"No Benthic, no Flechette, no Mouse Protector," Trainwreck reported. "Just one Noelle, another Crawler-type one by the way, a tied-up Ward named Browbeat, about a hundred clones of him who by the way were pretty tough to beat, and a cargo hold full of Genesis-clones who tried to kill us with no-shit Godzillas."
"Any trouble?" Danny said, leaning against the railing of the shrimping vessel.
"Honestly? Yeah. It was a real bitch. Parian and Leet were flying loops around the ship, with her threads and his grappling hook, pulling people overboard. Uber started using judo-throws to use their strength against them, and Circus set a fire loose in the cargo hold to get rid of the Genesis-clones. Uber got beat up a lot, every time he got distracted he got pounded by bad guys that can throw cars, but Panacea kept healing him and sending him back in. Oni Lee cut up the leader and disintegrated him. I'm going to need new armor, that old stuff just got pounded to shit. So bad that Parian used her threads to tie a bunch of the Browbeats to it and we threw it overboard, so they'd drown faster. Your girl was right, we made it without casualties. But dammit, I'd have liked to not come so damn close so damn many times." Trainwreck shook his head, the ponytail flopping around his shoulders.
"Thanks for sticking with me," Danny said. "You know we probably saved the world today."
"Yeah, and I know we'll never get what's owed us," Trainwreck said. "For the work we've done, we should all be pampered with mansions and margaritas and Playboy models the rest of our lives. Instead, I may be able to use the story to get some drinks from time to time."
"Is that a problem?" Danny asked, turning to look at the twenty-something tinker.
"Shit no. If I didn't already know that the world was full of dumb assholes I'd be all disappointed, but this is exactly what I always figured would happen." He stared out at the water for a minute. "We're going after Cauldron, aren't we?"
"We are."
"The guys that took away my life, my memory, any family I might have had, my arms and legs, and left me the ability to turn scrap metal into a body made out of scrap metal? Near as I can see, you're the only one going after them. So, just think of me as your other Oni Lee. You say what you need, I'm on it."
"Thanks. It means a lot to me. I think I'll be keeping this team together, if they'll have me."
Trainwreck nodded. "That Parian girl adores you. She's quiet when you're around, but as soon as you're out of the room she talks about you like you're a messiah. Any team you start, she'll be on it."
Danny winced. "That's probably not good, honestly. I think she's just transferred her attachment to authority to me, instead of her family or professors. That's not really what I was trying for there. What about Circus?"
"What about Circus?" the tinker repeated, and shrugged. "I've worked with her as much as anyone else. When one of us got hired, the other one usually did too. We were never officially partners, but we've got time in the field together. And I'm honestly not sure how crazy the bitch really is, or how much of that is an act. I don't know what she thinks or why she does what she does. But she's not acting like she usually does when she's about to walk away, she's acting like she does when she's on a long-term assignment. So, make of that what you will."
"Thanks," Danny said, turning in place to lean backwards against the railing. "I can talk to Uber and Leet myself, and Panacea."
Trainwreck nodded, and pulled a rag out of his back pocket to wipe his hands clean. "You do that. Try to keep them all, if you can. It's good to have a healer on the team, a real healer. Do you know how many teams have a healer they can put out in the field? I think it's none. If there is one, I've never heard of it."
"The Three Blasphemies," Danny reminded him.
"Oh, yeah. Shit. Okay, so now there's two: us, and a Class-S threat that makes entire nations nervous. As for those two nerds, try to get them to stay. It is really, really nice to start working with another tinker, and that Uber guy is useful in a hundred ways I didn't expect him to be. And especially keep the kid. She's probably the most powerful of us all."
"Not gonna be a problem," Danny said. "She predicted that she and I would be working as on a team of heroes outside the Protectorate."
Trainwreck tucked the rag back away. "Well, that makes it easy. Look, we've got her tucked away up at the helm where she won't see too much of the blood and guts."
Danny knocked on the door before he walked in. Dinah was sitting in the captain's chair, her feet kicking in the air. He noticed for the first time that her socks were mismatched, she had likely gotten dressed in a hurry when she was rushed off to the emergency shelters. "Hey, Gambler," he said. "Heck of a day."
"Yeah," she said, staring at the instrument panel ahead of her. "Hey, I've got something to talk to you about. It's kind of heavy, and I'm not sure I should bring it up yet. Maybe I should wait until we've taken care of the last of the Noelle monsters."
"Two Class-S threats simultaneously, deciphering the mystery of Cauldron, building a new team, my daughter's missing, we're dealing with the PRT hanging us out to dry... c'mon, hit me with whatever it is, you know I thrive under pressure."
"The end of the world."
Danny dropped into the seat next to her. "Okay, my fault for asking."
"No, like actually. C'mon, if you've got precognition powers like mine, it's only a couple weeks until you look ahead to see the end of the world. Now, the numbers fiddle about a bit back and forth, but generally it showed a ten percent chance it would happen three hundred years from now. And a one-third chance that it would happen thirty years from now. And a smidge over fifty percent that it would happen in the next five years. Today, those numbers shifted to one-third chance each. That's the biggest shift I've seen in those odds. Something we did today decreased the odds of the world dying in the next five years by twenty percent, and increased the odds of it being three centuries by twenty percent. I think that if we, you or I or any of the others, ever starts to wonder if we should do what we do, I think that's what we need to remember. There's a twenty percent chance we set the end of the world back three centuries."
"Armageddon," Danny said, rolling the word in his mouth. "The Apocalypse. Ragnarok. The Rapture, the End of Days, The Big One, Revelations, Extinction-Level Event, the Eschaton."
"What's that last one?"
"I think it's Latin or Greek, just means the same as the rest of those."
"It sounds pretty. Easier to talk about."
"Okay," he said, and he found a small smile for her. "I'm glad you shared this with me. We can go through some questions about it later, if you like. I want to make sure I'm asking all the smartest questions, after all. Wouldn't want to make things worse by accident."
"Fifty percent, almost exactly," she said.
"Well now," he said, cupping his chin in his hand. "That's kind of serious all by itself. Okay, that just reinforces the need to be patient, careful, and smart about this. C'mon, let's get off this boat and back to the city, there's people scared and suffering and in danger the longer we leave those monsters in the city."
"Well, the good news is we found your daughter, and Flechette, and they had already killed the other Noelle that was headed South, and we found a freezer full of ice cream that was melting so we ate that before it could go bad," Assault said.
"And the bad news?"
"We didn't save you any ice cream," the hero said, mustering a weak, tired smile.
"You go find your daughter, boss," Uber said. "We'll deal with this ice cream situation."
"No marks on the face," Danny said, mock sternly. Assault's expression showed that he wasn't fully certain that Uber and Danny were kidding.
An elevator ride later and a short wait, and he caught Taylor coming out of her room into the Wards' version of the Hub, her hair wrapped up in a towel and wearing only shorts and a tank top. "Hey dad," she said. "Sorry, I needed to get a shower, that was almost twenty-four hours in my armor. I've got my undersuit in the wash right now, but in the end I may just need to burn it." She stepped in close to give him a hug, and he returned it fiercely. And he could feel the reluctance in her arms. Hugs don't lie, they are some of the most sincere gestures that humans have, and there was no way to hide her misgivings and conflicted feelings.
He pulled back, and pushed a smile. "I got lucky, I lost my armor early on and never got it back. So, I understand you guys killed one of those Noelle things."
"Yeah, they regenerate pretty hard but if you destroy the body they stay destroyed. So I drove the bus, and Flechette hung out the windshield and used her power on the grille. The monster was entirely obliterated, or maybe just trapped at the molecular level inside that bus. It was kind of like that I-beam you used on Leviathan, only bigger and nastier."
"That's my girl," he grinned. "And you didn't even need to vaporize three floors of the Tower to do it. Look, there's one Noelle back, and with that there's the potential that it's going to find some way to duplicate itself again, and even if it doesn't there's thousands of evil parahumans loose in the city. We're gonna be really busy if we want to get people out of those shelters before the supplies run out. They're not meant to hold people more than twenty-four hours, but if we let people out now they'll just get slaughtered in the streets."
"Yeah, I was thinking about that," Taylor said, slumping onto a couch. "Dad, maybe we need to concentrate on evacuating the survivors and building a wall around the city like they did in Ellisburg. It may be easier to get the survivors out of the city than to get the monsters off the streets."
He was already shaking his head. "This is not the monster's city, this is a human city. It doesn't belong to Noelle or her spawn, and we shouldn't even think of giving it to them. And if we have to do it ourselves because the PRT won't help us or the Protectorate won't send reinforcements, then that's their own fault and our own credit."
She sighed. "I've got a spare undersuit, and I can be back in the armor in fifteen minutes. If you're going to fight them and kill them I'm on your side today. But I want it noted that I'd rather be holding a defensive perimeter while we airlift the people to safety."
"I'm not sure I should ask you to do this," he said. "Your armor is good and strong, the weapons are superb, but you don't actually have powers. You can probably just sit here in the tower, help Armsmaster and Kid Win get the power back on and the force-field generator back up and running. Honestly, I'd feel better if I could know that you're safe for the first time since this started."
"And I'd feel better if you were staying behind," she countered. "So neither of us gets what we want. C'mon, this doesn't work if we start holding back now."
"All right," he sighed. "I've got the mobile console now, so I can coordinate our response from the field. You'll still be hearing me in your comms." He stood up and gave her a smile, but did not offer another hug and neither did she.
Fuck, he thought to himself. He had a sinking feeling that his family was finally falling apart. It had been fine when his wife died, and when his daughter was being tormented. It had been fine when he started as a vigilante, and then as a hero. It had even been fine when they both joined as full-time heroes and worked together. But when Taylor watched him kill Jack Slash, things had changed in a way they never changed before. And he was slowly filling up with dread that this rift may not be the kind that heals with time.
He went to the Protectorate Hub and got his own shower, five minutes with low pressure and no heat, and it was sheer heaven. He changed clothes, stripping out of the armor's undersuit and replacing it with cargo shorts and his athletic-gear top, the outfit from his early outings as Wharf Rat. He tucked a couple bandannas in his pockets, and walked away. He considered it his favorite crime-fighting clothing: the armor had never worked out well for him and the trenchcoat was too warm for this weather. And then he grabbed a few sandwiches from the cafeteria and made his way to the parking lot.
"Are you sure this is okay?" Parian was asking, watching as the construction came together. "Those people didn't ask to have their cars cannibalized."
"Insurance will cover the damages," Trainwreck assured her. "Collateral damage from a Class-S attack is exempt from the Act of God clause. The insurance companies bundle their losses and bill the PRT, which keeps a fund set up specifically for these situations." He grunted as he crammed a bundle of exhaust pipes through a hole in the chassis and started sealing it up with bondo and duct tape.
"The resemblance to Squealer's work is amazing," Leet drawled dryly.
The long-haired tinker scoffed. "Look, Squealer had a knack for vehicles and she screwed them up by being herself. My knack is that I can do superscience faster, and cheaper, than anyone else. Sure, it doesn't last long, and it looks crude as hell, but even Squealer couldn't get you guys an all-terrain superscience battletank in just a few hours."
Panacea tapped Danny on the shoulder. "You okay? Any aches and pains to heal up?"
"Anything you can do about exhaustion or gnawing anxiety?" he quipped.
"The exhaustion, yes, that's just some fatigue toxins and some hormones. And any emotional issues you've got, well... I'm a doctor, not a psychologist."
Danny winced. "Is that going to be a thing? Star Trek quotes?"
Panacea grinned. "Wait and see. There you go, that should feel like you just had a good night's sleep. And, um, I think I've got an idea how I can help you today. Can you call some rats over here?"
He quirked an eyebrow to show his curiosity and confusion, but a dozen rats came trotting over from the shadows of the loading dock. One nearly got squashed wandering too close to Trainwreck's construction project, a counterbalance dropped as he heaved the thing up onto its new tires. They gathered in front of Panacea, in three rows of four, sitting up on hind legs. She picked one up, cradled it a bit, turned it this way and that. "Okay, I think I've got it," she said. "Okay, send him away, a block away, near the edge of your range."
He shrugged, and the rat climbed down her pant leg and then bounded away, heading across the empty street and across the parking lots across the street. And his range opened up, more rats coming into his perception. "Whoa," he breathed.
"I take it that it worked?" Amy said, smiling as if pleased with herself.
"It worked, that's amazing," he said. "I've been using some rats to delegate for others for a while now, smarter ones giving instructions when I'm not around, but this is a whole other thing. This is amazing, it extends my reach dramatically. Can you do more?"
She squatted down, and petted each of the rats in turn, for just a few seconds each. He could feel something shift in them, but he couldn't entirely put a name to it. They didn't seem any different to outside appearances. He tested them, sending them out, a wide swath of them chained end-to-end could reach nearly twenty blocks away, a huge jump from his previous limitations.
"This changes so much," he said. "I may be able to search the entire city at once like this. This is amazing, it's like they get my signal from my power and then they repeat it back out, like the way that Shatterbird resonates frequencies to boost her range."
Leet overheard and leaned their way to interject. "Except that unlike her, your powers aren't getting shut off by my machine."
"Exactly. So, all the sudden it looks like it might be really possible to find all the clones in the city and get rid of them," Danny grinned.
"Good to hear," Trainwreck said over his shoulder. "We need to be damn fast if we're going to have a city when this is over."
Oni Lee nodded, and even Circus seemed surprised by this expression from him. Panacea bit her lip. "Times like this I wish most that I could work on brains."
Danny nodded. "I get it. And I wish you could too. But maybe it's best if we don't rush it, let him come around on his own."
"I guess," she mused.
Uber set down his wrench and stretched his back out. "So, are any of the quote-unquote official heroes going to be helping with this, or are they all just sitting it out?"
"Some of the Wards, and Dauntless is helping," Danny sighed. "The four that got captured are not ready to go anywhere near this sort of trouble right now, Armsmaster is busy in his workshop, and Velocity says he's just a liability in the field. And I think it's my fault for putting that idea in his head."
"He actually is though," Leet said. "C'mon, anything tougher than a skirmish with a street-level villain, he's a dead man. Odds are that you're the one who's kept him alive as long as this."
"I can't imagine the kind of couple's counseling that Assault and Battery are going to need," Uber said, shaking his head, then he picked up a socket wrench and went back to tightening bolts for Trainwreck.
"Yeah, can you imagine if something like that happened with you and Leet?" Trainwreck asked.
"What are you talking about?" Uber asked, his forehead creased with incomprehension.
"It- you- uh, never mind," Trainwreck said, turning back to his work.
A half hour later the tank was finished, and the squad got ready to roll out. Dauntless met the rest of the team down on the pavement, with Aegis and Clockblocker and Benthic. Danny climbed to the top of the tank to address the gathered crowd. "Okay, we're going to be busy out there. Lots to do, unfortunately, and not a lot of time to do it. We're going to stay coordinated, and we're going to stay in communication. There's no Shatterbirds anymore, so we will keep our comms this time. I'm going to have all of you move straight from target to target. Each of you have certain strengths and the enemy has certain weaknesses, so I will be pairing you against your enemies based on that. That means, that you're likely to be seeing the same kind of enemies over and over again. Don't get complacent or take things for granted, these guys can be full of surprises and sometimes their powers aren't what you think they are. Got it? Now, the first few blocks are gonna go quick because I've already killed most of the mutants in that area. Everyone, stay safe and stay alert, because if you get hurt I need to get Dauntless or Aegis to carry you to Panacea, and that's three people out of the fight because of one mistake, okay?" He pitched his voice on that last word, and the assembled heroes and rogues nodded and murmured affirmatively. "Good deal. I'm in the tank with the console, Gambler and Leet are with me, Trainwreck driving. Uber, as awesome as it was watching you with a sniper rifle, we don't need to pin down sight lines or work containment today, so you're a mobile unit. All right, mounted units mount up, everyone else hit the streets and stay on comms!"
He dropped down through the hatch, while Dinah and Leet and Trainwreck walked up the ramp and took their spots. Leet was up in a bubble-like gunnery nest like the belly-gunner of a World War-era bomber, or as he pointed out the Millennium Falcon had them too. It had two sets of guns and a full swivel, so he could pick off any target he could see, though he was aimed more at aerial or elevated targets. Trainwreck operated the main controls, he buckled in and started the engines. The roar of a dozen diesels kicked in, and the whole machine rattled as the steamworks began to operate. The rattling grew less and less, the pressure sealing the whole mechanism together, and then they were ready to roll out. Dinah strapped in firmly to a jumpseat and whined that Leet had all the fun with his guns, and there was none for her. Danny just sat in his matching seat with rolls of maps and blueprints, with the console bolted to the floor and a dozen terminals clustered on it to operate the whole team, the rats working more quickly and surely than he could do with his hands.
And on the outside, rats leaped into action. The repeater-rats moved carefully through streets and alleys and storm drains, careful not to place themselves in danger lest they break the chain with the other repeaters. And every rat in their range began to move with a purpose. Months of cultivation had bred their numbers up considerably. The rodents bore large litters and reached maturity quickly, the population of rats and mice in the city had multiplied greatly since Danny had come into his powers. But for the most part he kept those rodents out of sight so as not to offend the people. Today, all bets were off. They moved through the empty city like they owned the place, spreading out to form a vast net of eyes and ears and noses, but also clusters of them to attack vulnerable targets. Any of the Shatterbird clones, or the human-looking doppelgangers, all died fairly quickly and without fuss. Fast-moving rodents would take out tendons or arteries and leave the mutants to bleed out on the ground, and move on. Any Genesis clones he found unguarded got the same treatment, a summary execution without fanfare or unnecessary effort. Trickster clones that held still too long were easy targets as well, but Ravagers and Hatchet Faces had thicker skin, tougher tissues and those were jobs for the other heroes and rogues.
The teams started out close together, but as the tank rolled out they separated out. Dauntless took a huge zone, killing out Ravagers one after another and moving to the next, never giving them a chance to fight back before his spear struck them dead with lightning bolts. Sometimes he swooped low to shoot in through windows or arced high to shoot down between buildings, but he moved from one kill to another with rarely more than three minutes between them. Oni Lee had a similar schedule, killing Crawlers with his nano-saws. Danny kept him to short-range teleports, because it was just easier to describe his next destination that way. Parian was the go-to for killing Hatchet Faces, she just stood well out of his range and sent her giant textile minions to grab the cloned villain and slam him against something until he died. Uber and Benthic worked well on Hatchet Face as well, often disabling him with some containment foam and then finishing him off with a nano-saw blade. Circus was the best for taking out Tricksters, wherever he teleported to she seemed to have already thrown a knife in that direction, and more than one appeared out of nowhere surprised to find a knife already in their neck. Panacea was nearly as fast as Oni Lee for killing Crawlers, limited more by her inability to teleport or move particularly fast. And any of them, or all of them, frequently took a turn killing Genesis projections of all types.
Wherever a cluster of Genesis clones was nested, the city nearby would be plagued by nightmarish monsters. Creepy things that climbed on walls and drooled acid, brutish beasts that bludgeoned their way through walls, flying horrors that swooped and circled. They became less of an issue as more and more Genesis clones were killed in their sleep by gnawing rats. But then the mutants began keeping their projections closer to themselves, leaving one or two monsters to guard their own bodies. But that would not stop Dauntless from raining down lightning until the guards were dead, or Circus from casually lobbing a Molotov through a window and controlling the fire to roar through and kill anyone inside before dissipating harmlessly. Clockblocker did particularly well here, freezing their projections kept the Genesis mutants from forming new projections, leaving them entirely helpless. Occasionally there was a situation with a cloned Miss Militia, Triumph, Assault or Battery. Danny was careful to keep those away from the Protectorate heroes. One of the Batterys ran straight for the tank, punching it hard enough to displace the armor plates and release a jet of superheated steam that seared her lungs and cooked half her flesh off. The clone died while the steam forced the plate back into place, the armor intact. Aegis was hard to place, he was vulnerable to Ravager, too slow against Trickster, not dangerous enough against Crawler, and easy pickings for Hatchet Face. Within a half-hour Danny had assigned the boy to ferry duty, hauling Panacea or Uber or Clockblocker to their next targets. He was reasonably superstrong and had a decent flight power, so he could reduce the travel time for his comrades. Or, Danny realized, other cargo.
"Hey, Panacea," he said into the comms. "Can you whip me up some more of these repeater rats? Maybe enough to fill this laundry hamper?" Panacea looked around and saw several dozen rats running her way, balancing a plastic hamper on their backs so that it looked like it was gliding along on a wheeled platform. She took a few minutes and created several dozen repeater rats to relay his signal, and then Aegis dropped in to pick it up and fly off, stopping every block or so to set one rat down. His range extended dramatically again. He estimated he was controlling literally millions of rats at this point.
For the more vulnerable mutants like Shatterbird and Genesis and Oliver's doppelgangers, it was a massacre, a genocide. The culling was so systematic that it became repetitive: snip the Achilles tendon, watch the target fall to the floor, cut the radial artery to disable their arm, cut the throat when it becomes vulnerable, and then move on. And when those areas were clear, the horde of rats began to sweep to the north, the repeaters moving together to keep a continuous chain of communication, the regular rats moving with them to stay in range, and new rats in the new area being added to the horde. Smarter rats were left behind in strategic areas to keep track of intersections, landmarks, or the entrances to the emergency shelters. When the repeater rats swept back south later, he'd be able to learn whatever the surveillance rats had seen. He tried to ignore how many of the shelters they saw were already broken open, emptied out, devoid of survivors. It was a painful amount.
Leet wailed with glee while he held the triggers down, blazing gunfire up into the air and bringing down another Genesis projection. He cackled and reached into his duffel bag full of supplies, tearing open a bag and uncapping a bottle to refresh himself before the next wave appeared.
"Seriously?" Danny asked, casting a judgmental look at the tinker. "Doritos and Mountain Dew? No self-awareness?"
"You live your tropes I'll live mine," Leet shot back. "Okay, Train, we're getting close. It's this storage center here on the left, just slow up and I'll let myself in and be right back in a -"
"My way's faster," Trainwreck said, piloting the rusted contraption through the front gates and bulldozing the guard-arms. "Okay, which unit's yours?"
Leet grumbled as he walked out the hatch, fishing a keyring out of his costume to unlock his unit and reclaim a cache of unused Leetware. Danny continued guiding the team, and Dinah bounced her feet in the air under her too-tall seat. "There's only a seven percent chance that you'll run across the Noelle in the process of sweeping for the regular mutants," she said to Danny.
He looked up, blinked distractedly, and nodded. "Thanks. Sorry, kinda zoned out there. I've got a lot of input and action right now, and honestly it's kind of weird that my brain hasn't exploded from all the overload, but I seem to be doing all right. Okay, if I can't just sweep around and stumble across the Noelle by accident, it'll mean that it's hiding very deliberately, and doing a good job of it. Probably avoiding places that are easy to search with rats. Vaults, skyscrapers, sealed environments, the survival shelters, or a mobile hiding place like the back of a truck or one of the ships in the bay or something. Maybe a tunnel that's been sealed shut, or a hideout that's been boobytrapped, hermetically sealed, turned invisible or something like that. Or for all I know they've got a Trickster that can teleport them through time and they won't reappear for another three weeks. That's... a lot of places to check. And that's places that are specifically picked so that I can't investigate them, which means it needs manpower."
Dinah nodded. "Yeah. Um, it kinda sounds like it's gonna have to wait until people are out, so the people can help you look. Or get a whole bunch of heroes like the Endbringer, and have those guys help look. But if they're not here yet, they're not coming."
"No," Danny agreed. "Dinah, is it possible you could tell me the odds that the monster-clone was telling me the truth about why the Protectorate isn't helping us?"
"Doesn't work like that," she said. "Can I get some of those chips?"
Danny stood up and reached into Leet's duffel bag. "Holy crap there's a dozen bags in here. This is madness, adults don't actually live like this."
A few minutes later Leet came huffing in up the ramp with a handtruck full of boxes. "Here we go. A bucket of lava, a Widow collapsible mass-driver sniper rifle, an infinite supply of bombs-"
"The round kind with the fuse? I love those," Trainwreck said, doing a nasally voice.
"Yo. Up top," Leet said, giving the other tinker a high five. "Way to go for the reference. Okay, yeah. Um, a hard-light deployable console gauntlet that can remote-hack electronics, sabotage weapons, creates a defensive force field and deploys an expendable flying combat drone. It's not real reliable because it crosses over into other inventions I've created before, but it's real versatile. This headset has a detective mode-"
"And a guaranteed lawsuit," Trainwreck observed, pointing at the ears.
"Probably. Um, a HP Materia that will permanently increase your hit points-"
"You can't be entirely serious right now," Danny said, his tone arch.
"Serious as a heart attack you probably won't have with this thing," Leet retorted. "One bottle of a tonic that will give you pyrokinesis until the irreplaceable fuel runs out, so four or five shots. And, one of these," he said, lifting out a large jar that had a small five-pointed star inside of it, bouncing back and forth as it flashed white and yellow and red over and over.
"Is that what I think it is?" Danny asked.
"It'll turn you into the Siberian for about thirty seconds," Leet grinned widely. "An invincibility star. Yeah. There was a lot more stuff in there, but Shatterbird messed most of it up, and this is the stuff that survived. Some of it is stuff I made and we never found the right job to use it on. It's remarkably hard to come up with a thematically-accurate crime that ties video games to real-world profits. Some of it is stuff I made and always intended to sell if I could find a buyer I felt I could trust. But if you make something, and can't use it, and can't throw it away, you put it in storage. So, here we are. Thanks for dropping me by to pick it up."
"No problem," Danny said, while navigating the rats and the heroes through another round of mutant monsters. "But we should get a move on, or we'll fall behind the team."
Leet scrambled back up into his gunner's nest, and took the controls to sweep the sky for flying threats. "What the- okay, whoever took my third-favorite bag of Doritos, I want you to know that I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed."
"Dinah was getting hungry," Danny explained.
"Boss, ain't nobody called Dinah on this job," Trainwreck said, glancing over his shoulder. "That's Gambler, and she's my teammate."
"Thanks Trainwreck," the girl said.
"No sweat."
Danny spoke up into his comms. "Hey, Oni Lee, I know you can sense living things with the new senses you got from the Butcher. Now, I know that Dinah said we weren't going to find the last Noelle during a sweep of the city, but it couldn't hurt to try. Could you let me know if you see any signs of someone hiding? Especially lots of someones hiding together."
The assassin considered it, then nodded solemnly. "Great, and thank you," the Wharf Rat said. "So, is everyone okay out there?"
Benthic spoke up first. "I've see a lot of dead bodies today. Lots of people killed by rats. Necks chewed open. I've seen... hundreds of them today. And every time I couldn't help but remember that you see through those rat's eyes, hear through their ears. All those hundreds of people, you had them killed. And you know what their throats taste like, their blood. You felt your own teeth cutting through them. It's... a lot to take in."
Wharf Rat shuddered. "Yeah, that's pretty gruesome. Do you want to get rotated back to the Tower? You've already done a hell of a lot, nobody could fault you for wanting to take off the rest of this day."
"I just want you to quit it," she said. "Just... I don't know. Just stop."
"I'm taking out almost half of the mutants myself," Danny said, sighing. "If I relegated those to the rest of the team, we'd make half as much progress. We would not be able to clear the city in time to let the survivors out. We're almost two days in, people are going to start losing their minds soon. They might be killing each other."
"They could be eating each other!" Leet said, leaning in towards Gambler with a creepy grin and wriggling fingers. She laughed, and swatted his hands away.
"Lots of people are going to die if I stop, Benthic," he said, careful not to stumble over her name. Even in the armor and the mask, it was hard to address her as anything but his daughter.
She sighed, and nodded. "Okay. I'll butch up, I guess." Her voice had a note of resignation that shot a dart through his chest, it felt like a physical pain. Why was he making her go through this? All at once he couldn't seem to remember.
Dauntless spoke up next. "So, do I understand the plan right? We clear the mutants out off the streets, open the shelters, let people out, and then start a house-by-house search for the last Noelle, and get her before she gets us?"
"Basically," Wharf Rat said. "She's not someplace I could find her remotely. So it's going to take man-hours to search every trailer-truck and walk-in cooler and sealed room in the city. If we try that now, people will starve to death waiting for us to give the all-clear. If we clear everything we can, then give the all-clear, then nobody dies waiting for us, and they can help us find Noelle."
"When they find her, she's going to attack," Dauntless pointed out. "It'll be just as bad as this, but in the middle of the city full of people and not a sewer substation during a lockdown."
"It won't be that bad," Wharf Rat pointed out. "We found out that the young Noelles don't make new clones nearly as fast as the big Lamia did. They can't absorb someone and spit out thousands of clones whenever they want. And if you guys have your VTOL up and running, with Vista contracting space and Assault supercharging the engine, your quick-response team can be in play in five minutes. Not even Lamia can do a lot of damage in five minutes. You take her out, and we're done. Maybe ten or twenty people die. Right now, ten or twenty people are dying right this second because they're locked up underground, and that's going to get a lot worse very soon."
"There's no way that's the only answer," Dauntless muttered.
"Seriously?" Danny blurted angrily. "Do you think I looked at a big list of easy, safe, reliable answers and decided to ignore those and do this instead? This isn't the only answer, but it's far and away the best answer. Now, Dauntless, are you going to help with this process or do you want to go sit in the Tower and suck your thumb while you wait for me to tell you it's okay?"
The silence crackled with anger, he was clearly unused to being spoken to in that way. "Fuck you, Wharf Rat. I'm in. I'll help. We'll save anyone we can. And then I'm going to put the spear down and beat your ass."
"Five bucks on Dauntless," Uber said.
"I'll take that action," Gambler shot back.
"Shit," Uber said. "I'm about to lose my money."
"Next part of our search pattern," Wharf Rat said, cutting in. He paused for responses, then nodded. "Okay, we'll be picking up the pace now. We're swinging west, then south. A wide search pattern, moving quickly. It's going to get worse, because we're going over the ground-zero of the Lamia site. Panacea, we'll be intersecting your path if you want that hit-point boost?"
"I did," she said, rolling her eyes. "And I honestly regret that I'm interested in this. It's just.. ridiculous. Hit points."
"Nothing ridiculous about buffing the white mage," Leet pointed out.
"It's like you're trying not to relate to anyone," the girl said.
Danny listened to them bantering, glad to see a chemistry forming. The team was really starting to gel, and he had some plans forming for them. But he also had a growing misgiving that he shoved down. At least the swirl of second-guesses and self-doubts was gone, he wasn't sure he could deal with that sort of distraction right now. Because he was already keeping secrets from his new team; he had been deliberately steering them around certain areas so they wouldn't see some of the shelters that had been broken open. There were a lot of them.
Some showed where Crawler's viscous saliva had eaten through the doors. Others looked like they'd been opened from the inside, either by a teleporter or a citizen tricked by one of the doppelgangers. At least one had the massive concrete walls shattered like glass, clearly a Shatterbird variation. A few had been rent open by massive claws, which he had to guess came from a Genesis clone. And some were so messed up that he knew it had to be that Ravager clone that could erode nonliving materials. Each of the shelters held anywhere from a couple hundred to several thousand citizens. And he had to fight himself not to start estimating the death toll for this day. And that without even knowing what was happening inside of the sealed shelters. For all he knew, there were only a few hundred survivors left in the city. And it was a hard pill to swallow, after having done so well against Leviathan. He had to hold it together for the time being. He began to regret not wearing a mask today, it was hard to keep his expression clear for Dinah.
"Let this be a lesson," Danny said. "If you've got a team of villains in your city and the precog says that anyone who investigates them is likely to die, then the right answer is not to walk away and hope the problem solves itself."
"Oh, shut up," Dauntless said, raising a hand to trigger his comm unit. "PRT headquarters, this is Dauntless. Voiceprint. I am now sounding the all-clear for this current Class-S event. Release the survivors and begin damage assessment. Be alert for remaining traps, and surviving hostiles. Be aware also that there is at least one Class-S entity remaining in the city, but our precognitive states that it will not present a danger for the next couple of weeks, and will not be found until after the all-clear is sounded."
The PRT officer manning the station returned with a terse acknowledgement, and a few seconds later the streetlights stopped flashing, and the sirens started again, signaling the all-clear. And around the city, shelter doors started opening, releasing the hungry, tired, terrified, frustrated citizens from their containment. The largest shelters had a hero standing at the entrance to welcome the people back to freedom, it had been shown to reduce the incidence of violence or depression on exiting. It helped people to see one of the winning heroes standing in the street waiting for them when they finally came back out into the open, and saw the mess that had been made of their city.
Danny was wearing his mask again, carried to him by one of Armsmaster's drones. No armor, no cloak, no Druid, just the return of the Wharf Rat. He stood as the door grated open, the massive slab lifting up away from the ground to disengage the locks before it slid sideways. The early-morning sun slanted in through the gap, and he saw the first row of people stepping out into the light. They appeared first as shoes, then legs, then shirts, then squinting faces hiding behind lifted hands, blinking in the unaccustomed glare. They were unshowered, unshaven, and clearly they had a couple of very rough days.
"It's safe now," Danny said, waving them out. "Sorry it took so long, this was a bad one. Come on out, please return to your homes. If you work in utilities or public services, you are asked to return to work as soon as feasible. Sorry it took so long. Please step out and return to your homes, I need to check on any sick or wounded. Come on out, it's safe now, please return to your homes. Sir, are you all right? Okay, thank you. Come on out, it's safe now, please return to your homes."
After the first rush had been cleared out, he moved in to tend to the ones that needed medical treatment. All he could do was count them up and guess at their injuries and report in to the PRT to let them know. The most common cases were existing medical conditions that had gone untreated for over forty-eight hours. After that were those who were suffering malnutrition, most of whom already had a metabolic or insulin disorder. There were a couple dozen injuries from slips and falls, and a few more injuries from some fights that had broken out. Danny reported these meticulously, calmly.
And his rats had a spare comm set and they listened in as Miss Militia reported a full loss, thousands dead. Armsmaster reported in that a Trickster had plagued that shelter for days, picking off one or two people at a time; the hysteria had killed as many as the monster. Vista was just sobbing, she had not even said what she had seen. The death toll was clearly well above a hundred thousand souls, and maybe several times that many. It was getting hard to estimate, the numbers just got big enough that his brain was flinching away from the realities.
And the boiling, roiling self-doubts were back. The what-ifs, the why-did-yous. He was second-guessing every move he had made. He cringed inwardly as he remembered how he had talked to Dauntless. How he had talked to Armsmaster. How he had talked to Taylor. How quickly he had turned his back on the Protectorate to surround himself with rogues and villains who obeyed him without question. But most of all, he was sure that none of this would have happened if he had not chased Piggot out of her position. Glenn was not as hateful as her, but she would not have left the Traveler issue to fester for weeks until this happened. He was growing ever more sure that what had happened here was his own fault, his apparent successes still contributing to major disasters.
But that was not the thing that had him the most concerned: he had nearly gotten the best of Jack Slash in a debate about morals. His files showed him to be a gifted manipulator, he would need to be to collect such dangerous villains to himself and keep them focused on a goal. Only Jack Slash could have kept Siberian and Crawler on a team together, or Mannequin and Bonesaw. And apparently only the Wharf Rat was able to turn them against each other. It was a heady and heavy subject: the implications that he could be nearly as gifted a manipulator as Jack Slash were a little terrifying to him. Not only because it hinted at a callous ability to use people for his own goals, but that it undermined everything he'd ever thought about his own ideals.
Most people got their sense of right and wrong from people around them. Danny knew he was no different. He knew that his sense of right and wrong did not correspond to everyone's, but if he had a chance to explain himself people tended to agree with him. He had been assuming that just meant that he was a bit complicated, but still morally correct. But what if he wasn't right? What if he was just good at convincing people that he was right? He could make all the heartless, unilateral decisions and anyone that could have corrected him would come to believe that he was right. He could be shortsighted, over-emotional, even cruel, and nobody would keep him in check. They would just support him as he turned into everything he hated. Not because they should believe in him, but because he made them believe in him.
He had to re-evaluate everything. His differences with Piggot, his conflicts with Armsmaster. He had to do some soul-searching, and he needed to ask himself whether he was really, really sure about his path. At the beginning, he had stalked a young gangster to prevent a robbery of the Union funds, and wound up mauling Lung. After that he had taken down the ABB because he could, not because he needed to. He had taken over the Docks because he felt like he had to, but holding that territory had put him into conflicts with the Merchants, the Empire, the Undersiders. He had been high-handed and demanding when he dealt the the Protectorate, and lashed out at anyone that had told him no. He had become very frustrated with Director Piggot, even though he knew that she was trying to do her job, because she wasn't doing it the way he wanted. He had pushed her to the breaking point and then exploited that to get her fired and replaced with someone more malleable. He had done a lot of things that were questionable, and a lot of things that were sketchy as hell. And he had rarely stopped to wonder if it was the right thing. He had been so certain, and he had been so persuasive, that he could have done anything and justified it. His certainty, his conviction, were dangerous.
And he already missed it. Second-guessing and soul-searching sucked. He already wished there was some crisis to distract himself so he could just fall back into that easy confidence and let it drive him. It was almost addictive.
No, he realized, not almost.
He listed off the injuries to the dispatcher, and then sat down with an old lady and held her hand while they waited for an ambulance to arrive and bring her insulin. He looked around the room. How long had it been since he had really looked at people? Not capes, but people. He had seen crowds of them, but he had stopped watching the faces. He saw through the eyes of a million rats spread through the city, he could see people walking back to their homes. He could see their shell-shocked expressions. He saw a teenage girl not dressed for the weather, he watched the face of a man who was trying to find out which shelter his family had gone to. He had spent weeks fighting for the city, fighting against enemies and criminals and corruption. But today he sat still, and he watched, and he immersed himself in the people. He needed to know that what he was doing came from a place of compassion.
"Yes, I'm sure," Tattletale snapped.
"I just really expected it to be something like the basement of the Protectorate tower, that sort of 'last place you'd ever look' sort of thing," Danny said.
"And that would be more of a 'place you stumble across by accident' sort of thing," she rebutted. "Look, from the placement of the six Noelles, we know that they stopped to talk to each other and form a plan and that they were on the east side of downtown when they did. So the one chosen to stay in the city would have started looking for a place to hide. That happened within two blocks of where you are now. And this is the only ratproof container within six blocks that hasn't already been checked out."
"She's sure," Dauntless reiterated. "Look, let's do this so we can put this whole thing to bed. I'm tired of wondering if another Noelle is going to pop up and kill another ninety-thousand people."
Danny shuddered at the number. It was turning into a Pavlovian response, his stomach dropped out every time he heard about it. A huge fraction of the city's populace was dead, entire families slaughtered inside the bunkers built to keep them safe. And he knew that the bunkers were only an illusion of safety, the only way to really work was to find the problems and stop them before they start. Like this mission to destroy the last trace of the Lamia. He felt a surge of certitude and righteous purpose, and he shoved it away. He clung to his doubts.
The assembled parahumans hauled the wreckage away. On the street level it was a fancy Malaysian fusion restaurant, or what was left of it. Browbeat and Manpower were hauling support beams out of the way, Oni Lee and Battery were shoving the furniture out. Trainwreck had taken a table and was using it to scrape broken bricks and fixtures away like it was a push-broom.
"Over here," Armsmaster said. He indicated a stairway leading downwards. His armor had been modified again, it was more globular than before and the arms were jointed differently to keep them closer to the body, making it look like the hero was either shyly holding his hands or defiantly crossing his arms.
"A walk-in refrigerator for a large restaurant, plenty of space, external ventilation, climate sealed, under a trashed restaurant near a center of major casualties," Uber pointed out. "This would have been one of the last places rebuilt, one of the last places investigated. It's a pretty good hiding spot."
Dauntless nodded. "Okay, we never caught the original Hatchet Face, so there could be himself or clones of his in there. We'll be leading with tinkers and long-distance powers until we've got that cleared, and then move in with the rest of the assault team."
They cleared debris and wreckage from the sunken stairwell, and then Trainwreck plowed through the door all in a rush, with Armsmaster right behind him and a flood of rats pouring through. The scene was a frozen tableau: the mutants and monsters stared at the doorway with their mouths open, clearly caught entirely by surprise. There were barrels lining the walls, and shelves of preserved foods shoved against the back wall. Only a few people were inside and alive, and half of them were strapped down to tables. A limbless Hatchet Face was accompanied by a mutant version of the same, holding a giant cleaver as he took his first lumbering step towards the invading heroes. Trainwreck swung an arm out sideways and caved in the mutant's head almost carelessly. The next table held a gruesome, bloody mess, with a broken deformed corpse stuffed underneath it. A small disfigured body was strapped to the last table, sealed up in containment foam, and then there was a single Noelle, sitting surprised on a simple stainless-steel chair at the far side of the room.
"Don't move!" Armsmaster ordered, bearing down on her with four retractable arms extended towards her, glowing weapons charged up and ready to fire.
"I suppose not," the girl with the eldritch-horror legs said. There were thick bands of tendon and gristle binding her legs together, and her feet were entirely lost to the mass of mouths and tongues and eyes and thorns that extended from her flesh.
"The fuck happened here?" Trainwreck asked, staring at the second table.
"Mouse Protector," Noelle sighed. "It turned out that she was the reason that the Nine came to Brockton. I had her here, captive with Hatchet Face, and I didn't realize that a Ravager clone was one of my bodyguards. Apparently he hated her more than he was loyal to me. He killed her. And so Hatchet Face killed him. And we were ready to smell both those rotting corpses for the next three weeks. Looks like we'll be dying instead."
Danny moved his rats around to see, and the mutilated corpse on the second table was indeed wearing blood-spattered armor. There was a familiar sword lying alongside it. He started taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly, counting to ten, then twenty.
"Who's this?" Armsmaster demanded, gesturing towards the third table.
"No name, no memories," Noelle said, shrugging. "Found him hanging out in the bad part of the Docks with the crackheads and the hoboes. But he's a powerhouse, I was going to clone up a hundred of him and turn them loose like a wrecking crew, bulldoze the city. But only after I sent a bunch of Hatchet Faces to assassinate you all. Guess that's not going to happen," she said, sounding oddly wistful.
"We got all the others, this ends with you," Armsmaster said, readying his weapons.
"All eight of them?" she said, her eyes open wide.
Danny touched his comms. "She's lying, bluffing to get you to capture her for information."
"Nice try," Armsmaster said.
"Worth a shot," she said, smiling, and then she was disintegrated into smoke and vapor.
The two tinkers came trudging up the steps after they killed both of the Hatchet Faces. A PRT team moved in to clear the area and dissolve the containment foam to release the last prisoner. Danny walked down with them, his heart heavy and his extremities gone numb. He walked downstairs, paused by the second table. There was nothing there to recognize as a person. It felt wrong to say his goodbyes to a hundred pounds of ground meat and shredded entrails and chips of bone. He stood over them anyway, and told them goodbye, and thanked them for their help and their sacrifice, and apologized for being too late to help.
Then he picked up the sword from her side and carried it back upstairs.
Panacea was working with the captive they had freed. It was a gruesome little goblin, looked like Peter Jackson's version of Gollum, or whatever that thing's name was. It was short and spindly, with an out-sized head and wrinkled, decrepit skin. And it had a Cauldron mark branded into its calf. She had her hands on the captive's arm, while it eagerly poured a bottle of water down its scrawny gullet.
The girl and the goblin murmured back and forth, Danny just absently stared on as he held the sword in his hand, rocking its weight back and forth. PRT uniforms traveled back and forth around him, in front of him, as they went to decontaminate the walk-in cooler. He did not even notice when she cleaned up the small man, removing the off-putting deformities. Danny came back from his thoughts and saw a whole new man, still small but less wizened, with a broad honest face and a slightly-crooked nose to add some character. His wispy dark hair was replaced by a dark blonde buzz cut, and his body under the EMT blanket seemed to be better proportioned.
Dauntless appeared at his elbow. "They're disbanding us, you know."
"I'm sorry, what?" Danny said, pulling himself out of his daze.
"The Brockton Bay branch of the Protectorate is being disbanded," the team leader said, his tone impossible to read. He stared out at the PRT uniforms, not even looking at Danny. "We're all being retasked to different cities. I'm going to Santa Fe, my assignment's in already. The Tower's been condemned, too much structural damage and exposure. Even the Wards are being shipped away. The official communication from headquarters states that the Protectorate's presence in Brockton Bay has become redundant. I think you can read between the lines, yes?"
"Did they say where I am retasked to?" Danny asked delicately.
"You know, it's funny," Dauntless said, still not looking his way. "They didn't say. They're getting rid of this posting, but they didn't seem to reassign you at all. I think the assumption is that you will quit the Protectorate before the closure here is final."
"And they expect me to take care of the whole city by myself," Danny filled in.
"You've already got a good-sized team working with you," Dauntless said, nodding towards the side of the road. Uber, Leet, Circus, Trainwreck, Oni Lee, Panacea and Parian were all close by, their line of sight scanning past him every so often to see if he had something to say to them. Dinah Alcott was at home with her parents, but it seemed odd not to have her lined up with the others. "And you've made it more than clear that we were just in your way."
"I'm sorry if I ever made you feel that way," Danny said. "In the heat of the moment, I... I'm an insensitive ass. I get caught up in myself and I stop thinking about what people are going to hear."
Dauntless stiffened, then relaxed. "Thank you. That helps me some. But it doesn't change the facts. You and your way of doing things cannot exist within the Protectorate. And the Protectorate can't share a city with you. And, if either your group or ours has to move, it's going to be ours. That's just the way things are. I don't think any of us ever really had a choice in the matter, no matter what it seemed like at the time."
Danny sighed deeply, and he felt five years older than he had a minute before. "Damn. This isn't what I wanted. Maybe they'll let me apologize, I can promise them I'll be a better team player, I can abide by their rules like everyone else. I've been thinking about this a lot and-"
"This isn't about you," Dauntless said. "Jesus, man, we've been having problems for a while. Sure, you didn't help, but that doesn't mean it's all your fault. Right now half my team can't even stand to be in the same room as each other. They won't talk about it, but apparently being trapped with someone's evil clone makes it impossible to ever really trust them again. Armsmaster is getting shipped off to Dragon's production facility to work on power suits full time, taking Kid Win with him. Vista is going to be in counseling full-time for a while. Browbeat is quitting, Velocity requested an administrative position. Gallant is joining New Wave to be with his girlfriend, Flechette is transferring back to New York but has already vowed to never fight the Endbringers again. If we stayed, it would be me and Aegis and Clockblocker and a ruined tower, sharing a city with your motley crew of misfits and New Wave, with no trust from the public, no support from the government, and no villains to deal with because you already beat them all. So no, the Protectorate is disbanding this posting no matter what you do. Look, just... make the most of it, okay? You've got good ideas, so put those into play now that there's nobody in your way."
"Wait a minute," Danny blurted out. "Taylor? Taylor's staying, right?"
Dauntless looked away again. "Her position as a Ward was a matter of convenience, to accommodate her living near you while you were a member of the Protectorate. Without you, there's no reason to keep her on board. Officially she's retiring, we'll be repossessing her armor and the trinkets that make it work. She can go back to being your daughter full time. But your daughter has walked through hallways filled with men and women you've killed. Things won't be the same for you two."
Danny cursed under his breath, and looked away from the other man. "Tell me there's some good news."
"You're not going to have to answer to us or follow our rules," the hero said. "Isn't that good news? The Protectorate is not going to hand you orders, they'll just stand by and wait for your call to pick up a prisoner. You get the city to yourself to do whatever you want, just like you always wanted."
"Okay, well one last thing before you go?"
"Yeah?" Dauntless asked, looking up at him.
"Talk to your superiors, move a memo up the chain of command. Get a dedicated team of heroes to train for Endbringer attacks, some people specially chosen to be effective in those fights, to support Eidolon and Scion. It makes more sense to do that, rather than just scramble for an army of unprepared capes every time an Endbringer arrives."
"Yeah," Dauntless said, nodding. "Yeah, that makes sense." He started to turn away.
"I'm sorry we never got to be friends," Danny said. Dauntless did not pause again.
The swirl of was-that-right and am-I-wrong was joined with a strong sense of dread, and doom, and a leaden sensation of guilt.
"Well, despite Dauntless's doomsaying, there actually is good news," Leet said, leaning forward to plant his elbows on the tabletop. "The city qualifies for even more FEMA assistance than the Leviathan attack, so there should be plenty of repairs happening, and soon. We've had almost no looting, rioting, or surges in crime at all. We've launched a dozen charities to support the families of Brockton Bay casualties, and people are donating money from around the country to help the survivors who have lost family. Housing prices have dropped, jobs are on the rise, and we're getting a fair amount of people moving into the city to replace those who died. And, our game has already gone platinum many times over, so Uber and I are now billionaires. I am now accepting applications for lackeys."
Danny nodded. "I've been keeping the harbor clear. I've basically eliminated all smuggling in the city. The customs office has built a mouse-sized pet door for me. Most of the police precincts now have a pet mouse in a terrarium that has a keyboard to type messages to them directly. I've chased out the loan sharks and other opportunists. But I'm concerned about this new FEMA money, there tends to be large sums moving around and not enough oversight. Seems like the sort of thing our mayor may use to enrich himself at the city's expense."
Oni Lee leaned forward, his eyes moving slowly side to side before he spoke briefly, haltingly. "Stop him?" Panacea patted him on the hand, smiling encouragingly.
"Well, there's lots of ways," Danny said, speaking towards Oni Lee. "We could threaten him and drive him out of the city, but that looks bad on us, looks bad for the city, and doesn't necessarily fix the problem. We could just find the evidence of his crooked deals and run it past the authorities and use our leverage and influence to get them to do the right thing. Or we could just go to his office and ask him to play straight instead of double-dealing like usual. Maybe he can be inspired to be a good mayor instead of a profiteering scumbag."
"That's the kind of outside-the-box thinking that beat Leviathan and blew up the Boardwalk," Uber chuckled. "I like the idea, but I'm not holding my breath. So, are we officially inducting a new member?"
All eyes turned to the far end of the table, where the small man sat staring their way. The man was a midget, about four and a half feet tall, but he had filled out a little with muscle since he had been discovered. His face was charming enough, but he was so consistently uncomfortable that it was a bit hard to talk to him directly. "If you guys will have me, I'd love to help you," he said. "I think I can especially help you out with current problems. My specialty is cleaning up wreckage and trash."
Panacea beamed. "I think I speak for all of us when I say we'll be happy to have you onboard. It's been a couple weeks, have you picked names for yourself yet?"
"I was thinking I like the sound of Josh Murray, but I also like the name Salvage," said the small man. In an alternate timeline, one in which things went differently, he may have remained a stunted and deformed little dwarf. He may have been picked up by the Fifth Street Merchants, were they still a thing, and Skidmark may have affixed him with the name of 'Mush'.
"Salvage," Parian said, rolling it over her tongue. "It's good. I've seen what you do, and it works for you."
"And it reminds me not to forget what you guys did for me," Salvage said.
"If this is a good time to do this," Parian said, "I'd like to change up my name too. I need to put some things behind me, and it's hard. My family has disowned me, nobody from my old life will talk to me. I need to embrace these changes, I need to make my identity about myself, and not about what I used to be. So I've picked a new name that takes strength from the people who rejected me. I am going to call myself Pariah."
"Kinda dark," Trainwreck said. "I like it." And Panacea sat back in her seat, looking thoughtful, her jaw shifting side to side as she considered.
"Speaking of dark," the newly-named Pariah said, "I've been talking to our esteemed leader about uniforms. I've not got everything worked out yet, but I can tell you that we're going with a basic black." Circus nodded approvingly, picking at the sleeve of her green-and-white motley. She had switched out masks, leaving behind the manically-smiling faceplate for a smooth oval with eyeholes.
"But I want to know if it's a great idea to reveal the location of our headquarters?" Uber said, looking around the room. "The Protectorate Tower sure was a great landmark, but it was also a great big target. The New Wave operates out of their own houses and have public identities, I'm seriously surprised that they've survived this long. So we should be going the other direction, right? We ought to keep our operations secret as much as possible."
Danny shook his head. "I get it, I do. But the city's confidence is shaken. They got hurt, a lot. Lots of people died. The Protectorate abandoned them. If we don't step up, visibly, then they're going to feel scared and vulnerable. They'll have a hard time being confident in us. They won't cooperate with us. We could lose all the public trust we've built on a winning record, if we go underground right now."
Gambler leaned forward, folded her hands on the table. "It's true. Like, every prediction I throw out gets worse if we go all secretive. Everything we do gets harder. I really tried to find a way to make your plan work, Uber, but it just doesn't."
The big man slouched back in his seat. "Damn," he sighed. He looked around the room. The walls were gray and plain but hardly level, they bulged with warts and grooves on all sides, shot through with rusted steel bands that wove in and out through the concrete at odd angles. It was a tremendously ugly construction style, completely at odds with the smooth businesslike table they all sat at. "Well, if this is where we work, then how long until it's ready?"
Trainwreck stretched his arms over his head. "I've been working eighteen-hour days, but most of the visible work gets done all at once. I know that right now all you see is me moving rocks from one pile to another. But when this thing comes together, it's gonna be something else. Gimme about three more days. And keep in mind that a job like this normally takes a contractor nearly a year to complete. Nobody works as fast or as cheap as I do."
"And once we've got the factory assembled, we can start working on the assemblers," Leet said. "Unfortunately, I won't be able to work on them. They're actual science, and my inventions are more like sufficiently-advanced magic."
"So, that's my job," Uber said. "Uber, design a factory. Uber, build the robots that are going to work in the factory. Uber, do everything!"
Salvage frowned, his forehead creasing. "Hang on, I thought he was the genius inventor," he said, pointing at Leet.
"Nah," Leet said. "It'd be nice, but it's not the way. Tinker talents aren't just being smart. It's the ability to make something technological, usually very technological, without meeting the usual requirements of knowledge, physics or materials. Trainwreck can make stuff despite not having the materials, he makes scrap iron act like space-age polymers and room-temperature superconductors, and makes steam act like carbon plasma in a Klein bottle. Squealer could do her stuff because the knowledge was just given to her, it's basically like thirty-first century technology but it's all real science that she shouldn't know. And then there's me: I can do stuff that physics itself says I shouldn't be able to do. That's part of why my power pushes back so hard against what I do, I can't make the same thing twice, or even very close. I just try to do stuff and it works or it fails, and any resemblance to actual science or invention is just to help me focus while I trick physics into looking the other way. Armsmaster had a little bit like me and a little bit like Squealer, he was given knowledge with a specific focus, and also he can bend physics in some specific ways to help him. Like the minimum insulation needed to keep an electrical circuit intact, or basic friction and entropy. He just messes them up in his presence so that he can make impossible inventions. And then there's Uber: the man who can be an expert in anything. Despite the fact that we've got two tinkers on the team, Uber's the only one who can actually do real science."
"Though he's gonna have a lot of help from me," Trainwreck interjected. "He designs the robots and programs them, but I can slam together a machine shop in an afternoon that can actually make the parts for him. But the stuff I make breaks down fast. But, if I make something that makes something else... well, as long as it's real science and not tinker-tech, we're good to go."
"And that's partly where things get tough," Uber said. "See, I'm not just turning into an expert in robotics and building the robots, I'm also incorporating some tinker tech and hoping that I can get the part that's advanced science and not the part that's tricking physics into looking the other way."
Taylor leaned forward abruptly. "Wait, what tinker tech are you incorporating?" Her tone was harsh and confrontational, and Danny sighed.
"Armsmaster," Uber said. "And some from Squealer. Possibly some from Mannequin, but probably not."
Taylor's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Armsmaster moved everything out of his workshop days ago. How did you get access?"
"Physics wasn't paying attention when I invented a camera the photographs the past," Leet grinned. "So, I got his plans. And the flash I use makes sure that nobody else can ever do the same thing, so the plans are totally confidential now."
"You're stealing his work!"
"Look, Taylor," her father said, his voice tired, "he was my friend, even more than he was your friend. But the tech he developed in that lab can help a lot of people. And the jobs it produces will help the whole city."
"You're just stealing your friend's work," she objected. "Grabbing anything that isn't nailed down. Picking over the Protectorate's bones. Your team of scavengers has poisoned the best parts of you, Dad." She stood up and stormed out.
Panacea winced. "That hurt to watch."
"Hurt to hear it, too," Danny said, rubbing at his temples.
"She's pissed at you," Pariah said. "She's been asking you to slow down for a long time, and you're just pulling away. She's probably never going to get used to thinking about how many of those clones you killed, and she thinks of them as people. And now you're working with rogues and villains and the heroes all gave up and left."
"Sure, that's probably it," Danny said, staring at the door his daughter had slammed shut. And part of it is that in her mind this is our thing, hers and mine. She was there at the beginning, talking to me on the phone while I rode my bike and patrolled the neighborhood. She designed my costumes, she helped me figure out my route. She covered for me, and she gave up afternoons with me so that I could be a hero. And now, there's all this. There's big plans, big pictures, secrets and teams and conspiracies and no time for Taylor, no room for a daughter. So much to get caught up in, and so much that seems so important. And it feels like I've just walked away from her, like I've forgotten when this was our special thing, our secret together. He pushed his chair back and stood up. "Look, guys, thanks for helping with all of this. Thanks for everything. You're all going so far above and beyond what I could ask of you. But I think I need a few days with my daughter. I'm going to have my earpiece in so you can call me, but... this is family."
Trainwreck looked over at Salvage, then up at the Wharf Rat. "Boss, speaking as someone who doesn't even know if he has a family, I understand. Take care of your girl, then come back to us." Panacea nodded, and Pariah too. This was a room that understood how important family was. Oni Lee and Circus nodded, and Dinah shooed him with her hands, urging him towards the door.
