To Lyger 0: I mean, probably? Though I'm sure some are just spur-of-the-moment bad puns!
To armadas: Methinks he's gone a little extreme! I mean, he isn't exactly putting any near her campus… but she's not on her campus at the moment, now, is she?
To Butterfly: 1. I'm glad you think so; it's sort-of turned into his version of Adrien's "my Lady"! 2. "10-43" is the police code Felix heard in Chapter 1 when Mecha-Man and Iron Maiden fought the first time. It's a new code the London Police use to designate "super-powered crime." It was supposed to become more significant in this story than it actually was; it may come back in the "Hound" sequel.
To yellow 14: Well, I suppose that's up to the Hound and Iron Maiden, isn't it? :D And mech-suits are definitely expensive; I probably underestimated how much it would cost to replace the Mecha-Man suit (though since they've built 2 entirely already, the development costs are minimal). And Bri's basically a broke college student who works at an auto shop and repurposes scrap materials to put together her suit.
The Hound stared in shock at the explosive Iron Maiden was cradling in both hands like a china plate, no larger than a rugby ball. He could hear a high-pitched beeping coming from the jewelry exchange behind them, its front doors hanging askew off their hinges. By concentrating and filtering out the city noise around them, he could also hear that same beeping all around him, carrying from all directions, though some of them were faint with distance. If every one of those beeps represented another explosive…
What would that many explosions do to London?
Felix was not cut out for these stakes! Every other time he had gone out to play hero, he could just as easily have stayed home and allowed the police to take care of it. The Stripper Ripper was a dumbass with mommy issues and a little too much time on his hands. But without any special abilities, he really wasn't a threat – or at least not to more than one or two women each night. Even if the Hound didn't lift another finger against him, the police would bring him down on their own eventually. When he had fought Mecha-Man the last time and taken an energy blast meant for Iron Maiden, sure he'd done it because he could see the damage the energy did to her suit. But he had known from the Heroes of Paris that a miraculous suit could withstand an energy blast, even if he had underestimated just how much it would actually hurt to get hit by one – his side was still tender and red from the injury, the burn sending chills down his side, almost a day later. But this time?
This time there was no way the police could do anything about the bombs fast enough to disarm all of them. Even calling them and making them understand what was going on might take too long! And the police wouldn't be able to locate the bombs fast enough, anyways. As far as he could tell, Iron Maiden didn't hear the same beeping that he could hear; Mecha-Man had set this up entirely for his benefit. And if he didn't do something about these bombs right the hell now, innocent people would die.
"What's going on there, Hound?" his mother asked over the communicator, the worry clear in her voice.
Carapace had said a hero's primary goal was to protect people. Period. But he'd failed the last time he was faced with this challenge.
Iron Maiden slammed her gauntlet on the pavement, leaving a fist-sized dent and shaking the Hound out of his reverie. She dropped down into a sprinter's stance, her helmet pointing straight at the receding shape of Mecha-Man and his damaged delivery truck, just turning the corner three blocks down and disappearing from view behind a row of buildings. "They're getting away!" she growled, her jetpack whining to life.
The Hound put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head, staring after Mecha-Man with a dark expression on his face. "We can't," he told her. "The bombs!"
She turned her helmet and nearly head butted him. "Screw the bombs!"
"Do that and we screw the city! If we don't do something people will die!" he shouted, placing his hands on both her shoulders and shaking, his face centimeters from hers, staring into her eye-slit. "No one else can stop this thing! Only us! Do you want that on your conscience!?"
She turned to look down the street where Mecha-Man had disappeared. "But – I just – damn it!" She turned back to him. She groaned. "Fine. So what do we do? I can't track these things."
"I can." He made a face. "I can hear them. I'll find them and let you know. You figure out how to stop them."
"How will you let me know?"
The Hound opened the end of his leash handle and pulled out another earpiece. Iron Maiden opened her helmet and affixed the earpiece into one of her ears before snapping it back in place. Then he caught his leash around the streetlight and pulled himself into the air, spinning around into a flip and landing on the jewelry exchange roof. "I'll make a circuit of the city and let you know where I hear bombs," he told her.
"Right…" Iron Maiden said slowly, testing out the communicator. She didn't sound convinced.
"Worried you can't defuse these things?" he asked, angling for the river where he could hear at least one explosive. He caught his leash around a chimney and swung around it as a fulcrum, spinning himself around in a sharp turn and throwing himself out into empty space over the street.
She scoffed. "Please. I already defused this one while he was talking." She was quiet for a moment, and the Hound heard her stomping up the stairs into the exchange building. "No," she finally continued, "I'm a little more concerned that you won't find them all."
"Well, your next target is the north tower on London Bridge," he told her. Turning south he followed the river a little further east. "Then the Tower of London," he added, jumping out into space and landing on the balls of his feet on a telephone line connecting to the Tower Bridge
"How many are there total?" his mother asked.
"Mecha-Man said there are twelve," the Hound replied breathlessly, running across the top of the Tower Bridge. Beeping came from the center of the covered walkway, and he dropped his leash over the side to snag the explosive. It flew back to him and he grabbed it one handed, holding it away from his chest. "I've got one; now what do I do with it?" he asked. Looking down at the bomb in his hand, he found a timer counting down: if it was correct, they had less than twelve minutes as he jumped from the Tower Bridge onto the closest rooftop, the package held tightly in front of himself with two hands, and turned to run straight west across the part of the city south of the river.
"Leave it by the next bomb and I'll take care of it," Iron Maiden instructed. Her jetpack activated in the background.
He could hear two sources of beeping to the north, closer to the river, and another one directly ahead. "The next one is on the Eye, and then there's one on Westminster Bridge," he reported, sprinting across the rooftops above Lambeth Road. "But I'll leave this one at the War Museum." Out of the corner of his eye he could see Iron Maiden hovering on her jetpack near the top of the Tower of London.
"If that's seven, then you're over halfway there!" his mother cheered.
"Thank you, Mother," he grumbled, tucking the bomb and tossing his leash as far ahead as he could manage. "I can count, too, you know."
"Wait, your mom is listening to all of this?" Iron Maiden snorted. "And here I was thinking you were some tough guy… Do you need mommy to bed you down? Take you out for walks? Does she rub your ears and call you a good boy, Pup?"
"Oh, shut up," he groaned, his leash carrying him through the air over the Museum. He tossed the bomb that was in his hands and it landed right next to the one already waiting on its roof. "Don't make a big deal of it."
"No, it's – it's nice that your mère supports you," she replied quickly. "It's… just not what I was expecting. Not from you, at least."
"Wait, is this… are–are you jealous? Because I have someone to help?" Iron Maiden didn't answer. The Hound glanced over to find her hanging by a grappling hook from one of the supports on the London Eye. Somewhere along the way she'd found a bag; she pulled something off a strut and shoved it into the bag. The Hound cleared his throat awkwardly to break the silence. "Anyways, I can hear a bunch more down by the water on the west end." He scanned the area quickly; knowing what they looked like the bombs were easy enough to spot. "There's one near the top of Big Ben… I see one near the middle of Lambeth Bridge… and… there! Westminster Abbey."
"That still leaves two more," warned his mother.
The Hound sprinted across the Westminster Bridge, scooping up that bomb as he passed. "The Westminster Bridge one will be at Big Ben," he reported breathlessly, lobbing the bomb in a high arc that placed it right next to the other one, just above the clock face. Without breaking stride he ran down the street from the bridge toward Buckingham Palace, dropping to the ground when he reached St. James's Park, following the high-pitched beeping. A pair of Queen's Guard in ceremonial uniforms stood at attention on either side of the palace gate. The Hound leapt over the gate in a single bound, only to catch sight of a small unit of guards in modern dress near the palace entrance. And on the roof above the palace he could see another explosive. He landed in the middle of the courtyard, and one of the guards shouted and aimed his rifle at the Hound. "Oh, bloody hell," he muttered, spinning his leash in a shield to deflect the hail of bullets the guards fired at him. "There's a bomb on Buckingham," he reported, "but the guards don't like me, so I doubt they'll be happy to see you."
"Well to be fair, I didn't exactly like you either when we first met," Iron Maiden teased. "So we'd at least have that much in common!" Even without the communicator, the Hound could hear her jetpack behind him from somewhere in the vicinity of the War Museum.
"All the same, I'll grab this one and bring it with me; spare them some bullets!" Another leap carried the Hound onto the palace roof and out of range of the guards on the ground. He tossed his leash and caught the bomb, pulling it off the roof and into his hand without slowing down. Tucking the bomb under his arm like a rugby ball, he charged across the palace roof, leapt into space, and landed on Constitution Hill at a dead sprint. The bomb under his arm jostled and almost fell, but he caught it by the tips of his fingers, holding it against his chest with both hands. A glance down showed the timer with less than five minutes to go. "Come on…" He could hear beeping coming from far away to his right and veered sharply in that direction, cutting across the park and racing down Piccadilly, nearly bumping into the startled pedestrians as he ran. "This is getting me nowhere." The Hound coiled his legs, leapt, and he cleared the street, landing on the closest rooftop without slacking his pace, putting on another burst of speed as he went. The London cityscape whipped past him in a blur as he rushed toward the last bomb. "It's at the British Museum," he gasped, landing on the roof and panting, placing the bomb in his hands next to the one on the museum roof and dropping to his hands and knees in front of them, taking in great gulps of air.
Looking back where he had come from, he could just see a speck of red and grey lifting off from a spot near Westminster. It rose into the air, turned toward the south and spun around in a ballistic arc toward the abbey.
"Merde," Iron Maiden cursed. "There's another bomb," she announced. "Trafalgar, on top of the Column. My suit finally picked up on a signature after scanning all of these. But I still have another two here before I can handle that one."
The Hound checked the display on the bombs. "There's only two minutes left," he warned. "Can you disarm all five in that time?"
"No; I'll be pushing it to get to Trafalgar as it is."
"What if I throw them in the water or the air or something?"
"No." Iron Maiden let out a frustrated sigh. "That won't work; with how much C4 he used in each one, the shockwave from two of them together would still do a ton of damage."
The Hound groaned. "I don't get paid enough for this," he grumbled. Louder he said, "Fine. Walk me through disarming it."
"Right. It's actually really easy," she replied, speaking briskly. "If you look at the device itself, there are fourteen different wires connecting the components of the bomb together. But don't touch any of them. The only important wire for the first step is the pink one hidden behind the other ones that looks like it connects the timer back to itself: that's the failsafe. Pull out the end closest to the left when the timer is right-side up facing you. Then disconnect the blue wire connecting the timer to the detonator and pull out the primer cap. At that point it's just a paperweight you really don't want to leave out on your desk."
The Hound blinked twice. "If you say that's easy…" He quickly found the wires in question and disconnected them on one bomb. The timer on the bomb blinked out. The second bomb followed in short order, stopping with 30 seconds left. He let out a sigh of relief, expelling a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, picked up the now-inert bombs, and carefully made his way off the museum roof before jogging down the streets south toward the metallic glint he could still see hovering above Trafalgar Square. His hands felt clammy inside his miraculous gloves; when had he started sweating? With a groan he collapsed in front of the fountain, hardly noticing when Iron Maiden drifted down, killed her jetpack, and settled on the steps next to him.
A metal hand settled on top of his head and massaged his scalp right behind his miraculous ears. Her helmet opened with a hiss. "You're a good boy, Pup."