It probably said something about being a Ward in Brockton Bay that waking up to explosions and walls shaking didn't feel too far outside the norm. If it wasn't for the alarm wailing incessantly in Vista's ear, she'd assume it was another of Chris' 'experimental builds' blowing up, or some training incident or something.
Instead, she threw herself out of the bed, blearily kicking away the customized green duvet that she'd had to request. She shivered, bare feet pressing against the chilled metal, scars on display. Quickly, adrenaline pushing her into action, she moved over to the wardrobe made of the same metal as the rest of the room, past a wall with a cork board covered in snippets she'd cut out of newspapers or printed of her victories. Some weren't so impressive, (temporarily) capturing Mush, while others, like the Wards delaying Hookwolf enough for the adult Protectorate team to arrive and drive them off, made old scars ache.
Opening the wardrobe, Vista grabbed the dress of her suit from a hanger without looking at the folded up civilian clothes while reaching up for a visor and the bag full of armoured panels. The building vibrated again, less powerful than the first but enough to knock her headpieces from its peg; instinctively, she reached out with her power and pulled it into her hand, bending space as easily as breathing.
As soon as it touched her fingers the room shook around her again, this time much more violent. There was a crash from above, muffled by the tons of rock between her and the PRT HQ proper and the ever-present alarm; Vista wouldn't have heard it at all if she wasn't focusing.
The force of it rattled the other visors off their hanging place, they clattered against the floor as the costume hangers clicked together. Her hand snapped out, steadying herself on the frame of the wardrobe when she felt her balance going.
A moment later the shaking abated, leaving her leaning against the piece of furniture in a messy room. Some of the clippings had been knocked loose from the cork board, they'd spread across the floor around the fallen visors, enough that it almost looked like a bomb had gone off in her room rather than upstairs and outside. If it had been a bomb at all. The ABB had gotten a new Tinker. A Bomb Tinker. And if that didn't sound like a bad enough specialty outside the hands of one of the city's gangs, she didn't know what did.
She kicked at one of the fallen pieces of paper, sending it fluttering up into the air before it fell limply back to the ground. A deep breath, two. There'd be time to put everything back in its right place later, an untidy room was nothing new to any of the Wards; this was even tame in comparison to some of the messes the boys got up to. A messy room was temporary… even if it would be so annoying to put everything back.
She took another breath, waited for a moment. Vista looked at herself in the reflection of the visor. Missy Biron looked back at her with a baby face with none of the baby fat, burned off by the harsh workout regime of a Ward and frazzled hair. She frowned. There was no time to straighten her hair, but she smoothed her hair down as best she could into something approaching normal and slid the visor on. It felt natural against her skin, the glass-like Tinkertech uncolored from her perspective.
She slotted the armoured panels into their slots. It was almost like meditation, the movements easy with deep rooted muscle memory. She'd pushed for more armour, pointed to the scars, and all that asshole Chambers had given her were these. Said the same garbage about image…
With a huff she shook the memory from her head as she put the last one into place. They hadn't been enough to stop Hookwolf from stabbing a blade into her chest, but it was better than nothing. Vista took a deep breath, tugged the hem of her skirt down and left her room, the door sliding open in front of her.
"What the hell is going on?"
Dennis came hopping out of his room at the same time Missy came out of hers, one arm pulling up his bodysuit, stuck through a sleeve, the other cradling his helmet against his chest. The blank expanse of white flashed red under the light of the alarms. His normally upbeat face cast into a worried frown, only made more severe by the lighting.
He still looked half asleep, his red hair was tousled, obviously having thrown himself out of bed, or been thrown out of it by the building shaking just like she had been. Dennis wasn't tall, but he still stood head and shoulders above Missy's own diminutive frame. Enough that she had to look up to meet his eyes when he stepped up next to her.
"No idea," Missy said, voice raised so he could hear her over the alarm. She pursed her lips together tightly before continuing, "Whatever it is, it can't be good."
"No kidding," he muttered back, barely audible despite saying it at a normal volume, "nothing from upstairs?"
Missy's frown grew. That was maybe the most worrying thing. The Wards had been told that there was some meeting going on upstairs in the PRT building proper. Told enough to know that they were missing out on something, something big enough that it couldn't wait until tomorrow, but not anything further.
Yet despite the fact that the majority of the Protectorate team was on site, the alarm still wailed, and the walls still shook. The vibrations had died down after the initial huge one, now reduced to faint tremors she could feel through the soles of her boots.
Before she could answer, the door to Noah's room slid open nearly silently, the boy himself stepping out a moment later. Browbeat was already bulked up from his powers, the normal body of a teenage boy, albeit an athletic one, replaced by a walking talking Greek statue. If a Greek statue had its proportions blown up like a balloon, if she hadn't seen what the strength that body was capable of with her own eyes then she'd find it comical. As it was, the blue spandex of his costume stretched over more muscles than she even knew existed as the teen loped out of his room, the blank and largely featureless room obscured from view as the door slid closed behind him.
"We're under attack?" The quiet boy asked, expression mostly hidden by the full-face mask he was already wearing but notes of anxiety shifted underneath the words.
She and Dennis shared a look. Noah was the newest member of the team, and she still didn't know what to make of him. He was always one of the last ones to volunteer for patrols, seemingly perfectly content to train alone back at base. That wasn't to say he wasn't capable; she'd seen him throw gang members around like they didn't weigh a thing and heard about his short stint as an independent. The boy himself didn't like to talk about it much, or about himself at all really, but he'd beaten Victor and Othala together and almost took down some small-time thief called Regent. If it wasn't for his Master teammate, both would be in PRT custody. But since then, he had the lowest number of engagements of any of them.
"We don't know." Dennis answered, looking at the spinning alarm light attached to the ceiling, "Don't see what else it could be though. Takes a special kind of stupid to attack while the whole team is here though. Even the Merchants aren't that dumb, and that's saying something," he paused for a second, looking between the two of them, "Where's Aegis?"
The door to their leader's room was open, but inside it Aegis was nowhere to be seen. The locker for their costumes and their backups was also open, one of the coat-hangers hung empty. Next to it, pictures adorned the otherwise blank metallic walls. Frames full of laughing, smiling parents together with Carlos, one from the Boardwalk with the Protectorate Headquarters shimmering brightly in the background.
Missy tried to ignore the bitter, stinging pain in her chest; ugly jealousy rearing its head. For once she was glad Dean spent most of his nights at home, she didn't like the looks he'd give her whenever her thoughts accidentally slipped towards her parents.
"He must've left already," she called back to the two boys who were peering over her shoulder, "although," she paused, looking at the relatively undisturbed bed sheets, Carlos' rucksack that he always took home with him thrown haphazardly on top of them, "it doesn't look like he was in here much at all."
"Strange," Dennis said, and she could hear the frown in his voice, "but not the strangest thing I've seen today. Let's go find our fearless leader."
Missy lips quirked up despite herself. Even with the blaring alarms, Dennis could always be trusted to lighten the mood… or at least try. More often than not the idiot's joke would backfire, but even then, it just meant that they'd laugh at him instead and he'd always join in in the end.
The three of them trooped away from the rooms, the movable pieces of metal that made up the large dome of the base configured to give their rooms a slightly cramped feeling corridor that connected to the main area of the base. Only a few of them kept permanent rooms at the base. 'Permanent' in the sense that they filed the paperwork to make sure that their rooms weren't deconstructed. Missy, for obvious reasons, Dennis, to be nearer to his father interned in the hospital attached to the PRT headquarters. Ostensibly as part of a clinical trial in co-operation with the PRT, luckily selected along with a number of others to test 'groundbreaking new technology', when in reality it was just something Dennis had asked for when he'd joined the Wards; something he'd confided in here once, in a somber moment for the otherwise upbeat older teen.
Aegis' room was only kept in a more permanent fashion because of his status as their leader. The older buy spent most nights at home, with a loving, happy family. Barring them, the others all made use of temporary rooms whenever they chose to spend the night. Missy rarely went home anymore, just enough to get the Youth Guard off her back when they started kicking up a fuss about it. Something about a thirteen-year-old girl that had done more for the city than any of them needing to spend time with her family. Yeah, right.
None of them said anything. A tense, uneasy silence against the grating loop of the alarm and the uneven beat of their boots against the metallic flooring.
Soon they emerged into the central area, a wide open 'room' with couches arranged near the middle of the room around a series of televisions. Cushions were still strewn about messily on top and around them, not having to worry about the next tour group until the next morning, combined with a group of teenagers didn't tend to lend itself towards a tidy environment.
Across the room, larger screens were place on the sloping dome, curving slightly around a wide desk under which several computers were joined together by tightly packed bundles of wires. The office chair normally tucked under the desk was lying on its side behind the nearest couch. Its wheels still shook gently, rattling in place.
Aegis stood, palms pressed flat down on the desk and partially silhouetted by the monitor. His costume, normally a rust like red stained into a deeper crimson under the emergency lights. The helmet was detached, resting on top of the table facing towards them and revealing their leader's shoulder length black hair, messed up and rumpled.
"Carlos!" Missy called out.
She reached out, her senses expanding into a mental map of the room. With a snag, she clamped onto the desk in front of Carlos and pulled.
The air in front of her distorted, like looking through a giant magnifying glass, or a tunnel with blurred sides as if the surroundings were being pulled towards the end of it. She stepped through easily, the use of her power as everyday as a normal stride. The room flew by and snapped back into focus again as her foot touched down by the side of her team leader. What had started out as a disorientating experience had become hers, the feeling of bending space a warm blanket. Her shoulders relaxed, releasing a bit of their tension as she sidled up to Aegis, releasing the stretched space behind her.
"Shit," he cursed, spinning to face her after nearly jumping straight out of his skin. He'd probably survive that, but she didn't want to imagine what it would look like, "don't do that."
Missy contained a giggle to a small huff of amusement at the small slip. As Dennis and Noah marched up behind her, she couldn't help but notice how worried he sounded and the genuine panic that raced through his eyes. Her eyes turned to the monitors attached to the wall and planted on top of the desk, an amalgamation of data and visual feeds that she was intimately aware of from console duty.
"So…?" Dennis asked, she could hear the tension in his voice, shoved down below a forced casualness. If it was someone less familiar with the boy, someone that wasn't a member of the team, she wondered if they would be able to hear it, or if they'd just hear the ever-cheerful Clockblocker. Could Noah hear it?
Her train of thought fell apart when she saw what was on the monitors. A half dozen camera feeds, panning around decimated corridors. Corridors that she reckoned from upstairs, just a couple of stories above their heads. Strewn with rubble and, hopefully, unconscious bodies, they looked like they were from a warzone rather than the organized, safe PRT Headquarters.
Another showed a conference room from the upper levels, wall blown inwards like an explosion had gone off just outside the window, or something large had been flown through. But that wasn't what grabbed her attention.
No, it was the brightly clothed figures lying unconscious in the room that her eyes snapped to.
"Christ," Missy exhaled, "fuck."
Miss Militia, the kind mother of the team was halfway through a hole into the room next-door. She'd always been the one to lend a kind ear to them, her lack of sleep leaving her door open at any time, except when she was on the job. Armsmaster tried, he really did, despite what those who didn't really know the man said. The man's cold demeanor tended to rub people the wrong way, and he just couldn't put anything above his job. But he wasn't good with kids.
For once, nobody corrected her language, too busy staring at the screens.
"Is that?" Noah trailed off uncertainly, probably realising the answer to his question. There was really no mistaking the bright costumes of their senior Heroes.
Armsmaster himself was prone and limp upon a pile of his own team-mates, easily recognizable from his silver and blue armour. The visor was cracked, it looked like just a breeze would blow it away off his face. His iconic halberd was a few feet off to the side of the pile, buried halfway into the floor like a pencil through paper. Standing like that, Missy thought it almost looked like a toy you'd find with the matching miniature in the gift shop.
Carlos followed their eyes, turning back to the monitors he'd been staring at before they got there and spoke, voice grim, "Yeah." He reached up, running a hand through his hair and opening his mouth to continue before closing it and just waving his hand vaguely, "yeah," he finished lamely.
"What the hell," Dennis paused briefly, eyes flickering down to Missy. She glared back at him, daring him to say anything else but he was already looking back at the cameras, "happened?"
"Tyrant attacked in the middle of the meeting. Just… blew straight in through the wall."
"Tyrant?" Missy asked, surprised. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it definitely wasn't that. Maybe the full might of one of the city's gangs, or just a scaled-up Lung. The Wards had been briefed on the newly Triggered teenage Villain. A Brute that had in a few short nights soundly defeated both Glory Girl and Armsmaster, killed Hookwolf and had done it all without getting hurt. There were rumors that they were trying to get help from out of town, Armsmaster's claimed that he could take the Brute down given enough time to prepare, but given the rate at which he escalated to murder nobody was interested in giving him that time, "As in that new Brute?"
Wordlessly, he pressed a key and the feed of the conference room blurred into reverse, a mess of movement and action too fast to follow. It stilled, resolving into a video of the Heroes surrounding the table. The large form of Director Piggot sat at the far end of the table, her back to the windows and with her perpetual cold near scowl fixed onto her face.
"-Yes, Armsmaster, you will be there. The rest of you will be operating as normal. We'll have to release a statement on Tyrant, of course." The director closed the laptop that Missy always saw on her desk, and put her fingers together into a steeple with her elbows resting on the table, "Until then, inform the Wards that they are to report any contact with him, and to not engage-"
Distantly, off camera, an explosion rocked the city. It was powerful enough to shake the entire building. This was the first one, the one that had set off the sirens and woken her up with the shaking. As one the Protectorate team and the Director spun to look out the window into the city, Armsmaster stepped up beside her. Flanked by the tall, armoured form the Director looked small. Whatever they saw was outside the frame, but if the explosion was so strong that she could feel it here then it must have been bad.
"Are we allowed to watch this?" Noah said quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the alarm, as if someone worried someone would overhear them talking, or that he'd draw attention to himself.
Vista and the other two boys just stared at him, Aegis pressing a key to stop the playback. That was what he was worried about in this situation?
"We have a couple slightly more important things to worry about right now than if Piggot didn't want us to hear about this," Dennis deadpanned, gesturing at the flashing red lights with an exaggerated wave of his hand.
"I'm just saying," Noah defended himself. The teen wasn't meek, no matter how much he didn't like to draw attention to himself, "the last thing we need is more problems. We're clearly meant to stay here anyway. Do you want to deal with a lecture from the Director in the mood she'll be in after this?"
"I can take a lecture later if it means being able to help now," Vista added her own two cents, "We can't do anything if we don't know what's going on."
"I'm not saying I don't want to help but-"
Aegis cut in, "It's fine, I'll take responsibility if they have an issue with me showing you. We trained for this, and we're not helping anybody just sitting here."
Browbeat sighed but subsided easily, the massive boy not pressing any further. Carlos looked at him again, eyes asking the boy for approval to continue. The massive didn't say anything, but Missy rolled her eyes and resumed the video before anyone could say anything more.
"What's going on?" Piggot asked, as calm and collected as ever. Often she was called cold, other times bitter, neither of them seemed wrong to Vista but damn if she couldn't work under pressure.
Armsmaster was the one to answer, precise and to the point.
"Confirmed impact, eastern Downtown area. Dauntless is already on his way to the impact site, Shadow Stalker and Kid Win are falling back. I'm pulling CCTV but none of them got a good angle."
The Director gave him a sharp look.
"You think this is Tyrant?"
"We can't risk them becoming involved if it is, and-" He paused, shoulders visibly tightening even through the thick layers of his armour, "Dauntless is down."
Whatever had kept the other Heroes sat at the table evaporated at that, as they rushed to the window. A chair clattered against the floor, tipping over backwards but Vista was too focused on watching what happened next to see whose it was.
"Move! We need eyes on the scene now. Battery, Assault, Velocity, get there and get there yesterday. Get me information!"
Piggot's tone left no room for argument, the named Capes rushing to follow the order…
But Armsmaster hadn't moved, hadn't reacted at all. He spun-
"Get down!"
He tackled Piggot away from the window, wrapping his arms around and landing on top of her and covering her body in a picture-perfect tackle, the kind she'd seen in action movies.
The curtain wall shattered inwards, a blur flying into it too fast for the camera to see. It sent the whole room shaking, a massive quake that Vista was certain was the larger one that almost took her off her feet. The camera shook with it, enough that the video became a blur of flying debris and rough shapes. The Heroes nearest to the window weren't as lucky as her. Right next to the point of impact, the closest were thrown from their feet like rag dolls, displayed by colorful blurs in the tumult of the quaking building and pelted by shards of glass and pieces of broken bars. Alarms flared into action, the same ones that were still piercing Vista's ears.
A moment of stillness settled over the room, broken by a pair of trainers alighted gently at the now open edge of the room. They were followed by jeans and a body that didn't fit fully into frame, but just from that reference Vista was reminded again just how big the Villain was. She'd seen the photos taken from the CCTV of the phone store he'd robbed and from Armsmaster's recording software in his helmet, but it still struck her every time. He was supposed to be the same age as Dennis?
"Is he bigger than he was before? I could've sworn he wasn't that big in the photos they showed us," Dennis asked idly, not expecting an answer.
But then Tyrant poke, and the voice was clearly young despite the metallic twang. Young and cold.
"Where is Thomas Calvert?"
Vista watched as the only answer to his question was a swarm of activity. The Heroes surged to their feet and towards the towering Cape.
"The commander?" She asked uncertainly. Commander Calvert wasn't especially well-known outside of the PRT. He'd appeared on television a few times at PR events but not nearly so often as the Director or any of the Protectorate Capes, "What does he want with him?"
The video froze as Aegis paused it, the Protectorate staring up at the looming figure of Tyrant on the pile of rubble, "I'm not sure," the words sounded like they pained him to admit, "I can't find anything in the files indicating that the two of them had even met before. You'd think the commander would've had to have done something to him personally for this kind of response but...if we want any more than that we'll have to ask Tyrant ourselves."
"What happened to… Calvert?" Noah asked uncertainly, brows scrunched together. She doubted he even knew who the man was, she remembered how it was when she first joined, a never-ending stream of faces and names. It had taken her longer than she liked to admit to get used to the hectic life of a Ward. Now she tried to bury herself in it.
"Dead."
Dennis grimaced, "Right, great. So we're what, trapped down here until the big guys let us out?"
"Something like that," Carlos answered, though he didn't look as sure of himself or in control as he normally did, "we've got help coming but Tyrant's already gone. Nobody is willing to bet on how long he'll be gone, or whether he's about to attack again so," he paused to look around the Ward's base, the casual lounge much less homely in the harsh red light of the alarms, "we're staying down here."
"Help?" Missy asked quizzically. Apparently, Dauntless was already down and with Kid Win and Shadow Stalker accompanying him, none of them would be back here any time soon. Nor would they be allowed to come back and help. Who else could they get, someone from outside of town?
"That would be me," A voice cut in, garbled as if through a filter but not enough for a touch of a strong accent to leak through, as a digitally rendered face appeared on one of the side monitors, "I apologize for listening in, but I've been busy organizing everything off-site."
"Apparently the world's greatest Tinker has a sense of dramatic timing, who'd have thought?" Dennis said wryly, but Missy saw how his shoulders relaxed slightly at the famous Tinker's presence.
Nor was she unaware of the same effect running through her. It was like her lungs had been being squeezed and she'd only realised when she sucked in a deep breath. There wasn't much more reassuring than having Dragon in your corner. Digitally, at least.
Kid's gonna be so mad he missed this, she thought.
Her lips twitched upwards at the thought.
"We've all got our vices Clockblocker." The mask didn't move much, like it was looking at something else off screen, but she thought she could hear a smile in the voice, "I hope you can forgive me for the little fun I can have remotely.
"I'll forgive it if you come get us out of this mess," he tried to play it cool, but that same note of tension was still clearly there. They were all feeling it, the alarms and emergency lighting wasn't conducive to a relaxing atmosphere.
"I've got a suit on the way but," there was a pause, as if Dragon was struggling to choose what to say, "it takes time. More than I'd like. There's no Protectorate Heroes left to stop Tyrant if he tries to move again now."
"Nobody?" Vista cut in, startled and unable to hold the words back.
This time there was a definite frown on the projected face and Missy couldn't help but think of how close she and Armsmaster were said to be. She'd never seen them together, but there were plenty of rumors around the base; Assault ribbed the man about it constantly, but he tried to push everyone's buttons with anything he could.
"You'll see in the video. Suffice to say the Protectorate team is currently… indisposed and unable to lift the lockdown. The building has been evacuated, but with Tyrant seemingly having left, teams are being sent in again. It shouldn't be long before they are given the all-clear, all going well we'll get you out of there soon."
One of the screens cut to a different security camera without any of them pressing anything. Dragon must have been moving it to bring their attention to the teams of fully armed PRT trooper squads slowly moving into the building with guns at the ready. It was surreal to see them move past her huge portrait, stepping over rubble as they went.
"So we just sit here and twiddle our thumbs?" She muttered bitterly under her breath. Again.
"I'm sorry," Dragon apologized so naturally and with such genuine remorse that Missy felt bad for snapping at her immediately, "Director Piggot has ordered that the Headquarters is to stay under lockdown until the building has been secured again.
"No, no." Missy waved her apology away, "It's not your fault. I just thought, well, maybe you could get us out there helping… or something," she finished lamely.
"I really am sorry," The Guild Tinker repeated earnestly, "But the lockdown was put into place by the Brockton PRT division. Even if it's just an automated system I can't break the law by going against it."
Of course she 'couldn't', breaking rules was just something Dragon didn't do. Even if it was just a small, harmless one that would get her out there helping instead of trapped underground watching videos of what she'd already missed. God even in her own head she wasn't being fair to Dragon, not when it was all Tyrant's fault.
"It's understandable." Carlos took over, glancing over at her before looking back at the computer screen, "I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we're grateful to have your help."
He sounded like he was pulling it straight out of a PR training session. Like something Armsmaster would say, but from Carlos it just sounded like a child trying to sound grown-up in a situation far beyond their control. Carlos somehow managed to make it sound endearing rather than annoying.
"I'm only sorry I didn't have a suit close enough to get here in time to help," Dragon shook her head. Or the avatar on screen did at least, she assumed that wherever the agoraphobic woman was, she was making the same movement. For a moment it looked like there was more the Tinker wanted to say, but whatever it was she clearly changed her mind.
"I don't think anyone could've predicted this kind of escalation from a new Cape," Aegis disagreed, the wish that someone had been able to see it shrining through clearly in his voice. Wouldn't that have been nice? Every time she heard about Tyrant, he was doing something crazier and crazier. The types of things you only see the most mentally disturbed of Capes do. What kind of person jumps from petty theft to assault, to murder then to attacking a PRT base?
Nobody could've seen that coming. Even thinking about it now she could barely believe it.
"Someone should have." Dragon meant herself, Vista realised, seeing how to face on screen grimaced and looked down and away for a moment, "If I'd just been looking…"
She and the rest of the Wards looked at each other uncomfortably and she saw the same silent question in their eyes as she was sure was in hers. How do you comfort Dragon? It was like suddenly being asked to give Legend emotional support, just not something she ever saw needing to do.
If Dean was here, he'd know what to do or say. He always did.
"Hindsight is twenty-twenty," Carlos finally said, slowly, "there's no point blaming yourself for it when nobody else saw it coming either."
Dragon didn't say anything for a few seconds, the animated face just looking into the distance.
"Maybe," She couldn't have sounded less convinced if she tried. The mood disappeared off the face, the emotion wiped away like it had been washed off. Or someone trying to put on a brave face "I've got to go. I'm sure I'll see you 'in person' soon. Aegis… make sure you show them the video. There's talks about shutting down the footage, but nothing's been decided yet. Try not to worry, there's nothing suggesting that Tyrant will attack again."
Her team-leader tried to smile. It didn't look very convincing.
"Yes, ma'am."
Amusement briefly flicked over the face, before it disappeared off the screen. There was a deep release of pressure in the room, as she and the whole team let out a deep breath as one.
"Well, that happened," Dennis said, voice drier than a desert in the Summer.
"Is this kind of thing normal? They didn't brief me on this in training." Noah asked, having stayed silent the entire time Dragon was there.
Vista barked a harsh laugh, "Which bit? Waking up stressed and to alarms? More than they'd like the public to know about, I'm sure. But an entire Protectorate team losing to a direct assault from a single new Trigger? That's something else, even for Brockton Bay," she said the city name like an insult; like how everyone from out of town talked about the city like it was diseased. Not that they were wrong, but she didn't have to like them saying that stuff about her home.
The boy didn't say anything back, just grimacing and looking away. Was he regretting joining them now? Maybe she'd been too harsh. Still, she hadn't been lying and was hardly in the mood to give a pointless placation or lie even if it might come back to bite her in the ass later.
"Anyway," Carlos cut in, "The video. Are we all agreed on watching it? I know Dragon told us that we should but it's okay if anybody doesn't want to."
Was he looking at her when he said that?
"No way. We're trapped down here because of him and you're suggesting we don't watch it?"
He raised his hands defensively in front of him, "I'm not suggesting anything. The video isn't a fun watch. We lost. You don't need to watch it to understand that. But if you're all sure then I'm not going to stop you guys watching it."
"I'm watching it," Vista frowned at him, trying to but as much steel into her voice as she could and not like a petulant child.
Carlos nodded easily, accepting the obvious answer, but looked at the other two boys on either side of her. Looking at Dennis' face, she saw an unusually grim look as he considered. There's no way he wouldn't watch it right? Desperate, she stamped down on his foot, hard enough that she knew he'd feel it through the armour panel on the top of his foot.
"Ouch! What the hel- heck Missy?" He grouched, shaking his foot out, "I was going to say we watch it anyway. As if I could miss the amount of material watching this will give me over the big guys. Can you imagine Armsmaster's face when I bring it up around him?"
The ginger boy laughed to himself as if he was watching it happening in front of him right this minute. Carlos looked like he was losing a fight to push down his own laugh at the idea but managed to force out a 'Dennis!' that sounded vaguely disapproving.
"What? It would so be worth the weeks of console duty he'd make me pull for it."
Carlos rolled his eyes before he moved on to Noah, but she already knew that the introverted boy wouldn't go against the two of them. Part of her felt bad about forcing his hand like this, but there was no way she wasn't going to watch the recording. Sure enough, Noah just nodded tiredly, and it was agreed.
"Fine, don't say I didn't warn you," Aegis warned, sighed quietly and resumed the video.
"You're under arrest!" Armsmaster yelled and pushed himself off the ground, the armour making it look effortless. His iconic halberd appeared in his hands in a flash of glowing blue lines, already at the ready. He planted his feet between Piggot and Tyrant. Velocity ran past him, faster than a car but unable to apply any of that force into an attack; the Mover ran circles around Tyrant but was unable to do anything to attack him.
At the same time Miss Militia's power, fuzzed from a knife at her hip into a huge revolver. It was weightless in her hands, but it looked as if the weapon should have been far too unwieldy for the not overly muscular woman to use. The bang that came when she fired it was so loud Vista thought she could almost hear it as if it was in the room with her, but the bullets did nothing but flatten themselves against Tyrant's chest. One pinged as it crumpled against his helmet off screen. Tyrant's power even extended to his clothes? Some kind of field then instead of just ridiculous durability?
Triumph roared, the sounds overwhelming any further gunshots from Miss Militia. Vista had heard his attacks in person, on one of their patrols together. It left her ears ringing for minutes afterwards, and the Empire gangsters several feet down the street. Yet it didn't even ruffle Tyrant's shirt. It took Vista a moment to realise what was wrong with the video. Triumph didn't have his helmet on. The bright gold piece of equipment lay off to the side, its jaw roaring defiantly half under a pile of glass. There was nothing protecting Rory's secret identity, and she could see his attention straying towards the helmet, unwilling to take his eyes off the attacking Cape.
"His helmet," Noah muttered, realising it at the same she did. Dennis and Carlos stared at the screen grim-faced. Everyone knew how important a secret identity was. It had been drilled into their heads over and over again by their trainers and the Protectorate team.
This was Bad. With a capital B. The Unwritten Rules were such that if a Cape's secret identity was found out it shouldn't be acted on. Shouldn't. People remembered what happened to Fleur, and even without that nobody would trust a Villain anyway. Things like this caused transfers, the Heroes forced to leave to avoid putting themselves or their family at risk. That kind of bad. The thought almost made her laugh. As if the situation wasn't already so far past fucked it wasn't even funny.
Assault leapt forwards, his powers throwing him forwards far faster than should have been possible. In his shadow, Battery stood still, she glared at Tyrant as the circuit looking lines began to glow blue. Before the chaos could continue, Carlos pressed a key, slowing down the playback just as the combatants' speed reached a point where it was almost impossible to follow as everything happened at once.
Tyrant finally moved. He picked up the table that dominated the room with one hand, lifted it like it weighed nothing and swung it like a bat at the airborne Assault, intent on slamming him out the window. It screeched across the floor, the stand of the table tearing at the flooring in protest. But Assault landed on it with both feet, taking away the impact with his powers. His legs bunched atop it, looking like something out of a cartoon, an action shot of a character jumping off a moving object. Tyrant let go, twisted and kicked the table beneath where Assault stood. It went flying out the shattered window, but Assault bounced off it and into the furthest corner of the room, pivoting in mid-air to face back towards his attacker.
In a blur of red, he came flying back into the room at the same time that Battery burst forward while Tyrant's back was turned. She blitzed the distance between them in the time it took Vista to blink. Before it could impact the teen spun, one huge hand wrapped all the way around her arm like it was a child's. He threw her with a flick of the risk, but it was hard enough that even the surveillance camera could clearly hear the sharp crack of her head hitting against Triumph's before the other Cape could move. Neither of them got up.
Assault crashed into his back, yelling in rage. Vista had never seen the normally upbeat man so angry before, he swung. Those punches had sent people flying across the room, but Tyrant weathered them without reaction. The Brute turned and lashed out with a wild haymaker that smacked into Assault's midsection with a meaty thud.
The Hero's power ate it up eagerly, and instead of being sent flying he just smiled an angry grin and swung back. Silly as the man acted, Assault was one of their best options against the standard Brute package. Take away a heavy hitter's heavy hitting and what else could they do?
Tyrant didn't pause, the punch with his own kinetic energy added to it beat into his chest and washed away like everything else the Heroes did. Instead, he punched harder. Assault barely reacted. Tyrant grabbed his neck and flew into the air, maybe a foot off the ground, the perspective of the camera made it hard to tell, all the while Assault pulled at the thick fingers. They didn't budge, and a look of stunned shock mixed with fear flitted across the normally bright Hero's face.
Cables around Tyrant's neck, each as thick around as Vista's wrist and made of the same shining metal as Armsmaster's halberd from where they'd sprung. They lit up with tiny arcs of electricity, then shifted to the red glow of extreme heat and then they steamed and cold. Little patterns of ice spread across their surface as they failed to bite into the Brute's skin.
None of them stopped him as, lifted away from any surface Assault could gain friction and redirect the kinetic energy into, Tyrant dropped him and instantly struck again, catching his stomach with an uppercut that looked like it should have blown him in half. This time Assault grimaced. The third hit came so quickly after the last that it would have looked like one punch without the slowed down footage. Assault was blasted away back into the corner he'd bounced from. He didn't get up.
"What the fuck is happening?" Vista breathed, feeling light-headed as she watched her role models be taken apart in front of her. It was a testament to how serious the situation was, how distracted the others were that nobody said anything about her swearing. Nobody answered. Something in her palms hurt and Vista looked down to find her fists clenched and shaking tight enough that her nails dug crevices into her palms. A little piece of her understood why Aegis had pushed them about whether they were sure they wanted to watch it, but she pushed it away and forcibly relaxed her hands.
In the time it had taken her to speak, Tyrant had stepped to Miss Militia, his massive stride carrying him across in a single step. Armsmaster slashed at his back, plasma shooting out from a hidden nozzle, the head broke off on a chain and wrapped around his thick neck. None of them did anything to stop the towering attacker from crushing Miss Militia's weapon between his fists. It evaporated back in amorphous energy that flowed through the cracks between his fingers like mist, coalescing back into a grenade launcher on her back.
Before she could reach for it, one of his hands whipped up to her face and rammed her through the wall. There was no finesse in the move, no smoothness that came with hours of training. He just brute forced his way through the Heroes like they were barely even there.
From the position the camera was in, Vista couldn't see anything of Miss Militia other than her legs and arms. The rest was obscured by Tyrant's wide body, but the limbs went limp after she was tossed onto the neighboring conference room's table. Her combat boots peaked back into the room and as Tyrant turned away Vista let out a sigh of relief as she saw her chest was still moving, even if it didn't look like she'd be moving any time soon.
She didn't know what she'd have done if she'd just watched the mother figure of the team be murdered. Hell, she didn't know what she was going to do now, in a matter of seconds only Armsmaster and Velocity were left standing on the screen and she didn't doubt that all the Wards watching knew how this ended. Velocity wasn't a front-line fighter, and Armsmaster had already lost to Tyrant when he hadn't been protecting the still prone Director.
A little piece of movement in the corner of the screen caught her eye. Rory crawled out from under battery, shaking his head blearily and visibly disorientated. He tried to push himself up, arms shaking beneath him, but all he could manage was to half fall, half drag his body forwards towards Tyrant.
All Vista wanted to do was yell at him to stop. Watching the normally charismatic and reliable Hero grimace and struggle to even move, it all seemed useless. He might have had an accelerated healing rate, but he was evidently fighting against a concussion and who knows what else. The camera hadn't captured a good angle of his impact with Battery, but it hadn't sounded good. A part of her wanted him to keep fighting, to do something, anything. But the cold, logical truth was that there was nothing he could do.
It was like watching a trainwreck in slow motion. Velocity sprinted forwards reaching out towards Triumph as the crawling Hero's white gloved hand gripped onto Tyrant's ankle. Just before the Mover could reach him, Tyrant's huge shoe lifted, uncaring for the hand attached and stamped Triumph's unprotected head into the ground.
Rory's head bounced like a drum with an ugly bang. She only got a snippet of his eyes, but they were wide and unfocused as he went limp. Somehow his fingers stayed clamped onto Tyrant, like a final act of defiance even while consciousness was forced from his body.
Vista's hand reached out without thinking, her fingers wrapped around Dennis' wrist and squeezed down hard. From the corner of her eye, she saw him barely react, just staring pale-faced at the screen and gritting his teeth. If it weren't for the alarms, she imagined she'd be able to hear his teeth grinding together.
Disbelieving, Velocity froze with his hand outstretched. Had Tyrant moved faster than him? It was hard to tell in the slow motion of the video, but whether it had been that he was so much closer, or had moved faster, she couldn't tell. Bleakly, she expected it was the latter. Of course the Brute lottery had to go to another scumbag asshole instead of a someone with heroic inclinations.
Armsmaster roared, artificially deepened by the reduced playback speed, and reared his halberd back painfully slowly. Before it could get anywhere, the giant Cape grabbed the bladed head, arresting it in place. The blade didn't even press into the skin.
He pushed it back towards its owner. Servos and mechanisms more complicated than Missy could understand in a million years groaned under the pressure. For a second, a second that would have barely lasted a tenth of that in real time, she thought that the mastercraft of Tinkertech power armour would hold, she allowed herself to hope.
They gave way. The end of the shaft smashed into the Protectorate team leader's visor with a weight that the slow motion heavily undersold. His helmeted head snapped backwards; the visor full of a spider-web of cracks.
He looked like he'd stay standing, rocking backwards but still upright and grasping onto his halberd.
Then Tyrant did it again.
This time he fell, toppling at a snail's pace sideways, one leg strewn over the Director who lay still, face grim but not panicked. Vista found herself admiring the woman then, just a little. The only non-parahuman in the room and she looked the calmest of all of them.
Freed from Armsmaster's grasp, Tyrant casually flipped the halberd like a pen and snatched it out of the air. It looked so much smaller in his hands. Next to his body it could have been a one-handed weapon. With his strength it was probably closer to one finger. She didn't have time to worry about what he planned to do with it before he planted it so deep in the ground a few feet away from the fallen Tinker that it didn't even quiver.
Velocity stood alone against a Brute that had blown through the entirety of the adult team. What chance did he have? Maybe he was fast enough to get Piggot out of there, but Vista doubted even that. Tyrant was fast.
Seemingly having the same idea, Velocity rushed towards the prone form of the Director. He didn't make it. The Villain's foot crashed into his side in a kick that made her ribs ache just watching it. Velocity was blasted out of shot, his trajectory and the crash of glass said that he'd been kicked straight through the conference room's door.
The video and the Wards HQ went quiet. Nobody breathed. Was Tyrant even breathing at all? The Villain didn't even look down at Piggot, instead staring out after Velocity, Rory's hand still around half his ankle. Before Tyrant could move, the video froze, ending there.
She turned to glare at Aegis and demand that he resumed the video, but he hadn't moved back to the keyboard.
"Why's it stopped?" Dennis frowned, no joking tone in his voice. He stepped forwards and tapped the spacebar a few times. The video didn't move, stubbornly freezing with Tyrant looking off camera.
"That's all there is," it took a second for Vista to snap out of it enough to recognise the emotion in Carlos' voice. It was anger, "or all that we're allowed to see. The rest has been locked down so tight I'm not sure even Director Piggot is allowed to watch it."
"But that makes no sense. What could be worse than watching that?" Dennis waved at the frozen image on screen.
Aegis shrugged, but it was full of a sort of tension that was unusual in the team leader, "Whatever it is is above our pay grade apparently. Orders came from the top before Tyrant had even left the building. I was watching it live and I got forced out from it before Calvert could even say a word."
"So he was after Calvert, but why fight the whole team first?" Vista latched onto the information like a lifeline while she was in a storm. Carlos grimaced like he'd said something he shouldn't.
"Yes," He stressed the final consonant, "he was on one of the lower floors. But other than the fact Tyrant got him, I haven't been told anything. I'm as in the dark here as the you all are, the Tinktank is probably going mad trying to work it out."
"He murdered him, you mean." She glared at him through the screen, trying to turn him to ash with her gaze alone. Carlos sighed but didn't refute it, instead following her gaze and looking back at the monitor.
"And now we're stuck down here waiting to be let out. At least we've got the lovely alarm as background music," Dennis butted in, with false cheer seeping from his words. That just made it worse. She'd been able to push the noise to the back of her mind, focusing on picking up the playback audio. Now the alarm echoed shrilly in her ears, burrowing between her thoughts.
Carlos tried to smile at him, but it came out as more of a grimace. Noah just stood, pasty skinned and eyes wandering around the room. She still couldn't read the boy overly well, he kept to himself too much, but even she could tell he was rattled the same as the rest of them.
Normally she'd put on a brave face. The team wouldn't see her as an adult if she burst into tears, or if she couldn't take care of herself. Her fingers absently traced around the scar on her chest from over her suit. This wasn't a normal situation.
Absently, almost in a daze, she wandered over to one of the large couches arranged in the common area and allowed herself to slump backwards against it. Someone may have called her name, but she didn't hear it, lost in the echo of the alarm. None of them stopped her.
Numb, she leant forwards, elbows resting on her knees and knuckles pressing against her forehead. She stayed like that for half an hour, until the alarms were turned off and the doors swung open, a PRT squad trooping inside with Piggot in tow. She knew she should listen to what the Director was saying. That it was important. That tomorrow she'd regret this moment of weakness.
But right then, at that moment, she didn't care. She'd already lost and she hadn't even done anything.
A/N: So.
This chapter has fought me a lot, and I'm really not happy with it. I'm not sure if it's because the last time I posted was a little while ago now or what, but this is the least happy I've been with a chapter, but at the same time I think it's done and not terrible. Let it never be said that my forte is dialogue.
Anyways, I was also a bit worried about this chapter beause while I enjoyed writing it, in terms of story events it doesn't do much to progress the plot itself, instead just introducing a different viewpoint to previously established events. I feel like this wouldn't be such a big deal if I wasn't so slow getting updates out, but 2+ months for a chapter like this? Hopefully it's better than nothing, I can only promise to try my best to get the next chapter out sooner.
At least I got to write a clusterfuck of a fight scene that felt messy to write so I'm sure it'll be even worse to read. Also wasn't sure that I liked how large a portion of this chapter is just watching a video, feels kind of like one of those stories where the original cast of a source fiction read the work they're written in. Nothing against those fics but it's not for me. I'm sure there's also so many grammar and spelling mistakes that slipped through the crack, just to spite me.
At least this is the longest chapter yet? I really am sorry about how long it took me to force this out. Again I thought I was well on track to being finished at most a month after the last chapter, but then the struggles came and it kept growing and I rewrote bits of it so many times. Ugh.
Really not sure what the response to this one will be, but then I never am. Now I'm going to run away and go to sleep to hide under a rock for another few months (joking?). Some edits have already been made as I usually post a little early on other forums as it's a lot easier to edit chapters on there before posting them here. Not happy with it but here you go!
Hope everyone is doing okay.