Earning Her Stripes Pt 23 (Patreon)

Escalation Central

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

Friday Afternoon, September 17, 2010

Monochrome

I stood on the deck of the half-sunken bulk carrier, angling my weight to adjust for the fact that it was listing by several degrees. From where I was standing, I could easily see what was left of the Boat Graveyard, and the city beyond. The ship's original name was lost to posterity, but it was known as the Gatekeeper. This was mainly because it had blockaded the entrance to the port for years until Alexandria made a flying visit (literally) and shouldered it around ninety degrees, allowing the gradual clearing of the Graveyard to begin. It would be awhile before Lord's Port was fully open for trade again, but at least that was a promise for the future.

The Gatekeeper was the only one that couldn't be moved by normal means, mainly because it was full of water and solidly aground. As such, it was the one piece of real estate I knew of that was big enough and flat enough (though with physical and visual obstacles) for us to have this sparring session, while not risking accidental bystanders or official attention if we broke any bits off it. The Real Thing was on thin enough ice with the PRT as it was, so there we were.

Or rather, there I was.

I held in my hands the staff Madison had forged for me. Made of good steel (of course), it was six feet long and was (in my inexpert opinion) nicely balanced. Emma also seemed to think so, though she also considered it too heavy for her to use in serious combat. For most of its length, the staff was oval in cross-section rather than perfectly round, but there was a purpose to that. There was a solid cylindrical section about the size of a Coke can at each end, and grooved hand grips right where I might want to hold it, but apart from that it was a length of basically unbreakable metal.

I quite liked it. Madison had put thought and effort into its construction, and it showed. The solid ends gave a wider strike area, while the speed I could swing it meant that the strike would hit hard. Theoretically, I could also throw it, though it would be more likely to go through things rather than bounce back like Emma's throwing discs.

The rules for our training-slash-sparring session were simple. If Emma or Madison tagged me, they scored a point. The same went for Emma; if I got a solid hit in on her, I scored one. With Madison, however, it was more stringent. Her suit was powerful enough to take a simple hit, so tagging her properly meant I had to knock her off the boat. At the same time, I had to be careful with my strikes, to make sure I didn't inadvertently splatter Emma with a blow intended for Madison.

This would be a good test of my powers and my reflexes. I wasn't at all practised in martial arts, though Emma had been giving me some valuable pointers in staff fighting over the past few days. There was no way I could match any but the simplest manoeuvres she'd demonstrated for me, but at least I had the basics of how to swing it without tangling my own legs up or thwacking myself in the back of the head (both of which I'd done, to Madison's vast amusement).

I didn't have to wait long before the exercise began. Emma hadn't yet shown herself, but one of her discs whipped out from behind a derelict winch, arcing in the air on a path that would intersect where I stood if I didn't move my force-field-clad ass pronto. I almost leaped up toward the drunkenly sagging superstructure but at the last instant, I dropped low instead, warned by some obscure instinct.

The disc flashed over my head, then hit a nearby shipping container and rebounded from it with a hollow boom. I watched, suddenly pleased with my decision, as the disc passed through the spot I would've been in if I had done the leap as I'd originally planned. Jeez, she almost caught me napping with that one.

Well, at least I knew where she was now. Keeping a careful eye on the winch as the disc dropped down behind it again, I began to circle around, holding my staff ready to deflect any random flying pieces of good steel. I'd known Emma was good, but her opening moves had raised my estimation of her capabilities by a considerable amount.

Only the faintest scrape of metal on metal behind me warned me in time. I whirled, bringing up the staff, and only just managed to knock aside Blockade's reaching hand; the power armour had unfolded itself from what I'd thought was a weather-worn wooden crate lying on the deck. That holo-disguise was terrifyingly effective, under the right circumstances.

"Nice moves," Madison observed, continuing to advance on me. I backed up, unwilling to commit myself to knocking her over the side when I couldn't see Emma or what she was up to. "Thought I had you there for a minute."

"So did I." I knew damn well what she was trying to do—distracting me so that Emma could pull some other sneaky shit—but it was almost impossible to not engage with her. Besides, I could keep an eye out all around even while I spoke to her. "You two really planned this out."

"That's the general idea." She took another ponderous step toward me, the footstep shaking the deck. Was she trying to herd me toward the winch, so Emma could jump out and tag me?

It felt like an obvious plan. Too obvious. They were coordinating on the sly with their radios so I wouldn't know what they were planning, but I already knew Emma was behind there. Madison was in the open, doing her best to draw my attention, which meant that Emma was doing something that needed the attention drawn away from her.

Right now, I was alongside another shipping container and the winch was only a few yards away. What seemed obvious about this situation, but wasn't?

Realising my mistake almost too late, I hooked the end of my staff under the side of the shipping container and flicked upward. It lurched over and fell on its side with a resounding crash; at the same time, Emma leaped off the top of it where she'd been almost in position to reach down and tag me, landing lightly several yards away.

"Good," she complimented me. "You're really starting to think on your feet. I like that."

This time, I didn't answer back. I was starting to learn. Instead, I prowled closer, keeping half an eye on Madison. Remaining at distance with Emma was a losing strategy; she'd already proven herself way too good with those damn throwing discs, so she had the ranged game all sewn up.

Almost negligently, she flicked one out at me now. I brought the staff up and around like she'd taught me, and managed to intercept it in midair; with a clang, the disc ricocheted back across the space between us, where she caught it out of the air like she'd meant to do it that way all along.

Which, of course, she had. Because she was that much of a smartass.

"Heads up!" boomed Madison. "Deadly poison gas incoming!" At the same time, I heard a hissing sound, and saw one of the hoses attached to her armour spewing a cloud of steam in my direction. This was one of the other ways she could tag me.

We all knew my force field would (probably) protect me from airborne hazards, but it would do nothing for any civilians that I was trying to protect. Which was why Madison had designed the staff like she had. I grasped the staff so that the oval cross-section faced one way in the upper section and the other way in the lower section, then began to spin the whole thing like an airplane propeller … or a fan. We'd theorised that if I spun it fast enough, the oval shape would act like an air-foil.

As the steam rolled toward me, I continued spinning the staff. Soon it was moving as fast as I could get my hands to respond, but I didn't know if that was fast enough. So I concentrated and tried to make it go faster.

That was when my vision blanked unexpectedly. It had done this a few times before, when I was about to do something that might actually hurt me. We'd figured that this was my power's way of protecting me, though I wasn't sure why it was doing it now.

Besides, being blind was a good way to get snuck up on, so I relaxed the need to spin the staff quite so fast. Right on cue, I could see again; the staff was still spinning in a blur in front of me, which was good. I would've hated for it to go propellering off into the harbour or something. Hastily looking around to see where the others were, I spotted Emma down on one knee, holding her hands over her ears. Madison wasn't going that far, but she was definitely enveloped in the same steam cloud she'd sent my way.

"What?" I asked, bringing the staff to a halt. "What did I just do?" Even as I asked the question, I heard a distant drawn-out k-kk-kkrakk-kk-k echoing from the buildings of Brockton Bay. It sounded like thunder, but the sky was clear of all but a few innocent white fluffballs of clouds. "What was that?"

"Sonic boom," Madison supplied helpfully. "You spun the staff so hard the ends broke the sound barrier."

"Loudly," added Emma, coming fluidly to her feet and taking her hands away from her ears. "Let's not forget the loudly aspect." She was talking a little nasally. "I think my eardrums just met in the middle of my head."

"Whoa, shit, sorry." I looked at the staff with concern. Just spinning it had hurt Emma, and I hadn't even touched her with it. "I did not know that would happen."

"I kind of thought it might, but not to that extent." Madison shrugged. "My bad. Should've warned you. Sorry."

"I'll be fine." Emma wiggled her pinky finger in her ear. "I recover real fast from this sort of shit. Five-minute break, and then we start again?"

"Sounds good to me." I found a bench-like section of the winch to sit down on. "I never saw you curve your discs like that before."

"Simple aerodynamics." She took a seat next to me. "Figuring out the rebound direction was harder. I really thought you'd go for high ground."

I wasn't at all surprised to have my 'trap' supposition confirmed. "Nearly did, but it felt too much like the obvious thing to do. And if it's obvious …"

"Then the other side's thought of it, too." Madison nodded. "Sun Tzu goes into this sort of thing a bit. I guess you could call it managing the expectations of your opponent. Don't just anticipate what he's going to do. Figure out what he thinks you're going to do, then use that to draw him into a trap of his own making."

"Yeah," Emma agreed. "If you can make the other guy think he's got you where he wants you, then he'll walk straight into the pit-trap and still be confident on the way down."

I raised an eyebrow. "I'm guessing it's not as easy as you're making it sound."

"Haha, hell no." Madison's booming chuckle rattled the deck slightly. "But it's worth studying books on strategy and tactics. Wellington's good for that."

"I've been reading up on Hannibal," Emma countered. "He had some good ideas, too. In fact—"

Whatever her 'in fact' was leading to would be forever lost to posterity, because just then another rumbling booooom echoed over the bay. I shared a glance with Emma, then stared out at the city. In the distance, literally miles away, I thought I saw something. "That wasn't another sonic boom, was it?"

"No. It wasn't." Madison was all business now. "That's a fireball from an explosion. I'm guessing a cape fight. One second, I'm going to check the scanner."

Emma vaulted to the top of the winch, then grabbed a dangling cable and went up it almost as fast as I could run on level ground. When she gained the top of the tower in the middle of the deck—I had no idea what it was called—she pulled a small pair of binoculars from a pouch and aimed them over toward the city.

"Cape fight, alright," she called down. "Something's on fire. Can't see who, but I can make a guess."

So could I. "Lung. ABB."

"And you win the prize." Madison nodded. "Some sort of boundary clash. The ABB's probably trying for a turf grab because the Empire's down a couple more members."

That made sense. The gangs sometimes tried to break their fellow capes out of holding but it rarely worked, so anytime anyone got captured, it altered the whole dynamic of the cape villain scene. Hookwolf was one of about three who had managed to escape once, and the only one who'd pulled it off twice. There were rumours on PHO that Armsmaster was trying to figure out how to pull off the Star Wars trick of freezing someone in carbonite for the next time they captured the homicidal cape. If it was true, I didn't blame him.

Lung, on the other hand, had never been captured. He was also the only cape who was known to escalate even harder than Hookwolf, until everything (and everyone) around him was in peril of catching fire due to his intense flames. Nor could he be worn down, because of his level of regeneration. The policy for dealing with a Lung fight was, after a certain point, to withdraw and let him go his way before he burned down everything.

The Real Thing had run into Hookwolf on the night Sophia had gone nuts and decided to murder Dad. Madison had curbstomped him and Stormtiger so badly that Hookwolf had fled rather than face her one-on-one after the aerokinetic went down for the count. They—that is, we—hadn't gone up against Lung yet, but that had only been for lack of opportunity.

Oh, look. Opportunity.

"So, what do you say, fearless leader?" Madison looked down at me. "Do we engage, or stay out of it?"

"If I said 'stay out of it', would you accept that?" I asked as Emma came down the cable, even faster than she'd gone up it.

"We would," Emma assured me. "You're the leader so if you make a call like that, we'll back you up all the way."

"But you want to engage, don't you?" I looked from Emma to Madison.

"Oh, hell yes." Madison chuckled and smacked her metal fist into her palm with a loud clack. "A fight that big, chances are Hooksy will be there, and I'm not finished beating his whiny little ass yet."

That was exactly what I wanted to hear. "Well, far be it from me to keep you from smacking Nazis around."

"We're doing this?" asked Emma.

I nodded. "We're totally doing this."

"Awesome."

<><>

Thirty Seconds Later

Armsmaster

This is a disaster.

The roiling flames from the gas station weren't getting any smaller; between that and the heat radiating off Lung, Colin could hear the cooling fans in his helmet and armour working overtime to keep the temperature down. This was one of the worst cape battles he'd ever had the misfortune to attend—aside from Endbringer battles, of course—and it didn't look like easing up any time soon.

Lung and the ABB had evidently decided that the loss of Stormtiger and Cricket meant the Empire was weak enough to be leaned on. Over the last few days, they'd escalated gradually with minor probes here and there, but never protracted enough for the Empire to mount a serious response. For some reason, Lung had apparently chosen to believe this meant he could just walk in and take an entire neighbourhood away from the Empire and Kaiser would do nothing.

This had not, in fact, been the case.

Right now, it was a stalemate, the normals sniping at each other from cover while Oni Lee teleported around the battlefield, sowing chaos (and grenades) wherever he went. Lung was going toe to toe with the remaining Empire big hitters, the less durable members hanging back and watching each other's backs.

Stalemate or not, Lung showed no signs of wanting to retreat or surrender. Already twelve feet tall, he was going hard at Fenja, Menja and Hookwolf, clearly seeking to kill at least one of them before the fight was done. For the Empire's part, Rune was doing overwatch with Crusader on the same block of concrete, with a cloud of rubble orbiting them. It seemed that people on both sides had decided that today, someone was going to die.

Colin had been the first on the scene, just before the gas station went up in a towering pillar of flame, but he'd wisely stayed back. While he rated his chances against any one (or two, in some cases) of these capes as pretty good, jumping in alone was just asking to be dogpiled and mobbed from all sides. So he'd done the smart thing: hung back and called for reinforcements.

"Blockade to Armsmaster," he heard over the channel reserved for affiliated teams. "Be advised, the Real Thing is inbound. We are coming in hot. Are there any friendlies in the combat zone, over?"

His eyes opened wide. He still hadn't fully assimilated the revelations about Blockade's true identity, and the thought of a petite teenage girl dropping into the middle of that meatgrinder was not one he wanted to entertain. "Negative, negative," he stated urgently. "Stay clear. I say again, stay clear. No civilians in immediate danger." He'd seen the gas station attendant bail out moments before the underground tanks went up, and the fire didn't appear to be spreading.

"Blockade here. Your warning has been taken under advisement. Incoming ETA zero-five seconds. Blockade, out."

As the signal cut out, he heard a vaguely familiar roaring sound. It became a lot more familiar when he looked up and saw Blockade's power armour passing overhead, travelling feet first with massive thruster plumes flaring down from the metal boots. As it plunged downward toward the battleground, two smaller figures detached from it.

The first, displaying the black bodysuit and flaring red hair of Firebird, leaped for a nearby rooftop that was currently populated with ABB footsoldiers. Her two throwing discs, tiny at this distance, flashed out while she was still in the air. He couldn't see what one of them did—it went out of sight over the rooftop she was heading for—but the other ricocheted its way into the middle of the cloud of debris around Rune's block of concrete.

The block lurched and began to meander downwards out of the sky; at the same time, all of Crusader's ghosts vanished. Firebird landed on the roof and Colin lost track of her. However, there were still two other members of the Real Thing in view.

He already knew Blockade, but he'd only seen imagery of the girl who'd replaced Shadow Stalker. Assault's report had called her Monochrome. Colin's best guess placed her as Taylor Hebert, bullying victim and daughter of Stalker's attempted murder victim. Her exact powers were still not very well known, though there was definitely a Brute and Shaker effect to them. Brute effects only counted for so much against Lung; after enough ramping up, his strength overcame almost anything. She was also carrying a staff, for all the good it would do her.

Blockade landed on top of Lung, cutting her thrusters and free-dropping the last twenty feet to drive him face-first into the destroyed roadway. By contrast, Monochrome came down between the currently twenty-foot-tall valkyrie twins (Colin only knew which was which because his HUD was keeping track) and smacked them each in the face with her staff in a blindingly fast move: first left and then right.

To his sheer astonishment, they both crumpled to the ground. No non-flier should be able to hit that hard and that fast without any leverage to speak of even once, and she'd done it twice. That they'd gone down hard didn't surprise him in the slightest; he'd felt the impacts from where he was. But how she'd done it didn't make sense.

He decided to puzzle over it later. Right now, despite the intrusion of the Real Thing, the battle was still ongoing. Or at least, Lung seemed ready to get up and keep fighting, unlike Fenja and Menja.

He fully expected Blockade to keep beating on Lung. After all, encased in her 'good steel', she was perhaps the most ideally situated to going mano-a-mano with the ABB leader. But a silent agreement seemed to pass between herself and Monochrome, and the two swapped opponents. Hookwolf, suddenly finding himself bereft of immediate support, ended up facing off against Blockade, while Lung clambered to his feet with Monochrome in front of him.

Or rather, Lung tried to clamber to his feet. Spinning the staff like it weighed nothing at all (and if it was made of good steel, that certainly wasn't the case) she smashed it down on his head then reversed the movement an instant later to strike him up under the chin. As with the double strike on Fenja and Menja, Colin felt the impacts from where he was.

The remainder of the Empire seemed to be backing off now, probably because four of their capes on site had been taken down in just a moment or two. It was also entirely possible that Hookwolf had told them just how dangerous Blockade was, and nobody wanted to tangle with 'him'. Certainly, Hookwolf himself was also trying to back off ... but Blockade wasn't letting him.

Lung wasn't down and out yet, though his fire seemed to be flickering. Even as he struggled to get to his feet again (Colin had no idea how many broken bones the man might be trying to heal at once there, but he was going with 'lots'), Monochrome got behind him and snaked her slim arm around his neck. She could barely reach, and should have had zero leverage, but he immediately began to choke and claw uselessly at her arm. Despite the fact that his muscular neck was plated with metal scales, Colin could see that she was depressing the scales and squeezing his throat until his eyes bulged out.

Hookwolf was faring little better. Every time he tried to break away, Blockade literally picked him up and smashed him overarm into the ground. No matter what metallic extensions he tried to grow, every ruthless, brutal impact shattered more and more of the hooks and blades from him. Watching the ongoing curbstomp, Colin felt sympathy for the Empire cape ... almost.

And then, Oni Lee landed on the ground in front of Colin. Bloody and battered, half his mask broken away, his right arm lying limp and useless on the ground, he lay there panting. Around his neck was locked a very familiar-looking cuff, near-twin to the one Colin had last seen decorating Shadow Stalker's ankle. Firebird, also looking a little the worse for wear, scaled down the side of the building and dropped to the ground next to the ABB assassin. "Hey. Present for you."

Colin stared. To his personal knowledge, nobody had ever landed a significant hit on Oni Lee, much less taken him down so thoroughly. Firebird bore marks of battle and from the way she was moving would be bruised tomorrow, but she had definitely gotten the better of the engagement.

"... how?" he demanded. "Why isn't he teleporting?"

Firebird shrugged. "According to Blockade, good steel doesn't allow dimensional shenanigans."

That made no sense whatsoever. But as Colin looked over the recent battlefield, deserted on one side by the normal members of the ABB and on the other side by the Empire Eighty-Eight, he had to admit that it still wasn't the strangest thing he'd experienced that day.

As the PRT sirens got closer, he looked over at where a pair of teenage girls had just beaten the absolute crap out of two of Brockton Bay's most feared capes (well, choked out in Lung's case), and shook his head.

With the advent of this new version of the Real Thing, life was getting interesting in Brockton Bay.

Part 24