interlude 3

Furor 3.09

I stepped over an unconscious Empire grunt as I carried yet another sack full of prescription pain killers to be tied to Angelica, which I affixed right next to a sack I'd filled and marked earlier. Kaiser had surprisingly few guards posted at this "drugs and guns" hidey-hole--a warehouse full of large jars, bulk boxes, and crates. It probably had something to do with Dad. He and the Raiders had, well, raided a couple Empire hideouts over the last few days. He hadn't captured any capes yet, but from what he'd told me the last time he'd talked a lot of Kaiser's non-powered minions had been turned over to the police. The Empire must be spread pretty thin.

"How many non-powered people are there in Empire Eighty-eight, anyway?" I asked.

"Who cares," Reagent answered as he was holding up a large jar of pills, "all that matters is that I think we're winning. "

"I'm just… This feels too easy," I said, "I mean, we haven't run into any capes and Kaiser hasn't lost any since we rescued the dogs." In fact, I'm not even sure any Empire capes have been seen since the meeting at the bar… Though that might just be because I never leave the base, so they could have been spotted and I just haven't been there. "I mean, I don't think my Dad took down that many thugs, so it's not like the capes have to be moved elsewhere, so where is everybody?" I mean, Tattletale had said that this place had lighter security than other Empire Stash Houses right now,

"You're overthinking it, dork," Regent answered again. "This has got a bunch of syllables. My-co-something Mo-fe-something," he said, "what is it?"

"A drug I haven't adapted to yet," I answered. Regent responded by dropping the large jar into his own bag.

Bitch was prying the lid off a crate. "I thought they were keeping guns here." Tattletale had said that Coil would buy any of the guns we took from the Empire. He didn't particularly need them, she'd explained, but he could apparently resell them elsewhere. Unfortunately, for a warehouse that we'd believed would have firearms and illicitly obtained pharmaceuticals that could be used for my adaption or maybe recycled for tinkering in some cases….

"The only guns have been the ones on the assholes," Bitch continued. It was a bit odd, that we kept opening crates expecting guns and just kept finding more drugs.

"Tattletale \sometimes gets things wrong sometimes, it's not a big deal.," Grue explained, "It's not like the guns were a big priority, this is mostly just taking Kaiser's merchandise to see if there's anything Empress can use." And cost Kaiser some money. "Now does anyone have any idea why the Empire is moving so much HGH?" He was looking at the third crate in a row of the stuff. "I know there's probably a black market for it but it's not the first thing you'd think of when people talk about selling prescription drugs on the street. I can't see quantities like this moving very well." It was a bit odd. I guess it was useful for body building, I think, but we hadn't found any anabolic steroids here, either.

"Yeah." Other than the pain killers nothing here seemed that likely to sell on the streets of Brockton. Even the pain killers were things like prescription strength versions of over the counter medicine, not opiates. Everything else was hormones and crap. I mean, I don't think Neo-Nazis would sell therapeutic estrogen and testosterone on the black market, but there'd been some here. "It's almost like nothing they keep here is that valuable in their eyes." I mean, I knew they had better stuff. I'd gotten most of my drugs from the Merchants but I'd scored some prescription opiates from the Empire once or twice. Honestly, I'd never heard of half of this shit before. "But none of it is stuff I've used before so… Wait a second."

"Oh. Shit." Grue had realized it too.

"What?" Regent asked.

"I don't exactly keep it a secret that I adapt to everything that happens to my body," I began explaining, "and assuming that Kaiser isn't stupid, he's probably done his homework on me since we took down Hookwolf. This stuff here… it's not exactly the kind of prescription drugs that usually get sold illegally, but it is all stuff that I haven't taken yet--it's stuff that might not be that valuable to Kaiser, but stuff that might be valuable to me."

"In other words, it's bait. Kaiser set a trap for Empress," Grue finished for me, "and we walked right into it. Empress, that bag you marked…"

"Full of stuff I can use to get my latest secret project done faster."

Grue nodded, "Then everybody, finish bagging what you've got, we're getting out of here before the entire Empire comes down on us."

Tattletale came out from a side room that we'd assumed the Empire grunts were using as an office. She was stuffing a stack of papers into a manilla envelope. "Guys, someone high up at Medhal is in on this. Once we take out Kaiser we could probably extort a small fortune out of Max Anders and his..." She took one look at us and realized what Grue and I had. "Well, shit."

"Exactly," Grue answered. Acting quickly, we all finished affixing what we'd already taken to Angelica, Brutus, and Judas and climbed aboard the dogs to get the hell out of dodge.

We managed to get out and get a few blocks away with no problem. "You sure it was a trap?" Regent asked from where he rode behind Grue."I mean, nothing's happened yet. Maybe it was just a shitty..."

I didn't catch what he said next because I sensed danger. I tapped Bitch on the shoulder and she whistled, causing the dogs to suddenly stop just in time for the street a few feet in front of us to explode in a flash of light.

"...I'm going to shut up now," Regent finished. Bitch mumbled about that being a miracle.

I scrambled off of Brutus and turned to see a figure with brightly glowing white hair in a white costume floating in mid-air. Purity.

"Get out of here," I said to the others. I could tell from her feelings and from how the blast had hit the ground that Purity had been aiming for the Brutus, Bitch, and me, not all of us. Even then, it didn't she cared about Bitch, so that meant that she was only gunning for me.

Grue began to say something, but I didn't catch it because Tattletale shouted over him: "No! You are not going to do the stupid self-sacrificing thing." Bitch looked ready to add her own protests but I cut them off.

"She is literally only after me! Just go!"

Bitch suddenly made some kind of signal and the dogs took off, bounding around the blasted part of the street. Man, Grue felt pissed. I wasn't looking forward to the conversation we'd be having later.

Purity landed behind me. Not too close, not enough that she couldn't get back in the air before I got to her, but it was still odd considering her attempt at sniping me a moment ago. "That was pretty noble of someone like you."

"Cut the crap," I replied, "we both know you're only after me. Keeping them out of it is just common courtesy. It's the least I owe them." I turned back to look at the blaster. "You left the Empire." At least that's what I'd put together from comments about her at the meeting. "Why come back just because Kaiser's throwing a fit?"

"I have everything to gain from killing you," she answered and I suddenly felt something flicker across my psychic senses, a name, something important, "and everything to lose by refusing."

I nodded. "So," I asked, "who's 'Aster?' "

And then her face contorted into a snarl as she flew into a rage. That's what I'd hoped for, that was the kind of important it felt like. In hindsight, however, I probably should have expected her to blast me at point blank range.

After exhuming myself from the rubble of a warehouse I'd been blasted through and shaking the cobwebs from my head, I noted that Purity's blasts were not quite lasers. Kid Win's lasers had burned. Purity's blasts hit like a truck.

I got my bearings and took note of the situation. Purity was back in the air. There were a lot of warehouses and other similarly sized buildings in the area, but from here I couldn't tell if any of them were inhabited or not, so jumping from roof to roof after her or using them for cover wasn't an option yet. I had to jump a few yards to avoid another blast. I only ever seem to get emotionally exhausted after big fights and--Oh hey, a larva finally spawned. No, I needed to focus on the task at hand. Maybe I could wear her down with attrition? Or, a fight between me and her is bound to draw attention--I dodged to the right. Maybe if I hold out long enough the PRT will show up and I can run away… but then they might bring the foam. I did not think this through.

I jumped and rolled forward to dodge yet another blast. Afterward, I took a minute to check the scales and carapace on my torso. My rib-armor was cracked, just slightly, and shifted ever so much when I prodded it. Now that I was aware of the damage, I could more easily feel it mending but that Purity could damage it at all after everything I'd been subjected to… I didn't need to win. I just needed to last long enough to get away, so a few more hits shouldn't be too big a problem.

I jumped and dodged and danced up and down the street to avoid more and more blasts while Purity flew back and forth over the street, out of my reach. The street was getting pretty torn up, maybe I could toss a chunk of debris at her and knock her out of the sky? I found a large chunk of asphalt that had been blasted loose when Purity had tried to sneak attack us. I grabbed it at my first opportunity, then after another minute of narrowly avoiding Purity's assault, I was able to chuck it at her. She proceeded to blast it to pieces.

I was starting to realize why exactly Purity had been sent to kill me. She was deadly from far outside my range, and it was at this time that I wished that I had a spike-launcher or a psychic laser or something other than throwing debris on the ranged combat front.

Okay, I couldn't fight Purity like this, and I was kind of an idiot for trying to. I was basically just running around like a chicken with its head cut off right now. By now I was pretty sure that the buildings were empty, so I jumped and rolled past an other blast and ducked into an alley between a warehouse and what might have been another warehouse.

There was a dumpster about halfway through the alley to my right, so I hopped onto it and used it to get a boost to jump and climb on top of the one I knew for sure was a warehouse--I hope the owner doesn't mind a few claw marks--and then I flipped backwards into a leap towards Purity's emotional aura just as she began flying above the alley. I'd planned to tackle her and grab on…

...But her reflexes were better than I'd thought and I was blasted over the building and back into the broken street. I had yet to adapt to Purity's surprisingly solid blasts of light, and it hurt like a bitch. I was starting to wish that I had a power with less raw… power to it and more versatility. Like telekinesis that wasn't just a pulse. Or energy constructs. Hell, I'd even take something like bug control--in particular, a swarm of bees would be pretty useful right now--if it meant my strategic options were more than variations of charge and hope for the--

She blasted me again and I'm pretty sure the impact to my chest stopped one of my hearts. I flipped over and start to push myself back up and another blast hit me in the back--I heard my carapace crack, but I couldn't feel it… I'm not sure if that was a good thing or not. The blast had forced me down and I'd hit my nose on the ground and now I was now bleeding pretty badly from it.

I was seriously starting to wish that I'd thought this through better. I had managed to turn back over and sit up to face Purity just in time to see another one of her blasts heading for me. On instinct, I closed my eyes and threw my hands up… Then I heard something that wasn't me exploded and opened my eyes to see shattered rubble just floating in the air between Purity and I. I moved my arm a bit to the right, the rubble moved likewise. I thought about it moving to the left and after a second it moved back to where it had been… Oh, this? This changed things considerably.

Purity was staring at me and the debris between us in what felt like shock. I took the opportunity to stand up and, now that I knew where they were and how big they were, flex my telekinetic muscles a bit--I lifted up a good chunk of asphalt that Purity had blasted from the street earlier, a chunk of wall from the building I'd been blasted through earlier, and part of a beam from the same. Okay so the pile of rubble from Purity's blast seemed to count as one thing, but… I could keep everything up and once, but stuff kind of got wobbly if I focused too much on one thing. I kind of pushed and sent the rubble flying forward towards Purity. The flying, glowing neo-nazi was shaken from her daze and quickly flew up and over the flying debris, but it seemed that three objects were easier to control.

The Blaster flew past the floating chunk of asphalt, so I pulled it and after a bit of spurting if flew right into the back of the white-clad villain. Purity was knocked for a loop but managed to keep airborne, and my control over the chunk of wall and wooden beam became better still… I hmm'd. I was a bit curious about something. I brought the piece of wall slowly to the ground near myself and stepped onto it, carefully, to see if it would hold my weight. When I was sure that the bit of broken wall wouldn't crumble beneath my feet, I put a bit of focus on it and lifted it up and--Oh, I was going to have fun with this later.

With my makeshift hoverboard, I flew up to Purity just as the other villainess was able to right herself. I brought the wooden beam from the warehouse up next to me and set it spinning, the slow "whump whump" providing ambiance. I had to close my eyes--looking at her glowing form from this close hurt, but I think it helped me in this case "Do you want to keep going?" I asked the woman, "because I'm just going to keep getting stronger and you're going to run out of energy before I do and if we keep fighting after that point… Well, this 'Aster' has clearly got you concerned about something and I don't think you being dead is gonna help with that."

I felt a twinge of fear and--there it was again, that feeling I got whenever I was reading someone's mind. I grabbed onto it and I wasn't letting it go because God damn it not being able to do it at will was irritating. I grabbed and I pushed and… Oh. Well, Lisa was going to be disappointed.

I opened my eyes again and forced myself to look right into hers. "Look, Kayden," there was a hint of shock in her aura, "I'll cut a deal with you. If you take Aster and Theo and get the fuck out of my city, I'll let you leave unharmed, because honestly if I can get one of you bastards out of my tendrils without beating the shit out of them first I'm all for it." I made the wooden beam speed up just a bit. "Or I could kill you now and they'd go back to their dad. I'm sure you'd hate that." I gave her a wide, toothy grin to punctuate that, and felt both fear and honest consideration coming from her. Then I noticed something. "Think it over quickly, there are about four people coming and--" one of them suddenly speed up considerably. A ball of light passed right by me, turned into a blond woman in a white and orange costume, who then produced a sword of light and stabbed it into my abdomen. I lost focus on my telekinesis and fell to the ground as the woman flew past Purity and turned back into a ball of orange-yellow light. Moments later, the second of the four approaching presences, a blond young woman in a white dress--Demolition Dallon--flew over me, looked down, I sensed a burst of terror from her, and then she charged after Purity, who'd taken off as soon as I'd gone down.

I took a second to assess my changed situation--there was a hole in my abdomen that kind of burned, so my pain response had come back a bit, and I couldn't feel my legs… A quick check revealed that I was bleeding from my back and my front. "Don't move!" came a masculine voice from behind me, I turned as best as I could to see a man in white and green holding a ball of light, flashbang, with Panacea a safe behind him. The entire Dallon Branch of New Wave had come to crash my fight with Purity.

"I can't," I replied, "your psycho wife cut my spine." Flashbang did not respond and it was a bit weird. There was a touch of apathy undercutting all of his emotions… It made them hard to read, kind of like Alec's, but not as scary and wrong.

"We've already called the PRT," Panacea added, "there will be an armored transport van here to take you in soon." Amy Dallon's emotions were more interesting. They felt a mix of fear, pity, confusion, loathing both self and otherwise, and something else that I couldn't quite place but that made my skin crawl. "If you promise not to run I might be able to reattach your spinal cord."

I rolled my eyes. She was probably counting on how I'd reacted to her specifically at the Bank as insurance that I wasn't going to hurt her, but did she really think I'd just stay put long enough for them to turn me in?"Are you going to have a panic attack and question my humanity again?" No response.

I could feel Glory Girl coming back. "Purity got away," she said as she landed. She felt like she was lying, and I could pick up a taste of concern in her. Every so often I felt a twinge of terror from her--I think she was looking my way each time she did it.

So there we were, for a few silent moments, and then Brandish returned. She just felt angry. The heroine walked up to where I lay prone and placed the tip of one of her hard-light blades so close to my nose that I could almost feel it. "So, that's where your daughter gets it from."

"Shut up." The cape-mom said in response.

"No, seriously," I said, "instead of stabbing the Cape blasting up the street, you stab the one trying to convince her to leave."

"You're the bigger threat, and you can take it better than she could." Brandish answered. "Besides, Purity isn't the one who traumatized my children."

"Gee-gee started it." I answered, "if she hadn't hurt Bitch, I wouldn't have had to show her what happens to people fond of excessive force."

"You're not one to talk, are you 'Empress,' after what you've done?" She laughed bitterly. "The agent whose arm you ripped off--

"I keep telling you people, that was an accident!" God damn it, I tear one arm off, by accident, after weeks… or was it months? After a while of being hunted like a dog…

Brandish ignored me. "And the way you brutalized Glory Girl and the Wards--especially Aegis

"That was also an accident."

"Yeah, keep saying that," Brandish said, "everything you did was an accident. I'm sure that'll go over well at trial"

"Okay, once I learned he was okay it was deliberate, but that was his fault." Seriously, if he'd just stayed the fuck down and let my friends and I go. "Besides, he could take it," I said, echoing her own excuse back at her.

"And I've heard that you ate part of Hookwolf."

"And part of Lung," I added, "and if you're counting just blood I've also eaten part of one of the armored porn stars that Kaiser has, not sure which one, and some of Barbie over there." Well, not in that order. "So far, I think I prefer dragon meat over white supremacists and dumbasses."

I felt disgust bloom up in Brandish, turning her anger into revulsion. It wasn't a pleasant tasting emotion. Then she looked me dead in the eyes. "You're awfully relaxed," she said, "considering that your spree is at an end. I mean, between the violence you've committed, your rampage at Winslow, the narcotics you're known to have stolen away with for who knows what purpose, how strong you're getting… Your similarities to The Siberian--"

"Wait, what!?"

"Cannibalistic nudist with a high-end brute power," Bradish said in a condescending tone. "All you need are the stripes." I glared back up at her, she was starting to legitimately piss me off now. "All of that, and how you've managed to weasel out of trouble so far… You'll be lucky if you don't end with a one-way ticket to the Birdcage."

Something, something about the dead seriousness in her tone chilled me. Those assholes would do it, too… So I felt out and tried grabbing her the way I'd grabbed the debris earlier. Her eyes widened and she began radiating shock and fear as she was lifted from the ground against her will. And then I threw her. Hard. Brandish went flying up and away at high speeds--I saw her turn back into a ball once she was far away, and Glory Girl, radiating panic, flew after her with a shout of "Mom!"

I still couldn't feel my legs, but at some point, a tightness in my abdomen had formed and the bleeding stopped. I tried to flip over and push myself up just in time to see Flashbang, clearly radiating fear and anger, toss his ball of light at me--I lifted my arm, leaving one to support my weight, and threw a chunk of debris to block it. The ball exploded, closer to him than to me, and I noticed Panacea was knocked back by the blast. She must have run up closer when I threw her mom. Flashbang seemed to be immune to his own power, so I had to push him over myself with another flex of my psychic muscles.

And then I pulled myself as fast as I could out of the ruined street. I'd memorized the storm sewers, I had to since that had been my main way of getting around, and there was an entrance in the next street over, if I could just get down there without anyone in New Wave seeing me then I could get back to the lair and… damn it! Apparently, my spine was one of those things that took a long time to heal and my limp legs were dragging behind me. Oh god, it was going to take hours to get home.

I'd managed to get to the other street, and pulled myself to a grate that could be pulled up with special machinery or by anyone with superhuman strength--and slip in before the remaining two Dallons recovered. I kind of… fell into the storm sewer and landed on my back. It had rained the other day so the sewer was nice and wet and I could kind of slide and push myself along. After ten minutes of that, I stopped and tried to think for a minute. I was getting tired. I couldn't sense anyone else down here, so I think I was safe, but I was getting tired. Half my body was dead weight and I didn't have anything I could levitate on.

I had to wonder if I could levitate my body just by myself. Flying… being able to fly under my own power would be cool. I tried it out, to try and get a feel for my own body but… maybe if I applied a consistent amount of force below--I crashed head first into the roof of the sewer tunnel. Okay, less force… and maybe some above me just in case… Fuck, that wasn't working either… I can't help but think this would be easier to figure out if there was more urgency.

Eventually, I managed to kind of sort of get up off the ground, my limp feet were treading water a bit, and after some trial and error, I was able to kind of push myself along the tunnels until I made it back to the entrance of my lair.

I could sense the others. They were in my room. Once I no longer had the framework of a sewer tunnel, my makeshift levitation power didn't quite work anymore, so I was back to pulling my way around with my arms. The other's turned to me and Rachel immediately came to my aid, the brutish redhead doing her best to lift me up and support my weight. "You look like shit. What happened?" She asked.

"New Wave crashed the fight," I explained, "Brandish is an ass, lightsabers burn like hell, and now I can't feel my legs." I could sense anger building in her. "Don't worry," I said to cut her off, "I'll be fine as soon as I get the Cocoon up and running. Did you bring the bag I marked?"

"It's on the table," Brian said, "but first we've got to talk." I noticed that Angelica was down here, and she was still fully ramped up… that was odd.

"Look, about earlier," I said, "I'm sorry for sending your off. It's just… She was only after me, and I don't want you all getting hurt for my sake, not after what you've done for me." Alec looked like he'd wanted to question something but Lisa raised a hand to cut him off.

"And we need to talk about that, too," Brian said, "but I meant that we need to talk about those things." He pointed to my hatchery, where a pair of larva--great big maggoty centipede-like zerg--were crawling around, feeding on creep and making a sucking sound, not unlike a boot getting stuck in the mud. "That… Is a step up from your other bugs."

"They're not done yet," I said, and raised a hand to fully plug them into the hivemind. They glowed and shimmered with the blue of my psychic aura and then their senses became mine. Then, I gave the order for them to metamorphose into their mature forms--one a drone, the other zergling. That part would take a bit though, so once they'd entered their pupal phases I turned back to the others

"...You know that you have to be very careful with something like this, right?" Brian asked. "The PRT doesn't like Masters or Tinkers who make living things like this, not after Ellisburg."

"I know," I said, "I looked into it as soon as I could. They can't breed on their own and the hatcheries only produce Larva when I set them too. As long as I don't spawn like a million at once we shouldn't be in any more trouble than we already are." As an afterthought, I added, "Besides, I'm not planning to show them off to just anyone for a while yet."

The larva I'd set to become a drone hatched into a long bodied, membraned leg-winged, crab claw equipped worker-zerg. I smiled and had it float over to my table, where I'd set it to work organizing the drugs we'd taken and put into my specially marked satchel--drugs that I could repurpose to help finish the Cocoon. The drone smiled, with a face only a mother could love, at the same time I did

"Look, I trust you," Brian said, "but your stunt earlier… I'm not sure I can trust your judgment right now. Sometimes it doesn't seem like you're thinking things through, or..."

"What Brian is trying to say--" Lisa was cut off as the second gestating larva exploded into a pair of six-limbed, quadrupedal, half-lizard-half insect zerglings. Each of them flexed their weaponized third set of limbs, and one looked at me with a tusky grin… I blinked, it was a bit weird, having so many clear views of the room at once. "Why did that one hatch into two?"

"I have no idea," I answered. It sounded like something to ask Sarah the next time I saw her. "I'm… not gonna spawn many more of that specific one until I know."

"...Anyway, what Brian is trying to say, and I agree with him on this," Lisa continued, "is that if you're to make more than a handful of these things… or if you're going to make more things like them, then for the foreseeable future you should probably run it by either me or him unless it's an emergency or something. It's not that we don't trust you," she said, "it's just that you're playing with fire here and we want to make sure that you're thinking things through."

"Because earlier… and a few other incidents..." Brian was hesitating, almost like he couldn't quite figure out what to say.

"Sometimes, it's like you don't trust us." Lisa said. It felt that this was what Brain had been trying to say… a bit more bluntly than he was going to try to by the feel. It kind of hurt.

"Wha-what do you..."

"Okay, that wasn't the right way to phrase that," Lisa said after a moment.

"No, it wasn't," Brian picked up, "Taylor, we're a team, but sometimes you act like you're still alone. Sometimes, you do things without talking to us. Earlier… If you'd just said "I'm the brute, I'll hold her off," that would be different, but you unilaterally decided that we shouldn't be involved." He sighed. "To be fair, if we had talked about it, it probably would have ended up the same, but still. Just… If you make a mistake, if something you do goes bad, and the rest of us are in danger? Or if you get in serious trouble because you just went and did something without consulting us… Just, for now, it's like Lisa said: Talk with one of us before you make more of those." He gestured to the zerg. "You didn't say they'd be that big."

"That sounds fair," I said, "and I'm sorry". They were my friends, I trusted them… I think. At least, I wanted to. "I think I can get the Cocoon done by tonight and I'm going to need to get that done soon."

"Well, since I don't think I'm needed I'll leave you to it," Alec answered and left. Brian, Rachel, and Lisa stayed with me as I made the drone do what needed to be done--mix a few stimulants with a few hormones and a calcium supplement I'd already had on hand, mix that with some crushed beetles and creep for biomass, and pour that down a shoot in the base of the structure, and so on and so forth in different combinations of different hormones and stimulants and within an hour I had a translucent, human sized chrysalis slowly filling with a clear goo that, if I'd done it right, would speed my evolution and regeneration processes along a bit.

I stripped the bandages from my stump--they'd been more so that I wouldn't have to look at the bone coming out of it than anything else, anyway, and asked the others. "Could one of you do me a favor? Keep an eye on me for a little bit. If… If it looks like I'm struggling or drowning or trying to get out of it, get a knife and cut me out." I'll admit it. I was afraid. After the locker… and the foam… and that trick with Vista's power at the bank, I was afraid of getting into such a cramped space, but I didn't have much choice if I wanted my hand back anytime soon.

"Don't worry," Lisa said, "we will. But relax, you made it, so it's not going to hurt you."

Once the Cocoon was about half full I climbed in through the open top--my legs still weren't working, so Rachel and Brian had had to help me up and into it. Then the top closed after me and I was sealed inside. My nerves were acting up, but I could feel Rachel and Lisa and Brian and even Alec upstairs. Hell, I could see them, through the eyes of my zerglings and drone and guard-bugs. I could feel my zerg too, more intimately than I could sense the others… All of these presences, there was something comforting about them and after a moment and one last deep breath I let the warm goo cover me and fell into a relatively peaceful sleep.Furor Interlude 3

Rune checked the time. A minute to go before the big mission, by her watch, though Fenja was the one who'd call it. Her cousin, Othala, was right behind her and Fenja was with them to the right, with a dozen armed men behind them, the last of them coming out of the nondescript vans they were coming out of as they prepared for their assault.

From what she'd been told on the way, a friend from outside of the Empire had told Kaiser that the PRT was secretly moving Victor, Hookwolf, and his crew outside of the city tonight and that they were moving in eleven minutes. Rune, Othala, and Fenja had an important job--they had to provide a distraction, to draw Protectorate attention away from the transports so that Kaiser and all the others could more easily spring their captured compatriots.

She'd tagged a piece of asphalt that had been... acquired from somewhere, and a car that they'd stolen. Othala would make her invincible, and then she would carry herself and Othala on the asphalt. Then her car and Fenja's great size and strength would be used to absolutely wreck a big building. Othala thought the CEO of the company who owned it was a fag or something, but what it wasn't wasn't exactly that important. They'd start wrecking the place, then one of the men they had with them would use a burner phone to call the PRT and tell them that the Empire's capes were destroying a building--the so called heroes would show up, and then she and Fenja and the men would fight them until they got the call that the mission was successful, and then they'd retreat. From what Rune had heard when the older members of the Empire had spoken, their friend had just asked for some help in kidnapping some bitch in payment.

They weren't the only distraction a couple more were going out to commit random violence against assorted undesirables.

Rune didn't say it out loud, but she felt that the distractions were needed. Purity was supposed to be doing a raid down by the docks, but when they'd all set out for this there had been no sign of the woman, and as far as Rune knew nobody had seen hide or hair of Krieg since Kaiser had asked him to get in touch with their friends in Europe. At least Night and Fog were still with them.

Fenja gave the signal and grew to her full size. Othala worked her magic upon her cousin, and Rune brought them up into the air and prepared to hurl the car... only for it to be blasted away by what seemed to be a loud shout.

All three present Empire capes turned down the street and saw a lion-helmed gladiator rapidly approaching with PRT vans following on his heels. How!? Had they been spotted? Oh, shit, was that retard Schuster here! Had he been given the phone!? Rune quickly turned and... no, nobody down there with an arm in a sling... So why the hell were the heroes here so soon!? Had they been set up!?

They were upon them soon enough and in an instant, Triumph had been joined by the mouse-helmed warrior woman bearing her sword and shield, who proceeded to... point, at the other end of the street and then wave.

Rune twisted her head again and swore loudly. Off in the distance but coming in fast was a pair of military looking vehicles shaped like something that the mutant-slut's father would build, followed by a truck that looked like that race-traitor meth slut's work... and the truck was hauling something big.

Rune heard Gunshots and turned back. The PRT's grunts had piled out of their own vans and deployed their foam against the armed men that the three Empire women had brought with them. One PRT Officer was on the ground, but otherwise… Fenja, too large to be foamed, turned and prepared to turn her massive sword against Triumph, Mouse Protector, and their minions as half a dozen soldiers in bulky powered armor emerged from Bastion's transports, as had the drivers, Bastion and what looked to be that gamer duo. Rune had heard that they were playing at being heroes now and--shit! Leet and Uber had all kinds of flying cameras for that show they did, had they been the ones who spotted them... No, wait, the blue bitch's father hated the PRT, he wouldn't have called... Then the huge thing that the truck had been hauling stood up, the street seeming to shake under its weight.

It was a giant robot. A huge tank on two sturdy legs, with two big ass guns for arms and four more on its back, clad in thick red and silver armor. "Do you like it!?" Shouted up Bastion's modulated voice, "It's called the Thor! We figured you Empire bastards would appreciate it!"

And from behind Rune, Othala spoke up for the first time since they'd came out on the job. "Shit."