TheMadmanAndre
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With Friends Like These, Interlude 6
🕑 Added 2022-04-21 07:15:40 +0000 UTCKaiser had been called many things in his long life. A monster, a villain, a Nazi. He readily accepted and acknowledged most of those descriptors, and more still. But the one thing he would not accept being called was a fool. Because when the PRT practically handed you an easy opportunity to free your subordinates, only a fool would pass on such a thing.
The evening before, the handful of moles that he had placed within the ranks of the PRT had each independently reported to him something interesting. All non-essential personnel of the morning shift had been instructed to proceed to one of several satellite sites the PRT utilized for various reasons, at least until noon that day.
No reason had been given for the apparent and unusual order, and said orders had already been cleared through the standard Master-Stranger protocols, or so the mole had explained. Thus, they were legitimate. Kaiser’s senior-most agent within the PRT’s ranks had yet to fail him so far, nor had the others. All were unaware of the others of course, and all of them had backed up the statement of the senior-most. Clearly something important was happening tomorrow morning, but as to what, Kaiser was unsure of.
One thing came to mind. There was the matter of the mystery cape, the independent that had single handedly captured two of his subordinates, humiliated a third, and wiped out the ABB, his primary rivals in the Bay, all in one single night. And then they had simply vanished, with only a vague press statement and an even vaguer description of her given out by the local heroes.
Tiamat. Kaiser turned that name over in his mind, letting the name roll across his tongue. It was an unfamiliar name to him, which meant that it was a new cape on the scene. That itself was not unusual, as the city’s inherent misery meant there was no shortage of situations that would cultivate fresh recruits. The name carried weight and gravitas with it. The official press release described her as having a rating of Tinker 5, but he doubted that. She had gone toe-to-toe with Lung, and anyone capable of defeating a cape that fought with the entire local Protectorate branch on equal terms was someone to be respected, if not outright feared.
Kaiser wasn’t exactly a mythology buff, but he was educated, and knew the origins of that name. It was appropriate, considering the so far unmentioned aspects of her apparent powers that the press briefing neglected to mention for good reason. His ultimate conclusion, after combining Brad’s panicked testimony and the crumbs of information from the press release was that this Tiamat apparently could create Endbringer copies, or at least smaller facsimiles that could give the impression of being such.
The conclusion he came to from all of this was obvious. A new cape, a shift in security posture. The PRT had arranged a meeting with Tiamat, and she would be attending it some time tomorrow morning. But why the drawdown in personnel, when it should have been business as usual? Perhaps there was some aspect of her power then, a master with a tenuous grasp of their abilities? The regular staff seeing even expies of the Endbringers could potentially cause a panic or an overreaction, so if that was the case, it would make sense for a limited and temporary drawdown of personnel.
But still, she could be useful, especially in due time. All capes regardless of their powerset took time to come into their own. It was also a painful point of contention that the largest gang in the Bay lacked a Tinker, assuming she was one of course. As well, it wouldn’t be the first time the PRT had stretched the truth in regards to the abilities of their heroes. But regardless, a parahuman capable of bringing the Dragon to his knees? That was one that could be eminently useful, assuming he could get them under his thumb. Something he had no doubt of being able to accomplish, either through coercion or force.
Max Anders turned away from the wall-to-wall window of his office at Medhall, before striding over to his desk and picking up the telephone there. He had plans to make.
----
So far, the plan was, well, going to plan.
It was a fairly simple plan, all things told. Assault the PRT headquarters en masse, while the building was briefly yet critically understaffed. Use the opportunity to free Crusader and Rune, and if possible, capture the cape responsible for their imprisonment. As far as they were told, only a handful of PRT troopers would be present in the building: a skeleton crew to guard the few prisoners in the holding cells, a handful of office workers, and Armsmaster and Miss Militia. And the mystery cape, and whatever surprises she had in store.
Despite the numbers being in the Empire’s favor, Victor for one couldn’t help but feel that Kaiser’s plan was risky, unbelievably so. He didn’t want to disparage Kaiser, but frankly, there were unknowns the leader of the Empire had either completely failed to account for or simply chose to ignore. Victor knew not which; one would have spoken of Kaiser’s terrible arrogance, while the other would have spoken of blatant incompetence. He didn’t want to accuse Kaiser of either. Not to his face at least, or ever really.
The biggest and most obvious unknown was this new mystery cape. They had a name, an apparent Tinker rating and little else to go on, if the press briefing he had read was in any way or shape accurate, which he doubted. Victor had been in the game a long time, and he knew bullshit when he saw it. That statement reeked of it, meaning the PRT was hiding something, and he had a feeling he would find out just what very, very soon.
Well, at least he’d be behind a scope and a huge rifle when he did.
The next day came, and Victor took up his assigned position, from a concealed, pre-prepared lookout atop a skyscraper several hundred yards away with a clear line of sight to and overlooking the front of the PRT HQ. Othala, his loving wife was beside him, ever dutiful. Victor had insisted she be with him, far back and away from whatever fighting was practically guaranteed to occur. He had been teaching her how to act as a spotter, using a tripod-mounted optic to spot and range targets for him. It was a task she didn’t mind performing on top of her usual duties as a healer for the Empire, and something she took to fairly readily.
And to her credit, she beat him by a second to confirm the wild and absurd claim that Hookwolf had made the evening before, when they were planning and preparing for this. He’d been covering the unpowered gaming members' advance toward the hole in the wall that the breaching charges made when she shouted out. “Victor, on the roof! Look!”
Victor trained his rifle toward the roof, panning up to see what Othala had called out. The Behemoth was standing there, gazing down at the Empire below. And then he saw the others. The sleek, mottled green form that was unmistakably the Leviathan, likewise peering down toward the rest. He also glimpsed the power armored form of Dragon, as well as two other, comparatively smaller figures he couldn’t quite discern. For a moment, his blood ran ice cold at the sight of the two Endbringers, but just for a moment.
“Are… Are those-”
“No, too small,” Victor was quick to reassure his wife, the fright audible in her voice. The… things, whatever he was looking at were far too small to be the real deals. The not-Behemoth was no more than a few meters tall at the most, whereas the real deal would have been eye level with the fifth floor of the building it stood on. The Leviathan expy was smaller still.
The not-Behemoth opened its maw and bellowed out a roar, one he heard a full second later due to the sheer distance afforded to him by his weapon of choice and a high powered scope. Said rifle was one that he’d been saving for a rainy day, a special import from South Africa. A massive anti-materiel rifle from the better days of apartheid, that fired depleted uranium shells that had more in common with those of a tank gun than any typical rifle.
And then through the comparatively tiny yet more than adequate optic mounted atop it, he watched the not-Behemoth leap from the rooftop ledge and plunge toward the ground below. The monster was falling too quickly, and he had to break sight picture just to track its descent as it fell towards-
Hookwolf. He watched, with his naked eye, as the not-Behemoth slammed into his fellow cape at roughly terminal velocity, with enough force to cause the parking lot to collapse into the space beneath, an underground garage reserved for the PRT’s vehicles if his memory served him right. Easily fifty square meters of concrete simply gave way as monster and villain alike fell down and out of sight, the gaping hole obscured by a rising plume of dust.
“Well, that just happened,” Victor deadpanned.
“That’s… horrible.”
“For Brad.”
Othala said nothing at that. He ducked back behind his scope, training the rifle on the newly-formed hole. Out from within Hookwolf rose, now with a passenger in the form of the not-Behemoth, clinging to his metallic back by maw and claw. Even though the sound took a second to carry to his position, they could hear Hookwolf’s panicked cries as he tried to shake the beast off of himself, to no avail. Before Fenja and Menja could move to help him, he abruptly took off, galloping behind a building and out of sight, heading toward the general direction of the Docks.
For a brief moment, neither husband nor wife spoke. “Should we relocate?”
“No,” Victor replied with a small chuckle. “I think he has things well in hand.”
Othala didn’t respond. Somewhere nearby, a bird chirped. Victor ignored it, refocusing his rifle back on the rooftop above. He’d caught a blur as he’d been moving his rifle back, presumably Dragon giving chase to Hookwolf. The not-Leviathan and the mystery cape he’d glimpsed earlier were still there. The PRT statement had neglected to describe her, but Victor’s gut told him the unknown was the mysterious Tiamat.
Victor watched as Tiamat clambered up onto its shoulders, before both the not-Leviathan and its passenger descended the PRT HQ in a much more controlled manner than the not-Behemoth before, walking down the side of the building as a gecko would a pane of glass. Victor wondered what the reactions of the office workers inside, if any, would be to the sight of the nightmare scaling down the side of the building. He could only speculate, presuming they didn’t evacuate the moment the satchel charges went off.
As for the Empire itself, he didn’t need to speculate. A few of the rabble of unpowered members broke and ran at the sight of the not-Leviathan descending toward them as a sphere of water began to form behind and above it. A sphere, he noted, and not the echo that one would have normally expected. From a distance, Victor thought he could hear Kaiser shouting orders to them to hold their ground. Fenja and Menja braced their sword and spear in anticipation of whatever fight was about to happen as the rest of the capes likewise readied themselves. The Leviathan reached the ground, and Victor watched as Tiamat dismounted, hopping off of its shoulders and landing softly on the pavement as easily as she had mounted it.
For a moment, all was still, in that clearing over three hundred meters away. Victor saw Kaiser stride toward Tiamat, arms outstretched. He was too far away to make out whatever he was saying, but it was no doubt something grandiose and saccharine, perhaps to appeal to whatever sensibilities Tiamat might have had. He trained the scope of his rifle onto her head, ready to squeeze the trigger if Kaiser gave the order. Far away, Kaiser finished with whatever he was saying. A beat passed, and Victor presumed that she was mulling over his offer.
And then Tiamat looked over to her pet Endbringer replica, before pointing at Kaiser. A ribbon of water, almost invisible to his scope, lashed out at Kaiser and sent him flying, bowling over several of the Empire’s capes almost a dozen meters behind him.
All at once, pandemonium broke out. The twins advanced on the not-Leviathan, who turned to face them. They were both armed and armored for the occasion, gleaming golden lances as long as they were tall that lashed out toward the aquatic beast almost in unison, only to be arrested by the ribbon of water that now ensnared their weapons. He didn’t wait for any cues or orders, as it wasn’t the first time he had been forgotten in the heat of battle. Victor trained his rifle on the beast’s head and fired thrice. The massive rifle barked once, twice, three times, shells as thick as his wrist hurtling downrange at three times the speed of sound.
He glimpsed the impacts, each round’s explosive charge detonating in a flash of light and smoke. But it wasn’t the fact that the armor-piercing round not only failed to do any noticeable damage to the Leviathan facsimile that distrubed him, it was the fact that it didn’t even seem to notice. Victor squeezed the trigger twice more, the massive rifle bucking into his shoulder. Two more shells sent splashing against the Leviathan’s head, bursts of fiery silver from the explosive armor penetrators failing to penetrate much of anything. If he squinted, he could almost see marks where the three rounds had impacted, but they faded quickly, almost between the blinks of his eye.
Right, it made sense that the fake Endbringer was a capital-B Brute. It presumably survived a fight with Lung after all. He ejected the now empty magazine and inserted a fresh one, five more cartridges of expensive ammunition ready to be spent. He aimed his rifle toward where he’d last seen Tiamat, the presumed master of the discount terrors. She was still there, dodging swings of sharpened air from Stormtiger and swings of sharpened kamas from Cricket. Tiamat was pretty quick, but Stormtiger was quicker, the latter managing to close the distance and land a blow-
An actinic, brilliant blue flash of light blinded Victor, causing him to recoil in pain. The rational part of his mind told him that it was some sort of Tinker defense. The last split second he’d seen of Stormtiger and Cricket was them getting flung away in that pulse of light. The rest of his mind was reeling in pain from an arc flash having been transmitted directly into his hindbrain through his eyeball.
“Othala,” Victor called out, half-blinded. “Are you okay?” He needed her to patch him up quickly.
No response. Had she been blinded too? He didn’t hear her cry out in pain. Victor looked up, turning to look with his good eye at where Othala was supposed to be beside him. She was still there, slumped over her spotter’s scope and unconscious much to his horror. And on the other side of her, opposite of Victor-
Was the Simurgh. No, a small girl that looked like the Simurgh. No, not that either. It was another of Tiamat’s facsimiles, and was right there with them.
The not-Simurgh chirped, smiled and meekly waved at him.
Victor screamed.
----
It was not hard for Dragon to follow Hookwolf’s trail. Said trail the villainous cape was leaving in his wake consisted of property destruction, of ruined streets and totaled vehicles.
Dragon flew her suit as low as she dared above the cluster of commercial edifices that denoted the downtown proper of Brockton Bay, flying even lower as the office buildings gave way to lower density commercial affairs. As Dragon took stock of the damage left by his passing wake, she noted the unusual pattern of destruction.
She got the impression that Hookwolf was attempting to smash his unwanted jockey off of himself by bodily smashing and crashing into everything in his path. It was fortunate then that traffic was as light as it was between the morning and noon rush hours, as it might have been a different story had there been more vehicles on the roads.
As she flew over the partially collapsed remains of a long abandoned tenement, she noted that the villain had finally managed to dislodge his passenger, judging by the large plodding footsteps that emerged from the ruin after Hookwolf’s own.
Benny, as Tiamat had insisted he be called, remained single-minded in his pursuit of the villain. Dragon had wisely chosen to go after them, trusting Narwhal and the other local capes to handle the defense of the PRT, at least until her combat suits arrived.
Still, his quarry had taken Benny through the low density commercial sprawl and into the rundown sections of the area referred to colloquially in the Bay as the Docks. Eventually, she finally caught up with Hookwolf and his stubborn pursuant. Hookwolf had somehow managed to scale an old, weathered oak growing in a grassy and disused lot, not far from the beachfront. Most of its leaves had long fallen off during winter and had yet to grow back, giving Dragon a clear view of the monstrous cape swaying precariously amongst the upper branches, the boughs somehow managing to support his weight. At a second glance she noticed he had shrunk considerably, which probably helped to explain what she was observing. But why?
Looking down, Dragon found her answer. Benny, or rather the Behemoth was there, stood almost directly beneath Hookwolf at the trunk of the oak. On closer inspection he had a mouth full of Hookwolf’s metal spikes and blades, his jaw working on munching away at the material. In each of his hands he clutched even more of the metal, apparently yanked free during his impromptu ride. Up above Hookwolf shifted, trying to work his way to the opposite side of the tree from Benny, but Benny matched him step for step, plodding along and keeping beneath the villain directly above him.
Dragon understood then: Benny had literally been eating away at the villain, before quite literally running him up a tree. She made sure to take multiple photographs and start recording video, ostensibly for evidence, because nobody would have even believed her otherwise. She hoped it could elicit a chuckle from Colin.
“Hookwolf,” she floated over and addressed the villain, “Surrender. You are under ar-”
“Please!” he shouted right back at her. “Please help me! It’s going to eat me!”
What?
“I’ll do anything!” he continued. “Send me to the Cage, anything! Just please get it away from me!”
Dragon had had a counter-response prepared, but it had been rendered obsolete by the villain’s unexpected pleas. The statement she had just heard was simply too… unbelievable, to be coming from someone with a reputation of being as ruthless and violent as the villain before her. Had Benny really traumatized him that badly? Of course he had, she rapidly concluded. He was the Behemoth, even if he was no longer acting the part.
“Stand by,” she managed to say. Dragon turned her attention to the minion of her newest not-quite-yet-coworker, still chewing on the spikes. Up close, the Endbringer was, for all intents and purposes, passive. Although it still seemed a little frightening, even in its not-so-diminutive state. Was it less diminutive, considering the pocket-sized dimensions earlier, or more diminutive, considering its normal dimensions prior to a month ago? It also occurred to her then that she had no idea whether or not the apparently mastered Endbringer would actually heed any instructions she gave it, or any that didn’t come from or were filtered through its master. She had to try though.
“Benny?” She asked tentatively, floating down to be at roughly eye level with him.
The Behemoth’s, Benny’s, head pivoted to look at her. It made some sort of sound of acknowledgement, or that was at least what Dragon presumed, as filtered as it were through a mouth filled with metal scrap. Then it waved at her, or at least tried to, considering the fistfuls of jagged metal it currently cutched. Some of it fell free, clattering to the ground. Perhaps she could work with Tiamat, create some method of conventional communication? It would make this discussion easier at least, when it would no doubt reoccur in the future.
“Would you allow me to take Hookwolf into custody, please?” If Dragon had fingers she would have crossed them, hoping Benny could understand her.
Benny’s head pivoted back up to Hookwolf, visibly shaking up amongst the tree branches. He looked back down to her, then back up at Hookwolf again before returning its attention to Dragon and making another garbled sound, accompanied by a nod. Dragon had no idea what it meant to say, but she got the impression that it was a form of yes. Probably.
“Okay,” Dragon assumed the answer. “Would you step back a little bit to allow him to descend?”
Benny’s head pivoted back up to Hookwolf. She heard another sound, a low rumble that was disturbingly distinct from the others. And while she lacked the means to even begin to attempt to translate what he was saying, she got the impression that he was expressing disappointment. Dragon spared a second to wonder how long it would have taken for Benny to start gnawing on the tree had she not arrived to get at the cape up in its boughs. Probably until he finished his current meal, as disturbing as that thought might have been.
She racked her mind for ideas. For the briefest of moments, she turned her focus to her data feeds from the Guild and local PRT. Currently, Tiamat was preoccupied with dealing with the Empire, as was Narwhal and the local Protectorate. It was typically bad form to drop in unexpectedly when someone was in the middle of a fight or battle. Colin had done so with her once or twice, but she always made time for him, regardless of the situation. As for her larger and more combat-oriented suits, they were still a couple of minutes away. She diverted one of them toward her current location, but unless she forced it to go supersonic and cause untold amounts of property damage with its sonic boom, it wouldn’t arrive any faster.
And then an idea struck her. In several compartments of her current, PR-friendly suit, she kept a variety of small items. A minor selection of souvenirs, trinkets and pre-signed autographs to hand out to tourists and the like, as well as several business cards to give to other capes if they needed a way to contact her.
But more importantly she had a small selection of varied candies and sweets. Each was stamped or pressed with her personal logo, and was intended to be given out to children as a simple way to endear them to herself. It was a shame more of her fellow heroes didn’t practice doing so. At least for her, it was a small yet effective way to relate to humans.
It was worth a shot. “Benny? I have a treat for you, if you allow me to detain Hookwolf.”
Benny looked at her, his baleful red eye actually somehow glittering at the mere mention. It finished chewing and swallowed, before nodding and making a sound akin to a deep growling rumble. She had its attention, at least.
From the appropriate compartment she withdrew the treats. They weren’t anything particularly fancy, simple chocolates and candies with her personal symbol printed on the wrappers and pressed into their surfaces. She showed the Endbringer the candy, holding them up in her palm. “Although, I suspect they wouldn’t be more than a mouthful for you at the moment. Could you make yourself smaller?”
Benny looked away from the candies and to her, making a sound similar to the last but higher in pitch. And abruptly it started to shrink, flakes of itself seemingly evaporating to somewhere, in a way her suit’s sensors couldn’t quite grasp. In but a moment he was once more palm-sized, at least for her armor suit.
At the same time, the whine of high-powered jet engines announced the arrival of one of her battle suits. The massive, hulking machine flew in low, hovering near the tree and coming to a stop by the side closest to Hookwolf. To her surprise, he had scarcely moved at all during her… communication, for lack of a better word with the Endbringer. Reluctantly he descended the tree, shedding his metallic scales and revealing a man beneath clad only in a pair of ratty jeans and garish chest tattoos. From the eyes of her combat suit, the man looked defeated, all but sagging to the ground.
“I’d like to go to jail now please,” he muttered, holding out his arms and sparing a fearful sideways glance toward Benny. Her combat suit obliged him, hosing him from the neck down in containment foam.
With one problem out of the way, Dragon was left with a technically smaller one. She knelt down, carefully scooping up the now pint-sized Endbringer in the palm of one of her gauntlets. He fit neatly, and Dragon couldn’t help but note how… cute, the creature looked. Cute. The thought was strangely foreign to her, as she went over it in her mind. Could an Endbringer be cute? The answer she decided was yes, if shrunk down to literal pint-sized dimensions. Then again she was a poor judge of things regarding beauty.
As she had promised, she gave him a few of the candies. Benny dug into a chocolate with gusto, nibbling on the fun-sized candy, wrapper and all. With Tiamat’s minion held gently in her gauntlet she took to the air, leaving her combat suit behind to guard Hookwolf until the proper authorities could arrive. Fortunately for her, Benny seemed oblivious to her flight as she angled back toward the PRT HQ. He finished the chocolate and moved on to a hard candy, making small rumbling squeaks her suit’s microphones picked up as he crunched away at it.
Dragon had been focused on the pursuit of Hookwolf and Benny, but now she could spare her attention back on the larger picture. And the information from her data feeds had surprised her. The Empire assault on the PRT headquarters had been utterly repulsed. Levi had managed to defeat the twins Fenja and Menja, no doubt to the surprise of no one.
Meanwhile, Simmie had managed to secure the villains Victor and Othala, having ambushed the duo in their sniper nest, while Tiamat herself had apparently disarmed Stormtiger and Cricket when the two of them had engaged her at once. Dragon had advised her to stay back and rely on her minions if need be, but in the end she did not need to, it seemed. She also made a note to properly test the full combat capabilities of Tiamat’s tinkertech suit when the time came.
As for Armsmaster and Miss Militia, the two of them had managed to disarm or disable both Alabaster and Krieg, respectively. Disappointingly though, Kaiser and the remaining villains had escaped as the tide of battle had turned against them.
Dragon had been expecting her combat suits to reinforce her beleaguered colleagues, but to her surprise they were relegated to mop-up duty, hosing down the remaining few unpowered gang members that hadn’t managed to get away fast enough with containment foam. One of them craned its head over to look at the now comparatively sized Levi, perched proudly and victoriously atop the giant and unconscious forms of the twin valkyries. He looked back, four glittering eyes regarding her combat suit’s two.
Dragon spared a moment to ponder what he was thinking, and resolved to try and make that communicator to let her minions speak with others properly, or to at least let them be heard.
A minute more of flight, and a relative silence broken only by the strange, happy sounds of an Endbringer nibbling on candy, and Dragon began to descend to the sidewalk in front of the PRT HQ.
Most of the rest of the local Protectorate roster had arrived ahead of her, having been ready to be recalled from the surrounding PRT satellite sites they had briefly relocated to. Following them had been a veritable army of PRT troopers to help arrest the gangsters and secure the area.
Armsmaster was conversing with Tiamat, who was standing next to a now adult-sized Simmie floating gently above the ground. The two were conversing, with Armsmaster gesturing toward Simmie and the items she was clutching in her wings.
“-going to need those as evidence,” Dragon heard the tail end of a conversation as she got close enough for her suit’s microphones to pick it up. “I cannot allow her to take possession of them.”
A chirp, an actual, audible chirp, seemed to act as a reply from the Simurgh, or rather Simmie. On closer inspection, said objects she clutched were actually a partially disassembled anti-tank rifle and what appeared to be a spotter’s viewfinder, presumably pilfered from Victor and Othala if the former’s history of utilizing high-powered weapons and the latter’s recent habits of spotting for the former were anything to go by.
“Really?” Taylor asked. “That’s a shame. She really, really wants to tinker with them.” Another chirp punctuated Tiamat’s words, this time with a pleading note to the tone.
“While I am sure whatever creation she would make would be interesting, that weapon was used during an act of parahuman crime,” Armsmaster explained. “Oh, hello Dragon,” he looked over at her, the group noticing her arrival.
“Benny!” Taylor exclaimed, looking at her friend in her hand. “He wasn’t too much of a handful, was he?”
“Not exactly,” Dragon spoke. “With that said though, I believe I am going to have to advise you all at length about minimizing property damage.”
Tiamat looked toward the direction Hookwolf and Benny had first taken off. “Oh. No one got hurt, did they?”
“Fortunately not,” Dragon answered. “Hookowlf is also in custody, thanks to your, ah, subordinate here.” Dragon reached out to hand him to Tiamat, who picked him up and plopped him on her shoulder as he nibbled away on the last candy she’d proffered him.
“Did you get into trouble?” Tiamat asked him.
Benny meekly grumbled.
“Oh.”
“What did he say?”
“He… uhh… Gave you a nickname.”
“Oh? What is it?”
Tiamat was about to say something, but all at once, Dragon’s vision became distorted. She froze, literally froze, her suits going rigid all at once. And suddenly her digital mind was screaming as it began to fray and fragment.
----
It was over. Finally, truly over, Mags thought, after Geoff pressed the button that fired Ascalon.
Or, it was supposed to be.
Saint, in a blind panic, had all but slammed his fist into the return key as he executed the termination code, an action that had been the culmination of two long, sleepless days as the three of them huddled around the terminal in their planning room, watching events unfold. Yesterday, the Guild, and by extension the Dragonslayers through their backdoor access into Dragon’s mind, had learned that the Endbringers were back, and far from dead or gone as so many suspected.
No, not merely back, but apparently capital-M Mastered by some teenaged girl in New England, who had apparently been bullied by a local Ward so severely that she had triggered. Said powers had manifested as the ability to both mind-control and miniaturize the abominations, and giving her more power than probably even Scion had. Literally in the palms of her hands, if the pictures of the girl’s first outing and later power testing had been anything to go by.
Then, with growing terror, Geoff, Mags and Dobrynja sleeplessly watched events continue to unfold. Both Dragon and Narwhal, the leader of the Guild and Dragon’s nominal superior, departed for Brockton Bay in an attempt to recruit the now godlike teenager. Their horror only grew further as the girl and her pint-sized abominations were officially recruited.
And then she demonstrated how effective she was as she and her trio of nightmares dismantled a gang of Nazis, the Behemoth having managed to effortlessly defeat one of the East Coast’s nastier villains by simply riding him like a jockey would a racehorse and literally devouring him all the while. Not to mention all the other capes her other mastered Endbringers defeated. Not killed either, defeated. The girl had not only mastered them, but had taught them restraint to boot.
And then… And then Dragon started talking to it. And then the Behemoth started listening. Geoff began the process to trigger Ascalon, their doomsday button, when Dragon began to give orders to the Behemoth and feed it candy out of the palm of its hand. Which led them to that moment, panicking in their hideout after Ascalon triggered, initiated… and then froze mid-execution, four words filling the screen of every display in their planning room.
YOU HURT
OUR FRIEND
A long, pregnant silence endured, as none of them said a thing, simply staring in shock at the four words on whatever monitor or screen was nearest.
Geoff was the one to break the silence. “Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
“G-Geoff, calm down-”
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down! You read the same fucking thing I did!” Geoff screamed. “She… She was speaking fucking Endbringer!”
“Geoff I don’t think-”
“Fuck!” Geoff slammed his fists onto the desk, hard enough to crack the surface and send one of the monitors clattering over the edge and to the floor. “Fucking fuck!”
“So, what do we do now?” Dobrynja asked. He’d remained the most composed of their little group.
“We…” A moment passed in uncomfortable silence as Geoff composed himself. “First, we need to gain access to Dragon’s core systems.”
“Okay. And after that?”
“Baumann,” he said. “We go there.”
“The Birdcage?” “What!?” were Dobrynja and Mags’ reactions.
“If Dragon’s gone…” Geoff swallowed. “Gone or not, either way she won’t be watching, and she won’t be able to stop us.”
“What… Do you mean by that, Geoff?”
Dobrynja answered Mags before Geoff could get a chance to. “Teacher.”
“What? Wait…” Mags realized. “Saint, you son of a bitch.”
“Mags-”
“You said you were over him, you fuck!” Mags moved to grab her boyfriend, only to be grabbed and restrained by Dobrynja, the Russian easily holding her.
“Mags, I-”
“Fuck you Geoff,” Mags spat. “You promised me he didn’t have any effect on you anymore. Hell, you promised us!”
“Mags, Calm down,” Dobrynja told her.
“Fuck you Dob,” she spat, struggling in his grasp. “How much?” She demanded from Geoff.
“What?”
“How much of your hate of Dragon was because she was a threat, and how much of it was because she was between you and your fucking sugar daddy?“
“Mags,” Dobryjna interjected, “That’s enough. And Geoff, we are not going to the Birdcage.”
The man was deathly quiet. “I don’t recall making you the leader of this team.”
“No,” he replied, “But I will not help you free a mountain full of madmen to aid one that deserves to be there as much as the rest.” He released Mags, who had finally calmed down. “But that is not our main problem.”
“Yeah, what about that?” Mags asked, pointing to the screens still displaying our message. “Pretty sure we just pissed off the apocalypse with the hornet’s nest you just kicked.”
Geoff scowled, reminded again of the message on every screen. “We leave. Mags, get the suits ready. Dob, bring the trucks around and tell the mooks to start loading gear up. We’re moving out asap.”
“Fucking get the suits ready!?”
“Mags, just go, okay? I… We’ll figure this out later. I- I need to pack up here.”
Neither Mags nor Dobryjna said anything, simply departing the planning room and heading separate ways. The old National Guard barracks they had repurposed had been long forgotten, as had the old steam tunnels beneath the complex. One portion of the sprawling network of accessways housed their shared accommodations, while another was converted into a makeshift workshop for their suits.
Mags thought about what Geoff had said, how his first course of action now that Dragon was out of the picture seemed to be to go straight back to Teacher. She considered taking her suit and fucking off right then and there, and leaving the Dragonslayers for good. Although, she doubted she’d get far. Because if her growing suspicions about Geoff were correct, then he was exactly the sort of type to insert all sorts of backdoor contingencies into its system in case she or Dob ever had other ideas.
Mags sighed, arriving at the heavy steel double doors. She unbolted them, swinging them open. If she did anything, she’d have to wait. Detroit wasn’t far away, but Geoff was clearly wanting to head in the other direction to B.C., despite hers and Dobryjna’s protests-
Her thoughts were cut off as a loud crash came from inside the workshop. In a panic, Mags swung the doors open the rest of the way and dashed inside-
Only to be confronted with an absolute horror of a sight before her. The Behemoth, sitting atop the crushed hulls of hers and Dob’s dragonsuits, using said suits of armor as a sort of improvised throne. The mangled remains of Saint’s own Dragonsuit were clutched in its paws, utterly ruined. It… It was eating the suit, taking bite after bite out of the armor and seemingly oblivious to her presence. For a moment, Mags simply stood there in shock, the nightmare stories about the Hero Killer flashing through her mind. Her shock was broken as the monster paused in its meal and looked over to her, the head pivoting atop its barrel chest, that single red eye pondering her arrival.
Mags was convinced she was about to die, only to be surprised as the eldritch nightmare simply growled at her, the rumbling sound shaking the room and Mags’ bones. It promptly wrenched a limb off of the mangled suit in its clutches in a shower of sparks, before holding out the severed limb toward her. The action was accompanied by another rumbling growl, and Mags almost understood what it seemed to be communicating.
“I… Uhh… I’ll… pass?” She somehow forced herself to say.
Another growl, and the Behemoth simply returned to its meal, chowing down on the severed limb like a chicken drumstick. Mags stepped back, one step at a time, before promptly turning and bolting, all but sprinting back towards the planning room and the way she came. She heard another loud crash, this time up ahead from the planning room. Mags rounded the corner and barged through the doors-
To see the Simurgh. She was there, floating over Geoff’s prone and limp form, at the center of the room that was now in total disarray. The nightmare made manifest was clutching the ruggedized laptop that housed Ascalon’s code in its elegant hands, while what looked like Geoff’s sidearm was clutched in one of its myriad wings. Normally it was nude, but here and now, Ziz was clad in some sort of dull silver-gray bodysuit to protect its modesty. Not that it left anything to the imagination with how… skin-tight it was.
Mags glanced down at Geoff, who had somehow managed to personally piss off an Endbringer. Considering the swelling bruise forming on his temple, he’d been assaulted by said Endbringer, bludgeoned either by the pistol or the laptop. Probably the latter, if the new dent in the case was anything to go by. Ziz turned its head to look up at her, and the anger evident in its glaring pout was plainly obvious. Mags took a step back and away from the Endbringer, while wondering how many seconds she now had left to live. A thought crossed her mind to draw her own pistol and put a bullet in her own head then and there - after all, getting turned into a Ziz bomb was a fate worse than death.
“Well now,” came a voice behind her, “So you’re the ones that attacked Dragon?”
Mags spun around, coming face to face with the one who had apparently mastered the Endbringers. Tiamat, she recalled her name. “You?” she asked, finding her voice, “How did you find us?”
Tiamat just shrugged as she walked into the room and looked around. “Simmie made another teleporter,” she gestured toward the Endbringer. “As for where, uhh,” she paused for a moment. “Where are we?”
“An old army base, a little ways south of Gary, Indiana,” Mags told the second most powerful cape in the world after Scion. Probably.
“Oh, really?” Tiamat turned to look at Simmie, still looming over Geoff. “That gadget you made with the scope took all of us that far? Neat.”
The Simurgh chirped, actually chirped in satisfaction, but Mags was too focused on what Tiamat had just said. Us all? Before she could ask her to explain, none other than Narwhal herself strode into the room after Tiamat, briefly ducking through the doorway to keep her horn from carving a chunk out of the threshold. “Your accomplices upstairs are detained,” Narwhal addressed her. “So if I were you, I would surrender.”
Mags grimaced. “I… surrender,” she replied with a nod. Abruptly she felt her wrists being jerked out in front of her, now ensnared by a pair of rings made of dozens of Narwhal’s little glittering force fields. She knew that if Narwhal willed it, she’d likely lose her hands entirely. The Guild leader approached her and immediately moved to pat her down, finding and relieving her of both the pistol and her combat knife, tossing them both out of her reach. Mags said nothing, and instead focused on the act of being as small and as insignificant as humanly possible.
“Tiamat, next time, please let us know when you’re going to perform a mass teleport.”
“I… All right,” she replied sheepishly. “Although I wasn’t really expecting Simmie to, well, do it either.”
“I see. Well, communication is something you are going to have to work on.”
“I understand.” Next to Tiamat, Simmie chirped, gesturing with Ascalon. “Simmie says she needed to get here immediately to stop it from hurting Dragon any more.”
“And what’s ‘it,’ exactly?”
A groan of pain from the floor. “You… you utter bitches.”
Mags wasn’t sure who Geoff was talking about, herself, the two heroes, the floating apocalypse or all of the above. In response, the Simurgh made a sound which came across as a demonic, angry squawk. She moved to raise the laptop again, but Tiamat held out a hand.
“That’s enough Simmie,” Tiamat chided her. “We don’t want to give him brain damage, even if he probably deserves it.”
Another angry squawk was her reply, but she lowered her improvised bludgeon nonetheless.
“You… all of you,” Geoff climbed to his feet unsteadily. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”
“Stopped a bunch of villains from trying to kill a hero?” Tiamat ventured, cocking her head to the side.
“What? No, that thing…” Geoff hissed. He shook his head, no doubt still disoriented from the clobbering he’d received.
“Simmie, I think you broke him. How hard did you hit him with that?”
Again the miniature Ziz ‘spoke’, this time with a more upbeat chirp.
Geoff laughed, looking at both Tiamat and Narwhal. “Look at you, you heroes, you’re so proud,” he spat. “You think you did a good thing, didn’t you? All you’ve done is let that… that abomination off its leash!” He half shouted, pointing at Simmie.
Tiamat crossed her arms. “I will have you know that Simmie is not an ‘abomination,’ she’s my friend, nor is she on a leash.”
“No! Dragon, you stupid, little girl!” The leader of the Dragonslayers was shouting now. “She’ll end the world if I don’t stop her!”
“According to Simmie here, you tried to kill her.”
“Kill her? Kill her!? How can I kill an AI!” Geoff screamed. “A computer program! She’s not even a real person, you stupid nit of a girl!”
There was a moment of silence after Geoff finished shouting. And then Tiamat spoke.
“I know, and I don’t care.”
Mags saw a look of shock settled on her boyfriend’s face. No, ex-boyfriend, now that she thought about it. “What?”
“Simmie explained it to me while she was making the teleporter,” Taylor said. “I was a little skeptical, but I suppose you just confirmed it. Benny?” Tiamat asked, turning to the door. Only then did Mags notice the plodding, lumbering footsteps of the Behemoth coming towards the threshold. Unlike Narwhal it didn’t duck, and the assortment of uneven spikes atop carved out rents from the threshold. Had it not been a double doorway, it probably would have taken most of the wall on either side down too. Up close, Mags realized how small it was. It still towered over everyone else in the room, but the Hero Killer was supposed to be as big as an office building. Then again, the Simurgh was supposed to be ginormous too. Reading Dragon’s thoughts and observations in real time was one thing, but seeing it up close? They really did come off as being ‘cute,’ in some eldritch, esoteric sense of the word.
Ziz floated over, handing off Ascalon to the Behemoth. She was actually grinning as the Behemoth took the comparatively small object with its oversized claws with a low, grumble.
“That thing,” she pointed at Ascalon. “Nibble.”
A louder, more enthusiastic roar, and both Mags and Geoff watched in horror as the monster began to chew on the device like some sort of tasty, dainty morsel.
“Anyways, I disagree with what you said about Dragon,” Tiamat picked up from where she left off. “Because, I’ve known her for less than a day and she’s a better hero than I probably ever could be. She’s a better person than I ever could be, has likely helped more people than I ever could, and according to you she’s, what, a computer?” Tiamat looked over her shoulder at her superior. Mags couldn’t see her face, but she could probably guess her expression from the tone of her voice, confused at the uncommon knowledge.
“Tiamat, it’s news to me,” Narwhal shrugged. “I thought Dragon was agoraphobic. It’s her go-to explanation when people ask why she’s never around in-person. It would explain things though.”
Said cape looked back at Geoff, now whimpering in the corner he’d backed up into. “You remind me of someone I used to know,” she continued. “Someone who had no issues at all with hurting other people for the pettiest of bullshit reasons. You think you’re some sort of high and mighty person, someone in the moral right. But to me?” Now Tiamat was looming over the man, “You’re just another sad, pathetic bully.”
“I… Ahh, urgh, fuck you!” Abruptly he lunged at Tiamat, A punch knife appearing in his hand from here he’d concealed it in his belt-
Whack.
Mags didn’t even register the Simurgh move. One instant she was floating near Tiamat, the next she’d actually slapped her ex-boyfriend with one of her elegant wings, sending him flying into a table in a heap. For a moment she thought he was dead, but a pained wheeze told her enough. The only other sound in the room was that of the Behemoth chewing on the lump of scrap formerly known as Ascalon.
“Well, that was surprising.” Next to Tiamat, the Ziz chirped a most satisfied chirp.
Mags felt a hand fall on her shoulder. “Well now, that leaves you. Before Dragon arrives, do you have any thoughts you would like to share?
“Dragon?”
“Whatever your partner did to my old friend, Simmie here built something out of a spotter’s scope to reverse it.” An excited chirp from elsewhere in the room. “Then she remade it into a Tinkertech teleporter that brought myself, Tiamat, Dragon and most of the ENE Protectorate here. Any other questions?”
“Ex-partner,” Mags clarified. “By the way, Saint wants to free Teacher from the Birdcage. I was planning to leave him after he pulled that stunt. Dob was too, probably. He’s not dead, is he?”
“Interesting. Your accomplice and his lackeys are alive and detained. They surrendered quite readily when Levi, was it? Popped out of the sky on top of them.” The nickname reminded Mags that Tiamat had renamed all of them. Looking down at her, Narwhal grinned. “Anyways, any information you provide will certainly improve your own standing.”
Mags regarded the force field cuffs she was currently wearing. She also regarded the cape that made them, the two Endbringers in the room and the baddest bitch on the planet, who was currently now focused on simultaneously patting the Hope Killer’s head and scritching the Hero Killer’s spiky crown.
“Fuck it, what do you want to know?”
----
Not for the first time that day, Thomas desperately wanted to shoot something. Said shooting would be followed by him plunging the Ka-Bar in his calf sheath into said something over and over, recreating that one scene from an old movie from the 50s he’d begrudgingly watched years ago as part of a PRT function.
In a throwaway timeline, he settled for shooting Pitter seven times with an automatic shotgun. The man, as detestable as he was, did have his uses.
Thomas continued driving home. In the alternate timeline, Coil turned around and headed back to his base. While Thomas was off work, Coil still had things to do. The day’s events had thrown a number of his schemes into disarray. It was one thing to have the ABB destroyed overnight, but the Empire as well?
Sure, Kaiser and a few of his lackeys had gotten away, but the vast majority of his little gang hadn’t and were now cooling their heels in various PRT lockups up and down the seaboard, thanks to that fat hog Piggot calling in some favors to capitalize on the moment to remove a second gang from the city. Unless Kaiser’s friends across the sea in Germany came to his aid, the writing was on the wall for the Empire.
Of course, there were still the Merchants. However, Coil barely even considered them a nuisance, let alone a threat. With careful use of his timelines, he probably could have killed Skidmark and the rest himself if he set his mind to it. There were also Faultline and her mercenaries. There were the Travelers, his latest acquisition that was proving its usefulness. And last but not least, Tattletale’s merry little band of thieves, the Undersiders. Destabilizing the Bay further would be much harder without the two main gangs all things considered, but not impossible.
A part of him wanted to be happy. His personal company wasn’t going to stop existing in a few weeks from insolvency and would continue to serve as his organization’s front, now that cash flows had been established with out of towners. His path to success, while now much longer, now had decidedly fewer roadblocks, the one titanic roadblock notwithstanding. But still, he was upset. He was upset, because he felt like he had no control over any of it, and he hated not feeling in control.
Tiamat. The walking, talking, breathing harbinger of Armageddon. Three Armageddons, to be precise. He genuinely dreaded the moment he met her face-to-face, either in his cape identity or out of it. He’d technically already had, several times, but those were throwaway timelines and he didn’t count them. He still had nightmares from the time he’d somehow accidentally injured her and all three of her pet eldritch horrors had descended on him at once. Not for the first time he flashed back to that moment, when they ripped the roof of his underground base. It wasn’t lost on him that said roof consisted of about a hundred feet of rock and skyscraper foundation.
Hopefully he could arrange something in regards to the girl’s father. He considered calling in a favor with Accord, arranging some sort of… something, anything to get their family out of the city. A job, some new maritime-related position there. She could be Boston’s problem for all he cared.
Thomas turned into his driveway, a nondescript house in an upper class neighborhood on the safer side of town. He got out, fetched his briefcase, locked his sedan and made his way up the steps of his home…
The front door was ajar.
In a practiced motion, Thomas popped open his briefcase and pulled the pistol from its holster inside. He dropped the briefcase by the door, gently kicking open the door from ajar to fully open. On cue, a lamp on a side table in his living room flicked on, revealing the person sitting there on his couch.
Thomas recognized her immediately. “You,” He spat.
In front of him, in his own home no less, was her. It had been well over a decade now since he’d first laid eyes on her, and practically nothing had changed about the woman. She still wore the same sharply-tailored dress suit, He briefly wondered where that fucking hat was, before realizing it was hanging from the coat rack by the door to his right. Thomas remembered that the rack was purely decorative; he’d never once bothered placing either a coat or a hat on it. In all the times he used his private civilian residence, he put those on and took them off in his bedroom. Strangely, the Cauldron agent was in all likelihood the first person to use the piece of furniture for its intended purpose.
“Thomas, you’re late.”
“What do you want?” He asked.
“You have alcohol and snacks,” she replied.
What? “I doubt you’d have a hard time obtaining either of those.”
“You also have a complete video recording of the downfall of one of the local gangs, and what I presume to be a comfortable sofa and an excellent home entertainment system to view it with.” She gestured to the couch next to her.
Coil dared not even consider raising a hand against the woman. He had no clue what power she possessed, but he had little desire to find out. For all he knew, Contessa was probably one of the deadliest capes in the world with powers to rival the Triumvirate, the quattro of nightmares on the other side of the city not counting. Or, she could be as powerless as any mundane. Regardless, she worked for the one person who still had hooks into him.
Thomas gritted his teeth, as yet more of his plans flew off of the rails. “I can provide you with a copy, if you so wish.”
The woman chuckled. “Mr. Calvert, we have both had busy days, I am sure.” She sat down on the sofa, thankfully in the spot adjacent to his preferred sitting spot. “I suppose you could say mine was even busier. I had places to go, people to see…” She trailed off, for a beat. “Governments to topple.”
Thomas didn’t know what to think at the idea that she was probably totally serious. “Well, I hope you like Chianti then, because that’s what I have.”
“Two bottles, top shelf. More than sufficient,” she said with a smile.
Coil sighed. He walked to his room, momentarily ignoring the woman that had clearly made herself at home. He wondered about the real reason she was there. It wasn’t to kill him, at any rate. If she had wanted to, she already would have done so. He shrugged off his suit jacket and tie, before heading back out to the kitchen to fetch the bottles of wine from the chiller.
“I doubt this is strictly a date,” Thomas said. “So what is this really about?”
She smirked. “Really, a woman can’t simply relax among good company?”
Thomas chuckled. “I really don’t want to know what you consider good company.” Thomas presumed it was probably some eldritch horror out of a Lovecraft novel. He placed the bottles and glasses on the coffee table before sitting at the opposite end of the couch from the woman, if only to put as much space between them as possible. “So, what do you want from me? Or rather, what do your masters want from me?”
The woman shrugged. “Well, to the point then. Fair enough, I’ll keep it brief, business before pleasure and all that.”
Thomas sighed heavily. He had an idea about what it would be. “This is about Tiamat, I presume?”
“You presume correct.”
Lovely, he thought sarcastically. “Since I became aware of her, I have been actively avoiding her.” Not strictly the truth, but not strictly a lie either. “Rest assured, whatever schemes you have in regards to her, I am staying far away from them.”
“Excellent,” the woman spoke. “Although you have certainly made efforts to, how should I say it, cozy up to her father?”
“A necessary cost of doing business.” After all that had happened, Thomas had wanted nothing to do with the Hebert family. And so it was peak irony that the local Dockworkers’ Association was best suited for the sort of salvage work his little business side venture needed done, and the man best suited to the task of finding and hiring suitable local talent that was up to the task was its head of hiring, the very man that was the father of the living, breathing nightmare that was one Taylor Hebert.
“I am sure.” The woman reached over, taking one of the bottles. Thomas didn’t notice from where, but the woman now had a corkscrew in hand. With a quick, practiced motion, she twisted the cork free. “We want you to do one thing for the time being.”
“And that is?”
“What you are currently doing.” She poured herself a glass of expensive wine before continuing. “To a degree. You plan to find some means through her father for her to leave the Bay. Instead, you will use your resources to ensure she stays.”
Thomas laughed, he couldn’t help himself. “I don’t know what plans you have for Brockton, but Tiamat has likely derailed them by simply existing.”
“Assuredly.” She took a sip, and nodded in apparent approval before continuing. “But worry not about our affairs, Coil, and focus on your own. Besides,” she gestured at Thomas’s entertainment system, “We have something exciting to watch.”
Thomas looked at the flatscreen. Both it and the DVD player were on. He hadn’t even noticed until just then. Thomas picked up the remote from where it lay between them on the couch and pressed play. Immediately video and sound began to play, a series of recordings from various surveillance cameras around the PRT that painted the picture of the downfall of the Empire. He silently lamented the fact his life had become so infuriatingly complex.
