"I'm not comfortable with this," Dad said.

"They're coming for me," I said. "Whether we like it or not, it's going to happen. The only option is to hit them first, and hit them hard."

"Do you think you can manage that?' he asked. "Fighting Capes isn't like fighting normal people; there are always surprises. Couldn't you just run away?"

"For a while maybe, but how many people will they hurt trying to draw me out? How long will it be before I can't take the guilt of people being tortured or dying because I'm too afraid to fight?"

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head. "It wasn't ever going to work, the peace thing. I'd hoped that you could be like me and set it aside, but that's not going to happen, is it?"

"If you hadn't had me or mom, would you have set it aside?" I asked.

He was silent for a long moment, then he sighed.

"So how are we going to do this?" he asked. "Finding them when they are along is going to be the hardest part; keeping them from calling for help will be second. The actual fight is actually going to be the easiest part unless you intentionally draw it out because you are enjoying it."

"I wouldn't do that!" I said, scandalized.

"It's happened before," he said. "Here's what I want you to promise me; if you are going to do this, you go in hard and you take them out as quickly and as efficiently as you can. If you can avoid killing them, great, but staying safe is more important."

"So I didn't do wrong, killing Crusader?"

Dad's face turned cold. "Killing is always wrong. Sometimes the other alternatives are more wrong. He stumbled across a group of taggers and took them and their families hostage. He murdered people In cold blood. He deserved anything he got. More importantly, I'm not sure you could have fought his ghosts, not by yourself. You had to take him out or he would have killed or hurt you."

It felt odd having Dad suggest that murder was the better choice. I'd questioned myself whether I could have knocked him out instead of killing him, but I couldn't see any other way. Knocking someone out wasn't like the movies. If you hit them hard enough to knock them unconscious then you most likely did brain damage, and killing was only a step away.

"So how do I do this?" I asked.

"Attack the weakest first," he said. "If you were strong enough to take on their strongest capes and be sure of winning I'd tell you to chop them off at the head. Take out Kaiser and they might even break up and start fighting among themselves. The problem is that Kaiser is never alone and his power is a hard counter to yours."

He meant that Kaiser would most likely kill me.

"But if you can make the Empire look weak, there is a chance that Lung or maybe even the Merchants will move and do some of your work for you."

"People will get killed then too," I said dubiously.

"There's no way you are getting out of this without someone getting hurt," Dad said. "But at least this way your enemies will take each other out."

"So who are the weakest?" I asked.

"For you?" he asked. "Rune and Othalla. Alabaster will be hard or impossible to kill, but easy to capture. Viktor steals skills, so you'll have to be careful with him."

"And the ones to avoid are Kaiser, Hookwolf and Purity," I said. "Maybe Krieg, depending."

"I'm not sure how you'd do against Fenja or Menja," he said. "They say Cricket is fast and can disorient people, so she might be tough. You can't beat someone you can't hit."

"Stormtiger?" I asked.

He shrugged. "They say he can hear you coming from a mile away. I'm not sure how hard he hits with his winds either."

So four possibles, with Othalla more difficult than she seemed because she was rarely alone. It wouldn't be easy running a guerilla campaign even with Leet's help.

It'd be easier if the Protectorate would help, but the impression I'd gotten from Sophia was that they weren't interested in doing anything to rock the boat.

Even worse, they were rarely alone. Usually the weaker members either banded together or they accompanied one of the big hitters. They usually had backup in the form of goons too, although those wouldn't be much of an impediment.

"So what do I do?"

"The first thing you need is intelligence," Dad said. "The important thing at this stage is not to get caught. There are criminals who get caught casing a joint, or whose Internet searches lead right to them. You don't want that to be you."

"How do you know AL this?" I asked.

"Lustrum fought other supervillains," he said. "And there may have been a time or two I helped your mother, with planning at least."

"Then what?"

"Then you need a plan," Dad said. "Surprise is really good, ambushes make it hard for them to get you and you want to cut off communications. A signal jammer doesn't even have to be tinkertech to stop a cell phone call."

"Aren't those illegal?"

"You're out assaulting and possibly killing people," Dad said. "Signal jammers are the least of your worries."

"I've got mixed emotions about ambushing them," I said. "Part of me would rather just attack them head on."

"That's the part of you that will get yourself killed," Dad said. He shook his head. "Our family can be stupid about that kind of thing."

We were both silent for a long moment.

Dad continued. "You might try raiding some of their stash houses. The point of Guerrilla warfare isn't just to whittle down their forces. It's also to gain popular support. One of the Empire's strongest assets is that there are a lot of people sympathetic to them. Part of that is that people assume that they are the only defense against Lung and the Merchants."

"And the racists," I said.

"The racists will always be there," Dad said. "But the rest are just people who are afraid. Those are the people who can be swayed to your side. If they stop looking for you, stop helping the Empire then your life gets easier."

"All right," I said. "Let's get started."

"I've been looking into your career as Shadow Stalker," I said.

We were on the roof again. I was eating my lunch and Sophia was supposed to be bullying me. With no one around, she was instead stealing some of my meal, which irritated me. That may have been part of the point.

"Yeah?" she asked suspiciously.

"So I'm guessing you know where some of the Empire stash houses and drug houses are," I said. "Since stealth was kind of your thing."

"I might," she said. "Why do you want to know?"

I could see on her face that she knew exactly why, but she wanted me to say it out loud. She wanted for me to ask her for help, after everything she'd done to me.

I gritted my teeth but forced myself to remain outwardly calm.

"The Protectorate doesn't let you hit them, does it?" I asked.

"You want to hit the Empire," she said. "You know they've been buzzing around like a beehive since you cracked Crusader's melon."

She stared at me for a moment, then grinned, her white teeth startling against the darkness of her skin. "That was a good job. I've seen the videos... it couldn't have happened to a more deserving Nazi."

"So you'll help me?" I asked.

She bit her lip. "It's going to cost you."

"What?" I asked slowly.

"Emma's got something humiliating lined up; you're going to let it happen," she said.

I stared at her, then scowled. "I don't understand why you care what Emma thinks."

"You think you're the only one that's got something to lose from her?" she asked. "She knows who I am. All it takes is one word in the wrong ear, and I wake up to find my family murdered in the middle of the night."

"Emma wouldn't do that!" I protested.

"Like she wouldn't turn on you on a dime?" she asked. "I used to think she was cool, but ever since you've been getting all confident and shit and ducking most of her crap, she's been getting crazier than a shithouse rat."

"And you think letting her humiliate me would make her more normal."

"Couldn't hurt... me at least," she said. "That's the price."

"What does she want to do?" I asked.

"I couldn't spoil the surprise," she said, smiling unpleasantly. "After all, it won't look real if you aren't in the moment."

"Fine," I said. "Whatever it takes."

"That's what it'll take if you want to make the Empire bleed," she said. She smiled again, and this time it seemed more open and honest. "Let me tell you about a few places that are probably going to be up your alley."

I nodded and I started taking notes.

I could sense it from two blocks away; forty people gathered in a small area that should have only held five or ten.

Leet had built me a cell phone jammer small enough to put in my pocket. It would block all calls in a one block radius, and I could wait to set it off until I got close; he suggested that they would know what was happening if I used it earlier than I had to.

I didn't detect any parahumans, which was good, but I didn't know what kind of weapons they had, which wasn't as good. Small arms only left bruises on me, but it was possible that they had armor piercing bullets or high caliber weapons. I couldn't afford to take anything for granted.

An anti-tank missile would probably kill me if it hit, and this was one of their major drug distribution hubs.

While the Empire didn't sell as many drugs as the Merchants, it was still one of their major sources of income. This warehouse was the holding area for a lot of their drugs, and if I took it out it would cost them a lot of money and prestige.

This was the last thing Sophia had been working on before she'd been caught, one of the Empire's big secrets. Just knowing about it would be enough to get someone and their family killed. Of course, that meant that it was heavily fortified, even if it didn't look it from the outside.

Sophia had never been able to get close enough to see all of their defenses, but she'd seen a stream of trucks moving in and out at all hours of the day, other than during school hours when she'd been unable to watch.

The Empire owned all the warehouses in the block surrounding it too, and they made sure to keep those deserted. Property was cheap enough in the Bay that buying a few warehouses wasn't as big of an investment as it would have been in other parts of the country.

Still, at a quarter million per warehouse this was a two million dollar investment. It was a sign of just how important this hub was to the Empire.

It was strange that Sophia hadn't told the Protectorate. Was it because she didn't trust them to even take action?

I climbed up a drain pipe. I wasn't wearing weighted clothes today; the last thing I needed was to fall through a roof when I didn't need it.

I'd been having to pretend to sit down in chairs while holding myself up in school for weeks now. I'd almost gotten caught when Madison had one of the boys jerk a chair out from under me; I'd had to intentionally fall.

Climbing like a monkey up a drain pipe, I reached the roof of the warehouse. I ran lithely across the roof until I reached the gap. I kept running as stealthily as I could. I knew that there weren't any people in these warehouses because of my Ki sense, but it was always possible they'd have motion sensors.

Attacking where you aren't expected was one of the first rules.

There were guards on the roof. I I called up my Ki as I jumped to the roof of one of the adjacent buildings. That allowed me to land more lightly, landing like a feather on the roof. Otherwise my landing would have echoed inside the metal building.

I moved slowly across and did the same thing to the final building. Landing lightly, I crept across the roof toward the guards, who were peering over the edge of the roof.

Stunning them took only a moment, and a moment later I had them gagged and zip tied.

There was a hatch leading down into the warehouse, but it was locked from the inside. They were undoubtedly expecting someone to come through that doorway, which meant I needed to do something else.

I knew the locations of everyone inside the warehouse, but I didn't have Shadow Stalker's ability to get inside stealthily. That didn't mean I couldn't try, though.

Cautiously I reached down and I began snapping the heads of the nails off with my fingernails. It made more noise than I would have liked, but a quick check didn't show the guards acting like they noticed. One by one I snapped the heads off the nails.

Carefully I lifted the sheet of metal roofing, only to look down and see that there were old shingles underneath, the kind used on houses. I grimaced. Pulling all of this up would be too noisy and would take too long.

There was only one thing I could do.

I punched my fist through the shingles. It reminded me unpleasantly of what it had been like to hit Crusader in the head, but I forced the image from my mind.

I could feel the people underneath responding to the noise, and a moment later bullets ripped through the roof beside me. It didn't matter, though. I tore a hole in the roof, and a moment later I was dropping twenty feet to the floor of the warehouse.

Landing, I saw that there were pallets of boxes everywhere. They were labeled in various ways to disguise what they were, but the important thing was the men who were rushing toward me with guns.

One man had a machine gun mounted on the back of a truck; it was heavy and it was pointed at the overhead doors leading out of the warehouse. I had a feeling that I wouldn't enjoy being shot by those much.

I pointed upwards, and I blasted the lights.

It took a moment for me to hit all of them, a moment where I was dodging gunfire, but once the lights were gone we were plunged into darkness. The hole I had left in the ceiling wasn't enough to provide much light, and in any case their eyes weren't adapted to the darkness.

I didn't need any lights though. Unlike the holodeck simulations, I could actually see their Ki, which meant that they were lit up to me like Christmas lights. That didn't help me with the other objects in the room, which meant that I had to depend on my memory of where everything was, but in a moment it wouldn't matter.

Tossing people against walls was surprisingly effective; I tossed Nazis in the dark. Even if I hadn't been able to see Ki I could have followed them by the flashes of their guns going off. It created a strange strobe effect; I could see them for a fraction of a moment after they fired their guns.

Smashing one of them after the other, I heard some of them groaning as they were hit by their own people. The man with the machine gun was trying to move it around, but a moment later I was up on the truck behind him. I threw him up into the air and a moment later I had the gun.

The overhead doors opened; I wasn't sure whether it was the guards outside or a quick minded guard inside. It didn't matter.

As light from the street lamps outside filled the room, the men facing me froze as they realized that I was behind the machine gun and it was pointed at them.

"I'd throw my guns down and surrender," I called out, my voice altered by Leet's device. "Things might get a little messy otherwise."

Two of the men behind me tried creeping up behind me. Almost negligently I pointed behind me and blasted. I heard a horrible wet gurgling sound and a body hitting the floor.

I also heard a gun hitting the floor as the second man surrendered.

A moment later the others did the same.

"Kick the guns toward me," I said. I watched until they complied.

"The Empire will get you for this!" one of the less intelligent gang members said.

I threw my backpack at the closest man.

Instead of my usual costume, this time it was filled with zip ties.

"Start tying yourselves up. Any man I see cheating will get a Crusader special."

They seemed unusually willing to tie themselves up after that. A moment later I began tying them to each other. I roped them to the vehicle with the machine gun, and after putting it in neutral I shoved it outside.

A moment to regain the two men on the roof and the one man who who seemed to be dead, and I had thirty nine men roped together.

I grabbed a phone from one of them, and switching off the cell phone jammer I dialed the PRT.

"PRT," the woman on the phone said. "How may I help you?"

"I've just captured thirty seven members of the Empire," I said. "And also I'd like to report a fire."

"Who is this?" the woman asked.

"Just call me Hood," I said. "You can trace this phone's location, right?"

She was silent for a moment.

"Yes."

"You should probably bring fire trucks," I said.

I dropped the phone.

"There's no fire," one of the men said.

I ignored them, turning to the warehouse and pulling in my Ki. A moment later I shouted.

"KA...ME...HA...ME...HA!"

A moment later the world turned white. Apparently cocaine dust was highly flammable, and whatever else they had floating around in the warehouse was even worse.

"Shit," one of the men said.

I didn't leave until I heard the sounds of the fire trucks.

One down.