Jim was nervous. Okay, he'd worked with the Undersiders before, but that had been a one-time thing. Now, he'd called them, in addition to Orb Weaver.
Something told him Director Piggot probably wouldn't be happy.
Orb Weaver had let him know she'd be there in about 30 minutes.
So Jim and Claire just waited, and a few minutes later, a white truck just drove up, and two people got out of it.
Tattletale and Grue. They were both in their costumes, and Tattletale headed directly for them.
"Hope you didn't touch anything," she said. "I may be psychic, but it works best if people don't disturb anything."
Jim didn't respond to that. "So," he said to Grue. "Is H—I mean, Bitch okay with the animals?"
"She was able to save some of them," Grue said. "A few were just too far gone, so the next time she sees Hookwolf, she's probably going to try to kill him. She likes you, though."
"But her version of like is… sort of different," Tattletale said. "Okay…" the girl was glancing all over the room, a smirk on her face.
"They called someone," she said. "On the house phone. Probably the mother. Someone came to the door, the 'cops'." She gestured at the door. "They realized it was a set up and tried to lock the door again, but the 'cops' pushed on in, and they were too big to hold the door against…"
Tattletale knelt down. "Mom uses the mace, Doesn't work—they punch or kick her, can't be certain which, and she goes into the shelf, here."
Jim stared at the shelf. There was a picture of a young woman standing next to a man, the blazing lights of a Japanese city behind them. She had a baby in her arms.
Ann.
Next to it, a little shrine lay in disarray, like it had been tossed to the side and ignored.
Tattletale looked around, then followed the line of disturbed material. "The kids run—Ann was probably pushing her sister ahead of her. Get into the bedroom," she walked in. "Ann tries to hold the door shut…" she gestured at an overturned bed. "Sister tries to hide under the bed, but well, that didn't work." She glanced up at the windows. "Shouldn't have barred the windows, but well, this is that type of neighborhood."
"What's Lung going to do to them?" Claire asked.
"Not kill," Tattletale said, and her smirk vanished. "I did some research. Their brother, Kenji vanishes right before the biggest single break in the last five years hits the feds. A bunch of girls who were going to be sold end up free, and can talk. Wouldn't be some oldtimer, because they're okay with it. But somebody new? Maybe someone who swallowed the BS about Lung being the protector of Asians in the Bay?"
"He freed them," Jim said.
"Yeah. He freed sex slaves. Lung just grabbed the three female members of his family. Do the math. Good news, I bet Lung's keeping the kid alive, so he can see them get introduced to their new lives, before Lung sends them all over the nation. I—" Tattletale stepped back as Jim growled, eyes flashing yellow.
"Jim," Claire said, putting her hand on his shoulder. "We'll get them."
"I don't know how," Grue said. "The city's a big place."
"So we get Lung to come to us." Jim clenched his hands. "What are their most valuable places?"
"They don't have as many—"
"I can think of a couple," a voice said. The four turned, Grue, Jim, and Claire starting. Tattletale just stared, a grin growing on her face.
"It's the Plagues of Egypt!" she said. "You know, your thread on PHO doesn't do you credit."
Orb Weaver didn't say a thing, just tilted her head. "I talked to a couple of soldiers on the way here. You're mostly right." She stepped aside, and two men came in, whimpering.
Jim gulped, and Claire stepped back. Grue cursed softly.
The men were wearing ABB colors, and black widows ran up and down their arms, while other spiders sat on their face, just above their eyes so they could see the legs and feelers out of the corner of their vision.
"P-please!" One sobbed, falling to his knees. His pants were stained and both of them smelled of urine. "Lung took the traitor, and his family. He said that we were going to… Use the slu—" he screamed as suddenly a tide of bugs, spiders, centipedes, roaches emerged from his hair and walked onto his face, covering it.
"The girls! The girls and their mother! Mercy!"
"Where!" Jim snarled, his voice guttural. "Tell me!" he bent down in front of them, his eyes flashing.
"I do not know! Nobody does! Lung and Oni Lee are keeping them hidden, so that the Protectorate or the cops can't find them!"
"But one of Lung's big places is the old Triad HQ, from before he came. The ABB still uses it. But I don't think they're in there."
"No, they're not, but…" Tattletale looked at Jim. "Oh, shit. You know that's declaring war on Lung. I mean, full-on, to the knife War."
"What are you planning on doing?" Grue asked.
"Getting Ann and her family back," Jim said. "But I need someone to tell Lung a message. It won't stop until he faces me and releases Ann's entire family, unharmed."
He stared at the two men. "Can you remember that?"
"Y-yes."
"Good." Orb Weaver was still behind them, not moving, but suddenly the insects started leaving them in a tide. "One of you can go to Lung. The other goes to the police and turns himself in." She tilted her head. "But I don't just control bugs when I'm around. I can do that from far away. I am the swarm. If either of you try to run, don't do what we say, then they'll find you. There's not a room, not a place where they can't… And you'll be asleep one day and then…" The black widows actually walked over their eyes, and both men closed them tightly shut. One started crying like a small child. "Do you understand?"
"Y-yes."
"Go."
With that, the men fled.
"We can use Claire's portals to get to the HQ quickly." Jim said.
"Right, also, leave your phones here," Tattletale said.
"It's not a problem, we only have our private phones," Claire said.
"Are you really that—wow, I'd love to live where you come from." The thinker shook her head. "Trust me, the PRT can track those phones as easy as they can track anything else, if they want to, and they're going to want to."
"We'll leave them here, then," Jim said. "This way, they'll also be able to find out what happened."
"Nah, they won't, they don't have me," Tattletale said. "But I want to see this."
"Enough, Tats," Grue muttered. "This had better work."
"Let's go." Claire raised her hands, and a portal appeared. "We'll have to do jumps. I don't have an emotional link." She muttered. "When this is over, I'm giving every one of my friends something I can lock onto."
"What about your van?"
"Not ours. Technically, it's stolen, so the owner isn't responsible for anything we do," Tattletale said. "We are villains."
"Yes." Orb Weaver said. "We know that."
Grue glanced at the direction the men had fled and muttered something.
Five minutes later, they were standing before a five-story structure, set back from the street. The first floor was a restaurant of some kind, loud music emerging from it. The upper floors were quiet.
"There'll be intrusion alarms," Tattletale said.
"Good," Jim said. "Claire?"
Another portal, and they were inside the dark fifth floor. It looked like any standard office building.
"So…" Claire looked at some safes, computers, and filing cabinets. "Money, records?"
"Both I think we could—" Suddenly portals opened and let them fall through, save for one safe that Jim ripped free and dropped through. "Or… you could just drop them into the PRT lobby." She shook her head. "Wow, that is going to hurt." Then there was the sound of shouting and men coming up the stairs. "And main event…" She stepped behind Jim. "I'm a bit squishy for this."
Jim glanced at her and grinned. "Don't worry," he said. "Nobody's getting by us." Another sound rose under his voice, the hum of a growing swarm of bugs in the ventilation shafts…
Brian wasn't a fan of this job, to be honest. Ten K was good, but he'd started the job thinking it was going to be to try to find the kids, and then hopefully get the Protectorate involved to pressure Lung to release them. It had happened, a few times, before.
Evidently, the Trollhunter didn't do pressure like that.
It reminded Brian of the stories dad had told about the Marquis. There were rules.
If you broke them, you were done. No second chances.
On the other hand, Brian wasn't too upset. Everyone talked about how Lung might get some white girl… but his sister and the girls like her were the ones in danger. Lung wasn't stupid. He wouldn't get some princess whose daddy was on a first-name basis with the Mayor. No, it was the kids who everyone nodded and agreed that even if they didn't have it coming, they shouldn't have been walking around dressed like that. Those were the ones who vanished or got pressured into becoming whores, and who cared? It wasn't like they were upstanding citizens to begin with…
So no, he wasn't that upset. When the men appeared, Brian had covered his part of the office in darkness. It didn't seem to bother Orb Weaver as her bugs roared down onto the men, but Trollhunter and Shadowdancer stayed in the clear. Where they could be seen.
It didn't fucking help the enforcers. Trollhunter was moving as fast as anyone Brian had ever seen, and the people he punched or threw didn't get up again. Others just vanished into portals with screams and Brian really hoped they weren't appearing a few hundred feet in the air. Purple tendrils lashed out from her hands to grab a few men who had been running away, and pulled them back as they screamed and clawed at the floor.
One managed to get a shot off and it bounced off the Trollhunter's armor. That was when he roared, a bestial sound that was pretty fucking frightening, and he was on Brian's side.
Brian gave thanks that the Trollhunter had been holding back on the first day they'd met, and what was scary, given that all of the men were still breathing, he was probably still holding back now.
The last few ran into Brian's darkness, away from the monster and sorceress, and he took them out. There was more screaming from downstairs.
"Claire, portal them out," Jim said. "I don't want anyone left in this building."
"Right."
"Bar's clear," Orb Weaver said. "I found a beehive in the back of the building."
So that's where the rest of the screaming was coming from. She'd been standing next to them, using her bugs up here, and five stories below…
Shit.
"Good, let's go."
Outside, the crowd of former party-goers were thoroughly cowed. A few guards were there, but they were keeping their hands well away from their bodies, as little swarms of insects whirled around them.
Jim strode into the group, and picked up a man who was well dressed and surrounded by a few guards.
"Lung will—"
"Good, you know him." Brian noticed that Jim looked around at the cell phones a few had out.
We don't have a lot of time, I wonder what—
"Tell, Lung, the Coward of Kyushu, the Dog of the Bay, that he will return the family he took, and he will stop taking women for slaves, or I will end him, and utterly destroy everything he has built. Claire?"
Claire raised her hands, and suddenly there was a rumbling sound. Grue stepped back as water exploded from the first floor. For a moment, that was it, then the water turned brown in the street lights, brown with dirt and fragments of concrete. Grue could smell the tang of seawater. She was getting the water from the ocean.
Oh shit, she's not just sending water in, she's undermining…
Before he could complete his sentence, the structure, the pristine, newly painted symbol of the ABB in this part of town… Imploded in upon itself. Screams from the crowd were drowned out by the collapsing concrete and steel members.
Jim, still holding the man, turned him around and raised him to that he couldn't avoid the sight of the destroyed structure.
"Look at it! This is what will happen to everything the ABB has built until I get what I want! Tell Lung!"
The man was gibbering. Brian stared at Jim and wondered if they'd chosen what Claire had done because it was easiest, or because if they knew what kind of impact it would have.
Because among the hushed talk, one terrified word kept on coming up.
Leviathan.
"Claire, let's go."
"Yeah… Um, we'd better head to our hide out." Tattletale said. She looked pale.
And suddenly Grue knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she hadn't expected this. She'd figured that Jim would rough some guys up. She'd known he was going to declare war.
But not like this.
Tats, you really fucked the dog, because like it or not, they were in this up to their necks.
Someone was always supposed to be on Console. Parahumans couldn't be there all the time, but they all had a certain number of hours they had to log to stay familiar with the system.
Battery was staring at the display. At the window that had just popped up on PHO, showing off the cell phone footage. There were reports that the entire building was gone, but the rumors of a parahuman had been just that… rumors.
Until now.
"Tell, Lung, the Coward of Kyushu, the Dog of the Bay, that he will return the family he took, and he will stop taking women for slaves, or I will end him, and utterly destroy everything he has built. Claire?"
And then the building went away. They had troopers downstairs going through what looked like the best part of five years worth of records, the FBI was salivating…
And a sixteen-year-old ward and his girlfriend had just declared war on two of the most dangerous parahumans on the East Coast.
Battery hit a button. "I'm declaring an emergency, all Wards are to be removed from their homes and returned to the PRT building immediately. All off duty PRT and Protectorate personnel are recalled to active duty…" As she kept snapping orders out, she remembered how angry Jim had been at the idea that Lung might get away with trafficking women. She didn't know what had set him off to do this, but he reminded her of an old saying her father said that every good cop should live by.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
And I bet they're going to be falling, Battery thought as she continued mobilizing the PRT.