"Hey dad," Taylor said, opening his door. The light from the hallway fell past her in a long line across the bedroom. "Did you know that Eidolon's crashing on our couch?"
"Yeah, I told him he should stay over," Danny said. "He was going to try flying, but he was all wobbly and the dude can knock down a plane by accident. And god knows what would happen if he tried to teleport drunk."
"Okay. So, did you know that Eidolon got his powers from Cauldron?" she asked.
Danny sat bolt upright. "Motherfucker say what?"
"We'll chat about that later," she said. "But first, he ought to get home. There's people on the news speculating that he's dead because he didn't stay for the celebrations last night."
Danny sighed. "Damn. Okay, yeah, I guess a figure like Eidolon can't just switch to civilian clothes and help his buddy drink a couple cases of beer without some kind of fallout. You get some coffee started, I'll wake up our guest."
"Wake him up carefully, he swallowed a nuclear explosion yesterday and I wouldn't want him startled."
Danny was in flannel drawstring trousers and a white t-shirt when he shook the world's penultimate hero awake. "Rise and shine, Eidolon," he said. "There's coffee."
The potbellied man mumbled something inarticulate but pulled himself halfway out of the afghan and managed to mostly sit up. "Uh. What time is it?"
"Quarter to ten," Danny said. "You've been off the grid for like sixteen hours, the Protectorate is trying to keep people from realizing how scared they are. We need to get you back there so they can call off the search party."
Eidolon nodded. "Kay. Oh. Okay, the battery idea didn't work, I'm back to regular power. Oh well, at least I got Behemoth. He's the one I always really wanted to get, he's killed so many people and yesterday I finally got payback. Now I just need to figure out what I'm gonna do about the Simurgh. She doesn't create huge amounts of energy for me to steal. And, she has immense precognitive powers, anything we try to do she's already countered before we start. She's immune to the usual conflicts where you can cancel out one precog with another precog."
"Well, there's always plan B, calling Scion," Danny pointed out, and offered the man a hand to haul him up to his feet. "Or try throwing a field of normalized physics over her, so that her core explodes itself in one shot and she dies. Or a power specifically to block out precognition, some way to blind her thinker powers."
"I should write these down," Eidolon said. "You think of these things so easy, and I just... don't."
Taylor walked in and pressed a mug of coffee into Eidolon's hand. "Drink up," she said.
The hero looked into the cup. "Cream in this?"
"A small splash, and two sugars."
He made a face. "Well, good enough I guess." He took a drink, and sighed. "Not too hot, not too cold. Even with cream, that's good coffee."
"We should visit you sometime soon," Taylor said, smiling. "I'm sure we'd love New York. And besides, my dad's doing this thing where we go to neighboring cities and take on threats that are going to attack us before they get the chance. We already got Boston cleared out, and New York is probably next on the list."
Eidolon chuckled. "If you come to my city to beat up villains, you gotta give me a call so we can ride together."
"Sure thing," Danny said, slapping the other man on the back.
Eidolon finished his coffee, set down the cup, and disappeared after a minute of goodbyes. Then Danny turned to his daughter. "Okay, so spill it."
"It's worse than you think," Taylor sighed. "Eidolon's in constant contact with Cauldron, they made him and he works for them. And that goes ditto for Legend and Alexandria."
"Damn," he said, stunned.
"Oh, and Alexandria is also Chief Director Costa-Brown of the PRT," the girl said. "You know, the organization set up to police the Protectorate and other parahumans to make sure that they don't get authority over humanity, like Piggot was so crazy about? Yeah, their high lord and master is a cape. It's like.. everything is corrupt, and it's always Cauldron doing it. I am so ready for this to be over with."
Danny sighed, and ducked his head, his fingers stroking at his temples as his hand covered his face. "Great. If there were no other reasons to hate Cauldron, there's the fact that because of them Piggot was right all along."
"Hey now, let's not jump to any wild conclusions there," Taylor said. "I'm sure that even if she was right, she's still wrong."
"Be that as it may," Danny sighed, setting his hand back on his hip. "It looks like our next mission is heading out to New York City. I'll check in with Gambler and see who else we might need to clean up as long as we're there. But this is going to be a hard conversation to have, bracing the Chief Director of the PRT and Alexandria at the same time. But if we're going to un-wedge Cauldron from the Protectorate, we need to start with her and work downward from there."
"This is about those orders that Battery got during the Slaughterhouse Lamia catastrophe, isn't it? The ones where she was supposed to make sure that Shatterbird got free."
He rolled his eyes. "You really are a mind reader."
"You know I wouldn't-"
"I know nothing of the sort," he said. "I have been assuming that you've been reading my mind since you got those powers. I wouldn't ask you to restrain that part of yourself, any more than I would want someone to tell me just to not use my own powers."
"But your privacy-"
"I would be a hell of a hypocrite if I controlled this many rats, this many eyes, and still wanted you to make special considerations for my sense of privacy," Danny laughed wryly. "I sweep the city to make sure that nobody is abusing kids or robbing houses, to make sure that every death is either natural causes or an accident. I get into people's lives and snoop around constantly. Thoughts aren't any more sacred than people's words or actions."
She made an exasperated noise. "Well, maybe there's things about your thoughts or memories that I don't want to know!"
"Sofia Loren," he said, holding her eyes.
Taylor threw her hands up and walked back out of the room without another word, and he just grinned as she left.
"Italian mafia, sure, Russian mafia, of course," Eidolon chuckled. "I've run across the Hungarian mob and the Greek underworld, a Tunisian crime family, Tongs and Triads and Yakuza, cartels from almost half of South America, and plenty of home-grown local criminal gangs. But I have never heard of an Estonian mafia."
Wharf Rat chuckled along with him as he filled out the paperwork. "I know, right? But my precog assured me that in about six months the pressure here in the Big Apple would get to be too much for them, and they'd move to Brockton Bay to find greener pastures. And after a series of skirmishes they'd start a series of firebombings and chemical-weapon attacks to try to kill my rats, and take out a lot of civilians at the same time. Easier to nab them here where they were confined to just a few blocks of territory."
"At least you didn't level any buildings this time," Eidolon joked, punching the other man in the arm. It was a stronger punch than one would expect after having seen the man beneath the mask. He was in full costume, as were all the Scavengers, but the NYPD precinct was going on about its business as if everything was normal. It was part of the New York culture to be utterly unfazed and unflappable; if Mecha-Godzilla arose from the waters the citizens would complain about rubberneckers screwing up traffic. He looked around at the visiting team. "So, what's with all the black-on-black?"
"It's a collapsible design," Pariah said. "I can pack some of my telekinetic power into it to help protect my allies. Plus, it makes us hard to distinguish from each other. More confusion to the enemy. Like, if an enemy is super-strong and brings massive blunt force trauma, I want them to attack my projections and not Panacea, they're fully invulnerable to the only attacks that might hurt her, and vice-versa. We're not really the sort of hero team that wears bright colors and poses for photos, no offense."
"None taken. You guys are more of a covert strike force, I guess," Eidolon said, shrugging.
Panacea snorted. "And if Pariah is going to be a little less modest, she'd point out that the fabric itself is not that run-of-the-mill. We've had some upgrades. Carbon nanotubes worked into the cloth, makes it a hell of a lot stronger and more resistant to cutting. The nanotubes themselves are cheap and easy to work with, they're an industrial byproduct. But actually working with them in any useful capacity is almost impossible.. unless you've got someone whose telekinetic control over fine fibers is as precise as Pariah's."
"And I can't wait to gloat a little bit to Armsmaster," Leet said, grinning. "Seriously, working with carbon fullerene is like one of the holy grails of material sciences. If we can stage them up the right way to make it easier, then Pariah may wind up upgrading all those fancy Protectorate armors. And not a small upgrade either, but a really big upgrade. See, Uber explained to me how we can use a mesh of -"
"Okay, I'm done here," Danny said, setting down the pen. "That's the Estonian mafia formally arrested, and my statement logged and notarized alongside all the physical evidence we provided. Let's get outta here, yeah?"
The rest of the Scavengers stood from their seats and got ready to move out. They moved together like a paramilitary unit, and as soon as they were in motion their hooded costumes blended together and they became a mass of black-on-black. Eidolon instantly lost track of who he had been speaking to, and he was certain that somehow there were more of them now than there had been a short while ago. And at least one of them was teleporting around, moving from one side of the group to the other. Eidolon had not seen many capes that could work like that, and he was reminded eerily of the Yangban.
They walked out the front door to the PRT van that was parked by the street. Normally they only saw vans like this when they were throwing villains in the back to be secured and transported to the PRT offices and referred to the courts from there. But today it was their ride around the city, Eidolon had made the arrangements shortly after they touched down. They climbed up the back ramp and sat on the benches that were somehow even more uncomfortable than the seats in the precinct house. There were only two yellowish overhead bulbs as they adjusted themselves. They didn't really settle in until after Pariah had given them all some telekinetic cushioning. Eidolon climbed in with them and floated in the middle of the van's cargo compartment between the two benches, sitting cross-legged in the air.
"So, you said back to the PRT headquarters?" Eidolon prompted.
"Yeah," Wharf Rat said. "So, how've you been? It's been a few days since the Behemoth fight, any change?"
The green-cloaked man nodded as the truck lurched into motion. "Yeah, actually. It seems that my response time to change powers has improved, and probably my output power as well. So while I lost most of the energy from Behemoth, it looks like part of the benefits actually did stick around. So now the Protectorate's anti-Behemoth response team has been disbanded with honors, and now we're taking aim at the Simurgh. Literally. There's word going around that they're going to try to shoot her out of orbit, she's the only one who rests up between attacks where we can get at her. They're just trying to lick the problem of keeping her from dodging, she's pretty slippery."
Benthic spoke up before her father. "Could you keep us looped in on your Simurgh countermeasures? Gambler told us that we'd be interacting with her, and we'd like to keep up-to-date on issues dealing with her."
"Sure thing."
"Yo, is anyone going to address the elephant in the room?" Uber blurted out. "The Endbringers spent years threatening cities or nations, unstoppable by anyone but Scion himself, and the last two attacks have ended in dead Endbringers? Like, dozens of defeats, and then two kills in a row? That's just.. man, when I was growing up one of the things you could really count on was that the Endbringers don't die, they barely get hurt."
Parian shrugged. "What? Nobody knew how to do it before. Now we know how. Pretty straightforward."
Eidolon shot her a hard look. "That is a vast oversimplification."
"I thought the elephant in the room was that the boss killed one Bringer, Eidi here killed another Bringer, and Scion himself still hasn't racked up a kill," Salvage said. "For being the most powerful hero in the world, he's not even on the board in this game. Maybe we should save the Simurgh for him, just as a courtesy?"
"Dude," Uber chuckled, shaking his head. "You can't burn Scion like that, you know? It's just not done."
Wharf Rat looked back up at Eidolon. "So, what have you been up to lately?"
"More of the same. Goodwill missions, Alexandria calls it. I've just been using my powers to help people like you suggested, instead of just sitting around waiting for someone to beat up. I spent most of yesterday in rural Africa, teleporting around and drilling wells, building irrigation systems for farmlands. The day before I was in the Australian outback, healing people. Day before that, I spent twelve hours disintegrating a gigantic accumulation of trash out in the Atlantic ocean. And you know what? It feels good. I like doing it. It's not what I signed up for, all I ever wanted to do was stop bad guys. But there's more to being a good guy than just fighting bad guys, and I am finding out that I like those parts too. Sure it's boring to vaporize garbage, but I've got a toxic waste dump scheduled for day after tomorrow.. even if it's boring, it needs to be done and that's good enough. Next Friday I'm going to be building schools and clinics. Stuff like that is a huge, huge boost to the self-esteem. People don't just need me during Endbringer attacks, they need me all the time. They'll probably never stop needing me." He was gushing a little, enthused about something other than combat and power for the first time in a long, long time.
"That really does sound pretty cool," Gulliver answered. "That's the kind of stuff I'd want to be doing if I had powers like yours."
"Nerd," Salvage teased the boy, nudging him with an elbow. "I'd be beating up bad guys, starting at the top and working my way down."
Oni Lee leaned forward to speak. "It must be... good... to have those powers. Whatever you want. So you don't have to fight. My powers... they don't do much besides fight. Lots of us, we're the same way. It must be good to be different, like you, like Wharf Rat, like Panacea."
Eidolon cheated a glance at Wharf Rat, as if to say is this the one you told me about? and he got his answer in the return glance. "Yeah, it really is. But I think that the world has a place for everyone, and anyone who wants to help the world can do that, even if maybe they have to think about how to use their powers the right way."
"Oni Lee can create objects from raw materials," Pariah pointed out. "Like knives or more fabric for me. I'll bet that can be used for other things."
Eidolon nodded. "Lots of places I go to help, they've got lots of raw materials and not a lot of finished goods. Or even the poorer parts of this city. They have donation drives for school supplies for kids, you could fix that whole problem in a short time."
Oni Lee sat back, his forehead creasing as he considered it. "That might be nice. I can't fight and train all the time."
"Proud of you," Wharf Rat said, clapping the other man on the shoulder. Gulliver gave him a nod and a matching pat on the shoulder.
Pariah nodded. "It's good to have a plan for when we're done with all this."
Eidolon turned on her with surprise plain to see in his posture. "Wait, done with what?"
"This whole heroic costumed crimefighter thing," the girl said, waving a hand vaguely around. "Maybe some people can do this for a lifelong mission, but other people need a bit more stability in their lives. I don't think I can just keep going to one fight after another, over and over, until the one day I get in a fight I don't survive. Nothing against those who can, Eidolon," she said, hastily. "Obviously. But I'm not wired that way, I'd snap eventually."
"Ditto," Panacea said quietly.
"Yeah," Gulliver added.
"Wuss," Salvage joked.
"I had more fun designing a video game of our own than I had as a villain," Leet offered. Uber nodded as the smaller man kept talking, "I can kind of see myself getting to a point where I want to settle down, want to make plans. Maybe retire in thirty years."
Eidolon shook his head. "I'm honestly amazed. I really didn't expect to learn this about the Scavengers. You guys are one of the most feared teams in any city in America. I heard some water-cooler chatter, people estimating what would happen if you guys took on the Ash Beast or the Three Blasphemies. And now I'm sitting here and listening to you talk about your retirement to go get real jobs."
"We've got a few things to do first," Wharf Rat said, deliberately keeping it vague. "But one of the things about having a high-order precognitive on the team, is that you develop a long view of these situations. We've got some jobs to do that are important enough to keep us together, and after that... we've all earned our time off."
Eidolon chuckled and shook his head ruefully. "I've been at this a long time, and I've learned that there's always another fight and another reason to fight. You think you've hit the high point of your career, and then the next, and the next."
"Maybe not this time," Benthic said, her tone guarded. "We're building to something big, but we can't really talk about it right now."
The Triumvirate hero just nodded. "Okay, I guess I'll have to be satisfied with that. And- oh, and we're here," he said, as the truck bumped to a stop. He stretched his legs back down to the floor as the back ramp lowered and the doors opened, and walked out while the Scavengers unhooked themselves from their seat belts. "Why don't you come on in? I think you guys will be really interested in how the teams are organized here. It's all about-"
"Sorry," Wharf Rat said. "But we should check in with the PRT offices, instead." His voice sounded genuinely apologetic. The rest of the Scavengers tensed up.
"Well, that's a surprise," Eidolon said, huffing a laugh. "You've rarely had anything to say to any of them before!" He seemed to pick up on the suddenly strained atmosphere and tried to deflect it with a bit of levity. It fell flat.
Danny cleared his throat. "I know. But this is kind of important. Something I need to say to the Chief Director." His tone made it clear he didn't want to be doing this to his friend.
"I see," Eidolon said. "I'll make sure that she sees you then." His face was hidden behind his mask, just as much as Wharf Rat's was. But the tones of voice were those of one man who regretted having to give bad news, and the anxiousness of a man who is growing all-too-certain that he knows what that bad news is.
Wharf Rat walked up the stairs to the front doors, while Eidolon spoke into his comm unit to request a channel to the PRT offices.
"Chief Director Rebbecca Costa-Brown," Wharf Rat said, as he walked into the office. "Thank you for meeting us."
"My pleasure," the woman said, though a bit woodenly. "It's not really our policy to meet with unaffiliated heroes, or rogues, but you've earned some consideration with your contributions."
"Indeed," Danny said. "And god knows, you have too. But for all the good you've done for the Protectorate, and all the good you've done for the PRT, it's time to choose."
She blinked in surprise. "I beg your pardon?" she said. If she was not actually surprised, she was a more-than-proficient actress.
"Back in Brockton Bay, when you arrived to help fight Leviathan," Wharf Rat said, sitting down across from her desk, "I had rats all through the room so that I could keep track of what people were doing and saying. And they also learned the personal scent of every attending hero. Those scents are distinctive, like fingerprints or faces. So when I came within a few blocks of this building and I found a mouse that was close enough to smell this office, I knew who worked here." It was a good cover story, good enough to keep Alexandria from finding out that the Scavengers had a mind reader. "So, Chief Director Costa-Brown, Alexandria, I must ask you to step down."
"I beg your pardon," she repeated. She was not surprised this time, but she was seething.
The rest of the Scavengers spread out behind him, flanked closest by Oni Lee and Salvage, then Panacea and Pariah, then Benthic and Uber, and on the far edges were Gulliver and Leet, a half-circle that arced around her desk. She stood from her chair, looming over Wharf Rat. He seemed comfortable just staring up at her. "Ma'am, this doesn't need to be a confrontation. We can talk this through. We can work out many considerations for your hard and diligent work. We can work out any sort of confidentiality agreement you'd like, policy decisions, your successor, any of those issues. But I really must insist that you resign your posting as the chief director of the Parahuman Response Taskforce."
"That's not acceptable at all," she said, sliding off her jacket and unbuttoning her sleeves. "But you've just been allowed to run hobnailed over all of our policies so far, so maybe you just believe that it's your right to dictate policy to the PRT, to me. It may well be time that just once you learn that the PRT pushes back. Piggot made mistakes, and that allowed you too much lenience. That ends now. You're not leaving this place."
Wharf Rat raised his hands palms forward, a classic surrender gesture. "Ma'am, honestly, nothing like this is necessary. I think you'll find we're fully ready to be reasonable and-"
Alexandria swatted her hand at her desk, and several hundred pounds of wood flew forward on a path that would crush Wharf Rat's legs and leave him crippled. But Gulliver appeared in the desk's path, grown to his fullest size and crouching behind an eight-foot-tall metal shield. The shield took the desk and shoved him back, rocking him on his heels, but the desk was stopped and Wharf Rat was safe. Alexandria launched herself forward, and Gulliver vanished, just as Oni Lee opened up with the Butcher's pain-projection power. The heroine had been invulnerable for decades, only injured a few times in all those years. Nearly nothing could penetrate her skin or bruise her flesh, or even inconvenience her. She had plenty of time to forget what pain felt like. Oni Lee reminded her.
She gasped and staggered back, her brain flooded with the sort of pain that took one's breath away, that numbed the brain and made everything else unimportant. And she had little to no pain threshold as it was. Her hand carelessly swept through her chair and smashed it to flinders, her eyes wide and her breath catching in her throat. Her lungs seized and spasmed, and that was all that kept her from screaming aloud. Her body thrummed with the agony, and then it was over. Oni Lee still stood in place, his hands folded behind his back. "Please," Wharf Rat said, gesturing towards an empty chair. "Just sit down, work this out. It doesn't have to be ugly."
Alexandria whipped her head back and forth to clear the memory of the agony away. Her hair floated around her shoulders like an inky cloud, and her eyes flared with a prevailing rage. "You think I'm just a hitter, a flying brick," she said. "Stronger than anyone else, tougher than anyone else. But nobody told you how smart I am, did they? How I'm able to read people, yes even you, yes even with the mask. I know more about you than you want me to know, and I've memorized your files. And your family's files. Anyone the PRT knows about, I know about. An encyclopedic knowledge of your weaknesses, Hebert." She stomped down, her foot smashing into the floor hard enough that something snapped and gave way, the floor sagging several inches. The Scavengers flailed for balance on the shifting surface, and that was all the distraction she needed to lunge twenty feet to the side, and grab Benthic by the throat. "Now, stand down all your people, or I kill your daughter, Wharf Rat. Any tricks, any more pain, and my fingers close. I'll kill her fast, your healer won't be able to help you. Her head rolls on the carpet if you don't surrender."
Benthic's armor was pressing at her throat, the metal dented by the woman's fingers. It was just enough to add a raspy tone to her voice as the girl murmured, low and quiet just for the two of them. "You can still remember how the chemo made your mouth taste, can't you?"
Alexandria dropped the girl like she was a radioactive scorpion. "What the hell? How can you know that?"
"Pan," Danny said, and the giant taloned hand grabbed onto Alexandria's shoulder, and pulled her back while a very human hand emerged from the palm of the hand grasping her. When the smaller hand touched her, the woman went quiet, her system flooded with sedatives that no needle could have injected into her. Panacea, in her massive organic armor, lifted Alexandria and carried her over to where the desk had been, while Gulliver brought around the other chair. The Wharf Rat leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he stared straight at the unmoving, unblinking woman who was leader of the PRT and second in command of the Protectorate, in violation of the charters of both organizations.
"Alexandria," he said, his voice gentle. "You should be able to hear me. You've been given a paralytic, but you're safe. Just please, listen to me. I only came in here with three ways to bring you down. You've seen two of them. I could have signaled Leet instead of Panacea, but you're valuable as Alexandria, you're a great hero for the Protectorate, and if Leet had fought you, you would have died or just never been able to fight again."
"Not like last time, when you only lost an eye," Benthic said, leaning against his chair.
"Indeed," he said. "Now, here's the thing, Ms. Costa-Brown. If I expose you, it's going to hurt the Protectorate and the PRT, a lot. You'll lose a lot of funding and support. If I die and my automatic countermeasures kick in, it's going to hurt the Protectorate and the PRT even more. But if you step down on your own, nobody needs to know. I'm not interested in punishing you for corrupting the organization, I'm just interested in fixing the damage. I know that Cauldron bribed you and indebted you so that you'd do what they want, but the world can't go on like this. Shadow organizations can't just dictate terms to an agency that calls itself "heroes". Now, in a minute I'm going to have my associate here undo your sedation. You're going to be free to move and speak. When that happens, I'm really counting on you to sit still and discuss with me like a civilized adult. Because if you don't, I am pretty sure that we won't be able to sedate you again. We'll have to fight you for real. And I really, really don't want that, Alexandria. I don't want the world to lose Alexandria. But, I am more willing to lose Alexandria, than I am to keep Chief Director Costa-Brown."
He gave Panacea a nod, and she gave one more touch before she pulled her hand back. The head of the PRT blinked a few times, woozily. "I can't step down," she said. "'S impurr- It's important that I stay where I am. Cauldron needs to stay in charge of the PRT."
"Why?"
"I'm not at liberty to say. But it is of the utmost necessity that I stay where I am, as I am," she said, shaking off the last of the drugs and rallying her hostility. "Now, you seem pretty confident that you are in control of this situation-"
Danny sighed. "Ma'am, with all due respect, I made my bones taking down A-list supervillains with nothing but common rats and whatever I could scrape together in an afternoon. I killed an Endbringer with less than ten minutes notice. I killed the Slaughterhouse Nine literally thousands of times over while the Protectorate fell apart around me. Have you considered that I'm now here, with a handpicked team, adequate preparation, tons of resources, and the element of surprise? I don't mean to sound arrogant, but right now the only person that should be confident in your position is fucking Scion. Ma'am, you're tough and strong and smart. You're not Scion. Now then, if you can't tell me why it's so important for Cauldron to stay in charge of the PRT-"
Benthic laid a hand on his left shoulder. He paused, as if sizing her up. "You know what? Ms. Rebbecca Costa-Brown, I'm not interested in how important you think it is. This stopped being about your options. Stand down. Resign. Today. Either Chief Director Costa-Brown resigns, or Chief Director Costa-Brown dies and Alexandria dies with her."
Alexandria paused, her eyes narrowed. "She's where you get your information," the woman said. "Some kind of thinker power. She's signaling you right now. What does she know?"
"She knows enough to keep her mouth shut," Benthic retorted.
"And she knows that your justification for supporting Cauldron and manipulating the PRT is bullshit," Danny said. "Do you want to talk openly? Because we can keep dancing around the subject if you like."
"Maybe I drop out of the Protectorate?" Alexandria said. "It's less important than my Director position. And your only real issue is that I'm in both, right? Does it matter which one I drop out of?"
He paused. "Seriously? Actually seriously? No. No, because a big part of the problem is that nobody in the PRT, from the janitor to the technicians, is supposed to be a parahuman. Least of all the Chief Director. Unless... unless you weren't a parahuman anymore?" He turned his gaze towards Panacea.
"You can't..." Alexandria started, and trailed off as she stared into the giant compound eyes and needlelike fangs of Panacea's combat suit. "Can you?"
"It's a moot point anyway," the Wharf Rat said, his voice tired. "You've mistaken my willingness to leave you in the Protectorate for a willingness to give you options here. And you keep taking the most unacceptable option you think you have. Lady, Cauldron is cutting deals with villains that are trying to take over cities. Cauldron is enabling villains who use casual murder and dedicated torture to punish minor infractions. And despite these obviously evil overtures, it is also in control of both the Protectorate that opposes those villains, and the PRT that watchdogs them all. They've poisoned governments, betrayed every ideal that any of us could hold, and are directly implicated in the deaths and suffering of millions. If you can support them, you're not even human anymore."
"It's necessary," Alexandria said, sounding even more tired than him. "We have to."
Benthic cued her helmet's external speakers off, and a private party line just to her teammate's comm units. "Eschaton."
The Wharf Rat nodded slightly to indicate he'd heard. "So, you think that Cauldron is working some larger plan that is so grand in scope that it justifies their actions. Something so big and so terrifying that millions dead is a small price to pay. Something so heavy that you would openly endorse a power-hungry international conspiracy that kidnaps, tortures, experiments on, brainwashes, vivisects, brands, and abandons people en masse. Something that rationalizes their perverting every good that humankind can aspire to."
She glared across at him, her hair still wild, her eyes burning with anger, but her shoulders slouched with resignation. "All of that. Yes."
"And do you have any evidence aside from their word?" he asked.
Alexandria froze, her jaw snapping shut. She looked like a bomb was going off behind her eyes. She finally choked out an answer. "I can tell when people are lying to me."
"Ma'am, you are endorsing an organization that has repeatedly done the absolutely unforgivable and unconscionable, that has done literally everything it could to be as evil as possible, on the strength of your assertion that you can tell when people are lying. Well, you're not the only person in this room that can tell when someone's lying, ma'am. And you've got major doubts, major worries. You're trying to figure out if you've let yourself be duped. You're trying to be sure that you really believe in them and their mission, but you can't shake the feeling that you're just giving them the benefit of the doubt because they have done so much for you that you feel like you belong to them."
"No," she snarled. "No, that's not is real, this is a threat. I've been there and I've seen it."
"Alexandria," he said, his tone gone gentle again. "You've watched these people do everything that is evil in this world. You've watched them commit every crime and violate every trust. And you think that they would not, or could not, lie to you? Betray your loyalty? You already know that they would, you know they've done far worse than this. I need you to decide between what you believe, and what you need to believe."
"You're not going to kill me," she said. "You'll never stop the PRT or the Protectorate from hunting you down. Not to mention Cauldron. You're not bigger than the world, rat. You can't escape all of them. If you attack me, you'll die and nothing will stop it." She stood up, and kept rising, her feet dangling above the ruin and wreckage of her desk. "You've got no bargaining position, no room to make a threat. I am going to kill you, or you kill me and everyone else in the world comes after you. This is over, and you're going to lose, no matter what."
Wharf Rat looked over at Panacea. "Are you clear?"
"Yeah, miles away," she said, without turning towards him.
"Great," Danny said. And then he flickered out of existence. And then Benthic, Pariah, Panacea, Uber and Leet, and Salvage all flickered and vanished, leaving behind only small holographic transmitters. Where Panacea had been was a hole in the floor etched by acid, leading to a crawlspace in the building's structure. Gulliver sketched a small salute and then vanished away, and Oni Lee left in an explosion of flames and noise. Alexandria was alone in her office, the floor cracked down the middle, her furniture a shambles. And then she realized that the entire conversation had been recorded. She threw her head back and screamed hard enough that the windows exploded and and the cracked floor settled a foot lower.
The Scavengers were worming their way out of the utility spaces and into the building's basement, heading for the opened grate to the storm sewers, when Eidolon arrived. There was a flash of green-yellow light that zipped in through a wall, bounced around the room eight or nine times, and then resolved into the floating cloaked figure. "Guys, she is really, really pissed," Eidolon said. "Whatever you said to her, you should not have said it. What's going on?"
"PRT regulations require that no employee should be a parahuman," Danny said, shrugging helplessly. "I figure that goes double for any member of management, and triple for any director, and quadruple for the Chief Director. Quintuple for any member of the Triumvirate, and septuple for anyone who owes allegiance to Cauldron."
"You skipped sextuple," Benthic pointed out.
"I know what I did," he said, patting her shoulder then turning back towards the floating man who could turn this whole plan against them. "C'mon, Eidolon, you've known all along that this was wrong. People were trusting the PRT to be impartial, and you can't abuse that kind of trust."
"The world needs Cauldron, and Cauldron needs to control the PRT," Eidolon said. Even with the mask and hood, one could hear the frown in his voice.
Danny waved the others towards the open grate, without taking his eyes off of Eidolon. "What if they didn't? What if the world doesn't need Cauldron as much as Cauldron needs to believe that it is needed? And what if Cauldron didn't need to own the PRT? Just let me ask: would that be a better world than this, or worse?"
Eidolon brought a hand up under his hood as if to run his fingers through his hair, hampered by his hood and mask and gloves, but the nervous gesture remained. "Wharf, c'mon, you can't put me in this position, it's not fair at all."
"I didn't put you in a position," Danny stressed. "I'm just showing you the position they put you in. All you wanted to do was help people, save people, and they convinced you that you had to betray the world's trust to do it. They told you that you had to help them hurt people, lots of people, and corrupt the most noble institutions in the world. But Eidolon, what if you don't have to? What if there's a better way? We can do this, we can help with this."
"You're going up against Cauldron!" Eidolon retorted. "Look, even if I didn't owe them my life and more, it's still Cauldron. They're more powerful than you have guessed or imagined, they're in everything, they know everything. If Alexandria and Legend and I stood down, and everyone else stood down, then the core group of Cauldron has at least five members that could take out you and your entire team. Wharf, their accountant could probably take out me and Legend and Alexandria together. This is so, so far from a fair fight. This is not something that you can win, you can't defeat them or kill them."
"I know," Danny said, cocking his head to the side. "That's why I'm going to beat them the best way there is: I'm going to make them obsolete."
"Huh?"
"Eidolon, I"m going to finish what Cauldron has started, so that they can never justify or rationalize the horrors they have committed. So they can never convince decent people like you to condone crimes against humanity for their sake. They hide behind their secrets, claiming that the ends justify the means while they commit atrocities. I'm going to undo that, and that will undo Cauldron."
The man in green hung in the air, bobbing slightly on the air currents. He turned away, looking past his shoulder towards the dark brick wall. "Get out of here, Wharf Rat. Get back to Brockton Bay."
"I'll call you later," Danny said. "Oh, and Eidolon? This is a tough time for lots of people. We need to make sure that people don't lose faith. Talk to Legend, make sure he's okay. The Protectorate needs to look strong and noble and untroubled from the outside, and I'll bet that you and me aren't the only ones around that need a friend right now." He ducked low and slipped through the grate, disappearing into the darkness.
Panacea, Pariah and Salvage arrived on the back of a coal-black horse made of fabric, and it began unspooling itself before they were fully dismounted. The rendezvous was in a blind alley, and the darkness of their uniforms blended into the shadows. "Holy shit, boss, I have rarely seen you make an enemy the way you made an enemy today," Salvage was chuckling. The rest of the team wasn't laughing. "Hey, what are you staring at?" he said towards their back. "No fair putting the midget in back, lemme through!" He pushed past their legs, and stopped to stare at the doorway. "Well, how about that."
It was a doorway hanging in the air, just like the one that they had walked away from after killing Accord. It looked like an optical illusion, it had almost too much depth and detail. It opened onto a gleaming white corridor with recessed lights and gleaming tile floor, a hallway that looked more like a set piece from a sci-fi movie than any actual walkway.
Danny shook his head. "Walk away, and regroup downstairs. This is not a good-faith invitation, it's just a stupid power play. They've deigned to allow us entrance into their waiting room so we can sit around being impressed and intimidated and unsettled by their decorations, that are clearly designed to make an impression. And then when they actually give us their personal attention, we'll be grateful that the great and powerful Cauldron has actually found the time to talk to us. So grateful that we just accept whatever they have to say without question." He signaled for Pariah to start working on the wings again to fly them back home.
The doorway in the air vanished, and another one appeared in front of the Scavengers, barring the way to the street. And this time there was a woman standing in the doorway, a black woman with a white laboratory coat and elegant glasses that complimented her complexion. "The great and powerful Cauldron," she repeated, with a French accent. "That has a ring to it, Mister Hebert."
Danny stared at her steadily. "I'm certain. But you're still posturing and trying to dictate the power dynamics of our conversation," he pointed out, his tone aggravated. "Even when you get called on it, you still can't help it can you? I know you were watching our talk with Alexandria, so you know what I have to say about you."
"Hostility," Doctor Mother said, arching an eyebrow.
He snorted. "And you can't tell why, can you? You're throwing around casual displays of power to cow me and my people, blocking the exits, laying out carefully-calculated threats with a touch just subtle enough that we're supposed to be intimidated but never call you out on them or respond in kind. You back the likes of Coil and Accord, you are responsible for Shatterbird, Siberian and so many more like them. You infiltrated the PRT and perverted its purpose, infiltrated the Protectorate and turned it into a pawn for your schemes. There is nothing so noble or idealistic that you have not cynically influenced it into a hypocritical abomination. You kidnap people wholesale from their homes, experiment on them, torture them, brainwash them, brand them, then sell them off to act as straw men for your paying customers to knock down in easy fights. You have earned the concentrated hostility of the entire human race in all its iterations across the dimensions, Doctor, mine is a pittance compared to what you deserve."
She scowled. "Mister Hebert, what we have done is necessary to-"
"No," he interrupted. "It was not necessary. You don't even particularly care what is necessary. But if you were to be actually honest with us, you might use the word 'expedient'. Or 'convenient'. I know you have lofty goals. Vast goals. But the methods you are using are not necessary. They are just convenient for you."
"Necessary," she reiterated, her eyes narrowing.
"Liar," he said. "Your personal ego is more relevant to your methods than necessity is."
"How do you find that?" she asked, looking genuinely surprised. "What makes you think that I am hiding in the shadows out of egotism?"
He paused. "If I tell you how I discovered this, will you give my words at least twenty-four hours of reflection?"
She stared at him, judging, calculating as best she could. "I have other methods, I could learn without meeting your demands," she said.
"But you're still laboring under the illusion that you're not just an arrogant bully who is leveraging the trust of powerful capes to build a worldwide conspiracy for your own personal aggrandizement," he rebutted. "Take the deal."
"Very well. How do you conclude that my own ego is the subject?"
He cocked his head to the side. "It's really too obvious, and I've already pointed it out. You brand your victims, Doctor. You kidnap them and torture them, even vivisect them. You strip away all of their memories. Up to this point you have an argument that you are doing this for viable utilitarian reasons. You're trying to learn something, you're trying to protect yourself, maybe you claim you're even trying to spare them the memories of what they've lost. And then you brand them. Trainwreck's shoulder blade, Salvage's leg, each time you print them with your logo. If you had never branded them, they would have their own conclusions. They would think they were a natural occurrence. The authorities would conclude that sometimes people undergoing radical trigger events and physical change will also become amnesiacs. Or that they were slipping through a dimensional portal somehow. But Doctor, you signed your name on them so that they would know this was deliberate, so they'd come looking for you. And then you sell them off at a profit despite the fact that you don't need the money at all. The money doesn't serve a purpose, it's just a way for people to prove materially how important your services are. The only explanation that answers all the questions and satisfies all the facts, is that you're a narcissist who wants power and attention for their own sake, and you will say anything or believe anything to get them."
The woman did not make a single move, but the doorway closed up. The Wharf Rat turned to the team, and sighed. "C'mon, let's get back home to the Bay."
"What the hell, boss?" Salvage blurted.
Danny sighed, and his shoulders sagged. "There's people justifying the most evil actions possible. The stuff that Cauldron has done dwarfs the crimes of the Nazis, for god's sake. They're responsible for Shatterbird and Siberian, and all the tens of thousands of deaths caused by them. They are probably singlehandedly responsible for everything that is wrong in the world of parahumans. I literally would not be surprised if they were responsible for the Endbringers. They sowed secrecy and mistrust among the heroes trying to save humanity from the monsters. And they act like it is what they have to do to prevent the Eschaton, the end of the world. It's.. frustrating. Exhausting. Demoralizing. The things they've done to save the human race make me question whether the human race deserves to be saved. For that alone, I have to fight them as hard as I can."
"Do you want me to kill her?" Oni Lee asked.
"Worse," Danny said. "We're going to prove her wrong."
The wind was coming off the water, cool but humid. Danny sat on the edge of the roof with a beer in his hand, watching another sunset. His legs dangled off the edge, hanging in the air above a four-story drop. The Scavenger Industries factory seemed to suck the heat out of his body, and it was getting obvious that the summer was fading into autumn now.
"Hey boss," Gulliver said from behind him. The young hero walked up to the man's side and sat down cross-legged. He was a stocky kid still, but the planes of his face were etched hard, without baby fat. He had the build of a weightlifter not a sprinter, even dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. "Am I interrupting?"
Danny shook his head. "Nah. I'm just taking as much of a break as I can. Things have been busy lately." He didn't look away from the sunset.
"Sure, the trip to New York," Gulliver said. "Bracing the head of the PRT in her den, that sort of thing. You made a hell of a lot of enemies doing that. I'm sure that was stressful as hell."
Danny snorted and took a swig of his beer. "The Protectorate canceled their orders for all power armor components built by Scavenger Industries. They're trying to hurt our business and our factory, trying to take out their animosity on the people of this city that need jobs. There's not much else they can do at this point, they've already withdrawn all the support and assistance they can. They stranded us when we were double-dipped on Class-S threats, they pulled access to the PRT database. The next step is for them to start trumping up crimes to accuse us of and sending the heroes to take us down, but that only works if they literally don't care whether anyone believes the accusations or not, because they've been caught trying that before and it went badly. So if they're willing to throw away all their credibility, they've got a shot at attacking us, but if they do that it'll split their ranks and sink their whole organization. So, I need to avoid antagonizing them any further or they'll actually do it."
The boy just nodded. A cluster of seagulls circled above them, but when they saw that there was no food to be had they let the updrafts take them further down the shore. "So, that's what it takes for you to stop stepping on their toes," Theo joked.
"Yeah, basically," Danny replied, sharing the wry laughter. "But that's on top of everything else. Working city politics, for instance. I've gotten a copy of Accord's binder to the mayor, and I've been riding his ass to get this thing done. He's not nearly as corrupt as Christner was, but he's very insecure in his position and he needs to be pushed into anything that looks like a political risk. And that goes double for anything that looks like he's letting me dominate city politics. Still, poverty's already dropping, crime is on the decline again, and an early opinion poll is putting Brockton as one of the top cities in America for citizen satisfaction. That, and we're still building up the Scavenger Auxiliary, the second-stringers."
Theo considered that. "I've heard about this. Still not sure what it's for."
"You don't build a backup team with a purpose in mind," Danny said. "It's there for when you didn't expect to need it. But this is even harder than building up the Scavengers, because I have to do it in secret. Lots of moving parts to organize, lots of contingencies to plan for."
The teenager shrugged. "And that's why you're the master planner. Because you can actually keep track of all this. Infinite multitasking. But yeah, it kind of does sound exhausting."
"Both more and less than you'd expect," Danny said. "Let me tell you something. I've got Boston back."
"Pardon?"
"When we went to Boston, Panacea made me up a bunch of repeater rats, enough to cover the city there like I've done here. We were hunting for the Empire, and Accord, and we only had a few hours, so we needed lots of coverage. Then when I left, they were all supposed to disconnect. They were just supposed to transmit my signal to extend my range. But just the other day, a mouse from Boston connected them to Brockton. Apparently after we left, some of the smart mice that had just been born gave the others instructions, and the repeaters started traveling this direction, stretching their range from Massachusetts to New Hampshire until they found us here. So now I've got two entire cities, and a thin bridge connecting them, in my perception. So, I'm watching two cities now not one. And, I've got to deal with the fact that my little rodent minions have the capacity to exert that much independence and forethought. So, if they're as smart as that, is it slavery for me to control them? And what does it mean that the first thing they did was come looking for me so they'd be back in my range? And on top of that, as I review more and more of my work, it looks like a lot of it happens when I'm asleep, like the smart mice are learning what my plans are, and are sending those signals through the repeaters to keep everyone busy even when I'm offline. So I can either worry about what all this means, or I can just be grateful that I can delegate a lot of the work away."
Theo considered this for a bit, his jaw working back and forth as he thought it over. "Damn," he said eventually. "It changes everything if you think that your rats and mice might have independent thought. Even more if they are capable of working a multi-step long-term plan. They're not tools that you have at your disposal, they're soldiers in your army."
"Well, I never really thought of them just as tools," Danny admitted. "I've always tried to keep them safe. But yeah."
Theo pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them. "Sounds like you're taking a lot of responsibility on yourself. A lot of it that you don't have to. Accord's plans, the factory, the union workers, all of Boston, your daughter, the rats themselves, Cauldron, crime in general, the Eschaton... you need to let some of that go."
"I've already let a lot go." Danny heaved a bigger sigh, and finished off the bottle. The sun dipped behind the horizon, and his squint relaxed. "I had been worrying about the environment, and rehabilitation for the villains, and humane alternatives to the Birdcage, and rounding up the remains of the Travelers and the Teeth. I had been worried about that land that the PRT gave to Bitch, just north of the Trainyards. I was worried about Ellisburg, and proactively hunting down Nilbog to eliminate another Class-S threat from the world before he goes too crazy and breaks out to attack the world. I had been worried about ocean oxygenation and the upcoming election. I've already let a ton of stuff go, and pared it down to the important stuff. My friends, my family, and major threats to the world as a whole in the very immediate sense."
Theo just sat on that for a minute, considering his response. "Well, at least it'll be done soon, and you can stop worrying. Nice long vacation, eh?"
"It's a nice idea," Danny agreed. "You know what's stressing me the most? That I haven't heard back from Cauldron. I told them to wait twenty four hours, and it's been weeks. C'mon, it's getting kinda cool out. Let's get inside."
"So when are you making the announcement?" Danny asked, pitching his voice above the wind.
"Monday morning," Uber muttered, his voice low so his passengers wouldn't hear him speaking on his comm unit. "So don't touch any stocks, or the SEC will tear you apart."
Pariah spoke up. "I was zoning out, what are you guys announcing?"
"Leet and I are selling the factories," Uber told her. "We never really wanted to get into heavy industry, and we've got some tender offers from some investors. We're drawing up contracts for the sale, to make sure they don't fire everyone and try to build condos, again, or anything like that. We're going to be concentrating on our sequel game, and Scavenger missions, at least for the time being."
"It was neat to try our hands as industrialists, but we're just not that into it," Leet added, his voice coming clearly through the comms. "And the sooner we let it go, the better. We didn't need those distractions while we're trying to save the world."
Pariah nodded. "Yeah, I hear you. I've started working on my sketchbook again, I think I'm ready to go into couture designs again. You know, the first time some prima-donna photographer started screaming at me, I was really intimidated. That was before I helped kill Leviathan, Lamia, the Slaughterhouse Nine, Empire Eighty-Eight... I don't think that anyone in the fashion industry has what it takes to push me around anymore."
Danny grinned widely. "I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that. I've been worrying that I've been a terrible influence on you."
"The worst," she said with a straight face and a deadpan voice. "Such a bad influence I had to grow up and get strong just out of self-defense."
Gambler's voice came in over the comms. "Look at all of you, deciding what you're going to do when we're done preventing the Eschaton. Big careers, long vacations. Me, I'm going to the seventh grade. I think I'm the only one taking a step down."
Theo chuckled. "Nah, I'm going to still be in high school. Benthic too. Good ol' Arcadia High."
Panacea's grin was even wider. "I'm graduating this year. I've already got standing full-ride scholarships waiting for me at pretty much any medical school in the country."
"You can heal with a touch," Gambler pointed out. "What would you possibly do with a medical degree?"
"You can't charge people for healing unless you've got a medical degree," Panacea pointed out. "The plan is to heal billionaires for millions of dollars, and heal poor people for free. Set my own schedule, set my own customer list, it is going to be a huge relief to me. No pressure except what I choose to take on myself."
"I'm gonna publish my official memoirs with a ghost writer and do the talk-show circuit," Salvage said. "Maybe become a motivational speaker or something. As soon as this team is broken up and done, I'm gonna sell out good and hard and I'm gonna cash in on the fame."
Gambler laughed. "We would expect nothing less. So, I do think the boss is going to go back to working a real grown-up job and stuff, but what about you Oni Lee?"
The Asian man was quiet for a few seconds. "I think I'll join the Protectorate. Or stick close to Wharf Rat, I'm not sure which."
"The heroes would be lucky to have you," Wharf Rat said. "Okay, how far is everyone from position?"
"Cruising altitude at the flyover states, ready any time at all," Uber said.
"Target's on the scope," Oni Lee replied.
"Any time," Pariah reported.
"Give me the word," Leet said.
"Just waiting on the signal," Gulliver murmured.
"Ditto that," Benthic said.
"I've got him where I want him," Salvage said.
"It's not perfect, but close enough," Panacea checked in.
"Uber, take the first move," Wharf Rat called out.
Blueblood was sitting comfortably in her custom-made seat in her private jet. The wine was an excellent year, and for once the Kobe beef was actually Kobe and not some jumped-up impostor. And she was surrounded by her personal assistant, her executive assistant, and her bodyguards, all of whom were chosen for their soft-eyed pretty-boy looks and their professional acumen. And she was flying across the country to work an easy job, another coterie of rogues that needed to be persuaded to join the Elite. It should be fairly simple, they had already been thrown out of the Protectorate. It was a good time to be working for the Elite, as Blueblood herself could attest.
And then the cockpit opened up, and the pilot stepped out. He wasn't her usual pilot, she could tell. He was good-looking enough, but rather butch. Tall and broad-shouldered with far too much jaw for her tastes, and muscular rather than slender and waifish. It took her an extra second to realize he was carrying a parachute. He tossed his hat onto a seat, and stood by the door, with one hand on the door latch. "Good afternoon, Blueblood," he said, smiling. "My name is Uber, and I'm with the Scavengers."
"I read your file," she said, calmly. "You're the weakest member of your team."
"Oh, yes," he said, smiling. "I'm one of the only ones that can't punch a wall down, or see far more than I was ever intended to. I'm rated as a Thinker 3, no other classifications. I didn't even bring along any of my tinker friend's creations for an advantage. I can only acquire skills temporarily, so there's nothing I can do that an ordinary human couldn't do with training. But that includes training as a hacker to reschedule your pilot. And training as an infiltrator to get inside your organization's security perimeter. And training as a saboteur to lock the plane's autopilot on a collision course with the Ozark mountains, and unlock this door so that one twist of the handle depressurizes the cabin and blows everyone in here out into the atmosphere to die on impact. You will notice, I hope, that if you try to use your deoxygenation power, it will shut off the plane's engines and assure a crash. And further, that I will not pass out from oxygen deprivation until after I've had time to turn this handle, evacuate myself out of your area of effect, then open my parachute."
"Yes, yes," she said, waving a hand disinterestedly. "You've got me right where you want me. So, shall we negotiate your terms? What do you want to keep me from attacking your city? You already know my conditions."
"I know," he said. "Join you, or die. And lots of other people die too. It's a tough argument to negotiate with. That's why my orders aren't to negotiate with you," he said.
"Really?" she drawled. "Tell me more."
He snorted through his nose. "You've killed tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands. And there's basically no way to make you stop. You got on this plane with the intention of holding an entire city hostage so that my team would work for you. Left to your own devices you'll kill millions of people in your life. So I guess what I'm saying is, there's not a jury in the world that would convict me."
The thin man with the long brown hair parted in the center had finally eased his gun free of its holster without tipping off the big Scavenger, and he half-rose as he pointed the weapon and pulled the trigger. It wasn't a conventional weapon, it used compressed air to fire a razor-sharp dart. Bullets would not work when Blueblood had her power active, there was no oxygen reaction to explode the gunpowder. So under threat the usual plan was for Blueblood to use her power to knock out everyone but herself and shut off all weapons while her bodyguards killed whomever they could with their modified weapons.
But compressed-air weapons were not quite as lethal as firearms. And the big man moved with shocking speed, using his free hand to bat the flechette out of the air like it was a softball. The blonde man with his long hair in a sweeping wave lunged with a long knife, using the moment of distraction, but Uber's foot crashed into his face with enough force to stop the man in the air and leave him crumpled on the floor. The bodyguard had seven black belts, but Uber had made it look easy to out-fight him, like a cheap extra in a kung-fu film, the kind of stuntman whose job was to fall down after one hit.
"Okay, now that we've got that sorted," Uber said, picking up the parachute, "I'll be on my way. Toodles, bitch."
"Wait!" Blueblood belted, sitting forward from her chair and reaching towards him. "Let's talk! We can work this out! We-" And then the door was opened and the plane depressurized. Everyone in the cabin was flung out, and the autopilot disengaged and started plummeting towards the sides of the mountains. Uber spread his arms to slow his descent, and just enjoyed the skydiving experience while he watched bad guys get sucked out of the private jet and fall careening to the ground. He opened his parachute low, made a soft landing, and hit the beacon for his extraction back to Brockton.
Meanwhile, in an office in sunny California, Entourage was typing her RSVP up for a charity ball. It was actually a covert shakedown, the wealthy of the city paying their yearly protection money so that the Elite did not take everything they had. She was also in a dozen other offices in a dozen other cities, reading or working or relaxing or chatting with her colleagues. And then a man appeared in her office in a massive explosion. He wore the black hooded uniform of the Scavengers, one of the Entourages spent hours every week studying every new development in the world of parahumans, especially any rogues or rogue groups. She recognized the explosive teleport as belonging to Oni Lee, Butcher XV. And then she was gripped with a mindless rage. She flung herself forward, scratching for his eyes. She shrieked wordlessly, how dare he barge into her office!
He took her wrists easily, holding her back away from him. "You can't hurt me," he pointed out. "But maybe all of you working together could hurt me."
She snarled, and collapsed all of her duplicates, disappearing them from their various offices and homes and vehicles and restaurants, and reappearing here in this office. They pounced at him, trying to drag him down under the sheer weight of numbers and rage. He picked up her letter opener and cut one throat, two throats, three, then teleported to the far side of the spacious, well-lit office. The survivors were thrown back, stunned by the blast, with burns and broken bones. But they ignored their injuries to charge him again, and he cut three more throats before he exploded to another corner of the room. And bit by bit he whittled away every duplicate that Entourage could create. She eventually ran out of energy reserves and there were no more bodies, and he killed them methodically, systematically, dispassionately.
Regis Rex was one of the great powers of the Elite, a Brute on a level with Alexandria herself, just a step below the Siberian. He was massive, seven feet tall and hugely muscled, with thick wrists and a tapered waist. It took a special kind of tailor to make his top-of-the-line suits, and he was standing for a fitting when the little girl attacked. She was wearing the black cloak and uniform of the Scavengers when she walked into the back room of the haberdasher's, and accompanied by a half-dozen minions of her own, black-uniformed figures even bigger than Rex himself. The small Italian gnome with the pins in his arm-garter scrabbled out of the way, taking cover behind a thick oak wardrobe. Regis Rex boomed a laugh as he stepped forward. "The doll girl!" he boomed. His voice was as big as the man himself, it sounded like a bomb going off when he laughed, like distant thunder when he spoke. "Your Wharf Rat insults me with this gesture," he chuckled. "I will break him into pieces to teach him respect, after I've finished with you."
He punched the first fabric minion to reach him, and it collapsed around his fist as his strength overwhelmed the telekinetic field inside. But in a second it began reinflating, gaining back its mass and strength. He punched the next, but again it was only down for a second before it began to spring back. No amount of brute-force blunt trauma could stop a bunch of stuffed shirts. He grabbed and tore, ripping the next ones in half, but they began re-stitching in seconds. And the others were punching him. His invulnerability was almost absolute, only the smallest damage could be done to him by any blow, no matter how strong. He could weather a dozen nuclear attacks, punches from the Siberian, even go toe-to-toe with Behemoth. The blows from these creations could knock down walls or crumple cars, but to him they were like being swatted with a pillow.
But there were several of them, punching him from every angle continuously. Dozens of punches, dozens of swats with a pillow. And the ones he tore in half were reformed into two smaller ones, punching twice as often. He tried to charge on the girl herself, all it would take is a glancing blow from his fist and she would be killed, but he couldn't get any traction on the floor. The cloth creatures kept punching him upwards to take away his leverage, and his powers did not give him any adhesion to the ground. And then the tie around his neck began to constrict. He had to take a moment to reach up and snap it so it would release the pressure on his throat. And his clothes began to hamper him, pushing him this way and that to make an easier target. And then the tailor's shelves began to empty themselves of needles and thread, piercing him in dozens of tiny wounds. The threads rubbed at his skin, barely a paper cut, but he could see already the long, slow defeat ahead of him. He struggled, but he failed. It took him a long, long time to finish bleeding out.
Different assassins had different styles, matched up against their different targets. For example, the Patrician was a combination force-field projector and mind-controller. His habit was to protect himself in extremely powerful force fields, trap his enemies inside them, and then slowly infiltrate their minds so that they would obey his every order. And as a curious byproduct of his powers, nobody could teleport through his force fields, making him one of the world's premiere users of that power. They were technically not completely unbreakable, but only truly massive force could destroy them, and he could create new ones instantly. But when a skinny man in Scavenger black came smashing through the wall screaming "HEY KOOLAID", while flashing red and white and yellow, it could catch anyone off-guard, even a man as habitually unflappable as the Patrician. He erected a force field in front of Leet, but the small man burst through it like it was a soap bubble. More fields appeared in front of him, layered tightly together, and the small tinker blew right through them all as he sprinted forward. Patrician raised his hands to protect himself where his force fields could not, and Leet punched him one time. The infinite force of that punch exploded the Patrician into a fine red mist that painted everything in the room in a uniform layer. And then Leet's invincibility star wore off, and he stopped flashing. "Ugh," he said, standing in the red-filmed room. "I had my mouth open..."
Of the Scavengers, Gulliver was the most hesitant about killing, so he was assigned the target who would not need to be killed. The Gentleman was likely the only regenerator on the planet more powerful than the Crawler, having been known to reconstitute himself from component atoms. And every time he used his regeneration, he gained a proportional boost to his strength and speed that would last for about an hour. Fighting him was a guaranteed disaster, every time. He stood in the bathroom of his penthouse suite of the Drake Hotel, while four beautiful terrified women shaved his face, brushed his hair, brushed his teeth, and serviced him sexually. He smiled laconically and reflected on how good life was. Then the women fell back, shrieking with surprise as someone new appeared. The Gentleman turned in place, eyebrow arched, and came face-to-face with a man in black who was popping the tab off a grenade cannister and dropping it next to three others. The Gentleman looked down in mild annoyance, and then the cannisters burst open with clouds of containment foam. It overwhelmed him in a second, immobilizing him and the man in black. But right before his head was obscured, he saw the man in black vanish without a trace. Gulliver waited until the foam hardened, then he threw the mass out the giant floor-to-ceiling window. And a larger stronger Gulliver caught it down on the sidewalk, and bustled it into the back of a truck. The Gentleman could not be killed, or defeated, but he could be buried in the Nevada desert.
Strictly speaking, Nonpareil was a healer. But her power worked by overlaying a person with an ideal version of their self, then changing them to fit that. Injuries would be healed instantly, and imperfections would be removed. Scars, birth defects, amputations, moles, infections, excess body fat, body hair, wrinkles, free radicals, and freckles would all be removed, creating a perfect version that was attractive, healthy, intelligent, and rather artificial looking. It even corrected the vagaries of evolution, improving on the human genome itself, Nonpareil's patients were stronger, tougher, faster, smarter, longer-lived, and had sharper senses than unperfected humans. But the power also considered the ideal version of a person to be a sociopath; all those beautiful healthy specimens also turned into cold-blooded monsters that would stab their own mothers in the back given the opportunity. Nonpareil herself traveled constantly in a crowd of her creations, though her first line of defense was simply to transform anyone that threatened her.
She walked through the studio, with dozens of hangers-on who looked like photoshopped models, all watching every direction to make sure that no flawed humans were allowed to approach their mistress. Only their own were allowed to move in close. Perfected people were her go-betweens, taking sketches from the designers and presenting them to herself, or relaying her instructions to the lesser humans that operated the studio. The flawless people were a cloud of cold, heartless beauty that surrounded her entirely. And then one of them drew a sword and stabbed her through the back of her neck. She died before she could start healing herself again, and fell onto the floor in an ugly heap.
The flawless monsters turned towards the young woman with the black curly hair and the sword, their dead eyes fastening on her. "Vengeance doesn't get you anything," the woman said, wiping her blade clean on Nonpareil's dress. "Loyalty to the woman would be rewarded, but loyalty to her memory is just a waste of time."
The beautiful people stared around at each other, shrugged, and walked away. And Benthic sheathed her sword and walked out, while cuing up her comm unit. "Panacea, hurry back to the rendezvous point, I really want my own face back now."
"Will do," Panacea replied. "But I'm really shocked you were able to do that. You didn't even like killing the Lamia monsters, and they were manufactured clones."
"I read her mind right before I attacked," Benthic replied. "Trust me, the better you understand Nonpareil's mind, the easier it is to kill her."
"Right then," Panacea replied. "I just dropped off a customized virus that should take out Uppercrust inside of the hour, and won't endanger anyone who isn't a left-handed redhead that shares a blood transfusion with Uppercrust herself. Heading back to my rendezvous point."
"Nearly there," Salvage said. He had a close eye on his target. Bastard Son was one of the most feared figures in the Elite, he and his squad of enforcers were considered by many to be a threat on par with the Slaughterhouse Nine. He was a teleporter, able to transport himself, or others, or objects nearly anywhere. And he bypassed the Manton effect. He could teleport someone's heart out of their body, or teleport their arm into the South Pacific with a glance. There was almost no degree of torture he was not capable of and comfortable with. But, he did enjoy his creature comforts and exotic destinations. Including small islands in the tropics, isolated enough that he could do whatever he wanted without concern that a nearby hero would make him cut his activities short.
Islands like this were so isolated that they did not have cell phone towers, and only spotty coverage from satellite phones as those satellites tended to be clustered over landmasses. So a single tower with a single satellite ping handled all the phone traffic, with a line running to the Bastard's cottage. The phone rang, bringing news of the disasters that had befallen the Elite. Bastard Son cursed and grumbled all the way as he crossed the room. He knew that the only people that had this number were too important for him to ignore, so he went to answer the phone immediately. He picked up the receiver and got out a "Hello?" before a nine-foot long arm made of sand bound by thin ravels of flesh came crashing through the floor, a giant fist that pounded upwards and smashed the Bastard Son against the ceiling, killing him in an instant. "All right," Salvage said, pulling himself out from under the floor. "My target's down, ready for extraction."
The next phone to ring belonged to Agnes Court, the leader of the Elite. She reached for it with trembling hands, already certain she knew what this call was. She had been briefed on the casualties so far, every few seconds another of her highest lieutenants was dead. She sat in a grand throne with simple design and sweeping lines, in the middle of a grand palace of fresh-carved wood, still sticky with sap in places. This palace was brand new, she had been working on it for only a week now, in between other projects. Her soldiers and henchmen had fled as more and more news came in from the other posts. The pattern was clear: not only were the upper echelons being wiped out ruthlessly, rapidly, and unexpectedly, but it was a progression from the bottom to the top, leading up to Agnes herself. She picked up the receiver. "Yes?" she said, keeping her voice clear and confident. If one must die, one need not die without dignity, after all.
"Agnes Court," said a man's voice with an East Coast inflection. "This is the Wharf Rat, of the Scavengers."
"I see," she said.
"We decline your invitation," he said. And then he hung up, after breaking the back of her entire organization and leaving her empire in shambles.
