Realign 14.24
«Well?» you ask the rest of your team after a moment so you can all consider Alpha's question. «Anyone have any ideas?»
"Which cape was it that had the electric sword?" Sarah asks in a thoughtful voice, her eyes drifting to you. "You said one of them did. Flimmern, I'm guessing."
"That's the one."
"I'll go to the office, then. Cat Sith, too," she adds after a moment. You presume from the faint grimace and the mild glare her Guardian Beast is sending her that her quick correction was due to a telepathic prodding from the latter more than anything else. Looking back at Alpha, she explains, "I have lightning-based abilities as well, so I should be able to take her hits better than most of us."
"And we're tough on our own, anyway," chimes in Cat Sith.
Laura frowns, her eyes looking out to one of the targets. "I'm more worried about the construction store." Her hand rises to point at the building in question. "It looks like there is some machinery or something in a lot to the back, and you mentioned that one of them can possess machines. Sounds like a recipe for trouble."
"We can head that way, then. What?" Kayleigh asks innocently when Laura's head whips around to stare at her. "If that guy is going to possess a bulldozer or something, you can freeze it in place while I blow it up or dissolve it." She pulls her colorful revolver and her gold pistol out of their respective holsters and spin them around her index fingers. "We got this, especially if the other guys can keep anybody else in there with him off us while we're working."
That might work, you find yourself thinking, but it's still worrisome. Especially as the Wolfheads' roster contains several Brutes and the PRT force headed into that building only has one. «Sam, I'd like you to go with them. They're going to need the muscle.»
«I can handle that, but where will you be?»
"I'll join you in the office," you inform both Samantha and Alpha. "The guys going to the sporting store already have enough blasters. Your group is a little light on that end."
"More fire support is always appreciated."
Missy sighs and looks at the group that will be going to the sporting store. "I guess that leaves you guys with me. I'm not as tough as Cailleach or Samantha, but I've got a few tricks up my sleeves."
"You mean sleeve, don't you?" Delta comments with a smile and a pointed look at her armored prosthetic.
"I guess you'll have to find that one out with your own eyes."
"Chatter after, job first." Alpha punctuates her statement with a stern look at the older man, who just turns his smile on her. She might be in charge, but it is obvious that he both has seniority over her and knows it. Or maybe he is like Kayleigh and just does not let anything ever get to him.
Suddenly you are very glad that the two of them will not be left together in the same place. You can already see them being bad influences on each other.
The other groups split off, and you turn your attention to Sarah and Cat Sith. Unlike yours, her template apparently did not come with instructions on how to fly by default, or maybe it was because her Linker Core is still too small and the template has not had enough time to start whatever it does to make the Core bigger. Regardless, they are the only members of the team who do not yet have some kind of airborne mobility. «Want me to carry you down?» you ask, applying a bit of telekinesis to the older heroine to demonstrate what you mean.
With Cat Sith riding on her shoulder as a cat, it is not a terrible effort to float the pair of them down to the ground with you and sneak up on the door to the small office complex. The door itself is locked, no surprise there, but a couple of Flare Shooters set to their hottest setting quickly melt the hinges so Alpha can telekinetically lift the door outwards and set it on the ground. «Telepathic coms only. We don't want to give away the element of surprise,» she tells all of you unnecessarily.
«Yeah, yeah, mon capitaine.» You look over at Charlie, and while you cannot see his face through the PRT-standard helmets the Pentagram mages all wear, you can certainly imagine the no doubt enormous eye roll. «Let me just put away my squeaky clown shoes first.»
In fact, only Thirteenth Hour and Cat Sith are the ones to walk. The other four of you drift along silently, feet a couple of inches above the floor. The first set of rooms you enter are dark, and you are thankful that Devices can provide night vision on demand so you are not stumbling around blindly. That would be terrible for stealth.
After a couple of minutes, however, you find yourself looking at thin beams of light coming from beneath another closed and presumably locked door. Alpha holds up one hand to signal you to stop before pointing her staff not at the door but instead at the tiled floor. A casting circle spins into existence beneath her, and you cannot help but to smile to yourself at its appearance. The few times you saw them casting magic like this, it had been with a standard Galean triangular or circular sigil, but they are certainly making their magic their own.
And, you think with another glance at the five-pointed star in the circle, living up to their name at the same time.
The tiles and the concrete below them crack and shatter, and the broken materials lift up like a carpet before rolling into an oblong, almost tube-like shape. Wedges lift away from four points and twist into additional tubes with bulges at the end. The end closest to you swells and shapes itself, and that is the clue you need to figure out what she is doing. Once all the pieces are positioned correctly, the edges between them seal up to make a smooth surface. A shake of its short-snouted head, and the bulky, almost canine-looking construct pads its way to Alpha's side. She reaches down to pat its head and looks up at you with only the slightest bit of stiffness visible in her frame. «Force multipliers are always good.»
«I still say you're a monster,» Charlie says, clearly speaking to all of you despite the fact that he is addressing Alpha. «You go to the trouble of designing a hyena golem, and you refuse to make it laugh?»
«Considering you laugh enough for a whole pack of hyenas, I consider it a mercy.» She levels her staff at the door this time. «They are either in here or in a very nearby room, which means the time for sneaking around is over. Everybody ready? Okay. Three… Two… One.»
A blast of force explodes from the end of her Device, and she charges in followed closely by Sword, who pulls out a pair of long-handled knives and flicks them to make those suspicious handles expand into batons. Charlie is next, and a pair of purple daggers appear in his hands for just a split second before he fades out of sight.
You, Thirteenth Hour, and Cat Sith are not far behind. This room appears to have been a lobby of some kind before being taking over by the gang, complete with a reception desk in the middle of the room a short distance behind a staircase that leads to a balcony overhead. There are no chairs in the lobby for people to wait any longer, but a very nice padded chair sits behind the desk. Also by the desk, the blue armored figure of Flimmern has just looked up from some papers, a rather small man in a brown vest and with what honestly looks like a scarf with eye holes wrapped around his head standing next to her.
«We got her!» Thirteenth Hour yells out as she and Cat Sith charge the valkyrie, your newest teammate's brand new sword ringing as it slides away from the metal plate.
"Eindringlinge!" Flimmern shouts, grabbing her own copper blade. She has to make a hasty parry as Thirteenth Hour's sword crashes against her.
Alpha's hyena runs towards the man in the vest, and you grimace when his fingers elongate into foot-long bone claws. When Alpha showed you the picture of the man, you had focused on the bear skin he was wearing, but it is clear now that this would be Barbar, one of the Brutes the Wolfheads have on their roster. Which means you are likely also going to have to face his sister.
Sure enough, a cape in a midnight blue dress runs out of one of the doors on the balcony. White light surrounds her hands, but any appearance of softness is rapidly dispelled when Schütze flings several streaks of light towards Thirteenth Hour and Alpha.
«Sword, she's ours,» Charlie says, though you still cannot see where he vanished to.
Not a bad idea, honestly, you think to yourself. From what you understand and from talking with Missy on a number of occasions, most Blasters do not have any kind of special protection from getting stabbed. Mages like you are a glaring exception. With them attacking Schütze's weakness and Thirteenth Hour and Cat Sith countering Flimmern's strength, that leaves you and Alpha to take care of Barbar. You look down at the claws his hands have become– not to mention his now ursine head complete with fangs and a muscular tail that looks more monkey than bear – and the winning strategy becomes clear. «Think your hyena can keep him distracted down there?»
Alpha just turns her head to stare at you through her faceplate. «Why do you think I created it in the first place?»
You fly a short distance away from her, just in case Barbar somehow has a ranged attack of some kind, and call up a dozen Flare Shooters at the same time that Alpha creates or unseals a large number of honest to god shuriken. You stare at her from the corner of your eye. Is she a PRT agent or a ninja? The throwing stars start spinning around faster and faster, and you shrug. You have never seen her use any kind of Shooter spell, so maybe this is her alternative?
Almost in sync the two of you hurl your attacks. A second later, you are extremely thankful both that her weapons are undoubtedly cheap to make and that with so many, she cannot move them with as much precision as you can your Shooters. A couple of shuriken get melted just by the heat of your bullets passing by, and you have to take more direct control of them to weave through the hail of steel. If Alpha could steer her weapons the way you can, you have no doubt they would crash together even more.
Barbar's tail lashes out and sweeps a swath of shuriken out of his way, but there are too many for him to effectively dodge. The concrete hyena latched onto his leg likely does not make it any easier. The stars do not dig into his flesh, either; instead they start swirling around him so they can more easily carve long furrows into him. She plans to bleed him out, you realize. Keep him occupied with the hyena and nearly literally take him down with a 'thousand cuts'.
You can see the shapeshifting Brute give you a glare before turning his attention and his claws to the one enemy he can see, namely the golem. Great grooves are carved into the creature, but it is merely concrete, not flesh and blood. It does not care.
Flimmern shouts something in German, something that sounds even angrier than the language normally does. Another door in the back of the room opens, this time below the balcony, and an overweight boy forged from metal stomps out. Even from this distance you can see how his eyes widen at the sight of even just two of you, but with a timid battlecry he charges, growing taller with every step.
"I got this," you tell Alpha. You have been thinking off and on since seeing this cape in the drug den, and you think you know a good way to deal with him. He is obviously a coward, and while this metal form of his is undoubtedly durable, you have something that trumps it and just might put the fear of magic in him.
A blazing scythe blade erupts from the head of Perfect Storm, and your Device pulls up another bit of code without prompting. «Blitz Action ready, Mistress.»
You push the mental button and move. Gestalt might be twelve feet tall now and made of steel, but that does not matter to you. You dash forwards, the edge of your Flare Blade scraping sideways over his abdomen. A blink and you change direction, now accelerating behind him and carving a line across his back. Your enhanced speed nearly sends you into the underside of the balcony, but you hit the brakes and instead move full speed straight downwards. Your boots hit the floor a single moment before you spin around to hold your scythe between yourself and Gestalt.
Your concern that he will hit you as soon as you stop is clearly unwarranted. Gestalt screams as he pulls the stump of his right arm close to his chest. His closed fist lays on the floor, still large and metal, but despite the lack of blood he must still be able to feel pain. He does not even look at you before he turns tail and runs back into the room from which he appeared.
That is one of them dealt with, and you take a second to check on Thirteenth Hour and Cat Sith. It is their first fight with you, particularly Thirteenth Hour's first fight with her new powers, but you appear to have nothing to worry about. They have Flimmern well in hand.
Instead you return your focus to Barbar. You have the scythe out already, so it does not take much to rush past him and score another slash across his back now. Several of the whirling shuriken ping off you in the process, but they are a nothing to your Barrier Jacket. He whirls around to counter, but by then you are already out of his reach and floating ten feet away from Alpha.
It gives you the perfect opportunity to see Schütze's back explode in a burst of purple light and then for Sword to roundhouse kick her in the head and off the balcony entirely. The gowned villainess flips over the railing and tumbles end over end until she slams into the ground with a heavy thud.
"Schütze!" Barbar screams. He turns his back on you and starts running towards his fallen sister. In doing so he gives you the perfect opportunity. Six Flare Shooters fly from your hand to surround his head and explode with massive force. The orange light clears, and you watch as he stumbles around for several more feet before collapsing onto the ground.
He may be tough, and he may have claws, but that doesn't make him immune to concussions.
Your scythe powers down, and you glance up to find that Charlie has returned to visibility and stands next to Sword. They both look fine, not even a scuff visible on Sword's uniform. With them checked on, you look over at your own teammates and ask the question that has been bubbling in the back of your head since you saw what they were doing to Flimmern. "I thought capes were immune to their own powers."
"Their own powers, yes," Thirteenth Hour tells you, her sword resting on her shoulder. "That does not always mean that they are immune to similar powers. Grab-bag capes in particular have this weakness. Just because she used lightning didn't mean she was resistant to it at all."
"That's a good thing for us," Alpha agrees cautiously, "but we do need her alive."
Cat Sith looks up from her work and gives a slow, very cat-like blink. "She is alive." The Guardian Beast pulls her closed fist, which is somehow coated with a thin layer of sparking electricity, away from where it had been pressed firmly against Flimmern's back between her shoulder blades. You knew when you offered Thirteenth Hour a template that Cat Sith would gain her elemental affinity in terms of defense, but you did not know that it would also translate into attacks. Samantha certainly cannot use your Flare affinity. "See?"
No longer being constantly tased, Flimmern stops her spasming and sags into sweet unconsciousness. 'Sags' because she is unable to fall to the floor thanks to the pink circles of Ring Bind that hold her arms in the air. Nonetheless, you can see she is still breathing.
"Useful," admits Alpha after a moment. "If you're sure it will not cause any permanent injury, mind doing the same to the others?" She gestures to Barbar and Schütze. "It would be nice not having to worry about them waking up while we're still waiting for transport."
Thirteenth Hour nods, lighting zapping up her blade. "We can do that."
"We still have one last rat to deal with," you remind the others, your eyes turning to face the still-open door he ran through. "Gestalt came in to try to help, but he left… empty-handed."
"…That was awful."
Hiding a small smile, you float into the air and through the doorway. That smile fades as you consider the very real possibility that your quarry simply is no longer here. He is a teleporter, and that means he could be absolutely anywhere by now. He very much seems the type to cut and run, not stand and fight or even set up an ambush.
Turning a corner, you find yourself surprised and a little disappointed. Gestalt, rather than fleeing, is still here. More specifically, he is huddled in a corner as if hoping that if he is quiet enough you will not find him. He is made from wood now rather than metal, and interestingly in the short time since you saw him he has somehow restored his hand. You also cannot help but notice that the wood of his wrist and part of his forearm on that side are stained red rather than the brown of the rest of his body.
He opens his eyes when your feet audibly touch down on the floor, and those eyes grow wide as he gulps and stares at you and the staff gripped loosely in your hand. You still have to wonder why he is not teleporting, but… You tilt your head and look closer at him. Maybe his teleportation is more limited than you previously assumed.
Good for you; not so much for him.
You give him a smile that is all teeth and watch him squirm harder. "Good evening, Gestalt."
Silently Watches out.