50

Chapter Text

The drone that arrived looked like every other relatively cheap civilian drone she'd ever seen, which was surprising considering it was Dragon's.

The only difference seemed to be a small rectangular camera displaying the woman's simulated face on its front, obscured, of course, by darkness, only a digital outline and her eyes showing.

"Greetings. In a more civil manner, this time." She rumbled in Jarvan's signature arrogance, and the drone came closer, 'face-to-face' with her, in a way.

"Greetings to you too, I suppose. You said you wanted to talk. I'm here." Dragon simply said, emotionless.

Taylor observed her for a moment, then grunted.

"Well, there's not too much to say aside from what I already outlined. Heartbreaker's ours. The only thing up for debate here is whether you're willing to let us do our thing and be ready to contain the fallout and the mess, or if you're going to fight us over it. Ideally, we don't fight, according to Summoner. We don't have any desire to waste resources processing everyone at the compound and all the evidence, so we won't. We'll take our targets and go. Then, you go in and clean up, take your evidence, et cetera. Does that sound good?"

Dragon's gaze minutely sharpened.

That simulation was good.

"And who exactly are you here for? What are the 'targets'?"

"Heartbreaker, the Dallon twins, and Battery. Maybe one or two of the Heartbroken kids."

Dragon's suspicion became almost tangible, a thing she could almost graze her fingers through, it was so thick.

"And what business do you have with the heroines, exactly?"

Hm. Yes, explaining that bit was… going to be a very callous-sounding lie.

"PR." She lied, simply, dryly. "We'd normally have no problem freeing them and handing them off to you to… lock up in a box, or whatever you do to the bastard's victims, but due to recent events, our organization has gained an almost entirely villainous reputation."

"Quite the fearsome one too." Dragon said, coldly.

It wasn't a compliment.

"Hm. Yes. If we give them to you, you can claim you did this, and knowing how organisations like the PRT and The Guild function, we know you will lie about it. If we were to bring them back ourselves, next to a nice, gift-wrapped shoebox of whatever's left of Heartbreaker once we're done with him, our reputation would go from something approaching pitch black to something a little more along the lines of muddled grey. People will remember what we did with the ABB, why, what we did with their victims, and they'll remember this too, alongside our unfortunate disagreement in Brockton's old factory lane, and instead of disregarding us as villains, they'll be confused instead. Additionally, despite how much you might struggle to believe this, we do have opinions and beliefs of our very own besides looking good, unlike our local PRT. That includes saving people whenever possible. There's no reason to leave two teenagers and a heroine to a fate like that, even if we're not on the same side per say."

Dragon's head tilted in the small screen, almost darkly amused.

"Really… Morals and reputation are the reasons for the rescue, but PR is the reason you want to personally bring them back instead of letting us handle it? I find the first part a bit hard to believe, you understand… but it does make sense. Alright. But, what do villains care about PR?" Dragon asked, obviously skeptical.

"We're not villains. We don't care about this game you like to play. Villains, heroes. Arbitrary definitions, labels meant to vilify or glorify and little more. And we have no interest in improving the world under the PRT's rotten, incompetent boot, chained up by bureaucratic red tape up to our ears. The freedom to act is the only thing keeping heroes back from evening the field, or winning."

Dragon's amusement faded, a considering squint in her eyes. She seemed… thoughtful.

"And you… consider yourselves heroes? Doing this to improve the world, by any means necessary, even if it breaks law and morality?"

That was quite accurate. Dragon was, predictably, very intelligent, reading between the lines effortlessly.

"'Not really' to the first, yes to the second. In worlds like ours, savage, barbaric, and under constant threat, the only things that matter are strength, hope, and unity. Were we isolated in Earth Aleph, where the sun shines eternal and the only problems are those we create ourselves, things would be a tad different. The need for our existence would be minimal. Here and in worlds like this one, we are needed. This world's decline won't be halted through the work of flawed governments run by fools, thieves, and war hawks that left the military because their pay got cut." She declared.

Overdramatic, of course, but that is in character for Jarvan.

Dragon was silent, for a moment.

"And you aren't flawed?" Dragon asked, rhetorically.

"Of course we are. We are simply better. Our scope is tighter, more focused. We'll expand, of course, that is inevitable in this kind of mission, but we have unifying factors that your governments simply do not."

Dragon stared, before humming, almost whimsically.

"Your ideology?"

She snorted.

"No. That's the topsoil. The bedrock is Summoner."

She was mostly spewing bullshit, to be honest.

The main difference was that she was not afraid to cross the lines. She was not bound by law or morality. She did not have to process, trial, and jail the scum of society, letting them bleed her money away to rot in prisons for decades, no, she could simply enslave them, add them to her strength, and snowball herself into a position where she could influence society enough to make them believe in the same vision she did, make them hope, and make them fight, no matter how hopeless it felt.

A mixture of Noxian ideology, the hope this world desperately needed, and vicious survivalism.

It wasn't going to be pretty or soft and caring, it wasn't going to be a utopian vision, it wasn't going to be perfect. It wouldn't ensure that not one person would ever slip through the cracks.

But it would ensure that this world would still exist in ten, twenty, fifty years.

And so would the next, and the next, and the next, if Alexandria had told her the truth in that valley.

Or at least, that was the genuine hope. Everything in Nexus relied on enslavement, she wasn't shy about it. It was simply a matter of who was enslaved.

Maria, that secretary? She didn't deserve to be enslaved.

The vast, vast majority of the Empire? They deserved it ten times over.

"Single leading figure huh… And your suit… The way you talk… How oddly archaic. All of you." She eventually mused. "Is Heartbreaker your current, most important target? Can you not let this slide?"

"No to both."

"And what will you do with him?"

"Torture him to death." She said, simply, coldly. Mostly, she lied to conceal the existence of a Master in her organization. Just delaying the inevitable, really.

Dragon wasn't surprised, but something about her… shifted.

"We'll get information on his sleeper agents. We have methods you can't employ. Your 'laws' won't let you touch him. Interrogation? You think that will do anything? Pain is what makes the tongue start writhing. Inhumane, barbaric, bah." She scoffed, derisive to the bone. "We'll peel him like a fruit, and use his skin as the rag we'll choke him with. He'll squeal every last thing he has ever remembered. We'll give the list to you to deal with. We've no interest chasing his sleeper agents across two countries, we have more local affairs. Your governments will deal with it."

"And you will wait for us to clear this list, before you announce his death? Otherwise, if you reveal his death, the sleeper agents will all activate. It'll be chaos. You-"

"We know. We'll give you a deadline of one month after we're done with him. Considering the budget the PRT has, it shouldn't be a problem if they hurry along a little."

"That's far too short a timeframe." Dragon shot back.

"The public tides of attention shift too quickly. We need to strike while we're still in people's minds, so we can change them. The PRT's budget is almost in the trillion, if I remember correctly. Or trillions. If they, and you, can't deal with a few mortal, unpowered sleepers in a month, that's your complete and utter incompetence at play. We won't be shackled by the government's uselessness, even indirectly. Either hurry or face the consequences. If red tape is holding you back, cut it." She emphasized.

Dragon was silent.

"I see. Does it not occur to you that laws exist for a reason?"

"Laws exist to keep a society functional. That doesn't matter if nobody follows them, or cares about them. That doesn't matter if the world is crumbling to pieces year by year, one Ash Beast at a time, one Endbringer fight at a time, one gang of maniacs at a time. At that point, they are merely a hindrance to action. Will you continue to patch holes in a ship that's falling apart, held by glue and duct tape, or will you venture out into the waters and kill whatever it is that's sinking you? We won't be restricted and shackled like you. The laws of man mean nothing before a mission like this." She declared, definitely way overdramatically, but also definitely full of simple, sheer conviction.

Dragon continued to stare.

"You sound like a madman, you are aware?"

She probably was. Her way of thought was so alien that it was difficult to even conceptualise what Nexus would be when the ash settled, how her vision derived from Runeterra would apply to a world so foreign to her, like Earth Bet.

"So be it." She grunted with a shrug. "Are you done fishing for information? I've run out of things Summoner would allow me to say to answer your questions. What do your superiors say about this?"

"That's what I'm stalling for." Dragon said, in a shocking display of simple honesty. "They're making a decision."

She hummed, and they stared at each other.

"You're oddly amicable." Taylor noted, after a few long, long seconds of silence.

"Despite my intense disapproval of your actions in Brockton and my firm belief you should be in prison right now, you have been amicable yourself, aside from breaking my drone. I'm simply returning the favour to keep this from devolving into something troublesome."

She hummed, short and gruff.

"Fair enough."

Dragon continued to be silent, before her eyes quickly glanced to hers.

"And the Heartbroken?" Dragon asked, suddenly.

"What about them?"

"What will you do with them?"

She paused, thinking.

Cherie ran. And Regent was her brother, which Lisa didn't seem to dislike.

That, and her power was completely unknown. It could be something powerful, considering it was enough to create a 'big threat', according to Cosmic Insight.

Frankly, she couldn't see any of them as anything but victims, so far.

What would happen to them if the Guild or PRT got them?

Likely… years of therapy and distrust. They'd get split up along the country, for various reasons. End up in the Wards, if they ever end up being trusted. Otherwise they'd likely be used in black ops, underground teams, or given special roles in Parahuman prisons to help contain the inmates, though that last one was doubtful.

Whatever she could come up with, it didn't sound all that great.

But.

She had no use for any of them, really.

Additionally, the amount of therapy and rehabilitation they'd need to be normal, trustable individuals, who wouldn't cause her massive problems, like spilling the Mastering secret, or running away with fairly valuable information, things like that… it was a lot.

Furthermore, the likelihood of this cooperation falling apart at the mention of Nexus acquiring half a dozen Masters was… frustratingly high. They were already considered far, far, far more dangerous than Heartbreaker. A government agency would never agree to hand over a half dozen Masters to her.

Too bad. She didn't need their cooperation. She could take care of everything herself, even if it would knock her out for a couple days. Everyone else here was to make her job easier. They weren't necessary.

With that realization, she relaxed, and her thoughts shifted.

Specifically, they shifted to how Battery interacted with Florence, the girl with a manic grin that all her siblings avoided. Or with Nathan, the kid with the interrogator power, one of the most normal kids in the bunch. Or even Juliette, the unnervingly emotionless teenager. Florence in particular seemed to tolerate Battery more than anyone else.

The other kids were too abrasive and dismissive of her as just another powered sex slave, but those three seemed to be able to interact with her in a rather normal manner…

Damn it, this was going to tire the shit out of her.

"We'll take two of them. One named Florence, and one named Cherie. The rest are probably better off with Canadian CPS. We're not exactly a kindergarten." She simply concluded.

Dragon's confusion was visible in the way she just stared at her with a completely blank expression for six solid, quiet seconds, before she seemingly nodded, believing her.

She probably expected them to want all the kids too, just for their powers.

"Will you hand over Battery?"

She slowly furrowed her brows.

"We'll free her, and she'll make her own choices. Which will likely just be to peripherally work with us."

Dragon hummed.

"You'll free a Heartbroken… Does that not sound like an unwise decision? What makes you think she'll work with you?"

"It sounds like an unwise decision because you don't know what we know. And as for what makes us believe she will work with us? Well, where else would she go, precisely?" She asked, gesticulating widely with her hands, palms open upwards.

"Assault betrayed the PRT for her. He was already on permanent probation from being Madcap a decade ago, he can't go back to the PRT even if he begged. Battery won't ditch him for the PRT, not after all this, especially considering that she will never be trusted again after being taken by Heartbreaker. It's all in the drain now, it's too late. They'll either break off from everyone and get new identities to become rogues, or they'll join us. Even if they do become rogues, they'll still need us, because right now, they literally have nothing, and they'll owe us a debt you can't measure in coins. We're simply good to be affiliated with, because we protect the Truce, and by extension, rogues too. So, yes, there will be some degree of cooperation. They don't have other options, and we're not particularly bad employers. A healthier rogue community in Brockton wouldn't be a terrible thing either."

Dragon seemed to digest that.

"You think very, very far ahead, don't you?" Dragon slowly intoned, sounding downright wary.

She shrugged.

"Who said I do the thinking?" She replied, keeping it vague. "Are we getting an answer before they move again or not?" She added, growing impatient.

"Give it another twenty minutes." Dragon replied.

"Speaking from experience?" She snarked.

"Unfortunately." Dragon deadpanned.

She snorted, and settled in to wait, watching the buzzing drone in front of her.

She just made things a bit harder for herself, didn't she? She'd have to carry two kids and an adult back to Brockton, herself. Or just hope Duo's harness designers accounted for the possibility of extra cargo. She hadn't checked that.

… Probably worth it, but still frustrating.

What would she do with the Heartbroken…

Cherie seemed old enough to mostly be able to fend for herself if she put her into the retainer girls squad. Maybe she'd make some friends there since they were all around that age. But Florence was messed up, and she wasn't exactly sure she could find a good family for her.

Who would… even…

Oh.

Oh, hold on a second.

Battery seemed able to handle Florence much easier than her siblings. She also had a bleeding heart, would owe them an uncountable favour with her husband if Taylor managed to at least mostly fix her, and she had blackmail material on her in the form of her being a vial cape. Additionally, Assault didn't seem that bad of a father figure.

Either Battery would take her in on a suggestion out of the goodness of her heart, or she could… kind of force her to take Florence in? It would be better than being raised by a rotating cast of soldiers, but it wasn't ideal. The main reason she wanted Florence was because she had no idea what the girl's power was, but it was enough to seemingly scare her own family of sociopathic Master power children.

It had to be something either amazing, or awful, and she wanted it. It was perhaps selfish, but the PRT would do the exact same.

She'd have to see how it went. If Florence got worse and they couldn't handle her, she'd likely just hand her over to either the Youth Guard or The Guild.

The next twenty minutes weren't uncomfortable, but they didn't exactly fill up the silence.

Then it ticked over to twenty-something minutes of silence, and she shoved off her lance, picking it up and putting it on her shoulder, tense and genuinely irritated.

Were they really taking this long to make up their damn minds? Or was this some petty power play? A stalling tactic to… do what?

"If you won't make a choice, I'll make it for you. Leave." She calmly rumbled, piercing blue eyes staring holes into Dragon's drone.

It seemed to physically jerk with surprise.

"Wh- hold on, just, one more minute. One. I'm serious." Dragon rushed out, almost pleading, and the tone gave her pause for a second, squinting at the drone with irritated suspicion.

She grunted.

"Im counting down from sixty then." She mused, voice dangerously low.

The pressure mounted, until the tension was thick enough to taste in the air.

Somewhere around fifty three seconds, Dragon's avatar turned to face her, and gave her a nod.

"To paraphrase; we cannot, and will not, cooperate with villains. We will however let Nexus handle its business first before we intervene on the Heartbroken compound, on the condition that there will be communication by Nexus's intelligence to The Guild to avoid crossfire incidents. Our operation will have zero connection to Nexus aside from avoiding another Brockton Bay incident."

So, essentially… they refused to cooperate with them, but, they would cooperate with them.

Wow.

What a stupid, ass-backwards, PR-friendly way of saying "yeah, fine, we'll play ball, just don't say it out loud because it'll look bad to anyone looking at or leaking any of this".

Just- Wow. That was almost impressive if it wasn't so goddamn spineless and fucking pathetic.

She let out a long, annoyed sigh rumbling with a low snarl.

"PR games." She scoffed, derisively. "One moment."

She stared off into empty air for a moment, eyes focused but not on something in particular, tapping her lance's handle with her fingers in a clear display of impatience.

Did she accept this…

Yeah.

Everyone got to have their cake and eat it too this way. She wouldn't leave behind a chaotic mess for Canada with her retreat, the attack wouldn't reach the news until she chose for Heartbreaker's death to reach the news, the Heartbroken would be rounded up and processed instead of turning into a massive, scattering problem for Canada, and she would build up a small thread of trust with The Guild and everyone on the heroic side, that Nexus really could just work with you, regardless of affiliation, so long as the goal was the same.

"Summoner accepts." She said simply, to pretend she was listening to 'Summoner's' words rather than just thinking about the offer on the spot.

Dragon's drone drooped slightly, either relaxing, or trying to look less uncomfortable.

Dragon then sighed. "To be frank with you, this threw a massive wrench in our plans. How will you operate? I'm asking so that nobody steps on the other's toes and ends up botching the operation entirely."

She considered for a moment, then tapped her lance on the ground.

"Just leave a wide range between you and the Heartbroken. We're following closely from now on. Once they enter the compound or the perimeter, just wait for a flare and for us to fly off. That's our original plan. Now that you're here and have information though, we can massively expedite the process. What information do you have?" She asked, and Dragon paused.

"One moment. Need to clear with the PRT that I can share this kind of information with you."

She rolled her eyes.

"The things we're asking, we will know about regardless, by the time this operation's done. If you can tell us where the compound is, we can just go there without following this convoy, and deal with the man first. From there, we just ambush the incoming cars, incapacitate everyone, take our picks, and leave. It'll make the operation safer and smoother, as well as ensuring that there will be absolutely zero chance for Heartbreaker to further change the victims in the interim between them arriving, and us taking everyone down."

Dragon's avatar nodded, but remained silent. Ten seconds later, a look of relief appeared on her face, or at least, the outline of her face seemed to relax.

"Do you have anyone who can take coordinates?" Dragon asked hurriedly, and Taylor felt her lips twitch into a grin as she flickered the tiny phone into her hand, and called Enna.

Good news was, Taylor knew where his compound was now.

She was about to rush over to it, before a thought popped up.

Heartbreaker had physically been in Brockton.

Which meant it was likely he wasn't even in his compound yet. He was most likely with the main convoy.

That slight detail that should have come up quicker, in hindsight, forced her to calm down and focus on exchanging information with Dragon.

Which was how she ended up like this, fist against her chin as she sat on a tree stump, and Dragon's drone a couple feet across from her, resting on an upright tree log, in a lull, as the Heartbroken convoy drove away.

She would definitely go ahead to scout around Heartbreaker's compound, familiarise herself with who was where, plan a quick route, but if Heartbreaker was in the secondary convoy, which neither she nor Dragon seemed to have located yet, she'd still have to wait for them to arrive regardless.

And she wouldn't have the chance to settle things separately.

The girls would spend a lot more time with the rapist bastard too, which wasn't great. She didn't like the idea of them being actively subject to the fucker's whims.

"Do you have a drone on the convoy?" She asked, eventually.

"Of course. What do you think your next step will be?"

She got up with a sigh, adjusting Jarvan's lance.

"We'll be sending a scout over to check the area, map things out. Then, we simply wait to ambush the main convoy. It's a waiting game."

Dragon nodded.

"Would you be willing to scan the area with one of my creations? It'll give us a three-dimensional map. It should make the clean-up a lot easier."

She shook her head.

"I don't trust you that much. How do I know your gadget won't map our scout too? Record their powers, make a 3D model to gather information, et cetera, et cetera. Not happening."

Dragon hummed, seemingly disappointed.

"To quote you, 'fair enough'. Is that all we needed to discuss?" Dragon asked.

She paused, brows furrowing as she considered the future.

"Would you be willing to have an open portal of communication? Something neither of us can easily track? We might need a more direct line of communication to you and The Guild than just sending one of ours across the country to walk into your offices."

Dragon hummed, a tad sceptical.

"That would be a bit alarming, yes. But, in the spirit of transparency, I have to say that the only really 'safe' options for private communications between us would be entirely under my control, and thus, not safe from me. " Dragon mused.

She'd have to confirm with her techies later, but…

"Can't we just phone you from a burner phone, then destroy it? It's not like you can track down circuitry scraps by pinging it off the cell towers." She suggested.

She didn't really know anything about technology but she had listened to enough technobabble from her techies to understand some basic concepts about security.

Dragon paused, then nodded.

"I suppose that would work, yes. I'll give you one of my private numbers. Anywhere to write?" Dragon asked, her drone whirring to life to start hovering in place like before.

She flickered the burner phone into her hand, and slowly navigated through the odd menus until she found the contacts.

"Shoot." She hummed, and Dragon did.

After inputting the number, she cracked her neck for show, and glanced skywards.

"I'll be going now. Our scout will get to work. Oh, and one more thing. If you do find Heartbreaker's convoy, the main one, do not try to intercept it and capture him, and claim it was some kind of loophole in our agreement. Let it get to us. We're amenable to working with you and The Guild even after one betrayal, a second one means war, regardless of who has the bigger stick. Heartbreaker is ours. " She emphasized again, for what had to be the tenth time, and Dragon nodded.

"This would be a lot less tense if you didn't insist on threatening us every couple minutes." Dragon noted, dryly.

She inclined her head in agreement.

"It would, but then I fear you'd start getting ideas. Maybe not you specifically, but those who control you? I wouldn't trust them with a cookie jar, nevermind Heartbreaker." She snorted. "Farewell. Good luck."

"Wait." Dragon said.

She did.

"Any chance I could know what you're trying to use one of my suits for, in Brockton? Or any chance I'll be getting that back without fighting you?" Dragon asked, voice understandably miffed.

"For now, no. Farewell." She replied.

With that, she picked Evelynn and burst into invisible smoke, racing towards the north, where Heartbreaker's compound supposedly was.

"Asshole…" Dragon grumbled.

Hey, rude.

Calling it a compound was… kind of understating it.

It was situated on top of a slowly arching hill, within a circle of grass, completely void of forest or any kind of substantial cover. The only thing breaking the endless sightlines were warehouses, decoy buildings, barracks for the soldiers and even a couple capes Heartbreaker had enslaved, and watch towers.

They were just barely taller than the trees and cleverly covered in foliage, good enough to pass as trees to any passing drones or fliers, at first glance.

Aside from that, the only security she could see were six different civilian trucks full of men, driving in wide circles, as well as a couple foot patrols of three people each.

It didn't take long to figure out the layout.

Warehouses on the outer edges, to serve as cover and bait both, most likely, barracks and auxiliary buildings behind them, and in the inner… well, it was too haphazard to call it a circle, it was more of a crumpled square, but in the center, were all the residentiary buildings for Heartbreaker's victims and more valued associates.

She found women, a few men here and there, a worrying amount of makeshift tunnels under the houses, some for escape routes and some for equipment, and… a strangely eerie-feeling empty mansion, obviously lived in but currently empty.

Heartbreaker's real home, seemingly.

The empty children's rooms weren't the only strange thing about it, it was the copious amounts of medicine and pills strewn about the place, the bowl of fucking condoms in the living room in a mansion with multiple children's rooms, and the creepiest part of it all; Heartbreaker's bedroom.

It looked more like a torture chamber had a child with a bordello room, it had very large windows, and there were toys of both pain and pleasure shoved into every nook and cranny of the place.

He also had a wall of fucking hard drives next to his computer, and she didn't particularly want to check what was in them.

She was also pretty sure she found some of the individual kid's rooms.

Florence was in another building entirely, and her room was the most disturbing.

It was utterly covered in childish scribbles and drawings, all tightly packed until where her height ended, and it was all smeared in one way or another, making most of them unintelligible, even more so than Florence's lack of skill would allow, just a mixed mud of ink covering a solid four feet of wall in every direction.

There were bite marks on everything, to boot. Cables, wires, pens, the laptop, the furniture, the books, wherever few of them weren't shredded into pieces and strewn about the floor in a chaotic mess.

Additionally, the only lock in the room was outside facing. There was no key inlet in Florence's side of the room.

It was more of a fucking prison cell than a kid's room.

She was kind of curious on what the living fuck went on in this place, but she also just… didn't think it would add or change anything. She already hated Heartbreaker's guts.

So she eventually stopped pausing at every detail, and focused on the bigger picture.

Seven outer warehouses. One of them was a mechanic's workshop, another one was a multi-purpose workshop, seemingly to make clothes and do all kinds of small tasks with machinery, and the rest were either full of ammunition, food, or building materials.

There were also multiple small farms around the barracks and some of the buildings around Heartbreaker's mansion, likely tended to by his female victims.

The mansion and some of the smaller side buildings had makeshift tunnels under them, stretching out for hundreds and hundreds of feet in every direction, usually leading to gravel-covered trapdoors, sometimes within the perimeter and sometimes in the far distant woods, thousands of feet away.

Escape or smuggling tunnels.

The barracks were more like communal buildings, and were… extremely cult-y.

There were little fucking shrines in some of the rooms, pictures of Nikos's face framed by little candles and incense holders.

There were even a couple really high quality portrait drawings of the man in the main eating areas, overlooking the people as they ate.

It was such a shame to think of such a promising artist, reduced to being a cult leader's fucking plaything.

God, she hated this place and everything in it.

Eventually, she had mapped everything out, but it took her the better part of seven hours.

Heartbreaker's mansion had two tunnels, hidden behind furniture and a painting. Other buildings generally followed this pattern. There were symbols to denote which tunnel was an exit, which was a dead end, and which was storage of sensitive things like mass amounts of explosives.

Why he had so many explosives, she could only guess.

As the dreary Canadian weather dragged the sun under, she eventually called it a day, and flew to the Purity squad, flying into their car through the open window as it calmly drove down the highway.

She materialized in the back seat, and that calmness promptly ended as Enna caught her in the mirror, startled, and the car jerked for a moment, prompting the other two women to shout in alarm.

It quickly righted itself, and Enna let out a long, rattling sigh.

"Fucking Christ, don't do that please." Enna wheezed.

She raised a brow, leaning back and getting comfortable.

"You're that tense? What's up?"

Enna shrugged.

"I don't know. I just don't like the idea of being so close to two cars full of Masters. So I'm just… jumpy."

There was... something deeply ironic about that statement.

Duo's face turned impish, and she moved a finger to poke Enna's ribs from the side.

Enna jerked, thankfully keeping the car stable this time.

"Stop. Doing that." Enna growled.

Duo cackled under her hand, apparently having the time of her life.

"Damn goblin." Enna grumbled, and settled down into her car seat.

Taylor couldn't help but raise a brow.

This was a lot warmer of an atmosphere than before. Odd change in just a day.

"Hm. Well, I came bearing news. Lots. First of all, ditch the convoy, I found Heartbreaker's compound. Give me a map." She said, and gestured to the glovebox.

Duo quickly opened it, and began digging around.

"And a pen. We're driving close by, and you're all camping up a fake tree until you see the flare. Shouldn't be more than a day."

"You want us to camp up on a tree." Tria sceptically remarked.

"No, you will camp up a tree. A fake one. They have giant watchtowers disguised as trees, they climb up with a winch. It's only a couple feet wide and long, so you'll have to sit on top of each other for a while. I'll take care of the watcher." She corrected, and Tria sighed, rubbing at her face with dread.

Duo handed her a map and a pen, and she quickly spread it out on her lap, following roads and scenery with her eye as she tried to figure out where exactly it had been.

Ten minutes later, she found it, circled it, and handed it back to Duo.

"That's where the compound is. About two miles away is where their perimeter ends, so we'll post up there. Drive offroad if you can find a path, I'll take you deeper bit by bit. Do not use any power, do not fly, don't do anything until I say so."

"Got it." Enna said, and took an exit out of the highway, before gesturing to the map in a 'give me' manner.

Duo folded it a little, and instead held the map up so Enna could sneak peeks at it as she drove up and out of the busy road behind.

It took a couple minutes of driving and glancing for Enna to find a spot to pull over in a gas station, and grab the map, squinting at it.

"That's smack dab in the middle of a forest that's several miles long and wide. How are we even supposed to get close?"

She leaned forward, and put her finger on the map, trailing a path.

"There's a bunch of makeshift dirt paths along here. The least used one seems to go along this river. I'm assuming they used to get their water from there before the compound got proper plumbing or something, because I also found some rusting, unused pumps and such. Regardless, just follow this road, then ask around for a path that follows the river, and keep driving until I tell you to stop. It should be safer than any of the other paths since it loops just around the back of the property and behind the storage warehouses that are mostly left alone."

Enna continued to squint at the map for a couple minutes, before wordlessly folding it, and getting out to fill up on gas.

Then, they drove off.

Taylor… well, she actually had… nothing to do, for once. Which was rare. She was also… without a headache. First time in a while. She felt an uncomfortable pressure in her skull, mostly from constantly using her Legends, but it wasn't even at the point of 'slight pain' yet.

She hummed, and eyed the girls.

"How do you all feel about spiders?" She asked, and Tria turned to her, eyeing her with wariness.

"... Not good?" Tria quietly, suspiciously asked.

"Just keep them away from me." Enna shuddered.

Duo pursed her lips, moving them around like she was tasting something odd.

"I'm kinda curious but freaked out."

She nodded.

"Alright then. Tria, close your eyes and ears, I'm going to put a couple hundred spiders in the car."

"H-hundred?!" Enna exclaimed, incredulous, and Duo's eyes widened in alarm.

"Yes. They're intelligent and tame, so don't freak out. Just keep the car steady." She dryly ordered, and switched to Elise the Spider Queen, for the first time in a while.

A wave of her hand spread jagged mists of black-purple-red over her lap and the free seat between herself and Tria, quickly coalescing into a sea of chittering chitin.

She grinned as her children erupted into chittering, swarming all over her with glee, waving their little pedipalps in greeting, some roughly the size of a palm, and most barely the size of a thumb.

Tria let out a sharp, horrified gasp, and turned away, practically curling into a ball by the window, hands over her ears.

A couple mischievous ones made their way to Tria to scare her more, before she tutted in disapproval. "Don't make her ruin the car and you, little ones. C'mere."

They stopped, disappointed, and skittered over their siblings to climb over her.

Duo looked somewhere between fascinated and horrified, gawping at her and the sea of red eyes and black chitin.

Enna shuddered, but focused on the road.

The little spiderlings rushed to her, some proudly claiming the top of her head, some others shoving each other for a claim at her shoulder, and a few smart ones deciding to simply reach her headpiece, thread some silk on it, and hang off of it.

A small fight on her left shoulder escalated with a hiss.

"Behave." She scolded, and they settled down quickly, only using their legs to shove each other like little toddlers.

With a fond roll of her eyes, she extended a hand.

"Miranda." She called, and the mass of spiders parted to let the palm-sized spider hop on.

Miranda waved her little pedipalps in greetings, doing a little tap dance with her legs, and she grinned.

A wordless question pushed towards her mind, and she snorted.

"No, no ankles to bite yet, unfortunately. I need another one of those suits. They're incredible, but only me and Insight have them. Can you make one in say… five hours?" She questioned, and Miranda settled down, tilting this way and that, seemingly thinking.

A full-body bob, her kids' form of a nod, and Miranda perched on her palm, looking around for a good surface to work on.

"They can understand you?" Duo whispered, half-horrified and mesmerised.

Miranda turned to her, bobbed up and down in a nod, then turned back to observing the car.

"Oh my god they can. Wow." Duo breathed out, and slowly extended a finger. "Can I… hold one? They won't bite me, right?"

Taylor picked a spider from the bunch, a relatively small one, and sent it forth.

"Just don't squeeze them like a stress toy or play with their legs, and you'll be fine."

The spiderling quickly skittered forward, and Duo recoiled a little, startled by the speed, before slowly extending her hand again.

It climbed up, and waved with its pedipalps again before sitting down to observe Duo.

"That's… a weird sensation. Hi little guy." Duo whispered, cautiously.

It skittered forward, much faster than before, curious, going from her palm to her bicep in about a second's worth of time.

Duo jerked back with a shout, and turned into a luminous white floating crystal ball that stuck itself to the ceiling mid-squeal, cutting herself off.

"Duo! We're on a road! Drop under the window!" Enna snapped, irate, and the ball did as asked, warily hovering a couple inches above the seat and the spider that quickly flipped itself over, and started waving again.

"Go slower." She ordered the little spider off-handedly, and then focused on Miranda, thinking. "Would the trunk work well for you? It's quite large, I believe."

Miranda turned to her and bobbed up and down three or four times, quickly.

She regarded the open seat between herself and Tria, and turned sideways, the spiders shuffling off to not obstruct her.

Without much preamble, she formed her fingers into claws, and punched through the seat, the whole car rocking with the motion, and then she tore it outwards, foam and fabric going everywhere, a fist-sized hole left behind, leading to the trunk.

"Go in there and work on a suit. Make it fit someone of Oni Lee's stature. A bit stretchy, not sure who'll be getting it."

The tide of arachnids rushed into the hole with a cacophony of clicking and shuffling, all but the one who still waved at Duo from her seat.

Duo materialized, her body on the car floor, huddled cautiously against the door.

She extended her hand, and the spiderling climbed onto it again, much more carefully and slowly, making sure to wave every couple steps.

Duo's fear seemed to be slowly getting replaced by fascination.

Taylor just settled down for the long drive ahead, and watched them interact.

Eventually, Duo was back up on her seat, stroking the needy spider like it was a cat, and asking it many, many questions about what being a spider was like. Mostly yes and no's.

The working spiders were starting to get jealous, so eventually, she reached over to pluck the spider out of Duo's hand, and gave her a slightly bigger one she fished out from the hole in the car.

Duo waved back at the little spider as it skittered off into the trunk, and immediately began asking questions to the bigger one.

Tria mostly watched them with decreasing discomfort, and Enna only gave the spider side-glances while focusing on the road, regarding it with disgust for the most part.

Taylor eventually recalled Miranda to sit on her palm.

She was the only named spider, as well as the first, so Taylor wasn't shy about spoiling her girl. They'd spent almost two centuries together after all.

The drive was very odd, certainly, but eventually things calmed down, and Duo seemed to be loving the novelty of intelligent, giant spiders.

It was as Taylor was stroking the top of Miranda's abdomen that she had a sudden thought, and paused.

Did she… ever finish making that black widow order? Or did they get delivered and had just been sitting at that random address for a month?

Shit, she couldn't remember. Too much was happening too fast.

She'd have to make a new order. If she made one already well... Rest in peace little spiders…

And that was something she had to get on top of, soon.

After all, she could really use an army of intelligent arachnids that weren't tied to Elise exclusively. She could make a network of information so vast and unseen she'd know everything going on in Brockton, assuming she made the feedback department correctly.

But that was for later. As were most of the projects she'd started but hadn't gotten any time to dedicate to yet, like her lab, her workshop, Noelle's cage, the building materials rotting in a warehouse…

Sensing her frustration, Miranda hopped onto her collarbone, and began trying to clumsily nuzzle her.

All it did was make her miss Lisa and Mia, honestly, but she appreciated the effort.

The place they stopped at was a solid half mile out from the outer patrols of the Heartbroken, and nestled away from their sight by both the trees branches giving them cover due to the height difference, and the overgrown thickets of bushes on the ground, speckled with powdery snow.

The girls rested in the car for a bit, idly chatting about the strange suit and who should wear it, and she flew upwards to find one of those watch towers.

It wasn't too hard to locate, with her knowledge.

Trees always grew in roughly the same ways and shapes. They grew relatively to the same height, and their branches very rarely intersected. The shyness of the leaves' crown was present everywhere. Trees didn't like tangling with other trees, so they didn't. There was always a thin line of space without touching branches, no matter how thick the forest, unless it was corrupted by magic or something worse.

Thus, when nature's harmony was seemingly broken by a single almost… scraggly, and very straight, large tree, overgrown with fake ivy leaves to cover the metal pole in its core, she knew she found her mark.

The guard was nestled up in a small room from where the fake branches exuded, at the stem, overlooking two specific paths way down below, and the skies above, a bolt-action rifle covered in fake leaves by his side in the tiny six by six foot box, small amenities stacked thickly in the shelves along the top of the box.

By his feet was a small trapdoor, and a winch with a harness for him to take himself up and down, likely controlled by a remote.

Night vision goggles sat on his head, obstructing Evelynn's gaze.

She materialized behind him, slowly reached over his head, and then grabbed the goggles, yanking them back as her other hand wrapped around his neck and pulled.

His wide eyes met hers as he jerked, hands grasping for a knife and her bicep.

Then they reflected a flash of gold, and it was over, the knife hitting the floor with a dull clunk.

Working on a Heartbroken's mind was tiring.

She wasn't sure how to explain it exactly, but it was like his thoughts and feelings were fighting back every step of the way, at least where Mastered aspects were concerned, actively trying to reinforce themselves again. Change his feelings towards the weather? Simple.

Change his feelings towards Masters, nevermind Heartbreaker himself? Not easy.

On the positive end, that meant she could tell which parts of a person were Mastered by Nikos, and which ones weren't, simply by comparing how difficult it was to change something or by watching it backslide before she locked it in place.

On the bad end- was that even an expression in Earth Bet?- it confirmed that not every Master power was the same, which was frustrating, and it also confirmed that she couldn't just shift people's emotions back to normal and let them be. She had to lock them, or else they'd start to slip as Nikos's power demanded.

A big problem was that she didn't know exactly how Heartbreaker's power worked. Was it a switch flip, or an active pressure? Could it be turned off, or was it permanent like most people theorized?

Lots of answers she had to squeeze out of the man later.

The girls squeezed themselves into the little box with the man after a bit of convincing, and thus, arguably the most miserable watch was set up, with four people crammed into space meant only for one. Duo even turned herself into a ball, carried in Tria's arms as they awkwardly stood there, for extra room.

She mostly left them to it, for now, even if she could feel the girl's annoyance rising, knowing they'd be sitting there until a flare showed up.

Which could be any second now, or a day away. Nobody was sure.

Eventually, she spotted another one of Dragon's drones, flying up high above.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait.

But, she hated doing that. Just sitting there, doing nothing productive, it would drive her crazy.

So, she eventually found a half-decent formation of branches, turned back into Elise, and blasted them with magical web, a thick, almost slime-like construct of silk, with a simple swing of her arm.

Her hammock done, she pulled on that dark heart inside her, and with a burst of inky magic essence, turned into her spider form. Six foot tall at the abdomen, ten foot wide from foot to foot, all spikes and red lines cutting through black.

If the girls saw this form, they'd probably faint or blast the car apart to get away, Mastered or not.

The thought was amusing.

She tapped one of her legs on the branch, a miasma curling around it and forming into a tide of spiderlings, utterly tiny.

She didn't speak, because in this form, she couldn't, so she simply pushed a mental command.

To spread, and watch. Everything.

They hurried down the tree, a thousand clusters of eyes, spreading over the compound, hidden amongst the darkness and emerald blades of grass.

With another light stomp of her spiky legs, another cluster of spiders formed.

She pushed the idea of another silk suit forward, and they hurried up the tree to make another web to start working on it.

That done, she stepped off the branch, and onto her hammock, the tree's branches groaning under her weight as she curled up.

Patient, she watched through thousands of eyes, planned for things back home, and directed her spiderlings.

It had been a long time since she last acted as a broodmother for her little abominations.

It was strangely satisfying.

Miranda eventually asked when Taylor would make her as big as she was, and she could only mentally snort and wish she never had to.

The sun faded, and rose.

Two more suits were ready, bringing the total to three.

She made three giant spiderlings to carry the suits to the girl's watch tower, and infused them with enough magic to outrun a cheetah.

Enna's resulting shout from the delivery woke up everyone, but things quickly calmed down as the guard went down to the ground and the girls all changed into the suits, getting the hint.

Her spiders ran out of time, and faded, her magic returning to her.

Which was nice because her head felt… very pressured was the best she could put it. Not in too much pain yet, but getting there, slowly.

Another twelve hours passed, another two suits were made, for Oni Lee and Purity, and were once again delivered to the girls again to shove into Duo's harness backpack for later keeping.

In the fourteenth hour, something changed.

Nothing much, but it only took a few whispers of " they're here?" said with excitement or surprise for her to startle into full awareness, spiders across the property peeking around their corners and webs.

One of them, posted up near a seemingly more often-used trail, watched a car speed up the dirt and gravel, and without hesitation, skittered into the road, and jumped in front of it.

The car's bumper slammed into it, but with a bit of dazed flailing and web excretions, the spiderling hung on just barely, and quickly wedged itself into the front grill.

Good job little one.

It tapped its front legs on the plastic grill in a quick taptaptaptap of triumph and celebration, and if she had a mouth right now, she'd smile at how weirdly cute that was.

Endearing little hellspawn.

The car itself was familiar, unfortunately.

It was Battery and the Heartbroken.

No sign of the Dallons yet.

That worried her.

She tracked them regardless, using that specific spiderling.

The car stopped at a seemingly random parking location surrounded by shrubs, and the people got off of it quickly, before digging into the leaves on the ground to reveal a door latch, which they pulled up.

Ah, one of the dirt tunnels. Apparently not just for escapes, but also for coming in undetected.

The spider followed the long line of people, skittering along the ceiling and following the flashlight in the front, hearing the usual Heartbroken kids' bickering.

They broke off in the tunnels. Some of the unpowered men and women went off to the tunnels that went to the barracks, while most of Heartbreaker's children went forward for the mansion.

Then they just… got situated.

Some played games, some caught up on social media, many just crashed into a soft object and passed out, a couple of the boys went to find someone to have sex with, because why not let your underage kids do that apparently, fucking Heartbreaker-

Regardless, nothing of interest happened. Cherie got locked up in a literal human-sized cage in their basement next to the tunnel hole, but that was about it.

The snide comments about 'dad's punishment', were quite alarming. She didn't know what Heartbreaker did to punish his children, but considering that three of them were borderline emotionless golems, one was manic, and the others were overly mature hedonists for their age, she didn't want to imagine.

Life seemed to go on, and at night, everyone slept like usual.

She wanted to bust in and just get Battery, but that would raise the alarm way too early. It might ruin everything.

And she refused to Master any more innocent children. The Travellers were only even considered because they were fucking Simurgh bombs and she'd never take that risk.

Meaning that until the main convoy was here, she was stuck watching and making suits.

Tomorrow was more or less the same. She only made two more suits, since the girls got more room in their luggage by ditching the unnecessary plate carriers, now that they had magical spider silk armour, but there wasn't room for more.

That, and continuously sitting inside a Legend and watching through so many eyes was giving her a very slowly building headache, so she had to downsize eventually to stay functional and keep her resources up.

Another day passed without incident or arrivals, and she was seriously concerned. There's no way they were taking that damn long to come back.

She was on the verge of sending a team of spiderlings down to Cherie's cage with a piece of paper to try and talk to her about where her slug of a damn father was, but she decided to wait just one more day. One.

She was already away from Brockton for three days so far, and it would be four tomorrow. She couldn't afford more.

Thankfully, it seemed that Heartbreaker didn't just fuck off to some vacation home in the middle of nowhere in the middle of what had to be a massive manhunt, and took the 'wiser' choice of hunkering down in his petty slave kingdom.

The vehicle was something like a van mixed with a passenger bus, large and tall, with tinted windows and nothing else to make it stand out. The other two cars in front and behind it were filled with capes and security, she could tell, so it was obvious which of the cars was the important one.

The spider whose eyes she was watching through quickly leapt down from a branch above to slam onto the roof with a light thud that nobody inside seemed to pay attention to, and after a moment of limping, ripped its broken leg off and scurried forward, low on its belly.

Then the spider peeked into the car for her, from the only window that wasn't tinted, and she jerked so hard in her hammock that the branches started making tearing noises.

Heartbreaker was in the front seat, personally driving, lounging like he was coming back from a relaxing roadtrip. He fit every picture and description. Lean, wiry muscle, a severe, somewhat handsome face, long hair that hung down to his jaw, an intense, dark look in his glass-like eyes.

Of course, in character for the bastard, a beautiful woman was bobbing her head up and down his lap, which she didn't want to see.

A couple of the spider's eyes focused on what was deeper in the van, and she paused as she watched a strange inner space like a mobile tiny home with a large bed in the back, and within it, two female bodies, aggressively writhing and bucking into each other.

A moment passed before she recognized the blonde that was ravishing the girl under her with aggression that was making the van rock a little from the force, and her blood curdled in her exoskeleton.

For a moment, she just couldn't understand what the fuck she was looking at, shock and confusion pushing her thoughts out of her mind in favor of a scrambled, wordless question.

Then the shock faded, and disgust and rage flooded back, legs twitching.

Rodents, birds, and even small mammals died across the forest, mauled by monstrous spiders running on aggressive, mindless instinct, projected through her mind into them, a suspicious quiet settling over the hill's surroundings as every insect and bird stopped its cricks and caws.

What ungodly, sick fuck thought to Master two underage girls, sisters, into screwing each other? What for? His fucking lesbian fantasies? Incest-

Did he do anything like this to his own children , was the thought that slammed the brakes on her previous one.

The fact that she was almost certain he did, or that he planned to in the future, was just too much.

The man was already neck deep in hedonism. The only taboos left to break were the unthinkable, and there was nothing to stop him. He had a cult for fuck's sake. There was only the bottom of the barrel left to sink to, and it was the only direction he could go.

It only made sense.

Was that what he was planning to do to Cherie, to punish her for running away?

She imagined peeling his skin off as he howled, just to calm herself down, and switched into her human form, her fists clenched and shaking, spider legs on her back bulging and twitching with aggressive clicking sounds, chitin smacking chitin, eager to stab.

She averted the spider's eyes, and told it to sit on the van.

The van eventually took a less-used path and parked right outside the mansion, without an ounce of subtlety.

Then it didn't move for twenty minutes, aside from the occasional rock and loud moan that she refused to think about the source of.

Eventually, the doors opened, and Heartbreaker and the woman, who she just noticed had to be some kind of security detail, considering she screamed 'cape' with how she moved and looked around, came out, walking into the mansion, the assumed Brute hanging off his arm.

A minute later, the Dallon girls opened the van's back door, and hopped off, hair and clothes a mess.

She felt faintly sick about how Amy nearly fell to the ground from the tiny hop, weak-kneed, and forced the spider to turn away when Victoria picked her up in a decidedly unsisterly way to fly to the front door, a giant grin on her face.

It wasn't that she was that disgusted, she'd seen far, far worse.

No, she was worried she'd just vaporise Heartbreaker out of apoplectic rage before she even managed to meet eyes with him.

She let night settle upon the mansion, stewing in her anger the entire time, and eventually, everyone was asleep, somewhere along four in the morning, aside from Cherie who seemed to be having nightmares.

She was mostly relieved that Heartbreaker let the Dallon girls settle into their room rather than… do anything with them.

She picked Evelynn, and her spiders vanished into thin air.

It felt so incredibly strange and uncomfortable, to be so restricted in her senses and vision, after almost three whole days of watching through thousands of eyes.

She didn't think about it for more than a second, rushing straight at the mansion like a formless missile.

She slipped inside the crowded mansion through a cracked open window, and materialized, invisible.

Flickering a spore seed into her hand from her base form, she crushed it in her hand, and shoved the crumbling remnants under the living room couch.

It would be enough for the whole room.

She zipped into every occupied room and repeated her task, one by one, methodically.

Before long, everyone in the mansion was knocked out cold, and would be, for the better part of a week.

She rushed out, and crushed at least one of Zyra's spore balls into the communal living spaces and the barracks, to make Dragon's job easier, then flew back, around to the back of Heartbreaker's mansion.

Flickering her phone into her hand, she gave the girls a quick call, just to be sure they were on high alert, then flickered the flare gun from her real hip into Evelynn's invisible hand.

The night turned bright, violent red with a puny thump-whistle sound as the flare rose higher and higher, its light impossible to ignore.

She didn't wait a second before rushing back into the mansion, down to the basement, switching to the Rune of Domination for the passive run speed.

She cut the cage apart with two swings of her feelers, and took Cherie in a princess carry, rushing up the stairs on foot, kicking the back door open.

Depositing the girl on the ground next to the stairs, she glanced up and saw three shapes, barely illuminated by the flare, rushing through the sky to her position.

Enna's flight speed was slowing them down a lot, but it was better to be together than staggered, so she didn't think further on it, dashing out into one of the neighbouring houses to grab Florence out of her prison cell of a room.

The girl was quickly deposited next to Cherie on the grass, dusted with wood chips from the door Taylor busted through, and she dashed back into the main mansion, giving the Dallon girls the same treatment.

A blaring alarm sounded outside, shattering the eerie calm of a red night.

When she was next outside a scant few seconds later, the trio were on the ground, Enna and Tria quickly fitting Duo's crystal ball with the carry harnesses with harried movements.

They should have done that earlier, but whatever.

The only one whose flight speed was unimpacted by weight or impact was Duo, so she got to carry the brunt of the weight.

The girls startled at the sight of two floating, limp bodies, but didn't pause at their work, quickly calming as she dropped them on the grass.

Weight would be important here. Enna was the slowest already, Tria was even faster than Kayden but only had so much stamina with Canada's crappy, sunless weather. Duo would be the steadiest.

"Enna, take Amy. Tria, take Cherie and Florence. The one in jeans and the girl in frills. Load Victoria, Battery and Heartbreaker onto Duo's harness, they're probably heaviest. Hurry." She rushed out in Evelynn's voice, sweet as honey mixed with venom and sharp as a razor, then rushed back in to pick up the main target of her fury.

A couple seconds later, she came back out with Battery, whom she gently put down on the grass, and Heartbreaker, whom she tossed none too gently next to Duo's floating ball. The girls quickly got to strapping them all in, tying their limbs into place, their hands obviously practised.

Taylor wasted no time flying up and scouring for threats.

The general chaos let her know that whoever rang the alarm didn't know exactly what was wrong, because she could see a decent amount of non-combatants and even a few soldiers rushing out and barking at each other, seemingly unsure or where or what the threat was.

The main problem she could see was a single armoured truck, burning rubber on its way to Heartbreaker's mansion.

Flying down to meet it, she sped up, putting herself in line with the engine along the ground.

Then she picked Vi, the Piltover Enforcer, already set in a steady jog.

Rearing her right gauntlet back, she twisted her wrists just so, activating the pumps and hextech cores.

She kept jogging, half-crouched, fist cocked back with a charging whine in her ears as it gathered power.

The truck slammed on the brakes, and before any of them got the right idea to shoot her in the head, she punched forward, releasing the pressure out of her elbow, and launching herself forward like an arrow with a boom of distorted air behind her, and crackling electricity from the hex cores trailing behind her.

A translucent white shield flickered around her.

The distance vanished in a blur, and then her metal fist punched through the engine block, slamming the truck to an instant halt as the impact rushed through her suit, dissipating throughout her shield, and redirecting the remnants into the hex core.

Her spine would have snapped into a million pieces so many times during Vi's life, and right now, if it wasn't for this damn suit.

Chunks of metal, oil and coolant peppered her face like a grenade as broken glass, debris, and someone's flailing body tumbled over her head.

The shriek of tearing metal joined in with the startled screams of the people inside as the truck bent and reared up on its front wheels for a moment from its cut momentum, before gravity took over again and slammed it back down with a limp rattle, wheels tilting, axles snapping.

She flickered away before anyone could catch their bearings or even a clear glimpse of her, flying up.

That impact definitely drew attention, but it halted the fastest group running towards the mansion.

There were a couple stray men and women, solitary, that were decked to the gills with weapons, sprinting with surprising athleticism.

Not huge threats, but she didn't want guns that close to her people, or the people they were moving.

She dashed down as Evelynn, and while invisible, tripped them up, tore their guns off, and gave them a strong punch to the abdomen, just to slow them down.

It took twenty seconds to take down a dozen people sprinting around like that, and then she finally saw the trio dash upwards to the sky.

She mentally sighed in relief, relaxing somewhat.

Finally, it was over. They just had to get back now.

She flew up, escorting them from up close, eyes peeled for threats, projectiles, anything.

Nothing besides a few people pointing fingers upwards.

She wanted her people to be way out of the perimeter of the compound before she called Dragon to go in, so she refrained from being hasty, following the triangle formation of the girls from above.

To her pleasant surprise, nothing came at them. No missiles, no Dragon betrayal, no flying cape that Heartbreaker had gotten and somehow nobody knew yet, just… nothing.

They left without incident, and she eventually let out the longest mental sigh of relief she possibly could.

She reached out to the girls' minds about five minutes into their flight, to go up into a nearby cloud and wait there for her.

After flying down to the top of a tree below, she flickered her phone into her hand, and quickly called Dragon.

Not even one ring had come through before it clicked.

"Are you done?" Dragon rushed out, clearly impatient.

Taylor took a moment to switch her voice to Jarvan's, then cleared her throat. "Yes, go in if you want. They have underground tunnels, beware of that, search everything. There are also a few buildings full of unconscious people, we knocked them out with a gas. Most active people right now should be civilians, we gassed the barracks. It should be neutralised in twenty minutes, don't inhale it or you will drop unconscious for anywhere from three to five days. Good luck, Dragon. Talk to you once Heartbreaker croaks." She summarised.

"I know how to do my job, Executioner." Dragon dryly commented. "But, thank you for the heads up, I suppose. Kindly don't forget to give us the info you get from Heartbroken. We need to gather his sleeper agents to contain the aftermath."

"Yes, I'm aware, we talked about this. We'll call you pretty soon, hopefully." She said, and cracked her neck, purely out of habit. Jarvan used to do that a lot.

Then she cut the call, and flew up.

Right as she was about to enter the cloud backlit by the moon, she heard the faint sounds of human speech, curt and snappy and inordinately loud, argumentative.

Then, a shrill scream.

She tripled her speed, only to see a malformed… thing, jerk out of the side of the cloud, flying in jerky, uneven patterns, then Amy Dallon, flailing her arms and screaming as she fell, alone.

Without thought, she switched to Syndra, and froze them both in place, bringing them in front of her with a sharp, confused glare, unable to be sure of what she was looking at without much light.

The malformed 'creature', she realized almost instantly, was Enna, her left arm twisted like a pretzel of pus and bone and blood, her left side nothing but exposed, heaving flesh, breath coming in short, horrified gasps, an extra pair of angled, bony ribs coming out of her back like malformed spines to press into her nape, jerking and shuddering with each breath, slowly twitching about like they had a mind of their own. The suit was pressing into them so hard that they were bending, probably very, very painfully. And to top it all of her face was half-sunken in like it had flash-frozen in the middle of melting, an eye missing entirely, likely fallen out.

Her eyes widened, slowly moving to Amy Dallon, panicked and wide-eyed and fucking awake.

"How." She grit out. "How are you fucking awake? "

"I- wuh- who the fuck are you people!? Where am I?!" Amy Dallon screamed back, bucking in her cast of black-purple energy to no avail, and Taylor felt her eye twitch as Enna continued wheezing in agony.

She turned to Enna, and cast Heal.

All it did was grow skin and snap broken bones back into place, as far as she could tell. It didn't fix the malformations at all.

That wasn't how Heal usually worked. What the fuck did Dallon even do to her?

Tria and Duo quickly came out of the cloud, glancing around, and beelined for her.

She glared at Amy Dallon.

"We're up in the clouds. We're Nexus. We're bringing you back home. Fix her." She grit out, not liking at all how this was going.

"Why the fuck would I help you?!" Amy snarled, bucking again. "Take me back! I don't want to go to Brockton! Fuck that place and everyone in it! I don-" Amy continued, before her eye caught Duo's package, hanging in the clouds by nothing but a harness, and froze.

The look she sent her was liquid, manic hatred.

Fine, she'd play it rough. Amy was Mastered, so hopefully she'd forgive her later on for not taking the long route of trying to convince her when she was clearly out of her mind .

She took hold of Duo and her cargo, and dragged her by her side, cold eyes staring into Amy's.

Then she extended a hand to Heartbreaker's head, and grasped his hair, her arm glowing eerie black-purple, a low frequency hum disturbing caressing their ears.

Amy vibrated with rage.

"Fix her, or I'll pop his head like a watermelon. Or maybe we could wake him up and tear him limb from limb?" She coldly wandered, challenging the look with complete indifference.

Her purple glowing eyes, before the background of a starry, moonlit night, likely helped accentuate her statement.

Amy's teeth clattered.

"Fine. Bring her here." Amy snarled, and Taylor sent her a warning look.

"Actually fix her. Implant cancer, a time bomb, a virus, any deleterious effects whatsoever, and we'll make sure both Nikos and your sister get skinned like pigs in a slaughterhouse. You're not the only biology expert. Understand, child? "

Okay, she pulled a little too much Syndra into that one, Amy looked like she hated her even more now, if that was possible.

"Fine. " Amy growled.

Enna shook like a leaf as she forced her to Amy's side, and dropped some of her grasp on both of them, enough for Amy to grab the malformed tentacle she made out of Enna's arm.

Enna howled as bones and tissue began to squelch and crack back into place.

Taylor closed her eyes.

She knew Amy could do it without any pain. God, the temptation to punch some sense into the girl was real, but it was also pointless because she was Mastered. She could see why people hated these powers so much.

Ten seconds later, the screaming subsided for ragged gasps, and Taylor opened her eyes.

Enna was back whole, fixed.

"Done." Amy shot at Enna, then dropped the woman's wrist with disgust. "There. Fucking what now?"

She took a deep breath.

"Tria. Give the kids to Enna."

Tria floated over, and Enna gingerly took them, hands still shaking, obviously shaken.

"Float down, be ready to catch Amy." She ordered.

"Fuck you mean catch A-?!" Amy started, then cut off into a scream as she switched back to Evelynn, letting the girl go into freefall again.

She dashed down and grabbed Amy by the head, and pushed gold fuzz into her mind through her wide brown eyes, mid-fall.

Amy Dallon went silent, and Tria quickly caught her, staring at the girl like she was carrying a nuclear bomb that was spitting sparks out of its ignition chamber, leaning back, almost.

She turned into a visible cloud of coiling, roiling fog, two golden eyes in its center.

"I- can I not hold her?" Tria asked, understandably freaked out and nervous.

She reached into Tria's mind as they slowly rose back up with Duo and Enna.

That mindlessness charm only works for a couple hours at most. So for at least one hour, you're guaranteed to be safe. We'll stop every hour so I can re-apply it.

"Well, you said the spores were guaranteed too…" Tria nervously pointed out, and she paused, before bobbing her form up and down and continuing up into the cloud.

I suppose the 'sickness resistance' they reported to the PRT's database was a lot more expansive than that. It's more likely she's immune to all illness, poisons, toxins, et cetera. I can't think of any other reason she woke up, and especially not after five or six whole minutes. Her power likely struggled with our toxin but eventually got rid of it. Most likely, that's what happened. I know these compounds better than you know your own language.

Tria slowly nodded, still nervous, but putting her trust in her enough to hold onto Amy properly.

Unsteadily, they resumed their journey.

Their stops for Amy were the most annoying thing, really, but the persistent paranoia of being up in the air, without cover anywhere, grated on her.

It had to be said however, that flying was infinitely faster than driving. Days worth of time that the Heartbroken spent on the road were crossed in hours, long, exhaustive hours, but still mere hours.

By the time the girls had to call it quits, mostly because Enna was so exhausted she had started to tremble, it was mid-day again.

It wasn't exactly comfortable, but she found a good copse of trees and bushes to put the girls in. It spoke to their collective exhaustion, that all she had to do was cut up a few brushes and crush them into a relatively flat surface, and they were all out like a light on the pile within minutes.

She didn't drop Evelynn, even then, nor did she sleep.

Her head had started to throb by now. It had to have been days of her constantly being in a Legend.

She had to admit that this was… quite damaging to her improvement from the psych ward, if she was to be honest with herself.

That was what she ruminated on as she stood on the tall side of the shrubs, invisible, watching out for anything and everything.

How she wasn't sure exactly where her eye-line would be if she changed into her real body right now. How she tried to remember her own face and it was… there, but lacked any sharp detail. How she tried to remember her birthday and couldn't, again.

It wasn't anything close to how bad it had been after her visions of Runeterra, but… it was still a backslide. Small or not, it didn't numb the guilty feeling in her gut.

Mostly because she always felt so much more comfortable in the skin of a Legend, rather than her own. It was bad for her, but it calmed the paranoia, to know that even if Legend himself, the hero, showed up above her and vaporised her in a nanosecond, she'd still have another one to swap to another Legend and protect herself.

And by proxy, all those behind her.

With a heavy sigh, she glanced at the pile of unconscious bodies on the cut up shrub.

She walked over, all the frustration of the past two weeks boiling over in her gut the more she stared at the man who started all of this.

Evelynn's heel gently pushed down on his neck, and she simply… held it there.

Entertained the thought of gutting him like a fish, right here, right now.

Imagined it.

Considered it.

And, five minutes later, with a shaky breath, lifted her foot.

Later.

Later, he would burn.

First, she had to get back to base, and figure out if he could reverse the damage he had done.

Six hours later, as the sun finally dimmed enough for her to feel even a little bit comfortable, she woke everyone up, and they flew off again.

Twelve hours of constant flying later, she spotted Brockton, more by the shape of its outline against the sea than a landmark.

It had been five days away.

So, she wasn't sure what to expect.

Peace? Flame? Gunfire? Literally nothing out of the ordinary?

Eventually, she came close enough to relax, fractionally.

Then she saw a military truck. Not hers, since it wasn't black.

And then… another, and then another, and another, and before long, she'd counted more than ten.

It took more than a minute for her to connect the dots to the strange sight before her, at which point, she had to pause. Those weren't just… soldiers, offloading equipment to the local PRT or something.

That was the National Guard. Maybe not a large amount of them, but that was still a sizeable deployment of the National Guard. They weren't a huge threat to smart capes, but…

These guys only went to Endbringer, Slaughterhouse, or natural disaster aftermaths, as far as she was aware.

So why, exactly, were they in her city?