ooOoo

Lisa had finished her second cup of coffee and was debating whether it was worth the energy to stand up to get a refill when a notification dinged on her computer. Pulling it up, she saw that their gate had just been opened. The associated live video showed Tenten heading up the walk. The bounce in her step told Lisa that the meeting had been successful. Either that or Lung was dead, but something that big probably would have shown up on one of Lisa's news feeds by now.

Lisa headed downstairs to meet her friend in the entry way, pausing only briefly to refill her coffee mug along the way. She arrived just as Tenten finished kicking off her sandals and changing into a pair of slippers.

"Welcome home," Lisa said.

"It went just like you said," Tenten said, smiling broadly. "He was dancing on the palm of your hand the whole time."

Lisa's answering smile felt a little strained. It was always nice to be praised, although to be fair anticipating Lung's decision hadn't been that difficult. Fenja was one of the few capes that could keep up with him and constrain his actions as he ramped up and also lacked the status or reputation to be considered the sort of respected enemy Lung would reserve for himself to deal with. She also had figured that he would feel it was appropriate to send a female assassin after a female target.

It was hard to feel too joyous when the end result was that she was condemning a woman to death. She'd like to fob off the responsibility on Lung, but of course they never would have presented him with the option if they hadn't known who he was going to pick. Lisa and Tenten were determined to make big changes in the Brockton Bay criminal underworld. If Lung felt blindsided or threatened by those changes he would lash out, and that wouldn't end well for anyone. The whole point of Tenten's visit was to give Lung a feeling of control that would keep him content to stay on the sidelines.

Lisa's plan had been driving toward this moment from the beginning. She feared it would leave a stain on her soul. Honestly, she feared it would be the first of many.

"Fenja," Lisa said, then sighed before forcefully shoving her melancholy away. Fenja had chosen to join the gang of super powered Nazi villains of her own will. Lisa needed to stop wallowing in guilt and start focusing on the next step in their plan. "She'll be near Kaiser whenever he makes a public appearance, together with her sister."

"Three for one," Tenten said, her eyes narrowing. "But we're only going to kill one, right?"

Lisa smiled and took a sip of her coffee. "Kaiser is the glue that holds the Empire together. If he died they would splinter into several smaller gangs."

Parahuman gangs naturally had a sort of soft cap of five or six capes before they started running into problems. Capes, especially of the criminal variety, weren't the most stable individuals. They also tended to have large egos to go along with tremendous personal power. Even the Protectorate had a hard time keeping more than ten members in any one branch, usually resorting to independent sub-teams that hardly interacted with each other whenever a branch grew too large. For Kaiser to maintain the Empire's roster at upwards of fifteen capes was nothing short of a miracle.

Also impressive was his ability to keep the Empire's non-parahuman contingent unified despite widely diverging interests. He offered bread and circuses to the Empire's lower class contingent in the form of cheap drugs and Hookwolf's dog fighting rings, in addition to a heavy dose of rhetoric that encouraged them to blame their personal failings on nefarious outsiders. He offered protection to the middle class, both in keeping their neighborhoods free of non-organized crime and keeping their jobs safe from competition from blacks or foreigners. To the wealthy he offered the perks of power that money couldn't usually buy. And, of course, there was the contingent of true believers in the cause that bought wholeheartedly into the Iron Dream.

At least four groups of people that would all feel outright disdain if not hatred for each other, and Kaiser kept the whole thing ticking along like a machine. It truly was a waste. In a decent world Kaiser would have been a successful politician or a CEO. It took a shithole like Brockton Bay on a shitty dimension like Earth Bet to make that kind of man decide the best way to use his talents was to run a Nazi gang.

"As entertaining as it would be to watch Nazis killing Nazis, that kind of chaos would invite interference from outside gangs," Lisa continued. "If fear of Lung is what keeps the villains here from going overboard, fear of the Empire is what keeps outsiders away. That's why we need to leave Kaiser and his intimidating image intact even as we hollow out his strength."

In the same way that she could almost admire Kaiser's skill in keeping the Empire running, Lisa almost felt bad for what she was going to do to him. He had assembled his machine piece by piece in the painstaking work of a lifetime, building the ordinary criminal gang created by his father into the dominant force of Brockton Bay. She would take that machine apart piece by piece, leaving the outward appearance in place while the internal workings gradually ceased to function. When the time was right the whole thing would fall apart at a single stroke.

Lisa's feelings of guilt died stillborn when she reminded herself that Kaiser's life's work was, after all, the promotion of Nazism.

"Leaving her sister alive will remind Kaiser every day of what he has lost," Lisa said. "Instead of making a clean break and finding a new bodyguard the old wound will reopen every time he sees her."

Lisa took another sip of coffee and watched Tenten to see her reaction. Judging by the way that her grin turned positively vicious, she felt she had successfully appealed to her friend's bloodthirsty streak.

"As expected, you have thought things through," Tenten said.

"Thank you for listening," Lisa said, then hesitated. She hated to admit any weakness, but she finally decided that she and Tenten were past trying to hide doubts from each other. "I know you're more experienced than I am with this kind of thing."

Lisa wasn't sure if she was referring to experience with violence in general or with exterminating criminals in particular. Either way, Tenten's experience vastly outstripped hers. Of course Lisa was a thinker and had more local knowledge. She was confident that she was the smartest person in the room most of the time. But she'd never been quite sure why Tenten was so willing to take her direction once they'd set out to fulfill the Number Man's request.

Tenten gave the implicit question the attention that it deserved. She spent a long moment in contemplation, tapping her chin as she thought.

"I know my strengths," Tenten finally said. "I trust myself to read a battlefield. I expect you to take my advice about tactics. But all these twists and turns and scheming aren't really part of my nindo."

"Your what?" Lisa asked. She understood the idea of playing to your strengths, but this new bit of vocabulary seemed to have some deeper connotations to it.

"My... hmm... shinobi way? Path of life?" Tenten said, searching for the right phrase. "In this life your actions are written on your spirit and resonate with your chakra. In time, your habits wear a path in your soul and the resonance builds to become your nindo. You are strongest when you fight for your ideals. Going against your nindo can weaken you or even cause injury."

She should have known that learning new superpowers would come with a drawback. "When were you going to tell me about this? What if I had chosen a bad path?"

Tenten laughed. "There is no good or bad path. Your nindo is a part of you. You will discover it for yourself in time."

Lisa took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She was already at Tenten's mercy when it came to chakra usage, and if Tenten thought she didn't have a problem then she probably didn't have a problem. She was still curious, though. "What's yours, then?"

"In short, I would say my nindo is this: straight for the target. Quick, efficient, direct. It's how I like to do things and what I do best," Tenten said. "Like I said, complicated plans are not my strength. But if you make the overall plan then I can take each of my pieces of it and do it my way, in straightforward fashion."

Lisa blinked. She hadn't expected that somebody's whole life philosophy would be subject to that kind of, well, she could only call it rules-lawyering.

"Isn't that cheating?"

"No," Tenten said, shaking her head before smiling brightly and giving Lisa a thumbs up. "Teamwork!"

ooOoo

The Empire ran dog fighting rings here and there throughout Brockton Bay. The real high profile events, though, were held every other week at an old junkyard on the edge of the city. Although Kaiser had no personal interest in the sport, he still showed up at the big fights from time to time to show his solidarity with the Empire's rank and file.

Tenten was huddled in an alcove across the street and half a block away from the entrance to the junkyard. She was under a transformation technique that made her appearance blend in with the vagrants scattered throughout the neighborhood, although in the driving rain of the summer storm the Empire contingent probably wouldn't have noticed her even if she were wearing her outfit from that Uber & Leet video that had made her locally famous.

The two men guarding the gate of the junkyard did not show the alertness Tenten would expect of sentries charged with keeping an eye out for serious threats. Instead their attention was focused on the stream of people passing through the gate, ensuring that nobody made it past without paying the cover charge. From time to time they would step in to break up fights between rambunctious men in line, reinforcing the appearance that they were ticket takers and bouncers rather than sentries.

The festival atmosphere carried on inside the gate as well. Tenten had staked out this same location two weeks earlier. Although Kaiser had never made an appearance she had still found the trip useful in that she was able to familiarize herself with the ebb and flow of the event. Immediately inside of the gate was a large open courtyard that was bordered on each side by heaps of junk and at the back by the warehouse that hosted the fights themselves. That courtyard had been filled with people grilling food and serving up beer at impromptu food stands. Tenten had seen in her scouting earlier that the only change for tonight was that tents had been set up to keep the rain off of the grills.

It was striking just how normal the whole thing felt. The Empire was not behaving like a gang that feared detection by the authorities. It wasn't even acting like a gang that worried about attacks from other gangs. Instead, it was putting on this event as if it were a perfectly ordinary part of the community.

In retrospect, it was something that had bothered her about Lung's casino as well. He wasn't running some kind of fly-by-night operation that was ready to relocate once the authorities discovered his locations. He was putting down deep roots that he was confident would remain undisturbed.

Tenten bit back a curse as a gust of wind sent a sheet of rain straight past the meager protection offered by her little nook to soak through her clothes. The evening was too warm to rank very high on her list of most unpleasant missions, but she still didn't enjoy getting rained on. She caught herself cursing Lisa's inability to provide a more specific date and time when she could find Kaiser and chided her own immaturity. To catch a gang leader by spending one night every two weeks watching for him was already an amazing thing.

A car caught Tenten's attention as it smoothly pulled past the line of people waiting to get in. She didn't know much about automobiles, but the casual disregard for the restrictions the other cars had been observing suggested that this one held somebody important. She held her breath as the driver got out and held an umbrella at the ready before walking around to open the passenger side door. When an armored man stepped out of the car she let out a short, triumphant exhale as a smile crept onto her face. When two armored women clambered out of the back seat to flank the armored man, her grin only widened.

She took another deep breath and waited for her heart rate to calm down, leaning back against the wall of her alcove. As inattentive as the guards had been, she had to assume they would be at their most alert while their boss was present. Besides, there was no rush. The main event wouldn't be starting for a while and Kaiser would no doubt take his time working the crowd before he made his way to his seat.

She waited until a few minutes after Kaiser had gone inside before she stood up and staggered off down the street. She headed away from the gate and turned into the first alleyway she passed. After a quick glance confirmed that the coast was clear she dropped her transformation and channeled chakra to her feet before running at the wall in front of her. A few seconds later she was standing on top of the five story building where she had stashed her pack earlier.

The first thing she did was pull out a pair of binoculars before crawling on her belly to the edge of the roof. She had a clear view over the entire junkyard from here. Far below she could make out the knot of people surrounding Kaiser as he ambled along, still only halfway to the building where the fights would take place. A careful survey of the perimeter showed no guards posted around the edges. It was possible that she had missed somebody, but Tenten didn't think she had.

A complacent enemy was a gift from the heavens. She would only have this kind of opportunity once. She needed to make the most of it.

After running down the side of the building back into the alley she made her way to the street that ran parallel to the junkyard but one block away. She took her time walking several blocks before turning and walking back towards her target. She soon found herself walking past the corner of the fence to reach a small footpath that ran along the side of the property. It didn't take long before she was well out of sight of the road and shielded from the view of the Empire by half the junk on the property.

A small flex of chakra let an easy jump carry her over the razor wire atop the fence to land inside the junkyard with a soft thud. The stack of junked automobiles in front of her provided plenty of footholds that let her jump from car to car until she reached the top of the pile. Once there she began to leap from pile to pile until only a single stack of cars stood between her and the warehouse. At that point she carefully picked her way down until she stood in the deserted alley between junk piles.

For the first time that evening Tenten was glad for the presence of the rain as she performed a set of hand seals and created a trio of water clones. The water all around her eased the drain on her chakra and she was soon facing three identical copies of herself. Well, almost identical. The three of them didn't have her pack.

Tenten flipped the pack around from her back to her front and began to rummage around inside, soon picking out the goodies to distribute to her clones. Three submachine guns and two smoke grenades, all courtesy of Coil's poorly-secured armory.

Her water clones had never been particularly useful. They had a tiny fraction of her strength and ability and dissolved on taking any kind of solid hit. Tenten also hadn't been particularly impressed by Earth Bet's firearms. They were terribly loud and seemed more likely to annoy a serious opponent than accomplish anything worthwhile. Arming her clones with firearms, though, that was an idea with some potential. Today was more of a proof of concept than anything else, but Tenten already had some plans for the future.

Once her clones were properly armed, they each shimmered briefly before transforming. Tenten found herself facing three not quite identical large men dressed all in black, complete with body armor bulking out their torsos and balaclavas covering their faces. She nodded in satisfaction and climbed up the last junk pile between her and the warehouse. There was no need to go over the plan with clones that had been created with a single purpose in mind.

Tenten had scouted the warehouse in front of her quite thoroughly before her first stake out. It had been much easier to infiltrate the property when no Empire events were taking place.

The front of the building facing the entrance gate had a set of double doors that could be thrown wide open on a nice day to allow for easy entrance and exit. Today those doors were kept closed except when somebody was actually using them. The front doors led straight to the fighting arena. The Empire had installed a set of stadium bleachers around the arena proper, complete with a slightly separated seating area that Tenten assumed was meant for VIPs like Kaiser.

The rear of the building was a loading dock that the Empire used to move the dogs into the building. It led into a series of back rooms that acted as a back stage area on fight nights.

The side of the building didn't have anything interesting about it other than a set of windows mounted near the roof that let light in on sunny days. The building wasn't particularly well maintained and the window that Tenten had smashed open for convenience's sake was hardly the only one missing. It wasn't a security concern unless a potential intruder could walk up a four story wall.

Tenten thought about doing things the lazy way and jumping from her position atop the junk pile to the roof before shaking her head. The noise of her landing probably wouldn't be noticed between the sound of the rain and the excitement of the fight, but she wanted to do this right. She took one last look around for guards before she picked her way down to ground level, walked up to the side of the building, and began walking up its surface.

She pulled herself upright and used her hands to stick to the wall as she came level with the window and took a peek inside. The bleachers surrounded the fighting pit and were well away from the side wall, so she was looking at the backs of the heads of the members of the crowd closest to her. Lifting her gaze, she saw the VIP platform was populated as expected. Kaiser, his two bodyguards, Hookwolf and his two flunkies, Cricket and Stormtiger, all easy to identify from the pictures Tenten had seen.

She eased herself in through the window before dropping down onto a beam that spanned the width of the building. What lighting was present was focused on the action, as was the crowd's attention. Tenten began fishing around in her bag once more. This time she withdrew a small tripod and a video camera.

Once it was switched on the camera would begin transmitting video back to Lisa. Tenten didn't quite understand how it worked, but apparently it was readily available technology. Coil's mercenaries were known to make heavy use of such things. All of the indicator lights had been covered with black tape and the view port had been wrapped with a black sock. It meant that Tenten would have to crouch awkwardly in order to see what was being recorded but it was worth it to avoid any telltale glow that might give her away.

She carefully crouched down and began creeping along the beam until she reached the point where it intersected with another beam that spanned the length of the warehouse, allowing access to both the front and back doors. There was just enough room to place the tripod at the intersection. Tenten settled the camera in place and flipped it on before carefully adjusting the angle and zoom. She only had to fiddle with the sock around the viewport a little bit before she confirmed what she was seeing: a clean picture of the VIP area and the green bar graph icon that indicated that the video was being transmitted.

The view through the camera confirmed what she had seen with her own eyes. Kaiser sat straight, his bearing regal but not particularly attentive to the action in the ring. Hookwolf and his crew were leaning forward and watching the fight with interest. One of the girls with Kaiser was paying close attention to the fight while the other seemed more interested in fawning on her emperor. Neither of them was acting anything at all like a bodyguard protecting a client in a dangerous situation.

Tenten pulled away from the camera and glanced down at her hand, where she had inked the symbol for "shield." The target was the one interested in the fight, then. Her shield was propped up against her legs while her sword was strapped in a scabbard across her back. Tenten followed Fenja's eyes down to the ring but found that the fight couldn't hold her interest. The dogs had decent fighting spirit, but their fighting techniques had little more than tenacity going for them.

She looked up at the ceiling and focused on nothing in particular as she took a deep breath. This was the point of no return. So far, everything she had done could be undone. She could sneak back out of the warehouse, collect her clones, and head back into the city with nobody the wiser.

If she went through with this plan, she was risking the enmity of not just the Empire but also the PRT. Lisa's plan was clever, but Tenten knew inconvenient facts had a way of coming to light at the most inopportune time. There was also a part of her that hesitated to carry out an assassination in a foreign country without any official approval whatsoever. It was what she had to do in order to get back to Konoha but, still, she didn't like it.

She could think of a dozen ways to quietly dispose of Fenja that were less likely to draw PRT attention. She could think of a dozen reasons she didn't want the PRT coming after her.

In the end, it was a simple memory from two weeks ago that tipped the balance. While Kaiser hadn't shown up during Tenten's last stakeout, she'd had a chance to observe plenty of members of his Empire. Men, women, even children tagging along and enjoying the impromptu outdoor festival set up in the courtyard outside. She remembered watching a young family enter together. She remembered the father laughing as he bought his daughter some popcorn.

No proper hidden village would ever let a gang get so entrenched on its territory. No proper government would allow criminals to feel safe bringing their family with them to a gangland social event. No government that was so ineffective deserved her deference, let alone allegiance.

Lisa's plan would shake the gangs out of their complacency, if nothing else. As to whether it would work in the end? Tenten couldn't say. She hadn't been lying about her nindo. Straight to the target.

Time to live up to her words.

She opened her pack for the last time. A coil of rope with a grappling hook went over her left shoulder while she pulled out an over-sized iron dart with her left hand. The pack itself hung from a strap that she shrugged over her head and pulled tight so that it stuck close to her body despite the reduced weight. She performed a few hand seals and felt the transformation technique that matched her appearance to her clones outside. She drew back her right hand, poised to throw, and waited.

The timing was the trickiest part. The interior of the dart had been hollowed out and stuffed with five rolled up explosive tags. Exploding too soon or too late would be a disaster. Fortunately, Tenten always paid a little extra to ensure that her fuses all had consistent timing.

The noise of the crowd below her changed in tone as the fight reached a climactic moment.

Tenten channeled her chakra into the explosive tag.

One one thousand.

The crowd-including the VIP box-surged to its feet, cheering wildly.

Two one thousand.

Fenja was bouncing on her feet. She turned around to say something to her sister.

Three-

Tenten's arm snapped forward. The whip crack of the dart breaking the sound barrier was lost in the general tumult of the crowd. The dart flew straight and true, embedding itself deep in Fenja's neck.

-one thousand.

There was a tremendous explosion as all five explosive tags went off simultaneously. Tenten was only dimly aware of the confusion gradually turning to panic in the crowd below. She sprinted along the beam until she stood over the front door. Once there she shrugged the rope off of her shoulder and secured the grappling hook in place.

She didn't have long to wait before her clones burst in through the double doors. The first one through sprayed the crowd with an extended burst of automatic fire. The second and third rolled smoke grenades out in front of the three of them before joining in with their own bursts of covering fire. Once the smoke had started to spread Tenten tossed the loose end of the rope toward the ground before taking hold and sliding down.

She landed in a world of smoke and gunfire. Fortunately, maintaining her spatial orientation while blind was one of the first things her sensei had taught her. It was a basic building block in learning to resist visual illusion techniques. She tapped the closest clone on the shoulder before darting out the door. Her clones would take advantage of the cover created by the smoke and disperse back into water after tossing their weapons away.

Outside was strangely calm. The food stalls were long deserted as everybody had gone inside for the fight. The rain had played in her favor again. On a nicer day people might have stayed outside to enjoy the weather, making things more complicated. As it was, Tenten was able to make it into the seclusion of the junk piles without being observed. A quick flash step had her standing on top of the closest pile. A few more flash steps had her standing on a rooftop several blocks away, at which point she dropped her transformation, dropped down to the street, and settled into a ground eating jog.

Her work for the evening was done. Now it was time for Lisa to work her magic with the video.

ooOoo