The virtue of pessimism is that you're always either right or pleasantly surprised. So color me real surprised when, come Thursday, we had figured out a few places Bakuda might be that night and the mad bomber hadn't escalated again. She didn't slow down by any means, there were still bombs going off at least once an hour, but she hadn't upped that to two or three bombs per hour, so there was a silver lining there. It was razor fucking sharp silver lining, but it was still there.

Lisa had spent most of the week with the Undersiders helping gather info on Bakuda and the ABB, which left me time to either sit around her apartment or be out helping with the bombs. I spent most of my time on the latter, but today I wanted to relax so I'd be fresh for tonight. There was a chance we'd be fighting Faultline's Crew and I wanted to be at full capacity. I'd want to avoid accidentally killing any of them. Of all of them, Labyrinth and Faultline herself were the biggest threats. I was pretty sure I was immune to Newter's poison to some degree, I could phase through Gregor's slime, and I doubted Spitfire could actually do much damage to me provided she hit me. Labyrinth, though, could drastically change the battlefield and that would make things harder. Faultline, depending on where we fought, could just drop a building on us. I'd survive it, but that was still a less than ideal situation to be in.

The door opened and Lisa walked in, putting some food on the kitchen table.

"Hey, Lisa."

"Hey Taylor. You're not going out today?" She asked.

"No. Wanna think over my plans for tonight. Unsurprisingly I got stuck on Kaiser's squad." I sighed.

"I know. Bitch will be with you too. And Kaiser refuses to go anywhere without Fenja and Menja." Lisa shook her head and sat on the couch, handing me a to go box.

"Thanks." I said, popping it open. "I'm a bit worried about Purity being with Hookwolf, but Theo should be able to keep an eye on that. I doubt the hunk of metal could actually kill her, but he could do some damage."

"You think Purity beats Hookwolf in a fight?" She asked, somewhat incredulous.

"Flying Blaster? Yeah. I mean, Hookwolf has to have a weak point somewhere on him and she'd hit it eventually with big enough blasts."

"That's assuming he has a weak point though. What if he doesn't?" She asked, grabbing the remote and switching to the news.

"Then she loses when she runs out of power. Why do you want to watch the news?"

"It's good exercise for my power and I want to know what's going on. You don't like the news?"

"I usually only watch the morning news. Dad has the TV all night and I'm usually at school when the day time news is on. Or at least out in the city."

"Well it's a good way to keep up with all the things happening in the city."

"Sure." I half scoffed. She was right, but from my limited experience with day time news it would mostly be boring nothing news, borderline fear mongering, or artificial human interest stories..

We watched for a few minutes before it eventually came to the main story for the hour.

"Now, our top story; The PRT have issued a Kill Order for the Cape known as Bakuda who is currently responsible for the mass bombings taking place over Brockton Bay for the last two weeks."

"What?!" I shouted standing up and tossing my food from my lap and all over the coffee table. "God dammit." I sighed, fixing it and placing it on the coffee table. "I was fucking joking about putting a Kill Order on her! She can't die!"

"Are they fucking stupid?" Lisa asked. "Who thought this was a good idea?! Are they trying to get half the eastern seaboard turned to glass? Pennsylvania will be a coastal city! See you down in Kentucky fucking Bay!"

"Shit… Shit! Fuck, what are they thinking?! Didn't Coil tell them about the dead man switch?"

"He should have." Lisa sighed, rubbing her temples. "The only reasons I can think of that they'd put out a Kill Order on her is that they don't believe she can really take out as much as she says or Coil just didn't tell them. I'm not sure which is worse. If we don't get her tonight we're gonna have a bunch of crazed bounty hunters down here looking to collect the reward. If we're wrong and she's not where she is, we're all absolutely screwed. I don't think even you can fix that much damage."

"I don't either." I collapsed back into the couch. "God I hope this doesn't go to shit last second. Not to mention what would happen if… you don't think…"

"I hope not." Lisa sighed, catching my meaning.

"But if she does…"

"Then we're really screwed."

"You think she'll high tail it outta the city?"

"Doubt it. She's more likely to attack the PRT again than give up the ABB."

"Do you think she'd be vindictive enough to—."

"God I fucking hope not. She strikes me as the type to be that petty, but I think her life is worth more to her than winning."

"That's good. That's good. It means we've still got a chance. This hasn't gone all the way tits up." I sighed. "You think if I trap her in Vacio Mundo it counts as her being dead?"

"Not sure." She shrugged. "I'd need to see something similar before I had definitive answers to that, unfortunately. Nice name you came up with by the way."

"Thanks. Spent about half an hour thumbing through a Spanish-English dictionary."

"It shows." She smirked.

"Bite me." I drawled.

Lisa took a deep breath and sighed. "I have a feeling I'm going to need to get back to work on finding Bakuda. If she hears about this and gets too paranoid—."

She was cut off by the sound of an explosion, followed by another, then another, all across the city.

"Fuck, she knows." I said.

"I hope I'm still able to fight after this, because I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to down a whole bottle of pain killers to deal with the headache this is gonna give me."

"Please try not to short circuit." I said, standing up and changing into my costume. "I'll call the others so we can do another few hours of search and rescue." The building shook from an explosion really close to us as I pulled out my phone. "Oh I'm so gonna make that bitch pay for this." I growled.

"Just don't kill her." Lisa said as we made went our separate ways.

—

The bombs didn't start sowing down until almost eight, which we assumed she'd burned through the stock of bombs she'd already hidden around the city. It was actually horrifying to think about in retrospect. I hadn't kept a proper count, what with all the chaos and fixing buildings and people, but with the number of bombs going off every hour I'd estimated she'd had almost three hundred of them hidden around the city. I tried very hard not to think about the things she'd done.

It was ten and the raids were set to start at eleven. We were supposed to meet up with our designated groups at ten-thirty to start going over the plan. Kayden was with us in Las Noches as we went over the revised plan. She was nice enough to cook for us, and the woman could certainly cook, so we didn't have to skip dinner.

With Bakuda escalating again as a result of apparently feeling she had nothing to lose when she learned she had a Kill Order our initial four potential locations had been nearly tripled to ten potential locations. Raid team two, consisting of Crusader, Alabaster, Stormtiger, Tattletale, and Regent was the only team not expected to hit more than one place as a result of not having the level of mobility we provided to a team.

"Alright, let's go over this one more time." I said as everyone finished eating. "Because the PRT decided, for some ungodly reason, to announce a Kill Order on Bakuda despite possibly knowing that she has a dead man switch we're basically on a timer here. We get Bakuda tonight or risk losing the whole city and possibly half the east coast if any of the bounty hunters manage to get her. Nihilus, you're with Ballistic, Rune, Victor, and Othala, the latter of which will be hanging back. You're good to go since you're the only heavy hitter on that team. Any concerns?"

"Nope." She shook her head.

"Great. Purity, you're the one I'm worried about. Being on a team with Hookwolf, Krieg, and Cricket is bad for you. However, Samael should be able to keep them from hurting or killing you. Genesis being there should help mitigate their ability to try anything. I recommend you stay in his line of sight and don't go with any of the others. Like you said, I wouldn't put it past them to try something if they think they can get away with it. Concerns?"

"What do we do if we find Bakuda?" Samael asked. "I don't think I have a reliable way of disabling her like everyone else. It's all gas no brakes with me."

"Long as she doesn't die or isn't in danger of dying, we're good. You can turn her into a human nugget if you think you need to, she just can't be killed. Tattletale said her detonator is kept in her boot, so you can blast a foot of if you want. I'm not sure if sending her to Vacio Mundo counts as killing her, so I'm going to avoid it, but I'm probably going to take a bone or two out of her to keep her down. We can't kill her, but a Kill Order means we can act as needed to put her down."

"What about you?" Purity asked.

"What about me?" I cocked my head to the side.

"You're with Kaiser and Fenja and Menja. He could easily stab you in the back. Literally."

"I never told you my power set did I?" I asked slowly.

"No." She confirmed."Is it something that will help against Kaiser?"

I shook my head. "I can't be hurt."

"What?" She asked, confused.

"I can't be hurt. My powers make it impossible to do any lasting damage to me unless I let it. I can phase through any attack I see coming and make so that any that catch me off guard never happened in the first place."

"Oh… That makes sense." She nodded.

"Alright, it's time to head out. It might be difficult, but the rest of you can still get hurt, so watch your backs."

They all nodded and we each opened a Garganta to our destination.

I stepped out into the cool night air, a few feet above a roof top. Bitch was tending to her dogs, slowly making them larger. She looked at me for a second before going back to what she was doing. Kaiser stood on the opposite side of the rooftop with Fenja and Menja. Trickster was off to the front smoking.

"How nice of you to finally show up." Kaiser said sarcastically.

I ignored the jab and jumped straight to business.

"So what's our plan of attack? Are we going shock and awe? Just Blitz the target? Or do you want to go more subtle?"

"We're going to split up. Trickster and Bitch attacking from the back while Fenja and Menja and I will attack from the front. Since you're the only one of us who can fly you will clear the top floor and meet with us once it's clear." Kaiser said.

The plan was sound. He might be a massive piece of shit, but I couldn't fault the mans ability to plan. At least in the short term. Picking a fight with me was the worst thing he'd ever do and I hoped to show him that by the end of the night.

"Right." I nodded.

"Good." He opened his armor at the wrist to check his watch. "Thirty seconds to get into position, ten second to breach after that. Let's go."

I was the first into position on top of the rundown warehouse in the docks we were attacking. I checked the others were in position and waited for the sound of crashing to slip through the roof.

The inside of the ware house was more open than I was anticipating. The top floor was wasn't really separated from the rest of the large room accept by height. You could look over the side of the second floor and shout down to someone on the first with no problems. The roof was largely held up by tall concrete pillars. It was exactly the kind of place Faultline would set up as a trap.

Which was why I wasn't all that surprised to see her and Gregor on the far end of the second floor. She spotted me and I spotted a detonator in her hand. We made eye contact, sort of, and I glared at her.

"Don't you fucking—."

She clicked the detonator, igniting small charges she'd placed on some of the pillars, and dropped the roof on us.