A/N: Chap 50 review responses are in my forums as normal.
Acquisition 7.1
"Of course, Coil got away," Lisa said the morning after her rescue. The bitterness left a bad flavor in everyone's mouth. "There were three goals—me, Dinah, and Coil. He knew he couldn't stop you for two of them, so he made you choose. All things considered, I'm not going to complain that you chose Dinah and me."
On the morning after their rescue of their friends, Harry, Taylor and Lisa were not in the Coven common room. They weren't in their lair at all. Instead, Lisa sat on a hastily conjured recliner near the small office in the Terrarium with a cold compress against her forehead, clad in loose, faded pink pajamas while Taylor and Harry tried to undo almost two week's worth of neglect in his garden.
Harry knew everyone around their lair was busy. Danny, Phil and a dozen other of their DWA volunteers were kitted out to provide armed escort for Panacea as she and Schism toured the surrounding area for a possible location for Panacea's new clinic. They had a secret meeting scheduled the next day with the Mayor's office about the property.
Paige and Qiana were both playing nurse to Dinah and Aisha. Aisha's leg was healed instantly by Panacea, but the girl despite her bravado was obviously shaken by the experience. Dinah, like Lisa, was forced to overextend her power so badly under duress and drugs that even with a cleansing potion to wash out the newest round of addiction Coil forced on her, she could barely get out of bed.
Still other DWA volunteers were with Tiny Man as they made rounds of the local shelters and neighborhoods, looking for the families that were forced to abandon Coven by the PRT. Despite the absence of internet, phone or other basic utilities, word had spread through the city already that somehow the core of Coven has escaped the Birdcage and returned to Brockton Bay. Some DWA, Magnate and Seaboard Rail employees and their families had begun drifting back as soon as the sun rose. So far, they were hosting over two hundred refugees with more to come.
There was so very much to do, and so little time to do it.
"So you're saying it's impossible to actually catch the fucker?" Taylor asked. She knelt down in one planter box near where Lisa rested, working on the snowdrop and aconite.
Harry was finishing up the dittany and was about to water the mandrake. He paused, though, when one of the mandrake stems leaned away from his hand.
"Not impossible, just really, really hard," Tattletale said, oblivious to Harry's confusion since her eyes were closed against what she described as a raging Thinker's headache caused by prolonged, continual abuse of her power. She didn't mention the time spent carrying a bomb in her skull, and neither Harry nor Taylor mentioned it either.
Harry reached for another mandrake stem, and like the first this one leaned away from his out-stretched hand. He leaned back and absently fingered the dittany he'd just watered. Taylor used her bugs to weed the garden far more effectively than he could, but the care and planting of the plants required a personal touch.
The plants tingled against his fingers. He'd planted the purely non-magical American dittany as a less-powerful alternative to true dittany for the sleeping potion they used against the Merchants before Leviathan. But when he squatted down to stare intently at the plant that sprung from the seeds he planted, the tiny little violet flowers that topped it were…fluorescent orange, not violet.
Why hadn't he noticed before?
While Taylor and Tattletale talked about how best to kill Coil, Harry walked beside his girlfriend and knelt beside the planting box to study the Snowdrop he'd planted as a mundane substitute for Moly. But what…
Oh. I like that. Even as she spoke to Tattletale, Taylor absently ran a hand through his hair, making his scalp tingle. He didn't want to get distracted, though, because the plant that sprouted from the snowdrop seeds was not Snowdrop. The stem was black, oil-black, in fact, and the single flower atop each plant was a white so pure it glowed.
"So, when did you two finally figure it out?"
Harry blinked and looked up. "Just now!" he exclaimed. "It's amazing."
Lisa stared back with a wry smile even as she pressed her compress to her forehead. "You just now figured out you and Taylor are made for each other?"
"Er…no? What are we talking about?"
"I was talking about the fact that Taylor can't keep her hands off you, and you were purring like a fucking cat when she did touch you," Tattletale said. "I could figure out what you were talking about, but I don't want to use my power right now."
"The Birdcage," Taylor said simply. "We…figured things out then. And I have no idea what Harry's talking about."
"I can show you!" Harry said. "I can show you a mandrake and…and…well shit, then your eardrums would rupture and you'd both die. No, dittany!" He rushed back to the rows of dittany and carefully pulled off a single leaf which he brought to Lisa.
"Put that under your tongue and just suck on it."
"I'd tell you what you can go suck, but you seem serious," Lisa noted. "Fine." She took the leaf and slipped it under her mouth. Only to immediately yelp, drop her compress, and spit it out. "What the fuck was that?"
Harry frowned. "It was dittany. It's a healing herb. Why, what happened?"
"It started to relieve my headache, which is impossible!" Lisa said. "What is it?"
"I told you, dittany! Real, magical dittany! When I reached for the mandrakes, their stems moved away from me and that's what made me realize. By the way, do not pull out the mandrakes once they mature. You'll die. Badly. But…the moly! That's the very same magical ingredient that Hermes gave to Odysseus to protect against Circe's magic. Of course, in reality Hermes was actually just a wizard who was trying to steal the formula for Circe's transfiguration potion, but still, that's real, magical moly. Everything I planted has…has become magical!"
"How?" Taylor asked.
Harry frowned, thinking through his various previous lives until he remembered a lecture Professor Sprout gave to a twelve-year-old Harry Potter. "Magical plants are magical because magical people plant them," he repeated the old mantra. "Holy shit, it really is as simple as that. I've planted an honest-to-Merlin, magical witch's garden!"
He went back to the dittany and pulled another leaf which he handed back to Lisa. "Keep it in this time, you're looking at what may be the most valuable plant in the world. Distilled Essence of Dittany can heal almost as well as Panacea can."
With a nod and wide eyes, Lisa slipped the new leaf back under her tongue. Harry, meanwhile, wrapped Taylor in a hug and swung her around, kissing her soundly. "Do you know what this means?"
"What?"
"Better potions! Magical ingredients! It means…Taylor, I can use the mandrake, moly and my blood to infuse parts for a new magical focus! I can draft a potion that can…" He blushed. "A potion that can take away your monthly cramps and be a perfect birth control with only one dose every new moon. Clarity potions, cleansing potions, liquid luck and polyjuice. Skelegrow and…and…I'll need to fashion a stirring wand, but the mandrake will work for that. I just…"
"Harry!"
Lisa's voice broke his train of thought.
"What?"
"You have six planter boxes of plants, Harry," Lisa pointed out. "If you use up all your ingredients…"
"Yeah, you're right." Harry sighed. "I just…Taylor, I'm going to have add second and maybe third level balconies, okay?"
Taylor smiled, and for a moment the sheer beauty of the expression swept him away. "That's fine," she said.
"Holy shit you two have it bad, don't you?" Lisa said. Abruptly she hugged him both. "When I set you guys up, I was just hoping to get Harry laid and Taylor relaxed so you'd stop bugging the shit out of me and Paige. But this…this is beautiful."
"You set us up because we were bugging you?" Taylor said, hurt.
"Harry kept wanting to see my tits," Lisa pointed out.
"I still wouldn't mind," Harry admitted. "I mean…well, yeah. Tits. Who wouldn't?"
To his utter shock, Lisa flashed him. She pulled up her thick flannel pajama top and flashed him. She then dropped the pajamas back down and smirked first at Taylor's stunned expression, then his. And then she shook her head and sobbed, her eyes suddenly tearing up out of the blue.
Harry froze, overwhelmed first by the sight of some genuinely awesome breasts, and then by the sudden flood of emotion that followed. Taylor, though, seemed to get it as she pulled the weeping girl to her. Harry stood nearby, running a hand through his hair and feeling uncomfortable and a little lost, until Lisa grabbed him and pulled him into the hug as well.
"You came for me," she said, even as she hiccupped. "You came, and you saved my ass, and you didn't even think twice about it. It wasn't even a decision for you, was it?"
"Of course not," Taylor said.
Lisa nodded, then hugged them both hard, as if her very life depended on it. "The day you arrived from England, Harry, and the day you saved us from Lung, Taylor, are possibly the two best days of my life. Because they led to this, now. Thank you." She kissed Taylor on the lips, and Harry's brain shut down as he had visions of monorails and…and…
Then she was kissing him, and it was wonderful and sweet but not…
"You see now, don't you?" she said as she parted. "I know you dream about it, but you have what you need. You and Taylor really were made for each other. Stubborn, loyal and with the strongest moral code ever."
"Yeah," Harry admitted. "I love her. I really do. And I love you too, you know."
"Me too," Taylor admitted.
Lisa sobbed again. "I know. And if you say it again, I may have to shoot you both, because I love you too but it's…it's a lot. You know? Where we all come from? So…so I'm going to go find out how to get our internet back because life's just bullshit without internet, and you do your magical plant and bug shit, and…and…yeah."
She hugged them each again before walking quickly down the stairs to flee.
When they were gone, Taylor looked at Harry and said, "I wish to God I had tits like that."
"While I wouldn't mind," Harry told her, "I happen to like yours very much."
"That's because I let you kiss them sometimes."
"Sometimes like now? Now is a time, right?"
She grinned. "So it is."
"Wait until I'm out of the fucking building, you two!" Lisa called from the ground floor.
Thirty minutes later found Harry and Taylor snuggled together, sweaty, naked and glowing, on a conjured mattress in their terrarium office, when they heard gunfire outside.
"Fuck," Taylor muttered.
Harry propped himself up before leaning over and very intentionally suckling one of her petite and yet perfect breasts. When he lifted his head, he smiled. "Yes we did. And it was awesome!"
She ran her hands through his hair with a tolerant smile. "Doofus. Come on, let's see what's wrong now."
"Can't we just call someone?" He couldn't help but whine a little.
"We only have three of those satellite phones, and none are here. Come on, lazy-bones."
They quickly stood, cleaned up by way of Harry's magic, and dressed in normal civilian clothes before rushing down stairs to emerge in a pitched battle.
Taylor and he both stopped inside the wardline around the Terrarrium and stared in shock as a hundred or more heavily armed thugs advanced from the city across the ground the DWA, Schism, Harry and Qiana had cleared in front of the lair.
Coming from the water itself was a force of a hundred or so people that seemed comprised of the homeless wielding baseball bats and the occasional pistol. They were backed up, however, by…by something that was very hard to describe. If an amphibious assault vehicle was gang-banged by an Abrams tank and an air craft carrier, it might have resulted in the monstrosity that crawled out of the water. Two long boat hulls, probably belonging at one time to some nice yachts, were outfitted with tank-style treads hooked up somehow to a monster-struck wheel assembly to form a sort-of catamaran style surface, upon which someone had placed the body of an El Camino. Mounted in the bed of the El Camino body was a very large Tinker-made rifle that was spitting out little blue shards of destructive energy that held the approaching enemy forces at bay.
Riding in the back of the monstrous vehicle, wielding that Tinker gun, stood none other but the illustrious Skidmark.
"Come get some you cock-gobbling butt-fucking cunts!" he roared.
"Eloquent, isn't he?" Taylor muttered.
"I don't know, with a schlong as big as he has, I'm not sure he needs many words."
Taylor rolled her eyes in disgust.
Ordinarily Harry would have been okay letting the two sides duke it out, but unfortunately he saw Panacea, Schism, Danny and Phil crouched down in the shadow of one of the washed-up hulks from the boat graveyard surrounded by the DWA volunteers, one of whom was down, and another two or three obviously injured.
The whole equation changed when a vaguely lupine shape comprised of twirling steel blades rushed from the line of city-side attackers with a roar. He was followed by a short, athletic blonde in a buzz-cut wearing too-tight cut-offs, a white tube-top, heavy black boots and a cage-like hockey mask over her head. On the other side of the steel wolf was a bare-chested man in a tiger mask. They were looking at the heavy-hitters of the Empire 88.
"Nazis," Taylor muttered. "I hate these guys."
Harry snickered. "That was a great movie."
She frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"Never mind. Go for back up, I'm going to get our people out."
He started forward then paused when Hookwolf hit the front line of the Merchants. The sound of screams and ripping flesh briefly overwhelmed the rest of the fight and made Harry wince. Skidmark responded with a prolonged burst of fire from his tinker cannon that blew Hookwolf back without really hurting him.
Another of the merchant capes came barreling from the huge vehicle, which Harry quickly realized had transported the entire gang over the water to their area of the docks. The figure towered over everyone there, moving like a steam-punk take on Armsmaster. The suit was rusted and frankly ugly to look at, with a single steam valve off his back and gauges like shoulder humps beside it. Every step Trainwreck took was accompanied by the squeal of metal and the hiss of steam.
He slammed a fist into the tumbling Hookwolf hard enough to send the E88 cape flying. A step behind came Mush, going full-giant mode in a second body of collected trash and debris. He swung a car-sized fist comprise of trash at the tight-bodied blonde, who bounced away easily while slashing with a pair of kamas.
The heavily armed E88 minions continued to advance, moving steadily not toward the Merchants, but toward Panacea's group. "Holy shit, they're all after Amy," Harry muttered.
"Go!" Taylor cried as she darted for the lair, careful to stay within the shared wardline that protected both buildings.
Harry apparated and appeared with a pop right in the middle of his people. "Damn, Panacea, I can't take you anywhere, can I?" Harry said.
Panacea bit back a scream. "Where were you?"
Harry glanced at Danny and blushed. "Er, busy. But I'm here now. Danny, can you or Phil grab onto that man? I'm going to charm a portkey into the lair."
They dragged the fallen man into their group as Harry summed a metal pipe that just happened to brain the closest E88 thug on its way to him. He quickly imbued the pipe with portkey magic. "Everyone grab hold. On three: one, two…"
They appeared in the middle of the lair with a loud pop. "Three."
"You're supposed to make it go on three," Panacea said, obviously rattled and trying to cover her terror with anger.
"Eh, I'm a high school drop-out. Who says I can even count?" Harry said with a shrug.
The rest of their team was running toward them, those that were there. Qiana was already kitted out in their borrowed PRT gear, as were many of the other DWA volunteers, all of whom were prepared to fight to protect their own. Genesis had generated her dragon form, also obviously ready for a fight. Taylor had thrown on a rough Kevlar vest and a holstered pistol. Using her bugs to aim, Harry knew she was a preternaturally good shot.
They emerged from the lair just in time to see the E88 utterly obliterate the Merchants. The three heavy hitters—Hookwolf, Stormtiger and Cricket, were joined by almost the entirety of the E88 capes. Harry, because of his research for Coil as a slave, knew every member by sight.
Kaiser himself was in play, generating blades with ruthless efficiency against the desperately retreating, terrified Merchants. Beside him, the giant Barbie twins, Fenja and Menja, made quick, laughable work of Mush. They didn't just beat him, though. One slammed him down with her shield while the other stabbed the disgusting goblin of a cape through with a spear-tip the size of Harry's leg.
The cape's death scream set Skidmark to cursing even louder. Squealer's vehicle abruptly launched missiles that flew tight toward the twenty-foot tall twins. Fenja jumped in front of her twin with her shield to intercept the missiles. Even so, the five weapons exploded with sufficient power to send both giant women flying backward, shattering the shield and Fenja's arm. Both shrunk back rapidly as they fell.
Rune answered with a rain of dismembered cars, old water heater tanks and chunks of concrete thrown by her power with sufficient velocity to crack one of the hulls of Squealer's vehicle. Trainwreck was falling back before Hookwolf's vicious counter-attack, while Stormtiger, Cricket, Krieg, Viktor, and Alabaster led the unpowered E88 thugs directly into the Merchant minions, slaughtering them with an abandon Harry had never seen in a cape fight. It wasn't even really a fight any more—just a slaughter.
He looked around but noted Purity was not there. He knew she'd left Brockton Bay with Fog, Night and Crusader, but always harbored a fear that she might return. According to the news, she didn't just take her daughter with her, she'd taken Kaiser's only son as well.
The leader of the E88 obviously had some unchecked aggression to work off.
"Holy fuck," Qiana muttered from behind them.
The fight ended abruptly when Kaiser made a lifting motion and a veritable forest of streel spikes shot out from the ground underneath Squealer's vehicle. Amidst the sounds of dying Merchants, Harry heard a woman's scream of agony.
"Babe!" Skidmark shouted. "You cock-cobbling son of a…."
He never finished. A long metal spike shot up from the ground, piercing the El Camino bed and shooting through Skidmark's chest with a wet slick sound. Skidmark coughed blood and stared down at the two-foot long protrusion in his chest before going limp, impaled.
"Skids!" The cry from within the vehicle sounded weak, and Harry felt certain that Squealer would soon join her lover.
All around, the last Merchant minions were cut down viciously, even those that surrendered or begged mercy. The last fell to one of Cricket's kamas, blubbering and crying about her kids. Cricket just grinned as she took the emaciated woman's head with a single swipe of her hook-shaped blades. She was covered in blood-splatter that soaked her tube-top almost as if she were in a wet T-shirt contest from hell.
Harry shuddered as she made a point of licking blood off her forearm.
Kaiser walked toward them across the killing field, as splattered in blood as the rest of his capes. They fell in behind him. Menja cradled her arm and bore burns, while Fenja looked bruised and burned as well from the last fusillade of missiles Squealer shot. Hookwolf resumed a more human shape, looking like the male counter to Cricket in his jeans. He had more hair on his tattooed chest than Harry did on his head, and since the unmasking of E88 didn't even bother with his own mask. He looked vaguely like a Swedish porn-star, though the blood didn't help anything.
"Mage, Skitter, welcome back to Brockton Bay," Kaiser said with a smarmy smile, like a used car salesmen. "Given your recent experiences, I would have expected you to be more cautious. When our spies told us the Merchants were making a move on Panacea, I assumed she would be safe inside your impressive lair. Instead, I found her caught in the open. You're lucky we were in the neighborhood."
In the neighborhood with a few hundred of your close friends, Harry thought. Behind their Wardline, they weren't in immediately danger. But Harry had no illusions about walking over E88. Not at all.
"Thank you, then," Harry said, choosing to play politics in the face of the savages. "What do I owe your assistance to?"
"You eliminated a potential nuisance to us before it even began," Kaiser said with a regal nod. "We were able to run the Panthers out easily without their leader. Good work, on that. Shadow Stalker was always a troublesome irritant."
"I think I'm going to be sick," Taylor muttered.
Harry squeezed her hand but met Kaiser's smug grin head on. "So, you weren't after Panacea yourself?"
"We have our own healer, we don't need yours," Kaiser said, now sounding vaguely disappointed that Harry would even ask the question. "However, it seems we are at an interesting crossroads. The Merchants, as you can see, are now gone. The ABB ceased to function upon Lung's capture and have already splintered. There is only now the E88 and Coven."
Kaiser made a point of looking at Qiana, then at the handful of black men who worked with the DWA. "There are, obviously, some philosophical differences between our organizations. And yet, I feel there may be room to come to an…agreement."
"In other words, if we don't fuck with them they won't try to murder us." Lisa stepped out of the lair with a glass of wine in her hands. She wore a simple yellow dress and slippers, and had her hair in rollers fresh from the shower she must have just emerged from. "Hello, Max. How's Theo doing?"
Kaiser's smile turned vicious. "He's doing fine, I'm sure. Perhaps you'd be interested in meeting him? I'm sure Brad could get you ready for the son of Kaiser."
Brad's face remained blank, but beside him Cricket grinned and grabbed her crotch with an obscene hip thrust.
"From what I understand Theo wouldn't know what to do with me even if you gave him to me," Lisa snapped right back with her own vicious grin. "He is your son, after all."
Rune very slowly made sure to turn away from the exchange and cover her mouth.
"As fun as it is to see Kaiser stumble against a Thinker who's main power is to win battles of wit," Taylor began. "What are your terms?"
Qiana started as if shocked and glared, but didn't say anything.
"Surprisingly intelligent of you," Kaiser said. "We split the city. E88 currently controls central and southern downtown, the Beach front and the shantytowns to the south. Coven will control the entirety of the Docks to Captain's hill, the trainyard and surrounding areas. Boardwalk will be neutral ground. A truce will stand for six months or until violated. Any violations will be discussed on neutral ground before the truce is declared void."
"And the Protectorate?" Taylor demanded.
Kaiser scoffed. "What Protectorate?"
Which pretty much summed up the situation, Harry hated to admit. He looked around at his people, noticing the angry expressions on some. "Coven isn't a dictatorship. We'll have to discuss it. We'll have an answer in two hours. I'm assuming Medhall?"
The armored leader of E88 looked as if he might push the issue before nodding. "Two hours, then. I hope you make the right decision, Coven. It would be unfortunate for your people if we had to make another example of you."
With that, E88 turned to leave, minions in tow. Harry watched the retreating force, which for all intents and purposes was an army. They even had heavily armored jeeps they climbed into, which looked like European military transports.
"I have one thing to say," Qiana declared. "What the fuck?"
