Many thanks to Skyrunner, Technetium43, frustratedFreeboota, Assembler, and Fenrisulfr for betareading.

Many thanks to MugaSofer for fact checking.

Apologies for the lateness; this time it's because the original version of this chapter had to be pulled from SpaceBattles and revised. Sheen 4.6 will still be coming tomorrow, as scheduled.

Sheen 4.5

Aegis led the charge, Shielder close behind him. They were greeted by a veritable hail of lead from a mounted minigun.

This floor, too, had lost a lot of its interior walls. Instead of a workshop, however, this one had a military-looking circular barricade around a central part of the room. Sandbags had been piled around a nailed-together wooden frame, all around a central mounted turret, which was currently firing a steady stream of heavy rounds into Aegis and Shielder. The New Wave hero quickly threw up a forcefield, but Aegis just launched himself forward, heedless of the bullets tearing into his frame.

Twelve men were on the inside of the barricade. One was on the turret, while the others were peeking out from behind the cover of the barricade. A motley assortment of rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns were in their hands.

Aegis threw himself into one wooden wall of the barricade. It splintered before him, and a moment later he was among the enemy. I couldn't make heads or tails of the footage from his camera; he was surrounded by bodies and twisting limbs in a flurry of motion, and his microphone had automatically cut its transmission under the overwhelming sound of gunfire.

Sophia glanced in after him, then opted to stay on the floor above, taking potshots into the melee with her crossbows from a position between Clockblocker and Laserdream. The New Wave Blaster did much the same, blasting at them with lasers. I couldn't blame either, Sophia especially; the room was well lit and almost without cover, save for the enemy barricade. Vista, on the other hand, leapt down after Shielder, ducking into cover behind his forcefield. Gallant and Glory Girl followed after her in quick succession.

"Aegis!" hollered Vista, her clear voice slicing through the cacophony. "Get back!"

Aegis obeyed immediately, taking a single step back which, with Vista's help, delivered him behind the forcefield. Within moments, all of the gunfire was turned back to the group.

Glory Girl made as though to charge, but Gallant put a hand on her shoulder. "Wait," he hissed. His eyes—and his camera—were trained on Vista.

The youngest of my Wards was hunched slightly, her hands held just slightly apart, palms facing one another, as though she was holding a small ball. By the tension visible in the muscles of her arms and back, it was heavy. Her eyes were closed, and her brow was furrowed in intense concentration.

"I can't hold this forever." Shielder's voice was strained, but firm.

Calmly, Aegis stepped in front of him. "Fine," he said. "I'll meat-shield it. Not much longer now."

"Not much longer until what?" Glory Girl asked, her voice rising in something like hysteria on the last word.

"This." Vista looked up as she spoke, her fists clenching in a sudden spasm, and stood straight. She made a gesture, as though throwing something at the group of men with her left hand. Histeya glittered like a violet star on her finger.

Vista could shorten or lengthen space at will. It was an incredibly potent power, one which easily deserved its rating of shaker 9. Histeya had, as with all of the Wards' Rings of Power, provided an addition to her powerset. As with each of the others, the growth was conceptual.

Sophia's power allowed her to become one with the shadows. Her new power allowed her to literally be them, and emerge from any shadow she chose.

Clockblocker's power gave him dominion over time. His new power expanded that dominion.

Kid Win's tinkertech now had a greater tendency to beauty and resplendence, even as he produced more effective gear faster. Browbeat's control over his own body, formerly restricted to biokinesis, now extended to self-control of a more traditional kind; he'd been banned from playing poker with the rest of us for the foreseeable future. Aegis's ability to survive any wound had improved to include a true healing factor—rather than just refusing to die until slow natural healing could run its course, it would now take him little more than a day to recover from anything short of decapitation. Gallant's raw ability to inject emotion had gained force, and he had also gained more control over it—he could do more than just simple blasts now.

Vista had always controlled space. Now she also controlled the idea of space—direction.

Including down.

The men were thrust backwards as their conception of gravity shifted suddenly. Instead of beneath their feet, the source of down was suddenly a point in the air about three feet above the minigun turret. The turret itself Vista picked out of the air as it rose—it dropped to her feet with a clang, half of its long belt of bullets still hanging out of her spatial warp.

"Go!" Vista screamed, visibly straining with the effort of holding twelve men in their own personal gravitational pool. Her arm shook where she held it out towards the singularity, and sweat beaded and ran down her brow in rivulets.

My other Wards didn't need to be told twice. As one they dove forward. Sophia phased into shadow and rushed forward like a shade. Aegis charged, leading Glory Girl, Shielder, and Gallant behind him, the latter already firing bursts of debilitating emotion at one target after another.

As Sophia entered the group she solidified, drew two tranquilizer bolts, and buried them into the necks of two men with her hands before reaching for another set. Gallant struck two men with blasts of emotion before even reaching the group and hit two more within moments of arriving. Aegis grabbed one and beat him into unconsciousness with his own rifle, while Glory Girl grabbed two by their heads and knocked them together. Shielder pushed another into the ground with a forcefield, and Laserdream hit him with a laser to be sure.

Then Vista fell over. The singularity failed, and the remaining two gunmen fell to the ground. Of course, Sophia had jabbed both with tranquilizers before they could stand up. Then it was over.

Gallant immediately jogged back to Vista. "Are you all right?"

Vista slowly picked herself up to her hands and knees. Her whole body shook with the very effort of holding herself up. With a heave, she forced herself back into a sitting position. "I'll be… okay," she wheezed. "Haven't held that many targets in a singularity before. Took a lot out of me. Think I'll have to make like Clockblocker, for a little while."

"Fine," said Aegis. His many wounds were leaking thin streams of blood, but they were already closing, pushing the bullets out of the regenerating flesh. He looked around. "Where's Bakuda?"

"Here." It was Glory Girl, pointing at a trapdoor half hidden under the mounting for the minigun. "I mean, unless we have the wrong building."

"We have the right building," said Aegis. "What could be down there?"

"Storage?" I suggested. "Her workshop was a floor up, but I didn't see any actual bombs."

"Which means we should expect a lot of explosives," said Aegis grimly.

"I'll go first," offered Glory Girl. "I can tank any explosions that come our way."

I tapped into the public radio on Aegis's belt and spoke to her directly. "Can you tank being turned to glass? Or frozen in time? Bakuda's a tinker. Be on guard."

"Well, who'd be better for it than me?" she asked, a faint pout touching her full lips. "Not like anyone else is invincible."

"No, you can take point," I said. "Just… be careful. I want everyone coming home tonight."

"You sound like Mom," she complained.

"Sounds like a smart woman," I said.

"I can go in through the floor," Sophia suggested. "At least scout things out."

"Even Leet punished that," I answered, shaking my head. "Bakuda would probably be more fatal, and we learn from our mistakes. No, we should keep the assault party together. Glory Girl, can you bust through the floor?" If so, they could all go in from an unexpected angle.

"Don't think so." She stomped one foot hard, and cracks spread across the ground at the thundering impact. "It's solid, probably several feet of concrete. I can break through a wall, but I'm not a drill."

That didn't quite make sense to me, but I accepted it. She knew her powers better than I. "Fair enough. Clockblocker, you feeling better?"

"Some," he replied. "Probably don't have another slow in me, but I can freeze people."

"That'll help," I said. "Vista, what about you? How long until you're fit to fight?"

Vista shook her head, breathing heavily. "Not for a while," she wheezed. "I think I'm tapped out, sorry. Stupid. I overextended."

"It'll be okay," Gallant said.

"Think we can handle one fight without you," Glory Girl laughed, rolling her eyes. "So? We moving?"

I closed my eyes. "Aegis?"

"…We need a more detailed plan of action."

"Hard to make one when we don't know what's waiting for us in detail. We definitely shouldn't just charge her, though—any kind of direct assault might be countered. We have to try to shut her down before she has a chance to stop us."

"Shit," muttered Vista. "You need me for that."

Sophia shook her head. "I can teleport around behind her and take her out," she said.

"What if the room's well lit?" Vista asked. "You need me there. Just give me, I don't know, fifteen minutes."

"She'll be gone in fifteen minutes," Glory Girl countered. "You shouldn't have run out of juice right before we went in. We can't give her time."

"Maybe we should withdraw. We really don't have the kind of information we need to be doing this." Laserdream's voice wavered hesitantly.

"We've come too far to withdraw now," I said. "We have a chance to finish this, to shut Bakuda down before she can hurt anyone else." I grimaced. "Well, that's what I'd like to say, but I'm not there—it's not my life I'm risking."

"No, you're right," Aegis said. "We can't stop now. If the room's lit, we'll split up. Glory Girl, Laserdream, and I will come at her from different angles. With luck, she won't have a counter to that. Shielder will hang back with Clockblocker and Shadow Stalker to protect them if things go south, and they'll all look for an opportunity to disable. Gallant will hang back with Vista—someone has to."

"Really?" Glory Girl asked disapprovingly. "Gallant's one of our best disablers. Why do you want him to stay back here?"

"Because if Clockblocker or Shadow Stalker get an opportunity, either of them can end the fight more easily," Aegis said. "It's not ideal, but it's what we've got."

"Nah," came another voice. I glanced up in surprise at a screen I hadn't looked at in a while. Kid Win was dropping towards the bottom floor of the apartment complex. "PRT picked up Über and Leet, so I'm here now. I can stay with Vista, keep watch on the rear."

"Shouldn't we take a tinker with us, since we have one?" Shielder said. "We're going into a tinker's lair, after all."

"I somehow doubt I'd have time to examine her tech," Kid Win chuckled. "I don't think I'd be much help. You need Gallant more."

"Fine, we're out of time," I said. "Aegis, you and Glory Girl are on point. Shielder, you're behind them. Be ready to throw up a barrier if anything looks like it might hurt them. Clockblocker, you're the next one in. Laserdream, can you be his mover? He usually works with Vista."

"That's fine."

"All right. Gallant, you're back there with them. Shadow Stalker, you're in the rear. Be ready to jump on any opportunities you spot."

"Will do."

"Okay. If the room's well lit, be ready to split up and engage, but don't attack until I give the word. We want to see what she has up her sleeves first—if she has any countermeasures, we don't want to be caught off guard." I cracked my knuckles. "Be careful, everyone. I want my explanation to Piggot to involve telling her why we went and took out Bakuda with no casualties, not why one of you is dead. Aegis, whenever you're ready."

Aegis nodded to Glory Girl. With a grin, she shoved aside the wood and metal mounting and knelt to open the trapdoor. As soon as it opened—or, rather, was ripped clean from its hinges—she leapt backward, rising into the air, holding the square of wood before her like a shield.

A good thing, too. The bomb attached to the latch lit up in a burst of fire and light. Then again, it looked like a traditional fragmentation grenade, or something similarly concussive. Glory Girl would have been fine.

"Let's get going," said Aegis, and he and Glory Girl led my Wards, and New Wave, into the depths.

The trapdoor opened onto a spiraling stairway, wide enough for two to walk abreast. Aegis and Glory Girl floated ahead of the others, orbiting the central pillar slowly, their bodies tense as coiled springs, ready to leap into action.

But no action came. The stairs led them down some twenty feet into the earth, surrounded by concrete walls, and then they came to a door. Again Glory Girl opened it and leapt back, but this time there was no explosion.

And then the tension broke. The next room was spectacular, in the technical sense—it was a spectacle. They stood on a steel mesh balcony near the ceiling of a room almost forty feet in height, lit by fluorescent lights on the ceiling and along the walls, as well as lamps at intervals on the ground—only the corners and an area in the back where a sloping ramp led up to large garage doors were dim. The whole place was walled in unadorned gray concrete. Tables on the lower level were overflowing with what were unmistakably tinkertech bombs, and the excess was strewn across the floor.

All of this was secondary to the vast contraption which dominated the center of the room. Rising ten or fifteen feet in the air, the hemisphere of metal, partially plated with scavenged steel, was a marvel of circuitry and open wiring. Digital displays poked out from under the mess in several places, and tools were still attached in more than one location along the plating and in the workings.

"Like it?"

My whole force turned to look at the speaker. She was on the lower floor, about thirty feet down and twenty feet across from the Wards, leaning against a black and red vintage motorcycle with a painted flame motif and twin black luggage holsters on the back of the chassis. The dark steel of her gas mask contrasted with the yellow highlights of her costume and with the blood-red tint of her goggles.

I'd heard Bakuda's voice before, in the recordings she'd released and in captured footage. The voice I knew was twisted and distorted by the metal mask she wore until it was totally unrecognizable as human. That wasn't the case now. Her voice modulator was apparently inactive for whatever reason, and instead of a cold robotic tone, I heard an almost startlingly human speaker—a young woman of perhaps twenty.

"Split up!" Aegis ordered, but Bakuda held up one hand. In it was what looked like a detonator.

"Ah, none of that," she said. "You stay right where you are. Unless you want to turn around and walk out. I'd recommend doing that."

"We're not leaving," growled Aegis.

I channeled my power through Nenya and forced myself to look around through the screen, detecting whatever I could. I found bombs—several of them. Beneath my friends' feet, above their heads, on the walls behind and beside them.

There were too many to point them all out—enough that I doubted even Shielder could protect the team from all of them. And I couldn't communicate with him without Bakuda hearing.

"Keep her talking," I hissed. "The whole area is trapped."

"Got it," Aegis whispered, and then spoke aloud. "What is that thing?" He gestured at the large machine in the room's center. "Looks like junk."

"Shadow Stalker," I said as Bakuda gestured lazily at the massive device. "Try to get around behind her. Withdraw into the shadow of the stairway and then teleport."

"Okay." I watched as she took a couple steps back. A moment later, her screen went dark. Good luck, Sophia.

Meanwhile, with half an ear, I was listening to Bakuda's explanation. "It was supposed to be my magnum opus. My great work. A bomb with a payload of almost 80 terajoules—but that wasn't the impressive part. On detonation it'll release an EMP with a wide enough area to knock out electronics across half the eastern United States. Suddenly, Kyushu doesn't look so impressive anymore—and Endbringers aren't so unique."

"Why?" Gallant asked. "Why would you want that?"

Bakuda shrugged, and as she continued, I spoke again. "Be ready to go airborne, everyone. She can't have planted bombs in midair."

"Partly I just really like explosions. There's not even a philosophy behind that—no bullshit about their cleansing purity or anything. They're just fucking cool. Bang! And you're gone." She chuckled.

"Vista, how much longer?" I asked.

"I'm getting there. A couple minutes."

"Then there's the bit where Lung wanted me to do it." Bakuda continued. "All the other gangs have one major thing on his—money. But money's all electronic these days, and everything you can do with it is also electronic. Take out the electricity, and suddenly none of the other gangs within half the country look anything like as powerful as they were. But the ABB? They're still fine. But you know?" She looked over at the bomb. If I could see her face, I imagined it might look almost fond. "I think the big part was just that I could. I had the power to wreak havoc on a scale that makes Endbringers look like small potatoes. That's reason enough."

"You'd kill tens of thousands of people for a power trip?" Glory Girl asked, her voice pitched less as a question and more as a bewildered exclamation.

"Yeah, basically."

"I'm in position," Sophia murmured. She was in the shadows behind Bakuda, her crossbows trained on her. "Give the word."

"It's a long shot," I whispered. "You're fucked if she notices you before you take her out. Wait for now. You'll all act at once on my mark."

"You really are a cartoon supervillain," said Aegis, shaking his head. "Evil plot without good reasons, and now you're even monologuing."

"Well, yeah," said Bakuda. "Wouldn't you monologue if you could get away with it?"

"You're not getting away with anything," hissed Laserdream.

Was this my opportunity? I opened my mouth, ready to order the attack.

"See, that's the other reason I was monologuing," said Bakuda. "Had to give her time to arm. Ciao."

She leapt onto the motorcycle and began to move even as one of the fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling cracked and shattered in a blast of light and a sound like thunder. A translucent sphere, almost like glass, started to expand from the inside.

Aegis just had time to shout "Run!" before it was on him. From the cameras of the Wards behind, I watched in horror as he was swallowed up by the expanding sphere. His camera went dark and he froze as surely as if Clockblocker had struck him.

"Vista, Kid Win, get out of there!" I screamed, but it was too late. Even as Kid Win slung Vista up onto his hoverboard, the bubble rose through the floor and claimed them.

Sophia fired off a bolt as soon as Bakuda moved, but the Tinker was going too fast, and the confusion as too great, for her to be really accurate. She made two teleports in quick succession as the garage doors opened. The motorcycle sped past her, up a ramp and out into the night, her crossbow bolt just missing Bakuda's head. A moment later, her screen went black too.

In less than thirty seconds, I was left sitting in shock, staring at eight blank rectangles against the off-white backdrop of the wall.

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