"Ffffuuucckk!"
"Shh!" Alec looked around frantically. "Keep it down, they might still be out there."
Rachel gave him an unfriendly look as she relaxed a little from the totally tense line her body had formed when Brian dug out the third shrapnel fragment from her leg, having removed the other two from her shoulder and arm respectively. Luckily all three were fairly small pieces of metal and had missed immediately hitting anything serious, but she was still bleeding heavily. There was another one in her back far too close to her spine to make the taller boy want to touch it. Now he was wrapping her leg in bandages, using the last of the supplies they'd brought. Alec was wishing they'd thought to bring more.
Actually, he was wishing he'd never agreed to this in the first place. Glancing at the back-packs full of nearly half a million dollars that they had, somehow, hung on to, he wondered if it was actually worth it. They had no idea if Lisa was even still alive.
Despite himself, he kind of liked her.
"You keep quiet when someone is digging around in your fucking leg with a fucking knife you fucking idiot," Rachel snarled weakly, the longest speech she'd made since the fight they'd escaped by the skin of their teeth. With a lot of luck, good on their point and bad on that of the ABB. "It fucking hurts!"
Finishing up the bandaging, Brian wiped his hands which were covered in blood on a scrap of left over cloth, then dropped it on the ground. He sat back on the old crate he was using as a chair, next to the girl who was lying on a set of several more that they'd hastily dropped a couple of planks over as a temporary bed.
"Best I can do, I'm afraid," he said.
"Thanks," she muttered, not sounding thankful. One hand dropped to rub the head of her last dog, Judas, Brutus having been killed by one of Oni Lee's grenades, the same one that had nearly done for her. The enlarged animal had absorbed most of the blast at the cost of his own life. The fate of her last one, like that of Lisa, was unknown.
"Now what, great leader?" Alec asked somewhat snidely, unable to help it. He was worried about his friends, and scared that the ABB would catch up. Lung was going to be completely uncontrollable when he found out about his lieutenant. Not that he was particularly controllable at the best of times.
"I'm not sure," Brian sighed, reaching for his flashlight which was lying on a nearby pile of rubble, wedged in place to point at Rachel's wound. Picking it up he turned it off. The inside of the building was quite dark in the aftermath of the bright LED illumination, gaps in the roof and walls admitting a small amount of the dull late afternoon light. The fog outside was visibly wisping around the holes. "We only have one radio left, a single concussion grenade, that AK-47 you stole from the ABB guy which has a half empty magazine, and the gas masks, plus enough money to retire on. And our costumes, of course, with a few other things like this knife. Against that we have an unknown number of ABB, Oni Lee, Lung, and who knows who else wandering around outside somewhere."
Picking up the radio, which was Alec's, Rachel's one having been lost when Brutus died and she came off, and Brian's own one having taken a piece of shrapnel later, the tall boy looked at it for a moment, then tried calling Lisa. Yet again, there was no answer.
"We have no idea if she made it," Alec pointed out.
"No," his team-mate sighed. "We need to get back to the loft. Maybe she got away and will make it there as well."
"That would be a bad idea," a voice said from the dark twenty feet deeper into the wrecked building, making Alec's blood freeze in his veins and Rachel and Brian both twitch violently, the former swearing under her breath when she moved.
He knew that voice.
He'd heard it before, and still did in his nightmares.
Very slowly, he put his hand on the purloined machine gun which was sitting next to him, suppressing a wince as his bullet-wound pulled under the bandages Brian had put on it a while back and turning his head at the same time to look towards the voice. He could see two glowing yellowish eyes looking back at them.
"Feel free to shoot at me if you want, Regent, but there are two things you should consider… One is that the bullet ricochets might hit you or your friends, and the other is that half the PRT is only about a half a mile away, including Miss Militia and Armsmaster at least." The deep voice sounded amused. "The one thing it won't do is inconvenience me."
"Oh, fuck," he whispered. Glancing back at his team-mates he could see both of them had wide eyes under the domino masks they were still wearing, all of them having thankfully removed the gas masks when they'd hidden in here.
"Are you here to capture us?" Brian asked, wisps of black smoke beginning to form around him.
"Not exactly, no," she replied, moving a little closer into the available light, her dark blue-black scales and armor merging with the background in an unnervingly effective manner. "Actually, I'm here to help you escape."
"… What?" Brian asked in a flat tone, as he stared at the huge creature, which had stopped moving again. His smoke traces dissipated into nothing.
"Lisa is sort of a friend of mine," she explained, making all three of the other Undersiders stare at each other in shock. "We have a mutual issue we're helping each other with. It affects you guys as well, unfortunately. But I'm not your enemy."
"Where is Lisa?" Alec asked. "We lost her an hour or so ago. Do you know?"
"Yes. She's back at the Family office in the DWU facility. I had to intervene in an argument between her and Lung," Raptaur replied, making him stare. "Panacea is there, she healed her up. And her little dog too."
Rachel jerked up into a sitting position then swore violently at the pain, going white and sweating. Brian moved to support her. "Angelica? She's alive?"
"She's fine, Bitch, relax. Panacea checked her over, she was exhausted but unhurt. She even fixed her eye."
The girl stared numbly at the huge cape, then smiled very slightly, before passing out. Brian caught her as she slumped and gently laid her down again. Raptaur watched, then lifted her head, appearing to listen for a moment. She sniffed the air. "We need to go. There are some people coming, including Assault."
"This is some sort of trick," Brian said, sounding paranoid but hopeful.
She shook her head, smiling at them without showing teeth. "No trick. If I wanted to catch you, you'd never have known I was there. The offer is genuine, come with me and I'll take you to Lisa. And Panacea, who can heal you all." She looked down at Brian's leg, which was slowly dripping blood. He'd caught some shrapnel as well but it was only a flesh wound, not important enough to worry about. Alec himself had at least one bruised, possibly broken rib, plus the older injury he'd received when they'd first escaped the storm drain. He was trying, mostly successfully, to ignore the pain, but as soon as he thought about it he gasped, feeling everything come rushing back.
"I think I'd like some healing about now, Leader-man," he muttered. "I really don't feel particularly good."
"Fuck it all." Brian sighed, slumping. "OK. We'll come with you."
"Great." Raptaur moved over to them, dropping to all fours in a centauroid posture. The back of her armor changed, forming a long saddle. "You guys will have to ride, I'll carry Bitch. Grab your money if you want it. Leave anything you don't need, as long as it doesn't have fingerprints on."
Alec stared again, then looked at the bags. She obviously knew what they contained. And apparently didn't care. Shaking his head, he stood up, careful of his ribs, then helped Brian put his pack on. His team-mate returned the favor, Alec groaning in pain as he felt the load come back onto his tired and damaged body. They picked up a few odds and ends and put them in their pockets but left the gun behind. After a moment's consideration Alec grabbed all three gas-masks as well. Both of them tentatively approached Raptaur, who lowered herself to the ground fluidly, allowing them both to climb on. He was blackly amused to notice that she was a lot more comfortable than Rachel's mutated dogs.
Smoothly rising with no obvious effort under their weight, Raptaur gently picked the unconscious form of Rachel up. Judas whined as he looked up at her, his tail between his legs in a submissive display, then followed at a safe distance as she headed out of the building in a different direction than they'd come in. She could apparently see perfectly, easily picking her way through the dark debris-strewn hallways and rooms, even though he couldn't make out more than a few points of light. Shortly they were outside the decaying warehouse in a dingy and overgrown alleyway. She started trotting off away from the direction that they'd come in.
"I'll have to circle around to be safe," she explained over her shoulder. Alec and Brian both nodded, holding on and trying not to worry too much about how they were not actually sitting on top of the scariest cape they'd ever encountered.
Alec was also wondering how the hell Lisa had made friends with the reptilian woman and when.
Eventually reaching a slightly less ruined stretch of road, Raptaur accelerated carefully to a fast run, moving at about thirty miles an hour or so. Very soon after that they reached the gate to the DWU facility. The two guards there inspected her and her burden, looked at each other, and raised the barrier.
"Thanks, guys," she said as she passed through. "You didn't see anything, OK?"
"Who said that?" one of the guards asked, looking in the wrong direction with a faint grin. She chuckled and began running again. Looking over his shoulder Alec watched as they lowered the barrier and went back to their posts, not even looking at them. It was a little odd.
As was the way quite a few of the people working around the area glanced at them, then Raptaur, then went back to work without comment.
They quickly found themselves outside a roller shutter door, with a sign above it. Both Brian and Alec read it with mystification, then exchanged a glance. Alec shrugged. "Just roll with it," he said wryly.
"That usually works," Raptaur said, lowering herself again so they could get off. When they were standing on the ground again, she knocked on the pedestrian door next to the large workshop one. It opened seconds later a little, a very large black man peering out, then pulling the door wide.
"Hi, Zephron," Raptaur greeted him.
"Hi," he replied, stepping aside as she carried Rachel in, carefully maneuvering her feet around the door frame, then waited for Alec and Brian to come in as well before he closed the door again and locked it. "Danny asked me to keep Panacea company in case there was any trouble."
"Thanks," the reptilian woman smiled, moving over to a large table against the wall, which was surrounded by half a dozen chairs, in one of which Lisa was deeply asleep, snoring a little, with her legs up on another. She put the girl in her arms down on the table with care, then stepped back. "This is Bitch, Regent, and Grue of the Undersiders," she added, indicating them in turn. "Neighbors of ours."
"I'm aware of them," Zephron said with a small smile. "Are they the cause of all the excitement?"
"Sort of," she laughed. "Lung didn't like them visiting him unexpectedly."
"The man takes his privacy seriously," Zephron nodded wisely. "But he does tend to over-react."
"That he does. But we had words and he left." She shrugged a little. "Hopefully he'll keep his promise."
She turned to Alec and Brian who were listening with oddly calm interest, Alec at least having decided he was too tired and in too much pain to care about it making sense or not. "Sit down before you fall down, guys."
Both of them thankfully dropped their packs to the floor and collapsed into two of the remaining chairs, just as a brunette girl came out of the separate room construction on the other side of the huge main room, stopping for a moment and inspecting them, before approaching. She glanced at Raptaur, showing nothing other than obvious comfortable friendship. "Where did you find them?"
"Out in the wasteland to the north in a collapsing storage building," Raptaur replied, picking up both bags and moving them to the side next to Lisa's one, which Alec finally noticed. She left them there and came back, dropping to the floor at the end of the table. "I found what was left of Oni Lee as well. And one of Bitch's dogs, plus two dead gangers."
"Oni Lee's dead?" all four conscious people asked at once.
"Extremely. As in several pieces."
Alec sighed in relief, meeting Brian's eyes. "It actually worked. That's why he stopped following us."
Recovering from her surprise, the brunette girl who Alec realized was Panacea, moved to put her hands on Rachel. She frowned. "I need some tweezers," she said to Raptaur, then turned to Zephron who was standing next to her. "Could you roll her over onto her side, please? Carefully."
"OK," he replied, doing exactly that without fuss, then holding her in place as the girl accepted the shiny tweezers that her friend handed her. Alec wondered where they'd come from, since she hadn't had anything in her hands up until then.
Panacea pulled Rachel's shirt up, exposing her back, and a bleeding wound a couple of inches to the right side of her spine. Keeping one hand on the other girl's side, she probed with the instrument for a few seconds, then retracted it, a half-inch long piece of metal gripped in it. The wound closed up behind the tweezers leaving no trace other than the blood. "Thanks, you can let her down again."
Zephron did as requested then stepped back, watching as Panacea finished healing the girl. When she was done, he picked her up and put her into one of the chairs, Panacea lifting her legs and rolling another one under them, then reclining the chair as much as possible. "She needs sleep and food, same as that one," the healer said, nodding towards Lisa. "But she'll be fine." She looked at Alec and Brian. "You next, I think. Are you OK with me healing you?"
"I would be very pleased if you did that," he said with his most winning smile, then winced. "As soon as possible, ideally."
With a tiny grin she put her hand on his neck. The relief of the abrupt lack of pain nearly made him faint. "Oh, thank god. Marry me."
She laughed. "Thanks for the offer," she giggled, as she removed her hand. "I'm afraid you're not my type, though."
"Pity." His smile was genuine and a lot less forced.
Shaking her head, she asked Brian for his permission, then fixed him as well. When she was done, she sat down in the remaining chair. "You didn't bring food," she commented to her reptilian friend.
"I was a little busy. I can go and get something from the cafeteria."
"I'll do it," Zephron volunteered, heading to the door. "I'll let Danny know you're back with visitors."
"Thanks, Zephron," she said with a reptilian smile. When he was gone, she turned back to study them.
"OK. You're safe as long as you're here, my word on it. Like I said, I'm not your enemy and I don't care about what you took from Lung. He does, quite a lot, so if I were you I'd stay well away from him, as I can't completely guarantee that the deal I came to with him will hold if he sees you. But you're free to leave if you want." She cocked her head a little to the side. "Although I wouldn't recommend it with the PRT around. From what I know about you, Grue is sort of wanted in a fairly low key way for a few robberies and things like that, no one seems to care about you, Regent, or Tattletale, but Bitch there is wanted for murder."
Alec and Brian exchanged a glance. "There are extenuating circumstances in her case," Brian said slowly. "Not that it really helps her, since no one will listen."
"I'm happy to, although I can't guarantee to help," she replied.
"It's her story to tell."
"Fair enough."
Alec sighed a little. "Personally, I don't feel up to going anywhere right now. This chair is comfortable, I'm exhausted, and someone mentioned food."
Panacea smiled, as Raptaur snickered. "The food here is pretty good, you'll like it."
Brian looked at him, then them, then their team-mates, who were snoring in weird synchronicity. Finally he shook his head, leaning forward with his head supported by his hands, his elbows on the table. "I just don't want to run any more, I can hardly stand up. And riding the dogs was getting very old very fast. At least here no one is shooting at us."
"Good point," Alec said, leaning back and resting his eyes. "I don't like being shot at. I hate being shot."
"You should probably find a different line of work, then," Panacea's voice said with sarcastic amusement. He nodded without opening his eyes.
"I've certainly started to think that in the last couple of hours."
He lay there for a while, hearing her get up and walk away, Raptaur going with her. There was a low murmur of voices on the other side of the room for a while, which he was too tired to even try to listen too. When he looked a few minutes later the two were inspecting Judas, who seemed to enjoy the attention, and Brian was snoozing with his head on the table.
Wondering how the events of the last half hour had happened, Alec closed his eyes again and fell asleep.
Assault looked around the empty and dangerously close to collapse wood and stone building, then up at the ceiling, which intermittently dripped revolting things on him. "How the hell is this place still standing?" he wondered out loud.
"There's nearly half a square mile of similar ones here," the PRT sergeant standing next to him commented. "They do fall down sometimes. Even the Merchants and the homeless don't stay in them, it's too dangerous." Both of them were watching the four other troopers who were carefully searching the building with the aid of bright flashlights.
"Someone should do something about it," he muttered, irritably wiping water from his visor as a particularly large and disgusting drip landed on it, bringing down a fair amount of old pigeon output.
"No money and no one cares," the other man shrugged. "They're been rotting away for fifty years since the shipping business started to drop off."
"All we can find is this, sir," one of the troopers called, holding up an AK-47 and a transparent plastic bag filled with wrappings from bandages and bloody cloths. "Lots of small bits of garbage, the rifle, and footprints in the crap on the floor. Three people, a dog, and..." He looked down at the floor. "And a dinosaur, I think."
"The dog would be one of Hellhound's, if we really are following the Undersiders," the sergeant said thoughtfully. "Which would fit the dead one we found, and that pile of goo outside. That's what happens when one of her dogs reverts to normal."
Assault nodded. "It fits. Kind of." Then the trooper's other words sunk in. "What do you mean, a dinosaur?" he asked curiously, going over to take a look. The man pointed at three-toed clawed impressions in the revolting crud covering parts of the floor. They were enormous.
"Either that or a very big chicken," the man said.
Staring at the footprints, Assault felt his heart sink a little. He'd seen feet that could leave prints like that before, recently. "It's Raptaur," he said slowly.
"Oh, shit," the trooper replied, whipping his flashlight up and waving the beam around. His colleagues all did the same, the dancing lights spooking some pigeons but showing nothing else. "I really don't want to run into her in a dark place. She's worse than Saurial and she scares the shit out of me." He sounded worried.
"Calm down, I doubt she's here, and she's a hero anyway," Assault laughed. "Sort of. But I wonder how she's involved in all this."
"We don't even know what 'all this' is aside from a massive attack by the ABB that somehow left Oni Lee in pieces," the sergeant commented.
"True enough. OK, guys, let's see where these footprints go."
"Do we have to, sir?" one of the troopers joked, making them all smile.
"Unfortunately, yes," he told them. They followed the prints, which were the only ones now other than those of a normal sized dog, through the building and out the back into an ancient alley, then down it to a rough concrete road, cracked and with plants growing out of it. As soon as the mud and overgrowth ceased, so did the prints.
Assault looked both ways. One eventually led into the Ship's Graveyard, the other wound around through the entire Docks until it would finally end up somewhere near the DWU facility. "Any ideas?" he asked.
"Could have gone either way," the sergeant noted. "Plenty of places to hide to the north, all the old ships and so on. Lots of warehouses in the other direction as well, some of them are still in pretty good condition."
"Assuming they're hiding," Assault replied slowly. "It looks like Raptaur is probably carrying three people, there were no other footprints, aside from the dog."
"Maybe she ate them and is going home to sleep it off?" the trooper with a sense of humor asked. Everyone looked at him.
"I really wish you hadn't said that," Assault sighed. "Now I can't stop thinking about it."
"Thanks, Mike," one of the other troopers grumbled. "What a great idea to give us while we're tracking that same cape! You idiot."
The man shrugged. "We were all thinking it."
"Yes, but you said it."
They continued arguing in a low voice, until the sergeant gave them a meaningful look and cleared his throat. Assault pulled out his encrypted PRT phone and poked the screen twice, before putting it to his ear.
"What have you found, Assault?" Armsmaster's voice said without preamble when he answered.
"An AK, evidence that at least one person was fairly badly wounded and patched up, a few bits and pieces of garbage, and no people," he reported. "We think it was three of the Undersiders, including Bitch." He hesitated. "There's evidence that Raptaur probably helped them."
A moment's pause was followed by one word. "Explain."
He did. Armsmaster was silent again for a few seconds. "Interesting."
"Concerning, I'd have said, myself," he commented. "If she goes bad, we're all in a world of hurt."
"I very much doubt that would happen, having met her and talked to her," Armsmaster replied confidently. "I believe she is no villain. But she has her own ethical code and it doesn't seem to necessarily distinguish between our normal ideas of heroes and villains. If she's helping these people, there's a good reason for it."
"You sound very sure of that."
"I am. I have my own reasons for trusting her, at least to a point."
"What have you found on your end?" Assault asked, wondering what those reasons were but knowing he wasn't likely to find out right now.
"It's definitely Oni Lee. He was killed by three of his own grenades. He was holding two when they went off, the explosion was close enough to another on his belt that it resulted in a sympathetic detonation. He died immediately."
Assault winced. "Why would he make a mistake like that? He's been using that technique for years."
"We found three empty gas grenades in the immediate proximity. Initial tests show they contained a powerful sedative most likely of Tinker origin. I believe that whoever he was fighting set them off, probably covering them with smoke grenades which we've also found evidence for to prevent the gas being noticed, while they were defending themselves against the ABB. He teleported in with the grenades armed and lost consciousness before he could teleport away again."
"Shit. That's… sort of sneaky, actually."
"It was a very efficient plan which worked well," Armsmaster agreed. "I suspect that technically this will be noted as suicide. He pulled the pins himself and merely failed to escape in time."
"What about the dead gangers?"
"They were the victim of their own people, the preliminary scans show 7.62mm rounds in the bodies. Fired from close range, behind them. Again, probably due to not being able to see. Smoke, or if it is the Undersiders, Grue's power. Or both. I suspect they were so aggressive they kept shooting even when they couldn't see a target."
"Friendly fire. Ironic." Assault sighed. "OK, it all fits. We're heading back, there's no point poking around out here randomly if we don't know where she went. Anything else show up?"
"Miss Militia reported that she'd found some recently burned warehouses near the shore about three quarters of a mile from this location, which had been extinguished with a large quantity of seawater," Armsmaster replied, sounding slightly puzzled. "We have no idea how it got there. There is ample evidence to show it was Lung's work. Footprints and other traces show that he was fighting Raptaur, and one other person, currently unknown."
"She's certainly been hard at work," Assault commented as he and the troopers began heading back towards the main scene.
"Apparently so. I am interested in why, and how she defeated Lung. There is no trace of him on site."
"We'll be with you in about ten minutes," the red-clad cape said, then disconnected. He could make it much faster on his own but there was no reason to go on ahead. The small party of PRT personnel, containment foam projectors and more lethal weapons ready, kept moving through the old buildings and twisty alleys, all of them wondering if Raptaur or her sister were in fact watching them.
And what had actually happened in that building...
Going over to the door when she heard her father and Zephron approaching it, talking quietly together, Taylor opened it and waved them through. Both men were carrying boxes which smelled of various hot meals, and the latter had a bag over his shoulder which seemed to have a number of soft drink cans and water bottles in based on the sounds. "Come in," she said as she closed the door. "Put it down on the table."
They did so, none of the Undersiders waking up, as Amy had made sure they'd sleep for a while, both to give them privacy and to let them recover. All four of them, aside from the injuries, had been running purely on adrenaline at the end, according to her friend. Both dogs were curled up on the floor under the table having apparently accepted the situation.
Amy came out of the workroom and locked the door behind her, having been doing a little more work on their current project while they waited. She smiled at the two men.
"Hi, Danny," she said, coming over. He smiled back, opening the box he'd been carrying and lifting out a number of disposable containers, putting them on the table. Zephron did the same. "What have you got?"
"Mac and cheese, chicken curry of some sort, with rice, beef stew and baked potatoes, some salads, and some fries," he told them, pointing to each in turn. Zephron unloaded a dozen cans of various drinks and as many bottles of water, along with cutlery and pepper and salt shakers. "That should be enough for everyone. We can always get more, the cafeteria's open all night as long as we're working."
"Great. Thanks for that, I was starving, and these guys are going to need a lot of food when they wake up." Amy checked her watch. "In about twenty minutes, that should be enough for the moment."
"OK." Both men sat down, Taylor having made some more chairs in the last half hour in preparation for them. "Tell me what's going on, please."
Taylor, still in the Raptaur body and relaxing on the floor, shrugged. "I'm not entirely certain. These guys robbed Lung, that much I know. They got away, or more accurately, nearly got away, with something like seven hundred and fifty grand." Both her father's and Zephron's eyes widened. "It's in those bags over there by the wall."
"There's three quarters of a million dollars over there?" her father said in a shocked voice.
"Yep, I checked," Amy put in, looking at the containers of food before picking the beef stew and pulling a container of it towards her. She opened it, sniffed, and then picked up a fork. "Wrapped bundles of fifties and hundreds. Used bills. We think it was probably drug money or something, considering where it came from."
"Jesus. No wonder Lung was pissed," Zephron said in wondering tones. "These guys are in trouble."
"Hopefully not so much now that Lung and I came to an arrangement," Taylor commented, looking at the food herself, then picking up a container of curry and eating it whole. Everyone looked at her. Amy sighed, smiling, and shook her head.
Her father stared for a moment then visibly dismissed the peculiarities of his daughter's eating habits. "What sort of an arrangement?" he asked.
"He acknowledges that this area is the Family's, leaves, and doesn't come back, and I don't eat him," Taylor shrugged, trying a container of stew. The curry was better.
"Oh, god," her father sighed, while Zephron, after staring in amazement, laughed like an idiot.
"That must have been something to see," the man snickered. She grinned at him.
"He seemed to take it in the spirit I meant it as."
"You mean, as in he believed it?"
"Pretty much." She followed the food with a can of coke, liking the tingle of the drink mixed with the taste of the aluminum.
"Can you please stop eating everything, it's making me a little nauseous," her father requested with a small sigh. She nodded, folding her arms on the table. Zephron emitted a deep chuckle and selected some mac and cheese. Amy was just watching with a look of amusement.
"So you're helping them why?" her father asked as he gave in to hunger and pulled a container of curry to himself. "I mean, they are technically criminals. And they just proved it."
"Well, Tattletale over there and I have some history as you know," she said, motioning to Lisa, who was still snoring regularly and faintly, but looked a lot more relaxed now. He nodded. She'd told him quite a lot of the conversation she'd had with the blonde, although not her civilian ID or some of the personal things the girl had told her.
"I didn't want to see them killed, especially like that," she explained. "Lung was only seconds from killing Tattletale when I jumped him. These guys were all injured and it was probably only a matter of time until either the ABB or the PRT got them. I'm not sure which would be worse. Bitch is wanted for murder, although Grue said that it wasn't quite that simple. Knowing how weird the cape life is, I can believe that there's something wrong with it. It's the PRT who said she killed someone, after all, and we already know they'll take advantage of a situation involving a cape it if benefits them."
"You're certainly not wrong there," he admitted. They'd talked about the PRT a lot since she'd merged with the Varga, after that first conversation, and it was fair to say that he wasn't entirely a fan of the organization. She'd discovered that attitude wasn't particularly uncommon among either the police or the DWU members over the last few weeks, for very similar reasons in both cases.
"Anyway, until I find out what's going on, I thought they'd be safer here. Amy healed them all, and the two surviving dogs. I wouldn't be surprised if the PRT turns up here sooner or later, I left a trail that was hard to miss so they'll know who found them first. There's no point trying to hide it as far as I can see, that would get insanely complicated very quickly. Hopefully they won't push too hard at first."
"If they do?"
"I tell them to go away. This is Family business right now." She shrugged a little. "I think they'll listen at least for a little while, I confuse them."
"You confuse everyone," Amy grinned.
"One of my many superpowers," she replied with a laugh. "Anyway, Armsmaster wants something from me and he's a rational person. I think I can talk to him sensibly. We have information that they'll want, as well, so with any luck we can use that if we have to."
"OK." Her father ate some curry, studying the four sleeping people. "That explains some of it. What about Oni Lee?"
"That part I have no real clue about," she admitted. "From what Grue said, they had a plan to stop him following them, but he hasn't said yet what it was. I think they weren't sure it would work, I heard them speculating that Oni Lee was still out there looking for them. They didn't know the ABB and Lung pulled out."
"Right, then, I guess we should hear their side of it," he finally said, finishing his meal. He picked up a bottle of water and unscrewed the top, taking a drink, then turned to Amy. "Can you wake them up?"
"Yes," she replied, getting up and moving to each Undersider in turn, putting her hand on their necks for a few seconds. By the time she finished and sat down again to continue eating, they were all stirring.