The Greyhound bus pulled into its arrival spot behind the dilapidated building downtown. The four people that got off did not appear to be too happy.
"You doing okay there, Jane?" the tall, blocky blond man asked the much shorter and slighter figure.
"Fucking wonderful. My headaches almost gone and I want to get out of here before my horns become too obvious, Webster," she replied.
"So where are we meeting the local yokels?" the awkward looking redheaded woman asked. She currently had a baseball cap on with her long hair pulled back through the hole in the rear. Other than that, she was wearing normal clothing; T-shirt, jeans and boots.
"Let me distract the security guard while you guys grab the luggage," the last woman said, giving them all a smile as she sashayed over to the bored security guard.
Just a few minutes worth of taking and she was being led off as the other three stepped outside to wait just outside of the view of a camera. The last member caught up to them five minutes later.
"All cleaned up there, Melody?" Webster asked the dark-haired beauty.
"Yes, he showed me where the backups were kept and I even have our recording here as a souvenir!" Melody held up a security tape. "It should wear off in about ten minutes, so we should get gone."
"So where are we meeting our friend?" Jane asked as she swaggered along.
"Some sort of hole in the wall bar. Supposed to be the local neutral ground. We're meeting Krieg there, so it's in uniform," Webster said.
"Then afterwards he'll take us to Kaiser?" Angelina asked. "Good. I want to finish this up so we can get paid for Redoubt. Kaiser's going to owe so much for this favor."
"I hate this," the dark-haired girl said as she followed along behind the armored form of Dauntless. She tugged fitfully at her shoulder length hair.
"We were trying to save your life, you know," the up and coming star of the Brockton Bay Protectorate noted.
"I- I know. Now I have to play nice with the Wards. At least you aren't making me go back to my parents," the girl complained aloud. She was wearing a fairly generic dark blue bodysuit and a full face mask, though it did keep her hair free and loose.
"We're here," the red and black figure floating at her side said as they came to the security door.
"Way to state the obvious, Futurias. Can you be any more robotic?" the younger girl said snidely.
"You are really obnoxious. The rest of the Wards are ready." Futurias landed on the ground, her boots making a small thump. She put her eye up to the retinal scanner and opened the door.
The group of teens sitting on the couches all looked up.
"I don't recognize her at all," Vista noted as she almost bounced to her feet.
"That's because she's new. Introductions, please?" Dauntless said as he gestured to the new girl.
"Call me Insight. I'm a Thinker, with deductive cognition," the newest cape said. She then pulled her mask down, revealing her freckled features and blue eyes. "And I used to be a villain. A certain one that Shadow Stalker captured a week or so ago. But call me Lisa."
"You were Tattletale?" the totally black-garbed heroine asked. "She on probation, too?"
"Sort of," Dauntless admitted as he leaned on his lance a bit. "She was coerced into joining the Undersiders by Coil at gunpoint. And then he tried to have her killed after she was caught."
"Luckily I got there very quickly, though it was Triumph's demand that I drain his life force to resurrect her," Futurias explained as she stood at a relaxed military pose. Her cape was fluttering softly in the air currents of the room.
"Did you get the tunnel of light thing, too? And the demons?" Shadow Stalker asked. That got a startled look from Aegis and Clockblocker.
"The light, yeah. I saw... I don't really want to talk about it, okay?" Lisa seemed quite upset at the question.
Skitter pulled her mask off first. "I'm Taylor." She gave a shy wave.
"Gina," the giantess said as she popped off her domino mask.
"Missy here!" the youngest girl said while removing her own helmet.
"Dennis," Clockblocker said in introduction as he removed his helmet.
"Carlos," Aegis said as he removed his mask.
"Hello, I'm Dean," Gallant said as he doffed his own helmet.
"I'm Chris," Kid Win said as he looked up from a device on his lap. He was busy soldering with a handheld tinker tool of some sort.
Everyone turned to look at Shadow Stalker. "I was getting there." Her hood was thrown back and her featureless face mask was removed. "Sophia."
Lisa had a dull look on her face, but squelched the urge to verbally rip into any of them. "So I'm not really very physical or anything." She did not even know why she was here.
"You just need a little help like I got from Gitanica. Now I can jump and run like you can't believe," Taylor said with a shy grin.
"Yeah, yeah. White girl can jump," Sophia said with a roll of her eyes.
That got a dark glare from Taylor.
"Wow, you guys hate each other, don't you?" Lisa noted in an abstract way. This could be interesting and in a way that could distract her from the feeling of bullets shredding her heart. Wait? Skitter was taught how to jump and super run? How the hell did that even work?
Dauntless coughed. "Insight, I'm sure that you'll be helpful if figuring out what the gangs are doing. Coil's mercs appear to be just gone, but the ABB are trying to recruit someone to lead them-"
"-and the Empire Eighty Eight are starting to consolidate their strongest hold on the city since 1999," Lisa said as her eyes narrowed. "But they are being more cautious because the Protectorate (and Wards) are a credible threat against them finally."
"And Arachnos is mobilizing," Futurias said in a flat tone. "We have not picked up anything other than the murder of the mayor's wife as some sort of sacrifice or message."
"I need a bit more information to try and figure out things. Have we seen any of their thugs?" Lisa asked curiously.
"There thugs are all spec force trained men in light tinker armor with tinker rifles and gear. They are probably better than the PRT in terms of training and equipment. And we've started seeing them recruit among the poor," Futurias said carefully.
"Some of them are better than low powered capes themselves. Expect weird tinker special equipment at times," Gitanica said as she put her mask back on. "I'm ready for patrol."
"Insight, you'll be with Shadow Stalker and Gallant on dispatch duty," Dauntless explained. "Let me show you the screens and give you the rundown."
"Righto, boss man," she said with a snappy salute and followed, right behind Shadow Stalker.
Gallant stood there for a bit. "She's very unhappy. I think nearly dying scared her badly." He then slipped on his helmet and followed them.
"Well, that sucks," Taylor said. "Time for patrol though! I want to see if I can track down Arachnos."
"I'll go along to watch your back. Arachnos is no joke," Futurias said as she floated off the ground. "Then I have guard duty for six hours."
Guarding who, Skitter wondered?
"I don't like this, Charlie," one of the gathered Arachnos Soldiers said to the one on his left.
"We're just recruiting. Suck it up, at least they aren't the Lost," 'Charlie' retorted as he looked over the dregs of the docks. There was just the one street light at the end of this dock and they were all standing under it.
The third Arachnos Soldiers raised up a hand. "How many of you are sick and tired of being treated like trash?"
A couple of the street kids and one older man nodded while murmuring some agreement.
"Arachnos will give you the control of yourself to take charge of your life! Under Arachnos, the strong grow. And the strong will show the world that we deserve to be in charge! This world needs fixing! Anarchy is expanding to take over Brockton Bay, to fix the cancers that infect it."
"Burn it!" a crazed, older man said.
"If only we could burn it away, to then plant anew. But we must be surgical, smart as well as unwavering and strong-" the Arachnos speaker was saying when he was interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle.
Armsmaster snapped out the kickstand with his heel and stepped off. "This is Armsmaster of the Protectorate. You three are going to come in for questioning," he ordered as his halberd extended out and snapped into combat readiness.
"We are just a few people discussing the ills of the world," the speaker said, a smirk on his lips.
"And you can go right back to that after we've asked you a few questions about your boss. Though you might have a small problem of weapon licensing to deal with," the Tinker stated flatly.
"We're just a militia. We have the right to bear arms," the second Arachnos Soldier said, carefully raising his rifle.
"You are not a regulated militia-" Armsmaster was starting to say when his suit's back sensors picked up a distortion creeping up on him. He spun around and shot out a blast from his halberd, knocking a vicious shark-man back. "Captain Mako. So it was a trap."
"Armsmasssster... You die today," Captain Mako hissed out, his voice an odd gurgling quality to it. He suddenly charged forward and swiped with both claws and then leaped over the Tinker, leaving gouges in the armor with his feet claws and one of his fins. For his trouble, he got a halbard shot to his face and then tripped while a built in taser went off while in contact.
"You are a coward, aren't you? Can't even take on a single foe one on one," Armsmaster said dismissively. "This fight was decided before your first attempt at sneak attacking me." His prediction program was learning more and more.
Captain Mako screeched out angrily and charged back into combat. "I'll feed your gutsssss to the fisssshessss!" the assassin screamed as he unleashed a flurry of slashes, catching Armsmaster across his jaw and removing more layers of the laminate armor.
But more and more, Armsmaster's halberd was blocking the swipes. His cleated boot smashed into Captain Mako's knee, causing another screech of pain. The heel of the halberd thudded home into Mako's trachea, then the head swiped back around to nearly cut his head off.
His armor moved abruptly, even as the halberd swung around and fired a blast that knocked out one of the neglected Arachnos Soldiers, much to him and his friend's surprise. It kept its momentum and unleashed another taser strike to Captain Mako's face.
But that just enraged the shark-man as he spat out a vile green spittle and vapor that nearly hit Armsmaster's face. In a blur, he backed up and started to pull Armsmaster deeper along the docks.
It was blindingly obvious the Protectorate leader, but he had no desire to lose sight of the assassin so he could disengage and try to sneak up again. There was a small chance that he might succeed, after all.
Energy blasts lanced out from the halberd. Another four shots and he'd have to replace the super-dense batteries which would take 2.5 seconds where Captain Mako would try to break his defense.
"You knew it wassss a trap and you sssstill followed. You ssshall fear the power of the Leviathan of the Ancient Coralaxxxx!" the assassin shouted out, spittle flying from his shark-teeth filled maw.
"More magic?" Armsmaster asked as he narrowed his eyes as he watched Captain Mako stand there.
And then the waters swirled on both sides of the pier. The old wood started to creak and groaned. Purple-green lightning flickered within the waters, almost seeming to stare deep into his soul. The whirlpools sped up, then pillars of water exploded to stand hundreds of feet tall.
"Kill him!" Captain Mako shouted directing the waterspout on his right at Armsmaster, forcing him to dodge forward as it severed the pier from the shore and stayed there as a barrier to block his retreat.
The second water spout surged forwards to destroy the pier in front of pier and ignore the energy blasts of Armsmaster. Both waterspouts then jumped at him, sweeping him up into muscle-ripping force.
"You're jussst chum for the fishes," Mako hissed out, only to blink in surprise as something shot out of the combine waterspout, wrapping around a metal light pole just on the edge of the shore.
Armsmaster gritted his teeth as he activated the powerful winch to pull himself out of the maelstrom. He shot out sideways, but was quickly swung in a tight arc. At just the right moment, he had the claw release and twisted to skid across the roof of a lower storage building in a spray of sparks against the metal roof.
"You fucker! Why won't you just die!" the mutant shark man shrieked in maddened fury as he streaked forward.
Then the night turned to day as two bolts of lightning rained down from the stormy sky. Captain Mako was blasted off his feet and to his knee. A blur zipped past him and started to rain down laughably weak punches, but at hundreds of hits a second.
"He won't die because he's part of a team!" a new figure in the sky shouted out. Dauntless streaked foward and shot his own shocklance at the assassin.
"Don't count us out," Ms. Liberty said as she ran forward from where she and Charged State had landed as bolts of energy.
"One-" Charged State shouted alongside. She gripped her fists together and then hammered his face hard enough to break off three teeth.
"-Two-" Ms. Liberty shouted as she shoved an super-strength powered eagle-claw into Mako's chest, shattering three ribs.
"-Three-" Assault said as he appeared in a blur to hammer four more punches into the villain's other ribs.
"-Four!" Battery finished as she punched him hard enough in the stomach to double him over, then grabbed his head and it down on her knee that was coming up.
Captain Mako desperately reached out and pulled the huge waterspout to rush over the battle. Once he was back in the waters, he sped off at super speed in the waters, disappearing deep into the bay.
"What a time to not have an Aquaman. It's like the only time he's useful," Assault said, snapping his fingers.
"I could have finished my own fight," Armsmaster said grumpily to his team.
"Just saving you from even more paperwork from Piggot, boss," Battery said while holding up her hands helplessly. "Besides, you are wounded. We're just watching your back."
Armsmaster just stared at the shattered dock and the swirling waters churning under it. Director Piggot was going to be upset, though it was doubtful that anyone would even try to repair an unused dock like this. "You guys are right. Let's get back to base."
Ms. Liberty leaned a bit closer to Dauntless, putting her hand up to carry her voice only to him. "He could have said thank you."
"That's not his style, sorry. But he really is a good hero," Dauntless said as he shrugged as much as his armor allowed.
"I guess. So you doing anything later tonight?" the younger woman asked.
"Um, going back to my quarters?" Dauntless replied.
"Don't mind if I have a cup of coffee with you," she replied with a smirk on her face.
Charged State had been listening to the conversation in bemusement. "You're supposed to wait for him to offer the cup first."
"Sometimes you have be less subtle, girl," the haughty blonde said.
"I wasn't ever that dense was I, love?" Assault asked his wife.
"You were worse. Way worse," she replied instantly.
Armsmaster just shook his head. His team was insane.
Kayden was walking in the backyard, feeling pretty miserable. Casually glancing around while she played with her short, black (and dyed) hair, she took in the back alley of this upscale neighborhood. Was that kid playing with his phone fifty feet away looking at her.
She stepped behind a shrub and watched him covertly, using some of the basic skills that she had picked up while being a member of the Empire Eighty Eight.
After five minutes she was sure he wasn't an Empire stool pigeon. She continued on to the back door, knocking on it three times as a shadow followed her and landed on the porch.
The door opened to reveal the serious face of a plainclothes PRT officer. "In, we're clear."
Futurias followed her sort of new friend, releasing her shadows to fade away.
"Oh, hey. It's Future Lady," a slightly tubby boy said from the living room. He had a young baby on his lap. "Aster missed you, Kayden."
"I just had to get out for a minute." The ex-Empire enforcer smiled over to Futurias. "Thanks for coming with me."
"It's not problem, I wanted to get outside for a bit myself. Triumph should be here in an hour to take his shift guarding you. I would not suggest trying to do that with him. He's not very stealthy," Futurias said simply. She turned over to Theo. "Hello, Theo. Call me Futurias, please. Or Althea in private."
"Okay, Futurias," he said dully.
The baby girl on his lap fussed and started to squirm.
"I wish that we were already out of Brockton Bay. I hate red tape," the female ex-villain said in frustration.
Aster started crying.
Kayden moved over immediately. "Only two more days and we're clear and free. I won't let him ruin us anymore."
Theo moved over and awkwardly gave the woman a small hug. She grabbed him back, trying to smile through her tears.
She was just so scared. Not for herself, but her little angel.
Kaiser never lost. It was like a law of nature.