I remember when Dad first took me to the Docks for "Take Your Kid to Work Day". I think the rose-tinted lenses of memory make me recall it being more fun than it actually was, but I do remember some things with perfect clarity.
First, the Dockworkers were strong. They didn't look it, but each one of them could deadlift bags of concrete powder without sweating. Big ones. Little eight-year-old Taylor didn't understand what that meant at the time, but ever since then I've taken it for granted that if Dad ever ran into trouble he'd have a group of strong, angry men to bail him out of it.
Second, what Dad did was a labor of love. It didn't make him a lot of money, it had long hours, the workers complained about him when there were no jobs, and the employers complained about him when the wages he negotiated for were too high. He's picked up more than his fair share of grey hairs since then, and the situation hasn't magically turned around. Maybe Dad's helped slow the decay of Brockton Bay. Maybe not. But we both know that what he does isn't enough to matter on a city-wide scale.
The last thing still clear in my memory from that day is the sight and sound of a wrecking ball crashing through the wall of a condemned building, the noise so loud it was practically a physical thing, and how it was juxtaposed against the silence that followed the backswing.
Purity's destruction of the ABB's defenses is somehow more surreal, if only because it's quieter.
Silent beams lance out from the roughly human-shaped blob of light flying across the sky to rip parked pickups in half, the sounds of tearing metal and the shouts and screams of surprise echoing against nothing in the night. The rest of the villains look on impassively, but I can't keep a little awe from seeping through.
Purity. Often spoken of in the same breath as Legend. Not as versatile, not as fast, and definitely not as durable, but still...
Fucking terrifying.
After she finishes destroying the cavalry, Purity floats down next to Kaiser, who taps his ear and listens for a moment before nodding and walking forward. After a few steps he turns back around to face us, an aura of mocking surprise practically oozing off of him.
"Shall we?" he asks, and I have to break a toe to keep from snapping at him. Instead I stride forward, Hookwolf and Newter to my right. Faultline jogs ahead of us, walks up to the garage door, and raises a hand before turning to Tattletale. The purple-clad villain squints for a moment before nodding and Faultline swipes at the door, blue energy crackling where her hand passes. I can't see if anything's changed, but Kaiser waves his hand and the sheet metal peels open, metal bars pushing back the cheap steel and bending it into something like a cave entrance.
Hookwolf dashes through as soon the rent is big enough to fit him, already looking less like a man and more like a lupine tangle of blades. Gunfire starts up soon after and I run in behind him, a bone shield up to keep Newter covered.
ABB members are unloading on Hookwolf, but they might as well be trying to kill a swimming pool with a fork for all the good they're doing. He's among them like a thresher amongst grain, and blood flows as metal tears through flesh and peppers the air with screams.
A girl who doesn't look even my age spins around, her hands white-knuckled around the handle of a kitchen knife. I jab her in the stomach with a bar of bone and bash her face with the shield, making sure to keep my tools rounded. It doesn't stop her skin from splitting, but maybe it will stop any scarring.
An orange and blue blur appears over my shoulder and then Newter is among the thugs, pulling flips and bends that would make any acrobat jealous. People collapse in his wake, motionless but breathing. I shake my head as I sidestep a metal pipe, kick a gangster in the shin, and break his arm with a well-placed baton strike. His power is so perfect for non-lethal takedowns it's almost a joke that he's not in the Protectorate, especially given how pro-Case 53 they are. I wonder if Faultline is blackmailing him?
Something impacts the side of my mask with a boom, similar to the shotgun at the slaver plant but more diffuse. I quickly reform my mask and turn to look at the source, a proper gangster with characters of some type crawling up his neck, working the slide on a long-barreled shotgun then leveling it at me.
I fall forward and run low to the ground. The gun booms again but it goes high and I only feel a few gouges in my backplate. When I come up swinging the thug tries to block the blow with his gun, which only means that it's his weapon crashing into his chin instead of mine. He falls bonelessly to the ground, blood streaming from split skin. I take a moment to look around and see half of the assembled ABB members already down, some screaming and others ominously still.
One gangster with a full-face dragon tattoo pulls out a shiny metal sphere. Almost certainly a bomb. No idea what it does, but it's a threat. I start rushing towards the one real danger in the room, but Newter's already on it, weaving between thugs, people left unconscious and twitching in his wake. I hear him hawk a loogie, and the gangster with the bomb falls backwards, the munition beeping with increasing frequency.
"Cover!" I yell. Hookwolf leaps behind a waist-high wall of concrete as Netwer sprints behind me. I take my own advice and grow as much bone as possible between myself and the explosive.
There's the sound of a metal hitting meat and I feel some of my bone simply disappear.
The warehouse falls silent.
Slowly, I step out from behind the bone and look at the after effects of the bomb. Then I start grinding my toes together to try and keep my bile down.
The ABB members are all either moaning on the ground or still, bits of themselves swapped with concrete, metal, wood, cloth, whatever material was nearest to them. The lucky ones on the edge of the blast zone have mutilated limbs, the ends unmoving as they collapse to the ground on functionally dead legs or clutch at suddenly useless arms. The unlucky ones nearest to the center of the effect tear at their chests, suddenly breathless as their shirts replace their lungs.
The really unlucky ones split apart, the swapped material too weak to hold their bodies together.
Newter's skin pales to a more pasty shade of orange as he look at the carnage, and I tear my gaze away and try to look at anything else. I settle on the wall of bone in front of me. What used to be a wall of bone. Now it's a smear of different substances, already listing to one side as the uneven distribution of materials begins to crack under its own weight.
"Everyone important still alive?" a rough voice calls out. I turn to face it. Hookwolf is striding out from behind his suddenly-patchwork wall, looking no worse for wear as a humanoid mass of blades.
"Y-Yeah," Newter says, stepping around a weeping boy scratching at a segment of his arm that has been replaced with leather. I nod quickly, not trusting myself to speak. Hookwolf looks at the massacre with impassive eyes, then back to the entrance.
"All clear!" he yells. Our improvised entryway warps further as more metal bars force it open. Kaiser strides through, followed by Faultline, Grue and Tattletale. Kaiser looks to the Thinker.
"Where to next?" he asks. Tattletale is silent for a moment, looking around the room without really seeing it before locking her gaze on a seemingly blank wall.
"Secret door, proximity activated," she says, moving slowly towards the wall before stopping. "Mines near the door itself, keyed to specific members' DNA. They'll explode otherwise. Grue can smoke them and prevent them from detecting targets, but then the door also won't detect us."
"So we can't get through?" Hookwolf asks. "You're a pretty shitty thief, aren't you?"
"Eat me," Tattletale says, tearing her gaze away from the wall. "I never said we couldn't get through. We just need to open the door without the sensors." She shoots a pointed look to Faultline, who nods.
"I can cut open the door, but could there be more mines in the hallway?" Faultline asks. "Opening the door is going to make a mess, and I don't want to set any off." I'm confused for a second before I think back to the Dock workers' demolition and nod. All the debris has to go somewhere, and if it falls backwards into the hallway it's going to set off anything remotely volatile.
"Nah," Tattletale says waving her hand dismissively. "Bakuda's relying on her fancy door and her goons to keep the riff-raff out. There'll be a few traps inside of her actual workshop and she should have a gun at the ready, but besides that we're in the clear once we get through the door."
"Really?" I ask. When several pairs of eyes snap to me I suppress the embarrassment via some rib twisting. "I mean, not having backup plans seems... short-sighted."
"You think the gook's got good thinking skills?" Hookwolf says, laughing and shaking his head. "You know she blew up some guys runnin' away from a fight, right? Her own guys." He raises a finger to the side of his head and twirls it. "Crazy bitch put bombs in her own guy's heads. She's more than a few cans short of a thirty rack."
"Indeed," Kaiser agrees. "While your caution is warranted, Bakuda is not known for being particularly careful, and Tattletale is rather good at figuring things out." The last part has a barely-detectable hint of bitterness to it. I guess the decision to put aside his feelings for the sake of the mission doesn't extend to not having them. To be fair, I think I'd be mad at having my primary source of clean money taken away as well. "Does anyone else have pressing concerns?" Kaiser asks. When no one speaks up he nods. "Give me a moment to converse with Coil."
We wait while Kaiser puts his hand up to his ear once more. After a short moment, he nods. "Continue with the assault."
The next two minutes are filled with a tense silence as Grue covers different parts of the floor and walls with his darkness. After Tattletale assures Faultline that she's not going to be turned inside out by a random explosive, the mercenary walks to the wall and works her magic, slowly and methodically sketching out a door.
A section of the wall, more than six feet high and maybe five feet wide, falls back into the passageway with an explosive wumph of compressed air and the crack of concrete fracturing. After the dust settles, Faultline motions towards the hallway now carpeted with rubble.
"Frontliners," she says and I take that as my cue. Hookwolf and I stride down the hallway with Newter following close behind.
The corridor is smooth stone, with stairs switching back every fifty feet. Kaiser consults with Coil over the phone at each flight before giving us the go-ahead.
"How'd she tunnel down this far without tipping people off?" I wonder quietly. Forget the martial applications of specializing in explosives, clearing out several hundred cubic feet of stone is a marketable power all on its own. Bakuda could've made a fortune in construction, waste removal, anything like that.
"Bomb Tinker," a gruff voice says next to me, and I remember that I'm not alone in the tunnel. "Figure that should be explanation enough," Hookwolf says dismissively.
"Yes, but what type of bomb?" I respond, slightly irritated at having my train of thought interrupted. "Matter transportation is significantly less lethal than, say, matter annihilation."
"You saw what happened upstairs, right?" he says. Point. "Effect doesn't matter as much as how it's used," he adds, waving a hand at the wall. "Lots of different ways the crazy bitch could get walls like these. Worrying about it's only going to make you jumpy."
"Quit flirting," Tattletale says. "Lab is coming up and I'll need you two meatshields up front."
I suppress the knee-jerk revulsion at the thought of dating a Nazi twenty years older than me and push a little more bone out. "How close?" I ask, noticing that Hookwolf's skin is also pulling back, showing off steel.
"This is the last switchback," she says. "Bakuda knows we're here and she'll be ready." There's a note of pain in her voice. Why? She hasn't done anything more strenuous than think.
Kaiser taps his ear one more time and nods. "This is the final stretch. Onwards."
Once we go down the last set of stairs, we come to a landing with a pair of simple metal double doors. Tattletale looks it up and down, a slight grimace visible behind her grin, and holds up her hand.
"Explosives on the door. Anyone who's not Bakuda trying to open it gets fragged," she says.
"Grue's smoke won't work?" I ask.
"It doesn't need to," Faultline answers, looking at the walls. "What type of explosives are we talking about?"
"Conventional shaped charges," Tattletale says. "All the boom goes in one direction."
"If the doors fall back without touching the handles?" she asks, and I see her line of thinking. How do you pass an indestructible object? You walk around it.
"Then the ceiling's going to have a very bad day when the doors separate," Tattletale finishes, nodding. "Which they won't if Kaiser binds them together. A shield might be nice anyway," she adds, looking pointedly at the Nazi.
"Simple enough," Kaiser says, gesturing at the door, metal bands quickly growing out of the handles and forming a thread-like lattice between the doors before a metal bar extends to brace itself against the floor. Once that's done he stamps a foot, and a spike of metal emerges from his boot, quickly blossoming into a sharp and intricate chest-high wall that covers about half the hallway, with horizontal slits for vision. "Is this sufficient?" he asks, glancing at Tattletale.
Tattletale nods and looks at Grue, who in turn looks at the door as smoke pours off of him and glides through the gaps in the wall to cling to the door. While the rest of us crouch behind the wall (and it's downright odd to see Kaiser doing anything besides standing, sitting or striding regally), Faultline goes up to the door, pauses for a moment, and then moves. Three quick stances, from low to high, left to right, and high to low, outline the cloud of darkness in sparking blue light before she spins around and sprints back behind the shield. Kaiser gestures, peering through one of the slits in the wall, and the metal bar extends, pushing against the doors and tipping them backwards into the workshop.
Then all hell breaks loose.