22

Chapter Text

Everyone in the room… the Undersiders, the Warcrafted... looked at him. He stood there, his head hanging, his claws digging into the wood of his chair. He drew a breath and looked up. Taylor felt a chill; she'd never seen his eyes looking so serious, so-- afraid. "Go there, or stay here," he said. "I'm going, but I'm not going to force anyone to come along. But make your minds up quickly, we haven't much--"

"I'm in," Greg said. His apron was wadded in his fists. He'd never looked so… so much like a scared teenage kid. "I can work search and rescue, if nothing else… And healing..."

"I'm in too." Shen didn't say anything more.

"I'm there," Sparky said. No… it was clear in his eyes, in his stance. He was Shar'Din now.

"Same here," Fennek said, astonishing everyone.

"Fennek, Fidget and Gidget just came out of the vat," Adrian said. "You're nowhere near--"

"I was a Hunter before I had them," he snapped back. "I can do search and rescue better than anyone in the Protectorate. And hell, maybe I can ANNOY the bitch to death." He pulled his bow from his haversack and nocked an arrow by way of demonstration.

"It's a moot point, honey," Taylor said. She stood taller, her eyes grew more piercing. Adrian could almost see her slipping into her own skin as Hemlokk as she spoke. "Every one of us can heal, do search and rescue, or help out in a dozen other ways. It'd be…wicked for us to back out now, ready or not."

Adrian closed his eyes and turned his face to the ceiling. "Somehow I knew we'd have no choice..."

Taylor looked over at Lisa and Grue. "I won't speak for the Undersiders--" she faltered.

"There ain't no undersiders," Brian said. "Just the Alliance now."

"We're in," Lisa said.

"Damn straight," Aisha said.

 Brian wheeled around on her at that. "Like heck you are," Brian said to her. "You're staying here!"

"But I'm Mama Crow! I run the Crow's Nest!"

"And you ain't got no POWERS," Grue emphasized. "You're staying here!"

"We need her," Lisa interrupted. Grue gaped at her in betrayed confusion. "The comm system the Protectorate uses is crap."

"She's right," Bayleaf growled, running his fingers through his scalp. "All it does is tell everybody who just died. It's next to useless on a battlefield, designed by idiots." Who the heck approved that thing anyway? "She'll be miles back from the frontline but we need her on our comm-links if we want a chance to survive."

Brian fumed, but gave in. He slammed on his helmet and pointed at Bayleaf. "Miles from the frontline, you swear it." Bayleaf held up his hand, scout's honor. "Dammit," Brian growled. Aisha and Lisa began grabbing whatever portable gear they could.

"Okay, let's do this," Bayleaf said. "Everyone gear up. Shar'Din, take that carpet and get to the jumpoff point for the PRT. Give 'em a breakdown on what we have, what we're bringing. Let them know we're coming!" Shar'Din nodded, regal as a king, and rose out of the open skylight. "Lei Ling, Hemlokk, grab every potion, scroll, and piece of extra jewelry we got. Same with you Fennek… We're gonna be handing those things out like candy on Trick or Treat. Shen, Vindicator-- dress for a fight, but don't be surprised if they push you in the healing tent. Panacea, you need a lift?"

Before she could answer, A familiar golden-haired figure dropped down through the skylight. "Amy, we gotta go--"

Amy didn't say a word; she just threw her arms around her sister's neck. "Well, don't spare the horses, sis," she said. She looked at the others. "We'll see you there. I hope..." With that they shot through the skylight.

"Okay, that's taken care of. Lok'Tara, bring your dogs, Truck too if you think he's ready, you'll probably be on Search and Rescue before any of us. I'm afraid Sky will have to look after himself for a while. The ferrets too."

"Everybody, we got--" he looked at the information scrolling onscreen. "crap, unless Shar'Din can get them to hold a teleporter, we got fifteen minutes tops. Grab what you can and load it in the bus, we are out of here in five!"

Everyone scrambled.

Quality transportation was still way down on the team to-do list. So many of them had flight, or teleportation, or some other means of getting about that it had been put on the back burner over and over. The best that could be said was that they did have SOME form of transportation. Brian had gone out with Adrian on a vehicle hunting trip… and they had ended up securing an old school bus in a used-vehicle lot. They had gotten as far as tearing out the back five rows of seats for cargo space, but beyond changing the oil and filling the gas tank nothing had been done to beef it up.

It wasn't the Avengers quinjet, but it was going to have to do. Crates of scrolls and potions, bags of bandages and boxes full of stat-boosting jewelry were tossed in the back. A squad of tinkerbots-- fire fighters, alarmbots and other multi-use handibots-- were loaded in as well, tossed in the with the cargo they were loading. Everyone piled aboard, still donning their costumes and armor.

Bayleaf jumped into the driver's seat. The engine cranked, stalled out, cranked again. An absolutely breathtaking profusion of profanity rose to the roof of the vehicle for several seconds, then the engine caught. They roared out of the dilapidated garage at the end of the Warehouse row, barely missing the door as it scrolled upward.

The bus fell silent. There weren't a lot of words to say at the moment. There were plenty of scared faces to be seen, what wasn't covered by helmets or masks.

Grue and Vindicator sat side by side, their still, helmeted forms giving an illusion of stoicism.

Lok'Tara, if anything, was scowling even more than usual, her tusks gleaming.

Fennek grumbled and whined to himself, fussing over his bow and his quiver, checking for the hundredth time to make sure the nigh-bottomless quiver was packed full. He was gonna put one arrow in that feathered bimbo's eye, he swore it.

Shen tried to meditate, the way he'd learned in the garden. He breathed in, breathed out, his hands resting on his knees… suddenly felt another hand, clawed, furry, and clammy with fear, press into his own. Surprised he looked over. Lei Ling was sitting next to him in her chain armor, staring straight ahead. He felt her hand squeeze his, trembling.

He squeezed it back.

They soon slowed as traffic thickened. Bayleaf pounded the steering wheel in frustration, resisting the urge to lean out the window and scream epithets at the unfeeling masses. Suddenly Obie and two of the other alarm-bots came running up from the back. Using their magnetic feet and hands they climbed up the inside of the bus, out the window, and up onto the roof. They started their lights and sirens up, piercing the air even over the Endbringer siren. Slowly but with increasing speed the traffic parted in front of them. Bayleaf whooped and pounded the steering wheel. "Obie you little genius!" he shouted. "Good work! Lisa, you got an update?"

Lisa and Aisha were two seats back, fussing over a laptop and a pile of wires and waving around a wifi boosting antenna. They were trying to rig up a portable comm board for the headsets everyone was wearing. Lisa grumped and checked the news feed she'd Googled. "They're doing pickup at the PRT base," she said. "Capes are pouring in-- crap, Uber and L33t are there?-- and… wait, something's wrong--"

Without warning, the already congested traffic ground to a halt. They were close enough to see the PRT building; capes and cape vehicles were hovering around the helipad on the roof, as if something had happened and they were confused as to what to do next. What Lisa saw next on the laptop made her start swearing fit to make even a Dockworker blush. "It's the Simurgh!" she shouted over the ruckus of car horns and Endbringer sirens.

"What about the Simurgh?" Bayleaf shouted over his shoulder.

"She's interdicted us!" Lisa shouted back. "The instant the first batch of capes came through from Brockton Bay, some sort of force-bubble popped up over Canberra!" She rattled away at the keyboard. "It's cutting of everything-- all broadcasts from inside have been cut off… and noone can portal or teleport in or out!" She cursed and spat. "The only reason we know that much is this blogger is just outside the field!"

Bayleaf gave up and jammed the bus into park. He got up and came back to see what Lisa and Aisha were watching. Everyone else on the bus left their seats. The view was split between some field reporter a mile outside the city, and the cam-view from the luckless blogger still in the outer boroughs of Canberra. Capes, the early arrivals, could be seen swarming around the Endbringer, lashing fruitlessly out at her with their powers, her orbiting corona of machinery catching it all. The shaky web-cam zoomed in; for a heartstopping moment the Simurgh turned and looked into the camera. She gave the viewers a smile… not one of her usual, enigmatic, emotionless ones, which adorned her face in and out of season, but one of malicious glee and triumph.

Then the feed went dark. Lisa and Aisha BOTH swore aloud and started clattering away at their keyboards, Lisa at her laptop, Aisha at her phone. "No good," Lisa said after a perfunctory search. The Simurgh just put the kibosh on anything in or around Canberra, no feed, no internet, no radio… and no teleporters." She dove back into the Net momentarily, then resurfaced. "What I suspected," she said with a snarl. "The PRT is trying to port heroes in at a distance… they might as well not waste their time: that force field wall is immutable. Nothing's getting through until the Simurgh drops it. If she ever does."

"Has she ever done this before?" Bayleaf asked.

Lisa threw herself back in her seat, arms crossed under her chest, fuming. "No." Her expression suddenly shifted from fuming to disturbed. "Because… because for the first time, there was something she did not want getting there. Something in Brockton Bay."

Everyone in the bus looked at each other. "Us?"

Lisa pulled at her lip. "The Thinkers have been saying that, for some reason--" she gave Bayleaf a knowing look-- "the Precog and Thinker view of Brockton Bay has been like Swiss Cheese for months, and getting more full of holes by the day. If Miss Christmas Tree Topper is having the same problem..."

"She decided to play it safe," Bayleaf said grimly. "And cut Brockton Bay off from Canberra, early in the game." He snarled silently. "My little blind spots spooked her, and now thousands of people--" He turned away and staggered to the front of the bus, ears flat, shoulders tight as knotted rope. He sat in the driver's seat, cradling his head in his hands.

There was a knock on the windshield. Shar'Din was hovering outside on his flying carpet. He waved to Bayleaf, then gestured in front of the bus. A shimmering portal appeared. They couldn't have broken through to Canberra already, could they? Bayleaf threw the bus into gear and slowly drove through the shimmering circle of air.

When they came out the other side, they were parked back in the garage. Bayleaf switched the motor off and slumped in the driver's seat. The quiet was stifling. Sparky floated up next to the driver's window. "I'm sorry, man," he said. "The PRT was already turning Capes back. The last three teleporters or space jumpers or whatever who tried to get through… didn't come back in one piece."

"How many capes got through before the field went up?" Bayleaf said quietly.

"The newsfeeds say about half," Lisa piped up from behind him. "The local Protectorate got through, but the Ward's didn't. Aegis lost a leg, the field came down so fast. It says New Wave got through earlier..." she didn't say more. All of them were picturing two sisters, one blonde and bubbleheaded and take-charge, the other curly haired and broody.

"Should we… should we unload?" Greg said.

"No, just.. just leave it," Bayleaf said. "It'll keep-- "Silently the others filed off the bus. Lisa and Aisha went back to the Comms. Fennek retreated to his game room. Lok'Tara went to her menagerie, to the enthusiastic welcome of Sky and Truck. They all retreated back into the Lost Workshop, disappearing into their quarters and their workshops and their game rooms. The sound of work or play wasn't taken up by anyone though. It was terribly still.

Even the Endbringer sirens had fallen silent.

After several long minutes, Taylor took Adrian by the arm. Gently she pulled him to his feet and led him away from the bus, back into the Lost Workshop, where his alien plants still glowed and the enchanter's ingredients still glimmered on his workbench and the air was filled with the tick-whirr-click of his tinkerbots laboring away. She pulled him into the biggest of the Comfy Chairs and curled up in it next to him. For the next hour they did nothing but sit there and hold onto one another.

The sober peace was interrupted the next morning rather abruptly.

"Guys," Lisa yelled. "Guys, guys GUYS, EVERYBODY GET YOUR ASSES IN HERE!!"

"OmiGAIIEAEEK!" Aisha shrieked.

Teenagers poured in from every direction, more than a few with weapons at the ready."What, what is it??" Greg said, his hammer in one fist, his sword in the other.

For a wonder, the two girls were speechless. Aisha was standing there, her knuckles pressed to her mouth, rigid as a board. Lisa was so agitated she was bouncing in her office chair. Lisa pointed to the main screen on the Comms. The interdiction field had apparently fallen, and news was flowing out of Canberra again-- and the talking heads were climbing the walls over it. Everyone there could see what was happening but the newscasters felt obligated to tell-- no, to scream-- what was going on. Adrian had seen sportscasters at the Superbowl get less agitated than these people. What was happening was visible on the screen, as clear as it was unbelievable. "What the hell is happening?" Grue said.

"It's footage from last night," Lisa babbled. "The bubble came down before it was all over, and this has been playing over and over on every news channel--"

Fennek's eyes were round, he was practically hyperventilating. For a moment Adrian feared the unfamiliar rush of adrenaline and intense excitement might make the poor vulperan keel over. "They're fighting the Simurgh," he said. "They're fighting the Simurgh and they are KICKING HER ASS!!"

Whatever had happened during the blackout, it had clearly gone very badly for the Simurgh. Both her legs were gone, one shattered above, the other below the knee. Half her wings were in a similar state, blasted and charred to stumps. Cracks and score marks criscrossed her body and what could be seen of her face. She was half-flying, half crawling across the skyline, her cloud of levitated tinkertech struggling, and failing, to keep off the swarm of Capes that pursued her. A literal rain of exotic powers and energies beat down on her as the heroes and villains of humanity took long-awaited revenge for humanity's suffering.

"It can't be," Adrian heard himself say. "She's still sandbagging."

Lisa shook her head emphatically, then winced and clutched her temple. "No," she said. "No, I've been using my Power for the last five minutes-- she's actually running scared! The only reason she hasn't fled to orbit is some Tinker has hit her with some weird gravity-acceleration-curving something-or-other…"

The Warcrafted watched in silent awe as the battle unfolded. Triumvirate were all but hammering the Endbringer into the ground, alternating between blasts of energy and Alexandria's punches without letup. Every other cape was chipping in, letting loose with everything they had, pinning the Simurgh to the ground, decimating her once-invincible gauntlet of orbiting tinkertech… In desperation the Simurgh reassembled her tinkertech cloud into an enormous ring in front of her. The center shimmered, turned opaque; the void of the stars appeared inside it…

"Portal," Sparky said. "She can't fly to space so she's takin' a shortcut!"

...and the Endbringer all but flung herself through it. There was an eruption of light and she vanished. The floating ring went dark and fell to the earth, shattering in pieces. Capes swooped down on the wreckage, as the camera cut to another on-the-spot newscaster, standing in the middle of a mob of emergency workers, capes, PRT soldiers and refugees. She had her hand pressed to her ear and was shouting above the commotion into her microphone. "...And we can confirm it-- Yes, the Simurgh has fled-- Canberra has been saved! They will not be walling the city in, there is no quarantine-- Canberra has been spared and the Simurgh has been beaten!"

The crowd around her exploded. A roar of victory went up from all those present. Lisa had to turn the sound down to save the speakers from bursting.

"We won. We WON against an ENDBRINGER!"

Everyone lost their minds.

Even as everyone in the Lost Workshop began jumping around and screaming like lunatics, the battle came to its conclusion onscreen and the camera began flipping between newscasters, government officials, and wildly celebrating capes and even more wildly celebrating citizens.

"How did this happen?" Taylor said. "What changed??"

Lisa struggled to say something. "It's almost on the tip of my tongue-- argh!" She pointed at the screen where they were showing instant replays-- random cellphone footage, webcams-- of the most brutal moments of the fight. "Look at her it's like she was blind-fighting or-- " She rubbed her scalp in pain, but her eyes gleamed with excitement. She began speaking faster and faster, almost babbling. "That's it, she WAS fighting blind. She's a precog and a postcog, the most powerful in existence… she depends on those powers like we depend on sight. But something's been buggering that up--" she looked at Adrian. Everyone looked at Adrian.

"Your Azeroth tinker tech," Tattletale said, her classic smug grin fixed in place. "You gave a ton of it to The Brockton Bay Protectorate last Christmas. I'd bet my left tit Armsmaster reverse-engineered it and handed it out to everyone he could!"

"Yeah but nothing that would account for--" Adrian paused, his jaw dropping. "No. Wait. Not the Protectorate or the Wards… New Wave. One particular member of New Wave--"

"With us now is the leader of the Protectorate of Brockton Bay in the United States," the reporter onscreen was saying. Standing next to her was Armsmaster. He was battered, his armor cracked, dented, and even scorched in places, but his posture radiated triumph too clearly not to be seen. "Armsmaster, can you explain to us what changed everything? What made this possible?"

Armsmaster visibly swelled with satisfaction. "An extraordinary breakthrough, Miss Winters," he said. "Some time ago we were made aware of a discovery by a… Tinker in Brockton Bay, who shall for security reasons go unnamed for now… who had invented a device that could block the Simurgh's song. We owe this tinker greatly--"

There was a whoosh and a boom and a blonde, caped figure landed next to him, hard enough that her dainty feet cracked the pavement. "Got that right! The guy's a miracle worker. I was the first one to get one," Glory Girl said, tapping her tiara. "It was for… er, something else entirely… but Gallant figured out it could be even bigger than it looked!"

"Gallant secured one of the prototypes for us," Armsmaster butted back in to confirm, looking a bit disgruntled at Glory Girl hogging his spotlight. "We managed to reverse engineer it and build the circuitry into the standard arm-bands we distribute." Vicky held up her arm and tapped the heavy mechanical bracelet, grinning cheekily. "Within seconds of arriving at Canberra we confirmed that it was effective; noone wearing the device could even hear the Simurgh's song.

"But what about the city?" Miss Winters said.

Armsmaster pointed behind them. The camera panned and refocused, revealing what looked like a rectangular radar dish mounted on a six-wheeled ATV. "Once we confirmed the technology worked, we deployed these," Armsmaster could be heard saying. "Just three of them were enough to provide a blanket field that nullified the Simurgh's song over the Canberra region. It's a brute force approach," One could almost hear him silently screaming and horribly inefficient-- " but it was the difference between walling up the city and saving it, so I'll take it."

The now beaming reporter turned to a beaming Glory Girl. "So the Simurgh has been driven off in the greatest defeat for the Endbringers ever, and Canberra has been saved. Tell us, Glory Girl, how are you feeling?"

"Feeling? We beat the Endbringer, saved the day, and I even got to punch the Simurgh in the FACE! I am ready to Par-TAY!!" She began doing a ridiculous victory dance there on the spot. "Punched-- an end-bring-ah- in-- the face-- I--"

"There is still a lot of cleanup work to be done," Armsmaster said over top of Glory Girl's impromptu victory song. "And a lot of casualties. No battle like this is without cost--" he glared at Vicky, clearly displeased at her euphoria.

"Crap, he's right," Bayleaf said suddenly. "The fight isn't over. There's still wounded, and missing and people trapped in rubble. Saddle up people, they still need our help!"

They had been ready to go last time in less than five minutes. This time they were all loaded in the bus in less than three.

Bayleaf started the engine, picked up the garage door opener-- and paused. He facepalmed. "Shar'Din?" he said. "Would you mind opening a portal to the PRT jumpoff point for Canberra?"

The elf mage grinned and waved his hand. A shimmering circle appeared in the air, between the bus' front bumper and the garage door. "Thank you," Bayleaf said. He shifted into gear and drove forward…

...And out onto the helipad on the roof of the PRT building. Adrian stood on the brakes; the bus shuddered to a halt far too close to the edge of the roof for anyone's comfort. More than one passenger on the bus let out squawks of fright. "Sparky!!" Adrian yelled.

"Hey, this is where they sent everyone who showed-- me included," Shar'Din said. "Sorry. Didn't know my waypoint was so close to the edge..."

The rooftop was covered in PRT agents, workers and capes. Surprisingly few people reacted with alarm at the arrival of a school bus out of nowhere… Most seemed too busy, hustling back and forth with equipment and guiding vehicles and groups of people one way or the other.

Out of the milling confusion came Director Piggot. She'd caught sight of the schoolbus and came on the run, a couple of PRT squaddies hustling to keep up. Bayleaf decided to play it nonchalant. He leaned out the driver's window and addressed the Director. "We got a busload of Capes and Tinker gear for Canberra," he said, giving the side of the bus a slap. "Where do we put it?"

True to form, Piggot didn't turn a hair. "Just drive it that way," she said, pointing. "Stop and put it in park when you're inside the tape outline." She looked around. "STRIDER! Busload of gear for Canberra!" A lanky-limbed cape dressed in a blue and black uniform, goggles and what looked like a chauffer's cap came at a lope. "Armsmaster will meet you on the other side," she said to Bayleaf. "I'll call ahead and warn him-- maybe he won't shoot first and ask questions later if I do," she couldn't help snarking.

"Thank you, Director," Bayleaf said. He shifted the bus into first and sent it puttering to the port-out zone at a slow crawl.

The teleporter cape came walking up as they eased into the drop zone. He gave them the twice-over and smirked a bit. "This your team vehicle?" he said in disbelief.

Bayleaf flattened his ears and gave him a deadpan look. "Nah, nah, we're on a school field trip," he drawled. "Professor X wanted to broaden the kids' horizons." He threw it in park; the flashing stop sign swung out and hit Strider in the forehead with a dull kong.

"Ow!" Strider said, stepping back and rubbing his head. "All right, all right, no need to get tetchy," he said. "Okay, get ready, it's a couple of hops--"

There was a flash, then another, then another. The city skyline was replaced with searing desert, then with what looked like an open field in a forest, then another desert… then with a thump they were in what had to be the Canberra airport terminal. Since his arrival in Brockton Bay Bayleaf had spent many hours in grim preparation, browsing images of the battle locations he recalled from the story, familiarizing himself with the landmarks. He recognized the terminal almost immediately.

They disembarked. Bayleaf saw Armsmaster marching their way. He was looking slightly less battered-- he'd probably had time to hammer some of the dents out of his armor-- and he was moving with the same authoritative air he'd always had. Striding along next to him was a man with an official and bureaucratic air; he and Armsmaster were talking to each other rapidly as they walked. "That must be the local PRT Director," Grue said, leaning over to Bayleaf.

"How can you tell?" Bayleaf said, puzzled.

"He's wearing a short sleeved shirt, cutoff dress slacks and a tie," Grue said. "That's Australian for business formal, thanks to the heat… at least for people with zero you-know-whats to give." The humor in Brian's voice was obvious. Adrian took note; the company's "face" was good at his work.

The moment the armored cape clapped eyes on them, their team, their bus, et al, but particularly Bayleaf, he all but slammed to a halt. He remained expressionless-- well, what little could be seen of his bearded chin did, anyway-- but after am moment he gathered himself and resumed approaching them. He stopped just out of arm's reach. "Skinwalker," he said noncommitally.

"Armsmaster," Bayleaf nodded. This was definitely the time to be burying hatchets. "We're sorry we didn't get here sooner. We got cut off by the interdiction field..." Armsmaster nodded tersely and made what Bayleaf supposed was a dismissive gesture… probably the closest the man would get to saying 'it's okay, no problem.' Bayleaf pointed to the back of the bus. "We got a busload of Tinker gear to help with the aftermath. We grabbed everything we thought might be of use. Healing potions, accelerated healing bandages, firefighting and--"

"Understood." Armsmaster said brusquely. He turned his head to one side. "Agent Jones, do you copy?" He paused, listening. "We have a busload of assorted tinkertech, I need you and your two subordinates to assist unloading and securing it--" he strode off toward the bus, clearly considering the conversation to be at an end. Bayleaf found himself a little miffed. I tell him I bring a busload of miracle fixes and he treats it like a cargo of hazardous ordinance, he thought with annoyed grunt. Typical.

"A man of the people as always," the gentleman who had been with him sighed in annoyance. He held out a hand to Bayleaf. "Director Micheal Bays," he said. "No relation, before you ask. Skinwalker, I believe it was?" His accent was pure Mick Dundee, to Bayleaf's secret delight.

Bayleaf engulfed the man's hand in his own hairy paw. "It's a, uh, working name," he said. "My crew, we generally go by 'the Alliance.' ...Long story." He started making introductions. "Ah, this is Hemlokk… Shar'Din..."

"Bal'a dash, Sinu a'manore." The blood elf bowed grandly atop his flying carpet.

"Errr..." Bays held out his hand uncertainly.

"Vindicator there in the armor… ah, Lok'Tara and Fennek, Lok'Tara's the green one with the dogs by the way… Grue and Tattletale, formerly of the Undersiders" (Oh crap I shouldn't have told him that, should I?) "uhh..."

"So what all are you and your mates bringing to the party?" Bays asked.

Bayleaf hesitated. "...Something of a grab bag," Bayleaf said, thinking quickly. Why hadn't he catalogued all the Alliance's abilities, or written a list or something. "Trackers, teleporters, uh, some healing..."

Bays' face lit up at that. "You're already sounding right useful," he said.

A commotion from the bus distracted them. Armsmaster and the PRT agents seemed to be having trouble with the doors. "What is it?" Bayleaf called.

"Your security systems are preventing our entry, Skinwalker," Armsmaster snapped. He was glaring at the bus door.

Bayleaf blinked. "What security system? It's a school bus. We didn't even have time to paint it!"

"Your… automatons have locked the doors and windows from the inside," Armsmaster clarified. He looked at the door. "And one of your hazard lights is giving me the finger."

"Oh for…Obie!" The alarm-o-bot's head made an appearance in the window. Bayleaf gestured wildly at the bus while his 'team' stood clustered together and snickered. "Obie! Behave yourself!" Obie let out a short siren-squawk that sounded remarkably like an objection. "Unlock the door, Obie, that cargo's gotta be unloaded!" Obie let out a discontented fweep and complied. "Sorry, Director, Obie is a security bot and he sort of has a mind of his own… where was I?"

There was a commotion from the bus. Everyone turned to look; Armsmaster came staggering back out of the bus' emergency exit, flailing wildly. What looked like two giant furry slinkies were climbing all over him, staying just out of his reach. "Agh, GET EM OFF! GET EM OFF!" The two PRT officers were backing up, starting to reach for their guns uncertainly, not sure what to do.

The Alliance set up a hue and cry. "Stop!" "Don't hurt them!" "They're not dangerous!"

"Fidget! Gidget!!" Fennek said in a panic.

"It's okay, they're with us!" Bayleaf said, throwing out a hand in alarm.

"I SORT OF FIGURED THAT OUT!"

"Fennek, go yet your darn ferrets off the Armsmaster!" Bayleaf yelled in exasperation. Fennek scurried to comply, equally anxious to rescue his furry babies.

"Those are ferrets??" Bays said in disbelief. It was understandable; the things were three feet from nose to tailtip, easily.

Bayleaf gave him a weak grin, a disturbing thing from a werewolf. "They must've sneaked on board--"

"Hurry up! They're ACK! Getting into everything!" There were several electronic bleeps and whoops and a disturbingly metallic ping as either Fidget or Gidget found some of the manual controls and access panels.

"Fidget, Gidget, come down from there!" Fennek was leaping up and down around the gyrating hero; he looked like he was about to climb up Armsmaster's back after them.

"They're… playful… but Fennek is bonded with them, he has them under fairly good control--" Bayleaf went on, digging desperately and only going deeper.

"--Oh Lord one of them has a screwdriver--!"

"Would somebody go over there and help??" Bayleaf said, cupping his face in his hand. Several of the Alliance broke loose and ran over. Those that weren't recording the action on their cellphones, at any rate. He looked over at Taylor for emotional support; she was one of the ones (along with Lei Ling, Aisha and Tattletale) who had her cellphone out, her eyes sparkling with glee, the heartless traitor.

Bayleaf looked back to the Director apologetically. The man's face was bright red and he was shaking with suppressed laughter. Well at least he's amused instead of infuriated, Bayleaf thought.

There was a loud clearing of a throat behind him. Bayleaf looked over his shoulder; Tattletale had stepped up. She was holding a computer tablet and stylus, clipboard style, and doing very good at looking organized and professional.

"Like Skinwalker said, Vindicator needs to go with the Healers, and I'm thinking Hemlokk should too; her skills are probably better utilized right now showing your staff how to use all the stuff we brought." Tattletale pointed over her shoulder at the bus; the ferrets had been retrieved and were getting a half-hearted scolding from Fennek, as the Tinkerbots methodically unloaded and stacked the boxes of Azeroth potions, bandages and stat-boosters.

"Lok'Tara and her dogs and Fennek and his ferrets need to go on Search and Rescue. Their powerset includes the ability to detect and track any living thing-- even from the air, or underground. Lei Ling and Shen should probably be Search and Rescue too: they have some healing capacity and they may not look it, but they're pretty solid Brutes, Movers and Masters too." As she spoke, Lei Ling summoned up one of her rock elementals, which rose up through the tarmac with a rumble of stone (then sheepishly smoothed out the asphalt again with it's stone feet) and Shen summoned his ghostly white tiger, which prowled around him.

"If it's possible, could Shar'Din do a ride-along with Strider? Shar'din is a potential world-class Mover, he can teleport and open portals pretty much anywhere, but he has to have physically been to the location first. One around-the-world with Strider and he'll be able to open up temporary gateways to anywhere."

"That WILL be useful," Director Bays said enthusiastically. "I'll buttonhole Strider, get him right on it."

"I think Mama Crow and I will be heading to wherever the Think Tank is?" she said. Every Endbringer incident had some sort of setup for Thinkers, Precogs and the like; Canberra would surely be no exception. "We can help coordinate from there. Grue will accompany us for personal security."

Bays actually looked impressed. He coughed, and, still grinning, pointed back to the terminal entrance. "Report to the guards in the entrance, they'll give you your ID bracelet..."

Thank you, Bayleaf lip-synched to Tattletale. The Thinker girl simply smirked back. Smugly.

What am I doing here?

The thought wasn't a complaint, really. Well, not yet. It was an honest question Fennek, aka Alec, aka Regent was asking himself. This really wasn't like him. Fair's fair, going along with the team for the Endbringer fight, that was him-- It was part of his code that he made himself stick to. If you were part of a team, you were loyal, period; if they went in danger's way so did you. Da Rules, I has them, he thought.

But this wasn't an Endbringer fight. This was the aftermath… the slow, messy, painful and unpleasant cleanup that came after Leviathan or Behemoth or the Simurgh went slam-dancing through your neighborhood. Clearing streets. Digging the lucky survivors-- and the not-so-lucky-- out of the rubble. Patching up the wounded. Getting people sorted out, fed and sheltered. Lots of hard, grueling, thankless WORK… the exact sort of thing he (wisely, he believed) shirked at every opportunity, and to heck with team effort.

So... why was he doing this?

"These men here are the Search and Rescue team for the wreckage of the Simurgh's touchdown zone," Armsmaster was saying. He was addressing a group of men in hard hats and orange vests gathered around a map on a card table. "You'll be working with them. Micheal Darby is the crew leader--"

"Call me Mick."

"-- Follow his instructions to the letter." Armsmaster said.

One of the other crewmembers looked over the members of the Alliance. "Hold on, what's all this? Did Disneyland send some representatives this time?" He snickered. Several of the others chuckled. "Filming "Robin Hood meets the Kung Fu Panda," maybe?"

Fennek laid his ears flat and gave the guy a smile. "Nah, we're filming a documentary for 'Wonderful World of Disney,'" he said. "'A Day in the Life of a Bogan.' You're from central casting, right?"

"Ohhhh!"

The hard-hat just grinned wider, his teeth showing white in his tanned face. "Pissy lil' ankle-biter, aintcha?" he chuckled.

"The top of my head just about reaches your belt buckle, Slackadile Dundee. It won't be your ankles I'll be biting off."

"Ohhh!!" This time the crewman laughed and backed up a step, holding up his hands in surrender.

"These… individuals," Armsmaster said, grinding his teeth with the effort of patience, "Are members of an independent cape group called the Alliance. Lok'Tara, Shen, Lei Ling, and Fennek. They have a number of abilities including Master, Brute, Mover, and Thinker that will make them somewhat useful in any search and rescue efforts." He looked at Mick. "If I may review?"

Mick nodded and waved towards the table. Armsmaster edged between the men and ran his finger across the map. "The Simurgh first touched down in the Northeast quarter. She tore up a lot of buildings in that area before--"

"Before everything went tits up for 'er, ey?" one of the men shouted. That got a lot of rowdy laughs.

"...Exactly. When the tables turned on her, she took off in a more or less straight line, down South and West, ripping up and knocking down everything in her path with that telekinetic vortex of hers. Here.." He jabbed at the bottom of the map, "Is where she made that Tinkertech portal and escaped, abandoning the inactive gate behind her. PRT staff are moving to secure what's left of it right now."

"The place we'll be diving in first," 'Mick' said, poking the map. "is right here. There was a shopping center right here-- it had underground shelters put in under the stores a couple years ago. Nothing like those Endbringer shelters you Yanks have, but it was a big selling point all the same." He looked grim. "They didn't have time to evacuate before that Scrag dropped out of the sky and leveled everything; we figure anyone who was there dived down those bolt-holes. We've already got people on site there trying to listen with microphones and what all, trying to find where the survivors are and get down to them. If you got any Cape tricks or Tinker toys that'll do that..."

"I think we may be the people to help you," Shen said, smiling confidently.

The site was worse than they had described. The shopping center hadn't just been knocked down, it had collapsed down into its basement levels, leaving an enormous pit filled with rubble and broken slabs of concrete , like a study in the worst possible environment to search for the living.

They arrived in a PRT personnel carrier, flying in low over the site. The Warcrafted could see hard hatted people picking their precarious way through the rubble. There was a medical tent to one side, and it was getting a good bit of use; next to it was a patch of open parking lot with neat rows of sheet-covered forms, grim reminders that not everyone was getting a happy ending this time.

Even before they landed Lok'Tara and Fennek were picking out survivors. Just like Bayleaf had used his treasure-seeking powers to find coins and other valuables buried in the sands of Brockton Bay, the two hunters could pick out people and animals buried under the debris, glowing sparks shining up through the rock and concrete and other rubbish.

Many of those lights were starting to flicker…

"Here, hold position here!" Fennek yelled at the pilot. For lack of any contradictory orders, the pilot brought the VTOL in to stationary some hundred feet over the wreckage. Fennek climbed over the others and opened the hatch. "What're ya doin', ya drongo?" Mick yelled.

"Spotting survivors!" Fennek retorted, unlimbering his bow. He leaned out of the open door. The bow flexed and sang; a glowing arrow shot down from the VTOL and embedded itself in the debris. Then another arrow sprouted some fifty feet away. Then another. After placing just under a dozen arrows, Fennek pulled himself back inside. "Tell them to dig there!" he said. "Those are the ones closest to the surface, and they look like they're doing the worst!"

Mick hesitated, but he pulled out the radio and proceeded to relay the information to those already on the ground. Mick's word was obviously law; in moments workers with picks, shovels, jackhammers and more were moving on the spots Fennek had picked out. "Let's get down there and put our backs to it," he said. "Looks like we've got a lot of work to do."

"There's more, down deeper," Lok'Tara informed him. Mick's face only got grimmer.

They landed on the edge of the rubble; everyone was out and planting boots on soil almost before the landing gear touched down. Shen headed for the medical tents, Lei Ling in tow. Lok'Tara had Brutus, Judas, and Angelica at her heels; a few murmured commands and they scattered, sniffing their way through the disaster area, looking for people Fennek might have missed… or, more grimly, might have been beyond Fennek or Lok'Tara's ability to find.

Fennek was scurrying out into the center of the collapsed mall, Fidget and Gidget bounding at his sides. He arrived just in time to see them pull out the first bloody mess that used to be a human being…

Why was he doing this?

Time crawled painfully as they retrieved the living and the dead from the first layer of debris. Fennek was finding himself frustrated. Beyond his spotting ability he was of little use; Lok'Tara was in there, shifting slabs of building of alarming size with her bare hands. But his childlike size meant he could contribute little to the brute effort of shifting concrete and iron and brick. Worse, he could still see those sparks further below… some of them flickering dangerously… as he watched he saw two of them flicker out.

Then the debris shifted.

"Everyone get clear!" Mick yelled. Everyone hastily backpedaled, getting off the rubble as it shifted and groaned, plumes of dust rising up. After several seconds the shifting stopped, but Mick swore a blue streak. "Some of it must be unstable below," he said. "It's going to be the Devil to move it now without causing a cave-in..."

"There's still people down there," Fennek informed him. He could see one cluster of lights; a family…? They were huddled together so close they overlapped in his senses. "They won't last long if we don't get to them."

"We don't dare try to shift it by hand anymore," Mick said. "We gotta get a crane or something to LIFT it off, piece by piece, like the Devil's own Jenga game." He spit. "We go out there we could bring it all down..."

Fennek heard Fidget and Gidget chirping in his mind. The two ferrets, untrained as they were, were still bonded to him and followed his lead-- they'd been in and out of the debris, trying to help the workers spot the living and the dead.

Down?

Down in holes?

Small holes?

Gidget dig.

Fidget dig more!

Dig dig.

Squeeze in.

Fit in.

Bring out!

"You're too heavy," Fennek said, even as his old self screamed in confusion at him. "I'm not." He scurried back out on the ruin pile.

"Boy--!"

But he was already moving. It had sunk in just a moment ago; one of the skills that had been downloaded into his shiny new brain was mining. What he'd overlooked before was that mining was more than just finding shiny rocks and digging them up. It was working in caves, and in mines. It was subterranean work… knowing how to shore up stone, and spot pockets of poison gas and cave-ins before they could happen. An Azeroth miner had a literally supernatural feel for stone and earth that a Terran miner would have traded his union membership card for. All that knowledge had been filed away in Fennek's head, just waiting for him to poke at it.

He could feel the lay of the rubble beneath him, tell which stones and slabs and I-beams were load-bearing, which were precariously balanced, how far apart they were and how they stacked together… there was indeed a room-sized pocket directly below; he could feel there was a passageway down to it as well.

He sat there, analyzing the stone and dirt and debris, trying to pick out a course of action. Fidget and Gidget took his scrutiny for a command and promptly wriggled their way in. Cursing he pulled out a light, grabbed one of the ropes that were lying about and crawled in after them.

It wasn't a tight squeeze, but it was definitely claustrophobic. He heard a muted scream ahead; it occurred to him that the sight of two economy-sized carpet sharks squeezing into one's space might not be a comforting one. "It's okay, they're service animals!" he shouted. There weren't any further screams, so he assumed he'd been heard.

He finally made it to the pocket. His head popped out into the open space, and he promptly took a chunk of brick between the eyes. "Owwww!"

"It's a dingo!" a little kid's voice screeched.

Right. Australia. "I'm not a dingo!" he snapped, rubbing his forehead.

"I-- I think it's a Cape, Jamie," a maternal voice said.

Fennek opened his eyes. It was what he'd expected, a family of three-- a boy about ten years old, his mother and his father, all huddled in one end of a space maybe four feet high and six feet long that had once been the corner of a room. A pair of crossed I-beams had fallen just right, forming a peaked roof over their little sanctuary. The son looked okay, the mother too… filthy and a bit scraped up but otherwise okay. Dear old Dad was a bit worse for wear, with what looked like a broken arm and leg.

For some reason the boy looked familiar. "I'm Fennek," he said. "I'm a hero of the Alliance."

He wasn't sure whether that sounded cool, or retarded, or both.

"You're gonna be okay," he said. "We're gonna get you out of here." There was a faint rumble as some of the ruins shifted; dust sifted down.

What the HELL am I doing here??

He looked into the boy's eyes. He was a thin little stick of a kid, with dark curly hair and wide eyes. With a shock Fennek realized why he looked so familiar. it wasn't just his face, though give or take a bit the kid could have been a ringer for himself just a few years ago…. it was his expression. He'd seen it in the mirror countless times when he was that age, in the rare unguarded moments when nobody else was watching. Fear.

Alec, nee Jean-Paul Vasil was more than familiar with fear. His father, the villain known as Heartbreaker, had used his Cape powers of emotion manipulation on his children… used fear and terror and despair as a form of punishment, and when those didn't serve he resorted to more brutish methods. He had never been subtle about it either. Since running away from his father's little cult compound, Alec hadn't felt anything to match what his father had inflicted on him--

Until yesterday, when the Endbringer sirens had gone off. He'd found himself climbing aboard that bus. The entire ride, his heart had been pounding with terror every bit as intense and unrelenting as the artificial agony his father had inflicted on him; fear so bad, so merciless that you wished you could die, just to make the fear stop. He'd thought he'd never feel fear that horrible ever again... It had been an awful epiphany, that ordinary people could feel such horrible, all-consuming terror perfectly naturally all the time. No psychopath, psychic Father to flee from; no empowered siblings to resist; no powers-based immunity… or self-destructing, burned out emotional synapses-- to take the edge of the pain.

He looked in the kid's eyes and saw himself at six years old; powerless. In terror and misery, trying to hide it and failing. And his only hope was that somehow, someone somewhere would eventually make it stop.

He knew what he was doing here.

He reached out and put one fuzzy hand on the kid's shoulder. "You'll be okay. I promise."

Healing aura flowed through the air, rippling and splashing like water, quenching pain effortlessly. "Thank you," the aboriginal woman said in relief, relaxing back in her cot for the first time since Lei Ling and Shen had laid eyes on her. The burns on her arms were already on a swift mend.

When they had first walked in, Shen had taken note that slightly over half the injured had been, to put it cautiously, of native Australian descent. He carefully watched Lei Ling's reaction; she caught him watching and bristled up. "What?"

Shen manned up and pulled her aside by the elbow. "This isn't going to be a problem, is it?" he said, nodding his head in the direction of the patients.

"Not unless you MAKE it a problem," she hissed under her breath, jerking her arm out of his grasp. "Ophelia didn't have any problem healing--" she shot a glance to make sure noone was listening-- " 'others.'"

"Yeah but you aren't her. So: are all these 'others' going to be a problem for you?" He stared her in the eye.

"No!" she hissed. "Now can we quit jerking around about how the little remedial ex-E88 needs to be babysat around anyone not white and just get to work?" Chastened, Shen backed off and looked to the head nurse.