Ignition

The next few days were hectic. Even ignoring school, I had to work with Etelinda on buying up the warehouses near the docks, with Sherrie on getting the apartment ready, clearing the new tenants with Debra and her new assistants, who were also clearing new patients for pre-emptive bookings faster than ever.

Still, I wanted to get people moving in by the end of the month, which was in less than a week, and I wanted warehouses cleared up so that I could establish a formal relationship with the Travellers.

In good news, while I still couldn't hack the PRT's main database, I did manage to tap into their console and their security systems. That meant that I had eyes in the building, and more importantly, in their planning sessions. Unlike the PRT, I didn't have access to police reports to try and figure out where capes were. I usually only found out from PHO half an hour later at best. Maybe if I got lucky and someone was live-posting, but both of the last two times that happened I was in the middle of healing people and I couldn't get away in time.

So, I was starting to become aware of the rough movements of the main gangs. The ABB seemed to be consolidating, and seemed to be enforcing a sort of blockade against what used to be Merchant territory.

The Empire, however, had seemingly been spurred into action by the dissolution of the Merchants. Their members had begun descending into the southern part of what used to be Merchant Territory. It was mostly unpowered gangers though, with the capes only being sighted in short confrontations against the remains of Merchant drug dens, or protecting Empire drug shipments as the more co-ordinated splinters of the Merchants attempted to restock by raiding the Empire.

Speaking of the Merchants, the PRT did manage to ship all three of the capes to a holding facility that was a part of Northwood State Penitentiary while they were awaiting trial. In the meantime, the remains of the gang were… mostly collapsing in on itself. Without Squealer to bring in new supplies, most of the Merchants had devolved into a series of smaller groups roughly following the lieutenants that Skidmark used to distribute drugs to the unpowered members of the gangs.

Those had mostly been going after the Empire, with a lot of gang-fighting taking place just south of down town. The smarter ones seemed to be attempting to skip town, heading in the direction of suspected drug labs out in the more rural parts of the state.

They were quite a few outliers though. While the PRT was having a harder time tracking them, my habit of hiring African American and Latino people to avoid gang ties had unintentionally turned me into a safe exit point for a bunch of now ex-merchants.

There was basically a mass migration of minorities moving north, towards the docks and my neighbourhoods. Etelinda had already received a lot of news from those people asking when the redevelopment here would be done. I spoke to her, and we noted that, while probably not the nicest places I could build, I could do low-income housing towards the eastern part of my current properties without causing problems for the plans I already had closer to the clinic and the old mall.

The ex-merchants were going to be a bigger problem though. While the wider minority community was probably going to be a pretty good investment overall - a lot of small business owners, tradesmen and a lot of civil workers - there were a lot of drug addicts that had left the merchants.

The first wave would probably be relatively easy to deal with. According to Virginia and Reynaldo, a lot of the merchants who had already been trying to kick the habit had taken the capture of the Merchant leadership as a sign and a lot of them were previously saving money for rehab. With my contacts through my guards, I could probably deal with them fairly easily, taking on a bulk discount rate for healing them and then directing them towards some of the rehab clinics I was already in talks with to provide healing services to.

It was the ones that were less interested in improving their lot in life that would be a problem. I would have to put in a lot of work to deal with the remains of the Merchants.

I would probably have to accelerate my plans for a private security company. I thought about it for a moment before shooting off my guards an email, asking if they knew any veterans that were looking for work, and to pass their contact details to Debra.

With my new contract power, I should be able to screen them for gang ties fairly easily, so I shot off another message to Debra asking her to send me any resumes that were put aside since we couldn't prove that they didn't have any gang ties. I wouldn't be revealing that power just yet, I just let her know that I was looking into alternate background checks and I wanted to see who I could begin work on.

Though, it wouldn't be terrible to look into a few of the more promising candidates even before the whole contract thing. I was going to need a lot of people to properly manage the expansion into the docks, as well as my commercial area soon.

I sighed as I put away the last of the paperwork, the stacks sorting themselves into files and floating over to the safe on the other side of the room. I stretched and walked around for a moment, mentally running through my homework and getting it all worked out in my head so that I could just write it out later.

I twirled my rod, I had been working on it to pass time when I was healing and it was now large enough that I basically had to limit it to my costumed identity. I could have passed it off as a stylus or something before, but it was now solidly in baton range, and I was getting better at making the carbon structure with practice. Before long, I should have a decent length of the stuff.

I should probably also figure out how to colour it. The black rod is probably not the best for branding. A nice gold to match the accents on my costume would be nice.

As I worked on my homework and studied the Thin Film Effect, I looked out over the streets, The area around here had changed a lot since I had bought it only a month ago. I could see demolished houses, the scrap already having been carted away, cleared for new construction.

I was actually starting to like the view, a little. Or, at least, that I could see the Empire thugs coming. Hmm… A park over there wouldn't be terrible.

Still, the day was coming to a close so I opened up the window and floated up to the roof. I took a moment to lounge on the little deck chair up there, staring off into the sunset.

Which was clearly the best time for someone to try and kill me.

I sighed, as my automated barrier stopped the sniper-round in mid air, and turned to look in the direction it came from. There, floating in the distance was a small floating platform and using my powers, I could see three people on it.

Victor grunted and let go of the sniper rifle, grabbing a machine gun of some sort to use against me. I began to float in their direction, keeping an eye as I got close enough to Target them.

Their powers were relatively interesting, Kreig's power was actually pretty similar to Assault's though it didn't have the reserves that the hero's did. A trade-off for being able to produce his own kinetic energy, I suppose.

Rune's was pretty simple, though I was interested to see that her power's Target implementation was quite different to mine. I'd still argue mine was better, given it's longer range, but natural powers didn't seem to be limited like mine were, in the whole charges with levels that need to be spent precisely.

Victor was the one I was most concerned with, since I didn't want to risk him taking my skills, if for no other reason than letting him figure out what my power did. I could see a part that was surprisingly similar to a Tinker repository, which was fed into by a scanner, and a separate part that would cause brain damage in the part that was being scanned.

I batted away a continuous stream of fire as I sent the weights spinning off at them, diving down to distract them as the near-invisible line hurled through the air. They almost didn't see it coming, Victor yelling for Rune to drop them as I dove to recover my net.

I grabbed a little extra scrap material, and then rose to the skies. I took a moment to look around, refusing to be caught off guard by any other Empire capes as I began to shape a cloud of haze to surround me. I pinned the particles in place with my Projector, carefully constructing a grid of particles that scattered and refracted the light around me, leaving me at the centre of a strange shifting mass of colours.

Deep within the iridescent cloud, I began flickering with light, my Eye allowing me to watch as the Empire capes were forced to shield their eyes. I began to act more defensively, avoiding attacking them as I pinned them down and prevented them from escaping.

I also stopped them from calling home. More scrap was twisted into a simple coil of superconductors and supercapacitors crafted from exotic carbon chemistry. The small handful of bombs charged from my reserves were launched with extreme speed.

Distracted by the light, they ignored the dangers of the projectiles that were seemingly bound to miss until it was too late.

Carefully calibrated protein structure failed, collapsing the little EMP grenades as they got close enough. Little arcs of electricity bursting into the air. Rune was forced to dive as her costume caught fire, the battery of her phone melting under the sudden influx of current.

With their transport distracted, it was much easier for my second throw with my net to hit. Unfortunately, I quickly learned why Kreig was in the picture. As the netting hit them, he focused, using his telekinesis to shift the bindings to pull them off of himself and Victor.

I'd have to work on this a little longer.

I swung back towards my clinic reaching out for my 'stun gun' I hadn't thought about it before the fight, especially since I hadn't used it since the fight with the Merchants. But it should be available. My feet hit the lintel under the window and the pistol-grip of the little device flew into my hand.

I dove back into the iridescent blur as it caught up with me, racing back out to catch the Empire Thugs. Thankfully, they were still where I left them, distracted by cleaning up the damage done to their costumes by their damaged phones even as I got within range.

Kreig went down first, the twin lasers I used to channel the charge coming down from the sky as I let loose my first shot.

Victor on the other hand had managed to do something to his grenade launcher, so when I knocked away his return fire, it exploded right next to me, forcing me to put up a barrier to avoid getting hurt.

Still, it was all he was able to do before another pair of lasers lanced down and took him out. Rune, the only one left standing. I let her run, letting her move out of Victor's area of influence as I made sure that the two older capes stayed down, sending nets of Cord to tangle them up even as I stunned Krieg again as he slowly began to shift.

I floated down to Kreig and made sure to secure his restraints with a few solid knots, even as my taser lanced out again to take Rune down. The stunned cape collapsed to the ground. I floated over to her, pausing only to grab some more scrap to create a sticky resin to bind Victor's limbs together. The stuff would rot in a day or two, but I didn't want to risk getting too close to him, so I couldn't just tie him up.

Rune just kind of gave up as she came to, feeling the Cord tighten down on her arms as I bound them together.

I saw her mark the ground underneath herself, but I pressed the ends of my taser against the small of her back and she settled down.

I ignored her slurs as I picked her up and hoisted her over my shoulder, tapping into my phone and calling the PRT to pick them up. I kept scanning the distance, keeping an eye out for any other members of the Empire, but the coast seemed to be clear for now.

I dumped Rune next to Kreig and stunned him again, before checking on the knots making sure that he hadn't manage to make any progress at escaping. Still, it seemed that the fine control needed to take apart the knots was beyond the scope of his power, since he still seemed to be securely hog-tied. I could see Victor struggle under the compass of Resin sticking him to the ground, even as I began to create a little pouch of solvent.

I'll leave the clean up to the Protectorate, I think.

Before long, I heard the hum of Armsmaster's motorbike as he zipped down the road.

"Halcyon."

I nodded at Armsmaster as he dismounted his bike, "Armsmaster, It's good to see you."

He stared at the three of them, "I see you managed to deal with the three of them."

"It was difficult. Honestly, I'm quite happy that Purity seems to have split off from the group. It would have been much harder for me to deal with them if they had a blaster."

Armsmaster grunted, "It has gotten a lot better. We can't really do anything about Purity wile the statute of limitations is still open for her crimes, but surprisingly enough, we can't link her to any murders, so as long as she continues to keep her nose clean for another four years… well, we have better things to do than bother her right now."

"I wonder what Kaiser did to drive her away. I mean, Purity was a major part of the Empire's offensive power."

He grunted, but even as he did. I was busy with other things.