Hmmm, what to do, what to do indeed, thought Petyr, as he went over the various reaction chains laid out on the table. The ding of the microwave caught his attention, and he stood up to retrieve the TV dinner. He turned back towards his workstation, and began eating. Once finished, he turned to grab a timer, and set it for 2 hours from now. Should be enough time, he thought.
Petyr looked over the blood bags on the rack. Five quarts should do for trial 7, leaving me enough for another batch of sedative pellets after this afternoon's drawing. He set about double checking his calculations just to be sure. Satisfied, he set about cleaning his weapon. It was a secondhand paintball gun he'd purchased online, but it suited his needs well enough. Hadn't jammed yet, and packed enough punch to deliver his pellets at a range of up to 400 feet, by his estimate. Might have to get my hands on a real weapon one of these days, he thought belatedly.
He initiated the preliminary steps of his next batch, when the doorbell rang. He stood up to go meet his new guest.
The man who stood outside was, in a word, striking. His hair was all spiked, being longer towards the crown of his head, and colored with red, orange, and yellow so as to give the illusion of a flame emanating from his head. The man's suit was a jarring purple, with a blue dress shirt underneath. On anyone else, the getup would have looked downright stupid. He made it look good.
"I'm here about the borscht recipe," the man stated.
So this is the guy thought Petyr. He'd been dropping small hints on some of the more unsavory corners of the web that he'd needed some assistance for a few jobs. Parahuman assistance. The borscht recipe was the cover phrase he'd settled on. A week ago, a secure channel with one 'SixThousandLumens' was opened, and he'd agreed to at least showing up and hearing the pitch. All things working out, it's one down, two to go he mentally noted. He'd figured a four-man team to start with should be more than enough; better to err on the side of caution.
"The trick is to use 3 beets per serving instead of two," Petyr responded.
"And likewise, should I add an extra teaspoon of salt?"
"A half teaspoon. The balance is delicate."
"And thus a half teaspoon more pepper as well."
Petyr relaxed, as the codephrase was completed. "Come on in then," he said. The other man walked inside, and found a clean spot to lay down his suitcase. Petyr turned to lock the door again, and walked towards the center of the living room to properly greet his new guest.
"Name's Petyr Stanovic. In the field, I'm Artificer."
"Leo Pallas, a.k.a. Antares." The two men shook hands, and Leo began unpacking.
-
"Good fucking lord," exclaimed Leo, as he checked his twitter account. "I'm inactive for ONE day. Not even. 18 hours actually. I'm inactive for 18 hours and I lose 750 followers. What the fuck."
He neglected to mention that his total following on twitter alone dwarfed that amount by about 3 orders of magnitude.
Petyr half laughed and half snorted. "What makes these people so important to you? You've never even met them. And before you say anything, no, I don't believe that you know who each of those people are or even that you know who a quarter of a percent of them are. And I mean outside of twitter." Leo shot back a look of indignation.
"You may be correct in your assessment that I do not personally know these people, but that does not diminish the role they play."
"And what, pray tell, might that role be?" Petyr's tone dripped with sarcasm.
Leo was quick to answer. "Can you not see it?" he stated, gesticulating towards himself in his unusual getup. "I'm an artist. Those followers? They are my audience. And twitter is the medium."
Petyr raised an eyebrow, and began preparing several syringes. The timer was due to go off any minute. "Really? How?"
Leo rolled his eyes. "How are tabloids still a thing? Gossip is a powerful force, good sir. I'm tapping into two of the many parts of the human condition. The first is narcissism. Everyone loves to hear themselves talk, and self aggrandize. You build a platform specifically for that purpose and people will flock to it. The second is a sense of vicarious living. How many people out there wish they were someone else, either because that someone else has more money or power or skill or something along those lines than they do? I bet you have at least once in your life. It's a ubiquitous emotion.
"So, I have a bit of a knack for fashion and self-photography. But that's not the true art that I'm practicing. The art, the skill, comes in using that in tandem with a platform to effectively gossip about oneself, and develop a persona; a catchphrase here, a grammatical quirk there, and before you know it, hundreds of thousands of people are following you. I've made complete strangers relate to and care far too much about the mostly utterly vapid nonsense that comes out of my ass, AND they feel as if it has enriched their lives in some measure. Even if it is completely a placebo effect, the impact is anything but. I've done my job."
Petyr sat there, a bit stunned. "Well shit. Never thought about it that way. I guess you do have a point."
The timer went off, catching Petyr's attention. He got up and went over to his setup to begin the drawing process. He turned towards Leo. "If you're squeamish, now would be the time to leave the room."
Several minutes passed in silence. He was about to begin drawing the last half pint, when Leo broke the silence loudly and unexpectedly. Petyr swore as he missed the vein and went to try again.
"Holy shit why does it smell like Nurgle's asshole all of the sudden?"
Leo walked back into the main room and proceeded to dry heave as the smell got worse. "God dammit that is fucking foul. The hell are you making?"
"Oh shit; sorry, byproducts of the process." He pointed to a small box with two knobs on it. "Crank that knob on the left to 5 for about a minute. Ozone generator; if there's an odor it won't neutralize, I haven't come across it yet. Should help."
Petyr finished the final drawing, and checked that the current titration step was indeed going smoothly. Satisfied that it would need no more personal attention for at least the next 3 hours, he went to make himself another meal.
-
Gabriel went to a bar near the Boardwalk; not his first choice for lunch, but the fish sandwich advertised sounded enticing, and the venue was nice and quiet. Not too many people. He needed to clear his head.
Or deliberately fog it up with alcohol. The second option was looking better right about now.
Holy shit that sandwich was good. Exactly what I needed. He'd ordered a third pint just as a woman dressed in a sharp suit sat down next to him.
"You shouldn't order a fourth, Gabriel."
What. Gabriel stopped mid sip and slowly turned to her. "How do you know my name?"
"The 'how' is of no consequence to you. The 'why' should be your primary concern."
Gabriel felt a headache coming on as he tried to piece together any sensible chain of events that would lead to this woman showing up here with knowledge of his name. Of course, the retrograde amnesia meant that he had no information whatsoever to go on. Sighing he picked his gaze off the table and looked at the woman once more.
"Fine, I'll bite. Why are you here?"
"You're a parahuman. I'm here to offer you employment."
Gabriel blinked. "I...guess that explains this morning." Wait, fuck, that's probably not something that should be common knowledge to everyone in here. "Why'd you just announce that to everyone in here?"
The corners of the woman's mouth turned up slightly. "No one heard."
Gabriel turned around quickly, looking for eavesdroppers. Strangely enough, there was no one else in the place; even the bartender was out of sight. "Where'd everybody go?"
"The elderly gentleman left 53 seconds ago. The two who were in the far corner are now copulating in the women's bathroom, and the bartender is taking a small smoke break. The security cameras do not pick up sound. We will have precisely 2 minutes and 37 seconds of continued privacy from the end of this sentence." She produced a small stack of paperwork before continuing.
"Documents for tax purposes so as to not draw undue attention."
Gabriel quickly looked through them. Aside fromt the fact that this woman also somehow knew all of my personal info and shit, this company looks about as legit as a 3 dollar bill.
He looked back at her. "Tell me something, does the IRS just not give a shit anymore, or did you scare them or something?"
"Yes."
Gabriel frowned. "Funny," he said with absolutely zero humor in his voice. "I'm not a criminal. Why would I go along with this?"
"You do not have the heart of a criminal, no. But as unpalatable as this option is, it is your best. Your powers are suited towards offence, not defence. You will have much more success striking out at predators than protecting their intended prey."
Gabriel grimaced. "Why wouldn't I just go work with the police or something like that?"
The woman smiled again. "You could do something like that. But it won't work out the way you think it will."
"Why?"
"The man who attempted to assassinate you was a captain in the Philadelphia Police Department. The level of corruption in the Brockton Bay PRT is not quite that egregious, but nonetheless disheartening."
Gabriel felt like the ambient temperature in the bar dropped a full 20 degrees. "Why did he kill me?"
The woman got up to begin leaving. "Our time is nearly up. The answers to that question and the plethora of others you have will do you no favors. Don't waste your time looking for them; they're worlds away now."
The woman left and turned abruptly down the next street. Step 76981 complete.
-
Impulse had donned his costume, and was waiting mock-impatiently for the rest of the guys to put theirs on. He'd gone for a yellow bodysuit with splashes of red and black, which ended in a hood and built-in domino mask. I wish I remember which one of those books in my house I got the idea from, he thought to himself.
Artificer had loaded up his pressurized air tanks and custom feeding system for the paintball gun, and was securing his kevlar vest. Next came the mask, and finally a gray overcoat. I give it a 6/10.
Antares had gone into the bathroom, and 7 minutes later came out looking like an entirely different person, even without a mask. Not only had he completely changed his skin tone, he also managed to alter the apparent shape, depth, and location of almost every feature of his face. His nose looked wider and shorter, his eyes seemed to be set further apart, and his chin's profile looked considerably narrower. He said he'd fooled facial recognition programs before, Impulse thought to himself as he looked at the completely new person in front of him. Still looks completely ridiculous though. Antares rounded out the ensemble with….4 cans of shaving cream. And an umbrella. Antares caught Impulse's incredulous gaze.
"They're extremely necessary! The 5'o'clock shadow has a nasty habit of showing up at the worst times in the evening," he offered.
Ok what the fuck. If he goes down I'm not going back to help him.
Gabriel had donned his costume which consisted of nothing more than a one-way full-face mirror mask. He'd even picked it up this morning from a CVS. Can't necessarily blame the guy, he's only been here for two days. Not enough time for a proper costume.
"So did you pick a name yet?" Impulse asked, as everyone seemed just about ready to go.
"Nothing permanent. Can't think of a good one. But for now? 'Jace Beleren.'"
Impulse laughed. "That's both stupid and on the nose. Impressive."
Jace held up a middle finger in response. "We ready to go then? Who's got the picture?"
Artificer grabbed the folded up photo out of his pocket. "Alright. The job description is as follows: find this asshole, tail him back to the warehouse he's going back to, and because apparently Coil really doesn't like his face in particular, and 'render the premises unusable' I think was the phrase he used. Then we get 6 grand total, or 1.5 a piece."
Impulse chuckled. He wasn't really paying attention to anything their new 'employer' had said throughout the call. The guy had quite the flair for the melodramatic though. Got the 'mysterious benefactor of unknown assets and abilities' act pretty well. There are worse ways to make 1500 bucks in a night.
Impulse sighed again. Wonder what bug crawled up plasma-boy's ass though. Seemed ready to reach through the phone and choke the bastard if he could.
He stretched again, and shook his arms out as they piled into Artificer's 'rape van' as he affectionately called it. Tinted windows and everything, yet on the smaller side, with a neutral gray color.
They proceeded to pull out of the garage, and headed into the outskirts of Empire territory to hunt their mark.
-
They'd camped out for about 40 minutes before spotting their target: a medium sized man with a shaven head and a shoulder-length brown beard, with an "E88" tattoo on his left forearm. That, unfortunately, described a good portion of the Empire's ranks. What set this particular man apart though, was an unfinished 'USMC' tattoo on his right forearm. It was common knowledge that he was dishonorably discharged. The artist who started the tattoo refused to finish it upon learning the circumstances of the discharge.
Even within the Empire, he didn't have too many friends.
About an hour or so later, the man of the hour began to leave on his motorcycle. Thanks in no small part to how loud the motorcycle was, Artificer had managed to tail the mark while leaving him about half a block of room. After a few twists and turns, their mark had arrived at his destination. Artificer parked a fair distance away, and out of sight.
Their approach on foot was made easier thanks to the absence of working streetlamps. Stray bullets from years of crime had rendered nearly half the lamps in this part of town bulbless, and the city did not have the funds nor the manpower to address that issue. They reached the warehouse undetected.
The building was in roughly the same condition as it's neighbors; the windows were either broken or boarded up, the fences and locks had rusted considerably, and the signs and banners had faded to the point of illegibility. Judging by the plethora of graffiti and the number of bullets still lodged in the walls, this particular block was recently contested territory.
"Remember, non-lethal takedowns if you can help it; boss specifically said to keep the bodies to a minimum," Artificer spoke. "Impulse, how quickly can you take care of the cars on this block?"
Impulse had slashed all four tires of each car on the block in under 8 seconds. "That quickly," he said.
"Impulse and I will wait out front here. Antares and Jace, head 'round back, and see if you can't take a look at the power supply to the building or something," said Artificer. Jace and Antares both nodded and walked off.
Jace took care to quietly remove a good section of the fencing preventing entry into the side alley, using one finger as an improvised plasma torch, and Antares caught the newly freed section of metal before it could fall to the floor. The noise that would make would be quite counterproductive.
At the back of the warehouse stood two rather large looking generators. A quick glance upward showed that the normal power line connections had fallen into disrepair a while ago, and the city did not seem to keen on supplying power to unused buildings. In addition, there was what Antares thought was some sort of jury-rigged boiler unit supplying heat to the warehouse. Gonna take a wild guess and say that probably isn't up to code, he thought absently.
Jace turned to Antares. "Any thoughts on how you want to go about this?"
"Well, that heating contraption I should be able to use to advantage," Antares responded.
"Ok, well, I'm going to see what I can do with those generators," said Jace as he walked over to one of them.
They were fairly large units, each rated to 30 kilowatts. Well, here's to hoping they didn't invest in surge protection of any kind, he thought to himself as he began scoring the insulation around main power line leading into the building. He focused and created a small field of plasma around his hands, concentrating and separating the free ions, before gripping the exposed wire. He focused as much as he could on shoving the plasma as additional current into the warehouses system.
He was feeling for resistance or skips in the flow, signs that either the circuit breakers had in fact done their job, or hopefully (Jace thought to himself) an electrical fire had started. Unfortunately, he failed to pay attention to his surroundings, as two large shadows came into his view. Menja and Fenja, each about 12 feet tall, Jace thought. He'd read up on the E88 known cape roster, but hadn't thought this particular location would have been worthy of cape defense.
He was quickly disabused of that notion as Fenja jabbed at him with her sword. He narrowly managed to dodge it before her twin landed a hit with her spear. The hit was a glancing one at best, but it still left a gash on the left side of his torso.
At the other corner, Antares had been focusing on the makeshift boiler. He'd been wearing down the casing in key locations, accelerating the rate at which the metal rusted, and adding just a little more chaos to the internal combustion process. He'd finished the sabotage right as Fenja and Menja had showed up, and figured now was the time to leave if he wanted to remain in one piece. Feeling with his power that the system had become well and truly volatile, he began to leave.
Wait, shit, how long before that mess explodes? Hmmm...better safe than sorry...
"25 seconds!" he called towards Jace as he ran in the other direction, back towards the building's front.
-
Artificer didn't quite know when he began to feel as queasy as he did, but the sensation quickly crossed the threshold from 'annoying' to 'problematic.' Last time I eat pad thai before starting a job, he resolved. He put his hands on his knees momentarily to try and combat the sensation; he couldn't afford the distraction, especially right now.
He thought he heard something getting louder, but couldn't quite place the sound. It sounded like it was on the very edge of his hearing range. He tried looking around for the source of the sound, and turned around just in time to catch the sight of a kama coming straight at his head. He didn't manage to avoid the hit, but he did manage to lean away from it so that his mask took the brunt of the impact.
His mask split in a jagged line, and managed to absorb most of the energy from the strike. Instead of cleaving straight through the crown of his skull, the blade simply left a nasty gash. Recovering, he took a second to figure out who hit him.
The assailant sported a blonde buzzcut and a metal cage around her face. Cricket, thought Artificer. That's where the nausea was coming from. Cricket had earned her namesake for the sound she emitted whenever she fought, and the incredibly quick reflexes that she possessed.I
Artificer pulled himself together enough to fire a burst of sedative rounds at her at basically point blank range. Cricket didn't feel like getting hit, and so ducked underneath the line of fire mere fractions of a second after the trigger was pulled. She moved her torso considerably faster than should have been physically possible for even an elite athlete, and before Artificer allowed the trigger to return to it's original position, she'd begun another kama swipe.
Impulse made sure it didn't hit. He went to tackle Cricket with a brisk running start, already primed to test out his ground'n'pound skills.
Fuck you bitch, I'm not afraid to hit a girl, and I can't really fuck up your face any worse than it already how did you fucking dodge that
Impulse's train of thought derailed as he rolled to his feet, the stream fading. Cricket managed to backflip (fucking showoff) out of his dive, and turned his attention on him. The sound of a thunderclap ripped through the air, making all the combatants jump.
-
Jace looked up at the two giantesses decked out like valkyries in front of him. Whatever Antares did, it's going to happen in less than half a minute, and I don't think I want to be here when it does, he thought.
I could try to go through them. He looked to the right at the warehouse wall. Or, I could try and take a shortcut through the building. No idea if this is going to work, but fuck it, if nothing else it furthers the primary goal of property damage.
He dug into his power, turned and fired. A good chunk of it had been removed; large enough for him to duck through, but too small for Fenja and Menja to follow. Without further wrecking the building of course. He ran through the newly created entrance and immediately regretted his decision.
The plan to start an electrical fire inside the premises had worked; several of the chemicals the E88 was working with had been next to a cooling unit that had been fried, and three goons were working to try and put out the flames with fire extinguishers. They weren't having much success, and the noxious fumes being released into the air weren't helping. One of them had turned at the sound of the explosion, drew his magnum and fired. That endeavor had been considerably more successful, and the bullet struck Jace in the left side of his torso, bouncing off of and breaking a rib in the process.
GODDAMMIT WHY AM I RETARDED WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD FUCKING IDEA
Jace mentally berated himself while clutching his left side, and took cover behind one of the supporting pylons in the building. After another volley of pistol fire, he used his uninjured arm to toss another plasma bolt. This one he aimed at the floor in front of the gunmen, shaping the blast so that it acted as a mass taser instead of a fireball. That bought him time to dig again and carve a new exit in the adjacent wall.
Ducking outside once more, Jace was immediately blindsided by a shield bash from Fenja.
Fucking hell I suck at this
-
Impulse had shaken off the shock faster than Cricket did, and began throwing a barrage of strikes. Cricket, while unable to match the speed and quantity of Impulse's attacks still nimbly dodged and blocked every punch and kick. God fucking dammit how is she doing this shit I'm supposed to be the speedster here, he lamented. On the bright side, she's not having any more success than I am.
Artificer had opted not to waste any more pellets on attempting to take down Cricket. He turned his attention instead to the trio of E88 thugs who were now hurriedly exiting the building. They seemed to prioritize putting as much distance between them and the building as possible.
Artificer waited until they had crossed the street, then tagged each of them with a sedative pellet. Just in case; should erase the last six hours for each of them. The fleeing gangsters had covered about a dozen more yards before collapsing mid-stride. Artificer let out a short sigh of relief before turning his attention back on Cricket.
At that moment, Antares came bolting around the corner. Artificer gave a short chuckle
"Well, whatever you did was obviously-"
"VACATE THE AREA; 12 SECONDS LEFT," shouted Antares, cutting Artificer off. Well shit, time to…
"Where's Jace?"
-
Jace rolled to his feet in time to dodge another swipe from Menja. Fenja had moved to flank Jace, cutting off his escape. She reached out to grapple him, so Menja could land a killing blow.
Jace concentrated a let off a small nova pulse. It didn't hurt either of his opponents really, but it bought him precious seconds. He drew on his reserves once more, and jumped, directing the plasma burst into the ground. The superheated air hurt a bit, but it successfully propelled him to the roof of the building.
Attempting the maneuver for the first time, he flailed wildly, and landed on his back. Annoyed, Fenja drew upon her power and grew, at a pace slightly too slow to catch her quarry mid-trajectory.
Jace flailed wildly trying to orient himself before he landed on the roof. He managed to not have the wind knocked out of him on impact, and quickly scrambled to his feet just out of Fenja's reach. He full on sprinted to the far corner of the roof and went for gold on the impromptu long jump off of the building.
The makeshift boiler erupted half a second later, and roughly half the warehouse was destroyed instantly.
-
Goddammit this is really starting to piss me off, thought Impulse as his duel with Cricket waned on. He decided to switch tactics again, and attempt a grapple one more time.
The sound of the boiler exploding was considerably louder than any of the muted thunderclaps that Jace produced. It caught Cricket off guard as Impulse attempted a variant of a bear hug, and he succeeded.
The sound also caught him off guard, and he felt his heart skip a beat. And then, he felt his heart begin to actually slow down.
Artificer blinked a few times as Jace left from the building and the fireball erupted at the back of the warehouse. Jace managed to control his falling speed with short bursts of plasma, and rolled to a stop with no new injuries.
He turned back to Impulse and Cricket. Impulse normally had a blue glow about him when he was using his mover power. The aura he was currently sporting was blood red. Cricket struggled in his grip, completely unable to make him budge even the tiniest bit, and unable to wiggle out of the lock.
She proceeded to wail on him with her kamas, which proved to be an equally fruitless endeavor. Artificer took the opportunity to peg her several times with the sedatives, just to be safe, as Impulse's red aura began to fade and he began moving again.
Impulse barely registered Cricket's abrupt transition from 'battle rage' to 'unconscious' as he let her fall to the ground. The building was solidly wrecked, and the remains were ablaze, so he booked it back to where the van was parked, and started the engine.
-
Back inside Petyr's apartment, Gabriel took off his mask, still clutching his rib as Petyr set the bone.
"That could have gone better, but it could have gone worse," he remarked. John gave a shrug before pulling out his phone and alerting Coil.
Job complete.
