Reality Intrudes Pt 14 (Patreon)

Poking the Bear

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

Morrigan

I'm just deciding which way I'll go—either Downtown and kick the shit out of Coil, or to the Trainyards so I can explain to Skidmark why he shouldn't sell drugs to high school kids, using extreme percussion as a teaching aid—when my phone rings. Taking it out, I flick it open. "Is there a problem?"

"Maybe. Got one of their 'superheroes' closing on your position. The guy with the armour fetish and the halberd. Might want to make yourself scarce." Loki doesn't even sound mocking, right now.

"Armsmaster. Right. Got it." I close the phone and pocket it again.

Just for a moment, I consider not being here when the guy shows up, but seriously? If he's all that as a superhero, if he leads a whole bunch of these 'capes' at all effectively, how the fuck are they letting both a white-supremacist and an Asian supremacist supervillain gang just walk around like they own the place? I wonder if anyone ever asks him questions like this, or do they just let crap slide all the time, because superheroes can do no wrong or some shit like that.

Ask me about my deep and abiding respect for the forces of law and order. Go ahead, ask me.

I hear the motorbike before I see it. It's got a deep rumbling quality about the engine that says to me that it's tuned to go from zero to insane in three point one seconds. The online sites say that Armsmaster has rejiggered this thing from the ground up to his own personal specs, and from what I can see when he rolls around the corner, they're not far wrong.

Lung sits up, groaning, just as Armsmaster rolls to a halt. There's a glance in my direction, but the superhero's attention is all on the guy who took a motorbike in the teeth and survived. I mean, he's not wrong, but I do feel a little slighted.

Just in case he's got some kind of fancy facial recognition in that helmet of his, I've put on the shades I bought the previous day, over my glasses. The PRT already has Taylor in their sights; there's no reason to verify their suspicions. I had considered putting a scarf over my face or something similar, but that would make it damn clear that I'm trying to hide my identity, which would only serve to draw more attention.

He unlimbers his halberd—ooh, nice, it actually unfolds, with a very techy-sounding series of clicks and clacks—and jabs Lung with the tip. Doesn't stabbify him with it, even though Lung's lost a lot of weight in the last few minutes and doesn't have his scales anymore. The tip just touches him, and I'm pretty sure I hear a hiss, like a pressurised system.

Lung jerks away from him and climbs to his feet, but Armsmaster just jabs him again. There's a second hiss. This time, when Lung takes a step, he stumbles. From the fuzzy look in his eyes, he's not connecting all the dots right now. Then he takes two more steps toward Armsmaster—who backs up out of the way—and falls flat on his face.

Buck-ass naked, I have to say. No pants to be seen, which kind of makes sense. He probably doesn't shop at the same place the Hulk does, for Big and Purple Pants for All Occasions.

Once Lung starts to snore, Armsmaster turns toward me. He doesn't put the halberd away, which indicates that he's not entirely sure about my intentions.

Okay, so he's not a total idiot.

That opinion gets revised real quick, when he opens his mouth. "You gonna fight me?"

I'd been intending to get his measure before vanishing into the shadows—hey, on a superhero world, you do what superheroes do—but mainly in a non-violent manner. However, that question just plain pushes all my buttons. It's a challenge I can't pass up.

I work my neck, popping it one way and then the other. "Already kicked the asses of two masked idiots tonight. Might as well make it three for three."

Armsmaster brings up his halberd, aiming the tip at me. I take in everything about him, every aspect of his stance and his balance, and of the fact that two tiny prongs are now protruding from the tip of the weapon, where there previously had been a needle. He's good—I'll give him that, he's very good—but someone should maybe inform him that he's got tells when he's about to unload that halberd at someone.

There's the slightest twitch in his right arm, barely noticeable under the armour, and I leap up and over the crackling stream of electricity that he's just tried to nail me with. Kudos for the wireless taser; someone expecting a big-ass bladed weapon would be caught totally unawares by that. If that someone wasn't me, of course.

As he tries to sweep the thing up to catch me, I come down on it with both heels. He's strong, and the armour adds some power to his moves, but even my (lack of) weight landing on it does force it downward. And then it's all over bar the shouting, because now I've got my hands on him, and I also have a ton of momentum behind me. Getting a good grip on his arm and helmet and using him as a fulcrum, I swing around then up and over, throwing him off balance. He staggers wildly, his armour's servos whining audibly, and throws out his other arm in an attempt to regain his equilibrium, but it's far too late.

I'm cheating, of course. I probably mass one-fifth of what he does in the armour, and that's being generous. But in the Matrix, I don't do what physics says. When I'm jacked in, physics is my bitch, and that's particularly true in this specific server. So if I decide I'm going to use some bullshit martial-arts trickery to toss a power-armoured superhero around like a rag doll, that's what's going to happen.

Keeping a good grip on his armour, I plant my feet on the ground, and perform a gorgeous shoulder throw. He lets out a startled yell as he briefly goes airborne, then slams down hard on his back. That armour would have to be padded, right? Right.

There's gonna be some dents in the armour—and the asphalt—but it's not my armour and not my asphalt.

Going up onto my knees on top of him, I haul off and deliver a strike straight down into the front of his helmet. Not hard enough to shatter his skull and kill him—he hasn't done anything to deserve that—but definitely enough to utterly fuck up any computer-driven analysis software and recording system he might have in there. As an added bonus, it'll kill any HUD he's got running, so if he was cheating with low-light vision, tough. It's back to Mark One Eyeball for Mama Armsmaster's little boy.

I step off him and stand up. On the way over to where he parked his bike, I pull out my phone.

"Operator. Wow, you really do make friends and influence people wherever you go, don't you?"

"It's part of my inimitable charm," I say blandly. "So, what security and tracking does he have on his wheels, and how do I disable that?"

Because of course I'm going to steal his damn bike. I've been wanting to ride it since I saw it. And I know for a cast-iron fact that I'll be able to get better performance out of it than he can.

"In case you were wondering, the Captain just facepalmed," Loki says with the kind of glee that comes from knowing he's not the one who's going to be in trouble. Meh; some things are just worth it. "Sending a schematic to your phone."

I've been counting on this: he could have cock-blocked me from doing what I really wanted to do, but then I won't get in nearly as much trouble. My phone chimes as the schematic arrives, and I study it carefully. There are three separate trackers, plus two override units that Armsmaster will be able to use to take control altogether, one disguised as a power junction. But first I'll have to take care of the remote immobiliser; otherwise it'll all be for nothing.

I grin. Piece of cake.

<><>

Armsmaster

Colin groaned and sat up, shaking his head. There were tinkling noises inside his helmet when he did this, which didn't give him a good feeling about matters. Cracks radiated across his visor, and the entire HUD was down. This wasn't much of a surprise, given that the rest of the helmet was down as well.

Lung was still unconscious, which was a bonus, and Oni Lee lay nearby. Colin thought the latter was alive, but after the extremely brief encounter he'd had with the parahuman who'd taken the ABB capes down, he wasn't so sure. Someone who could hit so hard as to wreck his helmet (any harder, and he would've been wearing his HUD as an involuntary implant) could certainly kill someone with a punch or a kick, either accidentally or deliberately.

He looked around toward where he'd left his bike; to his shock, he saw the parahuman still there, crouching by the bike. As he watched, squinting in the dimness, she pulled a component out and dropped it on the ground. Shock combined with outrage as he realised that she'd just removed the second remote override module, the one that looked just like any other part of the bike. Already on the ground were the primary override, the immobiliser and the voice command module.

As of ten seconds ago, the most he'd be able to do with his bike would be to track it. Okay, I can do that. Just play possum until she's gone, then call in the cavalry. She can't fight us all.

Then she smacked that panel closed, opened another one, and plucked out one of the trackers.

Christ, how the hell did she know how to do that?

Just waiting for her to leave was no longer an option; from the way she was going, she'd have his bike totally anonymous before too long. The halberd wasn't lying too far away, so he reached out for it. While the primary teleport-retrieval trigger had been in the currently-defunct helmet—and if that wasn't a wake-up call about not having everything controlled via the HUD, he didn't know what was—he had a secondary haptic control in his right gauntlet. Flexing his fingers in the coded pattern, he tapped the side of his index finger twice with his thumb, then waited. One second later, the halberd vanished from where it was lying and reappeared in his hand.

The cape didn't seem to notice, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. She'd found the second tracker while he was deciding what to do. From the way she was going, he had zero faith in the idea that she might not know where the third one was, or how to emergency-start the bike.

He'd put far too much time and effort into making the bike the fastest thing on the road to simply lie there and let her ride off on it. More to the point, there was no way in hell he was going to allow some no-name cape to boost his goddamn motorcycle. Brute or no Brute, he would take her down.

Rolling over, he triggered the wireless taser again. She was crouched by the bike, with nowhere to go. The girl was good—he would be the first to admit that—but he was better.

He could've sworn she was looking in entirely the wrong direction, but between the triggering of the taser and the emission of the charge, she vaulted over the bike, evading the shot altogether. Sitting up with a surge of adrenaline, he used the halberd to vault himself to his feet, a little trick he'd been practicing for just this sort of moment. The moment he was upright, he brought the halberd around to try for another shot. If she tried to close with him, he was going to activate the plasma blade, to hell with continuum-of-force guidelines.

Instead, she swung her leg over the bike, and hit the high beams. He hadn't realised she'd compromised its systems that far, and regretted not anticipating it. This close, the tweaked halogen bulbs produced a wall of light that his unassisted visor did exactly zilch to mitigate; he could barely even see his own hand as he brought it up to shield himself against the light.

In the next second, the bike engine kicked over, and he swore luridly. She's fucking getting away! Leaping forward, going off memory, he swung the halberd in a wide sweep, activating the plasma mode as he did so. The possibility of wrecking the bike, something that he'd been quietly concerned about, had ceased to be an issue. Stopping the cape was more of a priority.

The blade hit and sheared through something, which clattered to the ground. Unfortunately, the receding sound of the engine informed him that whatever he'd hit, it wasn't her or the bike. By the time his vision cleared, both she and it were gone, though the parking meter he'd hit was still glowing orange at the cut.

As he stood there in frustration, fists clenched around the halberd, he became aware of wheezing, painful laughter. He looked around to find Oni Lee lying on the grimy asphalt, laughing at him through half a mask. Lee had been shot at least twice, and didn't seem inclined to move, but he was showing his bloodstained teeth in a painful grin.

"She … got … us … all … good," he managed. Colin honestly wasn't sure if the man didn't know much English, or if this was due to the injuries he'd suffered at the hands of the just-departed cape; either way, this was the longest speech he'd heard out of Oni Lee, ever.

"Oh, shut up," he said irritably. Fortunately, he'd anticipated the possibility of his helmet radio going out of action, so he'd taken to carrying around a phone. Fumbling the earpiece cord out from its niche in the bottom edge of the helmet was a little tricky, but he managed it, and plugged the phone in.

He spent the few seconds until the call went through wondering exactly how he was going to explain this away. There was no way he wanted to just come out and admit that he'd been beaten up then let his assailant get away with the bike, but as that was what had technically happened, he was probably going to have to just downplay it. A lot.

"You've reached the PRT hotline, how may we help you?"

Colin sighed. The number he was using was supposed to patch him straight through to PRT Ops, and from there he could be forwarded on to the Deputy Director's office. Instead, the program had screwed up—again—and dumped him into the hotline queue. "This is Armsmaster, verification Alpha-Simurgh-Two-Delta-Ellisburg-Zulu-Three. I need a priority line to Operations." Now that he'd spoken that out loud with people potentially listening in, that would be automatically changed. He'd have to go and find out what the new code was as soon as he was finished with the debriefing over this incident.

"Wait one minute, sir …" He heard the rattle of keys as she undoubtedly entered the verification string he'd given her. "Verification accepted, sir. Are you on a secure line?"

"No, I am not." He could mod up the phone all he liked, but at the end of the day it was still a cellphone. "I will not be discussing any classified information." Such as secret identities, or PRT operating procedures.

"Understood, sir. Patching you through now."

A moment later, the background noise on the line changed, and a man's voice answered. "Operations. What can we do for you, Armsmaster?"

He let out an aggravated sigh. This was the part that threatened to hurt more than the actual fight, or even the defeat. "I need a pickup from Casey Street and Church Avenue. Myself and two prisoners. Oni Lee is suffering GSW and other potential injuries, and Lung has been tranquillised. I'm uncertain as to how long he'll take to metabolise what I used on him."

There was a few seconds of silence. "… understood. Transport for two prisoners plus yourself." Another pause, and he knew what was coming next. "Uh … what about your bike?"

He gritted his teeth. "It's a long, long story."

Despite the curiosity he could feel radiating from the other end of the line, the man was professional enough to not push it. "Copy that. Van dispatched, with medical supplies and cape escort."

"Understood. I'll stand by here."

Ending the call, he was left with his thoughts, as dark and frustrated as they were.

Who the hell was that, and how did she break into my bike so easily?

He would bring her in, he promised himself, and then he'd get some answers.

Because if he didn't fix this shit post-haste, he knew those above him would start asking questions about his fitness for running the ENE Protectorate team; questions he couldn't afford to have people ask.

<><>

Morrigan

I was right. It's a fuckin' amazing bike.

I'm tooling through the streets of Brockton Bay on top of a monster machine that was built to do one thing, and do it well: carry four to five hundred pounds of man and armour across town in the shortest possible time. With only eighty pounds of me on board, the power to weight ratio just hit the 'fuck, yeah' range, and I'm having the time of my life. My one regret is that Taylor doesn't have any place to keep it; I'm pretty sure that even Danny would notice if I stuck it in the back yard with a tarp over it and a sign saying, 'NOTHING TO SEE HERE'.

But I mean, come on. The guy literally challenged me to a fight. He was totally asking for it. I should've taken his halberd too, but I don't actually have anyplace to carry it. Besides, I don't think we've got any halberd training scenarios in the skill uploads. Though if we could take stuff out of the Matrix, I'd totally have it mounted over my bunk.

Oh, well. If he wants to be a dick about it the next time I see him, I'll just take his bike again. He kind of strikes me as the type of person who's in urgent need of having a stick extracted from his ass. A little bit of humility goes a long way. Of course, in my case it goes a long way in the other direction from me, glancing back nervously as it goes.

However, I haven't just been beating up people at random. Nor have I decided to go native; all this has been for a good reason. (Well, as far as I'm concerned, violence isn't the answer to problems. Violence is the question, and the answer is 'yes'.)

This has all been part of my fact-finding mission. Kicking over anthills is the best way to make a lot of ants start running around madly, and Loki and Hornblower will be gathering a ton of data while I'm smacking bad guys and having fun. It's honestly a win-win situation. But sad to say, the need for egregious violence is coming to an end. Just one or two more, and I'll be moving on to the next phase.

I'm still tossing up which of the bad guys to go and ruin the night of—Coil, who honestly sounds kind of boring, or Skidmark, who sounds like I'd want about three showers just to get over meeting him and who's barely a gang leader anyway—when my choice is made for me. Directly ahead of me, a bunch of lizard-rhino-dog things gallop on through the intersection, with four teenagers riding astride. All in costume, all with that subtle air of 'don't give a fuck' that gives me the strong impression that they absolutely do give a fuck, and desperately want you to give a fuck, but insist on pretending that they don't give a fuck.

Because teenagers.

All of which also gives me the strong impression that they're not four members of the local Junior Superhero Chamber of Commerce, out for a midnight charity ride.

Long story short, these are villains.

I catch sight of a tall guy all in black, with a skull-faced helmet—he glances over at me, then pulls a double-take that should've popped every vertebra in his neck—and a memory pings, from one of the PHO files. They're past the intersection by the time I get there, but I don't care. Laying the bike way over, I drift it around the corner to the sweet, sweet smell of burning rubber, then open her out on the straight again. Pulling out my phone, I call Loki.

"Operator. Are you trying to get yourself put on the Most Wanted list? Not that you don't belong there, I mean."

I cut him off. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Who's that ahead of me?"

His keyboard rattles briefly. "Those would be the Undersiders. Smash-and-grab teenage villains. Reputation for escaping and evading."

"Cool, thanks." I hang up. As good as I am, I'm going to need both hands for this. They've got a rep for escaping and evading, huh?

Challenge accepted.