Chapter 18

"Are you telling me," Colin growled into his radio, his voice dripping with silent fury, "that we are ignoring Bakuda, a bomb tinker who has never displayed even the slightest restraint-"

"No Armsmaster, we are simply not attacking a tinker in her lab, during the middle of a gang war!" Hannah's reply was short but stern, a biting reminder that he was no longer the one giving orders. Still, old habits were hard to break, and he couldn't resist arguing his point.

"She's still recovering from the recent attack, and it looks like an errant bomb nearly demolished the building," he pointed out. "Her current position is nearly impossible to reinforce, and if the Empire is moving on ABB territory like you say, she'll likely be called to assist. I can capture her when she's on the move."

"You want to take her once she's prepared to fight the Empire? When she's ready for a cape fight?" The lack of confidence was unspoken but painful regardless. Colin consciously ignored it, choosing to focus on Hannah's concern rather than the slight on his abilities.

"I have a plan." Sort of. "Besides, taking down Bakuda would be a major victory. She's too dangerous as a force multiplier to ignore. Once the Empire is pushed out of the city, we'll need the ABB weak if we want to maintain order." We, he said, as if he'd be in the city once this mess was over. If Hannah noticed the slip, she graciously ignored it.

"We can't spare anyone to reinforce you Armsmaster," Hannah emphasized. "Letting Empire capes run wild, even in ABB territory, would make us look weak. No matter how convenient it might be, letting villainous capes kill each other in the streets is against our mandate. We have to reinforce the PRT and BBPD on the ground."

"I can handle her myself," Colin insisted. "If I don't see an opportunity I'll retreat and regroup, but give me an hour to at least try."

There was a long pause. Finally, Hannah answered his plea, "One hour Armsmaster. Good luck."

Colin closed his eyes in silent relief. "Confirmed," he replied automatically. He sighed and examined the small alley he had ducked into to brief the Protectorate. It would suffice as a hiding place for his motorcycle, he supposed. He was less than a block away from Bakuda's apparent lab, and she had yet to move outside her building. She was gearing up, Colin suspected, to deal with the Empire's vengeful assault on ABB territory; Kaiser's retaliation for Oni Lee's interference during the PRT raids.

Yes, this alley would do just fine. He activated the defensive suite on his vehicle, a vast array of weaponry designed to incapacitate just about anything attempting to tamper with his property. A subtle hand movement would remotely signal the bike to drive itself to his location, and it had enough ordnance to breach concrete walls if absolutely necessary.

Colin really, really hoped it would not be necessary. He did not want to engage Bakuda in any circumstance, much less in the confined quarters of a building, and, in fact, hoped to have her unconscious before she even noticed him. Unfortunately, this plan relied entirely on him being unnoticed in his blue and bright fucking silver armor. Never had he hated the Protectorate's PR department more. It made him long for the dark greys and browns of his youth, back when only his results mattered. Now he was stuck being stealthy in a suit designed to evoke both awe and fear, as loudly as possible.

He wouldn't risk driving any closer. Honestly, it was a miracle of happenstance that he went unnoticed during the previous fight, and by now there would be lookouts posted, watching for Empire reinforcements on the ground. His only real approach would be via the rooftops.

Ah, well, complaining about it wouldn't get him there any faster.

Colin took to the roof, using the grapple gun built into his halberd to quickly ascend, and carefully made his way towards his target location: the apartment complex across from Bakuda's lab.

It was calming, in a way, to go back to the basics like this. A call back to his early days, when his victories were won more through determination and cunning, rather than the overwhelming variety that his tech provided. His specialties were miniaturization and efficiency, after all, and fighting far outside his weight class required a flexible mindset that he had lost as his budget and tech levels increased.

Armsmaster ceased his introspection, as he found a comfortable position on the apartment roof, and settled in to wait. His patience went untested as, within minutes, Bakuda emerged alongside a horde of minions. The unpowered gang members were carting around boxes of ordnance, and a moment later a open-top Jeep pulled around the building. The crates were loaded into the vehicle, and Colin nearly had a heart attack as Oni Lee briefly appeared on the same fucking roof holy shit where did he come from, before blinking down to the street.

The two villains held a brief, muted conversation with each other, and Bakuda passed Lee a brace of grenades. Lee gave a quick nod before fading into ash, presumably leaving to reinforce the ABB against the Empire's attacks. Colin tensed his muscles, quietly limbering up in preparation for the fight to come. If he was going to act, it would have to be soon.

His moment came when Bakuda addressed her men while perched on the hood of the Jeep.

"Alright motherfuckers listen up! It's time to show the Nazi fucks who rules this town!"

Colin's tracer sat embedded on the ankle of her boot. Half the size of a thumbtack and colored a dull brown, it looked more like a piece of dust or gravel than anything suspicious.

"We'll teach them the meaning of fear! We'll show them what happens to people who fuck with the ABB!"

Colin's specialty allowed him a great deal of flexibility. It was rare for any single piece of tech to have only one purpose. His tracer dart was never meant to act as long term surveillance.

"You plebeians are representing me out there, so you'll make a good showing for Lung or I'll replace your organs with grenades."

It was a pursue and capture tool, one that he rarely had the need for these days, but a potent piece of technology nonetheless. He had thought long and hard on how to best create a distraction that seemed, at first, more confusing than dangerous. With a subtle hand movement, Colin activated his tracer.

"You each get two-"

BRRRRIINNNNNGGGGG!!!!

The loudest, most obnoxious cell phone ringtone Colin could get a hold of blared through tiny speakers, thoroughly derailing Bakuda's speech. She twitched violently, before glaring wildly around, looking for the source of the disruption. It took her less than a second to look towards her boot, and she lifted up her leg to better inspect the dart that was now glowing a cheerful yellow. The motion happened to put Colin's device within view of just about the entire crowd.

"What the fuck-"

With one smooth motion, Colin shifted to his feet, took aim, and fired a tranquilizer out of the bladed end of his halberd. The dart struck Bakuda in the neck, right as the tracer exploded like a supercharged flash-bang. The crowd screamed, Bakuda collapsed like a rag-doll, and Colin rappelled down the roof at high speed. He could have foamed the mob, his halberd did have a single foam grenade, but he was unwilling to waste such a precious weapon on anything less than a brute. Besides, while speed was of the essence here, subduing a dozen blind and deaf gangsters was hardly a challenge for him.

Colin touched down and bulldozed his way into the crowd, great sweeps of his halberd hurling disoriented gang members about like bowling pins. He was unable to arrest them at this time, so he settled for a light pummeling. It galled him to leave trash on the street, but there was no telling when Lee would return, and Bakuda was the priority.

A casual boot to the face and a quick swat with the flat of his blade to knock aside a straggler, and Colin arrived at Bakuda's limp form. The ABB tinker was clearly unconscious, Colin's tranquilizer was built to drop Lung after all, but he placed an armored finger over her pulse point and his suit took a reading just to be safe.

All clear. Good. With basic safety protocols satisfied, Colin triggered the retrieval function of his bike. He dragged Bakuda's limp form off the Jeep hood and dropped her face down on the asphalt, clipping her wrists together with a zip-tie. She would be out for a few hours, plenty of time to disarm any booby traps on her person, once she was properly in custody. Speaking of which...

"Armsmaster here, I've apprehended Bakuda. I'm bringing her to PRT headquarters." Colin quickly reported. He made one last sweep of the groaning gangsters as he waited for a reply, eyeing their beaten forms with a small amount of satisfaction, before-

A flash of black in the corner of his eye, and Colin lurched backwards. The distant figure collapsed into ash as Oni Lee appeared before Colin, knife in hand, swinging towards his throat. A halberd intercepted the blade, metal on metal ringing out with a clang, and the Oni exploded into ash. Colin reacted instinctively, relying entirely on memory to angle his halberd as he fired a net behind him, towards Bakuda's body. He heard a muffled grunt as something was hit, and he spun around in time to see the ash dissipate.

A brief eye movement activated Colin's combat prediction software, a subtle hand motion primed it for Oni Lee, and Colin dove towards Bakuda as his armor screeched a warning. A clone appeared in the space behind him, pins in hand, and Colin barely made it behind the Jeep before the THOOMof a grenade shook the vehicle.

Colin planted himself over Bakuda, resolving to not stray from the bomb tinker. She was valuable to Lung so, hopefully, Lee would be cautious to use explosives near her. The fact that he used a standard frag grenade on Colin, rather than some insane tinker-tech, was enough confirmation for him.

Not that it helped the ABB members Lee just pulped.

For a tense moment, the battlefield was silent. Colin had no fix on Lee's location, but Lee could not fight Colin without risking the person he was trying to retrieve. Knives alone—Colin's face-guard snapped closed—would not suffice.

And then Colin's bike revved around the corner, and Lee was forced to act.

The ABB assassin burst into view, half a dozen clones springing forth around Colin in seconds. His halberd scythed through them, reaping ash like wheat as their knives battered against the joints of his armor. Each clone he shattered was almost instantly replaced, but Colin never stopped swinging. He had no hidden tech to stem this flood, no tricks or traps to deal with a horde of killers. Only his skills could help him here, forged by thousands of hours of training, tempered by dozens of villains far more powerful and dangerous than Oni Lee could ever hope to be. Colin held nothing back, resigning himself to the possibility of gutting the psychopath trying to murder him.

Truthfully, he never felt more alive than moments like these. His place was on the streets, pitting his skill and wits against men who wanted him dead, holding the line against impossible odds. Why did he ever feel the need to lead, to ascend the ladder of the Protectorate, when his skills lay firmly outside the social and political arena? It seemed so logical at the time. He was a soldier, and good soldiers get promoted. Had he known then the struggles of being a leader, he would have fled into the night. There was glory aplenty in the lower ranks.

For a brief moment, Colin left behind the gloom of his failed career, and simply exulted in combat. His halberd sang, ripping sound from solid air with the force of a runaway train, and the ground turned black from the ash of a hundred broken clones. His armor was scratched, marred, chipped, stabbed a thousand different ways, but Colin was a study in perfection. A subtle twist, a violent turn, a soft sway, Colin's movements absorbed the largest amounts of damage on the thickest parts of his armor. Every blade missed its mark.

Finally, after a small eternity passed, his bike arrived. A brutal twirl of his halberd dispersed the clones for an instant, just long enough lob Bakuda and himself onto his bike and tear off down the street. Lee couldn't risk fighting him now, not when a bad spill might end his ally. Armsmaster laughed, loud and proud, convinced that he had finally, finally done something of impact, inflicted real damage to the gangs that infested the city.

And then he noticed the screaming in his ear.

"ARMSMASTER RESPOND! YOU HAVE LUNG INCOMING ON YOUR LOCATION!" the urgency in Hannah's voice broke through Colin's excitement.

Oh Hell.