Prowl 2.6
Squealer was antsy, I could tell that much just by looking at her. Maybe she was eager for the fight to be over, maybe she knew it already was. The flying eye's ability to see in the dark was helpful, but it also meant I couldn't tell how much of the Trainyard was too dark for her to see.
As a result, my move towards her was awkward. I could see myself at distance through the flying eye, which helped give me an idea of what fences and debris would provide me concealment from Squealer, but it wasn't perfect. Every time she shifted on her feet and looked around I froze, afraid I'd moved wrong and caught her attention. What I needed was a distraction.
Luckily, I had one. I commanded the savage guarding Trainwreck to start banging its pipe against one of the nearby wrecked cars. It had the desired effect as Squealer's gaze snapped back to that area, freeing me up to move. I hurried faster so I could make the most of her distraction.
Strangely enough, the noise seemed to make her less on edge. It dawned on me that the sound probably made it seem like the fight was still going on, which in turn meant that she didn't have to worry about actually having to do anything. But that meant as soon as the PRT showed up the illusion would be ruined and she'd probably just run for it. I had to work fast.
My path didn't head straight for Squealer, but instead veered about half a block to the side so I could cross the street from the Trainyard to the buildings without walking in her direct line of sight. I was still nervous that she might be able to see me, and I didn't breathe a sigh of relief until I was all the way across and could see through my flying eye that she didn't react to my passage. Now that I was close enough to send minions after her without much delay between their summoning and arriving at her, I just needed to act.
The problem was there weren't any good options for that. A savage would be able to take her, but with her vehicle she could just outdistance it and prevent it from ever getting in a situation where it could do that. A beetleing could wreck her vehicle, but right now she was using it as an elevated tower atop a building. If it broke something crucial and she fell, she wouldn't be getting up again.
A compromise then. I summoned a beetleing and a savage, sending the beetleing to the building she was perched on and holding the savage in reserve. I would get the beetleing in a position to sabotage her vehicle, then use the savage to drive her into a situation where breaking it posed less of a risk of hurting her.
Giving the beetleing orders was fairly easy, even from this distance, thanks to the flying eye helping me know where it was in context to Squealer. I directed it around to the other side of the building as the one Squealer was looking out over and told it to climb. It leapt up and began to quickly scale the brick of the building's side. I'd known from their performance at climbing fences in the Trainyard that they were good climbers, but it was moving upward even faster than I'd thought it would. Another interesting note about their capabilities, then.
It reached the top with ease, and I immediately ordered it to move towards Squealer's vehicle. The machine had a large opening at the back festooned with ports and plugs, presumably how she'd connected it to the front to make the ring shape, which provided a very convenient entrance to the inner workings of the vehicle.
I had the beetleing leap up and it quickly squeezed in through the gaps between connections. Squealer herself was still busy looking off at the area where my savage was beating on a car, oblivious to what was happening behind her. Things broke in the process of it making enough room to push its body through, but considering the beetleing's purpose there, it wasn't really an issue.
Now that I had my saboteur in place, I sent my savage. I could see through my flying eye that the building didn't have any fire escapes, so I sent it to the side that had the most empty window frames and other wear and tear it could use as footholds. It was definitely a less gifted climber than the beetleing, nearly falling more than once in its slow climb. By the time it got to the top, I could hear the faint blare of sirens in the distance.
I didn't waste time. As soon as the savage was on the rooftop I had it rush Squealer. She didn't even know it was there until it leapt up onto her vehicle. She spun towards it as I had it climb up her improvised tower towards her. She yelled something, though I couldn't hear anything through the eye, and stepped on something by her foot.
Immediately the whole thing slid back away from the edge and dropped out of tower form. That was all I needed. I directed the beetleing to start tearing apart the inner workings of the segment it was in. From there I would have it work its way forwards, reducing more and more of the vehicle to dead weight. I estimated it would take breaking down a little more than half of the whole thing before it could no longer function.
My savage had been nearly shaken loose by the sudden shift in the vehicle's positioning, but managed to cling onto a seam between two segments. I sent it forwards again towards Squealer. Every good plan had a backup, and mine was to have the savage capture her, vehicle or not.
Squealer, who had been similarly shaken by the shift, saw the savage coming. Rather than panic, she wrapped the chains she was holding like reins around her arms and hauled them to the side. The whole vehicle quickly started moving, spinning in a circle like a dog chasing its tail. I stalled my savage's advance, ordering it to hunker down and grip the vehicle to avoid being thrown off.
Then the vehicle split apart. The gap between the segment my savage was on and the one in front of it abruptly came apart, splitting the whole thing in two. Then it detached from the segment behind it, and the centrifugal force of the vehicle's spinning took care of the rest.
The segment, with my savage still clinging to the top, was sent hurdling off the roof. They crashed into the alley wall of the next building before falling four stories to the ground below. I dismissed the savage before it could strike the ground, reabsorbing the energy rather than loosing it all upon its violent landing.
Through my flying eye I was Squealer stop her spinning atop the roof, dizzily staggering on her vehicle and only barely avoiding falling off. The severed back half of the vehicle reoriented itself and shot forward, homing in on the front half like a magnet and reattaching itself. The whole thing was one segment shorter now, but losing a segment didn't seem to have really affected it.
Several alleys away, I cursed. That was two plans wrecked through one trick. If her vehicle could just shed segments of itself, sabotaging them did nothing unless I got every single one. Savages were likewise useless unless I could get one close enough to her that she couldn't get away or just drop another part of her vehicle. Or unless I could throw enough at her quickly enough that she shed every other segment of the thing, but I doubted a Tinker with a vehicle specialty would sit around in one place long enough for that to happen.
The sirens were blaring now. I started moving farther from the Trainyard, hoping to avoid getting spotted as an obvious cape in an area where an unknown cape had just called in Trainwreck's capture. Squealer noticed them too, and through the flying eye I could see the lights of the PRT trucks turning onto the street running alongside the Trainyard.
Apparently deciding it wasn't worth sticking around anymore, Squealer turned her vehicle towards the side of the building and headed for it at full speed. She leapt the gap to the next building, the front half landing and pulling across the back half. The final segment stalled as it landed, courtesy of my beetleing's work. She cast a glance over her shoulder at it and let the broken segment disconnect, my beetleing heeding my command and scrambling forward into the next segment just in time. I had to give her credit, bizarre though the thing looked, it was excellent at traversing rooftops. Not a quality I would have considered in a vehicle before, but I was learning a lot of things with one excursion, another being that my flying eye was not faster than a car.
It kept flying after her as per my command, but the gap between them was growing larger. The gap between Squealer and me was larger still, seeing as I was a normal person running on foot and she was more or less in a car. I needed to level the playing field.
Through the flying eye I had watching over Trainwreck, I could see the PRT were nearly to him. No doubt the savage banging on a car a few feet away helped give them a direction. True to his word, Trainwreck was still sitting passively without attempting to break free, whether from cooperation or lack of ability. In either case, the PRT were close enough that he wouldn't get away even if he had some extra card up his sleeve.
I had the savage stop its banging and run away from the approaching PRT squad, dismissing it as soon as it was out of Trainwreck's sight. I dismissed the flying eye immediately after before summoning a new one and sending it up to fly above me. Helpful for how it gave me a bird's eye view of the area around me and find the best routes forward, less so for actually running faster.
I reached out to my beetleing, sending it forward to the midpoint of the vehicle with a new order for sabotage. I couldn't tell where it was exactly in the vehicle or even what it was doing so I had no idea what its progress was. The first sign I had of its success was when Squealer went to the next roof and the vehicle split apart in the middle.
She stopped abruptly, spinning back around to reconnect the back. Or more accurately, trying and failing. Blocks behind her, I couldn't help but grin. Sure, she could just discard segments as they broke. But by targeting the connections between the segments, I could disrupt the entire thing's ability to work as a singular unit and thus its ability to move between rooftops.
The front segment of the back half detached and moved to connect to the back. The new front segment successfully attached to the front half, but the back segment couldn't attach to the end. Squealer flipped off the broken segment and had it drive off the edge of the roof before continuing on. There was still a gap between us, but it was a bit smaller now, and my flying eye had already had time to catch up to her.
I repeated the process, sending my beetleing after another segment. Within a minute the situation played out again, buying me more time to catch up and costing Squealer another segment.
She was still dangerously close to the edge of my range, so I stepped up the boldness of my plan. The next sabotage came while she was in the middle of crossing between roofs. Squealer was safe on a rooftop, but when the connection between the segments broke, it sent the back half falling down the gap into an alley and forced her to step on the gas before the last few segments of her half followed it.
I couldn't help but laugh as I saw her almost cartoonish temper tantrum at the loss of half her vehicle. My first night out, and even the first part of tonight had put a bad taste in my mouth, but this? Harrying an asshole of a villain and not being in danger of getting attacked or found out? This was good.
My good humor promptly evaporated as Squealer turned and drove towards the nearest alley. As short as it was now, there was a very small margin of error for her to get to another building. As it was, she didn't even try. She was moving just fast enough for the front segment to hit the opposite wall, leaving the entire thing to bend down in a U shape and brace the first and last segment against the opposite walls, spinning their tires as it fell to slow its descent.
It hit the ground hard, but not hard enough to break apart or shake Squealer off. It broke apart into individual segments to squeeze out of the alley before grouping back together, but not reconnecting, on the street. Even the segments from the fallen back half returned, or at least the ones that hadn't been wrecked in the crash. Between the crash and the other sabotages, she'd lost roughly half the segments of the vehicle, but that was a hollow victory as she opened up the throttle and shot away down the street.
I could only watch as she sped further and further away. My beetleing was still in one of the segments, but with them all separated like this, I couldn't do much to stop it. I tried anyways, directing it to tear apart the segment's engine. Half a minute later I felt my connection to the beetleing vanish as it left my range. Moments after that the segment it had been working on stalled and broke down.
Squealer left it behind without a second glance. I slowed to a stop as I resigned myself to the fact that she'd gotten away. Annoying, but I had to admit that it had been a long shot to think I could chase her down in the first place.
I watched her through the flying eye as she got farther and farther away. Still, at least I'd gotten Trainwreck. A villain off the streets and my training spot reclaimed, that was a win in my corner. I started to walk away, intending to call a cab for a ride back to my neighborhood when something caught my eye.
Squealer was stopping. She was a ways away, far enough that even through the excellent vision of my flying eye it was hard to make out what she was doing, but she'd stopped by a larger building. Curious I moved closer, allowing the flying eye to move just as far with the border of my power.
A large door opened up on the building and she drove into it, followed by all of the vehicle segments, before it closed behind her. I cocked my head, thinking for a moment before a grin spread across my face. She'd said this was her turf, and I'd just been plaguing her with vehicle malfunctions. Of course she'd head for a garage.
I set off running again, continuing after her. Now that she'd gone to ground I had a specific destination, and that was an excellent motivator.
My flying eye got to the building before I did. I had it scout around, looking for ways into the building and openings to spy on Squealer through. By now I was tired from all the running tonight and planning my attack was a convenient distraction.
Her garage was apparently an old warehouse, one with plenty of side doors and skylights. Through one of the skylights, my flying eye could look into the entire open space. It clear that this was definitely one of Squealer's main workshops, or at least one she specifically used instead of hijacking from other mechanics. Half-assembled vehicles were scatter through the room, ranging from a six-wheeled monster truck to a seat set within a sphere of gyroscopic rings.
Squealer was in the middle of it, rummaging around nearby her now recombined segment vehicle. She pulled parts out of a box before consulting what looked like hand-drawn blueprints and hurrying over to pop open the side of a segment about halfway down the chain.
It was a longer run than I would have liked, but she didn't seem to make much progress in the time it took. When I arrived she'd actually taken most of a segment apart to check over each piece.
I circled around the edge of the building to a side door and summoned a beetleing, followed by two savages. I directed the beetleing to break down the door's lock, opening the path to Squealer. Right now my goal was to take her down before she could get to a vehicle, with the beetleing as a backup measure to sabotage anything she could use to escape. The segment vehicle looked like the only complete project in the entire workshop so it would be the main target, starting with the first segment she drove from. Now that it was on ground level, there wasn't much danger of her falling to her death if it went wrong.
My two flying eyes were still pulling surveillance duty, one over me and one watching into the warehouse. I was already getting used to the sensation of seeing through eyes that weren't my own. As a result, I was already planning ways to incorporate them into my tactics for the future. But that would have to wait until later.
The lock popped open and my minions crept into the building. My beetleing went first, just like last time. I used the flying eye to tell when Squealer was looking away and adjusted its orders accordingly. As a result it approached the segment vehicle and squirmed up through the underside of the front segment, unnoticed despite Squealer working on the same vehicle.
With it in place, I sent in the savages. I had them move stealthily as the circled through the workshop, looking to catch Squealer between them and cut off her escape by getting them as close as possible before she noticed.
As it turned out, that was pretty close. One of them was within ten feet of her before she glanced up from her work and saw the monster skulking behind a workbench.
Though I couldn't hear her, I could see her scream and scramble away as I ordered the savages to pounce. The closer one lunged, stepping onto the workbench to leap towards her as the other clambered over the segment vehicle to catch her from behind. She snatched up a large wrench and swung it at the closer savage, catching it in the jaw and buying her enough space to turn and run towards her vehicle.
The other savage was already there in her way, reaching out to seize her by the arm. She tried to pull free, but she was holding the wrench with that had and I had the savage snatch it from her before she could think to switch hands. The other savage was moving in now, one of its mandible-jaws clearly broken. I sent it off to search for cables or chains to restrain Squealer with.
As soon as she was left alone with just one, Squealer pulled something from her pocket and stabbed at the arm it was using to hold her. It staggered back, nearly releasing her as she pulled the now bloodied screwdriver free from its wrist. As she brought it around for another stab, this one aimed at its face, I ordered it to subdue her.
I immediately came to regret that order when it slammed the wrench into her shoulder. Squealer screamed and crumpled to her knees, pulling her shoulder at an angle I was pretty sure it shouldn't be at. I cursed, having the savage toss the wrench away and release Squealer. The incident with Aegis flashed through my mind, where the savage had preemptively attacked him because of a too-broad order on my part. Trainwreck had made me complacent, fighting an enemy durable enough that such commands couldn't hurt.
Squealer had recovered, scrambling away from the savage around the front of the segment vehicle as she cradled her injured arm. I sent the savage to grab her again, being more specific with my commands this time.
That proved to be another mistake. As soon as it stepped in front of the vehicle, Squealer reached up and slapped something on the side of the first segment. Ports resembling fat exhaust pipes popped out at the front and a loud bang sounded, loud enough for me to hear it through the walls of the warehouse.
The savage and everything else in front of the vehicle was violently thrown back. Workbenches toppled, tools became projectiles, and the savage soared at least thirty feet before striking a support column hard enough to immediately shatter into nonexistence. I recognized that bang as the same sound that occurred when she'd thrown Trainwreck. What the hell was that, some kind of weaponized exhaust?
I was already summoning another savage and sending the other after Squealer again, abandoning the extension cords it had collected in the process, but she was already clambering up onto the segment vehicle. She grabbed both chains in her uninjured hand, straddling the vehicle rather than standing atop it, and set it into motion. It spun around, the back end sideswiping the other savage into a wall and destroying it. I summoned another new savage and sent it after the other, but she was driving towards the broad door to the garage, which was beginning to creak open.
I reached out to the beetleing in the segment she sat on, directing it to sabotage the engine explosively. I didn't want it to just stall out, but stun Squealer long enough for my savages to catch up, though I made sure to specify how drastic the breakdown should be.
The doors opened and Squealer roared out onto the street. The savages managed to leap onto the last segment of the vehicle, but she just disconnected it and sent it driving backwards to put them farther from her. I had them leap off and keep chasing on foot, but they were too far to hope to get back onto the vehicle. I watched through the flying eyes as she flipped them the bird and drove away.
She made it half a block before the engine blew out. Fire shot out from under the hood as the whole thing skidded to a stop. Squealer leapt from the vehicle, franticly patting at her legs to put out the sparks that sprayed onto her and scrambling farther away from the now burning vehicle. She looked up from the ground and caught sight of the approaching savages. That was enough to light a fire under her as she staggered to her feet and tried to run.
But the savages were faster than her, and she was injured. One grabbed her by the injured arm, which I quickly corrected to the unharmed one, hauling her back. The two grabbed her and began dragging her away from the vehicle, back towards her garage and me. I dismissed one of the flying eyes and summoned another savage, sending it into the garage to collect the extension cables the other had dropped.
Within a minute, Squealer had been tied to the telephone pole in front of her garage. I'd tried to be considerate of her injured arm, but I had to balance that with keeping her secure. Plus there was the added complexity of the fact that I didn't really know the right knots to tie someone up, which certainly didn't translate well through the savages that were doing the tying.
I was thrilled. Not only had I taken down Trainwreck, but I'd also gotten Squealer in the same night! And all without ever having to show my face. This was a massive win for me, without question, enough that I was already trying to consider excuses for why last weekend didn't actually count so I could say this was my first night out.
I was fishing the phone out to call the PRT again when I noticed something out of the corner of my flying eye. I reoriented it to get a better look and found a pair of PRT trucks already headed down this street. I wasn't sure if they just happened to be coming this way after picking up Trainwreck or if someone else had called them after hearing Squealer's vehicle explode, but I wasn't about to question it. It was one less call I had to make, and the testimony Squealer would give meant I didn't have to worry about not getting credit.
Credit that involved severely injuring her shoulder. I winced at that thought. Between this and Aegis, I was pretty worried about getting a reputation as a 'violence first, questions never' kind of cape.
Those were worries I could have later at home. I started walking, groaning a bit at the soreness in my legs. The amount I'd run tonight far outstripped the amount I'd been starting with in my morning jogs. I'd have to up my routine later, but for now I just wanted to get home and collapse into bed.
I scattered the savages into alleys and dismissed them, leaving the flying eye to watch over Squealer. I'd gotten about half a block away when two PRT vans pulled to a stop in front of her. I wasn't paying much attention as the troopers got out of them to collect her. She was yelling something at them, they were presumably saying something to her, but I'd done my part. Now I just needed to get far enough away to call a cab without it seeming suspiciously close.
My attention was abruptly brought back as someone stepped closer to Squealer. I hadn't noticed him standing among the PRT troopers before, as the flying eye's night vision only showed shades of gray, but under the streetlight I could see the red of his costume. Aegis.
I sped up my walking pace, now paying wary attention to the scene. Squealer has stopped screaming, but she was still saying something. And Aegis was listening. The PRT troopers had actually stopped taking her to the van, apparently on his request.
I looked the group over more carefully now and spotted another cape, holding a hoverboard with a pair of pistols at his side. Even without color I could identify him as Kid Win. He was probably one of the more popular Wards, mainly because kids liked the hoverboard, but I didn't know much about him as a person. He was friendly and personable, sure, but supposedly so was Aegis.
Abruptly, Aegis gave a hand signal and Squealer was pulled away before he turned to the troopers and Kid Win. He talked for a few seconds before shooting up into the air. I panicked and had my flying eye gain altitude, trying to put more distance between him and it before he spotted it. I was so preoccupied with Aegis I nearly missed what was going on below him.
While one truck was pulling away with Squealer, the other was staying put. The troopers were spreading out, looking down alleys and checking doors. Kid Win mounted his hoverboard and flew out in a broad zigzag heading away from me, while Aegis began flying in a matching zigzag in the opposite direction, towards me. They were searching for me.
Fuck that. I broke into a run, aiming to put as much distance between me and them as possible. There was no way I was going to let that psychopath find me, especially if he could rough me up and claim I resisted arrest.
I summoned another flying eye and sent it up above me to give me a guide through the alleys and streets. After a moment's hesitation, I also summoned two savages and sent them off as decoys. I didn't summon a third, planning to keep an opening for anything I needed to summon without having to dismiss something else. The first flying eye I sent to follow Aegis. It had to fly high above him to avoid detection, but it helped me keep track of him.
The problem was that simply tracking him wasn't enough. He flew fast, fast enough that he would surely catch up to me. Tired as I was I kept flagging and then forcing myself to pick up the pace, only to repeat the process a few seconds later.
I had a moment of hope when he passed over one of my savages and slowed for a moment, only to put a finger to his ear and say something before continuing on his flight. Not for the first time, I cursed meeting him that night. Of course the decoys didn't work on him, he'd seen me in person and knew what my savages looked like. Which probably meant he'd passed the knowledge on to everyone else.
He kept coming. At his pace I wouldn't be able to outrun him, so I changed gears from running to hiding. I ducked into an alcove, the kind that used to be an entrance before someone bricked up the door, pressing myself back against the wall and hoping he wouldn't be able to see me.
He made another pass, then another. It would only be a few more before he passed right over me. I felt hollow with fear, remembering every nightmare I'd had about him since our meeting. My hiding pace felt woefully inadequate, but running and looking for another one would only make me more visible. I wished I'd been more urgent with leaving the scene with Squealer before I'd known he was here, but now my only chance to avoid getting cornered by him again was to hide and hope.
My power flared to life. I felt a chunk of my energy disappear, twice what I used up to summon a savage, and something formed out of the shattering air in front of me. For a moment I wasn't sure what I was looking at.
It was as large as I was, a mass of translucent chitinous plates, pale eyes, and half-formed pseudopods, all held together and merged by a thick slime. That was all I saw before it surged towards me. It spread out, abruptly filling the entire opening of the alcove, sealing me in and plunging me into darkness. Through the flying eye I had watching over me, I saw it flatten out and reshape itself to fit over the alcove. It rippled for a moment, then began to change. Patterns flared to life and settled, shifting to match the surroundings. In a few seconds, it had solidified into the appearance of the brick wall surrounding it.
Its disguise was almost seamless. There was a bit of a bulging border from where it covered the edges of the alcove, and I couldn't tell anything about the color, but to someone who didn't know it was there it was practically invisible.
That was put to the test a few moments later when Aegis flew by overhead. I held my breath, but he didn't so much as slow down as he passed by.
I let out a sigh or relief. That was one problem dealt with, at least for now. I brought down the flying eye that watched over me and had it perch on the underside of the edge of a roof across the street, hiding itself from observers above and providing me a peephole to the outside. At the same time, I watched through the one following Aegis as he found my other decoy.
The disguise worked, and I could keep track of them until they were done. I just had to wait in here until it was safe to go out. Just had to wait. Here.
My skin prickled with anxiety. Waiting was going to be easier said than done. Sealed into a small, dark space like this was bringing back some very unfortunate memories.
I tried to distract myself by thinking about my new minion. My flying eyes were pretty straightforward in their capabilities, but this was more of an unknown. Becoming a wall seemed pretty restrictive as far as powers go, so there was probably more to it. What else could it become? Just single-part objects, or complex machines too? Could it become a person?
It wasn't helping. Even with two viewpoints outside, I still felt claustrophobic. I tried to slide down the wall and sit, but my knees hit the fake wall of my minions and stopped me. I took a deep, shuddering breath as I tried to shake off the memories, then another. In, out, in, out. I focused on my breathing and shut my eyes. I just had to try and tune out my own body just like I did the flying eyes. They didn't have any way to truly shut off any more than I did, so I just had to do that. Focus on what I could see through them, and ignore my real body. Focus-
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the ringing of a cellphone. Banging my elbows against every wall of the alcove, I scrabbled the phone out of my pocket, nearly dropping it in my hurry. Without thinking, in an attempt to make the ringing stop, I hit the answer button.
For a moment there was silence. Then…
"Hey there!"
I closed my eyes and groaned. Tattletale. Figured she'd know the number of the phone she gave me. For a moment I considered simply hanging up. But I really did not like this alcove, and as much as I disliked her, she was still another voice.
I put the phone to my ear. "What?" I asked bluntly, aware that my voice was a bit too tight to just pass off as annoyance.
"Just wanted to check in. Heard on the police scanner that someone called in to the PRT from the Trainyard. Figured you'd probably wrapped up for the night and were heading in."
I took a deep breath, trying to ignore my surroundings. "Pretty much. I know you're not just calling to be nice. What do you want?"
"Before I answer that, I have a question of my own. Was Trainwreck there?" I could practically hear her grin through the phone.
I wasn't in the mood for this, but answering was easier than refusing and having to dwell on my surroundings. "Yes."
"So you'd say my intel was helpful?"
"Yes. What's the point of this?" I asked.
I turned my attention back to my minions. No one was in the alley on the other side of my shapeshifted minion, which meant I could technically make a break for it. But the flying eye I had watching Aegis showed that they were still hunting for me. On one of his passes he spotted one of my decoy savages again. By now PRT troopers had caught up to it, spraying it with a yellowish foam that trapped it in place. I didn't dismiss it. Any person they had focused on watching or containing it was a person who wasn't out looking for me. From my distance sense to my other savage, I could tell it was still running.
"Well, I was wondering if you'd like to have a more permanent business relationship." Tattletale said.
I nearly hung up the phone by impulse. "What?" I said, half in disbelief and half in annoyance.
"Hear me out." Tattletale said hurriedly. "I provide you intel. Gang storehouses, transports, cape info, you name it. No strings attached, for you to do with as you please."
I opened my mouth to reply, shut it again. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. She was a villain, and yet she was trying to make a deal with me. I had to admire her sheer brazenness, especially with how she'd come to meet me in the Trainyard.
She kept talking. "Hell, I'll even agree to some extra restrictions or stipulations, just for you."
"Why?" I finally found something to say. "Why would you help me? You know I'm a hero."
"Would you believe it's because it's the right thing to do?" she said.
"Ha ha." I replied without humor. "Not one bit. Is this your way of getting rid of your rivals? Feed me info for places and people you want gone, then swoop in and take their place?" It was a possibility I'd considered and dismissed earlier, but now I wasn't so sure.
Tattletale scoffed. "Hardly. To start with, I'm a thief and a bit of an information broker, not a gangster. Trust me, the two have vastly different interests. More importantly, I just don't like the gangs."
That I could believe. No matter who you were, there was a gang in Brockton that would be shitty to you. Still not enough of a reason to trust her.
"But the main thing," she said, "Is that I really don't like the gang capes. Not just personally, though I don't like them as people either, but professionally."
I thought for a moment. "I don't believe you. You have something else you're getting out of it."
"Then hang up." She retorted.
I didn't.
She hummed, and I heard rustling from the other end like she was switching hands to hold the phone. "Look, I said I'm a thief. I swipe jewelry from penthouses, steal art from museums, rob banks. Not actually that last one, the risk-reward on bank jobs is absolute garbage, but you get the point. What I do doesn't hurt anyone. What the gangs do does."
"What if you steal someone's family heirlooms, or take the money they're planning to use to pay for someone's surgery?" I retorted. "You can't say no one gets hurt just because you don't stick around for the consequences."
Tattletale groaned. "Look, I can say with all honesty I've never stolen anything that couldn't be replaced and-or wasn't insured. I can also say that I've never injured or killed anyone in the course of my jobs, which is more the point I was trying to make. The Merchants deal drugs, the ABB does human trafficking, the E88 are literal fucking Nazis!"
I stayed quiet. Through my flying eye I could see that the PRT's search was wrapping up. They were loading the foamed savage into the back of a truck, while the other reached the edge of my power and vanished. From the flying eye following Aegis, I could tell they had stopped spreading out and were beginning to return to the truck. In a few minutes I could hang up on Tattletale get out of here. In the meantime, I listened.
"The whole cape thing is a joke, and I mean that in the best way. Adults running around in costumes, using fake names to fight or commit crime, it's all a joke. It's not supposed to be taken seriously, just a bunch of people running around and blowing off steam using fun-as-fuck superpowers."
"It's not so fun for the people in the middle." I argued. "The people who get robbed, or have a villain break into their home, or have their car blown up."
"It's not usually that bad." She said. "Insurance covers damages, people get a fun story to tell at parties. Plus it boosts tourism, merchandise sales, property values for being a hotspot for cape activity. Cape crime is practically an entertainment industry."
"You're forgetting the ones who go too far. Lung, Hookwolf, Oni Lee-"
"No, I'm not," she interrupted, "Because that's the point I was getting at. The whole cape thing, it's supposed to be harmless. Dramatic and scary, but ultimately something everyone walks away from at the end of the day. Its why we have the unwritten rules, why villains who haven't gotten their three strikes get such lenient treatment. But fuckers like that don't care. They ignore the rules in the game everyone else is playing, do their own thing, and people get hurt.
"So when I hear about someone trying to do something to fuck them up, someone without any support or backup? I take interest. Do you know how many independent heroes last more than a year? The ones who don't get snapped up by other groups, quit, or just die? Short answer, not a lot."
I shifted uncomfortably in the alcove. I'd seen enough about that in my research. There had been enough articles pointing out that a lot of that was because of Endbringer fights that I didn't wholly believe the numbers, but they were still intimidating. It was part of why I still wanted to be a Ward, even after the incident with Aegis.
"So there you go. It's a classic enemy-of-my-enemy." Tattletale finished.
I thought for a moment. "I don't believe you. Or at least I don't believe what you're saying, even if you believe it."
"But?" she prompted.
I saw quiet a little bit longer. "But," I said reluctantly, "You're not entirely wrong."
I let the silence hang again as I thought, Tattletale didn't interrupt it, waiting patiently for me. I didn't want to work with a villain, but working entirely on my own probably wouldn't work out in the long term. Criminals cut deals with cops to serve as informants, right? This was basically the same thing. Besides, it would only be temporary.
"Alright." I finally said. "I'll take the deal."
Even her inhale to start talking sounded smug. "But!" I said warningly. "This is going to come with rules. And if I get even a single hint that you're using me for your own ends, it's over. Got it?"
"Loud and clear." Tattletale said. "I have the feeling this'll be a great partnership."
"I still don't trust that you're not going to try to recruit me with this." I grumbled.
"You said you don't want to join up with the black hats." Tattletale responded. "I'm adaptable with my plans. A friendly acquaintance might not be as good as a friend, but I'm not going to turn it down. So, rules. Want to hammer out the details tomorrow night?"
"Sure. I'll call you though." If I was going to have an agreement with a villain, I certainly wasn't going to let her decide everything, and I'd heard enough of Dad's business talks to know the importance of being the one to decide the meeting time.
"No problem, just redial this number whenever you're ready." Her voice was way to cheerful for her to be giving me her phone number, so presumably it was a burner. "Talk to you later!"
The line went dead, leaving me in the dark to register the fact that the villain I'd just made a Faustian bargain with apparently ended her phone calls like dozens of teenage girls I heard at school. It brought back memories of long phone calls with Emma in middle school, though mostly because I hadn't really had any phone calls since.
That wasn't something I was willing to get into with myself, so I turned my attention to my flying eyes. The one with Aegis showed the PRT getting into their van to leave, Aegis and Kid Win flanking the van from above. The one in my alley showed no one around. The hunt was over and the coast was clear.
I didn't feel like figuring out a new minion right now, so I just dismissed the shapeshifted wall and headed out towards the street. I had a cab to call, rules to make, two new minions to test, my next move as a cape to plan, and even some homework to do. It was a lot to consider this early in the morning on this little sleep.
But tonight I'd reclaimed my training area, made a deal to help me be more effective as a hero in the future, and put two villains behind bars. I realized that I was smiling as I prepared to go home. All in all, tonight had been a good night.
New Summon: Mimic (N medium aberration, CR 4)