9

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

The next few weeks, the Archer's Bridge Merchants learned the name of a demon.

It was a demon that hunted them day and night, in the docks, in the trainyard, downtown, uptown, Shantytown--anywhere they went. It struck from the shadows, from out of the empty sky, from doorways they swore had been empty just a moment before. If they were passing so much as a baggie of weed on a street corner, he was there. If they were shaking down their hookers for their weekly dues, he appeared. If they were stupid enough to walk into a convenience store with the intent to rob it, they soon found them exiting by way of the front window at high velocity-- with a raging wolfman following right after them.

And he was NOT pulling his punches anymore. If he caught you, you were in for a world of hurt… and he always caught you. Run all day, and you only ended up tired when he caught you. The emergency rooms were seeing a regular flow of dealers, pimps and enforcers who were battered, bruised, bloody and broken. Nothing life-threatening, that was worth note… but those he put down weren't going to be rolling down the street carefree as a breeze anytime soon.

One fool pulled a pistol on him. The proctologist spent six hours on him before the police could learn what the caliber was.

Merchants found themselves dangled from rooftops by various portions of their anatomy, held face down in the nearest pond, fountain, gutter, or toilet, batted around back alleys like a cat playing with a rubber mouse. The Demon only said two things. It told them its name: Skinwalker.

And then it asked one question. It was whispered from the shadows into their ears, snarled over prone forms, said an inch from terrified eyes by a mouthful of teeth, screamed by a raging beast-man as it thrashed them up one alley and down another.

"WHERE. IS. SKIDMARK??"

Taylor doubled over as Sophia's fist buried in her stomach. For the briefest of eternities she thought she was going to puke. "Just a little reminder of your place, Hebert," Sophia whispered in her ear, before shoving her aside and leaving the bathroom. Madison and Emma followed right behind, not even sparing a look for their victim.

Taylor coughed and spit, then slowly straightened up. She fished her bookbag out of the corner it had been kicked. Then before she could stop herself she kicked the wall. She kicked it again, then again, over and over while a scream of frustration bubbled up in her belly and burst out her throat. Then just as suddenly she was calm again. She wiped the sweaty locks of her hair out of her face and calmly, calmly, always calmly, walked out into the school. Her foot hurt where she'd smacked it into the tile of the bathroom wall, but that only helped to distract her from the pain in her gut.

It was study hall. She quickly went and found a seat, once again in the corners far away from everyone else. She took out her notebook and noted down the time of the "incident," the location, the ones involved.

She bit her lip and looked down at her hands. Not much had changed after all, had it? Here she was, back to recording all the times Sophia or her hangers-on bullied her. While the teachers did nothing. And the whole school looked on.

Bullying. What a stupid, juvenile name for it, she thought in a heated moment of anger. Like she was just going through some wacky childhood antics with Spanky and Alfalfa and the gang, and she'd be fine as long as she and Buckwheat outran Butch on their way to school.

She glowered down into her book bag. Things had seemed like they were going better for a while. Just for a while…She glanced over at the empty seat where Adrian should have been. She thought she'd felt alone before.

"Hey, what's this?" A manicured hand shot down over her shoulder and dipped into her bag. Taylor whipped around; it was Emma, back for more. Her hand reappeared, with Taylor's new phone in it. "Ooh, nice," she said, mocking. Without so much as blinking she stuck it in her purse. "Thanks!" She gave Taylor a smug smile and continued on her way to the front of the class.

Oh no way. Taylor got to her feet, her anger sputtering like a fuse. The pain in the muscles of her stomach brought her up short before she did anything hasty. Her anger suddenly switched from sputtering to ice cold-- and calculating. "Ms. Knott!" She said in as loud and clear a voice as she could manage. "Ms. Knott, get Emma Barnes to give my phone back!"

Ms. Knott was Taylor's homeroom teacher and her computer class teacher. She was a somewhat strong-jawed and mannish looking woman, which made her the unfortunate butt of many students' cruel humor. But in spite of that she was also probably the fairest teacher in the school and one most sympathetic to Taylor's plight. Still, she found herself with her hands often tied. "Taylor, you're not supposed to have your phones out during..."

"I didn't, she just reached in my bag and took it," Taylor replied. "Make. Her. Give. It. Back."

Emma had apparently been taking acting lessons from Madison. She stood up and put the most outrageously offended look on her face, her mouth hanging wide open. "I did NOT! Where do you get off accusing me of stealing?" She pulled the phone out and held it up. "Look, there's no way Hebert could even AFFORD this phone--"

Taylor felt her anger go from a cold burn to outright frostbit. She spun on the nearest student: Greg Veder. The boy actually flinched back from her when she stuck out her hand. "What??" he asked.

"Phone," Taylor gritted. He hesitated. "PHONE!" He hastily handed her his cellphone. She held up the phone to her face and began jabbing numbers.

The phone in Emma's hand began to vibrate. She actually tried to bluff! "Oh sorry, forgot to turn off the ringer--" she said coolly. She began poking at the screen. Then poking at them more frantically. Everyone could see the light from the screen flickering on her face as she fiddled with a phone she was clearly not familiar with. Her eyes went wide for a moment at something, then without warning the smartphone began speaking with a melodious female voice.

"This phone is the property of Taylor Hebert," it said. "This phone is the property of Taylor Hebert."

It was subtle, it was understated, it was beautiful. The room exploded in laughter. The Bitch Queen had been HAD! Face red as a fire engine, Emma slammed the phone down on Ms. Knott's desk. "I gotta go to the ladies' room," she mumbled as she bolted for the door.

Taylor had to throttle the urge to do a victory dance down the aisle as she walked down to get her phone. When she got closer she could see Ms. Knott struggling not to laugh. "Interesting security feature," the teacher said.

"One of a few," Taylor said breezily, loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. Message given and received; swiping her phone for a "prank" wasn't a smart option. Taylor examined her phone; no cracks, thank goodness. That little screen was tough. She noticed then that she'd forgotten to lock it earlier. Suppressing a curse she used her thumbprint and passcode to close it down. Oh well, Emma probably hadn't seen anything important.

"Do you want me to try and inform the principal that--?" Mrs. Knott said. The look in her eye was sympathetic. Taylor sighed.

"Don't bother. She'll just dismiss it as a 'little prank' or something like that," Taylor said.

She'd probably be paying for it-- probably with another gut punch or push down the stairs-- before the day was out. Taylor decided to savor the victory while it lasted; Screw it, she was cutting classes and going home early.

It was the last day before the Holidays. Two whole weeks without the Trio. Two whole weeks without Winslow. Just two whole weeks before Adrian was back. She could hold out. She just had to hold out.

The end of the day saw Emma dragging Madison over to Sophia's locker and huddling up. "Oh, what already?" Sophia said a bit irritably. Things had been crazy at the PRT lately, thanks to that Skinwalker headcase. He'd been waging a one-man war on the Merchants and everyone else was catching the fallout… which meant more paperwork and more patrols and more crap to put up with from Piggy and Arsemaster. Seems nobody could make up their minds they were happy the dope dealing freaks were getting their butts kicked, or mad that it was happening without PRT permission, or that the guy wasn't doing it the "proper" PRT way (with a PRT lawyer's hand up his butt like a Muppet.) It was putting Sophia in a real mood.

Emma looked around. "We got a problem. Taylor's got a new phone."

Sophia gave her a look that said volumes about what she thought of Emma's intelligence. "So??"

Emma leaned in. "You don't understand. She's got a new cellphone… a high end one with a built in audio recorder and video camera."

Sophia managed to get the hint. So did Madison. Sophia's face filled with rage. "You mean she was recording us??" Sophia hissed. Madison squeaked in horror.

"I managed to get a look at it," Emma said. She refrained from saying how. "She had an absolutely huge folder of videos and sound files… another one full of old emails. Three guesses whose."

"What do we do?" Madison whispered frantically.

Sophia's face was growing more and more suffused with rage. She was seething, she was FUMING. That little Hebert turd tried to pull a fast one on HER? Thought she was so clever? Sophia would... she bit back her homicidal rage and thought. "Okay. We just grab the phone and we're golden."

"But she left an hour ago--"

Sophia swore. She thought it over frantically, then surprising the other two girls, she calmed down. She'd spent her entire Cape career.. and truthfully a lot of time before it... reading people's intentions, guessing (quite accurately) what some dweeb or scumbag was going to do when the pressure was on, guessing when some punk was gonna jump right instead of left... and truth be told, Sophia was good at it. Taylor Hebert was an easy read. "It's okay. We're still golden."

"But what if she shows someone--" Madison started.

"Look, she's got a great big file of 'evidence' on that phone, right?" Sophia said patiently. Madison and Emma nodded. "So why hasn't she turned it in yet? Because she's looking to get something really good, something that buttons it all up, and she ain't got it yet. And she's waited till the Holidays and done nothing..."

"You're right," Emma said. "She wouldn't want to spoil Christmas, after all."

"So she's waiting to do the Big Reveal when school starts up again," Sophia said. "Does she got a computer at home?"

Emma shook her head. "Nothing worthy of the name anyway," she said. "It's even older than the ones in the computer lab here, and those things sure aren't compatible with a smartphone." She tossed her hair disdainfully. "Her Dad's been a total technophobe ever since her Mom died."

Sophia smiled. "Good." That meant Taylor probably wasn't saving those images anywhere else... and once they had the phone, Sophia knew a few off-the-record Tinkers and hackers who could tell them when, where, and how many times Taylor had uploaded anything from it, and could erase the files off the 'cloud' or anywhere else they were. "We already got a little surprise planned for her. We just go through with it, grab the phone, lose it in the bottom of the harbor, and we're in the clear." And maybe set up a little midnight visit from Shadow Stalker to search Taylor's house, make sure she didn't have backups stashed anywhere...

The other two girls' panic slowly subsided, their smug confidence returned. "Yeah, it's only understandable if she loses such a tiny little thing..." Emma said.

"Cow better enjoy her time with Santa Claus," Sophia said, scowling. "Cause after we put her through her little lesson and get that phone, I'm gonna put her on speed dial to the Tooth Fairy." She slammed the door to her locker shut hard enough to make it rattle.

It was a good evening at the Palanquin. The floor downstairs was packed with holiday partiers, the bar was doing good business, the mood was festive all around. Even Faultline was feeling fairly merry, or jolly, or whatever the appropriate term was. They'd set up a quiet little private holiday party up here in the office for herself and the rest of her mercenary crew. Nothing much, just a little punch, a few snacks, a little holiday music, a few decorations… that was about what Labyrinth could handle without being overwhelmed. Really, Faultline didn't want to imagine what sort of alternate reality Labyrinth would start overlapping into the real world if the holiday cheer overexcited the semi-autistic cape. Probably something with a Christmas Special theme. Giant Christmas ornaments or something.

Newter was down on the main floor checking out things to make sure everything was still going smooth. You could look out the observation window and see the lanky orange amphibiod flitting about the floor, moving from group to group, his tail flicking back and forth, making sure everyone was happy and partying. Gregor the Snail's shell-studded bulk was ensconced in the sofa, sipping his punch and humming along with the carols on the record player. It was definitely odd seeing the festively colored punch sliding down his translucent throat… Spitfire (sans her ordinary gas-mask and overalls) was sitting beside Labyrinth… sulking. Faultline and the rest had broken her out of the juvenile detention center-- but the penalties they'd enacted for her breaking the team rules were making a serious grouch out of her. Well, as far as Faultline was concerned she could just sit and suffer. She knew the rules, and she could just take her punishment like a good girl and forfeit her share of next month's take.

Newter came gliding into the room in his loose-limbed gait and perched on the back of a chair, his tail curling around the legs. "Something's up, boss," he said to Faultline. "It might be trouble."

Faultline immediately set down her cup and faced the amphibianoid cape. "What sort?"

"Got some company. That new cape… the wolf-man. They call him 'Skinwalker'.'"

"Not precisely a fortuitous name if one is hoping for peaceful circumstances," Gregor said somberly. He knew a few of the Skinwalker legends; they weren't all pretty.

"He's not caused any trouble or anything… well, not deliberately; having a seven-plus foot tall werewolf on the dance floor is gonna stir things up a bit regardless, but he's minding his manners." Newter shrugged in a fluid rolling move. "It's obvious he's trying to get our-- or your-- attention." He got to his feet.

Faultline followed him to the DJ's booth. She went up to the glass window overlooking the main room below and looked where Newter pointed. She looked again for good measure. "Karaoke?" she said, disbelieving. She was correct; the worgen was on the karaoke machine, belting a tune out to the entertainment of the other partyers. "What is he doing?" Faultline said, mystified.

"Barry White," Newter said. His eyebrow ridges (he had no eyebrows, alas) climbed. "And killin' it, too." Curious, Faultline turned on the booth two way speakers. He was right; the big wolfman was crooning along to "My First My Last My Everything," his deep rich voice caressing the lyrics like velvet. He was hamming it up too, vamping to the ladies in the front row of the crowd, more than a few of whom were laughing and eating it up.

"Invite him on up," Faultline sighed, reaching for her welding mask. "Hell, if nothing else maybe we'll hire him as entertainment."

A few minutes had the werewolf cape sitting in Faultline's office, sipping punch from a cup and exchanging polite pleasantries with the gang. "No hard feelings, I hope," he said to Spitfire. Spitfire just glowered at him through her mask with her arms crossed. It rolled off him like water off a duck's back. He looked at Faultline, who had donned her own mask as well. "I was under the impression she was still incarcerated?"

Faultline had to admit she understood why the ladies at the club had actually made friendly with the wolf-man. He had a voice that would send tingles down a woman's spine. "Yes, imagine that, a team of superhuman mercenaries illicitly liberating one of their members from imprisonment." She quipped. "How outrageous."

"I assume you're taking her to task?" he asked. "Judging from her rather hostile pose, I mean."

"Yes, you need not fear a repeat performance," she said. "We do not take contracts inside the city."

"Unless the job is right and the money is really good, of course," Skinwalker quipped, raising his cup to her in salute.

"It's usually considered poor form to insult a host," Gregor remarked idly.

"She's a mercenary. Her first ethic is business. It would be insulting to assume she would let one ethic get in the way of the other," Skinwalker retorted. He tossed the last of his punch into the back of his mouth and threw the cup in the trash. "I'll go ahead and assume you brought me up here to find out why I was here in your club doing bad karaoke."

"You wanted to ask for something."

He smiled. She was surprised; she didn't think dogs could do that. "Information."

"Not our usual forte, but..." she shrugged. "On what? Or whom?"

"Skidmark," he said. "He and his merry band of Outbreak monkeys are proving surprisingly difficult to track down, all things considered."

"All things considered?" Newter said.

"Like the fact that Skidmark has so many chemicals in his bloodstream that he should have died by spontaneous combustion," Skinwalker said drily.

"And why do you think we have information on Skidmark?" Faultline asked.

The wolfman counted off on his fingers. "One, you're a mercenary. The saying 'be polite, courteous, professional, and have a plan to kill everyone in the room' applies to you like any soldier. So keeping track of threats, even wastoids like the Merchants, should be second nature to you.

"Two, you're an outlaw operating in Brockton Bay. It's an open secret that you parlay with one another when things get hairy-- a little something from the days when a supervillain named the Marquis ran this town.

"Three… well, Newter here."

"What about me?" Newter asked suspiciously.

Skinwalker gave him a doggy grin, tongue lolling. "First off you're a party animal. A… lounge lizard, you might say?"

"Ar har, de har har." the vaguely amphibian/reptilian cape was clearly amused though.

"And even if you don't do the 'party' scene, a lot of the girls who hang all over you do, and they might have let something slip about where the number one dealer in the city keeps all his party supplies."

"Plus you secrete high quality hallucinogens from your skin. When Skidmark heard about you he probably spronged wood so hard he knocked all the coke lines off his coffee table." At this one more than one of the Crew snorted and clapped his hand over his mouth. "He's probably tried at least a few times to recruit you away from Faultline."

"Yeah, he has tried once or twice," Newter admitted to Faultline's surprise. Newter's lip curled. "I told him I had higher aspirations than to end up in one of his drug labs on the ingredient list."

"So yes, we do have some information, and what we don't have we can probably get," Faultline interjected. "The next question is, what do you have to pay for it?"

Skinwalker grimaced and sat back. "That's the thing of it," he said. "I do have the means to pay for it, but..." he looked at her, his palms held up helplessly. His expression was entirely earnest. "Okay, I have SOME money, but probably not enough to even scratch your price list. I can make you all some custom gear… but that will take time. Months even. Assuming I can design something genuinely useful for your, ah, line of work..."

"You're a tinker?"

"Of a sort," he confessed. "But-- my abilities can have very odd limitations. You'd have to ask the local Protectorate and the Wards for references on quality...." he shrugged.

"My third option… and this one I know your Case 53 members would willingly trade for-- information." The mood in the room shifted as Gregor and Newter suddenly became a lot more attentive.

"You mean about--" Newter pulled down the collar of his tank top and tapped one long skinny finger on the "c" shaped tattoo over his heart.

Skinwalker's grimace grew deeper with anxiety, guilt, uncertainty. "Yes. But here's the catch. I don't know how much I can tell you without getting all of you killed. Or worse."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop. "Or worse?" Faultline repeated.

"Or Worse," Skinwalker confirmed. "Your mystery, your secret is tied into pretty much every conspiracy on the planet. Conspiracy on top of conspiracy inside ANOTHER conspiracy… and there's no telling what part of the Jenga tower can be pulled out without causing the whole thing to topple. And if the sweater unraveled far enough, it could mean-- and I am not exaggerating here-- it could mean the very literal end of the world. SO I just DON'T KNOW..." He ran his clawed hands down his face. For the first time Faultline noticed how haggard he looked, and the bags under his eyes. She also caught a whiff hinting at how long it had last been since he had bathed (she could be forgiven for not noticing; when one lived in a house with Case53s, unusual smells were part of the daily routine.)

"One second," he said wearily. He cupped his hands under his face. His hands glowed emerald green, the light flowing up over him. When it faded, he looked if not less haggard, than at least more alert. He waved his hands over himself and another splash of light flowed over him. "a rejuvenation and a decontaminate," he said. "Not exactly a nap and a shower but it'll do for now."

Faultline found herself wondering how many times he'd done that particular trick over the past few days.

He got serious. "Okay. I'm going to give you the information. I needed to anyways eventually.. long story. But get one thing straight. We might very well be attacked."

"Once word gets out?" Gregor said.

"Once I finish my first sentence," he answered. The conviction in his voice was chilling. "These people have Thinkers and Precogs under their control that make every other one you can name look laughable. They have Movers-- teleporters-- with global range and pinpoint accuracy. They have governments all over the world on a leash. And they conduct surveillance worldwide, twenty four seven, and have no limits beyond their own nearly nonexistent ethics. So yes, they are that powerful and that dangerous and that determined to keep all their little secrets.

"Due to some really odd factors about my origins, I fall into a sort of blind spot where their powers don't see and where their most potent tricks don't work. But I don't know how wide the effect is, or whether it is… contagious… or not. So this conversation could get very exciting in the next few minutes." He got to his feet and pulled a staff out of seemingly nowhere, holding it at the ready.

The others took their cue from him. Faultline undid the catch on the holster of her gun. Gregor, Newter and Spitfire got to their feet, moving into different parts of the room. Gregor murmured a few words to Labyrinth. She got to her own feet, moving behind him and suddenly looking very timid, but any of them could feel her flexing her strange terrain-altering powers in the immediate environment.

"Gregor, Newter," Skinwalker began, "You were experiments. You were abducted from your own homes and your own worlds--"

"Our own Worlds?" Newter gulped.

"-- By a paradimensional organization of capes. They have developed ways to give people Powers artificially, and have been among other things selling "powers in a bottle" to people with a big enough bankroll. Sometimes they trade favors-- one miracle in a bottle, for an unspecified 'favor' owed them in the future. You both were test subjects. Two of literal thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. They've killed countless people with their experiments and are responsible, indirectly, for millions more."

The others in the room felt the blood drain from their faces as the wolf-man talked. Nobody had the temerity to doubt him. It was in the utter conviction in his voice, in his stance, in the way he held his weapon at the ready and the way his eyes never stopped scanning the room.

"They created Coil. They created at least three of the current roster of Brockton Bay heroes. They created at least two of the Slaughterhouse Nine… and have conspired-- stolen, blackmailed, assassinated--- to keep them alive and kicking, solely because they think their powers might be useful in the future."

"And their ultimate objective is to--"

There was a faint sound, an almost imperceptible change in the air pressure. A rectangle of light formed in the middle of the room, and a tall, pale woman with black hair in a ponytail and wearing a black suit and fedora stepped through. Everyone braced themselves and lunged.

The woman never broke stride. In three long steps she crossed the room and high-kicked the pistol out of Faultline's hand, sending it tumbling over her head and behind her. The fedora-clad woman seemed to slide past her, giving her a knife-strike in the neck and the precise point that Faultline's welding mask left it exposed and dropping her to the floor.

The woman caught the gun, turned on one heel and fired across the room, clearly aiming for Gregor's head… only to instead strike Newter in the shoulder as he leapt into her line of fire. Her eyes widened in surprise, but still she managed to sidestep the tumbling Case53's body and fling the gun overhand so it struck Gregor between the eyes, stunning him just as he was preparing to spray one of his chemicals at her. Spitfire, unable to use her power without immolating everything in the room, was left to hopping back and forth and trying to get out of everyone's way and constantly getting in it.

She pressed the attack, vaulting over Faultline's desk and snatching a wicked-looking ornamental envelope opener out of its holder and springing directly for Labyrinth. The astonishment on her face was epic when a powerful clawed hand grabbed her by the calf and brought her down out of the air, slamming her into the floor.

The moment the doorway had appeared, Skinwalker had been on the move too. He'd leapt forward, pulling a kibbled metallic disk the size of a hubcap out from under his robes and flung it through the portal. It could be seen striking the floor on the other side and rapidly unfolding into a shower-stall sized something before the doorway hastily closed.

He'd then twisted about and managed to intercept the attacking fedora wearing woman before she could try to kill the child… before she could kill another child. He slammed her full length into the floor. Snarling silently she'd flipped over and kipped up to her feet, facing him. Her eyes went wide when she she focused on him, as if she'd never seen him before--

She lashed out at him with a kick. It caught his staff and popped it out of his one-handed grip, flipping it to the floor. Her second strike he caught her leg under his elbow. She jabbed at his throat with both thumbs, looking to fracture his windpipe. He caught both her arms in his hands before she even got close. He began slapping her face with her own hands. "Stop hitting yourself, Contessa, stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself Contessa--" he said in a high nasally voice.

He lost his elbow-grip on her leg. She dropped it to the floor, threw herself backwards as far as Skinwalker's grip on her arms would let her and kicked him square in the chin. His head snapped up and with a yelp of pain he lost his hold on her. She lunged away from him, panic clear on her face. She kicked off the wall and came back the other way, trying to get to the open floor in the middle of the room. "DOORWA--"

Before she could finish the word Skinwalker's clawed hand caught her by the back of the head. With a swooping arc he brought her around and slammed her face down into the sheet cake sitting on the snack table.

SPLARCH.

He snatched up his staff in his other hand, shillelagh style, and brought the knobbed end around, cracking it across the back of her head. She slumped into the cake, unconscious. They all stood frozen for a moment, clutching at their various injuries and panting for breath, staring wide-eyed at the wolfman and his captive. "Say hello," Skinwalker said, his ribs working like bellows, "To Contessa: agent, key strategist, enforcer and assassin for Cauldron. But I'm sure some of you have met her before." He grabbed her by the skull and smeared her face in the cake "Isn't that RIGHT, Contessa? Isn't that riiiight?"

"Man," Spitfire said. "This is personal between you two, isn't it."

Skinwalker let go of Contessa's head. "No," he growled. "I just frickin' hate God Mode Mary Sues."

When Contessa awoke again, she was sitting in the middle of the meeting room, tied hand and foot to a sturdy metal chair and her hat stuffed in her mouth. Faultline and her crew, all bandaged up, were sitting around her in a semicircle, weapons loose in their hands and their eyes fixed on her. Sitting at one end of the group was the single most terrifying thing she'd ever seen in her life…. Because she hadn't known he was there. She jerked wildly in her bonds, eyes round.

He was sitting there in a backwards chair, arms folded over the back and his chin resting on them as he watched her. "There, you see? It isn't just like she didn't know about me ahead of time. It's like the moment she took her eyes off me, she forgot I even existed. " The wolf man stroked his chin. "How very Eleventh Doctor Who." He grinned at her. "It's probably because she depends so much on her Power. Still, I'm betting she's not the only one in their merry little conspiracy that has this problem with me."

"What is her power?" Faultline said.

"They call it 'Path to Victory,'" he said. "She simply chooses a goal, and her power gives her step-by-step actions to complete, like a recipe on a box of cake mix… "walk through this door, turn right, go fifteen steps north and press the red button three times." That sort of thing. She doesn't even have to understand them, just follow them. And ding, instant Victory."

"That's such utter bullshit!" Newter exploded."It's haxx, OP, Mary Sue-- I don't have words for how B.S. that is!"

Adrian nodded. "Bullshit or not, it's the truth. Her Shard basically... creates a perfect simulation of the world and extrapolates out for her. Lets her predict any possible movement, like that computer Deep Blue predicting every possible move in a chess game."

"But the universe isn't a chess game." Everyone turned in surprise. Labyrinth had spoken. The waiflike blonde's soft voice carried in the silence. "Chaos theory. The Heisenberg Principle. Schroedinger's cat. After a certain point the universe is fundamentally unpredictable, no matter how much data you gather. You can't make a perfect plan for everything, or anything, because simple chance will mess it up."

"And the bigger the plan, the bigger the mess up," Skinwalker agreed. One advantage Azeroth science had over Earth Bet science was that it had early on acknowledged the existence of the Chaos Effect. It was rather hard not to when you had the capacity to store the stuff in jars and bottles like marmalade.

"And her power comes with other tiny little drawbacks her masters have sort of willfully overlooked. For one thing, all her 'Paths to Victory' they slavishly follow are built on information provided by the enemy. I think the problem with that is self evident.

"Second: she's had this power since she was something like five years old, and she uses it constantly, just to get through the day. So her actual intellect is little more than a child's. She doesn't have to KNOW anything, just obey the instructions in her head, so she's never actually LEARNED anything in all this time." He shuffled in his chair a little. "Which makes me a problem for her. Her Power… because of my unique nature… can't really detect me, like the blind spot in your eye. So it can't lay out a path to Victory for her, so it forgets about me… And makes her forget me too, like an inconvenient truth. And her real mind, her real, five-year-old mind, isn't up to handling things like me. Her Path to Victory-- the really BIG one, that Cauldron is following so fanatically-- is as blind as the rest of us."

"Which brings us to the problem. You see, Cauldron has been operating on a Great Master Plan-- her plan--" he pointed at Contessa-- "since it was founded. And it's grown so complicated and so big it's literally engulfed the world."

"Aaaand that plan?" Newter said, nursing his bandaged shoulder. Regrettably, Skinwalker was out of his magic band-aids.

Skinwalker's face grew grim. "To save humanity by killing Scion."

The exclamations of surprise, shock and dismay were nearly universal. "That's crazy!" Spitfire spluttered. "He's… he's SCION! He's the world's greatest hero--"

"He's an alien creature, who intends to devour our world as part of his species' reproductive cycle," Skinwalker interrupted. You could have heard a pin drop.

"That thing you see flying around out there? That's just his… well, his avatar. Or maybe more like just his fingertip, sticking in from the parallel dimension his actual, gigantic, planet-sized Space Whale body is hiding. He's got less in common with humanity biologically than we do with a microbe. And he and his mate, or what's left of her, are the source of nearly all the superhuman powers on earth. "

He gave them a moment for that awful revelation to sink in. "Could you possibly start over from the Giant Space Whales, I think?" Gregor said, shifting the ice bag on his head.

Skinwalker nodded. "Super advanced alien race. Gigantic, multi-dimensional things-- picture a multidimensional fractal the size of a gas planet. They spin off through space as duets; one of them is the Thinker, the other is the Warrior. When they find an inhabited planet they sort of… wrap themselves around it, invisible and intangible.

"Then they start dropping Shards. Little fractal bits of themselves--- bits that are also their technology in some incomprehensible fashion-- that attach themselves to what the Shard considers a compatible host. The Shard gives them powers to use. Pushes the host to use them, use them as much as possible. The Shard collects all the data it can, then when the host dies, they return to the Space Whales with it, who download and save all that it has learned.

"When the Space Whales decide they've gotten all the information they possibly can, they destroy that world, and all the parallels of that world connected to it, blow it up... take all the shards back and fly off into space, with a full tank of energy from the explosion to find a new world to harvest. Maybe shoot off an offspring or two, if they've gathered enough energy and grown enough new Shards to start Baby off with..."

"That's… horrible," Newter said weakly.

"What do they need all this data for?" Faultline asked suddenly. "I could see needing energy to reproduce, but..."

"They're… well, they're trying to cheat death," Skinwalker said. "They figured out long ago that someday, billions of years from now, the material universe will finally burn out like a candle. Seeing as they're effectively immortal, they'd rather it not happen. They're trying to find a way to beat Entropy."

"By covering world after world with super powered beings, then killing them all?" Spitfire said skeptically.

"Well, you see, like I said they're super-advanced," Skinwalker said. "But they have absolutely no innovation, no creativity, no imagination… they've sort of like Contessa here." He pointed at the bound and gagged operative. "They've been letting their Shards do all the work for them for so long they don't know how do anything for themselves anymore, even think. So, despite their arrogance regarding any mere three dimensional creature as nothing but a lab rat, they depend on us to use their powers to innovate-- to be creative, generate new ideas, come up with new ways to do things.

"Unfortunately for us Scion is the Fighter, not the Thinker. The best idea Scion had to encourage us lab rats to use our Shards as much as possible was to push us into conflict wherever possible. Maybe you've noticed how much more aggressive capes are than normal? It's also why the Shards only bond to people who've had a Trigger event. Traumatized people given immense power and encouraged to lash out at the world..." he shrugged. "Like tossing two bugs in a jar and shaking it to see them fight."

"But you said his mate is dead!" Spitfire protested, "Why is he still..."

"Going through the motions?" Skinwalker said. "Acting like she's still there? Shuffling along from day to day on autopilot, doing what he feels obligated to do but with no enthusiasm, no joy?" He looked at her and gave her a humorless little smile. "Gee, it's almost like he's a widower or something." His smile disappeared. "At the height of his depression, he spoke to one human. One. Some suicidally depressed drunk… who told him to do something with himself. Save lives. Help people. Make a meaning for himself if he couldn't find one." He paused. "Thank God for that man, wherever he is. How easily he could have just said 'end it all, get it over with'..."

"So Scion's been trying it. Half-assed, of course. We mean about as much to him as a population of mice living in his basement. It's nothing more than a hobby to distract himself." He turned grim. "Sooner or later he's going to fold it all in, sweep the pieces off the table, flip the table and leave. It's only a question of how long before his boredom and despair get to him."

Newter got up with a stunned look on his long face and walked out of the room. He returned with an open bottle of liquor. He sat down and pulled at it hard before passing it to Gregor the Snail. It made its way to Spitfire then to Faultline quickly enough. "So we have to let her go," Faultline said, pointing the neck of the bottle at Contessa, her voice rough from the Grey Goose she'd poured down her throat. "She… and Cauldron are the world's only hope."

"And why do you think that?" Skinwalker snorted.

Faultline did a double take. "You just said… Plan of Victory, or whatever..."

"And what makes you think they got that right?" Skinwalker said. He got to his feet and paced a bit, rubbing his face. The need for a refresh from his powers was coming more and more often. "Look, don't you realize what their genius master plan IS? Scion is basically a thousand times more powerful than any cape. He has ALL the powers… all the ones we have and more. The only reason he hasn't destroyed the Endbringers is because he made them and released them, all to generate more conflict. He's effectively indestructible by conventional means. Even if you managed to destroy his "body," it's just a fingertip-- a blister sticking into this universe that he can regenerate at will. So Cauldron's planning to find some way to destroy him. Great, terrific, marvelous.

"Cauldron is basically led by two people: Contessa here--" he waved his hand-- "and by a woman who calls herself Doctor Mother. Eden, the other alien, was injured by a chance encounter in space with another of their kind some time before the Space Whale couple reached our world, and when she went to land her physical self on her parallel dimension she lost control and crashed. On Contessa and Doctor Mother's version of Earth. Polluting the soil, the water... and anyone contaminated with Eden's tissues gained a Shard, and gained powers. So the next thing you know there's monsters, madmen, superpowered warlords, you get the picture.

"By pure luck Contessa got the Path to Victory. But because of a little safety feature the Space Whales put into it, she couldn't act against even the mortally wounded Eden herself, not directly. So she found Doctor Mother, gave her a knife, and told her just where to cut the giant alien Space Whale's brain. They lobotomized it, and have been using its flesh to dose people to give them powers ever since."

"Ugh." Was Spitfire's verdict before she took another swig of Grey Goose.

"But Contessa was five years old when she gained the Path to Victory. And Doctor Mother is neither a doctor nor a mother…. they're just titles to impress people. And according to my sources the world they lived on was stuck somewhere developmentally in the Bronze Age!

"So they asked the Shard a super-simplistic question, the kind a couple of bronze-age peasant women would ask: how do I kill Scion? the plan that Contessa's Shard came up with was the exact sort of thing you'd expect a Bronze Age peasant woman to understand and accept-- to make a giant army of superhumans to punch Scion really really hard until he was defeated. " Skinwalker snorted. "That's their master plan. A plan perfectly in the vein of every bronze age heroic saga... To arm as many Greeks as they could with bronze swords, and send them storming up the slopes of Olympus to kill the gods. A plan that bloody common sense tells you couldn't work and WON'T work. Their plan is the equivalent of trying to drown an ocean."

"That white shiny laboratory looking place you saw through the portal? Stage props, so they look more advanced and enlightened than they are. Their futuristic tech is almost entirely their experiments using Shard powers to put on a light show. Their 'scientific research' consists of chopping off bits of lobotomized alien, whipping it up in a juicer, and going 'let's see what this does to the hobo we kidnapped when he drinks it.'

"But the Path to Victory thing would still work?"

"If you call a miniscule fraction of humanity across countless worlds managing to cling to life on cratered, burning worlds a victory, you're welcome to it. Remember how Ragnarok ends, with only two human beings in the entire world and a tree? Sort of like that but without the optimism. And that's IF Cauldron wins.

"That's the thing. Contessa and her boss are from a culture that hadn't yet discovered chaos theory, or probability, or any of the other things we take for granted. They were still in an era where our scientists were a couple hundred years back, thinking that if they just gathered enough data they could perfectly predict and plan anything. Stuff our most advanced outer-edge physicists and mathematicians are coming back and confirming, like Labyrinth said, is functionally impossible." He huffed in amusement. "Stuff more spiritually minded people have been saying for thousands of years. 'Man Plans, God Laughs,' remember?"

"Well the Space Whales… and their Shards… are the same way. The Space Whales are completely materialistic and deterministic. They've so completely abandoned the idea of anything philosophical, or spiritual, or beyond the physical that they can't even contemplate it as a concept. And whatever happened with their great transcendence, somehow they are still stuck believing they can predict and plan anything with sufficient raw data. Even though they're so uncreative they have to rely on us lowly lower life forms to even invent new ideas for them."

"In case you missed the last hour, this all-knowing, all-seeing, all-planning Path to Victory Shard misses things. If it can't even see me, how much else is it missing?"

"But at the same time, that's our hope, that's our salvation. Scion is NOT omnipotent and he's NOT omniscient. If his Shards can miss things, HE can miss things. That means he has blind spots, weak spots, vulnerabilities. And that means that all-knowing, all-seeing Cauldron and their Path to Victory have missed things too… like ways to win against Scion that don't involve leaving entire worlds in ruin."

"Faith and Hope… two things Cauldron, and the Shards, and Scion are too primitive and limited to even know exist."

"Whoa. That was DEEP." Gregor blinked at Skinwalker, then blinked at Newter who was leaning against him. "My friend, I think you got some of your sweat on me..."

"Oops. Sorry, man. It'll wear off in a minute."

"Well that's a great half-time speech, Coach," Faultline said. "But what's our next move?" She waved at the red-faced Contessa. "What do we do with her?"

"Well, considering Cauldron is a bunch of lunatics who don't think assassination is a big deal, and I don't wanna wake up dead," Newter said, "we should probably hold her as a hostage against this Doctor Mother's good behavior--"

A doorway opened up directly beneath Contessa. She plummeted through, chair and all. The portal vanished. "--- or we could just stand here and watch that happen," Newter concluded. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the floor where the door had been. "NEXT TIME TRY PLAYING WITHOUT CHEAT CODES, YOU SKANK!"

Faultline got to her feet and unholstered her gun again. "Are we about to get attacked again?"

"Probably not, for two reasons," Skinwalker said. "My 'blind spot' effect is apparently pretty comprehensive. Remember how she missed when she tried to shoot Gregor? I wasn't even in her line of sight. My just being in proximity apparently garbles her Shard's abilities to read the environment. It'll probably linger a while over you all and this general area, domino effect and all, but-- ah. Just a minute."

Due to all the excitement, the walls immediately around Labyrinth had started shifting into her alternate dimensions, or perhaps vice versa. The wall immediately behind her had begun looking like an Escheresque window out onto a plane full of floating rainbow colored spheres and white polygons. Skinwalker climbed up on the couch beside her and reached through, grasping at the nearest spheres. "Yellow? No, blue. Oooh, that one will do, a nice rainbow one..." he grabbed a wibbling globe about the size of his palm and carefully pulled it back. It passed from the phantasm-world into the real world with a pop.

"Okay, let's see what we got." He pulled an engraved copper rod out of his belt pouch and began poking at the sphere in his hand, squinting in concentration. There was a sound something like

Splatinkle!

And the sphere popped, leaving behind a tiny glowing purple shard. "Oh perfect! Anyone have a jar or bottle-- ah perfect," he said, accepting what they handed him. He popped the shard into the Grey Goose bottle and set it on the table, sealing the neck with a dollop of wax. The shard floated in the middle of the bottle, glowing and humming faintly and looking vaguely surreal. And Faultline wasn't sure it wasn't the Grey Goose talking but the crystal wasn't rotating, it was changing shape … "And what is THAT?" she said.

"A shard of Chaos," Skinwalker said.

"And you pulled that out of one of Labyrinth's… realms?" Faultline was starting to feel seriously dizzy contemplating all this.

"In the intersection between one reality and the next. That's where you can find it normally, if you know what to look for. Lucky I caught a glimpse of it." He examined the shard. "Not very much, but probably more than enough to give Cauldron's capes a blinding headache if they so much as look in this room's general direction. And if they try to open a doorway here, well, good luck. Here, let's boost it a little..." He withdrew a coil of thick copper wire from his bag and chunk of quartz, wound the wire around the bottle in opposite directions and made a spark gap at the top. Then he wedged the quartz in the gap. It immediately began to chime faintly, like a finger run around the rim of a wine glass. "That'll do it," he said. "That'll expand the zone to about the size of this building." He set it on Faultline's desk.

"I think I have a new favorite desk ornament," she murmured. "How many of these can you make? Because if we're going to fight Cauldron, we're going to need to cut off their access in more than one place."

Skinwalker thought of the shelves of jars full of dusts and shards and essences back in the Lost Workshop. He thought of the dozens of little shiny, glowy, glass and copper whirligigs, tiny versions of this oversized one, he'd sold and even given away to people great and small all over Brockton Bay. And he smirked. Smugly.

"No need to worry about that right away," he said. "And I think Cauldron is going to be too busy cleaning up a mess to bother anyone for a while. Did you happen to see that thing I tossed through the portal?"

"I did note that, yes," Gregor said. "A bomb of some sort?"

"Not exactly. Half of a goblin teleportation device that leads to where I STORE my bombs…. And a few other things."

Gregor gave him a stunned look, then slowly nodded. "That should keep them preoccupied," he said. Then he paused. Goblin?

"You don't know the half of it." He looked at Faultline. "So you all know the terrible truth of your secret pasts. What do you intend to do now?"

Faultline sighed, shoulders slumped. "I'm thinking we're going to take that magic see-me-not bottle, go find some place to hunker down about two or three thousand miles from here, and wait out whatever comes next. We're mercenaries. This… this is all beyond our pay grade."

"Fraid I gotta agree," Newter said. Murmurs of assent and nods of agreement went around the room. Skinwalker sighed. That was a handful more pieces, taken right off the board entirely. Whether it was to the good or the bad, he wasn't sure.

"Are you going after Cauldron yourself?"

Skinwalker shook his head. "Cauldron is too big a target still," he said. "Too widespread, stuck in too many things. Jenga tower, remember?

"Right now I've got one block I want to remove. The Merchants. So long as they're in play, they're a resource for bigger, nastier types to exploit. That festering sore Skidmark has been poisoning this city for too long. He goes down."

Faultline nodded. "Good luck with that."

Newter looked over at Faultline for approval; she nodded. Newter grunted, then turned to Skinwalker. "Can't say you didn't give what you promised." He looked over at the chaos bottle and his brow ridges climbed. "Gave us way more than we could chew, for that matter. So I'll tell you what we know about Skidmark.

"The Merchants don't have a single lair. They move around all the time, from abandoned building to abandoned building, going wherever Skidmark's paranoia leads them. He's sure to have heard you're looking for him so he's probably moving his location every night.

"Now what he does have is recruitment parties. You were right about him trying to get me to sign on; that wanker makes a pitch every time he sees me, and he always invites me out to these "Big epic parties" of his. They invite every bum, bozo and freak in the burg, throw some food and drugs at them, give a recruiting pitch… and run cage fights.

"Cage fights?" Skinwalker asked. Deja vu.

Newter nodded. "Between lowballer gang members who want to climb up in the ranks. He's playing the off chance that someone put through the steel cage will Trigger. New cape, new lieutenant."

"But the odds for that are so small they… yeah. And it's Skidmark coming up with this plan. Never mind."

"Heh. Anyway, he makes sure word gets to me whenever he's going to have one of these crackhead blowouts. His next one's gonna be-- God's honest truth-- Christmas Eve, at the old Twin Pines Shopping Mall near the docks. Mandatory attendance. Every ranking member of the Merchants, which means anyone sober enough to shoot straight, is gonna be there. Mush, Trainwreck, Squealer, they'll all be there too."

Skinwalker nodded. "Perfect."

Faultline stared at him. "And what do you plan on doing, all by yourself, against four Capes and about a thousand armed goons?"

Skinwalker looked at her. "I'm going to END them."

Doctor Mother cowered behind her desk, staring in shell shock at the corpse sprawled across it. The Number Man was dead. Stone cold dead. He was lying there, on his back, staring at the ceiling with a crude circular saw buried in his skull, right between the eyes.

Kurt Wynn was… had been… a banker and investor with a Shard-given power to understand everything perfectly as mathematical formulas. His supernatural ability not only gave him, gave Cauldron, the power to manipulate world economies, driving entire nations under their hidden goad and whip, but gave him preternatural abilities that rivaled Contessa's. He could dodge bullets. Scale walls like a spider by calculating likely finger and toeholds, collapse buildings with a few strategically placed blows, ricochet projectiles so they struck targets of his choice. He was also a criminal and a complete sociopath who destroyed lives through economic chicanery and who killed without a single moral qualm, but that only made him more useful, dammit!

And here he'd been struck down by the blade of a table saw. And he never saw it coming. It beggared belief.

Ten minutes ago, things had been normal. Contessa had stepped through one of Doormaker's portals to deal with some information leaks. Then something had flown back through the portal before Doormaker could close it. It had landed in the lobby, and as a befuddled Doctor Mother had watched, unfolded into something that looked like a cross between a shower stall and a tanning booth. It had sparked, buzzed, formed a vortex of energy of some sort inside itself… and begun vomiting mechanical, exploding chaos into Cauldron HQ.

One of the byproducts of the crafting skill of Engineering, whether gnomish or goblin, was explosives. A lot of explosives. A ridiculous excess thereof, in fact. And they were terrifyingly easy to make, even from base materials. Skinwalker had rapidly accumulated a considerable stockpile of the things, to the point that safety (or the lack thereof) was worrying him. But he'd known since day one he was going to be dealing with a number of incredibly nasty and well equipped organizations such as Cauldron, and had allowed the surplus to build up as a necessary evil.

Other things had started to pile up in bulk as well. Rudimentary Bots, firework rockets, landsharks, mecha suit test models, traps, launchers, quite a number of defective mechanical pets, remote controlled Tonks… so he'd devised this plan as a first-wave attack against a target of opportunity. He'd built a collapsible Goblin teleporter, kept one half in his workshop store room, the other half in his haversack, and waited.

The moment the teleport pad activated, the bots followed their rather simple programming:

1. Take full load of explosives.

2. Enter active teleporter.

3. Wreck the Bejeezus out of everything on the other side.

When a six foot high pile of round mortar style cartoon bombs had appeared in the lobby, it had been alarming. When they had rolled to a halt, sprouted arms and legs and started charging their chosen targets (machinery, doors, people) screaming "BANZAI!" it had gone up the ladder from alarming to panic inducing.

Explosions had rocked the lobby, then the hallways beyond it as supposedly sturdy doors were blasted off their hinges by kamikaze robots. A second wave had followed, then a third, little bitty robots with big round bombs balanced on their heads pouring through holes burst in the doors and walls and racing up the hallways.

There was plentiful security in Cauldron HQ… in the test subject quarters and on the perimeter. Here in the depths of their offices, it had seemed both excessive and potentially counterproductive to add blast doors and mounted weapons. That decision would be reviewed most thoroughly in the days to come as the ridiculous invasion blasted doors, walls, furniture and other obstacles to oblivion.

In her delirium, she'd had the ridiculous thought that at least they weren't yelling Allahu Akbar, that would have been just a bit too much…

When the bomber-bots had stopped coming, they had been followed by what could only be called toys. Crude looking miniature tanks that trundled on little treads and fired a steady stream of skyrockets in every direction, sending whistling streaks of fire and explosions of sparks everywhere. Flying machines like miniature zeppelins and autogyros--- that it turned out were loaded with what looked like dynamite, and were just as suicidal as the first wave. metal shark fins with rocket engines that raced off and exploded. Mechanical spiders and scorpions that stung and bit… and then exploded. Clockwork chickens that exploded. Clockwork sheep that exploded. What was it with this lunatic and exploding clockwork things??

The worst had been the two waist high miniature mechas. Grinning metal gargoyle heads with legs and arms that chugged and spat sparks and smoke and had buzz saw blades where their hands should have been. Several of the more aggressive guards, or perhaps the slower ones, had lost hands and fingers to those horrors. One of them had cornered her and the Number Man in her office. The Number Man had thrown a pen that (naturally) struck it in just the right place to disable it. Unfortunately it reacted to being disabled by self destructing. The explosion had sent parts and shrapnel in every direction, including one sawblade-hand that had struck the Number Man right between the eyes and delivered his final sum of Karma.

Then there had been a titanic, earth shattering kaboom.

Doctor Mother looked around. She took stock: She saw burn marks. She saw holes in the walls, floors, ceiling. She saw trashed office equipment. It was relative quiet at the moment in this part of the complex. She could still hear the occasional whistle of a firework in the distance. The Custodian was not responding: the explosions and fire must have temporarily disrupted her invisible, ghostly "bodies."

The intercom on her desk beeped.

She regarded it for a second in disbelief. By luck, she pressed the correct button to activate the damnable thing. "This is Doctor Mother."

A voice came through, staticky and tinny. "Uh,yeah, this is Jones. From Security. Are you all right Ma'am?"

She sighed. "Yes." She looked around. "For a given value of 'fine,'" she added. "The Number Man is dead, however. The Custodian is not responding either. Can you give me a status report on everyone else?"

Jones took a moment. "Uhh, okay, yeah. The, ah, Slug appears to have been injured, several second and third degree burns. And ah, a concussion, the medics say. He's not going to be doing any mind-erasing or brainwashing type.. stuff, for at least a month or two, they're telling me. Until his skull fracture heals. The Doormaker is suffering a nosebleed. He tried to look back in on, ah, his last portal location and he can't find it for some reason. If tries his nosebleed starts up again. The, uh, Clairvoyant guy, boy howdy, he's sort of having the same problem it seems…alla sudden he can't even focus in on half of Brockton Bay, by golly. Like it's all fulla holes or sump'n."

Doctor Mother was stunned. What in the Devil could make all of Brockton Bay turn partially invisible to the Clairvoyant? Or any part of it inaccessible to the Doormaker? "What of Contessa? Can they get a fix on her?" she demanded.

"Ohh, she's okay. She's in the lobby." Pause. "What used to be the lobby."

"Used… to be."

"Yyyeah. You remember that one last really BIG explosion?"

"Now that you mention it, it does stir my memory," she said. Her voice could have chilled dry ice.

Jones continued, oblivious. "WELL. We sent some tech guys to secure that Teleporter pad thingy? Before it teleportered anything else? And, um, it looks like it self-destructed. Aaaaand we don't have a lobby there no more."

Doctor Mother groaned.

"We do got the beginnings of a nice little open air atrium, though."

Doctor Mother ran her hands down her face.

"You need to hire two new tech guys, by the way."

"And what. About. Contessa?"

"Oh, she's fine and dandy. The Doormaker managed to pull her back through just AFTER the explosion, but BEFORE the whatever-it-was started giving him nosebleeds."

"Tell her I need her in… what's left of my office," she said.

Jones hesitated. "Oookay. But… she's tied to a chair in there." Pause. "And has her hat stuffed in her mouth." Pause. "Aaaaand she's covered in cake." Longer pause. "The boys and me don't wanna go in there, Ma'am."

"LOOK, JUST--" Doctor Mother cut herself off as Contessa staggered through the door. "Never mind, go back to your duties-- wait. Have any of those infernal contraptions gotten down to the test subject chambers?" – her own lovely little euphemism for Cauldron's prison cells.

"OH, we're down here already ma'am, it doesn't look like any of those mechanical things got down here at all." There was a crash in the background. "Well maybe one." Then there was an explosion. "Maybe two."

"Deal with it, Jones," Doctor Mother gritted her teeth. Forcing herself to mentally acknowledge that force-feeding Jones one of the more interesting Cauldron vials would not fix the problem, she disconnected the intercom. "Contessa, what happened? Where did you go?"

She was haggard, disheveled, hatless, and had only just scraped most of the frosting spattering her away. It took Doctor Mother a moment to place the expression on the currently hatless Contessa's face: fear. She looked for all the world like a frightened little child. "I don't know," she said, her eyes darting around.

"What? What happened? What was there?"

"I-- I don't know! I can't remember! Something bad, something VERY bad and scary. You can't make me go back there, you can't! I WON'T GO!" She fled the room as if the hounds of Hell were on her heels.

Doctor Mother sat back, speechless.

For some reason, for the first time in all these years she had the feeling she hadn't thought her brilliant plan all the way through...

,