Blinking, Brian looked around, then sat up abruptly when he saw that he was being watched by not only Panacea and Raptaur, but that guy Zephron, who looked amused at his reaction, and a tall skinny guy with glasses and thinning hair who was watching him with thoughtful consideration. He didn't look like much, but somehow Brian felt it would be a bad idea to underestimate him. There was an air of someone who had a core of steel about the man.
Alec, Lisa, and Rachel were all moving and mumbling as well. He looked at each of them in turn, seeing that they were all still wearing what they had been when they fell asleep and as far as he could see none of their masks had been interfered with. The bags of money were still where they'd been as well. A sound from under the table let him know where Angelica and Judas were.
Rachel suddenly sat bolt upright, looked wildly around, spotted her friends, then listened, before smiling a little and disappearing under the table as well. Everyone stared at her empty chair, then him.
"Ah… she's really attached to her dogs," he tried. They kept staring. "Really attached."
There were whimpering sounds and the noises of the dogs licking her face. He bent down, peered under the table, then straightened up with a small sigh. "She may be some time."
"Food!" Alec snapped awake, sniffed, and dived for the table. Brian suddenly noticed that there was a pile of takeout containers there, still warm and radiating appetizing smells. Panacea was eating from one of them which seemed to contain some sort of stew, and there were empty ones in front of Zephron and the other guy.
"Help yourselves," Raptaur invited with a wave of her hand. "We can get more if you want it."
Brian got up and leaned over the table, as she pointed out what was what. Taking some curry and rice he sat down again thankfully, still feeling bone-tired but much more alert, and so hungry he was almost ready to eat his own feet.
The curry was a much tastier alternative and more convenient in all respects.
Lisa made a grunting sound and opened her eyes, then sat up. She glanced around, smiled at them with what looked like relief, nodded to Raptaur, then moved her chair closer so she could get something to eat as well. "Thanks," she said through a mouthful of stew.
"You're welcome," Raptaur replied. She indicated the new man, who was watching with alert eyes over a small smile. "This is Danny Hebert, pretty much the top man at the DWU. Danny, this is Grue, Tattletale, Regent, and under the table is Bitch, the Undersiders. Neighbors of ours to the south-west."
"Nice to meet you all," Danny said politely, watching them eat. "I have no problem with you being here, but I would like to know what happened. The PRT will be poking around sooner or later, probably sooner, and I need to know how much trouble to expect."
"You're not going to turn us over to them?" Alec asked, finally slowing slightly from his frantic shoveling of food into his mouth. He reached for a can of sprite which Zephron pushed towards him.
Danny shook his head. "No. Raptaur gave her word that you were safe and I'll honor that outside this room, as long as you promise not to cause trouble for the DWU or any of my people. I have no problems with you myself."
Brian looked around at his friends. Lisa nodded, Alec shrugged, and Rachel's hand came out from under the table, gave him a thumb's up, groped around and grabbed a can of coke, and disappeared again. He stared for a moment. The girl was getting weirder.
"We promise not to cause trouble," he sighed, shaking his head. Lisa grinned at him.
"Good enough. So, what happened? How the hell did you end up with all that money, and how did Oni Lee end up dead?"
After a moment, Brian began explaining the sequence of events that led them to being there, including a brief description of their powers for context. It took some time, although that did at least allow them to eat all the remaining food.
Taylor listened to the story that Brian took turns with Lisa to tell with interest. She'd recognized the boy from the mall from the time over a month ago when she'd been there with her father, of course, and still thought he was pretty good eye-candy. Not quite her ideal type, but pleasant to look at. And he had a nice voice as well.
Not as nice as Über's, but nice.
"The plan Lisa came up with sounds quite good," the Varga commented, "Although by the sound of it they made a number of mistakes in executing it. The main one being not having any backup for in case someone came in while they were in the building. Without that setback I expect they would have made a clean getaway."
'Sound like bad luck more than anything else,' she replied. 'Another thirty seconds and they might have made it. By the time the ABB worked out where they'd come in and left through they'd have been too far away to catch up to. Leaving the manhole open didn't help, but Lisa was right, they didn't have time to close it and by then it wouldn't have helped anyway, even if they'd just jumped down the hole as soon as they heard the door open.'
"No, I think you're right. Probably their second biggest mistake was not being sufficiently suspicious about the vastly larger amount of money on the premises. And the excessive security for the safe. I don't think booby-trapping the door with explosives is standard practice in general unless you are both very paranoid and have something very valuable to hide."
'It does sound like overkill,' she agreed. 'Anyone but Lisa would probably have fallen for it.'
"If Coil did indeed plant the documents Lisa mentioned finding as a trap for them, or an excuse for the raid, which amounts to the same thing, it will be interesting to see if they amount to anything in themselves."
'Maybe they really were stolen, and he just used this as a test or something?' she mused. 'Or just maybe it was exactly what it looked like and things just went out of control. Sometimes that happens, not everything is a plot.'
"That's true, although with someone like Coil who seems to love elaborate plans, it's difficult to take anything at face value." The Varga sounded a little dubious. "He's a mastermind-type. They always have plans on top of plans. That can be a weakness, if you just smash right through they sometimes waste time trying to work out which plan to use, but it does tend to make them difficult to track down in the first place. Especially when they have some form of I-always-win power. Whatever it actually is."
'I've looked everywhere I can find online and no one seems to know anything about the guy,' she sighed. 'There are very few actual facts about him, only speculation. And he's also been very quiet for the last month.' She thought for a moment. 'In fact, almost exactly since we met. A few days after, then he went off grid. Weird.'
"I wonder if there is a connection?" the Varga remarked slowly. "If his power is some form of probability manipulation, or something similar to that, my presence could have caused him some trouble. Demons such as myself cause odd effects to certain aspects of causality in our immediate vicinity. It's a side effect of our inherent magical field."
'Really?' Taylor thought about that idea. 'That could explain some of the odd coincidences that seem to be happening, like bumping into people at just the right time. Lucy, for example. She picked a very convenient time to get mugged, right when Amy and I were walking past.'
"It's not impossible, but coincidences happen all the time without demons being involved," her companion chuckled. "Don't seize on that fact as the cause of every strange thing that happens to us. In your world, weird things happen a lot from what I've seen."
She snickered, agreeing entirely, then concentrated on Brian and Lisa's explanation, which had reached the point they ambushed Oni Lee.
"We noticed that when he was teleporting around, at first he pulled the pins when he arrived, then went off bang," Alec explained. "The clones only last for a few seconds. I started messing with him as soon as he appeared, which fucked up his clone's control enough that they vanished before they could get the pin out, or before the grenade could detonate instead of vanishing. I think it pissed him off so much that eventually he changed tactics, he pulled the pins first, then teleported in and out. If I messed with him at that point he'd just drop them and they'd go off. He nearly got us with that one."
"But that would leave the real Oni Lee holding a pair of armed grenades, surely?" her father asked, looking surprised.
"Sure. But no one ever accused that lunatic of playing with a full deck," Alec shrugged. "I guess he was planning on just tossing them when he got us and ducking, or dropping them and teleporting away quickly. Or just getting someone else to put the pins back in. They're not going to go off until he lets go of them after all. Who knows? But it gave Brian an idea, based on something Tats said earlier. We had three of those gas grenades left and the stuff works really quick, like a few seconds or so, if you get a good lung full of it."
"We met up with Rachel, or she found us, actually, after Brutus was killed," Brian put in, taking up the explanation. "That was in that little courtyard thing at the end of the alley. The fog was pretty thick, so we popped all the remaining smoke grenades around the edges of the place when the ABB caught up with us and started shooting. I suppose that's when those two guys got shot by their own people. Oni Lee started popping in and out like an idiot, pretty much randomly, there were grenades going off all over. We kept down, since he couldn't see us, and I used a little of my smoke to make it even harder for him to find us." He held up a hand, black smoke pooling in it from nowhere and drifting down to the table where it spread out and then disappeared.
"After he'd done it a dozen times or so we figured he was probably used to it and not expecting anything, working on the basis that sooner or later he'd get lucky. He needed line of sight, so he was aiming for the places there was no smoke. At that point we set off the gas grenades in the middle of the courtyard and ran, laying smoke behind us. It wouldn't last long in the open like that but it didn't need to. We heard three more explosions then it went quiet, except for some shooting. I guess that the other ABB were far enough away that the gas didn't get them all, or they woke up before Saurial got there." He looked at her. "Is she here?"
Taylor shook her head, hiding an inner grin and seeing that Lisa looked away for a moment. "No, she called me and told me about it, I went to find you. She had other things to do at that point."
He nodded absently, picking up another can of coke and popping the tab, then drinking.
"We didn't actually expect to get him, really," he finished. "We hoped we would, but it was at least as much luck as good judgment. If we hadn't noticed that he was doing something really stupid it might not have worked."
"You could still have stopped him even so, I think," her father said with a thoughtful look. "He'd still have been a victim of the gas. One way or the other you'd probably have escaped."
"But he'd have woken up and started looking for us, which might well have ended badly," Brian replied with a sigh. "By that point we were all right on our limit. Bitch was hurt pretty badly, Regent wasn't much better, and my leg was killing me." He looked down at the floor, where Judas was now lying on his back, asleep with all his legs in the air. "The dog was running on empty as well. How he managed to keep up with you on the way here I have no idea, Raptaur."
"Tough little thing," she said a little guiltily. She'd not really considered that the dog would have trouble keeping up with her sprint here, since by her terms she was going pretty slowly. "But I should have gone slower. Sorry, Dog."
The animal merely snorted in its sleep, its legs twitching. Rachel pulled herself out from under the table where she'd been sitting next to Angelica, the dog with its head in her lap. She looked at Amy for a long moment, then nodded to her. Amy smiled back. Sitting down, the girl picked up the last bottle of water and drank most of it. Brian had passed her down some food earlier when it became clear she wasn't coming out until she was satisfied her dogs were all right.
"That's more or less it. You found us half an hour or so later. Now here we are. What next?"
She looked around at them, then to her father and Amy. Zephron, who had been listening quietly with an interested look, cleared his throat, making everyone turn to look at him.
"If I can make an observation, I would think it's very dangerous to go back to your base. Lung probably knows more or less where it is, everyone around here has a vague idea at least and I can't believe his intelligence is less effective than ours is. The man is many things but stupid isn't one of them. Even with his truce with Raptaur, I think it would be a bad idea to push your luck."
"That's true, unfortunately," Lisa sighed. "There are other reasons as well. But I don't think we can risk it, guys. Sorry."
"Shit." Brian looked at them, then Alec, who seemed resigned. Rachel shrugged, scowling.
"I've got some good stuff there," Alec muttered.
"Anything worth dying for?" Amy asked acidly. He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head.
"Not really, although the TV is sweet." His eyes widened for a moment. "My savegames! Those took weeks of work."
"Idiot," Bitch muttered, making him grin at her.
"You can afford new video games and a TV, I think" Taylor's father pointed out, nodding to the vast sums of cash on the other side of the room.
"Oh, right," Alec smiled. "I forgot we were filthy rich."
"Where are we going to stay?" Brian asked. "We can afford a hotel or even a house, but the same problem applies."
Taylor looked at her father, who looked back, then sighed. "You stay here for the moment. Well, not here, there aren't any useful facilities, but we have a dormitory block for onsite workers during big projects. It's hardly used these days, because until this week there haven't been any big projects for years. There are beds, in rooms containing six each, all the facilities you need, things like that. It should do for now until we figure out what to do next."
Brian stared at him, then looked at his team-mates who were all staring as well. "Are you sure about that, Mr Hebert? It's a very generous offer."
Her father waved at her. "Raptaur vouches for you and I trust her judgment. You're under her protection, the Family are friends of the DWU, and we help each other. But listen to me; you keep your heads down. Don't cause trouble, don't do anything to bring trouble here. If you do, I'll be very annoyed. You don't want that." He fixed each of them in turn with a look that promised something bad would happen. Taylor was very impressed how dangerous he looked at that moment, and proud.
"We understand, Sir," Brian said respectfully, nodding his thanks.
"Good. Now we need to work out what to tell the PRT."
"Better work it out quickly," Taylor sighed as she heard something familiar outside, approaching from the direction of the main gate. "Armsmaster is coming."
Everyone looked at her for a moment, then turned to stare at the door. "What about our costumes?" Alec asked.
"No time for that. Damn it. I don't really want the PRT seeing us like this," Brian replied with a frown. "These domino masks aren't ideal."
"Here," Taylor said, handing them each a quickly made mask with eye, nose, and mouth holes and straps to hold them on, but otherwise featureless. "This is better than nothing. He's nearly outside."
All of them except Rachel put the masks on. She looked at it, then shrugged. "Don't need it," she said. "They know what I look like."
Shortly there was a firm knock. With a shrug, she got up to answer it. "This weekend seems to have become a lot more complicated than I was expecting," she mumbled as she headed over to the door.
Before she opened it, she glanced at Amy, then the bags of money. Her friend nodded, quickly shuttling them into the workroom and then locking the door again.
Unlocking the door she pulled it open, then smiled broadly. "Armsmaster! How nice to see you again so soon. And you brought Miss Militia with you. Come on in, we were just talking about you."
Colin watched as the PRT coroner loaded the last of the bodies into the van, then got in as well. The vehicle began slowly driving out of the confined space of the loading area down the access alley, a task made difficult due to the debris scattered around, old junk mixed with bits of collapsed wall and fragments caused by explosions. He looked around again in case something had been missed, not seeing anything. Walking over to where Oni Lee's body had been found he stared at the ground reflectively for a while, thinking.
A familiar engine sound approached slowly, then stopped. He looked around to see Hannah getting off her own 'official' motorcycle, the one she rode in her cape persona. Behind her was the PRT vehicle with several troopers in that had gone to investigate the burned-out warehouses at what they assumed from the evidence was Lung's encounter with Raptaur. She walked over and joined him looking at the small crater splashed with an appalling amount of blood.
"How do you think it happened?" she asked. "I can't quite see it myself, unless he was holding a pair of grenades with the pins already out when he teleported in, which would be a very stupid thing to do."
"Normally I'd agree, but this is Oni Lee we're talking about. He wasn't renowned for high intelligence," Colin replied absently, looking around. He knelt down and poked the ground. "I'm fairly sure that he fell face down onto the grenades before they detonated. The blast flipped him over onto his back, and the confined explosion did even more damage than it would otherwise have done. The coroner says his hands and most of his arms were more or less vaporized. The secondary blast from the third grenade is probably the one that actually killed him."
Standing up, he shook his head a little. "I can see several possible ways this could have happened. The obvious one is that he did in fact arrive in the gas cloud with armed grenades in his hands, passed out, and landed on them, releasing the spoons in the process. That fits the observed data perfectly. WHY he would do something that dangerous I don't know."
Looking at her, he went on, "Another possibility is that they were on his bandoleer, he was holding them tightly ready to pull them off and release the pins, and in the process of passing out from the sedative did exactly that but couldn't then teleport away. The gas would take a few seconds to cause unconsciousness but it would disorientate and disable someone who inhaled more than a small amount almost instantly. Or he might have successfully teleported into and out of it several times until the concentration became high enough he passed out in the middle of doing it. But we don't really know. And unless we can find a witness, we may never know."
"At least he's dead," his colleague noted. "Which will please a lot of people."
"Yes," he agreed. "There was no kill order on him at the moment, but he was a very small step from that. There was certainly a significant reward for his capture and I suspect that 'alive' could be considered optional for the most part."
"Are we sure it was the Undersiders the ABB was chasing?"
"Assault seems to think so. He's fairly sure that Hellhound was in that building he tracked three people from here to, based on the evidence he found. He's also almost certain that Raptaur took them away. Or ate them."
Hannah gained an odd expression, making him study her. It seemed to be part revulsion, part worry, and part fear to him, although he would be the first to admit that expressions were not his strong point. Especially when all he could see of the face in question was from half-way up the nose up. "God, I hope it's not the second one," she muttered.
"I highly doubt it is," he replied, turning and heading to his bike. "I'm going to go and find out."
"You know where she is?" she asked curiously.
"I have a good idea, yes." Getting on the machine he started it. "Are you coming with me?"
"I think I should. You might need backup."
"Raptaur is very unlikely to attack either of us," he replied, feeling confident in his statement. "And if she did, there is little doubt that neither one of us could do much more than retreat. Not if she successfully fought Lung off."
"Even so, I'd feel better if I came with you," she told him. Going over to the PRT vehicle she told them to return to base, then got on her own bike and started it. "Where are we going?"
"BBFO premises, in the DWU compound," he said. Turning his bike around he rumbled and jolted over the terrible surface until he was on the smoother road, then sped up, aiming towards the more civilized parts of the docks. Although that was a relative term if he'd ever heard one.
When they arrived at the main gate, the guards acknowledged them politely and opened the barrier although he saw that one of them was talking to someone on his radio. As had happened the last time he'd been here, he could nearly feel several sets of eyes watching them as they drove slowly around the main complex. He was somewhat surprised to see how much progress the workers had made in clearing away the remains of the demolished warehouses. Several gangs of men and women were working assiduously on them, bright yellow machinery moving to and fro with purpose.
Entering the side yard where the BBFO building was, he parked his bike and switched it off. Hannah drew up next to him, staring at the sign above the door. She seemed confused and oddly worried. Turning her own bike off she got off and followed him to the door.
Raising an armored hand, he knocked firmly on the metal, the sound echoing around the yard. A couple of workers were watching from other buildings but didn't approach. After a short delay the door was swung open and the enormous scaly form of Raptaur replaced it, blocking the entrance nearly as effectively. She looked down at both of them and made what was probably to her a wide smile, which had many, many teeth in it. Very sharp ones.
Her cheery greeting made his companion twitch. Less affected, having become used to her more than he'd expected, he followed the huge lizard into the building as she moved away to allow them entrance. When they were inside she reached past them and closed the door again, then waved at the table, around which were sitting several people. Colin recognized Danny Hebert and Amy Dallon, who were curiously watching him and Hannah, who was staring at the posters on the walls which seemed to have caught her attention.
There was also a remarkably large man of African-American descent who was watching everything with alert eyes and a small smile, while sipping a water bottle. He nodded to Colin and Hannah respectfully, but didn't say anything, and didn't take his eyes off them.
The other four people were all dressed in black military-style overalls, with webbing vests over their torsos, thin gloves, and military pattern boots, three of them wearing blank masks that completely covered their faces. Two males and two females. The shorter of the two females, a stocky and powerfully built girl he recognized immediately as Rachel Lindt, AKA Hellhound, had no mask on other than a small domino one which did little to cover her face, and seemed complete unconcerned about it. She met his eyes defiantly, making no move to get up, although he saw how she glanced at the taller of the two males, who he assumed from context was Grue, then Raptaur, before slightly relaxing from the tense ready position she'd started to assume. It was interesting.
These were the Undersiders, obviously. So it was them that Assault had tracked, and Raptaur had not in fact eaten them, she'd spirited them away and presumably had Panacea heal them, as none of the four showed any signs of injuries. Their clothing was torn, damp, muddy, and in all cases bloodstained in several places, giving all the indications of people who had seen recent combat at a fairly significant level. Which also fitted.
Next to the table two dogs were sitting close to Hellhound watching the two new arrivals closely, one of them growling until the girl tapped it and said something in a low voice. It looked at her, then back at them, before settling down with its chin on its paws.
All three of the others were watching them warily, based on their eyes, which was about all the masks showed. There were wisps of Grue's smoke collecting around him. Tattletale glanced at Raptaur as well, then looked at Danny Hebert, before rather interestingly relaxing completely, a smile forming on her barely visible mouth.
"Hellhound," Hannah stated when she noticed the girl in question, finally tearing her gaze from the posters and taking a step forward, her power forming a handgun which she half-raised. "You are wanted for the murder..." That was as far as she got before a massive reptilian extremity wrapped around her weapon and hand as if it was a toy gun in the hand of a toddler and as immovably as if it was embedded in steel, halting her in her tracks instantly.
"No. You will put the weapon in your hand away, or I will remove it," Raptaur rumbled, sounding mildly annoyed.
Hannah tried to free her hand with no effect, then glared at the cape holding her. "You realize you can't take my weapon away?"
"I was referring to the hand." The enormous lizard-like head lowered, baring teeth. It wasn't a grin.
Hannah swallowed.
"Don't worry, I can regrow it easily," Panacea said in a cheery voice, appearing somewhat amused based on the odd smile she was wearing. Colin looked at her, then back to one of his oldest friends and someone he was beginning to think was the newest one, of a sort, and sighed.
"Put the weapon away, Miss Militia," he ordered. "We are guests here at the moment. We're here to find out what happened, not arrest anyone."
He met Raptaur's yellow eyes. "For now."
She tipped her head a little in acknowledgment and released Hannah, who let the power-generated gun dissipate in a flare of green energy then rubbed her wrist with her other hand.
"Assaulting a member of the Protectorate is..." Colin sighed again as his colleague seemed unusually persistent in pushing a point that didn't need to be made. Even he could see that they were here only because Raptaur allowed it and that they had essentially no fallback, laws or not. He was a pragmatist, and so was the reptilian cape. You adapted to the realities of the situation, you didn't try to make reality follow the path you wanted it to, not when you had no ability to enforce that want. At the moment, she did and she was in charge.
"Hush," Raptaur said, gently placing a large clawed finger on Hannah's scarf over her mouth. "I didn't assault you, I stopped you breaking the peace I insist on in here. If you want to fight, we do it outside. In here, we talk. Calmly. OK?"
After a few seconds, Hannah nodded, still looking annoyed. Colin studied her. This was unusual behavior, she was normally a very calm and sensible person, and pulling a weapon seconds after being invited into another, very powerful, cape's base seemed rather out of character. He wondered why. Perhaps Dragon could explain it to him. Making a quick note using his helmet's internal systems and some eye movements, he dismissed the problem and turned to Raptaur.
"We would like to talk to your guests about the sequence of events that led to the death of Oni Lee, and to you about what happened with Lung. We have evidence that you fought, but you seem uninjured and there is no sign of him. I find this intriguing."
"Certainly," she smiled. "Please, take a seat." She motioned to a pair of chairs on the other side of the table from the Undersiders. "But remember, they are currently under Family protection. We would take a very dim view of any threats to them while that is the case."
"You can't just unilaterally declare them off limits to the PRT," Hannah said as she moved towards one chair.
"Yet I just did. Odd, that." Raptaur seemed unconcerned. Danny Hebert was clearly trying not to smile, and Panacea wasn't bothering to hide hers. "Lung and I came to an agreement. Part of that was that I laid claim to them and took responsibility for them to prevent him killing them for reasons that will become clearer when you hear their story. I take my responsibilities seriously. No one is harming them as long as they are under Family protection. In return, they will not be causing any problems for you, or us. They've promised and we've accepted their word."
"How very feudalistic of you," Hannah sniped as she sat. Raptaur cocked her head to the side, studying her with interest.
"You could put it that way if you wanted to. But then, that's the way the cape world works, is it not? All the gangs act that way. The E88, the ABB, the Merchants, the PRT… They all have their territory that they guard jealously against other gangs. The people in those territories can do little about it."
"The PRT is not a gang," Hannah spluttered, sounding outraged, moving to stand up again from where she'd just sat down.
"That's a matter of opinion," Raptaur smiled. "They certainly meet most of the requirements to be considered as such."
"Enough, please, you two, or you'll be arguing all afternoon," Danny said, making them both look at him. Raptaur nodded without comment and moved to a position where she was half-way between the Undersiders and the Protectorate contingent. Armsmaster sat in the remaining chair next to his colleague, who lowered herself down again, radiating irritation. Once again he was struck by how oddly she was behaving. Normally she would have been the one counseling calm.
"Grue? Can you please repeat what you told us about what happened, and how Oni Lee died," Danny requested. He glanced at Colin and Hannah for a moment. "Leave out any details that would compromise your identities, they're not relevant to the current conversation. But I would suggest answering any other questions as fully as you can."
"Yes, Sir," Grue said in a voice that was surprisingly respectful, nodding to the older man, then turning to look at Tattletale and Regent for a moment. He turned back to the visitors and began a fascinating story.