Trailblazer – Dream of Eden

Sometimes being the long shadow of the good guys was a real pain in the behind.

Five minutes to get everyone on her team out of the venue before questions were asked about how they got in. Four minutes to slip away after giving a brief statement and slipping a few people some evidence of one douchebag's stupid scheme to start an international arms race—idiot. One minute to get into the bathroom without anyone noticing. Two minutes to change into a different set of clothes. About thirty seconds to brush her teeth and touch-up her face because the damn crow's-feet were setting in early.

Stress was a bitch.

Then she had to climb out of the narrow window near the ceiling and get onto the street like a hobo.

This is what Lisa got for trying to be nice.

"You okay?" Stella asked as she worked her way toward the police line now surrounding the Parliament building.

"Dandy," Lisa grumbled. She straightened her sleeves out and wiped some dust from her arm.

The crowd was bigger than when she'd slipped out. Naturally. The parliament itself being attacked would be big news. The really fucked up part was that it might get Frost what he wanted even if the man couldn't claim the rewards. Countries didn't like being attacked out of the blue. Not as far as they saw it, anyway.

Once they pinpointed where these guys came from they'd look to retaliate and retaliation would lead to escalation.

They needed to get ahead of this before it exploded.

"Everyone get out alright?" Lisa asked.

"Yeah," Stella answered. "They're regrouping now. Plane takes off in a few minutes."

"Good. Now we just need to figure out what the fuck they were trying to say."

There were armed guards manning the line itself, and a few spokesmen talking to different clusters of the press. Reaching into her jacket, Lisa pulled out a wallet and flashed it open.

"Interpol," she claimed. "We're expected."

The guard looked her over. And then he looked at Stella who flashed him a quick hand sign. "Got here fast."

"We're improving response time," Lisa lied.

"Be quick," the guy said as he let them through.

"Thanks for your service."

It was so much easier maintaining a network of enablers and informants in your twenties. The world was fucking ageist. Though, Lisa couldn't deny she'd managed some growing herself.

Leaving her little unwitting helper at his post, she continued past the police line. There were guards. Lots of surveillance. More guards. Mobile suits. Investigators and crime scene teams. More guards. Lots of staff and personnel waiting to be interviewed, and yet more guards.

They were taking this seriously.

"Huh."

Stella cocked her head. "Hm?"

"Just occurred to me," Lisa admitted. "This is the most brazen thing any parahuman has done in what? Four? Five years?" She frowned. "Things had really calmed down."

"Suppose so."

She glanced over as they passed the mobile suit line.

The Leo wasn't as impressive as the Graze Veda was now putting out—credit to Chariot for at least half the design. Really, the Leo was just a repackaging of most of the same technologies as the Tieren in a sleeker and more picturesque package. There were about a dozen of them behind the line, and the AEU was prepared to manufacture thousands more.

The arms race was starting.

No more Endbringers. Domestic politics were settling all around the world. Villains were being forced to accept a balance of power with police and conventional armed force in addition to heroes. Open brawls in the street were becoming a rarer occurrence. Old school geopolitics were on the rise again and Lisa couldn't help but find it ironic.

It's easier to get everyone to work together when they all know they're going to die than when they can fool themselves into thinking they won't.

She'd watched the news, that last night when Taylor went away.

The images plastered the screens. Buildings torn apart. Machines beating capes into the ground save the small few actually strong enough or suited for fighting back. And those capes just got dogpiled. Hundreds of superhumans defanged and impotent in less than a half hour.

To be fair, it was something Cauldron spent years trying to keep anyone from trying. Most capes weren't bulletproof and those that were weren't Nilbog. Put enough firepower in the field and capes could get rolled over.

If you were willing to bite the bullet and deal with the corpses.

The pictures and video that came out in the aftermath were almost as dramatic as Veda's silence when people realized Newtype wasn't around to answer questions about aliens.

She'd been clever. Taylor dropped three separate panic-mode crises in everyone's lap all at once. In the confusion people had somehow been shocked into not being wholly unreasonable about all of it. Lisa couldn't help but wonder if Taylor's point could have been made better if she'd bit the bullet and upped the brutality of the first war waged with mobile suits…

But she supposed that's why Taylor was the hero.

She made the improbable probable and the impossible seem real.

People noticed when that sort of thing happened. It made them pay attention.

Concerned.

Lisa silenced her power and made her way through the crowd.

"This way." Stella pointed, shaking Lisa from her thoughts.

"Right." Focus on the job at hand.

Lisa turned, walking down a row of tents and passing yet more guards and investigators. There was a large tent at the end of the makeshift alley, nestled between a set of armored vehicles and guarded by a trio of mobile suits. Lisa showed her forged badge again as she moved to the entrance and the guard nodded and waved her through.

Inside a crowd of people gathered before some monitors set up against the back wall of the tent. Lisa spotted Relena quickly, if only because Marie looked to Stella as she entered. Stella waved warmly and then led Lisa around the opposite side of the room.

On the monitors were a series of feeds. Prisoners being transported. Others being held. Lisa ignored them.

She was here to get the inside scoop on one prisoner.

Stella tapped the back of her hand and nodded. Lisa looked to the far end, focusing on the screen.

The girl with the silver mask sat in a chair with her hands cuffed behind her back. Lisa's brow rose and she smiled at the capes present in the room.

Rachel was there, hands in her pockets and two dogs at her sides. She was with Vista, watching the villain from behind. Rachel had moved to Sanc a few years ago. Lots of open space. A general willingness to leave her be if she helped with getting order restored to the country. She'd done well for herself and Lisa was glad she decided to keep tabs on old capes she knew.

Vista had done pretty well for herself too. Twenty-two and she was already one of the most popular members of the Wardens, and a leader in Londo Bell. Sometimes hard work pays off for those who keep working at it, with a little luck.

They were joined by two members of the Internationals, all five capes surrounding the apparent ringleader of the attack on the AEU's leadership in the middle of a public session.

"—us a name?"

The villain was seated with one cape sitting across from her. A woman with a green and black costume with question marks on the shoulders. A thinker, obviously.

"You said you wanted to deliver a message," the thinker pressed, voice calm. "There are government officials watching this interrogation. You can deliver it now."

"My message has already been delivered," Silver Mask replied.

That accent. Definitely West African. Lisa would know. Africa had become her biggest headache the past few years. The place had become a damn melting pot for displaced warlords and villains from across Europe and the Middle East. Terrorists too, which just meant all kinds of 'wonderful' things were being plotted and Preventer was working around the clock to keep things from exploding. Literally and figuratively.

"Can you explain that?" the thinker asked. "What was your message? That the parliament could be attacked?"

"Water that has been begged for does not quench," the cape replied.

Lisa's back straightened.

She'd heard that before.

Where.

Where had she—

Moord Nag

Lisa's eyes widened. That was it.

She'd been there when that warlord finally fell. She'd helped Ukambozi pull it off. He was Newtype's kind of person. A kind-hearted man, forced to make difficult choices he'd rather not have. He'd tried to talk her down at the end. Get her to surrender instead of fight to the death.

Water that has been begged for does not quench.

Lisa unsealed the lid on her power fully, letting a brief surge out as she tried to eliminate possibilities.

"What does that mean?" the thinker asked.

Rachel—bless her—scoffed. "Stupid."

"Down girl," Vista mumbled.

Rachel frowned and Lisa was surprised when that was all she did.

"Want to fill us in?" someone in the tent asked.

"If you have to beg for it you're not going to feel very good afterward," Vista commented. Rachel hummed in agreement. Vista tilted her head, thinking. "Shit. You're going to be one of those cryptic assholes, aren't you? The one that's all 'oh no you have to figure it out for yourself' right?"

Silver Mask stared forward quietly. "If an arrow has not entered deeply, then its removal is not hard."

Which fit, actually.

"Of course you are," Vista groaned.

They weren't related. The facial structure and the skin tone were wrong. She was from the wrong part of Africa too. Moord Nag had started in West Africa early on but it's not where her base of power ultimately settled. This girl was definitely from somewhere around Liberia or Sierra Leone.

Lisa doubted the saying was really talking about water.

Stella glanced to her phone and then whispered to Lisa, "We found six more."

That made ten. Frost had supplied these guys—whoever they were—with more Leo's than that. So where were the rest?

"You could try speaking plainly," the interrogating cape insisted. "A message isn't much use if no one can understand it."

Silver Mask raised her head, looking into the camera and seeming to meet the eyes of everyone watching.

"Those who are absent are always wrong."

Why? Why did these kind of villains always talk in cryptic bull—

"But you already know that," Silver Mask continued, "don't you, Sarah?"

Lisa's face paled, her heart freezing for a brief moment.

The tent exploded, a blast tearing through one of the walls to the side. Rachel caught Vista before the smaller girl was thrown and shouted as her dogs began to grow. The ground shook, and Stella braced Lisa as a wave of screams and shouts echoed. On the screen, Bitch barked out orders and her dogs charged. Vista jumped back, avoiding a blow aimed right at her head by expanding the space between her and her attacker.

The tank of a woman swung a lamp post with a cement slab at the end of it, bashing another cape aside as five identical capes unbound Silver Mask and got her out of the chair.

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors."

Silver Mask raised her head again and looked at the camera once more.

Looking at you

"We borrow it from our children."

She turned and walked away, shielded by the duplicate cape and the brute with her makeshift weapon.

"Fuck."

Lisa stumbled back and broke into a run. Stella followed after her, glancing about and sending mental messages to the others. Lisa spotted the smoke in the air and the mobile suits and police moving toward it. There was gunfire and shouting, along with screams from the surrounding crowds.

The closer she got the more she had to shove her way through.

Stella raised a gun and fired it overhead. "That way!" She pointed away from the fighting. "Stop shoving!"

That got people moving in one direction at least. Those not going the opposite direction, anyway.

Lisa still had to push her way through, hand reaching for the gun in her jacket.

She was used to it now. It was its own sort of evil. The worst kind of evil, really. The kind you could call necessary. Sometimes, Lisa considered that it was more evil because it was so easy to justify. Cold, simple arithmetic. What is the worth of one woman's conscience when it comes to killing one nutjob to save countless others?

Not everyone in the world could be as noble as Newty—

"Newtype…"

Lisa froze, thinking. Her power thought back at her, tiny pieces fitting together.

A sudden and shockingly charismatic speaker, someone who didn't make sense to everyone but was perfectly understood by those she spoke to. Someone who made herself heard by being big and loud and refusing to be ignored. A leader from a dark place with a dark past who rose up and refused to be ignored.

"Shit."

"What?" Stella asked.

It wasn't a complete picture. Big pieces were missing, but this way of going about things. This showy display that forced the world to pay attention and deal.

This was how Newtype did things.

"We—"

A blast silenced Lisa as she shielded her face and mouth from the dust. Peering through the crook of her arm, she spotted Rachel and Vista riding a massive monster-dog, the space in the air warping as Vista redirected the path of a lamppost away from them. Then another one came down as a second identical giant woman stormed through a collapsing tent. She batted the tarp aside with one massive bicep and punched Bitch's dog in the jaw.

The beast snarled, opening its massive jaws and clamping down on the outstretched limb before spinning and throwing the twin—

Clone

Lisa froze as the cape crashed into the ground. Vista twisted the space around the other cape, encircling her in an isolated space and trapping her inside.

"Now stay there," the shaker declared. She snapped her head around. "Where'd—"

"Not here," Rachel declared, glancing back and forth already.

"What?" Vista stood up, head on a swivel. "How the fuck did they—"

Gone

Lisa quietly thanked her power for the obvious and schooled her face into a calm mask.

The clones were still there. One pulling herself off the ground as Bitch's dog squared up against it, and the other trapped in Vista's power. They weren't just vanishing. As mobile suits and police closed in, they kept fighting, along with a dozen other identically petite women in a black cloak and hood.

They were still here.

"Where," Lisa mumbled aloud as she backed up.

Stella tapped her shoulder and pointed.

To the right, dust and smoke were still clearing as people tried to figure out what was going on. The makeshift compound was set up in the middle of a courtyard sided by roads on three sides. Between a pair of toppled tents and an overturned armored car, a manhole cover lay on the ground.

Lisa started toward it, but a cloaked figure jumped out at her.

Stella intercepted the figure, throwing herself into the cape's side and rolling the petite woman across her shoulders. Lisa took aim and fired, hitting the clone in the head and causing it to explode into smoke. Then the blast hit her, throwing Lisa into the air and sending her tumbling across the asphalt.

"Lisa!"

She shook her head as knees fell beside her. Relena looked down, Marie and Allelujah standing over both of them with weapons drawn.

Stella.

Lisa nearly knocked Relena over as she jerked up, spotting Stella waving a hand in front of her face and coughing. She pulled herself up and stumbled. There was blood running down the side of her face from a small cut, but she wasn't too roughed up.

Spatial disruption, not really an explosion

Some powers were just god's damned bullshit.

Lisa heard another blast from behind but ignored it as she looked at the manhole cover. Stella was still recovering, but Sting and Ord came up from the other side, weapons drawn.

"Are you okay?" Relena asked.

Lisa pointed. "Down that hole!"

Sting and Ord nodded, running through a fleeing pack of people and jumping into the sewer.

At this point—and with a cape to detonate clones that could cover their trail—Lisa assumed Silver Mask was already gone. She'd planned to get caught. A daring escape was part of her whole scheme. It was stupid that Lisa hadn't seen it coming. She knew the group had smuggled more resources into Europe than they'd used to attack the parliament building. It wasn't meant for successive attacks. It was meant to make one grand statement.

Get all the world's eyes watching before Silver Mask delivered her real message.

Thinker, highly capable

Probably precognitive, or something akin to Accord's planning power. On top of that, she had at least a half dozen more capes backing her up.

Thinking of which…

Lisa glanced to Stella. "You okay?"

"Fine." Stella shook her head and patted at her cheek. "My hair is ruined."

"We'll schedule a spa day," Lisa promised. "Go check on the other captured capes. My guess is they're already gone. Maybe even clones in the first place."

Silver Mask wasn't.

Damn.

"Lisa."

Stella started moving, leaving Lisa to face Relena.

"I'm fine," Lisa insisted. Mostly. Her vision was still a bit shaky but that would pass. "You okay?"

Relena sighed. "Fine."

It had been a few years since they'd last met face-to-face. Life had a way of keeping them both busy. Lisa with foiling terrorist plots and insane supervillains, and Relena with diplomacy and policy making. Relena had never gone fully into politics, but she'd ended up adjacent to such circles working in international policy. Honestly, Lisa thought it suited her. Relena was simultaneously too honest and too noble for real politics. Actual politics took a degree of douchiness to succeed in. Relena just didn't have it in her.

She fit better as a speaker and advisor.

Like how Lisa worked better on the grayer side of things.

Neither of them were very good with their somewhat frequent reunions though.

"She'll be back, won't she?" Relena glanced off. The sounds of fighting were dying down. "This was all a performance."

"Unfortunately."

Lisa sighed, slipping her gun back into her jacket as police started coming toward them. Marie and Allelujah waved them off. Unlike Lisa, they actually were attached to Relena's entourage.

"We might be dealing with a dark-Taylor," Lisa whispered.

Relena's brow rose. "Really?"

"Well I'm not going to call her anything like anti-hero." Lisa frowned. "Whatever her goal is, her motivation is going to be something dark. People without grand ambition don't do all of this as an opening act."

Relena nodded. She'd been in and out of Africa and Eastern Europe for years now. She'd seen plenty of grandstanding and villainous plots. Preventer had foiled many. The Internationals or Londo Bell others. The very last appearance of a Gundam in a cape fight had been in Romania five years ago when a popular revolt overthrew the government and criminal syndicates tried to seize power.

Things had calmed down since then though. In the far-east the end of the Chinese Civil War was cleaning up fast and Lisa hadn't had to do much. People were sorting things out cleanly enough it seemed best to just let them be. It had been pleasantly calm and quiet all things considered. Peaceful compared to the decade before it.

Now this had happened and Lisa had a sinking feeling she couldn't quite place.

But that was what she signed up for. Fortuna be damned, the bitch was right.

Someone had to do the things no one else wanted to do. Lisa had been doing them for ten long years. It was grueling. Exhausting… If she were honest with herself, she kind of liked it.

A quiet life in some pretty place with all the money in the world might have been her plan when she left home and got involved with Fortuna, but it was never the life for her.

Some people thrived in the same crap that other people hated, and Lisa supposed that was just her lot.

Didn't exactly erase the frustration in the moment though.

Crowd

A good master-mind's work is never done.

"Stella."

"I see him."

"See who?"

They answered Relena's question by turning on their heels and running. Crossing the ground quickly as others tried to sweep through and figure out what happened, Lisa aimed her gun in the air and fired.

People ducked or scrambled, save the one person in the crowd apparently unalarmed by gunfire.

The man winced as Stella went ahead, charging him with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other.

"Don't run please," she called.

"We hate chasing," Lisa added.

He ran. Of course he ran.

Lisa aimed low and fired.

She missed, but Stella didn't. Her shot splattered the guy's leg and sent him tumbling to the ground. Then she was on top of him, bashing his face into the concrete and pressing the barrel of her gun to the back of his head.

"Time to give up," Lisa panted. She'd gotten more fit, but she just wasn't a runner. "And you know. Refuse to spill the beans while I get creative and dive on in."

The guy struggled, but Stella held him down. "Now what?"

Lisa shrugged and looked down at the cape's face. Definitely a cape, but not someone with a power that helped him right now. "The clever ones are always such a hassle. We'll just have to figure that out like everything else. Won't we?"

"We may be closer to that than it seems."

Lisa and Stella turned, spotting the small adolescent figure walking toward them. She was familiar. A face with large eyes and wide lips, long hair bound into a braid that hung over one shoulder.

Veda came to a stop.

"We have had an incident in Portland," Veda revealed. "Two teams raided old PRT storehouses holding tinker-tech."

Lisa scowled. She'd heard something about something going on that way, but the world was a big place. Her reach wasn't infinite and she couldn't track everything. Didn't make it any less annoying when she missed something. Especially something big.

"What they steal?"

Veda scowled. "The F-Driver."

"Oh." Lisa scoffed and glanced over her shoulder toward the moon with wary eyes. "Is that all?"

Next time, she thought she should get a job with vacation days.