To yellow 14: Indeed. Fortunately, they know of a few people…

Mind-Wipe folded his arms, watching carefully from the safety of an upper-story window as Fire-Fly and Mistral darted around outside, sparring in the open air with their newly-built equipment. While they had made forays into the ruined sections of Paris over the last few days – Fire-Fly had taken out several police officers; Mistral had tangled with a handful of these new vigilantes, along with the police – they had only been using crude prototypes. But since Monte-en-l'Air had acquired all the components they needed last night, they had managed to complete their rigs overnight. Mistral, with two jet-fans strapped to her back and two more mounted on her arms, held a clear advantage in height. Fire-Fly, however, had built far more power into her new arm/flamethrower, to go along with the smaller one in her good hand and her back-mounted jetpack. Mistral had managed to find a motorcycle helmet, while Fire-Fly wore nothing but a pair of heat-resistant goggles.

Admittedly, they were not the most effective minions he could have found, but he would work with what he had – at least until he could find better.

Fire-Fly and Mistral dipped and dove around each other in the small park they had selected as the "testing ground" for their new equipment. It was surrounded on three sides by tall apartment buildings, with a line of tall trees along the fourth side which had by some miracle survived the Tarasque's rampage. No one had yet moved back into this arrondissement, since the electricity had only been restored two days prior. This was one of the worst-hit sections of the city, with the building across from Mind-Wipe's viewing area missing almost half the wall opposite the park; something had been thrown straight through the building he was in, several floors above the apartment they had chosen to observe the sparring. And while they had seen a handful of civilians on their way in, none of the new crop of vigilantes seemed to be operating in the area, and police patrols were infrequent.

The ideal location for these tests.

Mistral pushed herself higher into the air, angling one of her arm-fans and spinning through a roll to avoid a jet of fire, while simultaneously turning the other arm-fan to divert the fire away from herself and back toward the building to Mind-Wipe's right. The flame licked across the brickwork momentarily before Fire-Fly cut the fuel to that flamethrower and turned it downward, rocketing straight toward Mistral. She climbed rapidly, though not as fast as Mistral, before angling away from her toward the apartment where Mind-Wipe stood. Fire-Fly coiled her legs as she hit the side of the building and grabbed onto the balcony above Mind-Wipe, sighting down her prosthetic at Mistral. Leading her slightly, she unleashed a massive torrent of flame.

"If Monte-en-l'Air doesn't return with more gasoline, she is going to be useless," Mind-Wipe mused.

"I think you mean 'more useless,'" Dynamus pointed out sardonically, lounging on the miraculously-undamaged couch in the middle of the apartment's living room.

Mind-Wipe's lip curled. "Oh, they have some uses."

Sensing the incoming attack, Mistral pointed both her arm-jets forward and propelled herself back in the opposite direction. However, she had drifted so close to the side building that the fans on her back nearly brushed against the bricks. She twisted one arm to brace against the wall as her feet hit it, barely saving her fans from being crushed. However, as she pushed away from the wall, one of her back-mounted jet-fans cut out suddenly, sending her into a freefall arcing away from the wall and out into space. She gasped, searching the sky and catching Fire-Fly's attention. Mind-Wipe furrowed his brows, watching Mistral's distress. She yelped in surprise, twisting her body and throwing her weight in the direction away from the damaged fan in an effort to generate enough lift to keep herself in the air. "Help!"

Looking closer, Mind-Wipe could see a thin wire running from the affected fan back to the energy pack strapped to her lower back, which flapped uselessly in the wind. "Dynamus?" he prompted, not looking away as Mistral spiraled out of control, descending rapidly toward the ground. Fire-Fly drifted closer to her, still maintaining some distance.

Dynamus scoffed, arching a languid eyebrow. "That's what they get for relying on technology, no?"

"Indeed," agreed Mind-Wipe, nodding. "But we do still require them. So…"

Dynamus shrugged, standing up and crossing the room to stand next to Mind-Wipe. "Very well." Holding up one hand, he pinched his thumb and forefinger together. As Mind-Wipe watched, the two exposed ends of the wire pressed together and twisted, and Mistral's fan kicked back on three meters from the ground. She pitched over to the opposite side as the thrust threw her precarious balance off, but quickly righted herself just as her outstretched toes scraped the ground, and she stabilized. Bending her knees and pumping thrust into her rig, she sprang off the ground and shot higher into the air, rocketing straight toward Fire-Fly.

Fire-Fly, hovering just below the level of Mind-Wipe's apartment, pointed both her wrist-mounted flamethrower and her prosthetic at the ground, launching herself up, stopping just below the roof height. Mistral ascended quickly before angling away from Fire-Fly, and turned her handheld fans straight toward Fire-Fly as her back-mounted fans adjusted slightly to hold her steady. Eyes widening, Fire-Fly flew backward, end over end, straight at the building in which Mind-Wipe and Dynamus had set up to watch. She pointed her thrusters straight at the building and struck it feet first, bending her knees to absorb the impact, before launching back off of it. Turning her thrusters in opposite directions, she spun around in a tight roll, sending jets of fire behind her in a double helix, and flew straight toward Mistral. Mistral shot higher into the air above Fire-Fly, who shot below her and only narrowly avoided slamming into the building opposite them.

"And you hope to build your empire from such as these?" Dynamus demanded, arching an eyebrow at Mind-Wipe dubiously.

Mind-Wipe's mouth set in a thin line. "To start…" he confirmed, his eyes narrowed as he evaluated them. "I doubt that they will be necessary forever. At some point we will have to find better enforcers. But for now we must take what we can get."

Lounging against the interior wall, Sandy scoffed. "I can't say I'm impressed by either of them. Although," she added, glancing across the room at Elemento and raising an eyebrow in challenge, "at least they're doing something."

Elemento glared at her in annoyance. "You want me to start showing off my abilities? Sure, I'll get right on that." He scoffed. "I'm not some circus performer who'll do tricks on demand!"

Mind-Wipe's mouth set in a thin line. "You are going to earn your escape," he informed Elemento curtly, his eyes flashing dangerously. "One way or the other."

Elemento swallowed nervously and looked around the room, his eyes wide. "And I'm grateful, M. Mallarmé; really I am," he assured him, a hitch in his voice. Mind-Wipe's eyes flashed. Elemento paused. "I just… I'm wondering why we are staying in the city instead of getting the hell out of here. Considering that we only just escaped, shouldn't we get while the getting's good? The heat's on us here; they're not looking for us anywhere else."

Dynamus scoffed. "How shortsighted," he sneered. Elemento cocked his head, staring at Dynamus in confusion. "Why should we leave? What heat is on us in Paris?"

"The–the police," Elemento began. "They're looking for us all over the city!"

Mind-Wipe smirked. "They may be looking for us, but with all the confusion, all of the mayhem around Paris these days, the police force is spread so thin that they can't look too hard. And with the Heroes of Paris missing, we have the city to ourselves! Who is going to stop us?" His eyes narrowed. "There is no leaving – not now. You can either help us, or we can kill you so you don't go to the cops."

Elemento gulped. "I'll–uh–stay."

"That's what I thought."

"Good call," Sandy shouted across the room.

The door on the far side of the unit opened, and Mind-Wipe turned around as Monte-en-l'Air entered, a satchel hanging over his shoulder. He dropped his bag on the folding table in the middle of the room before cracking his neck and stretching his shoulders. A couple dozen small jewels tumbled out of the bag, along with the remains of what had once been a computer. Monte-en-l'Air let out a breath. "Pickings are getting slimmer," he informed Mind-Wipe, frowning. "Not much good stuff left in the city anymore; most places are already picked clean."

Dynamus picked out an emerald and examined it with a frown. "How do you expect us to retire on this crap?" he demanded, flinging it at Monte-en-l'Air with a glare.

"You can turn stuff into other stuff, right?" Monte-en-l'Air retorted, catching the emerald out of the air and dropping it back into the pile. Dynamus' eyes narrowed, and Monte-en-l'Air folded his arms. "So maybe you turn some of this 'crap' into diamonds instead of complaining."

Dynamus scoffed. "It doesn't work like that, thief."

Monte-en-l'Air stared back at him irritably. "Well, considering that you're not the one out there putting your ass on the line against the cops and vigilantes, and clearly you're not going to do anything useful about it, maybe you can just shut the hell up. If you think you can do better, you're welcome to try."

Sandy snorted. "I'm pretty sure anyone could do better than that…"

"My friend," Mind-Wipe told Dynamus, walking over to him and raising his hand. He was moments from touching Dynamus' shoulder when the other man turned to face him.

Dynamus' eyes narrowed, and he glared at Mind-Wipe, his fist clenched around a glowing gem. "Don't even think about it."

Mind-Wipe shrugged, his hand falling to his side. "Fine."

Dynamus replaced the gem on the table. "I assume you have a plan, then?" he pressed, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course I do," Mind-Wipe retorted, just as the balcony door opened and Mistral stepped inside, followed by Fire-Fly.

"Were you just going to let me die?" Mistral screeched, shrugging off her rig.

Fire-Fly unstrapped her jetpack. "What was I supposed to do?" she shot back. "If you wanted to burn to death before you hit the ground, I could have helped. Otherwise–"

"I don't know, maybe a hand would have helped?" Mistral dropped her fan pack on the ground and quickly examined the connected. "Oh, goddamnit," she muttered.

"What is it?"

"It's the spot where that sniper shot it," she explained, a frustrated look on her face. "I don't have anything to hide the wires; they're all exposed. What I need is some sort of cowling, or tubing to contain the wires."

"Think you can use this?" Monte-en-l'Air called to her, indicating the half-destroyed computer on the table.

Mistral eyed it dubiously but shrugged. "I'll see what I can do with it."

"Apart from that, your demonstration was… acceptable," Mind-Wipe informed them, nodding to Mistral and Fire-Fly.

Fire-Fly manually bent her prosthetic in front of her chest, covering it with her good arm and picking at a dent in the metal. "So what are we doing all of this planning and stuff for?"

Mind-Wipe raised an eyebrow at Monte-en-l'Air. "Did you do what I asked you to do?"

He nodded, frowning. "I'm still not sure why you wanted it," he replied, passing a sheet of paper over to him. "But this is all I could find on him. Take him out, and the city goes right back into anarchy."

"Excellent. My friends," Mind-Wipe told the others, "we're not going to 'retire' on little prizes like this. And frankly it's a waste of our collective talents to focus on such a pittance – no offense to you and your efforts, of course," he added, nodding to Monte-en-l'Air. "This will perhaps keep us going for a while, but it is not our end goal. We're going for something much bigger."

"A bank?" asked Fire-Fly, arching her eyebrow dubiously.

Mind-Wipe scoffed. "Do you think any of the bills we got from a bank would still be worth anything?" he retorted, giving Fire-Fly a condescending look. "No; with everything that has happened, who knows what is going to happen on that front? For all we know, the Euro is going to be trash next week, once the rest of the continent figures out what to make of this crisis."

"Probably already is trash," Dynamus interjected wryly.

Monte-en-l'Air furrowed his brows. "So… what?"

Mind-Wipe smirked. "Power. Should we place this Minister Faure under our control, we will be the ones calling the shots for all of Paris – and even France itself. He's our target."