuck you talking about?" demanded Circus.

Aisha saw Taylor grin. "I don't just control bugs."

And that was when the seven rats erupted from the open air duct, directly behind Circus. The first she knew of them was when they clawed all over her head, going for her eyes. It would've taken a will of steel to keep the machine pistol aimed while this happened, something Circus apparently lacked.

Letting out a shriek that threatened to deafen Aisha all over again, she let go the machine-pistol, allowing it to clatter to the ground, while she grabbed for the rats assaulting her. Aisha took the opportunity to go for the previously discarded pistol, while Lisa dived for the gun Circus had just dropped. Circus wasn't entirely unaware of what was going on around her, though, as evidenced by the neat snap-kick that sent Lisa tumbling backward again.

And then, just as Circus threw the last rat away from her, and Aisha was figuring out which way around the pistol was supposed to point, the sliding door into the office opened with a grinding screech. A slender figure was silhouetted in the doorway. "Hi. Miss me?"

Pulling yet another fucking gun out of nowhere, Circus swung it straight-armed toward the newcomer. Glory Girl caught it in her hand and crushed it with a simple metallic crunch. Then she stepped forward and back-handed the villain into the wall; Circus hit hard, bounced off, then collapsed bonelessly to the floor.

Dusting her hands off, Vicky looked around with satisfaction. "Okay, so I know most of what's going on around here, but I'm not totally sure why Amy's handcuffed to the rail out there and Circus is in here fighting you two … oh, you three. Hi, Aisha. Would someone care to fill me in?"

<><>

Two Hours Later

Taylor

After a quick explanation, Vicky had gone out and joined the party. Taylor, cloaking herself in a hastily gathered swarm, went out also as Swarmina, and was duly 'defeated' to cheers from the guests and their mothers. Once Aisha came out as well and passed off the Circus incident as a last-ditch effort by the fictitious Mind-Melter to foil the intended rescue attempt, Bethany and her mother looked somewhat mollified.

It was funny, Taylor mused, how rapidly they'd modified their own memories, given the new 'information', to the point that they thought they'd been in no danger at all. Bethany was actually proud she'd been picked as the hostage, and her friends were quick to boast about how they'd seen through it the whole time.

The party had wound down a little while after that, and the Pelham fliers volunteered to return their guests to their homes; the girls had left chatting excitedly how cool the whole experience had been. Vicky had suggested that she could ferry Dean home, but Lisa had nixed that idea. It was best, she decided, that he be dropped at the PRT building (after everyone else) so that he could declare himself officially unkidnapped.

Which left Taylor, Amy, Aisha, Vicky, Lisa and Mr Pelham sitting around a table in the base commissary. The story had been told in its entirety, with Aisha interjecting now and again, as was her habit. Amy sat at the opposite end of the table to Vicky—by choice, not by chance—with her head down and shoulders hunched, as though expecting to be physically attacked at any moment.

"So, I gotta ask," Aisha said, irrepressible as ever. "What's it feel like? Do you feel like you in there?"

Vicky tilted her head as she considered the question. "Well, yes. Who else would I feel like?" She grinned at Aisha. "Cranial did a really good job. Everything she implanted feels genuine, and even though I know intellectually that most of them aren't memories I personally experienced, I honestly can't tell between the ones from elsewhere and the few that I'm pretty sure are original issue."

Amy lifted her head. "Why?" she asked, so quietly she almost went unheard.

It took Vicky a moment or so to look around. "Why what? Why haven't I done what you so clearly want me to do, and killed you for what you did to me?"

Mr Pelham started half out of his seat at that. "Amy! Vicky! What—"

Vicky waved him down. "It's all good. Yeah, Ames really did a number on me, and I've got every right to be pissed at her. And yeah, I am. But I'm more angry at myself for not seeing what was right in front of me, what was going through her mind. What happened that day was more than a little my fault, and I need to take responsibility for my own actions. And my failures to act."

Amy jumped up. "You can't just forgive me for what—"

"Forgive? No." Vicky shook her head. "Not exactly, anyway. If I'm to understand what Lisa says, it was at least partially your power's fault, playing on your attraction to me. And also my power, making you fall in love with me, when it didn't do that to anyone else. So yes, there's plenty of blame to be had, and it can be spread far and wide."

"No!" The anguish in Amy's voice rang from the concrete ceiling. "I did this! I did it! Me! I fucked your brain up! Why aren't you punishing me?"

Vicky looked at her with sorrow and empathy. "Because there's nothing I can do that will hurt you one-tenth as much as the pain you've been putting yourself through. And because you willingly put yourself through that hell just to make sure that I'd be okay, in the end." She took a deep breath. "But if we can't guarantee it will never happen again—and we can't—then it's best we not be on the same team anymore."

"What, you're leaving New Wave?" Mr Pelham looked shocked.

"No, you can't, not on my account!" Amy shook her head violently. "I—I was going to leave anyway. I don't—I can't be on the same team as Carol, either. Not anymore. Not after today."

"Me, too." Vicky looked at her uncle apologetically. "Same person, different reasons. I'm thinking I might join the Wards." She paused. "Uh—unless you were already going there, Amy?"

"No." Amy glanced at Lisa. "I got another offer. Lisa, Taylor and Aisha were going to be forming a team right here, and they said I could stay if I wanted."

"I'll be needing to go into the PRT building too," Taylor noted. "Probably the first thing tomorrow, so they can tell me I'm not in trouble. Lisa?"

Lisa nodded. "You should still have time by then. Just don't tell them anything about … well, anything."

Taylor snorted. "Yeah, I think I got that one already."

Amy roused herself again. "What about Circus and Carol?"

Mr Pelham looked at her curiously. "Circus goes to the PRT, and Carol goes back to her house. Why?"

"I think she's saying, they're likely to start shouting about what happened tonight," Aisha chimed in helpfully. "Brandish is gonna have all sorts of fun stories to tell about being held against her will, an' drugged by bugs an' stuff. And I can tell Circus will draw 'em a map to this place, on the off-chance it'll fuck Lisa over once an' for all."

"Ah," said Vicky, realisation settling in on her features. "Yeah. Mom would totally do that. And I can believe that of Circus, too." She looked at Amy. "You're saying we should do something about that? Maybe call Cranial back?"

"Hahaha, nope." Lisa shook her head definitively. "We absolutely can't afford her rates, right now. And she charges through the nose when it comes to having unwilling capes in her chair."

Amy's features were creased in something approaching pain. "This sort of shit is what started this whole mess. If—if I do something about this … have I still got a place here?"

Taylor tilted her head curiously. "When you say 'do something about this' … what did you have in mind?" Please don't say kill them … please don't say kill them …

"I won't remove any memories." Amy glared at the rest of the table, as though daring them to gainsay her. "But I can dull them. Like they've just come off a twelve-hour bender. Blank the short-term memory, fuzz the more recent long-term. Just enough that nobody can pin anything on this place, or on anyone here. If I do that, can I stay?"

"Absolutely." From the relief with which Lisa uttered the word, she might well have been thinking the same as Taylor. For damn sure, nobody wanted to go up against Amy in a serious conflict.

"Good." Amy nodded. "Then after that, no more goddamn brains. Like, ever."

Taylor raised a finger, then leaned back as Amy swung the glare her way. "Uh … are you still okay to do different types of rats and birds and bugs for me?"

The expression that crossed Amy's face as she relaxed could almost have been mistaken for a smile. "Well, yeah. Those I can do, all day long."

"Cool." Aisha grinned at Vicky. "So, we still buds?"

Vicky leaned back in her seat and regarded the younger girl. "I remember you braiding my hair and playing patty-cake with me. You never lost patience with me, and you were always happy to see me." She smiled and held out her fist for a bump. "We'll always be buds. Though I'm never going to be calling you Most Esteemed Aisha again, just to be clear."

Aisha hunched her shoulder and ducked her head in what almost looked like embarrassment. "Seemed like a fun idea at the time, is all," she mumbled.

"I'm sure it did." Vicky snaked her arm around Aisha's neck and applied a light noogie. "And this is me saying thanks."

As Aisha flailed and protested—but not too strenuously—Mr Pelham shook his head slowly. "Well, I'll leave you to it. Sarah should be back soon, my bed is calling to me, and we've still got to get Carol home." Standing up, he stretched mightily. "It's been a very long day."

"You've still got the PRT to deal with as well, don't forget." Lisa raised an eyebrow. "What are you going to do there? Fake amnesia?"

Mr Pelham smiled tightly. "Gallant and I have already spoken about this, and gotten our story straight. Sarah will back us up along with Vicky and Amy, and Carol won't have the foggiest idea of what actually happened. Emily will fuss and snort, but we're not actually under PRT direction, so she can go whistle in the wind if she tries to press us for details."

"Oh, man." Aisha grinned. "Now I want pics of her face."

Amy stood up as well, and sighed. "Well, let's get this over with."

"Ames?" Vicky was standing, but she didn't move to join them. "For what it's worth?"

"Yeah?" Amy half-turned her head to glance back.

"Thanks. And I'm sorry it happened this way."

"Yeah," Amy said. "Me too."

<><>

Toybox Base

Cranial

Lil finished putting the last of her equipment away, then sagged into a chair and let out a heartfelt sigh. "Well, that was a clusterfuck of epic proportions."

"Oh, hey." Glace leaned around the door. "The rest of the money just came through. Oh, and Pyro's in the commons, telling everyone what the job was like. It wasn't that wild, was it? A real underground supervillain base, a party with pretend villains, with actual villains crawling out of the air ducts? I mean, really?"

Lil looked up at her. "Let me just put it this way. When a weird job comes up and I'm tempted to take it?"

"Yeah?"

"Remind me about this job."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Lil closed her eyes. "I hate the weird jobs."

<><>

Gallant

Dean stood in Deputy Director Renick's office with Armsmaster on one side of him and Triumph on the other. None of the three looked happy, either outwardly or via their emotional auras. Not that he could blame them.

"So, let me see if I've got this straight," Renick said, both his tone and his aura indicating his struggle to cope with what he was saying. "You were kidnapped eighteen hours ago by a red-headed girl, along with Lady Photon, and now you're saying it wasn't a villain attack at all?"

"That's correct, sir." Dean tried to keep his tone firm and forthright. "It was some kind of … I suppose you could call it a scavenger hunt. Capes I'd never heard of before. Once it was done, we just … left. The Pelhams, the Dallons, me … everyone. Nobody stopped us. No criminal intent, no theft, nobody got hurt." He shrugged. "I'd almost think someone like Uber and Leet were behind it, only I didn't see anyone like either of them there."

Renick sighed and took off his glasses to polish the lenses with a cloth. "Talking about the Dallons … is there any truth to the scurrilous rumours that are going around about Glory Girl and Panacea?"

Dean snorted. "What, that they're actually a couple? No, sir. And I should know. Glory Girl and I are still definitely going steady. In fact, I spoke to her tonight and she expressed interest in leaving New Wave and joining the Wards."

That took all three by surprise. "What, really?" asked Triumph. "Are you sure?"

Dean nodded. "Absolutely. She asked me to pass that on to you, and that she'd be in tomorrow to put in her formal application."

"Well, that's bad news for New Wave but good news for us, I suppose." Renick put his glasses back on. "So, that's all it really was? Some misguided cape version of a scavenger hunt? Do you think you could identify the cape responsible if you saw her again?"

Dean smiled, fully aware that Lisa would be a blonde again by the end of the night. "Absolutely, sir. I'd know that red hair anywhere."

<><>

PRT Building, the Next Day

Taylor

Danny sat with Taylor in a conference room, vending machine snacks in front of both of them. Taylor had tried eating her sandwich, but had only managed a few bites. "What's taking so long?" she asked in a low tone.

He'd already polished off his sandwich and half-emptied his can of soda; she envied his calm. "Well, for one thing, they're probably making sure the recording devices are up and running. Also, they seemed a little frazzled downstairs, so we're probably not their highest priority right now. And there's likely a little bit of a power play going on here. Seeing if we blurt out anything while we're alone that'll give them a lever to work on us."

At that moment, the door handle clicked, and a costumed hero strode in, carrying a Manila folder. "Sorry for keeping you waiting," he said, heading for the end of the table. From his mainly-red costume and visor, Taylor pegged him as Assault. "We've been running in circles this morning. New recruit needing to be interviewed, stuff like that. I'm sure you're no stranger to that, Mr Hebert."

Taylor was pretty sure she knew which recruit he was talking about, but didn't comment. Danny, on the other hand, nodded. "You've actually looked into who I am." He didn't sound surprised.

Assault quirked a corner of his mouth in a grin as he opened the folder. "We did that back when Taylor first triggered with powers. Kind of standard procedure when we've actually got information on a cape's identity. Not that we do anything with it, but it helps to know who we're going to be dealing with if the cape decides to join the PRT or Protectorate."

"So does that mean you try to find out who capes are if you haven't got a name for them straight away?" asked Taylor, raising her eyebrows.

"Not as a matter of course." Assault's tone was serious. "But you'd be astonished how many capes have public triggers. We keep their secrets for them if we can; we want as many heroes out there as possible, of course."

Danny snorted. "Are you quoting from a recruiting pamphlet? Because that's what it sounds like."

Reaching out to the folder, Assault deliberately moved a recruiting brochure under the folder. "Noo ..."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't really thinking of joining." Taylor shrugged. "Just to put that out there."

"Fair enough," Assault acknowledged. "Any particular reason why?"

She'd given her next statement some thought. "Prior commitments. I will be joining a team. Just not the Wards."

"New Wave?" he suggested.

Taylor shared a glance with her father; they'd both suspected this would come up, and had decided that feigning ignorance about the current situation with New Wave was the best policy. She turned back to Assault. "No. A new team in town. We're in the process of forming it."

"Well, far be it from me to hold you back." He turned a page in the folder, apparently thinking. "Just don't go taking on Lung or Kaiser on your first night out. The Empire and the ABB are the top dogs in the Brockton Bay underworld for a reason, and they don't fight fair."

"I'm totally down with that," she agreed. If she ran into Lung or Kaiser, the last thing she had in mind was a fair fight. "Was there anything else?"

"Yeah." He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his interlaced fingers. "If you didn't mind, could you give me a run-down of your powers?"

This was where it could get tricky. "I control small creatures. Bugs, rats, birds, things like that. The bigger they get, the harder it is to control them, and the fewer I can control."

He sat up in his chair. "Really? So, how big a creature can you control?"

She chuckled. "If you're thinking 'human Master', not really. I need something smaller, with a much less complicated brain, before I can be sure of control." No sense in giving the PRT any ammunition.

"Ah." He sounded slightly relieved. "So … how many bugs at a time can you control?"

She shrugged lightly. "Everything in a one or two block radius, maybe? When it comes to birds and rats and things, I can't control as many as I can with bugs."

"And this is what happened to Ms Clements?"

Taylor grimaced and nodded. "I'd just got my powers, and I was feeling really, really threatened just about then. Are … are you going to be arresting me for that?"

He shook his head reassuringly. "We've already been over all the evidence, and I'm authorised to tell you that we're satisfied you were actually under threat. There may be a legal hearing, but that'll just be a matter of crossing the t's and dotting the i's. Between trigger trauma and the perceived need for self-defence, it shouldn't be a problem."

"Thanks." She hadn't even known about trigger events until Lisa had filled her in on them. "I don't want to say it's been keeping me up at night, but it kinda has."

"Yeah, I know how that goes. Now, is it just control, or does your power do other things?" He was watching her intently now.

"Oh, I can sense through their senses." She chuckled self-consciously. "Bugs have crap senses. Birds are better."

"I have no doubt." He grinned disarmingly. "Nothing else? Making them take off like rockets, or explode, or produce knockout venom?"

"Uh, no?" She blinked, miming incomprehension. "I can't make them do anything they can't naturally do. Though I have made a bunch of rats dance the Can-Can." Aisha had laughed herself sick, watching this.

That seemed to take him aback slightly. "I'm going to have to get footage of that. Another day. Moving on. This team of yours. Is there a redheaded girl on it? Or a Tinker, or a ranged Blaster, maybe? Any of the above?"

"No." Taylor shook her head firmly. "No Tinkers, no Blasters. Also, I only know one redhead, and she's one of the survivors of my trigger event. I'm pretty sure she's the one who called you guys on me, back when it happened."

"Ah, right. I think I remember her." Assault's lips thinned. "She lied her head off during the interview with Armsmaster, trying to make you look as bad as possible. So that was your trigger event right then in that bathroom, huh?"

"Well, I didn't have powers before, and I did after, so that's what I figure." She grimaced. "I'm pretty sure a container of sanitary products was involved. I was certain I was going to die."

"Ugh." Assault didn't seem to be faking his distaste, but this didn't stop him from dropping the next bombshell. "So, when you were facing Shadow Stalker, where did you get the knife from?"

"I honestly had no idea at the time," she said candidly. "I didn't have it and then I did. I'm still not certain, but I'm thinking that maybe Sophia put it in my hand so if she killed me she could claim self-defence. But I wasn't as far gone as she thought. I stabbed her and she backed off, so I dropped it and ran."

Assault nodded slowly, checking another page in the folder. "So, do you have any idea who killed her outside the bathrooms, and carved a swastika into her back?"

Taylor put her hands up. "All I know is, it wasn't me. I don't do swastikas and I don't run with the Empire."

Danny stirred and cleared his throat. "Just as a point of note here. If Taylor was an Empire sympathiser, do you honestly think she'd be forming a new team instead of just joining the current membership? More to the point, do you think I'd be so unworried about all this if my daughter was Empire? Two words: Hell and No."

"Okay, okay, I believe you. But I've just gotta ask the questions, so we can say we did. Don't shoot the messenger." Assault sighed. "So, one last question and we can put this to bed. Have you associated at all with Gallant or any of the New Wave capes in the last few days?"

Taylor blinked a couple of times, then shook her head. "Well, no. If I had, I would've gotten his autograph. Why, has something happened?" She hated lying, but she'd found that if she put that emotion into a bunch of bugs or rodents, they could act out the tells while she kept her face at 'politely attentive'.

"Nope, nothing of note." Assault closed the folder and stood up. "Thanks for coming in and speaking to us. I look forward to seeing where your cape career goes."

"Thanks." Taylor pushed her chair back and stood up as well. "Uh … before you go … could you …" Tentatively, she pulled out a notepad.

Assault actually laughed out loud. "Absolutely. Anything for a fan." Taking the pad, he scribbled a bold signature on the first blank page. "Nice meeting you, Taylor."

"It was very cool meeting you too." She shook his hand, then stepped aside so Danny could as well.

They exited the conference room and headed along to the elevator, then she and Danny rode down to the lobby. Barely anyone paid them any notice, which Taylor appreciated as they crossed the lobby and exited via the heavy sliding doors.

Outside, it was a brand-new day, and she intended to seize it. By the throat, if necessary.

<><>

Far overhead, the Simurgh turned her sightless eyes—and her course—to another part of the world. The story she'd nudged into being and watched with interest had played out to a conclusion both inevitable and amusing, but it was done with for the moment.

It was time to see what was going on elsewhere in Earth Bet.

End of One Bad Day

[A/N 1: Thank you for reading. This story was always going to be about solving the immediate problems of the main characters. It ends here, with Lisa, Taylor, Amy and Aisha forming a new team in Coil's old base, Circus in custody and a mentally rejuvenated Vicky joining the Wards.]

[A/N 2: And yes, this was indeed the Simurgh doing the equivalent of watching daytime TV.]

[A/N 3: I have no plans for a sequel at the moment. Sorry.]