"We've got a problem," Dauntless said.
"Just one?" Miss Militia asked, shooting a look over at Wharf Rat.
"Uncalled for," the skinny new hero protested.
"A different problem," Dauntless clarified. "It's Faultline and her crew. This afternoon Faultline came with a disguise on, and took the tour of the premises. Just the public areas, but she was taking pictures." The display behind him showed a series of stills from the security cameras in the lobby, focused on one brown-haired woman with a sun hat on and sunglasses. "Based on the angles and layout, it looks like she was mapping out the structural supports and load-bearing pillars. As you all know, her power is the ability to cut through anything she can see. As near as we can tell, she can affect any nonliving material. That makes her particularly difficult for those of us that rely on tools to do our jobs." He gestured to his own spear, and Armsmaster crossed his arms over his armored chest.
"If she's scoping out the lobby, then she is casing this place," Assault said. "Shit, it would only take her seconds to cut the beams and topple this whole building over. A dozen supports are all visible from that spot, enough to bring down the west facade, and half the internal structure. It wouldn't take more than a couple more beams or a hard nudge to tip the whole building over. Hundreds would die, we'd lose our communications, the workshops, our logistics, everything."
"And Spitfire, Newter and Gregor the Snail are all excellent candidates for the mop-up work," Battery added. "They could take out any survivors, or steal anything they want from the wreckage."
Velocity flicked through the pictures, thumbing the controls on the console. "So where's Labyrinth? That's the big issue. Yes, Faultline can knock down the building. She can do that from two hundred yards away without visiting us first. But the real threat is Labyrinth, always is. She's a Shaker 12, the only 12 rating in the city, for a while at least," he said, nodding to Dauntless. "She can do so much more than just tear the building down. Her limitation is that she needs to stay in a space for a while to attune herself to it. The longer she's still, the wider her range and the faster she can work. If Labyrinth is being hidden somewhere on the premises, it would only take a few days before she can change this whole building any way she likes, or the grounds around it, or half the block. We need to find her, somehow. Wharf Rat, you've broken into this place before, and you've got a knack for hiding places. Where would you hide Labyrinth around here?"
"I'd hide her wherever the real action is," Wharf Rat said, staring at the pictures. "Did I ever tell you guys about the time I visited here before I joined up?"
"No, you didn't," Miss Militia said, her voice denoting her curiosity.
He nodded to Velocity. "Hit the facial recognition software and scroll back, find me."
The speedster plugged in the parameters, told the computer to tag the facial features in the file for Wharf Rat, and find them on those cameras before the specified date. "It's gonna take several minutes," he said. "Lots of faces, lots of times to search."
"Mid-March," he said. "That'll narrow it down." He nodded while Velocity started the computer searching. "See, I sat next to Faultline at the villain's conclave after Coil released the secret identities of Empire Eighty-Eight-"
"Still not a ringing endorsement," Assault pointed out. "I'd not bring that up just everywhere."
"-and she was wearing her hair in this exact ponytail. It's a really severe look, wouldn't you say? Draws out her cheekbones, the angle of her jaw line and chin. Makes her look tough, even vicious. Even when she's not wearing her armor, you can almost see her in armor anyway. It wouldn't be hard to soften her up a bit, add a bit of makeup contouring, and even lipstick. Or just let her hair down. Maybe cover her ears and the corners of her jaw line. Or tip her sunhat down enough that it hides the eyebrows. Something like that."
"No match," Velocity said.
"That's funny, I was definitely here," he said. "Try again. Anyway, like Velocity pointed out a minute ago, she doesn't even really need to scout us out. She could stand on a balcony a half-mile away, watching through binoculars while she whittles this building down into any shape she likes. And it would take us hours to find her, if she held still, while our base was destroyed and we couldn't do anything to stop it. That's without Spitfire just setting the place on fire. We've got top-of-the-line fire suppression systems here, I should know I've seen them all, but there's very little you can do against a motivated pyrokinetic."
"Still no match."
"Look for Taylor then, she was with me. So with that said, it's kind of odd that Faultline walked in here when she could just have not shown up. Or just looked up pictures of our lobby online. Or hired someone else to take them. But instead she walked in here, probably several times, and-"
"Why do you say several times?" Triumph asked.
"Because she didn't want to be too obvious, so she kept coming back in slightly less disguise until we spotted her," Danny said.
"Got a match," Velocity said. He hit the controls, and Taylor's picture popped up on the overhead display. And right next to her was Danny, with a ball cap and sunscreen, with a slight bump on his nose and his ears sticking out slightly. "Shit, there you are."
"That disguise cost me less than five bucks and took less than two minutes to apply," Wharf Rat said. "Facial recognition software is easy to fool if you're trying to fool it. Now, how would Faultline, the leader of her own villainous mercenary group for several years, be easier to catch than me before I even had a single mission? I bet if you scroll back over the past few days you'll see her several times, slightly more disguised than today, waiting for us to figure her out."
Triumph groaned. "We were meant to see this. It's a ruse."
"Probably a distraction," Velocity said. "Crap, to make us search the whole place looking for Labyrinth."
"While the Wards are unavailable to help, because it's finals week," Miss Militia added. "Half the manpower, limited deadline, lots of space to cover. Good distraction, and all they have to do is show up and take some pictures. The rest of the team can be anywhere at all while we make ourselves crazy with this."
"Faultline doesn't do things like this on her own," Dauntless said, clasping his hands behind his back. "She works for an employer. So someone hired her to make a distraction. Shall we draw up a list of candidates?"
"Done," Velocity said, putting up a new display. His superspeed had a downside, he lost the ability to interact with the world in proportion to his speed. At ten times normal speed, he could barely lift two gallon jugs of milk, and his skin was sensitive enough that he needed to be very careful not to trip or run into anything. But his mental faculties were unaffected, and he could process at superspeed without worrying, and typing on a touch screen took very little strength.
"You've got the Undersiders, a non-powered organization or individual, an organization or individual from outside the city, or an unprecedented independent action by Faultline," Dauntless read aloud. "Honestly, that sounds about right. Hiring Faultline takes connections that are hard to make, and the kind of resources not everyone has. So, maybe it could be a villain group from another city looking to make their move. Or it could be local organized crime trying to reassert its presence now that the regular villain gangs are gone. Or, the Undersiders, who took Coil's payroll for months, robbed Brockton Bay Central Bank, have pulled dozens of other jobs, and may have all that money just socked away in their mattresses waiting to buy Faultline's help for a major job with a major payout."
"Travelers?" Wharf Rat proposed.
"Doesn't add up," Dauntless said. "They've been scrambling for small, safe scores, knocking over liquor stores and gas stations. They're lying low and hurting for money, this job is for a group that's flush with cash and feeling bold."
"So, what then?" Triumph asked.
"No idea. Theories?"
"What kind of job do you do after you've robbed a bank? What is worth robbing a bank to get the startup capital for? What do you hire high-end parahuman mercenaries for a distraction for?" Battery posed the questions.
"Maybe the better approach is to list very valuable hard-to-rob targets in the city from top to bottom," Miss Militia countered.
"The Tower," Armsmaster said. "There's the tech I've got. Hell, just the plans from Squealer's workshop are worth a few national economies."
"Seriously?" Assault blurted.
"Seriously. The most powerful tinker from Brockton Bay isn't me, or Kid Win, or Leet, or Trainwreck, or even Bakuda. It's always been Squealer. She has a talent on par with Sphere, not far behind Dragon. She squandered that talent, but she had it. Hell, she designed an engine that uses Maxwell's Demon as a power source, which is harder than most perpetual-motion machines and technically completely impossible. So yeah, those blueprints from her workshop could change international commerce, space exploration, law enforcement, devalue oil so badly that dozens of petroleum economies collapse. You could cause a dozen wars with this tech. And that's just on one desk of my workshop. There's also the stuff I've been working on with Dragon, that steps it up a notch. And the work I'm doing on these armors could change the entire power dynamic of the capes in this city, if I complete these projects it's possible that no villain in this city would have a chance. So, the Undersiders might want to interfere with that."
"But do the Undersiders know about any of that?" Triumph asked. He fidgeted with his mask in his hands.
"Assume the Undersiders know whatever you don't want them to know," Armsmaster replied. "It just saves time."
"Gotcha. But on the original subject: maybe they want to hit the bank again," Triumph said. "They've done one job there, they know the layout and the response, if they have their mercenaries with them they could probably crack the vault and make millions. That would be worth their while. And they may be counting on us not expecting that."
Velocity typed that in underneath Armsmaster's workshop. "Hmm, there's jewelry stores, we could ask around and see who's got a lot of merchandise or cash on hand for the next few days," he added.
"We should check to see who's doing cash payroll in the city," Dauntless pointed out. "Some companies might be going old-school after the Central Bank got hit."
"Oh, and the casinos on the west side," Battery added. "Especially Ruby Dreams, they're the biggest around right now."
"Armored car companies can tell us if anything particularly valuable is in the city right now," Assault added.
"You and your armored cars," she replied.
"You've been quiet," Armsmaster said to Wharf Rat. "What's up?"
The new hero turned to face him. "What? This is my first time in one of these sessions, I'm just taking notes."
"Okay, I just get ... concerned, when you start going quiet."
"Well, sometimes I know I'm out of my depth, and sometimes I'm out of my depth and I know it," Danny replied.
"That's what she said," Assault quipped.
The room immediately went into an uproar. Velocity ran out while Miss Militia threw her arms up in an aggrieved frustration. Battery leaped from the couch and shook her finger in his face, yelling "No! No! No!" over and over. Armsmaster slumped against the console and hung his head, and Triumph just pressed his hands to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. Dauntless strode over, his face dark and ominous.
"Not again, Ethan," Dauntless said, as Battery turned away. "We're not doing this again. We can't. We just can't. Don't start us down that road again."
"Okay, okay," Assault said meekly. "I wasn't sure if it was too soon, so I thought I'd test the waters. I didn't mean anything by it."
Danny looked around the room. "Is this anything I want to know about?"
"No," echoed from Dauntless, Assault, Battery, and Armsmsaster.
"Never ask," Triumph said, looking at Danny with haunted eyes.
Miss Militia took a long cleansing breath. "All right, we've got a list of leads. Tower, bank, casinos, armored cars, cash payrolls, jewelry stores, Faultline, and the Undersiders. Eight leads, eight of us."
"I can't snoop the Undersiders specifically," Danny pointed out.
Dauntless sighed. "I know, and it's a pain. That would have been exactly where I assigned you. Okay, let's do this smart. Armsmaster, work on Tower security, especially your workshop and the armory, the motor pool and anything else particularly sensitive or valuable. Assault, you take the armored car companies, you know their procedures and vulnerabilities the best. Triumph, check out the bank, use your costumed persona and also ask some discreet questions to your personal friends. Wharf Rat, see if you can get anything good on the Faultline team, you've got history with them and a knack for tracking. Battery, take the jewelry stores, Miss Militia the casino, Velocity call around to see who's doing cash payroll these days. I'll follow up on the Undersiders. No more than four out at a time, we need to keep a response team here and ready to go immediately just in case. If this is a distraction, we'll be doing their jobs for them if we all just run off in different directions. First team on the streets is Assault, Miss Militia, Velocity and Triumph, the rest of you work the phones or buff site security. Four hours on, four hours off, eight hours sleep. I'm going to go file the paperwork to ask permission for what we're going to do anyway."
Danny chuckled as he pulled his mask on. "I feel like I've been a bad influence on you, Dauntless."
"You take credit for a lot, Wharf Rat, but maybe don't take credit for this," Dauntless said with a quirked half-smile. "Now get out there and find the Faultline Crew."
The mice scrambled up the length of his jacket as he took it down off its coat rack. "I was actually thinking about that. It would make more sense for me to wait for her to come to us. Does Faultline have any indication that we've found her picture?"
"I'd say we've done nothing to tip our hand," Dauntless said. "But then if Tattletale's involved, we have to assume they know whatever there is to know."
Danny stroked his chin with thumb and forefinger. "Damn, I hadn't really considered that. I just figured that if Faultline has been coming back again and again until she got our attention, she might come back until she knows she's got our attention. Catching her in person is better than trying to track her down to wherever her team is at."
The team leader chuckled. "I can't think that Newter or Gregor the Snail would be hard to find."
Wharf Rat nodded. "Yeah, I'll try to use what Mouse Protector taught me to good use."
"Mouse Protector taught you how to track villains?" Dauntless looked skeptical. "I wouldn't have thought you had a lot to learn."
"I've found half the villains in the city. She taught me how to find the other half," he said, and gave a nod as he walked to the elevators.
The trail itself was long cold. He was able to pick up Faultline's scent in the lobby, he had memorized it during the conclave at Somer's Rock pub. He followed it for a couple of blocks and then it was lost in a mysterious puddle of some fluid that neutralized all scents that it came in contact with. He recognized that as being the work of Gregor the Snail, one of her mercenaries. He was capable of producing substances in his body with a wide variety of effects, which he could project from his translucent skin at will, and apparently a scent neutralizer was one of his options. So, that was not possible. Nor was following her back to Somer's Rock and trying to backtrack her trail weeks after the fact. Canvassing the city with rats was feasible, but he had no idea how much time he did have, he would eventually pick up their trail but that could well be after the Undersiders had done whatever they were planning.
But a few phone calls to Danny Hebert's friends had gotten him phone numbers to friends of theirs that they wouldn't give to just anyone, after he promised that no trouble would come to those friends. His assurances, and their trust, got him in touch with the premiere money-launderers of Brockton Bay. For some jobs, only good old-fashioned organized crime would do, and union work and organized crime were never far from each other. And for a major mercenary outfit like Faultline, that took in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time and needed a low profile, money laundering was essential.
And he lucked out. When he chatted with Paulie "Pops" Fizioli, he found that not only did the money launderer know some things about Faultline and her crew, he also had enough of a grudge against them to talk to him with no strings attached. Apparently he did not take it well that Faultline had taken the money he laundered for her at his standard rate, and invested it in a club she was using to launder her own money now, cutting him out of her operation entirely. As long as nothing came back on him, he was willing to share this information with the legitimate authorities, or whatever Wharf Rat represented.
So now Wharf Rat was hanging around an alleyway across the street, considering his options. From the rats crawling in the walls and ceilings, he was confident that the entire mercenary group was living in the apartments above the nightclub, which meant that he had not only their operations center but also their homes. One phone call and he could have this entire mercenary group shut down and put away. The entire team could come sweeping in here, outnumbering the villains eight to six, with the advantage of surprise and an opening volley that would likely take half the mercenaries out of the fight before it even started.
But he had no idea what the new woman's powers were. She smelled of gun oil and soap, had red hair and green eyes, and she wore a fitted costume. That was all he could glean. And, Labyrinth was upstairs in her room, and likely hadn't left there in a long time. She would be in complete control of her surroundings, trying to besiege this place would be a nightmare. The kind of nightmare where everything goes wrong and everyone dies. Spitfire, Newter, Gregor and Faultline were known quantities, but not pushovers. So calling his team in for a frontal assault could go very badly. And the only way he saw to avoid a long drawn-out battle that could take a lot of casualties, was to blast the building so hard and so fast that it would kill the mercenaries instantly. And he wasn't sure he wanted either of those outcomes on his conscience.
He was still casing the place when he heard movement from the manager's office, down the stairs, and down the hall. He repositioned his rats for a better view, and then he stepped further back into the shadows when Faultline walked out the front door. Her hair was down, she had lipstick on, and sunglasses that covered her eyebrows. It was enough to make her almost unrecognizable. She walked a couple blocks away, stopping in at a sandwich shop to order a half-dozen meals to go. She paid in cash, tipped the woman behind the counter, and walked out with her bags in hand. And as soon as she was out of sight of the shop, a tall man in a trenchcoat walked out of an alleyway and crossed in front of her, sitting on the bus stop bench. The man was wearing a white skintight hood over his head with glass lenses and a built-out mouthpiece reminiscent of an animal s muzzle or snout. He glanced her way, and patted the bench next to him.
Faultline unfroze her legs and walked forward, sitting next to the man. "Should I ask how you found me?" she said through gritted teeth.
The Wharf Rat nodded up at a collection of pigeons sitting on a wire overhead. "I have lots of eyes."
"And there I thought you only control rats," she said, giving him an appraising glance.
He raised one hand, with a single finger extended. A pigeon flew down, landed on his finger, bobbed towards her like it was taking a bow, and then flew away. He slouched back against the bench. "So my team is concerned about what you and your people might do," he said. "They're sure that you and your team were hired to distract us away from whatever your employers are going to pull. They're worried about armored cars and banks and jewelry stores," he said.
"And you're not?" the mercenary captain asked him, her tone leading his response.
"No, I'm worried about people. That's the only thing that's ever worth worrying about. You sort of implied that you would kill hundreds of people, and that makes Dauntless worried about what you might do, and it makes me worried about what you might make me do."
"You're worried I'd kill that many people?" she asked.
He reached into his breast pocket and lifted out one of the two small white mice. "I don't know enough about you," he said. "Sorry. I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but the stakes are kind of high."
"I wouldn't kill that many people," she said. "Not unless there was no other way, or if I really thought that they all deserved it."
The mouse could smell that she was not lying, so the Wharf Rat could smell that she wasn't lying. "And so now I guess I have two questions: is there another way, and do all of those people deserve to die?"
"I'm not nearly desperate enough to think that's the only way out," she said. "And I would need to research every one of those PRT employees to know if they deserved to die. I have not researched that. So in short: I don't intend to kill all those people."
He nodded. "Thank you for that. I don't actually want to fight you. I'd like to think you don't want to fight me-"
She snorted a laugh through her nose. "Rest assured of that. You know my power's weakness?"
"Living creatures," he said, nodding. "You can destroy any gun there is, cut missiles in half in the air, but you're no better off against rats and dogs and pigeons than anyone else."
Faultline nodded. "Spitfire could probably handle you. Maybe even Gregor and Newter. But I bet that Lung and Skidmark and Crusader thought the same way."
"I didn't ask them," he said, shrugging. "But then, I knew enough about them."
"You said you don't know enough about me," she pointed out. "Just a minute ago."
Wharf Rat stared across the street towards the dry-cleaner's that was closing up its doors. "I did. For example, you and your people work for a lot of money, you earn it. You work hard. You don't take month-long vacations to the Bahamas, or drive sports cars. You need that money for something."
"Answers," she said. "Expensive answers."
"I'm good at answers," he pointed out.
She shook her head. "Not like this. Way above your pay grade, hero."
"Shame," he commented. "Try me anyway?"
Faultline considered it a minute. "You seem reasonable," she said. "Okay, I and every member of my team have amnesia. And a brand," she said, tugging up her shirt to show him the mark on her waist. "The same mark on all of us. Lots of capes have them, and the amnesia. And almost all of them are like Newter and Gregor, disfigured or inhuman. Someone did this to us. We have a lot of speculation, but it's hard to weave it into facts without mixing in a lot of paranoid conspiracies. So we need answers. Bribes, investigators, access, those all cost money, and we invest all of our shares into those answers."
Wharf Rat nodded. "Noble and commendable. Do you have any local leads I can pursue locally?"
"I don't," she said. "You're offering to help?"
"If I can," he said.
"I don't think you can," she said, standing. "You seem nice enough. I hope we don't have to fight."
"I am nice enough," he replied, "Is there any way that you might not make me fight you?"
She tucked her hair back from her face. "We can leave the city after this job. With Coil gone, and Kaiser gone, there's not much need for us here. We can pull down high prices and plenty of work nearly anywhere, but Brockton Bay is turning into a long dry spell for us, just some bodyguarding and hits for the local mafia or the cartels trying to get these shipping lanes. This current job is the biggest thing we've had in weeks, and it's table scraps and we know it."
He sat on the bench, staring up at her. "If you're going to leave, we won't have to come to blows. If you can give me some assurances, I can make that happen from my side."
"Assurances," she said. "That was the word that Trickster kept using, that and 'collateral'."
"And then he used you to get to me with a knife to my throat," Wharf Rat pointed out.
Faultline shifted the bags in her hands. "He did that. How about this: I assure you that our part in this job does not involve us killing anyone or doing any permanent damage or loss. We're a distraction. A very big, very elaborate distraction for someone else's purposes."
He nodded, and glanced up. She followed his gaze as the pigeons took off, all flapping away over the roofs. He stood, and returned the mouse to his pocket before he straightened the coat. "That's just about all I need to know," he said. "If you get yourself set up in a city nearby, I may call you asking for a favor. And that favor may be me asking for the chance to help you find your answers."
Faultline transferred the other bag to her left hand and took his hand to shake. Then he turned and walked away into the shadows, and she walked back to her team headquarters.
"Piggot's gonna be pissed," Armsmaster predicted. "She just talked to you about negotiating with villains instead of arresting them."
Danny looked the man right in the eye. "But she got the drop on me while I was out investigating. I talked her down from killing me, and got us some good terms in exchange."
Armsmaster sighed, and tapped the side of his helmet. "This darn voice-stress lie detector. It seems to be on the fritz again," he said drolly.
Dauntless crossed his arms. "Dammit you two. Okay, looking at positives: Faultline's crew is now off the table, we can safely ignore anything they're going to do. Because Wharf Rat's lie detector was not on the fritz, right?"
"Right."
"Good. So, we can focus on the real issues, the Undersiders. We know what we're up against, now we need to know what they're planning," Dauntless said. "Anyone?"
Triumph spoke up first. "The bank doesn't know anything about it, their vault is actually a bit low. Their reputation took a hit after the last Undersiders robbery, and people have been pulling their money out and closing accounts. They're terrified that another high-profile robbery could finish them off for good, but I can't see any way for the Undersiders to profit from that unless they own a competing bank."
"Or if they've got a ton of loans out from that bank," Miss Militia added. "Okay, next is the casinos. I got no answers from them, but I think their security forces have more guns than I've had in my whole life put together. Could Tattletale be planning some sort of Ocean's Eleven action there?"
Dauntless considered. "A classic heist? I don't think anyone does those anymore. Anyone but Tattletale, I'd rule it out. But not yet."
Armsmaster spoke up. "I've set cameras to watch the alleys, roads, and rooftops for two blocks around us, plugged into the facial recognition system, equipped with the Undersider's composite sketches and some photographs of those giant monsters they ride on. I've got my most sensitive and valuable technology locked up in a vault that will self-destruct if they test it too much. And I've rushed through some of those armors so we've got some finished materials to work with for a counteroffensive if we need to. We've set some guards on the motor pool to keep an eye on the vehicles, and if anything happens they've got dead-man-switch alarms that ring to us immediately."
"This is a slow week for the armored car companies," Assault said. "You can judge the value of the contents by how much insurance the client takes out, and there's no super-diamond being transferred, or million-dollar art exhibits being relocated, or anything like that. There should have been at least one good score, just by law of averages, but I came up bust."
Battery sighed. "Jewelers are a weirdly insular little world. They all know each other's business, but they keep each other's secrets. If anything is seriously going down in their departments, they'd rather trust each other than ask for our help."
"And to answer your question about cash payrolls," Velocity said, "there is literally no way to know other than to phone up every company in Brockton Bay and ask them weirdly invasive questions about their business practices and security weaknesses. I have been hung up on more today than in my entire life."
Dauntless folded his hands behind his back and started pacing. "So, two probably not, two almost certainly not, and two inconclusive. I'll ask the PRT to get its desk personnel and analysts calling around about the payroll thing, but aside from that all we can do is stand by for fast response when something does happen. Okay, I want someone on the console at all times, sleep in shifts, watch the police band and news and every other monitor we've got. Shower in shifts, only one person is to be out of uniform at any time. These two elevators are going to be locked for our use, on a moment we pile in and straight down to the hangar. Get one of the motor pool guys to stand by ready to warm up and checklist the VTOL at a moment's notice, I want it ready to fly as soon as we hit the flight deck. No delays, and we can do this."
His tone made it clear that the briefing was over, and Miss Militia called dibs on the first shower. Dauntless took the first shift on the console, scrolling endlessly through anything that could hint at trouble. Wharf Rat paused at Armsmaster's side. "Hey, Colin. I gave that prototype a test run, and it worked perfectly," he said. "I could even get it to make a seamless landing on my finger and then take off again. I had Faultline fully convinced that I could control pigeons as well as rats, she thinks I've been understating my powers all along."
Colin laughed as he pulled his helmet off. "I bet a lot of people will be willing to believe that. It will help them understand how you've been able to take down ten villains on your own. It makes them think that you've got lots of powers you haven't disclosed yet."
"Eleven villains," Danny corrected absently. "Seriously, though, do you realize that this is the first action I've seen since I joined the Protectorate? I was kicking butts two at a time or three at a time, and then I became an official hero and now suddenly I'm sidelined every day."
Colin shook his head. "I'm not going to encourage you to go after the Travelers. You've got them backed right into a corner, and they're dangerous as hell." He turned away, and waved to Velocity and Triumph to come over and check out their new costumes.
Danny walked away, and took a seat on the couch furthest from the television. Assault picked something that was a bit too Vin Diesel for his tastes, so he just pulled out his cell phone. Being in the Tower always struck him as being weirdly quiet: Being a couple hundred feet above ground level meant that a much smaller footprint of his power's range was actually on the ground or below it, and the Director had demanded that he evacuate the rats from the area. So, all he had was himself and the half-dozen cute white mice in the cage in the corner that rotated out the duties in his pockets. It was almost surreal to see the world through so few eyes. He pulled out his phone to distract himself.
"Hey Dad," Taylor said when she picked up. "Whatcha up to?"
"Standing by waiting for the Undersiders to make a move," he said. "We may have them busted by the time you and the other Wards take duty next week."
"That'd be nice, we could use a quiet week," she said. "Dennis was just regaling us on the ride over here, sharing stories from last year when we go straight from finals to dealing with graduation and taking every single patrol shift at the same time. Even worse that double-shifts on Christmas, he said."
Danny laughed with her. "So, I wish I could be there to help with your homework. I'm just a couple floors away, but Dauntless wants us ready to jump straight into the jet as soon as the Undersiders make their move, no delays at all."
"I wish you were here too, dad. But at least I get more time with you now that we had when I was at Winslow and you were a rogue, so there's that. And once you guy get the Undersiders, there will only be ten or twelve villains left in the city?"
"Faultline is leaving once this job is done," he said. "So, if ber and Leet are still active, it's the two of them plus four Travelers."
"Oh, you heard back from Trainwreck?"
"Yeah, it's a weird system where I have to cruise past that area to check for message drops, but I've managed to open talks. At first he was just shouting at me in text, giant bold letters about how I needed to fuck off and whatever, but I convinced him that I'm sincere, and it turns out that he needs a visit from Panacea same as Circus did. Did you know that he's basically just a torso? That's why he never leaves his power armor, without it he's crippled."
"God, this business is weird," Taylor said. "Look, I've got a ton of conjugating to do down here, and I'd better get to it."
"Hey quick question. Do any of the Wards ever say 'that's what she said'?"
"No, never. Huh, that's kind of weird, you'd think locker-room humor would be all the rage in this place."
"Interesting. Okay, chat with you later, Benthic."
"Love you Wharf Rat."
He sat back and grinned a bit, then he dialed another number.
"Hello Wharf Rat."
"Hello Dinah," he said to the precog he had rescued weeks ago. "How's things?"
"Well, I'm going to pass my classes and graduate on time," she said. "I thought I'd have to repeat the grade or do summer school, what with the whole abduction thing. You've had a busy week."
"Yeah," he said. "I've gotten two, maybe four villains to stand down and go straight recently. Five more are leaving the city. Four more are probably going to get arrested as soon as they make a move. I spent a few days with Mouse Protector, and that is an exhausting woman for sure. And, thanks for telling everyone not to let me go after the Travelers. I almost got stubborn and got killed, but people around here are good people and they made me do the right thing."
"And I'm glad to hear it. You know whenever I've got some spare energy for questions, I ask whether you're going to be okay," she said. "So I've told you that you and I are probably going to be working together some day, right?"
"Yeah, but not in the Protectorate," he said. "I remember that part."
"So I've been thinking about codenames for myself," Dinah said. "Maybe something really epic and mysterious, like The Future. Or something more literal, like Predictor. But sometimes I think something a little funnier, like Odd Girl Out, because I know the odds of stuff."
He chuckled. "If you're thinking of codenames, you're putting the cart in front of the horse by a good margin. I'd be more concerned with how you'd arrange to fight crime and go to school if you're not in the Wards. They get special permission, but if you're not with them you're gonna have a problem."
"I don't understand the specific stuff yet," she said. "But I do know the odds. And there's a seventy-percent chance that you and I are gonna work on the same team, a ninety-eight percent chance that the team we're on is not Protectorate but not villains, and an eighty-percent chance that someday soon the whole world is going to think you're as awesome as I do, at least for a while."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I can't see it, but I know you're going to do something way beyond amazing that puts you up with Legend and Eidolon," she said confidently. "And, it's gonna be soon. I've thought about breaking my power just to see what it is, it'll take me days or a couple weeks to get back to normal, but it might be worth it to see it ahead of time."
"You probably shouldn't do that," he said. "There aren't many emergencies that make that worthwhile."
"You sound like my dad."
"I should, I'm a dad too, you know," he said. "Someday I'll introduce you to my own daughter."
"Sure," she said, and her voice was suddenly sad. "Listen, I've gotta go, it's dinner time, okay?"
"No problem," he said. "Hey, Dinah?"
"Yeah?"
"I kind of like Gambler," he said.
"Gambler is good," she replied, a little brighter. "Bye Mister Rat."
Miss Militia sat bolt upright. "I've got it. The casinos! They used to put all their deposits in the Brockton Bay Central Bank! Have they stopped making deposits there?"
:"Looking it up," Dauntless said, his fingers clacking over keys. "Um, looks like no. So what are they doing with all that cash?"
Armsmaster rolled to his feet, snatching up his Halberd. "They've been stuffing it in the mattress like idiots. People always do the wrong thing when they're scared. And now they've got millions of dollars in cash there on the premises. This seriously is Ocean's Eleven."
Assault shut off the DVD and the rest of the team looked back and forth amongst themselves. "Okay," Triumph said, breaking the tension with the question nobody wanted to ask. "How do we set a trap for Tattletale?"
In the movie, the casino's vault was an impenetrable monster set in a sub-basement that the thieves had to get to by traversing an elevator shaft full of lasers. But Brockton Bay was not Las Vegas. It would take an enormous amount of construction to make an underground vault possible, and that much construction would be impossible to keep quiet, and it would cost a fortune in bribes to make enough people look the other direction. The Ruby Dream took its security the other direction. The vault was on the second floor, out in the open with clear sight lines and plenty of visibility for the guards to make sure that nobody was trying to open the door or drill through the walls. The manager's office was directly above the vault room, with two guards on a rotating schedule and the manager himself, who was trustworthy beyond rebuke. The bottom of the vault sat directly above the main floor of the gaming room, with a single reinforced loadbearing pillar in the middle of it to hold the weight of the massive room. The center of the gaming room was the most visible and least defensible part of the entire casino. Seismic sensors made sure no clever thieves tried to burrow up through the load-bearing pillar, camera surveillance covered every side including the manager's office. The guards had more firepower than the city's PRT division. Only four people had the combination to the door, and they were under constant suspicion.
And one of those people was approaching the elevator now. The guard at the door gave him a nod. "Good to have ya back, Grimes. Ya know the boss worries when someone don't check in." The elevator was on one end of the main gaming room, where a bunch of the city's second-tier wealthy elite came to indulge their vices without having to leave the city. The casino was paid up with the right people to keep it safe from the cops so that nobody would hassle its customers. It had been owned by the Cosa Nostra organization back in the sixties, and had changed hands until it was most recently under the control of Lung and the ABB. But with the elimination of that gang, and the failure of any new villain groups to seize power and territory, it was now being run by the middlemen who had overseen it before. And rather than passing on the massive profits from its operation to some villains, they now kept the winnings for themselves.
Grimes nodded distractedly. He was a short squat man with thick glasses and a thick mustache, and his breath reeked of menthol and he was clutching a napkin. He lifted it up in front of him, and the guard leaned forward to read the printing on it. "Los your voice huh? That sucks Grimes, sorry ta hear it. C'mon, let's get ya upstairs," the guard said, punching the button for the elevator. A minute later the doors opened with a ding, and Grimes stepped in. The elevator attendant turned away to push a button, then turned back towards the accountant.
The doors opened on the third floor, and six guards stood with their guns leveled at his chest. "Shame that you missed a check-in," the one on the far right said. "We thought we could trust ya, Grimes. Now, you're gonna come sit in the boss's office and explain to us what Tattletale offered you to sell us out." Up here, the walls were not paneled in faux-mahogany and the ceiling was not restored tile, there was cinderblock and acoustic ceiling tiles. It was just as cheap as the decorations downstairs, but it wasn't trying as hard.
The night manager of the casino was one of those four people as well. He sat behind his desk, clipping his cigar when Grimes was brought in, still clutching his napkin and his bag of lozenges. "Siddown", the guard demanded. Six of them ringed him from behind, plus the two behind the manager.
Meanwhile, across the city, Director Emily Piggot was marching back and forth through the bullpen, listening as the PRT operators were fielding a sudden flood of calls from panicked residents. Reports of a giant white dragon, shining all over, with massive spreading wings, were coming in from the club district. Incredible amounts of smoke and fire were everywhere, and people were turning into demons or floating blobs of color and noise in the streets. Pandemonium was taking over the area, but the operators only assured the callers that everything was under control. She crossed the bullpen to the office of the head of communications, and barged into his office.
"Still the same thing," he said, looking up at her. "It matches what Dauntless gave us. It's not an Endbringer, and we can't even be certain that anyone has died at all. Reports are very inconsistent, but so far so good. I just didn't expect it to be so... big." Police lines were jammed up the same way, as people called to report the gleaming white dragon that crouched over the party district belching fire and ringed with smoke. And everywhere people were shifting, changing, and madness ruled the streets.
But the night manager at the Ruby Dream had more immediate problems. The dragon was a few blocks away and not heading this direction, so the treachery of Grimes the accountant was still his biggest priority. Making sure that the patrons downstairs didn't find out about the dragon was second priority, panicking people stopped gambling and started leaving. He wove his threats carefully, masterfully, the precise degrees of pain and cruelty and humiliation that would visit upon Grimes if he didn't tell them what the Undersiders had offered him for the codes. Grimes just held up his napkin, making low strained noises in his throat.
The guard slapped the napkin out of his hands, and then the bag of lozenges. "Nobody's buying it, Grimes!" the guard barked.
"Okay," Grimes said, his face suddenly twisting from desperate innocence to self-satisfied deviousness. "I'll tell you everything, but you guys have to understand one thing."
"That don't sound like Grimes," a guard said.
"They didn't offer me anything," the short squat mustachioed man said. "They just took what they wanted. Hey, gather in here, real close, will ya?" he said. "C'mon, closer, you gotta hear this."
"Yeah?" the manager said, leaning forward.
And that's when a heavy cable below snapped taut between Brutus and Judas's collars, straining for a second before the pillar broke off. And the giant vault dropped straight down, through the floor to crash onto the giant "JACKPOT" sign above the best-rigged slot machines. People had been running since the dogs grew into monsters, but a dozen tons of steel slamming down through the ceiling and into the beeping and flashing machines just motivated them more. The slot machines were smashed to pieces in a shower of sparks, and then darkness wreathed the room, spreading through the doors and reaching for the vault. The metal structure left nothing over it but a thin veneer of floorboards as the support was pulled out underneath, and Grimes grinned manically as he stomped his feet and broke through the floorboards, caving in the floor. Eight guards, a manager and an accountant fell two stories and landed on top of the giant metal surface, ringing it like a gong before the shadows swallowed them and their screams.
"Can you get your rats in there?" Dauntless asked as they burst out of the building across the street.
"No good, they'd be as blind and deaf as us, that stuff even muffles their sense of smell," Wharf Rat said.
"I'm going to turn up the gain on my radar," Armsmaster said. "I'm going in." Wharf Rat had argued to leave Armsmaster behind to guard the tower, but he had been outvoted.
"Me too," Triumph said. His armor had the same lion motif as before, the open mouth framing his face. Most of his face was protected by a clear bulletproof visor that opened enough to let his sonic shout escape then slid closed afterwards. His armor was surprisingly bulky, making the most of his superior strength and his ability to carry the weight. He charged forward, bellowing out blasts the sent debris flying in front of him, the concussive force of it undiminished in the field of darkness that masked the Undersider's movements.
"You're on second line with me," Battery said, catching Assault's arm before he could fling himself forward. He paused, nodded, and stood ready. Miss Militia stretched out a hand and Dauntless caught it, carrying her up to the rooftop to guard from an elevated position so they could keep the Undersiders from taking to the rooftops to escape that way.
Velocity hung back next to Wharf Rat. "If I run in there in the dark, I'll break a leg," he said. "And I'm mostly carrying flashbangs that won't work in there, and containment foam that could get Armsmaster or Triumph as easily as any Undersider."
Wharf Rat nodded. "None of us can help every time."
"Glad to hear that even you understand that," Velocity chuckled. "You're a bit of a showoff."
"Darkness is spreading, it's on the move!" Wharf Rat yelled out. He was surprised by how fast it could move, how much area it could cover. It moved forward fast enough to take Assault and Battery in a second, before they could make a move. It billowed up, covering rooftops and the street, there was no way to tell which way they were going. Wharf Rat closed his eyes, breathed a second. Can't fix this with rats. Can't fix this with punching. Can't fix this with talking. Need a solution, outside the box, different style of thinking. He turned to Velocity. "Get in there, the street is clear so you should be able to run safely. Every time you run into something, hit it with a containment-foam grenade," he said.
Velocity nodded. "Man, I hope that this armor is more impact-resistant than it looks," he said, and dashed into the darkness. The cloud swept over him, and he stood in the darkness, still and silent, hoping that he didn't get blindsided. After a few minutes the darkness receded towards the northeast, and he came out into the open again. He looked around to take it all in. Armsmaster was on the ground, breathing but definitely the worse for wear. Triumph was standing safe and sound in a ring of total wreckage and ruin, the front of the casino basically disintegrated, and he was breathing heavy but healthy. Dauntless was nowhere to be seen, but everyone else was more or less where they had been. Velocity was out of containment-foam grenades, but there was no sign of containment foam on the scene.
Miss Militia was on the roof, looking through the scope of her sniper rifle. "They're heading to the club district," she reported. "Straight for the dragon."
"And the hallucinogens from Newter, and the smoke and fire, and the crowds of people tripping their balls off, plus whatever escape routes Labyrinth built into the place," Triumph added, clearly pissed off.
"They've got at least a dozen containment-foam grenades stuck to each dog," Velocity said. "They're gonna be really ungainly and really easy to catch. We just gotta keep up and keep our eyes open."
But it didn't work out that easily. They found the containment foam lying on the street with several hundred pounds of steaming meat that was breaking down even as they watched. There was a lot of fabric stuck to it as well, pieces of costumes and two entire leather jackets. But no sign of the money, and no sign of the Undersiders. Dauntless looked over at Wharf Rat. "Please break your promise and track these guys," he said, his eyes pleading.
That look was a knife in Danny's gut, twisting. "I promised," he said. "People lived because I promised.."
"Several people died today because of your promise," Miss Militia said.
"And more after that," Battery added. "Just track them. Find them. They'll go to the Birdcage. Nobody will even know you broke your word."
"I can't," Danny said weakly.
"You were able to go after Purity, and you made a promise then too."
"I promised not to go after Kayden Anders, as Kayden Anders. She came to me as Purity, that's not nearly the same thing. I promised Tattletale, as Tattletale, that I wouldn't go after them. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I did promise."
"You always find the loopholes to let them off the hook," Armsmaster sighed. "You're an idiot. No, a fucking idiot. Tattletale played you. She figured you out and she got herself a lifelong immunity from the most effective hero in the city, and all it cost her was one phone call to tell you where to find the only two villains in the city more pathetic than ber and Leet. She played you, and you let her play you, and you're still letting her play you."
"But we can do so much more good by talking to people, we can help more people if we just..." Danny trailed off, sighed. "Fuck it. Fine. You wanna do this? Call the BBPD. Get a goddamned K9 unit over here. They'll track the Undersiders. Those dogs of theirs stink for hours after they've shed their skin, it'll be easy to follow. I'm not breaking my promise." He turned and stormed away, not even sure which direction he was going. The VTOL was nowhere nearby, he had no cab fare, and the tunnel buggy was back at the Tower. But he needed to blow off a lot of steam before he could look these people in the eyes again.
At least he could know that Faultline and her people were leaving. Just one faction left.
Danny walked and thought, and a swarm or rats built up alongside him. The roads were nearly empty, he had the night to himself. He chose a winding path back to the Tower, while in the distance he could still hear the wail of sirens as various emergency vehicles responded to the various incidents. And every rat that came within two hundred yards of him was pulled in his direction, until he walked through a virtual sea of the small lithe bodies, an ankle-deep carpet of fur and teeth that followed him from one side of the street to the other. It seemed to help him clear his mind to be surrounded by them like that. There were no squeaks or chitters, just the near-silent rustle of bodies moving in tandem and tiny feet padding along the asphalt. The city was never really dark, shadows only took hold in tight alleys away from streetlamps. And in this part of the city, as he walked through the Boardwalk district, even the alleys tended to have lights for safety or security. The sky was low and soupy, humidity from off the ocean gathered in low-lying clouds that threw back the city's light and looked more like a poorly-maintained ceiling than any kind of actual sky or open space. On some nights, even the empty streets of Brockton were claustrophobic and restless.
His phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket. He saw the caller ID, declined the call. A minute later a text came to his phone. "K9 followed to Faultline's distraction. ppl hallucinating, smoke everywhere. Lost trail."
He tucked the phone back into his pocket and kept walking. He knew that tonight's screwups were only his fault. Tattletale was abusing the promise he made, but he had made it of his own free will and he did not regret it, even now. Squealer's doombuggy could have killed hundreds in their joyride, and the Protectorate had not been close enough to help, or fast enough to help. The fact that he could not figure out a way to stop the Merchants without making that promise to Tattletale, that was on him. The fact that he could not figure out how to take down the Undersiders without breaking his promise, that was on him. He did not think he was wrong for refusing to break his word, but he did think he was wrong for letting it limit him so much. He just needed to think outside the box, think in unexpected ways. Tattletale was a thinker, but she wasn't the Simurgh, there would be ways to pull one over on her. The same question from earlier in the night: how do you set a trap for Tattletale? Obviously the answer was not to go to the scene where she would be pulling a heist and then trying to fight her and her team there in the street.
"Wharf Rat!" called a voice from ahead of him, and he brought himself back to the here and now. The front doors of the tower were always guarded by two soldiers from the PRT, but normally they didn't speak. The male soldier saw he had the hero's attention and called out again, "We've got word from the Director, and you're to go straight to her office."
"Oh, is that what my orders are?" Danny said, holding the guard's gaze with a hard look of his own.
When the elevator opened on the top floor, Danny Hebert walked out in a flood of small lithe bodies covered in sleek fur and chisel-like teeth. It was the scene from The Shining, played out with rats instead of blood. He stepped through them without an issue and they swarmed all around him, in front and behind. The door to the Director's office opened and he walked in, his minions streaming in along with him, climbing furniture and shelves, swirling around the empty corners, piling up along the side of his legs as he stood at parade rest in front of her desk. "I hear you wanted to speak to me," he said.
"You're feeling dramatic," the director sniffed, and he suddenly felt self-conscious about the display he was making. "You are on a roll, Wharf Rat. I call to dress you down for abandoning a mission and letting villains escape, and you use your parahuman powers to threaten me before I've even said a word. You're not just racking up demerits in the Protectorate, you're also taking steps to get yourself confined to Baumann."
"I've done nothing to merit being sent to the Birdcage," he said. "You could try it, but you'd overreach yourself and lose your own position," he pointed out. He knew she was bluffing, but if he said outright that she was bluffing then the conversation would break down into a standoff of her pride against his stubbornness. But he knew that pointing out the limits of her authority and the very real chance that she would lose her post, that would make her think instead of just reacting.
"They're not going to take the word of one cape with a checkered past against a Director of the PRT," she said, her voice cold and her eyes sharp.
He sat down across from her, as rats swarmed across her desk and brushed against her ankles, invading her personal space. "Why is that, Director?" he said. "Because you spent so many years earning this position? Because you proved yourself trustworthy beyond reproach in your service to the PRT? Because you've had such remarkable results and successes in this position?" he kept outright mockery out of his voice, but he let enough skepticism in that she could tell what his assessment was of each of those questions. They both knew that she had been promoted way past her capacity as a bribe to keep her hushed about the PRT's mishandling of the Nilbog case. And they both knew that her years in this job had been unremarkable and involved less publicity and arrests than his short career.
"Because you, just like every parahuman," she hissed, stressing the prefix that separated him from humanity, "are damaged people. It's not just this that makes you a monster," she said, sweeping her hand across the curtain of rats that was squirming all along her bookshelves. "It's the fact that you were broken. You were pushed past your limits and instead of harmlessly retiring to an asylum for treatment, you got the power to kill people hundreds at a time. Do you know how many of your coworkers have chronic nightmares? Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder? Aggression issues, highly developed defense mechanisms, personality disorders? That's why you and all your kind need to be restrained and restricted, so that sane humans can direct your lethal powers instead of just letting you work out your personal traumas on the world at large."
He cocked his head to the side. "But Director, not everyone can have a trigger event," he said.
The rats went still, and the words rang in the room, falling on silence. He held her eyes, she held his. He could see her processing it: she had no capacity to become a parahuman, otherwise she would have powers of her own. Because she had certainly had the opportunity when Nilbog's minions chased her through several miles of living nightmares and grotesque monsters, killed and devoured her squadmates, then caught her, tortured her, and ate half the meat off of her legs and half of her abdomen before she was rescued. She was permanently crippled, nearly died, stranded alone with the monsters, and to this day she had medical complications that impeded her every day. If the parahumans should not be given authority because they were broken and traumatized, she was just as broken, just as traumatized. By her own words, by her own reasoning, she should lose her job immediately.
He held her gaze, and she held his. Then she spoke, "So I didn't trigger, didn't gain any powers like you did. That proves nothing."
"True," he said easily. "But it must have been so disappointing. Having gone through that, and coming though it without powers. And here we are, the Protectorate, the Wards. A dozen people who went through trauma less than yours, and gained vast power doing it. Super speed, invulnerability, genius inventions, power to change the world. We didn't pay anything you didn't pay or earn anything you didn't earn, but here we are with fame and acclaim and power. And here you are, a cripple."
She barked a laugh. "Are you trying to insinuate that I'm jealous of you freaks? That I wish I was a cape too?"
"Absolutely not," he said. "You just wish that we weren't capes either. Your feelings are too far from hope or creativity for you to want what we've got, you just want to destroy what we've got. And maybe I can't prove it, but I can use that as the heading if I were to file a vote of no confidence."
"It'll never work," she vowed.
"A vote of no-confidence can be used to call for a full audit of policy decisions and internal memoranda," Wharf Rat pointed out, leaning back. "A review from the Chief Director. Ma'am, your assistant director was the only other survivor from the Nilbog massacre, and to any auditor his appointment will look like nepotism. A supervillain infiltrated the PRT, because you recruited and promoted a man who went to prison for killing his superior officer for your own personal feelings. And then you embarked on a campaign of harassment against the hero that brought him to justice. Director, do you know what a policy audit would look like to someone in your position?"
"You've been sowing insurrection among the other Protectorate members since you arrived," she pointed out.
"The difference between treason and revolution is what the history books have to say," the Wharf Rat pointed out. "But now we're just dancing. You called me up here to talk about me abandoning the mission today."
She eagerly seized on this subject instead. "Yes, there are penalties for dereliction of duty and desertion. Docking pay, restricted movements, duty shifts, and more."
He nodded. "Okay."
"Okay?" she echoed.
"Okay. I'll sign off on a written reprimand for my file. I'll agree to whatever terms of punishment you think are appropriate," he said. "I will cooperate fully in this matter in which I am self-admittedly at fault. And any punishment you assign will be documented in my file and yours. I am certain that you will assign me a fair and equitable punishment in proportion to what you normally assign to my teammates in similar circumstances." He held her eyes through this, his voice holding just a little too much sincerity.
And there was the trap. He was giving her the opportunity to take out her frustrations, but it would come up during an audit. Or she could swallow her indignation and let him off with the usual slap on the wrist. If she threw the book at him, she would be on record as a bully. If she knuckled under, then she and he both walked away knowing that she had given ground. Even if she used some sneaky underhanded methods to get her vindictive revenge, they would both know who had lost this staredown.
"I'll decide later," she snarled. "Now get out of my office and take your filth with you."
"This is a bit out of the way," Kid Win pointed out.
Danny walked along, shooting a look at the looming clouds overhead. They looked like rain, and soon. Maybe not the best day to be walking about like this. "I just have an errand to run, it won't take any time at all."
"Again, Dad?" Taylor asked, frowning slightly.
"I'm almost done, baby," he said. "It's kind of hard to communicate, what with all the paranoia and countermeasures."
Kid Win, Chris, looked between the father and daughter. "Um, what's up?"
"I'm not allowed to talk to any more villains with the intention of dissuading them from their criminal lifestyles," Danny said. "I'm supposed to fight them, not talk them out of being bad guys or trying to recruit them. But maybe messages get picked up and dropped off by completely anonymous rodents."
Chris shot him a skeptical look. "Dude, I'm not sure I can condone that. Who is it that you're conspicuously not talking to?"
"Trainwreck," Danny said.
Chris considered that. He thought about how Browbeat, the strongest and toughest of the Wards, had been one-shotted by Trainwreck, and Aegis had been beaten down just as easily. How Trainwreck had ignored Kid Win's best attacks during the arrest of Coil and that street battle with the Travelers. The villain tinker did ugly and inelegant work, but it was enormously powerful. "I really would like to see Trainwreck off the streets," Chris said. "Normally that means sending them to jail. But honestly anything that keeps him from hurting anyone is probably okay."
"Turns out that Trainwreck is actually badly deformed," Danny said. "Not much more than a torso. But Panacea owes me some favors, and if he can get real arms and real legs, he's promised to walk the path of the righteous. So I'm going to check in and make sure the work got done."
Taylor shrugged. "It's always something with him," she said to Chris. "He's been doing this double-life thing too long, it's like he's forgotten how to do stuff without a hidden agenda."
"Right," Chris said. "Speaking of that, I heard a rumor that you threatened to get Piggot fired from her job, Mister Hebert."
"I started that rumor because it's true," Danny said. "Ah, there we go. Okay, Trainwreck is taken care of, no more villainy for him. But he... oh. Oh no. Now he's devoting his attention to finding out where he came from, because he's got amnesia and no idea what his real name is."
Chris nearly missed a step. "Whoa, the dude has no limbs, no identity and no memory? No wonder he's always such a grouch, I think I'd wreck a lot of stuff if it were me too."
Taylor shot her dad a sharp look. "Okay, Dad, what's going on with that?"
He made an unhappy sound through his throat. "Enngh. So, Faultline's crew. You know how most of them are either deformed or insane, right?"
"Yeah, sure."
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "They all also have amnesia. And a tattoo or brand on their bodies, a symbol. I'll have to call Panacea later and ask her if Trainwreck has that symbol on his body. He may be just like the Faultline team. Anyway, this really isn't what we came out to talk about today, is it?"
Chris and Taylor traded a glance before the boy spoke. "Well, it's just that we heard you may call for a vote of no confidence. And the Wards, all seven of us, we talked about it and you'd have our votes against her."
Danny was taken aback. "Well, that's great to hear. But in this context, a vote of no confidence isn't actually a vote per se."
"Oh," he said. "Well, still, you'd have us backing you, one way or the other. With recent events, it would honestly explain a lot if Director Piggot was secretly a supervillain like Coil. Like, it would explain why her number-one right-hand man was actually Coil."
Danny opened the door to Fugly Bob's, and waved the two teens inside. "That may actually bear some investigation," he said. There was a delay in the conversation as they ordered at the front counter, paid and then took a seat to wait for their orders. Danny grabbed some napkins and ketchup while Taylor filled his cup and hers with soda, Chris taking a little of every flavor from the fountain and mixing them together. They sat, he checked their ticket, and he relaxed into the booth. Rats in his vicinity were eating well and finding good hiding places, profiting from his intelligence like he did from their numbers.
"So, it's like this," Chris said, leaning forward. "You're kinda the guy that tells other people how to do their jobs. The armchair quarterback. You thought that tinkers like Armsmaster and me should stay out of the field and invent weapons and stuff for our teammates. You think we should do response calls instead of patrols. You think we should stop answering to Piggot. And frankly you've rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Word is that you're kind of the outsider on your own team. But the other thing is that you're not wrong very much," he said, pausing to catch his breath. "So maybe you can tell me what I'm doing wrong," he finished. "Am I just a bad tinker? Or is something wrong? Is my power screwed up, or is it fine and I'm screwed up?"
Danny took a long drink. "Okay, that's pretty heavy, and very loaded. Tell me about your problems."
Taylor got up to go get the burgers when she saw their number come up on the lightboard. Chris leaned forward onto his elbows. "Look, I'm bad at math. No amount of tutoring helps with it, I've got a condition called dyscalculia. You can think of it like it's dyslexia for numbers. It's not really but that gets you started to understand. So, I have a lot of trouble with designs and plans. I have to measure everything a dozen times, I have to re-check my figures a dozen times. And that sort of thing gets in the way of real inspiration. I can't seem to get out of my own way. My best success so far is the Alternator Cannon, but I just bashed it together over a long weekend, scrapping parts from my other work."
Danny considered this, thinking quietly for a minute. "With your math issues, I see two possibilities. Either you try to turn the negative into the positive by having the most scrupulously planned out designs, or you just chase your intuition. The first option, you double-check everything, triple-check it, nontuple-check it, until you've got everything perfect. Other tinkers may afford to get lazy, but you'd have your condition to make sure that you never, ever take anything for granted. The second option, you just do more stuff like the Alternator Cannon, and just go with your inspirations and worry about the numbers after the fact. I'm not a hundred percent on how these things work, but it may be possible that your tinker talents don't have dyscalculia, and if you just run with your instincts you won't have any handicap at all. I recommend that you give both methods a try and see what happens. Also, I understand that most tinkers have some sort of specialty?"
"Yeah. I either don't have one," Chris said ruefully, "or my special talent is to be able to do some small amount of tinker work despite having a major learning disability."
"I don't actually believe that," Danny said, chuckling, "and I really don't think you- you... oh no."
The sirens rose and fell in a long, piercing warble. They were loud enough to wake the dead, blaring from the top of every traffic signal in the city. Street lights switched on and began strobing in sequence, guiding citizens towards the nearest safe shelter. The three heroes sat frozen, paralyzed with the enormity of that those sirens meant. Their cell phones all went off, chiming with a single text message that read "ENDBRINGER".
Danny slid out of the booth, reaching for Taylor's hand. "We've got to run," he said. It was several blocks back to the Tower, and all road traffic was currently cut off. People poured out of houses and businesses, running along with the streetlights towards their shelter. And overhead, thunder cracked across the sky loud enough to drown out the sirens for a minute, and then the rain started coming down. Everyone outside was immediately soaked through with hot, humid water that fogged the air and felt like a fever on the skin. Danny's head was spinning, thinking fast about everything that this was going to mean. Everyone knew about Endbringers, and children drilled on how to respond to attacks. Every few months when there was an attack, the news would rebroadcast their advice on how to properly evacuate and shelter down in case of an Endbringer attack. And now it was happening in Brockton Bay. He had to remember those bomb drills from his childhood, the Cold War had everyone convinced that the bombs could drop any day at any time, and the dread that had come with that. When the capes began to appear, nations stopped building nuclear weapons, but when the Endbringers appeared it was like the Cold War would never end.
By the time they reached the end of the street they were splashing through ankle-high water, the storm drains couldn't keep up with the torrential rains despite his work keeping them clear and clean. He began gathering rats, without making it obvious who they were following, moving them through alleys and culverts where he could. Clearly it was Leviathan on his way, he was always preceded by flooding rains. And tidal waves, Danny figured those were going to be the first big danger. Brockton Bay was in no way built to withstand a tidal wave.
The rushed through the crowds, some running one way and some the other as the roads divided them towards two different shelters flanking the Protectorate Tower. The guards at the front door were turning people away, shoving them to the left and right towards the shelters, repeating over and over "This tower is not a shelter, please head for the designated shelters indicated by the lights, this tower is not a shelter, please..." as they tried to keep the way clear.
Danny came at them at a run, tugging a bandanna from his pocket to tie around the bottom half of his face. Taylor tucked her head so her hair hid her face, and Kid Win pulled his hoodie up and pulled it down over his face as much as possible. The guards realized that Wharf Rat was on his way when the street was suddenly swarming with rodents, wet fur everywhere. They opened the door for the three masked figures, then went back to shoving onlookers back and away. Thousands of rats flowed into the lobby of the tower, spreading out to observe in every direction, climbing for good vantage points, while the three of them ran for the elevators.
"We've got five minutes, tops, until the rest of the Protectorate shows up," Danny said. "Costumes, and quick!"
Taylor pushed the buttons for the Ward floor and swiped her hand over the reader, then Danny did the same for the Protectorate level. And then Kid Win handed him the burger he had rescued from the restaurant during the evacuation. "Here dude," the teenage boy said, still holding the damp bag that held the other two burgers and what was left of their fries. "You're gonna be hungry by the end of this."
Danny saw them off, and hoped that everything would be okay. Taylor was a teenager, and she didn't have any powers. And what's more, her armor was geared towards aquatic situations, and if Leviathan was about then going in the water was a deathtrap. He shoved those thoughts away, knowing that if he stopped to consider then he would just grab his daughter and take her to a shelter and damned be the consequences. Piggot would kick him out of the Protectorate if he denied an Endbringer defense and hid away instead. She would take her revenge slow, and nobody would challenge her or try to stop her. But, he considered, he just worked with rats. Just rats, and those were no good against Leviathan. And Taylor had less than that, she had some fake powers that only worked in the most dangerous area where she would die instantly. What could they do to help, really?
He stepped off the elevator, and the rest of the Protectorate East-North-East was pulling on their own costumes. Triumph tossed his costume at him as he came through the door without a word, and Armsmaster was nowhere to be seen. Danny started stripping out of his wet civilian clothes and pulling on the cargo pants without a moment of modesty for the women in the room. He whisked the white mice into their cage and had them lock it tight behind them, today was not a white mice sort of day. He tugged on his mask in the elevator and was slipping his jacket on as he stepped out into the crowd.
