Earning Her Stripes Pt 28 (Patreon)

Stupid Prizes

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

Later That Evening

Monochrome

"Okay," Emma said. "We have a potential problem."

They were sitting in the living room of Madison's parents' house, out of costume for the moment. Mrs Clements—Marcy, as she'd insisted they call her—had just brought out a tray of cookies. To an outside observer, it would've been just a pleasant gathering of friends. The TV was even on, to bolster the illusion of normalcy.

"What, apart from the fact that the Empire's trying to follow me home?" snarked Madison, grabbing a couple of cookies.

"Which is the one we're here to solve." Taylor claimed one for herself. "But I'm guessing that's not the one Emma's referring to."

"No, it's not." Emma looked at each of them in turn. "We're prepping to go out and smack the Empire down. Sure, we're able to do that. But not if we don't know where to look. In order to punch the cape, we need to be able to find the cape."

"Oh." Taylor realised she was correct. In her mental imagery, the Empire capes would've been just showing up, spoiling for a fight. The reality was likely to be a little different. A line out of a book she'd once read seemed appropriate: 'Never assume your opponent will cooperate with your battle plans'.

Emma nodded. "Even worse, as soon as Mads gets in her suit and takes off, if they've got people watching the area, they'll have a location to keep an eye on when she lands again. Sooner or later, they'll pinpoint it, and potentially be able to ambush her out of the suit."

"Wait a minute." It was Mr Clements who'd spoken. "You think the Empire has people watching for Madison to go to her suit?"

"Well, they were asking people if they'd seen it," Madison reminded him. "So yeah, I'd think the next step would be to stake out the area, Dad."

He nodded. "So, we turn the problem into a solution."

Madison frowned at him, then looked at Emma and Taylor as though they knew what he was talking about. "How do we do that?"

<><>

Over Brockton Bay

Rune

Tammi stifled a yawn. This was far from the first time she'd stayed up this late, but the combination of doing the same thing over and over, with zero action to show for it, was boring as all crap. Still, it was important. Kaiser was pissed, and that meant there was going to be blood in the water.

She gently banked the chunk of concrete she was flying over the city into a long turn, making sure not to make it too sharp or abrupt. Right now, with tensions as high as they were, she didn't want to make Victor or Alabaster yell at her. Just before they went out on this mission, Kaiser had given a short speech on 'everyone pulling together' and 'united against the world', which in her mind boiled down to 'don't fuck this up'.

She really, really didn't want to fuck this up.

"Anything?" asked Alabaster, for about the fifteenth time.

It had to be getting on Victor's nerves, because it was totally pissing off Tammi. She fantasised about tipping the slab at just the right time to drop him two hundred yards to the ground, but she was pretty sure that would count as 'fucking it up'. Plus, she knew damn well he'd survive it, and Alabaster was really good at holding a grudge.

"Not yet." Victor didn't move his eye from the scope of the sniper rifle he was carrying. Kaiser had said not to kill Blockade, but a blown-out kneecap would make it really hard to operate that damn powersuit.

If Tammi understood the plan right, they wanted to at least identify Blockade; ideally, capture him. A little pressure in the right direction should make him amenable to working for the Empire Eighty-Eight, and fill in the gap in their lineup. Kaiser had wanted a Tinker in their ranks for years.

But even without that, just forcing the Real Thing to stand down when it came to Empire business would be a step in the right direction. Kaiser really hated to lose, which Tammy totally understood. She disliked it intensely herself.

While Victor scoured the ground and rooftops for anything that might resemble a concealed suit of power armour, she stuck to the search pattern he'd laid out for her. The park where they thought Blockade had landed was under direct surveillance and they could respond to any call within minutes, but Victor had decided to search farther afield, just in case.

This absolutely was important, and Tammi knew enough not to think otherwise.

But still, she was bored. Bored. Booooooored.

<><>

Coil

Suburbs, Safe Timeline

On the surface, Thomas was relaxing at home, in his living room, with a good book. The TV was on more for background noise than anything else, and he had takeaway coming in the next half-hour. It was a pleasant way to spend a Monday evening, and it meant that he could clearly demonstrate that he'd had zero contact with Shadow Stalker, if anyone happened to ask that question.

PRT Building, Throwaway Timeline

Thomas Calvert swiped his card, waited for the beep, then pulled the door open and walked in. He nodded to the night desk guy, who nodded back in a disinterested fashion. Thomas was a reasonably familiar face who had the clearance to be in the building after business hours, so there was nothing to be concerned about.

Swiping for the elevator, Thomas rode it up to his floor and went into his office. He seated himself behind his desk, booted up his computer and started delving into systems he really had no business going near. He had the backdoors and the stolen passwords that would get him what he wanted: access to Shadow Stalker. While he could've left it until morning, he'd heard a rumour that she was to be moved soon, perhaps even in the next few days. He wasn't the kind of man to leave that sort of thing to chance, so tonight it was.

It would take time, especially given that he was starting from scratch (again) but as he liked to joke to himself, he had all the time he could give himself.

<><>

Firebird

An Hour Later

The car was nondescript, as far as cars went, but it was the little things that stood out in Emma's mind. It wasn't parked in a driveway, for one thing, and it had been carefully placed between streetlights so that anyone inside wouldn't be easily seen. The other point of note was its proximity to the park that Madison was currently using to stash the Blockade armour; anyone sitting in the vehicle would have a fine view of anyone entering said park.

At first they'd thought the surveillance would be conducted via unmarked vans, but either Kaiser was aware of that trope and had decided to steer well clear of it, or he didn't have any available. Either way, after finding zero vans in the area, they'd started checking out cars.

So far, they'd found six with men sitting in them, doing nothing much except smoke and (she assumed) talk with their stake-out partners. What about, she wasn't sure. The preferred conversational topics of racist assholes were a closed book for her, and she was fine with it staying that way.

Looking from the rooftop down toward the car through its windshield, her miniature binoculars picked out an unshaven face briefly illuminated by someone drawing on a cigarette before it was brought down below window level again. "He looks really, really bored," she murmured.

Beside her, Taylor smiled. "Bored is good. Mr Clements absolutely called it."

"Think there's more of them around?" They'd covered the neighbourhood around the park for a few blocks in all directions, but that didn't mean there weren't people not in cars. For all she knew, the Empire had people posing as homeless vagrants, keeping an eye on places where cars couldn't easily be parked.

Taylor pursed her lips. "So long as they don't have eyes on the armour, it should be okay." Madison's armour, with its holo-disguise to make it look like an electrical junction box, was tucked away discreetly behind a large tree in the middle of the park. It was far enough away from the illuminated pathways that nobody could see it through the shadows.

"Yeah." Moving back from the roof edge, Emma put the binoculars away. "Stage two?"

"Stage two."

<><>

Monochrome

Madison was waiting outside her back door, the light off, when Taylor dropped down from above.

While looking up how to camouflage herself at night, Taylor had made the interesting discovery that going pitch black wasn't actually the best way to do that. Shadows, it seemed, drew the eye. As she couldn't do anything other than black and white, she'd experimented with tiny specks of white on a black background. The way Madison eeped and jumped when Taylor landed right beside her gave her the impression that it worked.

"Wow, you're human after all," Taylor jibed with a grin. "That tough-girl act of yours had me wondering."

Madison blew a raspberry at her. "Not funny. You caught me by surprise, that's all."

"Sure, sure. Whatever." Taylor spread her hands. "Ready to roll?"

"Any time." Madison grabbed her hand, and Taylor exerted her protective ability. Immediately, Madison's clothing—dark blues and reds—turned to grays, as did her skin tone. With her free hand, she pulled up the scarf she had wrapped around her neck so that it covered most of her face, mainly to reduce the chance that she'd be seen.

"Three, two, one, yoink!" Taylor kicked off with a light jump that sent them soaring up and over her house, toward the park. Once they were at altitude, Taylor spread her arms—without letting go of Madison—and popped air-guides to let them glide in the right direction. Madison had her other arm spread out as well, probably so she could feel that she was contributing; Taylor chose not to correct her illusions.

"Wow." Madison's voice was hardly more than a murmur. "I don't know what's better. Gliding like this, or flying in my suit."

"I prefer this," Taylor admitted. "I like the feeling that I'm just suspended above the city. Peaceful. Nothing's trying to get at me."

Madison snorted. "Nobody's able to get to me when I'm flying in my suit, too."

"I said 'nobody's trying to get at me'. Totally different. Nobody knows about it when I'm up here. Everyone knows about it when you are."

"Yeah, yeah," jibed Madison. "I can tell suit envy when I hear it."

Taylor grinned. "Says the shortest member of the team, who built a suit to make herself eight feet tall."

"Oh, I'll totally own that." Madison said it readily enough that Taylor figured she meant it. "Being tall is amazeballs."

"I know, right?" Taylor looked down at the street they were passing over. The park was just up ahead. "Okay, we're going to be doing a high-speed drop in just a second. Try not to shriek too loudly. We don't want to let the bad guys know we're here before we're ready for them."

"Pfft. As if you can scare me by—"

Taylor let them drop all the way to the ground, touching down barely twenty feet from the camouflaged suit. The entire fall took less than a second.

"—yipe!" To her credit, Madison did keep the exclamation to a loud whisper. She lifted her feet a couple of times, feeling the ground under them then did her best to give Taylor a dirty look. The deep shadows where they were ruined the effect, but Taylor gave her a B-minus for effort anyway. "That was mean."

"Also funny." Taylor kept her voice down. "Don't forget 'funny'."

Madison headed for the shadowed 'junction box', with Taylor at her side. "Y'know, part of me wants to accuse you of holding a grudge for all the shit I helped pull on you, but the rest of me wouldn't blame you if you did."

That could stand being addressed more fully, but Taylor knew they didn't have the time right then. So she satisfied herself with a noncommittal "Mmm," while she watched Madison put her hand on the box and wake it up out of standby mode. Then she turned to keep a lookout while the suit unfolded just far enough for Madison to climb inside. She only relaxed once her teammate was safe behind a layer of good steel.

Crouching slightly, she leaped skyward once more. Inside the suit, she knew, Madison would be activating the radio. "Stage two complete. Stage three is a go."

<><>

Rune

"What was that?"

Tammi looked around at Victor's question. "What was what?" There didn't seem to be anything out there, except lots of night sky above and lots of city below. Brockton Bay was supposed to be enchanting from above, especially at night, but it had lost all its appeal for her after the first hour or so.

"I thought I saw movement." Victor lowered the rifle and rubbed his right eye before raising the weapon again. "But there's nothing I can fix on. I think there might be a flier around here somewhere."

"Aegis?" ventured Tammi. He was the only flier in the Wards who didn't glow when they flew. "Or maybe one of New Wave's fliers?"

"No." Victor was a bit of a dick when he couldn't figure out what was going on. "They all show up on IR like a beacon. Whatever I saw was the same temperature as the background."

"Well, at least we know it wasn't Blockade, right?" Alabaster had to put his two cents in. "You wouldn't need IR to spot that damn suit."

Tammi was forced to agree. Using an IR scope when that suit was in flight would likely be damaging to the eyesight. "So, is it still there?"

Victor frowned, searching the skyline. "No."

Tammi wanted to ask him if he was sure he hadn't been seeing things, but she didn't want to be yelled at, so she kept quiet. Sometimes it sucked to be the youngest on the team.

It would suck even more if Blockade decided to take a night off and let us float around here all night while he's watching TV and getting takeaway.

That was definitely a thought she wasn't about to share with the other two.

<><>

Throwaway Timeline

Coil

At last.

Thomas wanted to do a little dance of victory—it had been even harder to sneak past Piggot's safeguards this time—but he wasn't quite sure that there was no ongoing video surveillance of his office. He knew they weren't watching his screen outputs, because someone probably would've kicked his office door in by now if that were the case.

Instead, he settled for a luxurious stretch in his office chair while the faked authorisation printed out. He knew what he'd done wrong last time. This time, he'd ask the right questions.

The printer beeped to indicate that it was done, and he stood up from his chair. Because he was a careful man, he took the time to look the clearance over carefully. There were no errors, and he smiled slowly.

It was time to go make the Real Thing regret that they'd left Shadow Stalker alive.

God knew, he never made that mistake with anyone who had damaging information on him.

<><>

Vince Foley, Empire Eighty-Eight Minion

"Hey, Vince."

Scott's voice was barely louder than the gurgle of coffee running out of the thermos and into Vince's cup. He finished pouring, then looked up. "What?" Swear to God, if he tells another one of his stupid jokes, I'm gonna … well, he wouldn't do anything then, but later on he was going to rip the guy a brand new series of assholes.

But Scott was pointing at something outside the car. Vince leaned forward and looked. It was a guy walking across the road, wearing a hoodie and carrying something big and rectangular. "That's Blockade!" Scott hissed. "It's gotta be!"

Vince felt excitement rising in his chest, but he tamped it down as best he could. "Could just be some guy."

"No fuckin' way." Scott shook his head. "That's a toolbox he's carrying. I heard it clank just now."

Vince peered through the windshield at the guy. The thing he was carrying did look like a battered old toolbox. But with that hood in place, there was no way to get details of his face; all Vince could see as the guy paused under a streetlight was the glint of light on glasses. Wearing glasses and carrying a toolbox was pretty well shorthand for being a Tinker in every Saturday morning cartoon ever. Not that Vince was a Saturday morning cartoon sort of guy, but he knew the gist of things.

"Okay, if he goes in the park, we call it in." Vince took a drink of the coffee. It was still warm, but tasted like shit.

Together, they watched the guy cross the sidewalk and step into the park itself. He looked around once, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a flashlight. The beam showing the way, he guided himself deeper into the darkened park.

<><>

Rune

Victor's phone rang. Tammi was holding it, as Victor needed both hands for his rifle, so she swiped to answer, and hit speaker so Victor could talk normally. "Speak," he said.

"Sir, it's Foley. We just saw someone that could be Blockade go across the road and into the park. He was carrying a big-ass toolbox and a flashlight."

Tammi's eyes widened. Without needing to be told, she turned the slab of concrete and started toward the park.

"Do you have a description?" asked Victor. "Anything that will let us pick him out of the crowd?"

"Uh, about five-ten, not skinny but not fat either. Had a hoodie on, and glasses. We didn't see his face."

"Good, good. Hold position. Let me know if anything changes." Victor nodded to Tammi to end the call. Once she'd done that, he said, "Text Kaiser. Two words. 'It's on'."

She grinned as she tapped in the words and sent the text.

"So, how we gonna do this?" asked Alabaster, raising his voice slightly over the wind-rush.

"There's one tall building near that park." Victor jabbed his thumb at his chest. "You'll drop me off there. Rune, drop Alabaster right on top of Blockade while he's fixing his suit, then wait in the air and keep an eye out for the other two. Alabaster, you get to subdue him and fuck his suit up. Once you've done that, we'll take him back to Kaiser and see if he's willing to see reason. Questions?"

Tammi didn't have any. Victor might've been a dick sometimes but he had the best plans.

<><>

Throwaway Timeline

Coil

The guard at the security checkpoint looked moderately surprised when Thomas showed up.

"Can I help you with something, sir?"

"Yes. Something's just come up that I need the prisoner's input on. An ongoing situation, so we need answers now." He held up the papers. "Here's my authorisation."

"Copy that, Commander." The guard hit a button, and the slot in the front of the checkpoint motored open.

Thomas slipped the pages inside, making sure once more that his fingers were clear before it closed. Those things sometimes acted like they had a taste for blood. He didn't fidget or even glance at his watch while the guard checked the papers over; the attitude he projected was calm competence.

Just as it had done before, the door buzzed and clicked open. "You're clear to proceed, Commander. I'll buzz you at thirty minutes to wrap it up."

"I doubt I'll need that long, but I appreciate it." Moving at a steady pace—Piggot might have gone home for the day, but Renick would be undoubtedly curious about why someone was visiting Shadow Stalker at this hour—he headed into the prison block.

Now, let's see what sort of answers I can get before they foam me this time.

<><>

Monochrome

Crouching in front of the partially unfolded suit, Taylor mimed working on it with a large wrench. Her protective shield was pushed out from her skin as far as it would go, bulking her out by a full inch in all directions. It was amazing how much larger this made her look, and how it concealed her body shape by careful adjustment of its contours. The two layers of clothing on top, with the hoodie over that, had completed the bulking-out process, giving her the profile of a medium-skinny guy rather than an actually skinny teenage girl.

Mr Clements had originally volunteered to be the faux Blockade, but they'd shot that idea down harder than Behemoth stomping on a lead balloon. When Taylor showed that she could go one better, he'd gotten on board with that idea instead, and offered the toolbox from his garage as a prop. The clanking of the tools inside, she felt, really sold the act.

She had an open phone line with Madison. Emma, who was acting as spotter on the tallest nearby building (and the place where they strongly suspected Victor might set up an overwatch situation) could text her, and she could relay the message to Taylor, via her phone earpiece. It was a clunky setup, but workable for the moment.

Right about then, her phone beeped with an incoming text, alerting her that something was going on. Madison's voice came through the phone call. "Emma says thirty seconds."

Taylor grinned. Waving the wrench in the general direction of Madison's powersuit made her feel silly, but the act was paying off. "Let's do this."

<><>

Victor

Rune swooped the slab of concrete down over the top of the building just long enough for Alex to jump off, then she headed down toward the park. He could feel his heart rate increasing with the excitement of a plan coming together, so he applied biofeedback techniques to slow it down again. The last thing he wanted was for buck fever to spoil any shot he needed to take.

Kneeling down at the edge of the roof, he put the rifle to his shoulder and the scope to his eye. There was only one tiny patch of light in the park where there shouldn't be light, and he settled the scope onto it. A smile stretched his lips as he saw their quarry at last. The suit was partly folded up and the flashlight was lying on the grass while Blockade did something with a wrench.

He frowned. While the light was a little inconvenient, it shouldn't be drowning out the IR scope. But although he could see Blockade, he couldn't see the guy's IR glow. It was like he was a robot … or something of that sort.

"Shit," he muttered, clawing for his phone. Something was badly, badly wrong. Alabaster would be coming up on that scene right now, and he could hold his own even against a major Brute for a while, but Alex needed to call Rune in right—

A metal disc whipped past him and hit the rifle hard enough to knock it clear out of his hands and over the side of the roof. Deflected downward by the impact, it bounced off the edge of the parapet and struck his phone, shattering the screen and leaving his hand tingling and numb. Finally, it ricocheted back the way it had come, to the hand of the teenage girl who'd thrown it.

"Hi," said Firebird as she clicked the disc back into place on her forearm. "Nice evening we're having, isn't it?"

<><>

Alabaster

Rune didn't want to get too low, but that was just fine. Paul could see their target, so he took a run-up and launched himself in that general direction. He tumbled through tree branches, breaking a few, and hit the ground hard enough to break a few bones. Seconds later, he was up again, drawing one of his pistols. Blockade was just a few yards away, turning to look at him and dropping the wrench.

Paul sneered. It wasn't like the heavy tool would've actually helped the Tinker against him, but at least he could've pretended to put up a fight. "Okay, fucker," he said, pointing the pistol at Blockade's gut. "Step away from the powersuit."

The guy did as he was told, standing up and taking a few steps away. Then, in a tone that sounded way too high-pitched for any normal guy, he said, "Go."

That was when the suit unfolded all the way and stood up, its eyes lighting up as its systems came active. Paul didn't hesitate. If the Tinker could remotely activate his suit, the next command would be to go on the attack, or to carry him out of danger. So Paul shot him, in the stomach, three times. Fuck you and the power-suit you rode in on.

The suit didn't power down, but neither did it try to protect its master. Instead, it activated its flight thrusters. Paul was bowled over backward as the suit took off straight up, a lot faster than it had done on the available footage.

The burns healed almost as fast as he got them, but when he looked over at where Blockade had been, he got a horrible shock. Still standing where he'd been, the Tinker was shedding the half-burned, half-shredded clothing, to reveal … fuck! That's not Blockade! That's Monochrome! This was a bait-and-switch!

He didn't bother shooting Monochrome again. Instead, he bolted. Victor's dry, lecturing voice came back to him, explaining how Monochrome could quite easily figure out how to kill him. He really didn't want to test that out.

For the first time since he'd gotten his powers, Alabaster ran for his life.

<><>

Rune

When Tammi heard the three shots, she tensed. Oh, shit. Alabaster had to shoot Blockade. Kaiser's gonna be a bit pissed that we killed him. But still, those were the risks when it came to fucking with the Empire Eighty-Eight. Those who played stupid games got stupid prizes.

And then, with a growing thunder, the suit rose out of the shadowed park, outlined against the glow of its thrusters. Instinctively, she angled away from it, not wanting to risk a mid-air collision. But it changed its course toward her. She altered direction again. It followed.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit. Victor and Alabaster could take care of themselves. She had to evade this thing. Crouching low on the slab, she pushed all her power into making it outrun the thundering power-suit.

"Rune!" The voice was a magnified bellow. "Land that thing and surrender! My friends have already got your friends! You've got nowhere to go!"

Sticking one hand up to give the suit the finger, she angled over sharply, dropping toward the rows and rows of suburban houses below. Blockade's suit swept past way too close, nearly causing her to piss herself in fright. She'd thought it was a lot farther back than that.

"Fuck you!" she screamed back. "I'm Empire Eighty-Eight! We don't give up and we don't surrender!"

The suit came around in a sharper turn than she'd expected, but she knew she was more agile than that in the air. It came boring back in, and she realised it was faster than her. Okay, okay, I gotta do this smart.

Trying to just fly away from the suit with its creepy fucking glowing eyes was a total non-starter. But if she got down low enough so Blockade had to slow down or break shit with that clumsy fucking suit, she could maybe slip away in the confusion. It wasn't much of a plan—Victor could probably make a better one—but it was all she had.

As the suit came at her again, ginormous metal hands reaching out toward her, she dived for the ground again. As it dived in response, she realised too late that it was able to turn just enough to get too close for comfort. She jinked to the right, but one long arm came out, and cold metal fingers closed around her left arm, plucking her off the concrete slab. "Gotcha!"

"Let me go, you fucker!" She struggled, but the fingers were ridged for grip, and it had her good. In desperation, she tried tracing a rune on the armour itself—maybe she could make it fly where she wanted to go—but it evaporated as fast as she tried to make it stick. "Motherfucker! That's cheating!"

"No. That's good steel." She could hear the smugness in Blockade's voice. "Now land that chunk of concrete safely. You're under arrest, and all that jazz. You'll get read your rights when we can get you to the PRT."

"Fuck you!" she spat. "Put me down right the fuck now, or I crash it into someone's house!" Under her control, the chunk of concrete was heading down toward a quiet suburban street, gaining speed all the time.

Blockade didn't back down. "If you do that and they die, that's, uh, depraved indifference. With all your other crimes, they just might try you as an adult for that."

That didn't sound good. "Uh—"

"Pull it up! NOW!"

Rattled by the shout, Tammi obeyed, or tried to. The high-speed chunk of concrete had almost levelled out when it clipped a street-light, ricocheted off at a bad angle, and smashed in through the front window of one of the houses. It was going so fast that bits of it came out through the back wall before they came to a stop in the back yard.

Tammi had the feeling that she'd really, really screwed up this time. "Fuck. I tried to stop it. I did."

"Well, it could've been worse. The lights were off, no car in the driveway. Infrared shows nobody inside. You got lucky this time."

"Oh." Tammi didn't feel lucky.

<><>

Coil

Throwaway Timeline

"Hello, Shadow Stalker."

The girl lying on the bench sat up and looked around. "What the fuck is it now? Are you trying to make me crack or something by interrupting my beauty sleep? And is sending a black guy in to interrogate me supposed to make me spill my guts?"

"No, it's not." He stayed away from the polycarbonate panel this time. "Cards on the table. I've heard that Monochrome has convinced Firebird and Blockade that you're a threat, so they're going after your family to keep you quiet. I need to know who they are, so I can stop them."

"The fuck they are!" Shadow Stalker was on her feet, her eyes wide with outrage. "They can't fucking do that!"

Thomas shrugged. "You're in here, and they're out there. What can you do to stop them?"

That was the trigger. "Okay, you want names?" Stalker's eyes narrowed again. "I got names. Firebird is Emma Barnes. She lives at …"

Safe Timeline

Holding a notepad, Thomas wrote the names and addresses down as fast as he could manage. He'd really hit the jackpot with this approach; she was spilling all the beans she had access to. She even outed Monochrome as 'that dorky fucking queef loser Taylor Hebert', giving her address as well, plus the fact that Taylor's father was the Head of Hiring at the Dockworkers' Association.

There were so many leverage points he could use right now. He knew the names, he knew the addresses, he knew the friends and he knew the names of the families. All he had to do was apply the right pressure in the right places, and the Real Thing would be—

He didn't even have time to flinch as the concrete slab blasted in through his front window and obliterated him.

Ex-Throwaway Timeline

As he was reeling from the unexpected cutoff of the other timeline, the alarms went off. He took two steps, then the foam-sprayers engulfed him in sticky yellow globs.

No. No. No. This isn't how it works!

This was supposed to be the throwaway timeline!

<><>

Firebird

Emma observed Victor's stance and form as they circled each other on the rooftop. He was good; she could see where he'd blended a dozen forms together. But he wasn't good enough.

"We could go anytime now," she offered. "Or are you waiting for a tumbleweed or something to roll between us?"

"Why won't your skills go down?" he gritted. "And why can't I add them to mine?"

"Because it's my power, dipshit." She stepped in, watching how his guard shifted and changed to respond to her proximity. He was bigger and stronger than she was, and he was fast, and he'd stolen hundreds or thousands of man-hours of learned combat skills.

But he didn't have her power. Every martial art had its biases, and with biases came weaknesses in the form, however infinitesimal. She came in, feinted, blocked his counter with a disc, then smacked the side of his wrist when he extended it just a little too far. Before he could try to overwhelm her with strength, she was through the window of opportunity and gone again.

"Was that all you've got?" he taunted. "You barely touched me."

"Next time I hit that wrist, I fracture it." She held out her hand and made the classic 'come at me' gesture. "Your turn. See if you can tag me."

He was confident in his skills, but still cautious. She watched him come in, seeking an opening. Deliberately, she let him see two: a blatant one and a subtle one. No doubt suspecting a trap with the more obvious hole in her defenses, he went for the subtle one, a strike at her kneecap.

It was all going his way, right up until she went through his defenses, smacked his wrist again, then back-kicked the ankle that he'd intended to use to disable her kneecap. He tried to counterattack, failed as she faded away, then grunted as he put weight on the ankle she'd hit. "Goddamn it, stand still."

"Haha, fuck you, no." She set herself up again. "How's the wrist?"

"You know what? Fuck this." Victor did what Emma had expected him to do from the beginning, and pulled the pistol from his shoulder holster.

One disc hit the rooftop hard enough to spray gravel into his face, then smacked into his groin hard enough to make him scream and fold up. The other one knocked the pistol from his hand then bounced off his head just hard enough to put him on the ground unconscious for the next minute or so.

Emma kicked the pistol off to the side and retrieved her discs. "That's what you get for targeting my friends. Asshole."

<><>

Monochrome

Alabaster definitely had a good turn of speed. Taylor supposed that it came from never getting tired. He sprinted to the nearest surveillance car, screaming at them to go, go, go. She followed along, letting the shadows hide her until the right moment.

The cars started to peel out, and he made a flying leap to go in through the rear window of the last one in line. They headed off down the street, accelerating to unsafe speeds.

Taylor jumped.

As the cars rocketed through the streets of Brockton Bay, heading back to wherever they considered a safe place, she crouched on the roof of Alabaster's ride.

This was gonna be fun.