AN: This chapter is slow as bread. Like, really, really slow. I like the ending though. There will be a fight next chapter. And this happens at approximately the same time as last chapter.
I had slept till noon. I wasn't feeling particularly tired, quite the opposite after my chat with Missy the night before, so I ended up staying up reading well past two in the morning. I was still half asleep when Madison called asking about our training session that day. I told her to we were taking a rest day so we'd be fresh for our raids that night. I didn't get around to her run until almost one.
"Hey Abby." I said, walking into the donut shop.
"You're late today. Anything happen?" Abby asked. She was sitting back reading a book and didn't bother to look up when the door opened.
"Stayed up late, slept late. I've only been up for less than an hour. I'll get a fritter this time. Usual drink."
"Staying up with boys already huh? Oh how you've grown." Abby smirked, getting up to get the order.
"No!" I said more forcefully than she meant to. "I was reading, if you must know. Didn't feel tired so did something else to occupy my time."
"I'll tell you what I told my kids when they were your age: As long as you don't end up pregnant, dead, or on drugs, you can do what you want." Abby said, putting the order on the counter.
"Seems like a really free range parenting style." I said, giving her the money. "Keep the change." I added, noting it was only a dollar and some change.
"Thanks." She nodded. "I think they turned out alright. My oldest moved up to Canada for a nice tech job. He was always the nerdy type. My daughter works in fashion."
"I'm glad they ended up doing what they like." I nodded. "I'm not sure what I'm gonna be doing as an adult."
"You got time to figure it out," She waved off the concern. "Some of the most interesting people I know are in their forties and don't know what they want to do with their life."
That got a chuckle out of me. "I just hope it's something I enjoy."
"That's all we can hope for. See you Monday."
"Monday." I said, heading for the door. "Bye, Abby."
Truthfully I didn't really need to get a donut, but it was routine. One I rather liked. Grab a donut from Abby three times a week on my morning run. It was the most consistently positive part of my life since I found her shop. Breaking it now just felt wrong. Like it would be a bad omen for things to come.
I spent most of the rest of the day in the Isolation World, which I had decided would be called "Vacio Mundo" after thumbing through a Spanish dictionary. I revised our plans and cased the safe houses I had planned for us to attack. I decided two per gang would be a good start. Maybe three for the Empire since they had the most we knew about.
After setting a plan in stone I went home to get dinner ready. I didn't really feel like cooking, I was still hurt from dads dismissive attitude on Wednesday, but he'd just try to cook himself or drink himself to sleep on an empty stomach, neither of which I wanted for him. So I threw together some chicken breast, rice, and roasted broccoli. A simple meal that required little seasoning and little work besides making sure I paid attention to the time.
I met the others in Las Noches at ten on the dot, both already in their outfits.
"You guys are early." I said.
"I'm surprised you weren't" Theo said.
"So, we have a plan right?" Madison asked.
"Yeah. I spent the day looking over our potential hit spots. The Merchant spots are pretty empty. Not much there except drugs and druggies. The ABB spots are mostly just cash drops. They seem like they might be heavily staffed, but they should be the easiest to hit after the Merchants. The Empire spots are the most heavily guarded but they have the least going on besides guns and money. From what I could tell they seemed to be heavily trafficked and filled with people. I say we start with the ABB. We could probably rob them blind and not have to worry about much since Lung is gone."
"The ABB first, huh?" Theo asked. "Yeah, I can see that."
I changed into my costume and slid my mask on. "Then let's get to it."
—
When we stepped from the portal above the ABB safe house, we found all but a few people ready to surrender. That was a surprising turn of events. While I could understand being terrified of people with bright yellow eyes stepping from a black hole in the sky, gang members were usually willing to at least stall long enough to get Cape support.
"Something is off here." I said. "Those people don't look like they want to fight."
"Let's go check." Samael said.
We stepped down to the ground. The safe house some derelict house in the South Docks that was tagged to hell with ABB colors. They didn't seem to be trying to hide it. There were people with guns standing guard in the front and back and some in the windows.
"Everyone inside, if you don't wish to fight, please drop your weapons." Samael called.
One of the people in the front and both in the back of the house dropped their weapons and laid down. The guy who hadn't dropped his gun aimed it at us and started to fire before finding Nihilus in front of him and the barrel of his gun bent.
"You shouldn't do that." She said. "I can't stand quick shots."
The man backed away and pulled a pistol from his waistband, which was promptly sliced in half by a gust of wind. The mans eyes widened and he put his hands up, dropping to his knees.
"This is going to go faster than I thought. I'll call the cops, you guys can finish up." I said.
"Got it." Samael took off to help Nihilus in the house.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the cops.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"We just busted an ABB safe house on Maple."
"And who's calling?"
"I'm a cape. Sacrosanct."
"Generally you would go through the PRT for this. Were there any other Capes on the scene?"
"No, just us. The weird thing is everyone surrendered really quickly. Like, almost all of them dropped their guns when prompted."
"That is odd. The police and PRT are on their way to your location. They should be there in about ten minutes."
"Alright."
I hang up and go to find the others. The inside of the house is stripped out with exposed wooden floors and barely any furniture. There are people on the ground tied with tape and guns on the floor.
"Samael, where are you guys?" I call out.
"Basement!" I hear back. I sink through the floor and find the others looking at a safe.
"We're trying to figure out how to get this safe open." Nihilus explained.
"Just rip the door off."
She grabbed the handle and pulled, almost tossing the metal safe door across the room.
"Oh…"
"So what's in it?"
"Lots of money." Samael answered.
"Cool. The cops will be here in a few. You guys can take off for the next spot while I wait for them."
"I'll go stake it out."
"I'll wait with you. No point in going if we aren't going to hit it." Nihilus shrugged.
"Fine."
Samael took the money to Las Noches before heading to the next spot while we gathered everyone up in the front. I was just about to adjust my mask to smoke when the PRT and cops showed up.
"ID!" One of the PRT officers called, foam sprayer aimed towards us.
"Friendly! Sacrosanct and Nihilus." I called back.
The troopers lowered their weapons and approached us.
"Alright, thanks for the call. Mind telling us how it went down?"
"We showed up and half the people were already ready to surrender. When we told them to, most of them did." Nihilus shrugged.
"That sounds too easy." The trooper said.
"That's what I said, not that I'm complaining." I said as my phone rang. "Hold on."I said, before answering. "What's up?"
"We might have a problem." Samael said.
"What do you mean a problem? A problem how?"
"I think they're using civilians."
"What?"
"I got to the next target and as I was looking around for security I spotted a kid I know from school. Dude avoids anything even tangentially related to the ABB like the plague. Gets top grades and all that. He's not the gang type. His family is well off and everything."
"Can you grab him?"
"Yeah, give me a second."
"Is everything alright?" The trooper asked.
"Samael is at our next target. Says he thinks they're conscripting civilians." I explained, partially annoyed. The troopers eyes widened slightly.
"Conscripting… Hey, Carter!" He called to one of his team.
"Yeah?" She called back.
"Grab one of the captures and ask him why he joined up."
"I'm back. He says Bakuda forced him. Something about bombs." Samael said.
"Samael says a cape named Bakuda is forcing people with bombs." I relayed.
"Bakuda… Shit. Get everyone we captured back to HQ for scanning immediately! You guys, avoid hitting the ABB for now. If these people really are strapped with bombs we won't be able to do anything if they get detonated in our base. We'll see if Armsmaster has something for it."
"Yeah." I nod. "Samael, we're done with the ABB for now. We don't know what Bakuda did and we can't hold anyone we capture until the PRT is able to."
"Got it. I'll meet you at the Merchant where house."
"Right." I hang up and turn to the trooper, "Don't get too comfortable. We'll have some Merchants for you guys in a bit."
He laughed at that. "Don't go too wild."
We left and stopped in the sky above a rotted out warehouse on the border of the Trainyard. Samael arrived just as we did.
"Alright, this place is pretty empty, but they tend to get a lot of druggies through here, so we'll probably not have a lot of fighting to do." I explain.
"That's fine. Three pronged entrance?" Samael asked.
"What's that?" Nihilus asked.
"It means we each take a different entrance. I'll take the front, One of you take the back and the other gets the second floor." I explained.
"I'll take the top floor." Samael said.
"Great. Get to your spot, count to ten, then go."
We broke up and got in position. Usually going through the front door is the distraction for everyone else. In my case, I was the sneaky one, since they'd react to the sound of Nihilus breaking through the back wall. I phased through the wall and knocked out the small group of Merchants that were heading toward the back room of the warehouse. They went down easy and half of them were too strung out to even stand properly.
"What the fuck?!" I heard a man shout from the back. "The fuck are you?! You think you can just bust up our shit and get away with it?"
I phased into the room to see Mush covering himself with trash while Nihilus had bubbles popping and breaking his garbage armor.
"Fuck you bitch! Stop that and come fight me!" He trash armor was smaller than he wanted it to be, but he was able to get enough to swing a long metal tendril at Nihilus, which was destroyed as it got closer to her.
"You got this?" I asked casually.
"Yeah, you go see what Samael is up to."
"Alright." I turned to leave and Mush was blasted through the wall. We made eye contact as he got up and I just Sonido'd to the second floor.
"That you Sacrosanct?" He called.
"Yeah. You find anything?"
"Back here! This place is a drug lab or something. I thought we were just hitting a distribution point."
I followed his voice and found him in a room with a chemical set.
"That's new. It wasn't here when I checked earlier." I said, confused. "I didn't think they were smart enough to start making their own drugs."
"I don't think anyone did. Should we leave it for the cops?" He asked.
"Probably. We gotta call the PRT though. Found Mush downstairs. Apparently he was sleeping in a pile of garbage. Nihilus is taking care of it."
"Huh. Okay. You know this is turning out a lot easier than I thought it would be." He said as we moved to a different room looking for any money.
"I know right? I figured we'd run into more opposition than this. The ABB conscripting civilians worked in our favor, much as I'd like to find Bakuda and stop her. Any idea where we might be able to get her?"
"No. All the Empire knew until recently was that Lung had a Tinker, but she hasn't been seen much. I don't think anyone but Lung knew her specialty."
"We're going to have to go after her. We definitely can't have people like her in the city. What kind of monster conscripts civilians under force? Targeting people down on their luck is one thing, but forcefully recruiting civilians is another. She should be a priority."
"Definitely." Samael said as we finished searching the last room. "I can't believe there's no money here."
"It's either well hidden or they picked it up already."
"Yeah. Let's go check on Nihilus."
We made it downstairs to find Mush stuck to the wall and none of his trash coming to him, dropping to the floor several feet before it could touch him.
"PRT are on the way." Nihilus said as we walked down.
"Great. We're heading to the next spot. You cool to wait for the cops?"
"Yup."
"Great. Let's go." I tap Samael. We leave out the hole Nihilus made in the back wall and head off to the next location.
This one is closer to the Downtown. We stop on the roof across from the building to look over the security it might have.
"Hey! Who are you?!" We hear a shout from behind us to see two blonde girls in white outfits. I recognize Glory Girl immediately and realize Laserdream was the one that shouted.
"Oh, I remember you! That's Sacrosanct. Me and Amy ran into her a while ago. I don't know the guy though, she had another girl with her last time." Glory Girl explained.
"The name's Samael."
"Sacrosanct and Samael." Laserdream said slowly. "Those are some weird names."
"The other one is named Nihilus. Where is she, by the way?" Glory Girl asked.
"Dealing with the PRT. We ran into Mush at the other Merchant spot we hit so she's dealing with that." I answer.
"You left her to deal with it alone? You sure she'll be okay?" Laserdream asked.
"She'll be fine. Nihilus can handle herself."
"If you say so. Were you guys planning on hitting this place?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Yup. Got a tip about it a while back and we only now got the chance to do anything about it. You guys wanna team up?"
"Sure." I shrug.
"I'm good with that."
"Great. This will be so easy now with four of us." Glory Girl pumped her fist.
"Five if Nihilus makes it in time. You know what's in there?" I asked.
"No. Just that there should be a bunch of people in there."
"Right, well, Security is heavier than I was expecting. Shouldn't be too long to clean up though."
And it was. We made quick work of the Merchants inside. There wasn't much to take and Merchants offered very little resistance.
"Well, that was easy." Glory Girl said.
"Yeah. I was actually thought we'd run into trouble this time." Samael said.
"Nihilus missed all the fun. That's too bad." Laserdream sighed sarcastically.
"She'll live." I said. "How do you want to split the cash?"
"Fifty-Fifty is good. It's the easiest way to split it." Glory Girl said.
"Sure."
"So are you guys done for the night?" Samael asked.
"Why? Wanna take us out for drinks?" Glory Girl teased.
"Well Laserdream could definitely hit me up." He said slyly.
"Aw, am I not pretty enough?" She joked.
"Aren't you dating Gallant?" I asked.
"We're not together right now." She pouted. "Stupid jerk."
"GG and Gallant are on again off again. I swear they break up like once a month." Laserdream rolled her eyes.
"It's not that often!"
"I was asking because we're hitting some Empire spots after this." Samael clarified.
"We might be able to go. I'd have to call mom first." Laserdream crossed her arms in thought.
"Well Nihilus just texted me she's waiting at one. Pick fast." I said.
"I have classes tomorrow." Glory Girl said.
"Okay. We'll sit this one out then. Good luck." Laserdream said as they flew off.
We met Nihilus at the first Empire safe house in downtown. It was a three story apartment building that looked like it was completely over run with Empire members.
"One per floor?" Nihilus asked.
"Yep. Go for it."
We all breached at the same time. I could hear gunfire on the other floors and that clued in the guys on the first floor.
"Shit, Cape!" One of them yelled. The others in ear shot all echoed the call and took up arms.
The first guy shot at me, but I phased through the buckshot and sliced his gun in half. I put him down with a palm to the jaw and tossed the broken half of the shot gun at the next person in my sight. I ran through the floor taking out all the gangers with little trouble. I felt a tinge of excitement in the pit of my stomach, which highlighted how supremely bored I was before.
I finally stopped when I thought I was done knocking them all out. I started back towards an earlier room where I saw a bag of zip ties to keep them all contained when I heard the cocking of a gun.
"Put your hands up and face me." The voice of an older man told me.
I turned to face the man, leaving my hands at my sides. I cocked my head to the side when I spotted him a few feet away holding a black shotgun.
"I said put your hands up!"
"I don't think I will." I said, taking a step towards him. He took a step back. "Oh? You think you can intimidate me when you can't even stand you ground? How am I supposed to believe you'll shoot me then?" I took another step forward and he inched back, forcing himself to stay in place.
"You don't know a damn thing, you stupid bitch. You're the one coming in here attacking honest folk!"
"Honest?!" I took another step forward. "You think killing people because they have a different skill color or sexuality is honest? You think dealing drugs and guns is honest?"
"You take another step I'll shoot you!"
"I take another step and you shoot me?"
"Yes."
I stepped forward, but he didn't fire.
"What's wrong? I thought you were gonna shoot if I took another step? Did I not go far enough? How about this?" I took a larger step forward. "No? What's wrong? Where'd all that bravado go?" I started walking forward and stop just at the end of the barrel. He's taller than me by a few inches, but he looks so small. "Still no? You need my help?" I grab the barrel an bring it towards the mouth par of my mask. "I'm giving you a free shot. Are you too pussy to take it? Let me guess, you joined a gang cause you thought it would make you feel like a big man, huh? Hows that working out for you, limp dick? You act all hard but you can't even shoot someone who's basically begging you to shoot her. That's probably why your wife left—." I was cut off by the sound of a gun shot. I didn't bother to phase through it and let the buckshot hit my mask.
We both were silent as I stared at him. He trembled and nearly dropped the gun.
I couldn't help but start giggling. His face sinking to despair made me start outright laughing.
"Touched a nerve, huh?" I said through my giggles.
"I'm sorry."
"I don't care." I grabbed his gun, which he let go without resistance and snapped it in half. I then picked him up and slammed him against the wall, knocking him out. I was about to go grab the zip ties again when I heard a loud blast from outside. A quick Sonido brought me out and up to the roof where Nihilus and Samael were looking up at a bright figure in the sky.
Samael was tense, like he was angry and had nothing to do with the frustration. Then he spoke, a single growled word that carried as much of his anger as it could.
"Purity."