Enjoy!
Terror 3.3
Boogeyman couldn't help but smirk as she watched the "highly trained" PRT agents scramble around like a group of headless chickens. She supposed that wasn't entirely their fault, it wasn't as if one expected a mutilated coworker to fall out of a shadow.
The sun was just barely starting to rise over the horizon, so she had a few more minutes to watch the PRT agents flounder. Still, she wouldn't want to stay here too long. Even if she was across the street and out of sight from the fortress-like building she didn't want to risk being caught off guard. Despite their apparent incompetence and the almost banal looking nature of the building, the PRT headquarters was a heavily defended facility.
A six-foot-tall wall separated the main structure from the street and the surrounding buildings. PRT troopers armed with containment foam launchers patrolled on top of the wall and along the reinforced gates that sealed the area off. The ground around the building had been completely cleared of trees in order to prevent someone from masking their approach while a majority of the bottom three story windows had been sealed up, and none of the remaining windows had their slats open.
The only view from the outside world was through two panels of bullet proof glass on a magnetic lock guarded by two burry looking PRT agents who were currently freaking out at the sight of the of one of their fellow agents with the word 'traitor' carved into his forehead. The entire building was built like a fortress to repel attacks by villains, and Boogeyman had to give them credit where credit was due. If she hadn't had the ability to travel through shadows she would have had a very hard time trying to break in.
It only made all the more infuriating that villains could break out of here with such regularity.
Boogeyman bit down on her bitterness and drew herself back into the shadows. As hidden as she was, she didn't want to risk being seen. She didn't doubt that the PRT had some sort of surveillance system for the surrounding buildings to avoid surprise attacks. As she merged back into the endless void of shadows and darkness she considered her options.
She would be the first to admit that she had taken a significant risk with this move. While an attack on a PRT agent wasn't exactly earth-shattering news in the town that Hookwolf and Lung lived in, it was still a significant sign of escalation. While she had left Sophia Hess a broken wreck of a human being she had at the very least a strong reason as to why she wanted to attack her.
And she had no doubt that if she hadn't released such compelling evidence to the public to crucify Sophia's image that the Protectorate would have come down on her like a sledgehammer. If she had given into her darker desirers and killed her she doubted that she would even be alive. The death of a Ward, no matter how violent or ill-tempered was something that the Protectorate could allow to happen without consequences. While she certainly had been stepping on the line of what was acceptable and what was not, she hadn't made that final jump.
She wanted to get revenge on Sophia, not bring Legend down on her skull.
The mauling and torture of a PRT officer, no matter if he was a traitor or not, was going to have some consequences. She doubted that it would be anything too major given how the man was a spy and PRT troopers where somewhat expendable compared to a cape, but she didn't want to waste their patience with her quite yet. Trying to fight the PRT off with only waste more of her time, time that could be used against the gangs.
But despite the risk, she didn't doubt that her night had been…productive. Lewis had still maintained some minor resistance out of fear of Coil, but she had quickly dissuaded the notion that he was scarier than she was. What he had told her was somewhat disturbing. Knowing that the PRT was incompetent was one thing, to know at a villain had infiltrated them and was using their resources to further his own goals was another.
She didn't doubt that the other gangs had spies inside the PRT, but she sincerely doubted that any of them had the job of keeping track of cape intelligence. Lewis' job at the PRT had been to record cape sightings and their powers. That meant that Coil could track new independent capes and co-opt or threaten them to work for him. It was somewhat terrifying to realize that if her power had been a weak one then that could have been her fate as well. She had to wonder how many capes that Coil might have under his thumb, willingly or not.
As her formless mass moved through the endless void a glint of yellow caught her attention. She turned her focus towards it and caught sight of…something. She wasn't sure what she could describe it as anything more than a howling shifting mass of darkness with two pinpricks of yellow amidst the lightless universe.
Fearling.
She moved in to get a closer look, but the creature darted back to wherever it came, once again leaving her alone. She contemplated going after it to find out more but chose not to. She could deal with that later when she wasn't dealing with the revelation of how far Coil's reach extended.
Unfortunately, Lewis didn't have much on Coil himself. Apparently, the man didn't trust his own employees, but apparently Lewis didn't trust him much either. He had been keeping track of everything he could about his boss on the off chance that he needed to protect himself from him, or to make himself useful if he had been caught by the PRT. She supposed that mentality of distrust and paranoia came from being a professional spy.
He knew that Coil apparently had a base in the city, but Lewis had never seen the entrance or location of the place. He had been blindfolded and shoved into a car with tinted windows for the entirety of the trip. The had only seen the inside of the base, but it had been well constructed and fairly large. While it didn't give her much of an actual location, it did eliminate most of her fist guesses.
Though she had to wonder exactly what Coil had been thinking when he decided to construct his own secret base. According to Lewis' impression, its layout had obvious been designed with the intention of being a base, which probably meant that Coil had built it himself. He had to realize that if anyone every found out about it then that would end up being a huge waste of resources. A secret base would only be worth it if it stayed secret.
But she was willing to give Coil the benefit of the doubt that he might know what he was doing given the fact that nobody had apparently discovered his base before. Either way, it suggested that he had even more resources than she had originally thought. As far as she was aware even the Empire didn't have a base of that magnitude anywhere in the city, and they were supported by an international crime syndicate!
He had managed to give her the names of a few more of Coil's spies in the PRT. None of them were in as critical positions as he was, but it was still disturbing to see that one of the PRT special responders was on a supervillain's payroll. Those guys were trained to fight and take down villains with nothing more than a containment foam launcher. If Coil had Lewis and the likes of that, who else did he have under this thumb?
How much of the PRT had been subverted to a single man's will? What was even more concerning was the thought of him having one of the Protectorate heroes on his payroll. For all the Protectorate liked to portray themselves as incorruptible heroes, she knew all too well that was far from the reality of the matter. They were human and just as susceptible to greed as any other person.
Still, this was all just idle speculation. All she knew for sure was that Coil had managed to either subvert or plant a handful of spies into the PRT's ranks. She had been tempted to purge them herself, but then what? Until she found Coil himself all she would be doing was trimming the weed of corruption that had managed to worm its way into the local law enforcement. Coil would just hire new spies that she didn't know about, which would leave her right where she started.
No, the better choice would be to wait and use her knowledge of Coil's spies to try and gather more information on him. Frankly what she already knew about his was terrifying enough, and she didn't even know what his powers were exactly. Lewis had claimed that Coil had made a demonstration of his powers when he had first been hired through the flipping of a coin. He said that Coil had claimed he could "control fate" and proved his capabilities by flipping the coin on heads ten times in a row. He had apparently made a rather unsubtle threat that any action that he took against someone would be a virtually guaranteed success.
The show and threat had been enough to convince Lewis, but Boogeyman wasn't so sure. Flipping a coin to land on the same side was something that anyone with enough practice could accomplish on their own, without the assistance of powers. Even assuming that the coin itself wasn't being manipulated in some way, she doubted that his powers were as powerful as he claimed them to be. If it really was almost impossible for him to fail, there should be no reason that he wasn't running the city by now. If he truly couldn't fail, then nobody would be capable of standing in his way. There would be no need for spies or other covert tactics, he could just roll over all the other competition.
Boogeyman rose out of the alley shadows as she made sure that she wasn't in direct line with the sun's rays. It still stung somewhat to be out in the light at this hour, but is was far less than what it had been when she had still been invisible to all. Even in the nicer parts of the city litter still cluttered the damp and dreary alley like a second skin. She could feel the faint dreams of a homeless man lying under a sheer of cardboard, but she decided to let him be. Even though she was so tempted to take his dreams she allowed him to keep one of the few things that he had left for himself.
Even with a quick glance around, she couldn't tell exactly where she was, and she wasn't exactly in the position to go and check a street sign. At best, she knew that she was further north, where Coil and the Empire brushed up against each other and the PRT.
I wonder if I could get the Empire blamed for an attack on Coil, Boogeyman mused as she allowed herself to lean against a graffiti covered wall. If she could force the Empire and Coil into a minor skirmish she might be able to draw both parties out a bit more. She would have to try and keep civilians out of harm's way, but it was doable.
The uncertainty of Coil's power had influenced her decision in avoiding any direct engagements with him for the time being. Her previous experience with not knowing everything about her opponent had taught her a valuable lesson about caution. She would need to investigate Coil more thoroughly, but trying to find more information without letting him realize that she was onto her was going to be difficult, to say the least. She was going to have to…
Boogeyman froze at the sudden influx of emotions. It was a delicious mixture of human misery and terror, all wrapped up in a blanket of sorrow. She could feel the wave of human suffering growing stronger, and only then did she realize that it was coming from multiple people rather than one. Boogeyman tore herself from her position and dove into the closest shadow, driving forward with all available speed towards the location.
She tore out of the shadows with the speed of a woman possessed, emerging in an empty apartment building a few stories up. Boogeyman pulled the closed blinds open with a tug and winced a bit against as the sudden influx of light, but nothing could keep her eyes away from the image on the street below.
For a long time, she said nothing as she stared down, unable to move away from what she was witnessing. Even as the miasma of negativity rose to greet her hunger, she couldn't help but feel as if the dead bodies were somehow her fault.
Boogeyman wasn't sure how long she stood there staring at the bodies. Certainly long enough for the police to show up and cordon off the area.
The two teens had originally been strung up and hung from a flagpole that had been jutting out of the building. The Empire had clearly intended for them to be a warning of what would happen if they were crossed again. Apparently, the weight of the two teenagers had been too much and at some point, the pole had snapped, dumping the bodies on the ground. They were sprawled out on the uncaring pavement as if they had both decided to jump from the building. Blood from their wounds had dripped onto the concrete, staining the gray stone with their crimson fluids.
Even though they were long dead, Boogeyman could still see the expressions of pure terror etched into their faces as if they were made of marble. The source of their terror was quite clear given all of the wounds that covered their body like demented tattoos. These teens hadn't been shot or beaten to death, they had been methodically tortured and left to bleed onto the ground before having their necks broken with a noose.
How long had they laid there, unable to move or call for help as their strength left their bodies with every passing moment? The realization that they were going to be nothing more than another statistic in Brockton Bay's death toll must have terrified them to the bones. How many people had heard their screams of terror and had done nothing as the Empire carved up a few more victims?
Boogeyman could feel her hands curling into angry fists as a few of the police officers, specifically white police officers, disregarded the two teen's bodies for the corpses of the obviously Empire gang members. Even if their brown shirts and shaved heads weren't a clue, the rather large swastika tattoo on one of their necks was. Unlike the teenagers, the two men and one woman had been laid out across the ground as if they were being prepped for a funeral service. Their eyes had been closed and their hands cross on their chests, as if their allegiance somehow made them worth that treatment.
From what Boogeyman could hear from the reporter down on the street below as she tried to raise her voice about the din of the assemble crowd, the two black teenagers had been inspired by her actions against the Merchants and the Empire and decided to do something themselves. The had apparently managed to kill three Empire goons before they had been confronted by a much larger group, including the parahuman Alabaster.
The confrontation had been a short one.
Boogeyman sneered as several civilians started to shout racially derogatory slurs out to the two dead teens as if killing them through torture hadn't been enough. She could feel her desire to go down there and show the sympathizers the fear that those two nameless teens had experienced. But such actions would only serve to hurt her goals in the long run, so she managed to restrain her impulse.
But someone was going to pay for this.
As she contemplated the acts of vengeance that she would unleash on the perpetrators of this act she felt someone enter her range. Previous experience with Miss Militia had taught her the dangers of allowing herself to be lost in her thoughts and not pay attention to her surroundings. She could feel the mind growing closer, and while it did feel some trepidation, it clung to the notion of hope like a desperate child clawing at their favorite toy.
"Did you come here to arrest me?" Boogeyman asked neutrally, not even bothering to look away from the window as the door behind her creaked open. She could hear the floor boards groan as the man's weight settled on them. She could feel herself tense in anticipation of an attack, but to her surprise, the man apparently recognized her apprehension. To his credit, he stopped almost immediately, making sure to keep a safe distance between the two of them. He could easily cross the intervening space with a few steps, but by that time she could dive into the closest shadow and escape to safety.
"Nah, I figured that might be a pretty bad ice breaker," the masculine voice said from behind her. There was a good amount of humor laced in his words that were being used to mask his slight unease at being in her presence. Boogeyman allowed her head to turn around enough so that she could see the man from her peripheral vision.
Despite the fact that he was less than fifteen feet away from the parahuman that had emotionally broken a Ward and assaulted and mutilated a PRT agent, Assault still had a small smile on his face. His costume was almost the exact opposite of her, with streamlined armor covering his torso and shoulders. She wasn't sure what the fabric was made of, but it was thin enough to reveal a set of well-developed muscles underneath. A simple visor covered the upper half of his face, concealing his identity while still allowing him to express himself. His smile was the infectious sort that would have made most people break out into grins of their own at the exuberant energy the man exuded.
She wasn't one of those people.
Perhaps a few months ago, she might have been, in-between the jeering and torment from Sophia and Emma. During those times, she had had fantasies of heroes coming to the school to save the day and stop the bullies, but once she had found out Sophia's identity she had abandoned those notions.
She had learned her lesson.
"I didn't think the PRT would allow their oh so vaunted 'heroes' to associate themselves with villains," Boogeyman spat out as she turned herself back towards the sight of the two dead teenagers. "That is what they're calling me right? A villain."
She didn't doubt for one second that the PRT would try to smear her with all that they had, to lessen her in the eyes of the public. Time utterly wasted because she didn't care what the public thought about her. Had they ever cared about who she was before she got powers? No, she had just been another body to throw into the meat grinder that was Brockton Bay.
The PRT were fighting a battle that only existed because they wanted it to. No, because they needed it to. It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad. It was even sadder that they had chosen to label her as an unrepentant villain after she did their jobs for them.
"I like to think that labels don't have to define who we are," Assault countered, artfully dodging the question about the PRT.
"What do you want?" Boogeyman asked in an attempt to cut straight to the point of the conversation. She might have enjoyed going back and forth with the man earlier, but right now she just felt tired. The weight and consequences of her decisions and actions were being thrust before her with all the subtly of Scion himself.
Before the casualties of her conflict with the gangs had been limited to acceptable targets like gang members or Sophia. But now two civilians had died because of her actions because they had wanted to do what she had done.
And now they were both dead because of it.
Because of her.
Even though she hadn't been the one to end their lives, it still felt like she was responsible for them. Would they have committed such a brazen act if not for being inspired by her actions? The sweet taste of victory crumbled to ash on her lips, as dead as the two boys before her.
"To talk," Assault said with a careless shrug. Boogeyman felt her lips curl back into an ugly sneer.
"Oh? Are you going to demand that I lay down my arms and submit to your broken authority?" she asked, her anger coloring her tone.
"It's not like I could keep you in place," Assault said as he crossed his arms. Boogeyman couldn't fault him for that logic. It wasn't as if he could somehow destroy every shadow in the room, but she would have thought he would have at least tried to restrain her in some way. It was off-putting to realize that he wasn't following the script that he should have been. Even for all of her "compassion" Miss Militia had been more than happy to follow the rules with an unrelenting focus. Assault on the other hand? He seemed to be more that willing to bend or break the rules without an ounce of hesitation.
"I doubt your boss will be happy with that," Boogeyman said as she watched the police and medical officers start loading the corpses into body bags. As the crowd began to realize that the show was over they started to filter out. The relief of so many meals being removed as a temptation hit her so hard it was almost a physical experience. And by judging from the brief spark of wariness that entered Assault's mind he noticed her relaxing posture as well.
"Probably not," Assault agreed. Even with her back turned she could almost hear the wiry grin in his voice. "But I imagine that she wasn't very happy finding out she had a mole in her midst either."
"What makes you think I did it?" Boogeyman asked neutrally. She didn't really care if they knew that she was the one to attack Lewis. She just wanted to know what convinced him that she was the one to commit the act.
"I doubt Coil would out one of his own spies, Kaiser would have made it into a spectacle, and Lung wouldn't care either way," Assault said as he ticked his fingers down the candidates. "That really only leaves you and Faultline, and she wouldn't get involved in something like this."
"I'm surprised that you're not angrier about this, he was one of your co-workers after all," Boogeyman said as the last of the corpses were loaded into an ambulance. The stark white doors of the vehicle slammed shut with a certain finality. She could feel the apathy from the police and the EMTs as the prepared to pack away another case of Brockton Bay violence. This wouldn't be any different that the dozens of other murders that occurred, and it was almost a certainty the Empire would prevent it from going anywhere, if only to use if for propaganda.
A pair of black teens trying to kill whites? That was exactly what story Kaiser needed to get himself out of the hole that he had dug himself into. He would play it up the best he could to regain whatever legitimacy he had lost. She doubted that he could win over everyone, but by preying on the populace's fears he could convince enough. She knew all too well how easy it was to manipulate people who were scared for their lives.
"Well, I can't say that you haven't attacked anyone that hasn't deserved it," Assault said.
"Even Shadow Stalker?"
There was a brief flicker of…something too complicated and fleeting for her to make out. It almost tasted like regret, but there was something off about it.
"I can't say that she deserved being screwed with so bad that she was put on suicide watch," he said with just the tiniest amount of venom in his tone as if that would somehow make her feel bad about what she had done. "But I won't disagree that she deserved a reality check."
"I gave her what she wanted, a chance to prove that she was strong. It's not my fault that she failed in the end," Boogeyman shot back, her expression shifting into another sneer. She could feel Assault's indignation swell up at that, but instead of saying anything he let the silence carry on. She could practically feel the tension in the room weigh down on her as the last of the police cars drove off, leaving the cleaners to wipe away the crime. It wouldn't do for their shining city to be blooded, would it?
"You know," Assault started as the tense silence wore on. "I used to be a lot like you once."
This time Boogeyman did turn around to face the Protectorate hero, her curiosity piqued by his statement. "Mercilessly tormented at the hands of a psychotic Ward?"
There was a brief flare of genuine regret at her words, but she avoided clamping down on it. If he wanted to convince her to try and stop then at the very least she would listen to what he had to say.
"I wanted to make a difference in the world, to make a stand against the injustices that I thought where happening," the Striker said, a somewhat wistful tone worming its way into his voice.
"…What happened?" Boogeyman asked after a short silence, much to her own chagrin. She didn't want to speak to the man, but her curiosity had been roused.
"I realized that I was hurting more people than I was helping," Assault said, his tone becoming more restrained and melancholy. She could feel the regret that laced every word like a fine wine. She could felt the images pass through his mind of the culmination of all his work, of all what he accomplished.
"What did you do after that?" Boogeyman asked as she stared at the slowly fading chalk outlines on the concrete as uncaring cleaners whipped away the only evidence that such a tragedy had occurred. Not that it mattered to her, she would hold the weight of those on her shoulders for a long time.
They were the ones who were being stupid, not you.
She shook off the insidious whispers from the back of her mind. She couldn't allow herself to become callous to the suffering of the populace like the Protectorate had.
"I let Battery catch me and bring me in," he said, his eyes lighting up with mirth. He looked around the room in an exaggerated fashion, as if he was somehow making sure nobody was listening. He then said in a mock whisper, "Don't tell her that, I let her think she won."
Boogeyman wanted to laugh at the joke, but she still couldn't help but let some bitterness worm her way into her mind as she considered Assault's words. From the slight panic that he was experiencing her clearly noticed the way her face grimaced but managed to do an admiral job of keeping such emotions off his expression. Not that it helped much against her.
"Why don't we go down to the PRT and sort this whole thing out, huh?" Assault asked with a forced grin. She could feel his nervousness start to ebb and flow with the realization that something was wrong with her. She said nothing at first, allowing his unease to start filtering through to his body as he started to shift his feet out of nervous habit. Just when it seemed like he was about to start talking Boogeyman cut him off.
"So, you think I should be a coward like you?"
"What?" Assault asked with genuine surprise coating his words like a Carmel layer. She could feel his emotions shift themselves as he tried to keep his outrage off his face.
"When you were confronted with the results of your choices you ran away, Madcap," she hissed, earning a slight flinch from the man. "Oh, you felt sorry for them, but instead of doing something about it, you negotiated your way into a new life. You fashioned yourself into a hero and tried to forget everything that you did, good or bad."
Boogeyman turned around the face the man, her yellow eyes locking on to his paling face as each word struck at his heart like a jackhammer.
"I'm not going to be a coward like you," she declared as she pointed towards the street below. "I'm going to fix my mistake and make sure it won't happen again."
"…It's not that simple," he pleaded, his voice full of pain and regret.
"No, it's not," she conceded. She would give him that at the very least. This wasn't a simple thing that she was demanding herself to do. It could take years for her to finish this, but if giving up meant become a man like Assault, a coward who became a cog in the very machine he tried to resist?
That wasn't something that she could let happen to her.
"The Empire is going to suffer for this. Alabaster is going to pay for this," she declared to Assault and whoever was listening in on his radio. She could feel the emotions of strangers enter the building as they charged up the stairs, no doubt PRT reinforcements coming to help Assault. Not that they mattered, by the time they got up here she would be long gone.
"You're going to get more people killed," Assault shot back, his voice becoming a bit more heated. She could feel and see the tension in his body as he tried to hold himself back from lashing out.
"If the Empire kills one more civilian I will retaliate on them ten-fold," she said. Internally she couldn't help but shaker her head. Who used words like ten-fold? "Their so-called "Empire" will bleed rivers of blood."
The voices of billions screaming. The sky choking with smoke and fire. Oceans stained with crimson blood.
This is our legacy.
This is your future.
Boogeyman shook off the nightmarish images as Assault spoke once more.
"You can't kill Alabaster. Please, come with me and you can help us put him away for good."
"I'm sure you said that the last ten times when you caught him too," Taylor said with a sneer that slowly worked its way into a vicious grin. Even as she footsteps of the PRT troopers became audible and Assault finally started to move into an attacking position she allowed herself one last parting shot.
"Besides, who ever said I was going to try to kill Alabaster?"
Assault shot forward with the speed of a bullet as she slipped back into the shadows. Even as the tips of his fingers brushed up against her cloak her form became entirely intangible and lost to the physical world. Assault was left grasping nothing but empty air as her Cheshire smile was the last thing to fade from existence.
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