Jim decided not to wait and so With Ann in his arms (eyes tightly shut), he basically made a run for home. They got there really quickly.
Putting Ann down, Jim opened the door. Claire and Missy were sitting in the living room watching some cartoon show. Missy looked up, blushed, and hit the button to turn it to a news program.
"Jim?" Claire asked. "Why is—did Ann miss her bus?"
"K-kaiser!" Ann got out. "And Night and Fog, they were there, they were there and they were around me and—"
"Okay, Ann, why don't you sit down," Jim said. "Blinky!"
"Here you go, young lady," Blinky said. "Drink this." He pressed some hot chocolate into her hands.
Jim grabbed his phone and hit the "priority, but not 'oh-shit'" button.
"PRT dispatch, Trollhunter, is this an emergency?"
"Not… Now, but I was just attacked by Rune while I was walking a civilian to the bus stop and also ran into Kaiser, Night, and Fog."
"Are you currently in danger?"
"No."
"Remain in your house. Velocity and Miss Militia will be inbound."
"Right."
It was… amazing how fast things could work. Moments later, there was a knock at the door, and Velocity was there. A PRT helicopter was overhead, flashing its light here and there, and a pair of vans were zipping down the street.
"I checked, nobody around for six blocks," Velocity said. "Is this the civilian?"
Ann was sitting down, still breathing fast.
"Yeah. Ann, say hi!" Jim said.
"Hi-hi…Night and Fog, Night and Fog!" Ann repeated. A few moments later, Miss Militia was at their door, while some PRT troopers set up cones.
"You were attacked by the Empire?" She asked. "In your civilian ID?"
"Well…" Jim raised his hands. "I'm not exactly…"
"Doesn't matter," Velocity said. "You were off-duty, with a civilian."
"It was Rune," Jim said. "She was really angry about that fight last week, so she shows up and brought some guys to keep me from running away. I had her, and then Kaiser and Night and Fog showed up… He said that Rune was doing this on her own and would be… disciplined. She'd evidently gotten the guys by telling them Hookwolf said to do it."
"Shit." Velocity didn't sound happy. "Someone is going to be getting some scars from this."
"That presumes that Kaiser was telling the truth," Miss Militia said. "I've ordered a full recall of the Protectorate and safety checks on the Wards—" She stared at Vista. "Why are…"
"Girls' night," Claire said.
"Hmmm." Miss Militia nodded. "Then you'll come to the Rig with us, young lady, at least until we can contact your parents."
"What about Ann?" Jim asked.
Miss Militia nodded. "I think she needs to come with us as well. Can we get your family's contact information?"
Ann nodded jerkily and held out her phone.
Meanwhile, Jim was speaking into his phone, relaying the preliminary report to the PRT. He didn't think they'd want to wait for his writing now.
The Rig was active, but not in a good way. They passed over the forcefield bridge as a pair of PRT VTOLs landed on the upper pads, disgorging PRT troopers. Missy went off with Miss Militia to "find her parents" and incidentally to change away from Ann. Jim, Claire, and Velocity bought Ann to a meeting room to wait for the others.
"I'm sorry I'm freaking." Ann was shivering. "I mean, Night and Fog—I saw them when I was in Junior High—Mom and I were at the park, and all of a sudden there was, like this big rumble between E88 and the ABB and I saw a bunch of guys in an alley just… Vanish and then they were screaming and the fog went away and they were on the ground and all cut up and there was so much blood and, Oh, God, they were right next to me…" Velocity vanished, returned with a shock blanket, as Claire and Jim guided Ann to the seat.
"I must be such a coward," she said.
"What? No!" Claire said. "If you're not scared, you're not brave—you're dumb! You were surrounded by those…" She went off into a spate of creative Spanish. "You had every reason to be afraid!"
"Language, Shadowdancer," Velocity said and grinned. "We're supposed to be much more polite in saying exactly what we think about the E88."
Ann laughed at that as a PRT nurse and detective came in.
"Okay, Ann?" Jim said. "We have to go talk to the rest of the team, are you okay?"
"Y-yeah."
"Okay, but if you need us, just call and one of us can come on out of the meeting," Claire said.
"O-okay."
A few minutes later, Jim and Claire were walking into the meeting, one full of most of the Protectorate capes and the directors of the local branch.
And it looked like things were a bit more important than Jim had assumed. Director Costa-Brown was on one screen, and facing her on another was Alexandria. Director Piggot was talking, her voice, loud, angry.
"…and if Rune had succeeded, Kaiser would have made sorry noises and expected us to do nothing. This is exactly what happened with Fleur, only this time, the E88 has graduated to using a Cape against one of our Wards, when he was off duty and escorting a civilian friend to the bus stop. If we don't respond, it will say we're willing to accept it, and it will be open season on both Protectorate and Wards!" Piggot punctuated that by slapping her hand down on her desk. She looked up at them. "I know, we all know the reasons to have… certain lines that all sides agree to abide by, but in this case, the Empire, either through being unable to control their people, or actively refusing to control them, has crossed that line."
"What would you like, Emily?" Costa-Brown asked.
"What I would like would be a member of the Triumvirate here for at least a week, with enough support to dismantle the Empire and enough federal LEO's to keep it dismantled. I know I'm not going to get that." Director Piggot took a deep breath. "So I'll settle for what I can get, which is enough support to keep pressing the Empire hard enough that they'll have no choice but to turn Rune over to the PRT."
"They'll fight that," Deputy Director Renick said.
"But only for so long," Director Piggot said. "Kaiser can count, and he can see things getting worse for the Empire. But the point is, if we can't do what we should do, then we have to do something where it is clear, unambiguously, that the Empire has lost this confrontation and paid far more than they gained."
"You will have to use backchannels to inform Kaiser that a mysteriously dead Rune will not be acceptable as a peace offering," Alexandria said. "Criminal or not, she is a teen." She looked at Jim. "What is your opinion Trollhunter?"
"I…" Jim paused. "I don't know much about the Empire personally, I mean, but Rune didn't act like they were in on it." Please don't kill me, Director Piggot. "But right now, Director Piggot may be right, they managed to scare a civilian, attack me, and got to back off on their own terms…"
"A good analysis." Alexandria frowned. "But I think Director Piggot is correct, Chief Director. A strong display would be needed, and I believe that Legend could make himself available, especially given his speed. If anything did occur that needed his attention, he could quickly return."
Costa-Brown nodded. "Agreed. Lastly, what about the mystery cape—Exterminator?"
"Yeah, um, I think it's pretty plain that they have good control over bugs," Jim said. "They sent two moths right where they needed to go. Also, the bugs that talked to us, well there were a lot, and it took a lot of control to get them to make speech sounds."
"Creepy, but useful," Claire murmured.
"But we don't know if she can hear through them," Alexandria mused. "Even so, it's a quite useful power. And they said they knew you?"
"Um, I waved to them," Jim said. "But…" he shook his head. "I wave to a lot of people when I jog."
Alexandria's lips quirked. "I have heard as much from our own people. Keep up the good work."
Waving is good work? "Um, yes Ma'am."
"Good. Emily, if you need any more assistance, let us know, but I believe you need to get down to nuts and bolts." With that, Alexandria vanished, followed by the Chief Director.
"Preparing an assault on the Empire might lead to Lung becoming more aggressive," Armsmaster said.
"Why do you think I wanted one of the Triumvirate here?" Director Piggot said. "Lung isn't an idiot and he knows that even if he managed to stand off one, the rest would arrive, because the Protectorate cannot let a defeat of one of those three stand."
Armsmaster nodded.
"And the Wards?"
"Light duties only, with the possibility of being restricted to base if it looks like there may be more attacks."
Jim winced. Everyone is going to love that.
"Now, I want you to go brief the trooper teams, and prepare. We'll be starting tomorrow, with raiding known E88 fronts, in cooperation with the BBPD, but remember how completely they are riddled with E88 sympathizers, so I expect you to abide by standard security regulations for notifying the police of exactly where we'll be going."
"Wait, they're…" Jim fell silent as Emily gave him a look like he'd just asked if Santa Claus was real.
"The BBPD is heavily Anglo, and heavily represented from families that were here before the Kyushu refugee influx. Combine that with Lung, and they are a fertile recruiting ground for the E88."
"Oh," Jim said. He looked over at Claire, noticing how her lips had compressed. That wasn't something they had to deal with in Arcadia…
At least not that Claire had ever said.
"Why don't we just destroy them?" Claire finally burst out. "I mean, sure, it might make things more difficult other places, but if Alexandria, Eidolon and Legend spent three days here, I bet they could take the Empire out." Claire looked around, then nodded once. "Sorry."
"No, I agree," Director Piggot said. "But the PRT believes first of all, that starting such a trend would lead to the next generation of criminal capes having no restraint at all on their behavior. Not a problem if say, they're like Uber, but if they're more on the Lung or Fairy Queen end…"
"Escalating that far leaves us the issue how what do you do when you can't escalate any further, and when you can never control the chance of a new, powerful parahuman appearing on the scene." Armsmaster nodded. "But you are not the only one to have such thoughts, Shadowdancer."
And I sort of think she's right, Jim thought. Bullies didn't abide by any rules unless you made them. If the E88 got a super cape tomorrow, all the quiet agreements in the world wouldn't stop them.
And he could see that was what Director Piggot thought, but Jim figured if she could take what she could get, he would as well.
Back in the conference room, Jim and Claire found Ann, signing paper after paper.
"What happened?"
"Oh, you know, I decided to be honest and point out that since I'm descended from Charlie Chan, my keen intellect realized that Missy looks a lot like Vista, and given that there were no cars around when I left and she was there when we got back, she probably was really good at running…or you know, doing super stuff. So—NDAs."
"That's good," Claire said. "How are you?"
"Well, I'm…I'm good," Ann said. "I got a ride over a magic bridge, got to see the Rig… I'm sorry for the freakout. It's just that spooky Nazis with murder powers aren't my thing."
"Not a fan of them myself," Jim said. "I—" He was nearly bowled over by a short woman who came charging in and immediately wrapped Ann in a hug, going between "Are you okay?" to "I told you never wander around at night!" interspersed with Japanese.
Next to her, a child, looking like a younger version of Ann with a long ponytail stood, chewing bubble gum, trying to look unimpressed.
She wasn't succeeding. Finally, she sidled up to Jim. "They said you saved Big Sis from the E88. Did you fight Kaiser?"
"No… I fought Rune, but Kaiser was talking." The kid nodded and then heard more words from her mother. She whipped around and looked up at Jim. "You protected sis from Night and Fog? That was so brave!"
"They were there with Kaiser," Jim said.
"Oh." The girl looked around. "They're scary. They say they like to go out in the fog, so you never know if it's fog or… them. My best friend heard from her brother that some of his friends knew someone who was just…swallowed up, that they ate them because they can't eat real food, because they're not real capes—Fog's a ghost and Night is just a body they animate…"
"Well, they looked human enough to me," Jim said. "They're dangerous, but not magic."
"Oh." Kim's look said it all. Jim wondered if the Empire was trying to push that idea…
And then Jim was awkwardly shaking Ann's mom's hand, as she thanked him, again and again for saving her daughter. Ann looked a little embarrassed, standing behind her mom.
Finally, Ann and her family left, each one provided with a panic button signal that they would keep until the threat of the Empire was past. Jim and Claire were directed to head back to the Wards quarters, along with Missy, and get ready for a briefing tomorrow.
"Never a dull moment," Claire said, as she leaned against Jim. "But if Chris isn't here until tomorrow, how about we borrow his gaming setup, at least until we can get some sleep."
Jim grinned. "You and Missy promise not to gang up on me?"
"No such promise," Missy said.
"I'm gonna die," Jim replied. But he didn't say no, because there was no way he could get to sleep right now…