章節 1636: 24
Chapter Text
She pulled out of Maria's mind, and only felt a bit like someone gave her a hard shove rather than a punch to the gut made out of exhaustion.
It was getting easier to not mess up or get tired.
She took a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh as she straightened, allowing Maria to take a moment to focus back into the real world, taking the time to grab the woman's hand and poke a little pinprick on her finger with an invisible tentacle. She quickly lapped up the drop of blood, and backed up.
It took a couple seconds to clear the mental fog, but when it did, Maria didn't really… seem different.
Just a bit shocked? Maybe? She was staring at her with wide eyes, glancing at the stall around them with a faint sense of puzzlement.
"Uhm. Apologies, I must have… zoned out. Is everything alright? Are you okay?" Eventually Maria asked, staring down at her eyes directly with a slight, growing feeling of unease, concern and confusion, and Taylor felt her brows raise.
Did she… not remember being Mastered?
Why-
Was it because she stuffed her head full of the mental equivalent of a slightly euphoric drug buzz?
Wait, of course it was!
For a moment, she contemplated the benefits of slamming her head into the wall.
Evelynn never bothered slamming people with changes like she did, she preferred a surgeon's touch and pavlovian conditioning to make her sex and torture pets how she wanted them to be. She found it more fun.
But somewhere in those dozen thousand years of existence, near the start, she might have done it for a few years until she felt it was too easy and changed her pets without that salty aftertaste of despair that came by naturally twisting them.
She probably did do this exact thing at some point, but she couldn't really be sure.
Even a demon didn't have a memory that ran that long, at least not flawlessly.
Still, she should have known she could do this. Evelynn had probably done this herself, and even so, she knew how her 'magic' worked. She felt like bashing her head into a wall.
No, she was too frustrated right now in too public a place. She should calm down and get her head back in the game.
So, with a deep breath, she did.
Now, to act or not to act?
Something in between?
"I'm perfectly fine. Would you mind giving me your phone number real quick?" She asked, and Maria nodded, quickly reaching into a handbag that Taylor hadn't even notice was hanging off her arm the entire time.
"If you don't mind me asking, how did we get here, exactly? I suppose I… zoned out?" Maria asked hesitantly, and quickly dug out two phones.
"... Why do you have two phones?" She whispered, confused, and Maria lifted up the bulkier one.
"PRT phone," Maria started, then lifted the slimmer one. "Personal phone. Why are we whispering?" Maria asked, giving an anxious glance to the door, or likely, the chaos outside.
"There's someone in here and I don't want her to hear us. Give me your personal phone number."
Maria put the bulky one in the bag, and then spun the slick one around to find her own contact, scrolling through menus.
Now, what to tell her?
Well, what she didn't really know didn't really hurt her, but it might.
And Maria had enough acceptance embedded into her to not even blink at her if she told her she was a member of the S9, so there was no need to know why she would be giving her information. If she asked, Maria would tell her.
"You kinda did zone out there. You should probably go for a doctor's check-up if you don't remember how we got here. That sounds a bit concerning." She whispered back, conscious of the woman in the next stall over that was currently washing her hands.
She almost told her not to go for an MRI scan before she remembered that she didn't alter the brain, she altered the mind.
The brain would quickly synchronize, of course, but not with the kind of speed that would indicate something anomalous in the brain waves, hopefully.
Maria nodded with a slight, anxious mumble, then found her phone number, and turned the phone around to show it to her.
She hadn't brought her burner phone with her because that seemed like a security risk, especially if they had some kind of procedure where she might have to part with it, so she simply glared at the phone number as she memorized it.
'Perfect Focus' made it trivial, and after five seconds, she nodded.
"Okay, put it away. I'll contact you later from an unknown number with the words 'The world words shine strangely'. That will be me. Put me in your contacts when you see it, alright?"
Maria nodded, some anxiety and confusion still roiling in her head.
"Now, I have some orders for you. First of all, you will feed me information you might consider relevant to cape life and general goings-on. Operations, PRT rumor and gossip, whatever you can reasonably get your hands on without risking discovery. Do you have a family, relationship, super close friends?"
Maria nodded.
"My parents who moved to Philadelphia, and a brother in Plymouth. No close friends or anything else, unfortunately." Maria whispered, and a tinge of sadness soured the air.
So no children or boyfriend or any children. Thank fuck.
She wasn't a saint, but if Maria had said she had a husband or a daughter or a son, she'd have completely called the whole thing off and let the woman go on with her days. It's one thing to put a woman in a bit of a risky spot, it's an entirely different one to put a family woman in a place that could ruin an entire familial ecosystem.
"Okay. So, next order. Do your absolute best to climb the career ladder so you can get to a higher ranking position to feed me better info. Preferably stick to Brockton Bay until further notice, or just ask me if an opportunity pops up. But do not sacrifice your health and personal life to do so, if possible. You're a good woman and you deserve to be happy. Alright?"
And she was a good woman. A surprisingly good one.
Maybe she was unnecessarily jaded, but she was expecting about half the cheer and lightness the woman exuded to be some kind of front to something worse beneath, but no. It was genuine.
She kind of wished Maria had been a bitch deep down, so she wouldn't feel that slight tinge of guilt for this, but whatever. She'd dealt with worse.
Maria smiled at the compliment, and her incredulous, slightly anxious mix of emotions faded for something nicer and more determined. She nodded.
Good.
"Okay, third order. You already know this deep down because you're a good woman, and a genuinely smart one, but do not tell anyone anything about me that could end up hurting or exposing me. So if someone asks what happened when we walked into this bathroom, or what I told you…"
Maria frowned in thought for only a moment before her features took a puzzled twist.
"Then this conversation didn't happen, and you didn't really tell me much besides apologizing for dragging me here?" Maria asked, somewhat uncertainly.
So she was a good liar too, if she had to. The perks of being socially adept.
She smiled.
"Yes, good. Of course, you won't tell them about what you feel about me either, or why you decided to follow through with this. But, on the off-chance that you are caught, I want you to say that you were Mastered into all of this, and if they ask, say that you can say you were Mastered because the cape that did it explicitly let you say it if you were to be caught, as a sort of mercy. But do not say anything else."
Maria blinked at her in confusion.
"Why would I say I was Mastered?"
Holy shit.
She genuinely had no clue.
Damn it, this was going to be a bit finicky. Having to dodge lie detectors was her main issue here. If Maria knew she was Mastered, she'd completely crash a lie detector test. The woman was a good liar, but not that good.
And she had no idea what kind of screening processes people in the PRT went through to get to the higher seats.
"Because if they catch you, then you were Mastered by me in this very moment. If you're not caught doing what you're doing for me and detained, you were not Mastered by me, ever. Understand?"
Maria opened her mouth, furrowed her brow, tilted her head, pushed her glasses back into place, a bit, and shifted.
"I'm… not sure that makes sense?"
She shook her head.
"Sense doesn't matter. It is fact. That is how my power works, and powers don't have to make sense. Retroactive precognition mixed with time travel paradoxes." She said, spouting some random bullshit that might somewhat make sense if one squinted and took some LSD.
"Powers don't make sense, but they just are. They're a fact, they're there, they're accepted. So that's how this works. You were never Mastered or influenced by me or anyone, of course. But if the PRT catches you leaking information to me and tried to interrogate you or detain you, then yes, you were Mastered in a predetermined point in past time that I will not tell you about so you cannot know. Alright? Understand?" She asked, and much to her surprise, after a few moments of silent processing, Maria did nod, and she did feel like she understood.
How the hell Maria twisted that mess around in her head to make sense, she wasn't sure, but she sure was grateful.
"That is an odd power. Not at all what was described in your file either." Maria half-asked with an inquisitive smile. "I assume you want to keep this power a secret too?"
Good, good.
This woman was smart.
She had been worried that through some logical Master-deficient loophole, Maria would leak everything and get her a Kill Order signed pronto, but she had enough sense to understand basic op-sec.
Well, she worked in the PRT, it made sense.
"Yes. I do. Now, let's get out before this becomes suspicious or weird. Nobody is in the bathroom, leave first. Continue as normal." She whispered, and Maria nodded with a smile, only a tiny hint of anxiety in her still lingering from that apparently random bout of memory loss she had.
Had she not put acceptance into the woman's mind, she would have connected the obvious dots, but if it came from her mouth, then she was right and there was no need to think of it much further.
Unbudging acceptance did wonders.
As Maria stepped outside, then out onto the hallway, she took a moment to mentally prepare herself, and switched back to herself, going to wash her hands for the sake of appearances.
Then she walked outside, and Maria escorted her to the PRT vehicle heading for The Rig with a smile, past rushing troopers, past a screen tuned to a local news channel, and outside to the right of the building.
It was actually a tad labyrinthian now that she walked through its halls. Open bridges between three three-storied buildings, some snaking around, some going through other buildings entirely, and most simply arranged like an odd mixture between a university, a military base, and an office block. It wasn't much bigger than a university, but still, it was larger than she expected, and oddly deserted.
Like it was built for a city much bigger than this and the future just didn't hold up to that expanding dream.
Practically a perfect metaphor for the Bay itself, really.
The PRT building was like a figurehead up front, behind it was a large open space for speeches and events most likely, and all around that open space was the rest of the complex.
And there were so many goddamn cameras. It was ridiculous.
Still, a simple walk through this place and some seemingly innocuous, curious questions, had given her the knowledge of where the troopers kept most of their gear, where the containment foam canisters and tanks were stored and where the grenades were kept, where troopers could sleep if there was an emergency that required excessive overtime, where the real lethal options were hidden, and even the gymnasiums where they would train.
It was enlightening.
Already, she could see lines form in her mind, barricades and traps and places to strike to send the whole fortress tumbling down, the path of least resistance for a group of men or capes to take to ruin any cohesive response the complex could bring against assault.
Maybe she should point out some weaknesses to the PRT in some anonymous email or something.
She was taken to a large, square metal box that was quite similar to an armored, monitored hangar, albeit significantly less tall. Vehicles of all types covered the place, including even a few boats and some of those hovercraft things that could go on any terrain, shoved in the corner. There were even four helicopters perched on the back of some… fork-lift like vehicle likely meant to drag them outside onto open air. They didn't look particularly well-cared for, armored, or armed, but they'd probably fly well enough for them to keep track of some foot chase or something if needed. Which was likely their purpose in general.
For the most part though, it was a mix between bulky rapid response cars like someone took a police car, threw tank plates on it, and painted it black, armored military vehicles like hummers and humvees and even personnel carriers, sans the turrets up top, all aso painted black and covered in the PRT logo. Most of the armored jeeps looked like they could take a beating from Lung and keep moving.
She paused for a moment in awe.
Her first thought was fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck those things look fucking hot as shit! She wanted those!
It was a strange childish glee that she knew many boys felt in their early years, seeing something and just inwardly sperging out because holy shit those things look so tough and cool. It was almost stereotypical, the young kid and his obsession with cool cars, or cool swords, or shining armor. A classic.
She could really fucking relate right now. The sheer intimidation factor of seeing this stuff patrolling the streets would make half the gangs pucker up or hide in their holes a bit more.
So… why the hell didn't they? Why were these beasts literally gathering dust in a fucking hangar shoved into the back of the PRT complex?
This was more of a small army base than a huge police station. Which made sense since this organization was all about fighting or responding to cape bullshit, but she hadn't expected this.
It wasn't like she couldn't figure out where this all came from. Most of this was likely literally given to them by the military, which was slowly getting cut because nobody wanted to go to war when everyone was fighting a small scale permanent civil war in their territories between capes.
Still, she inwardly bumped up the PRT by several notches on the potential threat rating.
...If they could ever be bothered to use the shit they had. It was just… why have all this gorgeous armor and never use it!?
…
She was probably starting to sound like Squealer at this point, wasn't she?
Still, these things gave her ideas. Little visions of what the future could be.
"Everything alright?" Maria asked with a kind, puzzled smile, and she shook herself out of it, resuming her walk.
"Yeah, just… why the ff- heck are all these things sitting here gathering dust? Wouldn't it be better to get them out and patrol, letting the criminals and the villains know you're just around the corner?" She asked innocently as she matched stride with Maria again, eyeing the troopers that were rushing past and around them into the cars, the fastest vehicles they could find.
"Ah, that's mostly because the PRT is not a police force. We're technically Special Forces meant to deal with parahumans, and now that the military has less use for most Special Forces, that is actually where a lot of our captains and other troopers come from, though an unfortunate amount of Americans of the military have turned to overseas mercenary work instead. That, and people would prefer not to live with small tanks driving around. Makes things uneasy and tense. Oh and, I think there's some logic for not pushing villains too much. It's the 'cornered rat' mindset. A rat with a way out will take it, but if it's shoved into a corner without an exit, it will fight quite viciously. And that gets both infrastructure and people hurt, when villains feel cornered twenty four seven." Maria rushed out like a chatterbox, and she hummed in acknowledgement as she processed that.
She hadn't gone in here with rainbows and glitter in her eyes, but still, it was a tad disappointing to see that the PRT thought this way.
It was more realistic and reasonable though. She couldn't really judge this method too much, especially with how absurdly outnumbered the heroes were in Brockton.
Maria led her to one of the more normal looking cars that looked like an armored police vehicle, with only a single man in a slightly ruffled buttoned up shirt with a black tie. Male, well-built, appearing bored. Armed, judging by how he was right handed and his left arm moved oddly when moving over his chest.
A chest holster? Wasn't that a self-shooting hazard or something?
Regardless, her raised his head, gave a polite smile and a nod, and swung the door open to get in.
Maria opened the door for her, and after giving the woman a raised brow, she slunk into the car. The blonde entered from the other door, and they began the trip to The Rig.
Pistol is Tinkertech. Modelled after the 1911-
She yanked her power back on track with a slight twitch of her brow.
Grip and way of handling suggests Trickster is unfamiliar with it. Travellers do not have any Tinkers. Travellers do not have the resources to buy Tinkertech. Travellers have a backer. Non-standard actions suggest this is a job for said backer. Backer is Coil. Tense-
Lisa clenched her jaw and turned her head away.
Just her fucking luck.
She glanced back at the hideous monster pacing around them, some bizarre mix between a gorilla and a crocodile with a giant fuck-off anaconda as a tail, its disturbingly human eyes jerking around to keep them all in her sight.
Genesis body language is subdued. Tightness around the eyes, lingering stares. Feels guilty. Does not want to do this job. Feels like she has to. Does not care about the money. Driven by personal reasons. Emotional reasons. Seeks to use Coil to assist someone she cares about. Travellers doing this job to assist one of their own members. Believe Coil can help.
Now that, that was useful information, but they weren't giving her much info to give to Tay.
Still, she was in no mood to put herself in the bastard's sights, so she just had to keep herself quiet and wait for these assholes to leave so she could go to some other bank. There was another one in the Bay, somewhere.
Even so, she wanted to fuck with the bastard. She wanted to scramble his minions goddamn brains and make them realise how fucking stupid they were, what little tools they were.
Just like her, but these fuckers did this willingly. No gun to the head, as far as she could tell from the glimpse she got of Sundancer and Genesis.
"What the fuck is taking her so long?" Trickster grumbled, antsy and jittery, glancing back to the vault. "Gen, stay here." He barked, and suddenly, a fake potted plant replaced him, and he was in the only visible corner, sprinting out of sight to the vault.
So his power needed line of sight. Good info.
She swept her eyes back to the crowd.
She could needle Genesis a bit. She was more emotional about this than Trickster, or at least showed it more. Just a bit of prodding, hopefully something that wouldn't make Genesis tell Coil. And if he did come to know, well too bad. By the time he learned, Taylor would have given her a completely new look and even voice, if she asked.
She was scared, but she also wanted to know more. She wanted to be useful to Taylor. She didn't like taking and taking and not giving back enough, it felt unfair. She owed Tay… pretty much fucking everything.
And this might somehow lead her to figure out something about Coil that could put the bastard under Tay's heel quicker.
So she took a deep breath.
"You know that skinny bastard won't help you right?" She asked, and Genesis's snake tail tilted to eye her, her steps coming to a slow stop. She stared back, appearing calmer than she felt, still flat on the floor.
Is unsure of who you're referring to. Assumes you mean Trickster. Tense, assumes you're a parahuman but is uncertain.
"That coiling snake is lying to you."
Genesis went very, very still.
Is certain you are referring to Coil. Curious and alarmed.
"He's just trying to use you. He's going to use your teammate as leverage to control you and stall for time endlessly, stringing you along until you've outlived your use. Then he's going to discard you. Whatever bullshit he's fed you, he's not going to help your friend."
Genesis was just staring at her.
Alarmed, cautious, uncertain. Is considering calling for Trickster. Doesn't know what to do. Is afraid that what you said is right. Has been suspecting the same. Has lost too much hope in anything improving to really believe Coil.
"He won't even let you break off, even if he did suddenly grow a conscience and decide to help. He doesn't like loose ends, and if he doesn't kill you himself using another set of pawns, he'll let you die in a fire he ordered you to light for him as he crawls back into his hole." She growled, forgetting to control her anger.
Twitched at the word 'hole'. Believes you know where Coil is. She knows where Coil's base is. Base is underground.
Yeah no shit, she knew that already, shut up power.
If it told her where that underground was, it would have been better.
"What do you think happened to the Undersiders? You think those guys just randomly chose to hit up Lung's casino? Coil paid them to do it. Then he ditched them, left them to die. He will do the same to you. My advice? E-"
A flash of movement caught the corner of her eye, and a mousy girl with curly brown hair dashed forward to slap her hand onto Genesis's knee.
And nothing happened.
Both Lisa and Genesis, along with most of the lobby itself, paused and turned their heads to gawk at the girl, who was standing there wide-eyed and incredulous, staring up at Genesis with an expression of muted terror trying to shift into anger.
Was expecting something to happen. Is parahuman, Striker. Biokinetic. Stature, features and power all suggest Panacea. Was planning to knock Genesis out, her power does not work on Genesis. Genesis's power does more than alter and mesh biology. Genesis's power is too intertwined with her to be a Changer. Genesis is a biological projection or summon. Controller is not here.
That was useful but-
Panacea cringed back with a glare, falling on her ass and scrambling back, still half-raised off the floor.
"You're Panacea." Genesis spoke, a strangely soft rumble.
Awed, hopeful. Thinks Panacea could help their teammate. Sees her as their only viable option. Lisa Wilbourn's previous words reinforce this belief by making her further lose hope in Coil as an alternative.
Genesis dropped to her knees without a second thought, lowering her towering bulk as if to appear less threatening, and Panacea's eyes widened further as she jerked back.
"No no, relax. I'm not going to hurt you. You're Panacea. I've seen your face on the, the websites, and TVs. Amy Dallon." Genesis rumbled, and Panacea's eyes lowered into a glare as she tensed, glancing towards Trickster's direction.
"I… Can you help us?" Genesis asked.
Amy's glare swerved back into a look that looked simultaneously offended, incredulous, scared, and hateful.
"I- what? Do I look like a villain?" Amy snarled, backpedalling.
Genesis winced and didn't follow, a strange motion on an eight foot tall behemoth of scales.
"No, no, not with- with this. We're… we're doing this in exchange for getting help for a friend of ours. The- the girl knows."
Expects you to back her up.
Yeah, no.
Genesis turned back to Amy, palms up and hands open, softly gesticulating.
"Her power disfigured her, badly. We're doing this because someone said they could help us in exchange for doing things for them. We don't want to do this. I, we'll turn ourselves in if you can fix her, we'll become heroes, or leave this world entirely, or whatever you want. Please, just help her, take a look at her." Genesis rumbled, pleaded quickly, and Amy paused, her expression shifting between a dozen different cues.
Believes Genesis. Does not want to believe Genesis. Is convincing herself of ulterior motives and deception. Distrustful. Does not believe Genesis.
"You could have come to the hospital for that without becoming scumbag criminals! Go f- screw you! Do you really think I'd believe this bullshit?! Wait till Vicky comes here and turns you into a handbag! I'm not doing anything for you!" Amy growled, glaring defiantly up at Genesis.
Scared, hiding it, tone suggests great admiration for Victoria Dallon-
She turned her gaze to Genesis.
Troubled. Wants to give up. Will not give up. Considering taking Amy Dallon with them by force. Does not want to.
"We can't bring her to the hospital! She wouldn't even fit inside! She's…"
Believes teammate is extremely dangerous and unstable. Believes any public appearance is bound to end up in death for either side. Believes there is absolutely no hope of getting help from heroic sources. Believes teammate is dangerous enough to be killed on sight by The Protectorate. Deep down, believes teammate should be killed while it's still possible, for the greater good. Will not say this. Cannot say this. Is in denial.
Oh.
Shit, that… was not a misinformed opinion. What the fuck? Was their friend turning into another Crawler or something?
"She… I can't explain it. We can't bring her to a hospital, we can't take her to the PRT. The first will call the heroes, and the heroes will kill her! They've already tried!" Genesis growled loudly, and Amy flinched back, her hands shaking despite the defiant glare she withheld.
Genesis is not lying, but isn't saying the truth either. Heroes tried to kill their group before, but the reason is unrelated.
What?
Why?
She'd read up on what little info there was on these guys. They were basically just a slightly more asshole-ish version of the Undersiders.
"Yeah, sure, and Eidolon kicks puppies for fun! I don't believe you for a second. Heroes don't kill, villains do! Great excuse to make me "willingly" get kidnapped so you can ask for ransom money or something after. You're all fu- you're scumbags. I don't believe you as far as I can throw you. Just wait until New Wave gets here and rips you all a new one!" Amy growled, and Lisa kinda liked that fire.
Genesis did not.
Frustrated. Sad. Guilty. Desperate. Convinced by Lisa Wilbourn that Coil will not help. Convinced nobody else will help. Is willing to kidnap Panacea to force her to try and fix teammate. Does not want to do it. Will do it.
Oh, fuck. She should have just kept her fucking mouth shut, shouldn't she? Godfucking damn it!
Genesis's hands drooped, her eyes closed, and with a sigh, she got up to her full height, and took a step towards Panacea, whose glare faltered at the sight, backing up into the wall.
Her mind raced, and her eyes widened as a stray thought arrived.
Which timeline is this? The risky one, likely.
So if Genesis grabbed Panacea…
Coil did not want that kind of heat, ever, at all. He'd already been taking too much of it due to her telling Lung about his bullshit.
So the moment Genesis grabbed Panacea and dragged her to their escape car…
Then this would all disappear. This timeline would end, and she would end up harmlessly depositing her money into her bank account before going on with her day in another timeline.
Her knowledge would disappear, and this opportunity would vanish.
Genesis took a second step.
The Travellers had to finish their objective so that Coil would keep this timeline.
So she absolutely had to stop Genesis from grabbing Panacea, and she had to hope they would escape the heroes, wherever those guys were at the moment.
Another piece of the puzzle flit into place as the fleeting thought of calling Taylor raced to mind, and the conversation they had yesterday of how the hell Taylor knew about Spitfire came to mind.
Blood.
She could track anyone to anywhere as long as she had tasted their blood, like a constant compass beaming their location to her. Which was pretty terrifying to know, but also rather reassuring.
Another step, Panacea's expression shifting rapidly to fear.
"Gen, we're almost done- what's going on here?" A voice asked from her left, and she quickly glanced over to see an armoured costume, like someone took a baseball player's outfit and made it a little more angular after painting it black and red, having just turned the corner to the back of the lobby where the vault was.
Worried, confused, tense and ready to use his powers, hanging close to objects he can launch at any trouble.
Ballistic.
The worst fucking guy that could have come here and asked that question.
But it wasn't like she had options.
Genesis did not stop moving, even if she glanced to the side at her teammate. Her eyes quickly moved back to Panacea. Her mouth opened.
She had to stop Genesis to keep Coil from removing this timeline.
And she had to get their blood, any one of theirs, so Taylor could track the bastards back to Coil when they took whatever his prize was back to him. Because that would be when he would close up the timelines and Taylor could conveniently Master him without making the multiverse explode or something.
Well, she had a prime Brute option right here. But it was too uncertain. Biological projection, so it had blood.
But whose blood? Was it Genesis's? She doubted it.
Ballistic was the other option.
His outfit did not look like it would succumb to her nine millimetre rounds. Her right hand rushed down to her pant pocket, and she slid two cards into her hand, whatever they might be.
Sorry Ballistic she inwardly thought, and whipped her head around at the same time her movement caught his eye. She pushed her chest off the floor with her left hand, just enough to be able to commit to a wide swing of her arm, from her right hip to her left shoulder, a backhanded flick that almost looked playful if it wasn't so straining to pull off.
She had no idea how to throw cards besides the obvious whip motion and to try to keep them straight to what she was aiming at. Besides being bored occasionally at Taylor's, she hadn't had much more practice than a combined two hours.
But it was enough.
Ballistic slapped a hand down on the desk to his left, and sent it flying at her in a rush of papers and splintered wood.
It narrowly missed her cards, which by some power-afflicted bullshit, did not seem affected by the rush of wind that followed. One went too low and to the right, into some wooden cubicle. The other went straight, but too high to hit his foot.
She saw a glimpse of red slam into Ballistic's knee before the faded glass top of the desk covered her sight, and she only barely managed to twist her waist and neck away before an explosion further propelled the desk towards her, deafening her.
The impact winded her. Despite the glass top breaking on the floor before it hit her, it did nothing to help with the wood, the cheap composite cracking against her ribs and splitting open, the desk unravelling around her into chip dust and planks breaking off from each other. The world spun twice as she slid and rolled across the smooth floor, covered in broken glass and splintered wood, one arm over her head as the other scrambled for more cards.
She wasn't concussed enough to not recognize the green bulk that rushed at Panacea and whipped around, the massive anaconda tail rearing up and striking at her from above before the dust had even settled.
She thrust her left arm forward, and for the first time, consciously activated her power in the middle of a fight, feeling her focus fray at the sudden information.
Panicked strike. Uncontrolled. Paralytic venom. Trajectory aimed towards lower face.
She lifted her arm up a little, to protect her lower face, and barely managed to catch the bottom jaw with her wrist by sheer reflex, the silk snapping the thin fangs like they weren't even there.
The jaw tore backwards from the force, and the rest of the head twisted awkwardly as its mouth snapped shut. Momentum made it half-wrap around her arm and swing the limb up, above her head, making her slide backwards on the floor, wrenching her shoulder oddly and making pain flare from the joint as she coughed, trying to gasp air back into her bruised lungs.
She grabbed a fistful of cards with her right hand, but she didn't know what they were.
She jerked her eyes to the right, just enough to be able to see the light reflect off the broken glass covering the floor around her, and she activated her power as she prepared her arm to swing, focusing like a laser on the light, the light, tell me what the light reflects you stupid power.
Middle card glows gold, left and right glow red.
She gathered her legs and jammed her knee and foot against the snake part right as it began to shift, and shifted her grip just enough to shove the red cards to the sides of her hand, damn near dropping both before she swung the gold card onto the thing's "head", held between her middle and ring finger awkwardly.
A strange ping rang out as the card sank into the snake's brow, and she watched the golden energy rush out of the card and flare along Genesis's body, locking both her and the card in place, Panacea's screaming, wriggling body locked under her gigantic armpit as the healer tried to wriggle out.
A wall somewhere above her exploded, and a tide of dust and brick filled her sight before she snapped her eyes shut and rolled away.
The direction of 'down' moved from her sides to her feet, and gravity abruptly changed direction, making her stumble and throw her arms out, opening her eyes to see a street, a half dozen Wards in front of her, rushing for the bank and dragging people out of the chaotic insides of the bank.
Trickster.
Who just got shoved in the bank?
No, didn't matter.
Save Panacea.
Don't kill the Travelers so Coil doesn't close the timeline, make sure they escape.
Get their blood.
She only barely managed to stop her spin and fall to the floor by scrambling forward on all fours like a monkey, and then she was up again, pumping her legs as fast as she could, copying Taylor's stiff running form as best as she could.
A trooper tried to stop her, shouting something, but her ears were still ringing a little and everyone was screaming so she couldn't tell what. It didn't matter.
The bank shimmered and expanded in a way that made her head hurt, Vista somehow turning the lobby into a massive arena by stretching whatever unoccupied space was in the corners, a space which the frenzied mess of capes inside immediately exploited to spread thinner, to loosen up even more and hit harder.
Clockblocker sprinted at Genesis's frozen body as Vicky pried her sister from its frozen grasp, and Aegis followed behind him, before they too were swapped by Trickster, putting Aegis up front.
Genesis unfroze, the three seconds the stun lasted abruptly ending, and the woman jerked into motion a split second before a furiously screaming Glory girl tackled her through a wall.
Genesis swapped with a corner desk and her momentum threw her straight into Kid Win's hoverboard, sending him flipping as he crashed on the street outside.
Then she got swapped again.
A hero swapped with a hostage, a hostage ran and got swapped with a PRT agent right as Clockblocker flew into the air and grabbed Genesis to stop her from bowling over Gallant who was in a melee with someone and seemed extremely confused-
Wait, what?
Aegis lunged forward and slapped Genesis's arm, and the projection froze mid-thrash.
Wait, they swapped costumes?
No no no, there's a reason you don't pull shit like that with Brute teammates, you fucking idiots-
As if to confirm her very thought, the sound barrier cracked from somewhere inside the mess of overturned and shattered desks. A fire extinguisher practically teleported into Clockblocker wearing Aegis's suit, Ballistic's handiwork.
Even through the chaos, the screaming, the ringing, and the poof of white foamy powder covering half the frenzied lobby as the extinguisher exploded, she could hear the guttural thud-crack of his ribcage folding inwards as he got launched out of the bank like a spinning rocket, in a shower of glass fragments, just a foot or two past her, bouncing off the concrete like a limp corpse before rolling to a stop to her right, bleeding out of his mouth with weak, gurgling coughs.
Her steps stuttered for a moment as she realized that he might actually die from that, if he hadn't already, debating how quickly she could take her earring out and put it on him, then she saw Glory Girl dash out of the bank with Amy's coughing form and ran forwards, confident that Miss Healer would do the job.
She couldn't see Ballistic in the chaos, more than a dozen capes all fighting, but the shimmer of blood in the back of the cubicles was all she needed.
That did not stop her power from telling her how likely it was that she just crippled the man. An impact grenade to the knee?
Shit, he might die.
A PRT soldier lunged for her from the left, and she almost jammed the red cards into his chest before her mind caught up with the adrenaline.
The background chatter of her power focused.
Left side unbalanced, grip on foam sprayer shifting his weight upwards due to the mechanism, plans to reach for the foam grenade if he can't stop you, even at the risk of trapping allies inside due to missing, does not-
She swung her arm up at the second floor to throw the cards, flinching slightly at the spray of broken glass that washed over her as another few feet of the building were destroyed, and then she reached for the man right as he was about to tackle her.
She yanked up, pulled him close, and twisted to jam her hip into his groin and push him over and away from her in a classic, simple judo throw, one of those stupid ones that Brian used to like and forced her to learn.
She expected to maybe, barely manage to get him to roll off her hip and be too disoriented to grab for her again.
Instead, he practically flew off of her, spinning once before he hit the floor.
Right, Taylor's enchantment bullshit again. Thank god.
She didn't wait to see what he did, finally crossing the broken threshold of the bank entrance, half-leaping over the broken doors in the front. She slipped on glass and found herself staring up at the ceiling, suddenly lost as her brain registered the fact her head just hit the floor quite hard.
She spun onto her front and turned, digging into her pocket for the stun cards, and without thinking, discarded the first handful of red cards she dug out, right next to her foot.
She froze, expecting instant death.
Instead, they just clattered to the floor harmlessly.
She only had a moment to boggle and assess the fact she was still breathing, before she got back to digging, and after another two seconds of praying nothing randomly hit her and totaled her, she had a dozen glowing golden cards in her hand.
She crouched and turned, her eyes widening.
It was complete fucking pandemonium, and the way the world stretched around her gave her a headache.
Explosions, lasers, strange beams, dust, broken everything, glass, an orange orb melting the ceiling, one that flickered violently like a strobelight or a constant flashbang, further disorienting everything in the slugfest, making colors dance in her vision-
She had volume, but not aim.
Fine, fuck, she could work with this.
Trickster was turning chaos into a complete clusterfuck. Punches thrown at Genesis found themselves connecting to allies as everyone teleported and swapped at speeds that suggested Trickster could think fast or was simply high on cocaine, and-
She had to freeze the bastard.
She stood for a moment, gathering her breath, back against the broken doors, waiting, watching, even as her vision rapidly began to look like a rainbow decided to shapeshift into a wriggling centipede.
Fucking Sundancer.
Bitch.
Her power began to fill her in, working with her, in bits and piecemeal pieces as her eyes rapidly lost and found Trickster in the chaos.
Trickster follows a reactionary-
Teleported Aegis with a plant.
Reactionary pattern. Possesses no superior mental processing nor Thinker ability. Redirects strikes, eye drawn-
Aegis with Genesis to tank a punch from Glory Girl who recoiled at the burst of blood.
Eyes drawn to fast movements, wishes to swap enemies with allies at points of no return where momentum is unstoppable, to force them to hit eachot-
He teleported himself out of Kid Win's lasers, a desk replacing him.
His eyes.
He always had to have both things in his line of sight.
His eyes always go from his first selected target to his second. Is setting up pieces for final, decisive moment-
Too late. Her power could work fast when things were straightforward and easily deductible, but not this fast, and Trickster's chess-like manoeuvre was not as simple as reading the movements of someone swinging a fist at her.
Whatever he was preparing, he had everything in place, it seemed, because in the span of four seconds and two dozen abrupt teleportations, the room was suddenly split in two, with the Wards and her on the side facing the street and the Travellers on the vault's side, everyone glancing and spinning around to try and figure out or what was about to hit them.
A ball of flaming light burst into life right in front of them, further separating the room, moving back and forth too fast to dodge through. Glory Girl tried to go through, only to be replaced with a dumpster, her yell of frustration sounding out somewhere behind them.
Smoke and flame began to fill the building, and the ball slowly swelled.
They collectively pulled back, shielding their eyes.
Shit.
Would the blood even be there by the time she got to it?
The sun winked out suddenly, before another burst of light came from behind the giant curtain of smoke and flame, a moment before that too winked out.
Vista did something, and the lobby became smaller, normal, the fires somehow momentarily sputtering from that.
The Travellers were gone, a charred black hole in the wall the only sign to point to their escape.
People yelled, something about smoke grenades and the streets, another few yelling for Clockblocker, but she wasn't paying much attention to details, her vision narrowing like a tightening cone until it was focused on one thing.
She could get Coil. She could give Taylor Coil.
Someone put their hand on her shoulder.
She jerked and spun, stabbing at least four golden cards into some kind of silver armour or something with a near-united crisp ping, and then she dashed forwards, into the half-melted part of the building, ignoring how the melted, cracked tiles shifted under her, vaulting over a broken desk and through a small forest of flaming debris. Her clothes caught fire, but the suit would protect her.
The smoke bringing tears to her eyes was the worst part.
Ballistic's last position was further back, past the flames, and so she pushed forward, ignoring the pain of her hands burning every time she stumbled over something and had to shove her hands in the fire to get up, slapping her hair occasionally to put it out.
She heard steps and shouts behind her, and she whirled, throwing out all the remaining gold cards, hearing at least two distant ping sounds as they connected with her pursuers. Then she pumped her legs through cracking wood and mounds of paper and dented trashcans, like crawling through a junkyard on fire.
The heat and flame lessened near the back, not only due to proximity but due to less clutter being teleported there to be lit on fire, so after a few horrible seconds of barely being able to open her eyes through the stinging smoke, she saw it.
A flash of red amongst a bunch of large glass shards. Still liquid, almost boiling from the heat. The shredded, splayed out remnants of the lower half of Ballistic's leg were smeared across the floor just above it, half-confined in his shredded pant leg. A gleam of blooded bone briefly made bile rise up her throat.
So she had amputated the poor guy by accident. But he wasn't here, so he'd probably live.
Shit, she owed these guys so many apologies. She had no choice, she had to hurt him enough to bleed, and she didn't have time to pull out some glowing cards and just try to find which one was the one that just cut instead of fucking exploded before either Genesis or he would just smack her upside the head and she'd be done for, taken back to Coil.
God damn it.
She fell down onto her knees, and hurriedly grabbed two vaguely similar-sized pieces of glass, quickly jamming them into the thin layer of blood and pressing down until one side was coated.
Then she pressed them together, like they did in the labs to avoid coagulation, and put the bundle in her left hand, squeezing tight and with equal surrounding force, regardless of her skin splitting.
She had to run now. She couldn't explain or hold onto the glass, she couldn't sit there and explain why she'd so suddenly escalated everything into this giant shit show, she'd probably be tossed in jail and this opportunity would be gone and everything would be for nothing, and most importantly, she couldn't fucking waste time when it was any minute now that Coil might merge his timelines and split them again.
She had to get Taylor here, asap. But she had no regular phone, so how… fuck.
She was still here, so Coil hadn't pulled his timeline yet. He likely considered Ballistic's leg an acceptable sacrifice for whatever his plan here was.
She turned to the hole, still glowing faintly and making the wall sway and slowly crumble. She got up to her feet, still wracked with slight coughs, and ran, leaping through it, out onto an empty alley, stumbling from the impact, more out of surprise than difficulty.
"Halt!"
From the right.
Run left.
She did, half-melted shoes pounding at the asphalt.
Fuck, how could she escape? Make chaos? No, she'd hurt enough people for today. Maybe just-
Why were the streets covered in fucking smoke? What the hell? There was no way the bank made enough for all of this.
To the left, under the eddying, blanket-like swirls of white smoke, she saw a manhole cover, and she made a sharp turn, almost falling down as her shoes slid over the asphalt, barely recovering by slapping her hands down and pushing forward.
A flash of white light reflected off a nearby car window, the smoke lighting up around the upper edges.
Glory Girl, following from above-
She palmed one card, and mentally prayed that whatever the fuck she grabbed, it wouldn't hurt Disaster Barbie, at least not seriously enough to make the mini-Nilbog mad at her more than she already might have been.
Her lungs burned.
Taylor had been right. She definitely did not hate exercise right now, even if it wasn't Hookwolf she was running from. She wished she'd done more of it, because she was slowing, and gasping for air between tiny coughs, and her limbs felt like fucking jelly.
She glanced at her hand as it rose and fell by her side.
Red card.
Someone to the right jerked in surprise, gaping at some spot above her, his gaze lowering rapidly.
She briefly changed to a sideways sort of jog, craning her neck up to see Glory Girl speeding straight towards her like an arrow. She waited for a moment, because there was no way in hell she'd hit the bitch any other way, and when she was only thirty feet or so away, whipped her arm up, from her stomach, backwards to her waist, already reaching for more cards.
It didn't do anything spectacular, but Glory Girl didn't dodge, and that was all the opening she really needed.
Victoria yelped when she went to swat the card away and ended up making it explode, and her aura, the forcefield, it flickered as she spun clockwise from the force, her hair whipping around everywhere.
Her power went crazy for a moment, apparently deciding now was the moment to explain to her in detail how Victoria's power worked, and she ignored it as she spun, and threw half a dozen cards at the manhole cover, just thirty feet away.
Four red cards. None will hit the target.
Fuck you power was the last thought she had before she got tossed a solid four feet backwards flat on her back, and it was only her newfound Brute status that stopped her from getting the wind knocked out of her, instead trying to curl up defensively by instinct, only to accidentally roll ass over head onto her feet, disoriented on how the fuck she even did that as she stumbled a step back.
She took a single moment to stare at the giant crater in the middle of the road, the small emergency response vehicle blockade she'd accidentally caused that was currently buying her precious time before the PRT troopers got here, the spectators in the windows recording her.
Well, at least Coil wouldn't think that she was Lisa, not after this.
Glory Girl gaped at the road before she turned to her with a glare, rushing at her again.
Lisa shoved her fist into her pocket and took out the entire bundle of cards, spreading it out like a fan as she glared upwards in warning, squaring her shoulders as she panted like a dog.
She didn't have time for this shit. Glory Hole could go play the cutesy little hero some other time. It was a miracle she hadn't cracked the glass in her left hand yet.
Dallon took the hint, and slammed to a stop.
Then she slowly backed away with a constipated expression, damn near pout-glaring at her.
Not even Collateral Damage Barbie would risk fighting someone holding the equivalent to thirty grenades in their hand in public.
Well, it wasn't like Dallon knew more than half of these didn't explode.
She walked forward towards the crater, brisk and careful, glancing side to side for any more nasty surprises, having a mild staring contest with Glory Girl in the meantime as she slunk forward. Victoria's eyes flicked up.
Hers followed.
She saw Aegis, still wearing Clockblocker's outfit, fly over a rooftop, then look straight at her before speeding forth.
Nope.
She dashed forward, and before she could second-guess her escape method, leapt over the lip of the crater, and straight down into the sewer through the hole, spraining her ankle in the process as it slammed into one of the metal footholds, then bruising her hip as she tumbled onto cold, wet stone, barely keeping her left hand from dunking into the sewage water and ruining the blood.
With a miserable groan, she staggered upright, and limped down into the darkness.
They'd escaped using the sewers before. She wasn't completely lost. These things had an order, a method, signs and regulations.
It might take a little bit, but she'd get out, and she'd drag Taylor over to get that snake rat fucking bastard under her boot.
Granted, back then they had the dogs to sniff for fresh air.
Fuck.
"Give me your phone, I need to make a call."
He let the message stay half-finished as he turned his head to tell the chick to fuck off, only to find himself staring at a metal… circle. In a square.
That… oh.
His eyes widened as he leaned his upper body back, just a bit, his cigarette falling from limp lips.
Bottle green furious eyes glared at him as her finger stayed steady on the trigger, her outfit torn and burned and wet, looking like she'd just crawled out of a warzone, half of it shredded clothes and the other some kinda bodysuit.
"I, uh-"
"I'm not asking ." She growled, cocking the hammer back with an audible click.
He audibly gulped, and jerkily presented it to her. She used her left hand to grab it, awkwardly, using only half of her finger's length like she was holding something else.
She hopped back, and before he could utter another word, she flicked the safety on and shoved the pistol into her waistband, grabbed onto the roof of a beat-up car with a broken window and a dented hood that he somehow hadn't noticed pull up on him, and then hopped up, swinging herself into the car feet first through the window.
She wriggled into place before ducking under the steering wheel.
He stared, blinking.
A moment later, she popped up, grabbed the steering wheel with a hand and a half, and the car sped away with a screech of burning rubber, bouncing along the pothole covered road.
He briefly debated calling the police in for the theft.
Then he remembered that he was in the ABB, and turned his head down to stare at his empty hand.
He'd bought that like a week ago.
Fuck, man.
Notes:
I do not believe Lisa is using her power to its fullest extent. I shall be working to fix that in this fic, over time. :^)
Also I think this chapter shows that 'Mild AU' tag a bit more than others. I've changed up how the PRT works and functions a bit, fleshed it out a little, or at least i like to think i did, and I'm trying to expand some interesting future developments early on. Hope this chapter was fun.
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