49

Chapter Text

The images she had no hope of comprehending froze, to one of a bedroom.

Then her back was pressed tight against Samantha's, for the tiniest fraction of a second, and she only caught a glimpse of a spotless bedroom before Samantha jerked, an elbow smashing into her skull with a crunchy crack.

It would have gone through Shen's head had she not swapped to Evelynn and burst into smoke, flying out of an open window-

And out onto open air, nine stories up in the air, surrounded by an expanse of trees to the right and short, squat apartment buildings to her left and beyond, stretching out until they met the ocean, snow gently falling through a thick grey film, hiding the sky above.

She froze, her brain momentarily shutting off the frantic yelling from the apartment behind her. 

Snow.

A part of her felt relief, that this had actually been Heartbreaker's fault and she hadn't gone into overdrive over some petty Master toying with their powers out of arrogance.

Another part of her shut its eyes, and let out a long, slow snarl.

Heartbreaker. Snow. Completely different environment and architecture.

She was probably in Canada .

How did they even run back so fast? Had they spent five entire days speeding or something, without stopping? She wouldn't put it past them, but she had been operating under the impression they wanted something more than what they'd gotten, some other objective, some message to deliver.

To just run into Brockton, take people and leave, just like that, like it was some fucking grocery run, it made her teeth rattle off her jaw, shaking with suppressed anger.

She was halfway across the continent, essentially. 

Resisting the urge to punch through a wall, she instead turned her gaze, dashed around the apartment until she found a small, thin balcony, and perched on the railing, flickering, transmitter in hand.

Purity, Tria and Duo might be the only ones who'd reach her in any kind of reasonable timeframe, but the simple plan of 'just raid them' had gone to shit immediately, so she'd take whatever she could get.

She pressed the button, and flickered back to smoke, dashing back into the apartment, trying to get a decent guess of what the hell was happening, counting the souls inside.

Five.

Six across the hall, all moving as well.

The living room had two teenagers in it, scrambling up as Battery ranted about an intruder to a busty redhead from one of the bedrooms.

Another teenager in the bathroom.

She ducked through, trying to put names to faces, to no avail.

There was information about Heartbreaker's children out there, a decent bit of it, in fact, but pictures were sparse, if any.

Battery, or Samantha, was currently trying to confirm with one of the teenagers that he must have seen something, but he insisted he just saw a weird shield engulf her, then her striking at air behind her, adamantly, almost arguing with her.

Gillaume Vasil. Could see through the eyes of anyone he'd touched.

She dashed back to the bedroom, and hissed when she saw nobody in sight.

Zipping back out, she checked the apartment on the other side of the hallway.

Women, women, a child, a male teenager who was having sex with a grown woman… Nobody she cared about or recognized, but clearly all part of the Heartbroken, judging by the disturbing amount of casual debauchery and apathy on display. 

Good interrogation targets, because she couldn't see Amy or Victoria anywhere.

She zipped back to the apartment, where everyone was on their phone and hurriedly packing, apparently believing Battery, informing others of an apparent intruder.

A young girl right below her floating form checked her phone, and immediately rushed to bang on the door of the teenager mounting a woman in the backroom.

"Gotta go! Intruder or scout!" The girl exclaimed, boredly and completely without inflection somehow, and the teenager and the woman both flew apart in no time to grab their clothes, apparently disciplined enough to know when to scramble to action.

Shit.

The best thing she could do right now was just follow them and set up an ambush.

The urge to just pounce and bulldoze through them was gratingly powerful, but she let herself sit and settle, stalking them, watching their movements.

Mostly just picking things up and throwing them into already packed suitcases, ready to move out, and it occurred to her that this was likely a temporary stop on the way back to base.

This had turned from a battle to a long, slow hunt.

It might take days, she was aware, but if that's what it took, then fine, fuck it. That's the entire reason she'd gotten Coil and Lisa under her, to manage Nexus while she went off to deal with more dangerous things, and they'd done a fine enough job of running things while she was knocked out. The heroes couldn't even make trouble for her this time around. It was the perfect time to dedicate some time to her pest-control hobby.

Her thoughts backtracked with doubts, but she dispelled them quickly.

They could deal with it.

She just had to let them know the mission was going to have to change.

Odd as it might sound, she immediately began doing math in her head.

Approximates, distances, trying to guess regions. How long she had until Purity or any of her new flock zipped down through the clouds to mess this up.

If Tria or Duo were good with their approximates compared to Purity, not that much time.

During a small lull as the group of a dozen people quietly but quickly went to the elevators, she darted out the window and to the roof, flickering back to her real form.

She called Lisa, and before the girl could utter a word, she cut her off.

"Mission's changed. We're up in Canada. I'm going to stalk them back to home base, Heartbreaker isn't with this group, neither are the Dallons. We need to re-plan, and I need a plan I'm actually happy with. I'll follow and stick the tracker in their car. Need to go, be back in a minute." She rushed out, and cut the call, bursting back into smoke and dashing down. 

She was jumpy. Incredibly so.

Perhaps understandable, but it made her easy to read, as far as her siblings were concerned.

A blip of presence, above.

Cherie startled, feeling a human presence suddenly just exist on the roof of the building just above, then ten seconds later, immediately disappear.

The jerk of her shoulder, the tiny stiffening of her limbs, it was barely noticeable by sight.

Considering her dad's new victim was literally holding her by the scruff of her neck however, it didn't matter too much.

Samantha glanced down at her, somewhere between wary and protective, the conflicted feelings of a newly mastered person with a mission given on little information.

' Guard this until I make a decision'.

Delightful parenting.

This, like she wasn't even a person.

If her dad decided to be crueller than usual, she might not be, when he was finished. When he'd decided on what to do.

"What is it?" Samantha asked, the grip on her neck still stiff and controlling, but slightly reassuring in its oddly gentle, massaging motions, almost, like trying to take the stiffness out of her.

It didn't work.

She opened her mouth.

Nicholas sent her a warning look, with a tiny hint of fear shoving its way down her gullet, and she closed it, stiffening further. 

Fucking dick. The chick asked, was she not supposed to answer?

They were all mad at her. Saw her as a traitor. Stupid fucking assholes. Just because they had to suffer under their father's jumpy, narcissistic moods didn't mean she was a traitor for not wanting to fucking share in the torture.

She hated Nicholas more than any of them.

She remembered being buried alive in a coffin, and even if he was forced to, she remembered Nicholas blasting her with fear until she'd passed out, vomiting, only to wake up again and scream herself hoarse until her nails were bleeding as she scratched at the box futilely until she'd finally just fucking triggered-

A box like this.

A tight-

No.  

"Claustrophobic." She said, evenly, and Samantha made a soft sound of sympathy.

She forced her reductionist mind to shut the fuck up for a moment and see things from a bit further.

No, they weren't upset at her just for that.

They were also upset at her for their father sending them on a multiple month long journey to catch her, upset at her for the letter she left behind lambasting her father, and upset because they saw that letter as the main reason the moody piece of shit decided that he did want to be more than just a 'limp-dicked rapist who needed powers to get any', and decided to start building a real empire.

Cult, more like.

She wasn't even sure what had fucking made her leave that letter. Just… hatred, arrogance and a wild sense of freedom, like riding a high.

They were just retreading old ground, at this point. That stupid ordeal with her dad overreaching his hands to get a famous actress a year ago, forcing the PRT to jump to decisive action and almost kill many of them, which had almost cost them their life and freedom, had made her leave in the first place.

And now he was doing the exact same shit, with something ten times riskier, and they thought it was because of her.

For all she knew it might be.

Maybe if she hadn't left that stupid letter full of insults that undoubtedly rang true to her father's self-indulged, endless egoism, he might have sat on his fucking eggs like usual.

If only, maybe, what-if's and bullshit she couldn't change.

What she could change, what she could influence, was to simply not fuck this up, and hope the person above was a hero who could save her before this group met with her dad's main group.

She didn't know what he would decide to do with her, but she doubted it was anything good.

Maybe he'd torture her for a month, break her.

Maybe he'd have Samuel torture information of her travels out of her. It was the only thing his power could fucking do.

Or maybe he'd break his own personal rule, and Master one of his own children for the first time. And… she did not want to think about what might follow.

After all, he broke another big rule with the shitshow in Brockton. Not going after children to add to his harem, or cult.

She was pretty fucking scared without Nicholas giving her warning pokes every half damn hour. She hated him.

And goddamnit how many fucking floors did this place have-

The elevator came to a stop, and she took a deep breath.

As she was forced forward, she briefly wondered if maybe she should have gone up to the Nine and taken one of them out to make room for herself to enter, but she didn't know if they would take it as an attack and very horribly kill her, or take it as a bold entry display and welcome her with open arms. It had been too risky to go for it.

She just hadn't been expecting them to have a filled out roster, for fuck's sake. Last she'd heard they had five or six members, seven at most?

When she finally got to them, there were nine people with powers present as far as she could observe. She was out of luck.

So she had run to Brockton, because Jean-Paul was not nearly as subtle as the obnoxious ass thought he was, to hopefully group up with him and kill their brothers with whatever gang of misfits he got into, all in exchange for her addition to the roster.

Of course, her siblings were practically on her heels at that point, so it was a game of inches instead of miles. They'd caught up, she was in a corner, literally, and she had no way out.

Jean-Paul was pretty great compared to the rest of her fucking family, so fuck it, she'd take him over them, was her thought process.

She got about two hundred feet from him and his parade of teens before it all went to shit in the form of a grotesque parody of a dragon and endless gunfire.

She tried to stick around and help in the fight, nudging emotions and trying to find some way to stay concealed from her siblings as they tried to find her while also not getting themselves involved in the fight just around the corner, but she was pretty sure she just made everything fucking worse.

Blasting the dragon with fear to make him back up only enraged him further, and then he tried to charge for Jean-Paul who he thought was responsible for it, so then she blasted the emotionless blue fucker with the halberd with the most vile, maddening, volcanic eruption of emotions she'd ever tried before, to just get him to get in the goddamn way and fight the dragon instead of dancing around the bastard and letting Paul die.

It worked great, until old blue almost got bisected due to fighting like an enraged animal instead of an actual veteran, and then… then she had to hide in a hole while Jean-Paul skipped town, her siblings buzzing around and using her own eyesight to track her for- what might have been months, she wasn't sure.

She could not escape, and she could not run. 

Much as it grated, she eventually got the lay of the land, and decided to try her luck with a local, low-key parahuman villain called Coil.

She couldn't find him, and when she started getting close, his base blew up, with him assumedly in it.

So, to her… immense disgust, she had to scam and tempt people to get any money to survive with, even binding her eyes to make sure her siblings couldn't track her. With her power, it worked. She survived, she… didn't thrive, but stayed low enough to evade them, and eventually, they'd have to give the hell up, she thought.

She spent her copious free time as a homeless blind girl annoying Old Blue, or Armsmaster. Nothing major, just… fucking with him a bit, really. When frustration struck, she amplified it. When hesitance reared its head, she turned it to resolve and conviction. When his ego got hurt, she dug a knife in the wound, real deep in there.

And when hope reared its head, she crushed it.

Yes, it was a shitty thing to do, but he'd tried to use Jean-Paul as fucking dragon bait and only she could do that so fuck him. 

That, and it kept her sane while hiding in plain…ish, sight. Kept her own crumbling ego in place while flitting about one of the most dangerous cities in America, blindfolded and fucking homeless for the most part. 

She rarely allowed herself to see anything to keep Gillaume from seeing something identifiable.

But she fucked up, once when adjusting the blindfold under her hoodie, and that was it for her. He probably saw a sign, or a hint of the sea. She wasn't sure, but next thing she knew, they were driving towards her far faster than she could run from them.

The good part of being captured was catching up on things, ironically enough.

She mostly got to be treated like a prisoner for a while, until dear old dad personally came to collect her along with his newest toys on the bucket list.

The blonde girl was taken for the… usual reasons, despite being underage, a new low for her father.

The mousy chick… nobody knew, apparently, but the girl was a healer, so that wasn't hard to piece together.

And the Protectorate hero was taken just to trade her back in exchange for Jean-Paul.

A stupid fucking idea, the heroes would never do that because they'd think it would send the message that such methods worked and would only encourage Heartbreaker to target heroes, but her dad was not famous for his intelligence.

A strike was coming, and she doubted they'd all survive. You don't just kidnap three heroines and walk it off.

The PRT conducted a full raid because they stole an actress. It almost got them all caught.

This time, her fucking brainlet of a father stole America's most beloved healer, most fangirled Alexandria package teen, and a Protectorate member.

They were going to get destroyed, damn it.

And her dad really thought that being a little smarter about things would save them. He had a few villains and a new vision and all of a sudden he thought something had changed.

Idiot. Fucking delusional narcissist.

But if it did work, and if Battery did get traded for Jean-Paul… a selfish part of her was almost glad she'd get to see him again, even if only in shared misery, but… well, yeah, she was selfish, no shit. She wanted someone to relate to, someone who wasn't conflicted and brain-scrambled like most of her siblings and just straight up did not want to be here.

As they loaded up on the cars below and drove off into the Canadian countryside, she kept feeling the same presence flicker in and out, within the forests and around the treelines around them.

She should have felt hunted, stalked, but frankly, as long as she didn't get Birdcaged, she was more relieved.

It was by the hundredth mile that she realized that whatever the fuck they were doing, it most certainly was not preparing for a heroic rescue slash takedown. It was probably something along the lines of scouting and info-gathering. Most likely feeding the Guild information to ambush them.

Fine by her.

Hell, she'd help.

She just wished the person would stick around long enough for her to shove the emotion of urgency down their throat, for one damn time.

Eventually, the group let their guards down.

It took an entire eight hour drive, and a slow crawl into a forest cabin.

They mostly settled in to unwind and rest, it seemed, but her interest lay with a single person in particular.

Whenever she'd float close enough to the second car to feel the emotions inside, one of the girls inside was very, very different to the rest. A possible traitor, judging by the caution exerted around her? A known one?

As they all got to their rooms to settle in for the night, Taylor took the time to set a Teleport waypoint nearby, in a thicket of trees up a steep hill, and then Teleported back to Brockton.

The room was empty, now, the screens and all signs of life taken away.

She flew back to their current HQ, and caught up, as quickly as she could.

It was just a blur of rapidly reporting the situation to Lisa, giving her the go-ahead on some things, and then Coil immediately ranting back about what she'd missed.

The mission had been aborted, and everything had been put back on normal track. Purity, Oni Lee, Hookwolf and the Purity clone triad were all being briefed and loaded for a long trip, a couple streets down from here.

Lung's gang continued to slowly get integrated into Nexus, the Empire sat on their eggs and prepared for a takedown on the Merchants on her behalf, because she wanted those pests gone, and Lisa had put their men to focus on guarding Noelle for now, while she and Coil made a plan to break out Greg. 

Assault was mutinous, but generally quiet because it did appear like she was trying to do something. The update on the changes in the operation would surely buy her some time to get him to sit tight and goddamn wait.

Coil had also gotten Faultline's package and team into the city, since nothing else was going on locally if Heartbreaker had fucked off back to Canada.

Learning that in the short few hours she was gone, THE package had arrived, gave her a strange sensation of fearful, anxious joy.

The tinkertech battery could wait. She couldn't care less about the damn thing.

The important bit was the folder Alexandria gave Faultline in LA, however the hell she managed to sneak away from her Cauldron associates long enough to make it. Or masters, whichever.

She got to the Palanquin solo, letting Lisa give them a two minute heads up as she blurred through the sky, invisible, before dashing down.

She practically sprinted up the stairs in the back, adopting Renata's form, less than two minutes later.

The guard seemed bewildered, but rang up above and quickly stepped aside as she nearly bowled him over.

The door had barely swung open before Taylor flickered a duffel bag full of cash into her hand, threw the duffel bag on the floor, and practically lunged for the suitcase on the coffee table, glaring at the lock as she turned it around.

She glanced up to a conflicted crowd, half surprised and half curious.

"Password is six five seven one, since you're not up for pleasantries?" Faultline asked, mildly, and Taylor quickly input it into the lock, and it clicked open.

She took out the binder, utterly overflowing, and opened it, switching to the Rune of Inspiration, purple eyes glittering as her chest tightened.

Considering Cosmic Insight basically treated the binder like a grimoire that would alter her perception of the world and shift her entire worldview, it was exactly what she'd ordered Alexandria to write up.

Which was every single thing Alexandria knew about Cauldron and the PRT, what felt like ages ago, in a ruined valley, snarled out in the woman's ear during the short interim between Morderkaiser's death realm slowly fading, and her own brain trying to melt into mush before their private arena crumbled. 

A comprehensive, detailed report on the most secretive, and likely most powerful organization in the world, sitting in her hands.

Her 'plan' had been dodgy, and it had been a pure gamble on whether or not Alexandria would even go to the right neutral territory to meet her without getting caught, and an even further gamble to send Faultline to collect instead of herself, but it had paid off.

Slowly, she relaxed, letting herself sigh in relief.

She turned to Faultline, and nodded.

"Excellent work. Payment's in the bag. We'll contact you soon for further jobs, and an extended offer." She said hurriedly, before flickering, the binder disappearing as she gently tossed the remaining briefcase on the chair meant for her.

Cracking her neck, she continued.

"We'll be sending the Travellers and some of our men as an escort for the battery, just in case. Kindly show them the package, if you will." She hurriedly, but professionally, added, and flickered again, disappearing into invisible smoke as she rushed to the Palanquin's basement, and activated Teleport, to her own personal, secret bunker, the breathing plants and glowing fungi having completely taken over every inch of stone by now.

It was perhaps uncouth to show such immense hurry to Faultline and her crew, and leave Lisa to handle the details through the phone, but she had to take a step back and mentally regroup.

Her bunker felt… quiet and safe, serene and magical. Especially after recent happenings.

She didn't get to enjoy the little sanctuary, unfortunately. She went to work immediately, switching to Zyra and preparing various strains of spore bursters, meticulously adjusting dosages from sheer experience.

Alexandria's report binder was thrown in her old backpack for later reading, zipped up behind her as she worked.

Lisa and Coil would just have to pick up the slack.

An hour later, she switched Runes, and Teleported back to Canada, feeling a low, but sharp pressure, building in her temple.

It was nothing all that bad. Stalking the car convoy had been such low-consumption work that she actually somewhat recovered during it.

Making a small mountain of the spores she'd used to knock out and capture Accord took a lot out of her, however.

She only spent a minute amongst the trees, calming down, before she burst back to smoke and zipped to the cabin.

Everyone was still there, to her immense relief, even if they were quite on edge.

Back to stalking, then.

She didn't veer too close. She'd managed to duct tape the tracker into the engine bay, so sticking right on top of them was no longer necessary.

It was not enjoyable whatsoever to watch Battery awkwardly hanging around the gaggle of teenagers and enslaved women in their rooms, but she picked up on a lot of things by floating around the ironically picturesque property. 

She learned their names, or at least most of them.

She learned that 'Cherie' was essentially an escapee who got caught, which raised the question of how many of Heartbreaker's children had run away. First Regent, now this girl.

Cosmic Insight also gave her a ton more information, though only a bit of it was of interest.

For starters, Cherie gave her a… very cryptic series of ideas and words.

Something that seemed to go along the lines of her being the unknowing creator of a big threat… which, yeah. She was a Master. That was very likely.

What concerned her was what Cosmic Insight considered a "big threat" might be a completely different thing to what she might consider a big threat.

Another note of curiosity was that Battery was a vial cape. And she was almost certain Assault had no idea.

Back to the Heartbroken however…

One of the many blondes in the family, Samuel, was apparently the best interrogator on planet Earth. Not useful to her, but of interest.

It would be a pain to try and figure out what to do with his children afterwards.

She certainly wouldn't Master them unless she knew for sure they were the same calibre of human trash as Heartbreaker, so she had to find some other way.

She learned of two more names through standing next to idle conversations and teenage grumbling.

The first was Juliette, a rather blank-faced, generically pretty girl with straight brown hair who spoke without any real tone to her voice. The second was a young girl named Florence, who had black-brown hair in a pixie cut, wearing weirdly frilly black and white clothes, and who seemed inordinately unwell, wearing a near-permanent manic grin and being generally avoided by the rest of the family.

Except Battery, who seemed to actively try to interact with the girl, even in a… vaguely motherly way, though with a careful lack of condescension. 

Oddly enough, the girl seemed to tolerate it, and the interactions drew raised eyebrows amongst her siblings, though they quickly emptied their faces anytime the girl checked.

Florence either had a terrifying power, or was very unhinged.

The hours passed, and eventually, everyone retired to sleep, in various ways. 

Battery slept on the armchair, while Florence hogged the couch, to the silent annoyance of her siblings. The beds got shared, generally, and it was a good thing the two rooms were segregated based on sex or she guessed there would be a lot more glaring and discomfort in the air.

In both rooms, however, there seemed to be a dedicated watcher. Someone who stayed up and kept an eye open just in case.

In the boys room, it was Guillaume, obviously, since he could see through the eyes of anyone he'd touched. In the girl's room, it was the seemingly unpowered woman who'd been having sex with one of the teenage boys in their last resting spot. 

Cherie was also up, but that seemed to be because she couldn't sleep, anxiety and fear roiling off of her in waves. The ropes around her wrists and ankles probably didn't help.

The question with Guillaume was…

If she pushed a haze through someone's eyes, would he too see it and get stunned? Or would he only see the visual aspect of it, and start screaming at everyone to wake up?

It was an idle thought, not a genuine concern. She didn't want to Master children for the sins of their father.

After the two rooms went silent, she rushed out to the nearby woods, flickering her phone into her hand as she perched on a branch next to a startled squirrel.

She had a lot of messages, but only a few of which were important.

Coil wanted to talk to her about a plan. No details.

Accord sent her some valuable information as well.

Blasto was apparently capable of self-replicating, semi-intelligent creations, which… terrifying, but tempting beyond belief.

Brockton also just got its new Director. A man by the name of Renick.

His profile was at least far less alarming than Tagg's. Hopefully the PRT had learned.

She ducked back to the rooms, and finding the Heartbroken all asleep, flew to a distant copse of trees, and Teleported back to Nexus's main office.

As the purple lines faded, Coil's tired eyes turned to her, backlit by the monitors in front of him.

To her right, Lisa was snoring softly, facedown on the couch, drooling a little.

Her lips twitched into a fond smile.

"What was the plan suggestion you wanted approval for?" She asked, stepping forward and collapsing into Lisa's chair.

Coil flicked his chair around with a push of his foot, and steepled his hands in front of him, leaning back, out of exhaustion, more than confidence.

"It concerns Greg. We can't figure out where he is. Not for certain."

She frowned.

"I'm peripherally aware of something like that. Haven't heard details yet. Explain."

He nodded.

"On paper, Greg is at a low security Parahuman prison. Off paper, we think he's likely housed in the PRT HQ. There is a cell that is occupied, there are people coming in and out of it, food is coming in and out, and everything else that points to habitation. However, not a single one of my sources has been able to visibly see Greg. Which is highly unusual. To leave a Tinker in a room with no surveillance whatsoever is unusual even more so. Both the prison and the PRT HQ have no tangible evidence of his existence besides paperwork. Secondly, it was something you said that's giving me doubts." He slowly added, tapping his fingers on his knuckles.

"Armsmaster seemed to have a strange, inordinate fixation on finding and capturing Greg. Likely for some kind of collaboration on a project, considering there is no real personal benefit to capturing Greg aside from that, and Armsmaster's psych profile makes it unlikely that he simply did it out of a sense of civic duty. And despite the reconstruction making it easier to spy on the Rig, Armsmaster's part of the building is locked down tighter than ever before. There is also unusual traffic towards the place. Like clothes, around Greg's size, and things like that. So, now we have three possible locations where he might be imprisoned. Greg is most likely, at the PRT HQ. But it's also worryingly possible that the PRT is using misdirection to throw us off. If they are, he could be anywhere. He could be with Armsmaster, he could be in the PRT HQ, he could be in a maximum security prison halfway across the country, and we wouldn't know for sure."

She thought for a moment, and slowly nodded.

"Yeah. That's possible, and very frustrating. Did you have a solution?"

He nodded, and leaned forward, almost eagerly.

"Aside from putting you in a position where you have to personally teleport to him, like we did with Battery? Let me use my power. I can move the Empire to raid Armsmaster's lab, and then send a large secondary team to raid the PRT HQ. Then I'll send a large team of our mercenaries to raid the most likely Parahuman prison that could also be hiding Greg, just outside Brockton. Then, I simply pick what reality benefits us. The Merchant extermination will have to wait either way because Greg is far more important than them. Another reason to cancel the Merchant raid is that raiding two high security government facilities at once, or maybe three, without losing anyone, that is risky. I need overwhelming firepower. All the Travellers, aIl the clones, and the 'retainer girls'. Maybe even Spree too." He said, exhaustion and a strange passion making him talk far more like Lisa than his usual, calm, conniving tone. 

She hummed, brows furrowing.

She only wanted the clones to accompany her to Heartbreaker's compound in Canada in order to have someone to take the girls and Heartbreaker out of her hands and fly off with them. That's why she'd been adamant on the Purity clones being there, with Lee around, just in case combat broke out.

"Alternative suggestion. How about I start like I did with Battery, give you a definite location with a transmitter, and then vanish so you can use your power? You can focus on different tactics instead of wasting timelines on figuring out where he is. It'll alert them a little early, but with all the firepower we have and the capes, it shouldn't matter. I need the Purity clones to bring the girls and Heartbreaker back. I don't have a mass teleporter anymore. This is also a good chance to put it out there that we, the 'gangs', can join forces if we have to. Will further deter interference from the PRT if the three most dangerous gangs in town make a joint attack together after a truce break."

Coil took a moment to think about it, and nodded.

"A tad more destructive and forthright than I'd anticipated, but it will likely work. Using that route will put us even higher up on the danger radar of the PRT, of course, but Greg could become indispensable. Having Heartbreaker, or a clone of him through Printer, would be very valuable in freeing up your hands, but we have alternatives to that. We don't have alternatives to Tinkertech coding. The applications are endless. Automated weapons systems, websites, privacy, security, algorithmic handling of all of our organisation's assets, automated trading on the stock market for massive returns without any of the hassle and risk of manually doing it…" Coil trailed off, almost begging.

She eyed him with cold scrutiny.

"You're not wrong, but I have a feeling that this is more about you wanting to use your power."

He nodded without hesitation, eyes full of fire.

"Yes. Yes it is. You have read about what happens when people don't use their powers, right? I'm certainly getting irrationally antsy lately. But let's not pretend this is not a perfect application for it, regardless of my desires."

Bad things happened when powers went unused. Erratic behaviour, searching for trouble, manic obsessive tendencies…

And he was right. This was the exact kind of situation his power was made for.

She slowly nodded.

"Fair. You're one of our main organisers. Can't have you breaking down. Alright. So. To agree and finalise. I'll teleport to Greg, activate the transmitter, and then cut all comms and go focus on Heartbreaker until I get him. I'll keep out of Brockton entirely, cut off communication. Clones are still coming with me for the raid. They might give you status updates. Tell them to stop if it's messing with your 'realities'. Expect some shooting stars to drop down with captives in a couple days. Is Citrine still around?"

Coil nodded.

"Asked her to wait a few days, specifically in case I needed her for this. So… am I clear to do this?"

She nodded.

"Consult with Lisa for a good plan. Go for it."

Coil nodded, satisfied, relaxing significantly.

"Thank you. Ah, and, one more thing." He quickly added, raising a finger.

She tilted her head.

"Dragon's mechs are going to be gathered in a couple days. They've been sitting there for the most part because the area has been hot and nobody's wanted to draw our attention, but civillians are starting to walk into the perimeter to gawk around at the destruction and poke Dragon's mechs for pictures and other benign, idiotic reasons, so the PRT is sending a cleanup crew to scoop them up and send them to Canada. Likely in a day or two. We could interfere. I'm sure Greg would like to pirate some code off of those things, assuming we manage to take him."

Oh.

"Good idea, but we don't know what kind of tracking she has on those things. Send a couple teams. Try to be discrete. Take them to a throwaway location far from anything and anyone important, and wait it out. See if Dragon sends another mech to take them back or something.."

Coil nodded.

"That's all, I believe. There's more information on your phone, if you want more details on what's going on. I'll go rest now." Coil said, and wordlessly turned to the computer, turning it off.

She sighed as the screens powered down, and rubbed at her burning eyes.

"Yeah. I'll do the same. Good luck. Update Insight on everything tomorrow."

He nodded wordlessly, and got up to leave.

She got up, stretched, and slowly got to work on picking up Lisa without waking her.

Ten minutes later, she settled her into her bed, and after a brief moment of hesitation, said fuck it and just plopped down next to her, unwilling to lay on her own bed by her lonesome.

She didn't have many sources of comfort or human connection. She had to cherish what few of those she had.

Helped keep her sane, empathetic, and somewhat on the right track, morals-wise.

Also, to be honest with herself, Lisa was soft and warm and tended to cuddle in her sleep without Taylor doing anything, and not only was that very pleasant, that sort of familiarity let her feel something important.

Vulnerability.

She went to sleep thinking of her dad, hoping he was doing alright, nice and far from anything that could horrifically kill him, like everyone around her. Except Lisa, maybe.

She hadn't realized how large Canada was until she had to follow a pair of cars for a grand total of two entire damn days while Coil set everything up.

Half of it was spent through back country roads and off-trail paths.

Impatience was starting to burrow into her mind like a parasite, urging her to do something already.

And as usual, she resisted it, and did as patience and logic dictated. She just followed.

Her morale was significantly improved by the arrival of a third car, filled to the brim with male grunts and two more of Heartbreaker's children.

Darlene and Roman, apparently. She didn't get to learn anything further about them specifically. Cosmic Insight gave her mostly personal information on them rather than anything immediately usable.

From there, learning more about the general situation was trivial. Where there were more than a dozen people familiar with each other in close spaces, especially women and teenagers, gossip flowed like creek water.

Add in people that were avoiding communications for security, leaving nobody in the know, and current happenings was practically all they talked about.

Heartbreaker had gone straight to his compound with the two Dallons and was waiting for them there to cast judgement on Cherie for… probably just for running away.

Bastard.

His compound was… speculatively in the Canadian countryside, and neither she nor the PRT knew exactly where. Or at least if the PRT did know, neither she nor her insiders had the clearance level to access that information from The Guild.

Assumedly, the PRT would be told due to recent events, because neither of the two Parahuman guiding bodies would let a situation like this lie down. She hoped.

Three heroines was far bolder than anything else the man had tried before.

The Guild definitely knew where his compound was, because they were supposed to be watching out for him, and he was under their jurisdiction, but she hadn't ever been able to get the exact location or a general area besides 'northland forest' from Accord and Coil's connections. 

Having no connections to the Guild, she was forced to sit on her eggs, wait for the convoy to arrive at a shady motel and break absolutely zero road laws in the meantime, not even speed limits, and finally, she got a decent four-hour window before the Heartbroken got back to moving.

And with some subtlety and a tiny needle inserted into the arm of one of the women, yielding a single drop of blood, she had a fallback measure to track them again if they left their cars for new ones.

That opened her schedule up significantly. She no longer had to keep almost constant tabs on the group.

Not that she'd let them out of her sight. Just in case.

Still, another stop at a dilapidated motel meant she could make a quick stop herself, so she teleported back to Brockton, squinted at a sunny afternoon sky outside the window, stretched, and flickered her phone into her hand.

Five minutes of catching up later, she called Lisa, and the line clicked.

"Sup." Lisa said, muffled through… something.

"... Are you eating right now?" She asked, bemused.

"Yea. Still on my desk though, just come up. Are you ready to go, or just coming back for a nap like usual? Everything's good on our end. Empire's waiting, ABB plus Lee clones are ready, our men are getting annoyed at all this buildup without action…" Lisa trailed off, before slurping something. Probably soup. Or, knowing her, cereal.

"Yeah. The Heartbroken stopped for a quick pit-stop nap. For the tenth time. They seem very hurried to not stick in a single place for more than a couple hours. There isn't much Canada left on the map for them to drive through though. They have to be really close to Heartbreaker."

"Ah. So you wanna be done with this quickly and let us handle it. Got it. Ready to go, then?"

She took a deep breath, blew it out in a sigh, and hummed positive.

"Let's see how it goes." She said mildly.

"Don't sound too confident there." Lisa snorted.

She huffed a short laugh, brushing her hair back.

It was greasy and heavy. How long had she gone without a shower? Gods she hated it, but she spent so much time in Evelynn that she barely noticed her actual, physical state.

"No, it's not that. I'm just… tired of this fucker. Heartbreaker. I wanna be done with him already." She admitted with a soul-deep sigh. 

"Ah. Can relate, somewhat. You won't kill him, right?"

She cracked her neck, her light mood soured by the mere mention of him.

"Not before I toss him into Noelle and get a good dozen clones of the bastard."

"Good. We really do need to talk about why you have such a deep personal hatred of him though, you know that?" Lisa asked, half-muffled, crunching through her cereal.

"When we have time, sure."

"That's basically a "never", T- Sam." Lisa stumbled, then huffed in frustration at the dumb names and such, assumedly.

A clatter of plates followed.

"Alright, sending out the message. It'll take people half an hour, maybe, to get to their designated points, arm up, get organised, et cetera. Just uh, rest, freshen up, do whatever in the meantime. And come on over to grab the transmitter."

"Hnm." She hummed back affirmatively, and clicked the call shut.

She flew to Lisa's office, on the warehouse across the alley, and materialized in the office from sheer habit.

What she hadn't expected was to hear a sharp gasp and see sudden movement out of the corner of her eye.

She jerked her head away, feelers flaring, ready to gut someone-

And blinked, confused, at a young woman of… Korean, maybe Mongolian ancestry, staring at her wide-eyed, almost hiding behind a plate.

"Whoah whoah whoah, uh, Sam, that's one of the girls from the ABB raid. Chill. She's just on the cleanup payroll." Lisa said, rising from her chair, and quickly took the girl by the shoulder, gently guiding her along out of the office with body language, reassuring pats on the back, and exaggerated smiles.

She relaxed, and stood there, a tad awkwardly, until Lisa shut the door and jogged back to her desk.

"Sorry, forgot how fast you can move from place to place. She'll be fine, don't worry. Anyway, raid. Uh, shit, where's Hook?" Lisa rushed out, and Coil's screen flashed windows at him with alarming speed.

Could he even read what they said before they swapped? It was kind of impressive.

"Was on a drunk bender, angry about being promised a fight and then having it stalled for half a week. He'll be there in a minute or two. Oh and the Dragon suits were too large to take all of them, we only got one before the men started shooting down following drones and retreating. We put it up as bait along Lung's territory."

"Oh. I forgot about that." She admitted, a tad annoyed with herself and nodded. "Good job. Power ready?"

"As it can be. Everyone's in position, give or take five minutes. Give us a signal, and let me work, and we should have Greg back without issue." Coil rushed out.

She hummed noncommittally, and leaned on Lisa's chair, idly following the dots as they moved on their maps.

Each one should be a team captain.

That was a lot of teams around the PRT HQ.

"How are they concealed?" She asked, curious.

"They're camped up in vacant office building. They'll be packing into moving company trucks, vans, et cetera. Going to bust out when we call for it." Lisa rushed out, typing a message to one of their coordinators.

She nodded, and kept quiet, letting the minutes tick by in quiet chaos.

It felt like ages.

Two minutes.

Three.

Five.

Ten.

Thirteen.

She watched the teams carefully, the Empire posting up near the boardwalk, and the ABB with her men carefully surrounding the PRT HQ.

Eventually, both Lisa and Coil seemed to lean back and relax, in sync.

"It's time?" She asked, judging from body language, and Lisa nodded, stretching.

"Everyone's good to go. Here's the transmitter, just click the button." Lisa said, plucking a small rectangular piece of plastic off her desk and holding it up for her.

She went to grab it, before a thought popped up.

"Try to make sure there are no casualties. Not just on our end. We don't want to kill people." She said, stern.

Lisa paused, and Coil turned towards her in seeming disbelief.

"This is a little late to mention considering our men are carrying almost entirely lethal options." Coil said, voice teetering on the edge of a complaint.

Lisa groaned, and rubbed at her face with her free hand.

"Fuck. Why did I not even consider that? Yeah, I'll tell our men to try and focus on non-lethal. I've been too focused on planning for Greg. Sorry. I'm kind of alarmed I didn't even consider that we're not supposed to be killing innocent people to grab him."

Well, that was good, because Taylor was also alarmed by that. She thought it was to be expected. It only dawned on her now that maybe she should have audibly clarified, since her faction was so militant that 'non-lethal' was practically a foreign practise.

She sighed, and took the transmitter out of Lisa's hand.

"Don't beat yourself up over it, just learn and keep going. I'm going now. I'll leave immediately after to save my energy for Heartbreaker, so if you have any last minute requests, this is the time to tell me."

Lisa shook her head.

"No, no, we're good. Most of my planning time has gone to making sure we don't get anyone captured by PRT grunts or a stray Ward. Our men will hopefully not kill anyone."

"Hm. Watch out for Flechette. Her power trumps mine, so it probably trumps everyone else's too."

Lisa nodded.

"Already figured and worked that out."

Good.

She hummed in acknowledgement, and took a step back, her breaths deepening as she slipped into meditation.

She chose Shen once more, her viewpoint shifting from his raised height, and thought of Greg, everything she knew about him.

Her hands joined together in front of her, in line with her solar plexus.

Breath flowed from lung, to nostril, to hand and soul.

That mental connection seemed to slip into place, two malleable things finding a common track.

She knew him well enough to teleport to him, apparently.

"Going." She announced in Shen's calm baritone, and pushed at the boundaries between worlds.

They split open, and purple lines of energy began to whirl around her and spread in perfect circles from the heel of her feet, lighting up the whole room.

The same flash of passing images, landscapes and memories and people and entire worlds, passing by her as the spirit world cracked open and threw her across the cosmos-

And it all stopped with her staring at a metal wall of tools and microscopes on extending racks.

Greg immediately squeaked and dashed away from her, spinning to face her as she half-turned, flickering the transmitter into her hand.

"Nexus sent me. You'll be rescued shortly. Stay here, sabotage anything you know how to operate, take anything you need. Be quick, you have thirty minutes at max. Your rescuers will be terrible people, but they're under our employ, so just comply. Keep this on you."

She clicked the transmitter's button and it instantly beeped once. She tossed it to Greg, who tried to grab it, failed, and quickly dove for it on the floor, grabbing it with shaking hands.

"I- wha- I-I'm working on something super important-" Greg stuttered, hissing almost from sheer stress.

Did she find him in the middle of a Tinker fugue?

"Then you have thirty minutes to finish it or take it with you to finish later. I need to leave, now. Good luck, Greg. Oh, and, your mother is safe."

She watched Greg pause and relax in relief for only one more second before she switched to the Rune of Inspiration and immediately cast Teleport back to her little nook in the treeline, over in Canada.

"W-wait you can't just- just take me with you! Why are you leaving alone?! You can TELEPORT-"

Greg's panicking, wide-eyed figure before the background of Armsmaster's laboratory vanished in favour of a dimly sunlit forest.

She sighed, and flickered back to herself, just to check and be sure.

Yep. No way of communicating with Brockton, and almost an entire country away. The only thing on her was a tablet to display the signals for the trackers she put on the Heartbroken's cars, and some ancient button-phones to contact the Purity clone squad.

Coil should be free to use his power.

She switched to the Rune of Domination for the Ultimate Hunter keystone, and picked the Purity clone triad, all three of the women.

Considering she changed Duo to a teenager, two women and a girl, actually.

After quickly checking in on the motel to make sure that everyone was still sleeping, or at least most of them, as usual, she took off in the girl's direction.

A big part of her continued to fuss and worry over the operation, but… well… a big part of why she went along with being uninvolved so easily, was that she needed to test them. Lisa and Coil.

She needed to test whether she really, genuinely could trust Lisa and Coil to run operations without her leaning over their shoulders and getting ready to do it herself at a moment's notice. It was as much for her own confidence as it was for Lisa's, since Coil generally knew what he was doing quite well.

The countryside below her slowly faded from trees and plains to sparse fields cut in endless strips by highway roads, and another minute of flying later, she was walking into the lobby of a small, but unusual hostel.

Finding them was not exactly an issue considering the compass in her head and the fact the building was pretty much a twenty four seven eatery with just three rooms for rent on the upper level.

It was a pretty nice place though. Cream coloured walls, carpet, thick mahogany wooden doors with little stickers on them to denote number, all three of them, as if it was needed.

She checked once for any cameras, and dropped Evelynn entirely, before knocking on the door.

"Girls. Sam here." She called out.

Some shuffling, light steps.

Probably some light blasts being readied, just in case.

The door cracked open, and an eye peeked at her.

"What are our names?"

She raised an unamused brow.

What, did they think she was a doppelganger or something?

"Are you seriously- just let her in." Someone from deeper inside called out, exasperated.

The eye in the door squinted.

"Your names are numbers. Enna looks like a close relative to her, Duo looks like a teenaged version of her with white hair, and since you're an inch or so taller than me, you're Tria." She explained, bored.

Her head felt a bit stuffy by now, from all the constant summon core usage and Shen's strongest technique, but it was at most a mild annoyance.

The door opened, and Tria stepped aside, wearing jeans and a white tee.

She walked in-

"Um, shoes. It'd be rude to dirty the place." Duo pointed out from the little sofa in the corner, pointing at her feet for a second before going back to reading her book.

She huffed, and kicked them off.

"Right. You three all ready? It's just us now."

Enna sighed from where she was reclining on the bed, looking at the TV with complete and utter boredom.

"This sounds like a complete and utter suicide mission, no offence. At least for us."

She exhaled through her nose, almost a snort, and sat on the bed next to Enna's feet, rubbing at her eyes.

The bag full of Zyra's spore bursters clicked along with her movements, shifting along her back and harness strips.

"You guys brought your gear?" She asked, tiredly.

Enna pointed to the corner, where a giant suitcase rested against the radiator under the window.

"All the armour plates, helmets, et cetera. As costumes, they're worthless. We just look like a SWAT team. Also not sure why you gave us pistols. We know how to operate one, but we're capes." Enna said, reasonably.

"There is never a reason to not carry a pistol at the very least, cape or not. Fighting with only your power and fists is ego-tripping bullshit. Do anything to win, at all costs. Not that carrying a piece of iron is a big sacrifice." She grouched, and Tria raised a brow as she sat in a chair.

"Strong opinions on cape culture, huh?" Tria asked.

"Don't get me started. The Empire is half-full of fucking morons running around shirtless like a bullet won't kill them… Regardless, you won't need to fight any powered individuals, hopefully. I'll just knock everyone at the compound out, then drag the ones we need to bring back home outside and fire a flare. You all drop down, pick them up, and I'll cover you until we're at home base. We fly straight back to Brockton once our targets are secured."

The two and a half women nodded.

"Duo, you have your harness, right?" She asked, and the teen nodded.

"It's going to be awkward, but yeah it's here and it fits my ball form. Should be able to carry a limp person with it." The girl shrugged.

She nodded, slowly.

"Good. What are our targets?" She asked, just to make sure they knew everything, more than a genuine question of curiosity.

"Dallon girls, Battery, and Heartbreaker. Don't worry, we got briefed pretty well." Tria answered.

"What do you do if you need to rest and can't carry them for much longer?" She asked.

The girls all hesitated, glancing at each other like twins having a wordless conversation.

"Grit our teeth and push through?" Duo offered.

"No, you let me know that you're running out of energy or strength, and we either stop to rest, or I'll switch out with a cape that can take us all back home in an hour or two, depending on how much we're trying to hurry. It'll expend tons of mine and her energy though, so we'll see if I decide to bring her."

The girls either said nothing or hummed in acknowledgement, lounging around and staring at her.

"What's with your eyes? No offence, of course." Enna said, staring at her with a slight air of discomfort.

Eyes? What-

Oh. She'd forgotten about that.

"Information sharing with the… network. Gives off the feeling like you have a hundred-something eyes staring at you. Lots of people are a bit freaked out by it. Part of why it's hard for me to pass as a civilian even if I act completely inconspicuous. One person meets my eyes and they'll feel very strange. They'll remember that. Hard to blend in."

"Huh. That's cool." Duo hummed.

It really wasn't.

"Are there really like a hundred-something capes in Nexus? Just ready to switch at all times? How does any of this work? Sounds absurd." Tria asked, geniunely curious.

"Not answering that. Anything else before I go back to stalking the convoy?" She asked, a tad irritated.

Not with them, just… in general. She wanted to be done with Heartbreaker five days ago, and it was looking like it would end up stretching to a week before she was done with the bastard.

Mostly, to be honest, she was worried about the Dallon twins. It wasn't hard to imagine what Heartbreaker wanted a bombshell blonde for. It made her fucking sick. It made her want to throw him in a woodchipper feet first and videotape his screams just to enjoy them for later.

It made her want to say "fuck it" to this whole plan and just erase his entire existence on sight.

Tria raised a hand, half-assedly, drawing her attention back out of the dredges of her mind.

She inclined her head.

"How close-by should we stick? We're about sixty miles away from them right now according to the trackers, and that's not exactly close when our main mode of transport is a car, at least until it's show time. Are they about to meet up with the man?"

"Probably. There's genuinely not much Canadian countryside left, so they have to be getting pretty damn close. Stick closer to them with the car, no reason to stick this far back anymore. Give it five or ten miles, honestly, none of them seem to have that big of a range. Should be good enough."

The clones all nodded.

Tria then rose.

"Can we talk? Privately." Tria clarified, jerking her head to the bathroom.

Resisting the urge to sigh, she got up and walked into the bathroom with her.

Tria stepped around her, closed the door, and leaned in close to her ear.

"Something's up with Duo." Tria whispered, then leaned back, eyes worried.

Her disinterested gaze sharpened.

"Explain."

"It's nothing alarming, she's not Mastered or anything. It's just… she didn't come out of Noelle that bad, physically, but mentally, she's very different from me and Enna. The more time we're forced to interact and spend together, the easier it is to tell. She's like… infantilizing herself, sort of. Regressing, mentally. The more time goes on the more she acts like a kid. A mature kid, but a kid. She's a clone of an almost forty year old woman, this is just strange. It's not a problem to you, or your operations, and you probably don't care as long as it stays that way, but-"

Okay, no, that was just completely wrong.

"Stop. You're wrong. I do care, to a certain extent." She said, raising a hand between them. "I forced you all into existence to help me, and while life is arguably the grandest gift one could ever get, I feel like the least I can do is try to keep you all alive and well. Were you going to suggest something?" She asked, quietly.

Tria leaned back, seemingly surprised, and slowly, hesitatingly, shrugged.

"I'm not sure. Therapy doesn't seem to work with most Parahumans, honestly, but it can't hurt, right? It's just…There's nothing wrong with her, exactly, I feel like she's just trying to delude herself into a mindset that fits the body she asked for, so maybe it's not even necessary, but she's just- in general, more… sensitive? She has nightmares, we don't. She gets embarrassed super easily, we don't. She gets anxious really easily, and then when she's anxious she wants to run away and calm down and… I don't know. Something's wrong with her, up here." Tria tapped the side of her skull. "Might be some malformation from Noelle, in the brain. Could check it with an MRI scan or something… Sorry, just, I don't know. Thought I should just… mention it, at least. We're all taking on different behaviours and patterns to feel like we're our own distinct person rather than a Kayden clone, so maybe that's all she's doing, but it would be nice to have confirmation, or some reassurance that we won't have to end up working with a literal child one day if this keeps going. And…" Tria seemed to inhale, stutter, then huff and gesture around with her hands, as if giving up.

"You're everything to us. We know you made it so, but that doesn't change anything. You're all we care about, you're the only person we can trust. We don't even particularly like each other aside from having a common goal, understanding of each other, and origin. So you're the only one I felt I could really bring this up to. Telling Duo anything about this gets her incredibly angry and avoidant, so discussing it with her isn't an option. You're the only one with power over us who can fix or help this. And you're never just around for us to talk to, and getting your ear for even a couple minutes is impossible when you seem to be busy building a goddamn empire. A real one, not Max's shit. So, yeah. Felt like this was my only chance to really bring this up. Sorry if I'm taking stalking time away from the Heartbroken."

Taylor swallowed, leaned on the sink, and sighed deeply.

It was kind of easy to forget the consequences of Mastering Noelle's clones, but this was a nice reminder of it.

And it made sense, really. She made people violently, fiercely loyal and trusting to her, then practically sent them off and ignored them for weeks at a time. It couldn't be helped, it was necessary, but it wasn't very nice.

She licked her lips, and nodded.

"Yeah, good call. I'll try to check the non-urgent messages more often, try to put some time aside for you and the Lee clones to bring up any concerns, et cetera. And I'll put in an inquiry for our therapists to look into you. All of you. We only have three though, and they're more specialised in PTSD and behavioural problems since they're mostly working for our soldiers. If you don't like them, I can get someone lower down to find someone more suited. But, let's be realistic. I won't be able to sit with you and chat on any regular basis, or anything. I'm always busy and I always will be, this will only get worse. I won't have time to do more than sleep, probably until I die. So, make bonds with each other, support each other, become your own best friends. Technically, you're all family. I could force that, but I don't think anyone here would like that."

Tria thought long and hard, for almost a solid minute of silence, before nodding.

"It can't hurt. I'll give it a shot. Thank you for listening."

She nodded, feeling a tiny smile twitch onto her lips.

"No problem. I'd do it more if I had the time. If it becomes a big problem, don't be afraid to send a message through the 'urgent' section on the app. I read those all the time. Is that all?"

Tria thought for a second, then nodded.

"Good luck. Thanks again." Tria quietly said, and then opened the door, walking out back into the room, receiving the curious stares with a shrug. "Woman talk."

Taylor came out behind her, and gave a quick, lazy salute, before picking Evelynn again, and flying off, back towards the Heartbroken.

It was only halfway there when she realized she forgot to put her shoes back on, but with a mental groan of embarassment, she decided to ignore that tidbit. Shoes were overrated anyway.

Then she was almost there, and something was... not quite right. And when she caught sight of a hawk, flying at her height, almost a thousand feet away, the Rune of Precision letting her catch wind of it despite the cloudy sun and fading light, she knew exactly what.

The hawk wasn't strange, but having it circling above the exact motel the Heartbroken were holed up in for their daily nap? Without flapping its wings once? In a perfect, straight circle?

Something was weird about that.

And as she focused more and more on it, more and more things were strange.

Its feathers were too stiff. They didn't move at all, unaffected by the wind. Not even the little hairs on either side of each quill, it was as if they were frozen needles. The joint along its side, connecting wing to body, was pitch black and… rubbery. No, it was rubber. Same as it's neck, it seemed to have a tube of rubber over its neck and throat.

Was it wearing a suit? Or was it a minion from a scout team or something?

The little mystery clicked in her head when it finally completed a turn, and its head ended up facing her.

Its eyes were cameras.

Dragon.

Or someone good enough to make a realistic enough hawk mimic to the point it took her thirty seconds to figure out that it was a drone, even with the Rune of Precision active.

Considering this was deep in Canada, and the Heartbroken had overstepped any line they had prodded ever before, she doubted it was someone that wasn't Dragon.

So she stopped, observing the drone in silence, mind racing.

This was annoying, but it could also be a big opportunity. Depending on how she played her cards.

Option one, was to claim this as Nexus's business, and tell Dragon to kindly back off.

Option two… attempt cooperation.

After all, she never set out to be a real villain. She only took this path because she refused to be subject to the incompetent command of the PRT, bound to worthless laws and tied down with miles of bureaucratic red tape.

Her main method of acquiring power being Mastering, also made that option impossible.

But she never wanted to beat down the heroes and claim herself a petty kingdom atop the ashes left behind. That was more Lung's speed, disgraceful waste of a wonderful power that he was.

She considered asking for some advice, but, she couldn't. Even the thought of calling Lisa would likely mess with Coil's power right now. Accord might be a safer option, but he was still connected to the raid through Citrine, and his contact with Coil.

This felt oddly nostalgic to how she started, going after villains on her lonesome, no support, nobody to bounce her plans off of and figure out a better way.

Choices filtered in and out, discarded, refined, or shifted.

She had little to lose, either way. The Guild should pull out entirely if they thought that Nexus would fight them over the right to kick Heartbreaker's ass, and that was just not a fight worth taking, when both were technically trying to go for the same target.

Eventually, she made a choice.

She rose up, higher and higher, her formless, invisible cloud of gas deforming from the speed, then she flew until she was right above the hawk.

After a few seconds of waiting for the hawk to get in position, she dive bombed it.

A couple feet before impact, she picked Jarvan again, and clamped her hands shut around its body, the sheet metal denting with a loud bang sound as they tumbled down.

Considering it was completely inanimate, without any tissue or soul inside it, she simply flickered it back with her original body, picked Evelynn to fly, down to a thin copse of trees besides the highway, and then switched back to Jarvan to flicker the drone back into her hands.

It was completely still for a second, before it jerked, likely establishing it's connection again.

Two beady cameras zoomed in on her face.

"I assume I'm talking to Dragon, correct?" She asked in Jarvan's deep, arrogant rumble.

She held the hawk up higher with one arm, tilting it this way and that.

Slowly, mechanically, the hawk bobbed its head in a nod.

"I see. Can this… toy, not speak?" She asked, feigning disdain for the drone with a subtle curl of her lip.

The hawk shook its head, clumsily.

"That is unfortunate. I'd like to speak with you. It seems we have the same target. Unfortunately, we can't let the Guild take care of our business for us. Heartbreaker insulted us, gravely, and interfered in our territory. He's ours to take. Our only options here as Nexus are to either stop you from interfering by force, or to try and work with you. To my displeasure, Summoner prefers it if we worked together to take care of Heartbreaker. Can you send another drone over to speak with me, in any expedient manner? The Heartbroken will likely move soon. They never sleep or stay at these places for more than a couple hours, they just stretch their legs and go back to driving."

The hawk stared.

And continued staring, unmoving, for almost a full minute.

Eventually, she scowled, and shook it.

"Did this thing break?" She wondered, almost sneering.

The hawk shook it's head, but provided no more input.

She huffed.

"My patience is running out, Dragon." She sighed, faking annoyance, but decided to spin her lance and rest her elbow on its guard, to wait.

A full two minutes later, it weakly flapped its wings to grab her attention, then nodded, the faintest of whirring sounds coming out of its mechanical joints as it did so.

"Nod once for half an hour until it's here, or twice for one hour. So on and so forth."

The hawk nodded once.

Half an hour or less.

That was fine.

She nodded back.

"Good, I'll wait right here. Don't try anything, we'll know, and I won't be so lenient this time. No more betrayals."

Not subtle in her threat whatsoever, but she wasn't in the mood to let the Heartbroken slip out of sight because the Guild decided to fight her just outside their goddamn motel.

Painfully slowly, the hawk nodded.

"Do you want this back?" She asked, and tapped the hawk's chest.

The hawk nodded, and so, she turned it, raised it with her hand, and stopped gripping, just holding it up.

Something inside it whirred, and it dragged itself off her palm.

Dragged, because instead of flying away, it simply tipped over and fell to the ground, ungracefully.

She picked it up, squinting at it through her helm.

"Did I break it?"

The hawk nodded.

She snorted as she put the hawk on her shoulder, and it used its wings and mechanical legs to balance itself while she leaned on her lance, staring out onto the forest.

"Apologies. Wasn't expecting a Dragon drone made out of metal to be this fragile, considering just a couple of your rockets took my arm off a week and a half ago."

Somehow, she got the sense that the drone was glaring at her through those beady cameras.

Notes:

Hope that that little Cherie POV explained some of the butterflies of this story and where they originated from, like Armsmaster and Heartbreaker. :)