Interlude – Laughter

A balaclava felt a lot more uncomfortable than she remembered.

Still, it was surprisingly nice to put on the old gear, pick up the old bat, and just beat some guy for being an asshole. No fate of the world stuff or wacky metaphysical esotericisms. Just a good old beat down and some karmic justice.

"You broke my fucking hand!"

Lafter kicked the prick in the side. Her boots were steel-toed. "I can break the other one if that works for you." She let the top of the bat clap the concrete floor. "Even it out?"

"Bitch—"

A quick raising of the Great Equalizer shut him up. Typical. Give him some kid off the street or fresh off the boat and he was Mr. Tough Guy. Smash him around a bit with a bat and he whines like a baby. Lafter knew the type. She'd dealt with plenty.

A table crashed behind her, and Lafter turned as Akihiro buried some sap into the ground. Figuratively. Big lug could really lay into someone. And fuck he looked angry. Lafter knew angry. Taylor could be pretty damn furious when something or someone—usually Teacher—set her off.

Akihiro punched the scrawny man once, twice, and then a third time. Lafter watched a tooth fly off somewhere, ding a cup and then hit its former owner in the eye. Lafter had to agree with herself.

Like this, he totally looked like an angry teddy bear. An angry teddy bear mercilessly beating some prick in a trashy apartment building.

Akihiro stopped and Lafter wandered on over and leaned on her bat. "You done there, teddy?"

The boy exhaled and started to rise. "Yeah. I'm done."

"Someone you know?"

"Could say that."

Lafter glanced down as the man lay there. If she had to guess, he brought Akihiro to the country and sold him to the ABB. Same story for a lot of refugees. Most didn't get as lucky as she did with Sister Margret.

"Find out where the cages are?" she asked.

Akihiro glowered, wheeled his leg back, and kicked the dick on the ground. Figuratively and literally.

"Yeah," he snarled. "This way."

Lafter swung the bat out and blocked his path. "I go first, remember?" The boy stopped and glared at her as she took the lead. Amazing how few facial expressions he managed. "Which way?"

"Down the hall to the right. There's a door to an underground garage."

Well at least it wasn't some skeevy shipping container or an unrefrigerated truck.

"Down the hall." Lafter checked the corners before moving forward enough for Akihiro to follow. "To the right." She approached the door and readied the Equalizer. "And kick!"

She threw herself forward, foot colliding with the doorframe and snapping the hinges off.

Kind of awkward as a movement. She'd gotten used to Taylor's costume. Nostalgic as her old gear was, it didn't compare. Pink totally pointed out how badly a girl was kicking some asshole's ass too.

The guard on the other side jumped. His gun fired and the bullet hit a pipe overhead. Water sprayed out, blasting into his head and blinding him as Lafter stepped over the door and swung Equalizer right for the family jewels. The guy gagged and topped back, tumbling down the stairs before crashing onto the floor below.

Lafter jumped, foot coming down on his wrist and snapping it. She kicked the gun away and tapped her bat against her ankle. "Stay down and I won't have to do that again. Clear? Clear."

She stepped over him and stopped.

"Akihiro."

Weird as it was, she didn't hate Behemoth for what it took from her. Behemoth was a force of nature. You don't hate it. Resent it, maybe. Hate? What good did it do?

No, what she came to hate were the vultures and the carrion feeders. The real rats, who preyed on the desperate and the broken.

Guess that's why she found Taylor so easy to get along with. Their lives were different and they came from different places, but they weren't so different. Suffering isn't a race. It's just suffering. Taylor raged against the inequity of it all as much as Lafter wanted to.

Akihiro stepped up behind her and didn't look surprised.

Continuing forward, he took the woman's arm and took his coat off. He draped it over her shoulders and let her pull it closed herself. Too bad he only had the one coat and there were at least thirty men and woman cutting drugs from one end of the table to the next.

Lafter turned around, raising the bat and glaring at the guard.

She froze when she saw his face and grimaced.

He was crying.

All he had to do was stand and watch as people with barely any muscle or fat over their ribs did all the real work. People with nowhere to go. People who got shuffled off to the cages to the side to be locked up during the day.

The fuck was he crying for?

Lafter snarled and swung Equalizer as hard she could.

The man flinched and closed his eyes.

Flinched again when the bat hit the floor beside his head.

"Fucking sucks," Lafter hissed, "doesn't it?!"

She wouldn't have done that before.

She'd have all but bashed his skull in and been proud of it. She wouldn't kill. No, that would get the Protectorate hunting for her. Lafter knew she wasn't smart like Taylor, Dinah, or Veda, but she wasn't stupid.

Why did it feel so wrong now?

Pulling his jacket open, she found a ring of keys in one pocket. Then she roughly pulled the jacket off, ignored his whining as his busted wrist came out the sleeves, and walked away. She settled the garment onto a boy who couldn't be any older than twelve, Dinah's age.

Flicking through the keys, she found the one that undid the lock at the end of the table.

The chain came loose and Akihiro closed his phone. "Amida and Aston are coming."

Looking around, Lafter spotted a woman who looked like she might be Polish. Walking toward her, she freed her wrists from the chains and said, "Pomoc nadchodzi." Help is coming.

The woman's eyes flickered in recognition, then looked wearily at the guard.

Lafter stormed back to the stairs, grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up the steps. He wailed like a baby, but whatever. He'd get over it. Out in the hall she forced open a bathroom door and shoved him inside. She slammed the door shut, beat the knob out of place and left him.

These kinds of places didn't exist in Brockton Bay. They only happened in the middle of nowhere, far from where any heroes may notice the smell. It's a side of things Taylor didn't have to deal with, though freeing Lung's brothel girls came close.

Truthfully, Lafter was thankful.

Taylor took things hard. She might not have experienced the absolute depths of what people could do to other people, but she understood it. She knew how bad things could be.

This wasn't something she should have to face on top of everything else.

The world really was broken.

When Lafter got back to the basement, the woman she spoke to was gathering the others together and watching Akihiro. He crouched before a boy maybe half his size. He was skinny like the others, and wary in his gaze. A gaze that looked really familiar.

Walking up behind him. "Is it him?"

"Yeah." Akihiro looked over his shoulder and smiled with wet eyes. "Masahiro."

His brother.

It took coaxing, but they got everyone upstairs and outside. The area was remote, about a mile from the nearest off ramp and connected by only a single dirt road. Lafter checked on the half dozen guards she and Akihiro beat down. None of them had moved much in the intervening minutes, but lingering wasn't a good idea. If nothing else, they'd probably have an alarm on the door to the basement.

A basement Lafter was sorely tempted to burn.

A bus pulled by the front, followed by a truck. Aston leaned out of the truck's window and Akihiro carried his brother to the vehicle. Amida Arca stepped out of the bus and came to Lafter.

She spoke Polish better than Lafter did.

There was a mix in the group. A few Germans, some Poles and Czechs, a pair of Russians and two Hondurans. All women. Amida pointed to the bus and the Polish woman managed to get the others to start moving toward it. A girl started handing them clothes as they went, and another gave them food and water as they got inside.

Not much, but something.

"Can't feed them too much too fast," Amida explained. "Too much too quick and they'll die."

"I know." Lafter was German. She'd been to the museum at Landsberg am Lech. "What about the boys?"

She noticed Akihiro taking them to the truck, while the girls and women went to the bus.

"The world is cruel," Amida said with a grim face. "It's easier to get support for women than men, especially from rich men and their rich wives. Programs exist for sex workers, and some of them have children born as American citizens. Gives us more to work with."

And the boys didn't get the same sympathy. Especially not when so many were pressed to working the streets in different ways. Right. Akihiro told her something like that.

"It's a good thing Tekkadan has managed to stand up." Amida's grim face became a solemn smile. "It gives the boys somewhere to go. With time, we can do more."

"Guess," Lafter mumbled. She glanced back to the building, now devoid of refugees. Tapping her bat against her ankle, she—

"Don't." She turned, finding the older woman glaring at her. "They're not worth it."

Not worth it? "They'll just find more."

"And you could stop them. Then what? It was smart to put that on." Amida pointed to Lafter's attire, a costume thrown together with off the shelf items. "Some might suspect a cape, but they won't pin this to you. No one is going to look that hard over a few lost rats."

"But—"

"Leave bodies and they'll look harder. There's all kinds of thinkers out there. One will figure you out, and then all of you have to deal with this." Maybe they should. "As much as I like seeing heroes get involved in this sort of thing, bite off too much and you'll drown."

Amida glanced to the bus, and Lafter followed her gaze and frowned.

Something was missing.

Why didn't she lay into those guys like Akihiro did? She would have before. She hated them. She knew them. The ones who grabbed girls out of the tents and tricked them out. Drugged them up when they fought too hard. The reason she had to pretend to be a boy, and then needed Sister Margret to save her when she couldn't pass as one anymore.

Where was the bitterness? The justice. People like that deserved what they got, right?

A hand came down on her head, and Lafter shuddered. She looked up at Amida questioningly and the woman smiled widely.

"You're a good kid. Stay that way."

Lafter blinked and felt her face turn red. Her phone started ringing, and Lafter quickly stepped back. "I have to take this."

Slipping the device from her pocket she looked at the screen and frowned.

"Akihiro." She turned to the truck and held the phone up. Once close enough, she whispered, "StarGazer says there's a car coming this way."

"It's not ours," Aston noted.

"We can't move yet," Amida called.

"Take your time," Lafter called back.

Lafter pushed the phone into her pocket and started up the dirt road. Even with more time, if someone saw the bus they might trace it to Turbines and Amida. They needed to be drawn away, or knocked out. Either worked.

She stepped into the dark, and that word from class came to mind. Metaphor. That's it.

What was it Taylor liked saying?

No one deserves to die.

Didn't they? It's not like any of those pricks would wake up in the morning and change their ways. The world was full of rats now. Between the capes, the Endbringers, and cruel fate, millions of people had nowhere to go. It was easy to forget where she was now, but Lafter knew them well.

A human tide that never ended.

While she thought on that, the sound of footsteps behind her drew her eyes. "Go with your brother."

"Can't leave now," Akihiro answered. "Job's not done."

Huh again. "And they said it was a myth."

"Hmm?"

Lafter grinned over her shoulder. "A man who isn't afraid of commitment."

He grimaced and looked away from her. "Thank you. Your power meant no one got hurt."

No one? Interesting choice of words. Sensing a chance, Lafter smirked and asked, "So, I'm just a walking power am I?"

The boy flustered, his glare looking goofy as his face turned red in embarrassment. "No."

Her grin widened. He was too easy. Kind of like Taylor, but way more muscley.

The big bad teddy bear had a soft side… Maybe she had one too.