Tattletale broke off from her conversation with Grue and gave me a considering look before covering the mic on her phone. "So, Rose, be honest here. Given how much of a trump you are with your bullshit hax powers, how would you rate your chances against that train?"

I blinked in response, even as Madison looked at the blonde with a look of horror on her face before she spoke up. "You... you can't be serious, you're asking her to-"

"If it's just the train and Squealer, I would say fifty fifty depending on what she's got packed into the train," I shook my hand as if demonstrating that it could go either way.

Madison now looked at me with wide eyes. "But it's a train. You don't have to do it... alone."

I smiled and patted Madison on her hand. "Trust me, it's going to take more than a train to kill me. Such a thing would be ludicrous."

"So, what's the plan, Tattletale?" I turned to look at Lisa now.

"Basic plan, we go in the back to help out the Wards and PRT officers from inside, and you hit the train after the Merchants go in." It did seem simple in theory.

"And while there is a slight chance that Skidmark is crazy enough to have Squealer ram a way into the museum, they won't," She continued on with a shake of her head. "It would get the truce called on them."

"Too much noise?" Glitter Girl spoke up with a frown. "Or at least, it would get Brockton Bay too much attention from the wrong people?"

I nodded at the other two. "Makes sense."

"So, you good with taking out the escape vehicle?" My nod to Tattletale's question was answer enough. With that, she got back to talking on the phone with Grue to finalize the plan.

.


.

As the train parked itself in front of museum, the stealth field dissipated with a surge of electrical discharge followed by an artificial aurora borealis.

I stepped out in front of the train, hands behind my back as I walked casually to look at where Skidmark stood by the cabin exit. I had read about him on the internet as part of the research I did on the parahumans in Brockton Bay not long after I triggered. After all, he and the other capes of Brockton Bay were part of the bigger sea I now swam in.

Such information was essential, and I was sure that every other parahuman had done and would do the same thing I had after triggering, researching their local capes just in case.

The photos taken of Skidmark in the articles that covered him and the Merchants didn't exactly make him photogenic. He dressed like any other junkie that one could find in the Docks, the only concession he made to his cape status was a bandanna-like mask that covered the top half of his face. What was left revealed, however, wasn't much to write home about. He was dark skinned, had badly chapped lips and discolored teeth that looked more like shelled pistachio nuts than anything else.

My piercing and loud whistle at Skidmark was enough to make him break his kiss with Squealer. My impression of her was that she was a trashy blonde who liked to dress trashy, I tried not to glare at her cow-like endowments that were barely concealed by the fishnet shirt and bra she wore, or the daisy dukes shorts. Her only concession to her cape identity was a pair of over-sized goggles that looked to be tinker-made. "Normally, I wouldn't be doing this. But for formality's sake, I'll be nice and ask that you run back to your hide-out in the docks."

The two capes just looked at me as if I had gone insane. "Bitch, are you for motherfucking real? Or is that your way of saying you wanna be spanked hard and made to suck my dick? Cuz me and the boys here, we don't have any problems with that."

"I'll take that as a no," I nodded at the pair as the more normal Merchants peered at me from the top of the train and started making lewd remarks about what they'd do once I was defeated. "Excellent."

I breathed in, this... would be tricky. Generally, using charms that were loaned to me when I didn't quite have the graces for them tended to be a little bit more difficult. At times, this was due to the mote cost consuming much of my essence. Other times, they required a little something more from me.

Such was the case with Unreal Shipwright's Method. The name implied that ships were crafted with this charm. That wasn't quite true. What it allowed me to craft was any vehicle I could put my mind to. The only requirement was that I had to use up some of my extremely precious stockpile of gossamer that I shared with my guest.

I reached out to the side and pulled two of my gossamer tokens out of elsewhere. I called them tokens as that was the name and concept I had for them, but they were closer in appearance to gemstones cut, ground and polished to an oval cabochon form. One might even call them jewels if they didn't burn with absolute potential.

The shimmer of light within those gossamer tokens flared in my hands as I focused on the design within my mind.

The first things to form were a trio of crystal shards that glowed with a soft inner brilliance as gravity warped around them, twisting and spinning as light etched out containment units that spun around two of the crystals. While the third spun freely behind them before being covered in a shell that resembled a jet thruster. Slowly, bit by bit, the rest of the vehicle took form around the crystal cores.

A metal frame formed the skeleton, while crystal components wove themselves into existence to form the rest of the engine, there was no need for suspension as the inertial field generators came into being in a flicker of light tracings that transformed into solid metal that glowed balefully from within the skeleton frame like a heart.

The end result was a streamlined hoverbike of jet black stone exterior, armored with obsidian plating and burning crimson from the intakes. A trio of rather sharp, bladed wings arced forwards in the rear behind the seat.

"You goddamn cheating bitch..." the absolute disbelief could be heard in Squealer's voice as she looked at what I had just done and then at me. "Where the hell did you get that quantum fucking shit?"

It was clear she had worked out what I had done, more... how I had done it. It was certainly impressive for her to be that perceptive. Clearly, I would need to watch myself around tinkers when I was crafting.

"Does it matter?" I smirked at her as I settled myself on my hoverbike's seat and, with a light touch to a near invisible button, activated the holographic display.

"Skidmark? Go, I'll cut up that fucking dirty cheating ho myself." It was clear that I had offended Squealer's sensibilities with the raw materials I had used in crafting my hoverbike.

"If you say so, babe," Skidmark's uncertain look at his angry girl friend was surprising. Clearly she hadn't been this upset before, or at least not in front of him. "Boys, let's get going and leave the cat fight to the girls."

With that, the Merchants abandoned their transport and made their way up the museum stairs, leaving the two of us to look at each other from our respective vehicles.

As she slammed the train cabin door shut, I reached out to the side before pulling back across the front of my body with my arm. Like so much shattered glass, reality splintered behind my right arm's motion as I pulled my sword from elsewhere.

I spun my sword in my hand idly, realizing I would need something larger. With but a thought, the length of my blade doubled as it unfolded like a switchblade. The gap where the blade had emerged filled in and it was a perfectly long and rather sharp blade, as the handle twisted under my hand to transform into a handle that looked more at home on a very short spear.

With a flex of my arm, I adjusted my grip on my lengthened sword, taking into account its new length and weight. My other hand rested on the handle of my hoverbike. A light twist of my left hand and the engine beneath me whined as I throttled the motivator crystal.

For her part, Squealer was clearly charging up the engines of her train. It appeared that she would be depending on the pure brute force of her train and quite possibly the electrical discharge of her engines to take me down.

.


Goblin Queen | Heaven is about challenges

Worm / Exalted


.

There was an endless moment as we charged our respective engines.

Beneath me, the whine of my hoverbike's engine slowly grew higher in pitch and frequency as I maintained the brakes on it as I revved up the drive crystal.

On the other end of the street, Squealer's train screamed and roared as the electrical field around it grew into a field of lightning that arced outwards to ground in the cars, lamps and other metallic objects touching the ground.

There was no agreed upon signal by either of us. And yet, we released our brakes as one and surged forwards.

Jetting into the lightning field, I glided around the bulk of the train before my sword slid smoothly into the steel alloy plating and armor much like a hot knife would into warm butter. The lower blade wings of my hover jet shattered the plasma orbs of the train.

Despite my more than human constitution, the lightning hurt as it flicked over my body and hoverbike before continuing on into an adjacent metal object. I didn't see what they were, and I didn't honestly care.

I had to win, and thus I endured.

Despite my temptation to extend one of my feet to use as a pivot point, I didn't do so. It wasn't the smartest of ideas, not with the electrical charge in my body that would ground from the foot touching the ground.

Instead, I simply spun out and trusted in the inertial dampeners.

It was clear to me as I charged the stilled hulk of the train that I had done significant damage with my slash down its length. But it was still "active" judging by the electrical field that continued to arc from it.

A second slash from the other side should do it.

Once more, I flew into lightning. I felt warm and I could smell something starting to burn all around me as the insulation from the tires of the cars proved to be insufficient and started to melt from the electrical field.

The second attack proved sufficient to have Squealer launch the remains of the cabin outwards as a bulky shape within took to the night sky with the sound of jet turbines.

Getting off my bike would prove trickier than the battle, I idly noted to myself as the train exploded behind me.