A Darker Path Pt 49 (Patreon)

Consultations

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

Relevant Side Story: Epiphany

Panacea

"Why are we coming back here again?" asked Vicky, as they came in for a landing at Westlake Park. "Doesn't Atropos have some other place you could meet?"

"Yeah, she does," Amy agreed, recalling the rendezvous where she'd shown her mushroom baby to the dark-clad cape. "But I think she prefers this one." Maybe as a reminder to you that attacking her is a bad idea, she carefully didn't say. Though from the way Vicky's eyes flicked to the remains of the picnic table and away again, she probably didn't have to.

"Okay, so why are we here?" Vicky let Amy down onto her feet and looked around. "And where is she, anyway? I had stuff I wanted to do."

"What, like ghosting Dean?" snarked Atropos from behind them both.

Amy had been prepared for something like that, but Vicky clearly had not. "Fuck!" she squawked, shooting two feet into the air and spinning around to glare at Atropos and her companion. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"I didn't sneak up." Atropos was the very picture of innocence, even going so far as to place her spread fingers on her chest. "Did we sneak up?" she asked the girl beside her. Amy didn't know who she was; street clothing, dark hair with a red streak, and a pink cloth mask didn't give many clues away.

"Pfft, no." The other girl seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. "Maybe Glory Girl needs to spend less time talking and more time listening."

"That's not funny," grumped Vicky. "Anyway, who are you?"

"You can call me Cherish," the girl said promptly. "Reformed supervillain, and minion to Atropos. Pleased to meet you." She stuck out her hand.

"Oh." Vicky blinked. "Same … I guess?" Tentatively, she shook Cherish's hand. "Where do I know that name from?"

"My father was Heartbreaker," Cherish explained cheerfully. "Atropos broke his hold over me, then murdered him gruesomely in front of me. Life's been amazing ever since."

Amy restrained herself from rolling her eyes, though she also had to work to keep from grinning at the look of bogglement on her sister's face. "Okay, enough messing with Vicky's worldview. You were pretty damn cryptic when you messaged me. What's this about?"

Atropos swung the pack off her back, then unzipped it and hefted out a garbage bin liner bag holding something small but bulky. "Nilbog," she confided, opening the bag to let out an odour that had Vicky backing up and gagging, and Cherish looking a little green herself. Inside the bag was a misshapen creature that had certainly seen better days, if the state of the back of its skull was any indication. "This is one of his creatures. They've all got the same basic genetic code as he does. I need you to make me two different diseases, designed to attack his gene code and only his gene code."

Nilbog. The Goblin King. Everything became a whole lot clearer to Amy. "Ah. I can … I can do that. But why two diseases? Why not just one?"

"Because presentation." As Atropos went on to explain, Amy found herself nodding along. As much as she wanted to dislike Atropos, the girl always came up with interesting concepts.

<><>

The Household of Gerald O'Dwyer

Brockton Bay

"Gerry! Phone for you!"

With a grunt, Gerry heaved himself up from his armchair. Patched and decrepit it may be, with stuffing leaking out in places, it was still comfortable. "Thanks, love," he said to Maria as she passed the handset over. Putting the phone to his ear, he leaned against the back of his chair. "You've got Gerry."

"Good afternoon, Mr O'Dwyer. I represent the Brockton Bay Betterment Committee, and your name is on a list of Dockworkers' Association members provided to me by Danny Hebert. Would you be interested in an ongoing work contract? The pay rate starts at twenty-two fifty per hour, and goes up from there. Paid vacations, automatic healthcare insurance, and sick leave included. And union rules throughout, of course."

Gerry blinked. "I … what would you be having me doing? It sounds too good to be true, so it does."

The household budget had been in a long, slow spiral since the last work Hebert had been able to get for him; they'd cut costs where they could, but it was ever a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The first stimulus payment had bailed them out of a nasty hole where the landlord had been getting more and more pushy about back rent, and he'd heard there was a second one on the way. However, a stimulus was not a pay-packet.

"Infrastructure work. If you've got heavy machinery tickets, that'll mean a pay rise. If you're willing to work nights, that will too. And there will be training courses for getting qualified in other machinery, if you're interested."

Every word rang in Gerry's ears like a silver bell in the hands of an angel. "Where do I sign?"

"Present yourself at the Brockton Bay Betterment Committee offices tomorrow, at two PM. The relevant paperwork will be ready for you to peruse and sign. Good day to you, Mr O'Dwyer." The call ended.

Gerry stared at the phone, then slowly put it back on the cradle. "Well, I'll be eternally damned, with hellfire and pitchforks."

"What? Who was it?" His wife stood anxiously in the kitchen door. "Was it one of those gangs?" He'd once considered the idea of joining a villain gang as a minion, just to bring some money in to tide them over, but she'd talked him out of it. "I thought they weren't around anymore."

"No, love, it wasn't them." Grabbing her, he spun her around, then kissed her on the forehead. "I'm getting work from the Betterment Committee! Good, honest, well-paying work! At least twenty-two an hour!"

"Oh, my. My goodness." She gasped, her hand going to her mouth. "It's a miracle."

"That it is, love. That it is."

<><>

A Little Later

Director Piggot's Office

Emily laced her fingers together and leaned forward. "Captain Reeves, what else did Atropos say about the possibility of a sit-down meeting with her?"

Reeves frowned in recollection. "As I recall, ma'am, she said that we would get together for a meeting, and that we're more or less on the same page anyway."

"So, is now a good time?" asked Atropos, stepping out from behind Reeves.

"Jesus!" Reeves lunged away from her, his hand going for his sidearm, then arresting the motion just as quickly. "Please, don't do that to me. I don't need any more grey hairs."

Emily, on the other hand, managed to control her reaction to a twitch of her fingers. "Yes, we get it," she said acidly. "You can show up anywhere, with impeccable timing. Can we dispense with the theatrics now?"

Atropos inclined her head respectfully. "Absolutely. Nice to meet you, by the way. When I said I was a big fan of your work, I wasn't being facetious." She pulled a chair toward herself and sat down, crossing one leg over the other. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

Taking up the papers on her desk, Emily made a show of straightening them to gain a few extra seconds to think. She'd encountered many other dangerous capes during her career, but only one with a death toll that exceeded Atropos', especially in such a short time. And none who had killed such dark luminaries as Jack Slash, the Butcher, or the motherfucking goddamn Simurgh.

With every other cape she knew, the knowledge that they were so lethal all too often translated into a certain amount of attitude, if not outright arrogance. I could kill everyone in the room before you could blink. Not many of them actually said it, but she knew they were thinking it.

But not Atropos. There she was, large as life and (as far as Emily could tell) the genuine article, and there was none of that from her. This wasn't to say she couldn't project menace—the footage of the way she'd dismantled the Slaughterhouse Nine always raised the hairs on the back of Emily's neck—but here and now, she was deliberately choosing to be unthreatening.

We damn sure couldn't force her to sit in that chair if she didn't want to be there. That was the absolute, unalloyed truth. Emily had no doubt about it.

But she was there now. Emily took a deep breath. "I'd like to talk about acquiring your services. Like Mouse Protector did."

"I'm listening." Atropos reached out and clasped her hands around her knee. "Who do you want Ended, and what are you proposing to pay?"

Deep in the back of her mind, Emily got the impression that she was reading lines that had been prepared for her, but she pushed forward anyway. It wasn't the weirdest feeling she'd gotten from being near a cape, not by a long shot. "I want Nilbog dead, and I'm willing to offer ten percent of the budget we would've put toward keeping Ellisburg secure for the next ten years. Just as you arranged for the other two Endbringers." The 'other two' Endbringers. Jesus Christ. It was almost possible to forget that she was sitting in the same room as the person who had almost casually disposed of the Simurgh … until it wasn't.

Atropos nodded thoughtfully. "Sure, I can do that. But I'll be doing it my way."

"Your way?" asked Reeves. "What does that mean?"

Emily honestly couldn't have cared less how Atropos did it, so long as that motherfucker ended up as dead as Jack Slash, the Butcher and the Simurgh. Wear a pink tutu and dance him to death; I don't give a fuck.

"Same as Coil, Kaiser, Lung and Skidmark," Atropos said. "I'll go into Ellisburg and give him a warning face-to-face that he's got twenty-four hours to surrender to the PRT, or I come back and kill him."

Emily blinked. "You're actually going to give that monster a chance to surrender?"

Atropos shrugged. "He's theoretically capable of listening to reason, so yes. Once he's out of there—I will specify no tricks and no booby-traps—you can lock him away in supermax, and feed his creations over the wall until they all die of old age, in about ten years' time. Also, if he surrenders, you don't have to pay me."

"Do you honestly think he's likely to surrender?" asked Reeves.

"Honestly? The reality he's living in only touches on ours here and there," Atropos said. "He might, but I sure as hell wouldn't bet on it." She turned toward Emily. "So, do we have a deal?"

Emily tried hard not to frown, in case Atropos took offence. She wanted the girl just to march on in and gun down Nilbog with no quarter given, but the world was good at not giving her what she wanted. Still, between the options of Nilbog surrendered into custody and Nilbog dead, they were both a hell of a lot better than leaving him in Ellisburg to hatch his plans.

Also, as Atropos had stated, he was exceedingly unlikely to surrender, so there was that.

"Very well," Emily stated. "It's a deal."

"Awesome." Atropos nodded, and Emily again got the impression that some obscure script had been followed through to its inevitable conclusion. "Was there anything else?"

"Yes." Emily had told herself she would ask this question. "The other Endbringers. When are you going to be killing them?"

"Oh, I've already dealt with them." Atropos glanced from Emily to Reeves and back to Emily. "Their threat is Ended. To borrow a classic cliché, which probably never got used in real life, Leviathan sleeps with the fishes, and Behemoth is taking a dirt nap." She let go her knee and dusted her hands off theatrically. "You can ask Dragon if you want."

Reeves blinked. "Uh … just like that? That was it? They're done?" The bewilderment in his voice would've made Emily smile if she herself hadn't been feeling so unbalanced.

Atropos had faced off against the Simurgh and had contrived to kill her in a way both theatrical and understated. The world had marvelled; Emily had actually smiled. At home, in the privacy of her bedroom, but she'd smiled. But to kill the other two and then make such a casual deal of it …

… well, that really was Atropos all over, wasn't it? She didn't seek glory, and in any case, how much more could people celebrate her for killing the other two visibly and openly? Her entire oft-stated goal was to make Brockton Bay a safe, prosperous city to live in, and she'd done exactly that.

A small part of Emily's mind boggled at exactly how many people had had to die in order to make that vision a reality. Another, larger, part was much more cynical about it. There were a lot of assholes standing between us and having nice things.

Atropos chuckled. "Well, if you could get to where they were, I guess you could check for a pulse. But the proof of the pudding, as they say. The next attack is due mid-May. If nothing's happened by the end of June, would you consider that good enough, Director?"

Emily got the impression that Atropos was bending over backward to be nice. If she insisted that the Endbringers were dead and that Emily and Reeves had to take her word for it, there wouldn't be much they could do to protest. As it was, the timing had been gradually creeping up, so missing an attack by a month and a half would definitely signify that something hugely drastic had happened to them.

And, of course, that 'something hugely drastic' was currently sitting in her office.

Slowly, Emily nodded. "I personally do not doubt you, but we'll do it that way. If there hasn't been an Endbringer attack by twenty-three fifty-nine on June thirtieth, it'll be official. We'll announce the deaths of Leviathan and Behemoth then."

Atropos chuckled. "There are gonna be so many people with hangovers on July the second."

Emily didn't doubt her for an instant. The party for the demise of the Simurgh had been impressive enough, in the same way that an earthquake or a tsunami was impressive. For something so dramatic … they'd earned it. I might even get my kidneys healed, just so I can get shitfaced with the rest of the guys.

"So, is it true you're getting Australia's version of the Medal of Honor, too?" asked Reeves, apparently starting to relax now that the serious questions were over. Atropos was absolutely getting the Medal of Honor. There wasn't even a question about it.

Atropos nodded. "Yeah. They call it 'Companion of the Order of Australia'. The United Kingdom is giving me a Victoria Cross. Some people were saying I shouldn't get it because I'm not a soldier, but then everyone else told them very politely to shut the hell up, because I killed the bloody Simurgh." For the last four words, she affected a crisp British accent, drawing a startled bark of laughter out of Reeves. "Anyway, all this stuff is coming to the Betterment Committee, probably because they figure the Committee knows how to get in touch with me. Which they do."

Emily tilted her head. "Are there any other villains on the way here?"

"Yup." Atropos didn't hesitate with her confirmation. "A few idiots, and some not so much idiots. But it's okay. I got this." She raised her hand. "Good talk. We should do it more often. Toodles." With a snap of the fingers, she just … vanished.

Emily did nothing for a good fifteen seconds; at one point, she glanced behind herself, then relaxed fractionally when she found nobody there. "I think she's gone," she said at last.

Reeves drew a deep breath. "It was slightly less nerve-wracking to talk to her before she killed the Endbringers," he admitted.

Emily snorted. Ya think? "What's your read on what she said? Do you think there's any chance she's pulling some elaborate prank on us?" That Atropos might just be lying to aggrandise herself in their eyes was not something she even bothered considering. Killing the Simurgh on live footage was a spectacular way of establishing her bona fides, vis-à-vis the ability to kill Endbringers.

"No." Reeves shook his head. "There's no point, and there's no payoff I can think of. Besides, she opted to give us all that time to make sure of it ourselves. If there's anyone's word I will absolutely take about whether or not they killed someone, it's Atropos."

"True. She might be irritatingly playful in some ways, but I don't believe that's one of the ways. If Atropos says that she Ended something or someone, they are Ended." Emily nodded to Reeves. "Thank you for your time. Dismissed."

"Ma'am." He turned and went to the door. Opening it, he stepped through and closed it behind himself.

Emily sat watching the door, thinking. She said there were more on the way, but that she had it under control. Idiots and not so much idiots. The 'idiots' are probably the Fallen, but who are the others?

She sighed. It would become clear in time, or it wouldn't. Such was the life of the regional Director of the PRT ENE.

All she knew for a fact was that if they came to Brockton Bay uninvited and refused to surrender to the PRT or leave … they would die.

That was just how things went these days.

<><>

In a Motorhome, West of Boston

Sundancer

"Oh. Ohh, man." Krouse rubbed his forehead, then winced. "Luke, did you slip hash brownies into my food again? My head feels weird."

"Nope." Luke shook his head. "We were just driving along last night, and all of a sudden you and Cody and Noelle started babbling about how you could hear colours and taste sounds or some bullshit like that, so I got you out from behind the wheel and we pulled over. You've only just come out of it."

"What, nobody else got hit by whatever it was?" asked Krouse. "That's bullshit."

"No, no, we all felt something," Marissa hastened to say, anxious to calm him down. He could be a total epic troll if he felt he was being disrespected. "But I just felt a bit woozy then afterwards I took a walk, and everything was good. Better than good, actually. Like I'm seeing properly for the first time in forever."

Krouse blinked and rubbed his eyes. "Well, I'll be damned," he breathed. "You're right. It is like I'm seeing straight for the first time when before I didn't know which way was up."

"Well, that's not exactly uncommon for you," snarked Cody, showing up in the doorway. Marissa could see Krouse gathering spite for a comeback—

—then Cody shook his head. "Sorry, sorry. That was a reflex. I've got about a million of those stored up in my head to use on you, and now I have no idea why. I mean, we're all in this together, right?"

Krouse blinked. Luke blinked. Marissa blinked.

"What … the fuck?" That was Luke. "Cody, when you went under, you didn't hit your head, did you?"

"I don't … think … so?" Cody rubbed his hand over his head. "No sore spots, no lumps." He turned back to Krouse. "We've had our differences in the past, but truce until we figure this out?"

Krouse nodded slowly. "Yeah. That's a good idea. And while we're doing a confessional, I just want to say that I've been a totally shit leader, this last year. I made sooo many bad decisions."

Luke raised his eyebrows. "Who are you, and what've you done with Krouse?" Marissa could tell he was only half joking. The confession was a little startling to her as well.

"I'm still me, but like Mars said, I can see a lot better now." Krouse took a deep breath. "I think we should go to Brockton Bay."

"No!" shouted Marissa, Luke and Cody at once. Jess, farther back in the motorhome, added her negatory to the chorus.

Noelle, down at the back of the motorhome, called out, "What?"

"Krouse still thinks we should go to Brockton Bay!" Cody called back over his shoulder.

"Tell him no!" she replied, loudly enough for Marissa to hear.

"We are not kidnapping Great and Terrible Aisha to force Atropos to take Noelle's power away," Marissa told him sternly.

"Or holding the Mayor for ransom," Luke added.

"Or any of your other stupid fucking plans that involve kidnapping people inside the city belonging to the girl who ganked Jack Slash and expecting her not to kill us," Cody concluded. "Sorry, man. But those plans were fucking moronic."

"Yeah, I know." Krouse rubbed his hand over his eyes. "I know. I got it. Those were phenomenally idiotic plans. But I've got one that might actually work out." He beamed at them cheerfully.

Luke and Cody stared back, deadpan. Marissa wondered if she should say something.

"Just ask him and get it over with!" yelled Jess.

Cody huffed. "Okay, fine. What's your brilliant plan, genius?"

"Yeah, okay, I deserved that," Krouse allowed. "My plan is, we pull up just short of the city limits, then we call ahead and get into contact with Atropos, and we ask very politely if we can come in, or if she can come meet us, whichever works for her, and then we offer to pool all our money—except for basic expenses, yeah?—and donate it all to the Betterment Committee. You know, the one that's been handling the bounty for Jack Slash. And in return, she kills Noelle's power."

Luke and Cody stared at each other, then at Marissa. Then they all stared at Krouse.

Jess came into view, wheeling her way down the narrow corridor. "Okay," she said, "who are you, and what've you done with our idiot leader?"

"I want to know that too." Cody spread his hands. "That was actually kind of brilliant. And I'm not even being sarcastic."

"It's a good plan," Marissa said. "I mean, a really good plan."

"You mean, a great plan." Luke clapped Krouse on the shoulder. "I love it."

"What?" called Noelle from the far end of the motorhome. "I can't hear what you're saying!"

"We're going to Brockton Bay!" Marissa called back as Krouse slipped back into the driver's seat and started the engine.

"What? I could've sworn you said we're going to Brockton Bay!"

"We are!" Jess yelled. "Krouse had a great plan!"

"When did that happen?"

"Damned if I know, but it happened!"

Part 50