With James Barron unconscious Taylor Hebert must face Armsmaster on her own. Beta by Faria Lyton.
Guild Invites 4.1
Armsmaster whipped his halberd around and pointed it at my face. "Stand down, Lady Bug. That was an accident, a malfunction." He made the word malfunction sound like a curse. "It was also a tranquilizer dart."
I stared at that halberd while «Aikido» whispered suggestions for taking it from Armsmaster's hands. Thousands of bugs swarmed about us. I could take him… I took a deep breath and stilled my bugs. "I'm sorry, it's been a long night." I really didn't want to get into a fight with the head of the local Protectorate, and I had seen that it was only a dart, but… "Beetle Knight went down awfully fast." And I had no idea how many 'hit points' James had by now. He'd leveled several times and was at least a low-tier brute by now. I'd almost killed Lung. Dosage mattered. "Are you sure he's fine? That dart was meant for Lung wasn't it?"
Armsmaster nodded. "It was. However, that was a sandman dart. It's a special tinker-tech formula that Dragon produces for the PRT. It's very safe. He'll just sleep it off for several hours or until someone administers the antidote."
Tinkertech would explain how Shadow Stalker could run around shooting gang members left and right with tranquilizer bolts from her crossbow without ever overdosing her targets. I knew James was breathing steadily, because I'd placed a housefly under his nose. That didn't make me happy about the situation. "So, if there is an antidote, wake him up."
"Unfortunately, while the tranquilizer is very safe, the antidote is not." Armsmaster explained. "Sandman will fight most normal stimulants and keep the subject unconscious. The sedative has to either run its course or be carefully neutralized by a doctor."
"Fine." No, it really wasn't. If James was out for a long time we were going to be in worse trouble with our respective parents. Then again, my father seemed a lot less scary after Legion Zombie and Lung. "When can we get him to a doctor? I'm sticking with him until he's conscious."
"Good. That will give us time to talk about the Wards program. There is a PRT van already in route to here. They should be arriving soon to take Lung into custody. Which reminds me. I still need to sedate Lung."
"Wait!" I held up a hand. "I loaded Lung up with spider venom. He almost died. We hit him with epi-pens to save him. Miscalculated a bit there, and he got back up, but are you sure you want to dose him with a tranquilizer?"
He frowned at me. "Yes, I'm sure. As I said, this drug was designed by Dragon. It's safe. Now step aside."
Right. No need to tell me twice. I got out of Armsmaster's way. He took two steps and pointed his halberd six inches from Lung's thigh. I heard the same quiet pfft sound as before and there was a green dart sticking out of Lung's leg. Just to be safe I put bugs on Lung just under his nose to monitor his breathing as well.
Armsmaster turned to me. I couldn't see his eyes, but his mouth was set in a stern frown. "Now, we have some time to talk. By your own admission you almost killed Lung. I also see wounds that would qualify as excessive force, even brutality against anyone else – except this is Lung. You're right, you had to hit him hard, but you can either give a full statement to me now, or you can give one to the police."
Fuck me. We took out Lung, would it be too much to ask for 'congratulations' or 'job well done'? Apparently it was. "Right, so Beetle Knight and I were out practicing with our powers…" I gave Armsmaster an abbreviated version. I didn't mention Legion Zombie, Illusion Barriers, or how James's powers allowed me to join the party. I just mentioned that we'd run into the ABB and decided to trail them to find out what was going on. When Lung started talking about killing kids, we had decided to stop him. I kept the description of the fight short and focused on my role. I didn't want Armsmaster to get too curious about James's powers. I considered leaving out the meeting with the Undersiders, but it was too likely a video would surface tomorrow. So I breezed over meeting Tattletale and her friends. "Did we do the right thing meeting with them? I don't think we were in good shape to fight after Lung, but they were villains and we just talked."
«Your relationship with Armsmaster has increased!»
"Could you have taken them in a fight?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Seven against two? I didn't have many good bugs left. I could have used numbers against them, but that's slow and it looked like those dogs alone could have kicked our asses. Plus I still don't know what their powers were."
"Hellhound controls and enhances the dogs. Grue projects darkness. We don't know what Regent does, and you just gave us more information on Tattletale than we ever had before. She's clearly a Thinker of some kind. So, well done there. As for whether you should have fought them, you made the right call. They had numbers on you, plus they had just seen your powers and theirs were unknown. Even experienced heroes have trouble going up against unknowns."
It was a huge relief to hear him say that. I still wasn't sure about the Undersiders, but they hadn't seemed that bad for villains. Maybe what Tattletale said about shades of grey had some truth to it?
"Count it as a good thing that all they wanted to do was talk." Armsmaster was smiling now. "You captured Lung and brought back valuable intel on a group we had almost nothing on. What you did tonight was spectacular. You took a major villain off the street."
«Your relationship with Armsmaster has increased!»
The word spectacular rung like bells to my ears. I could feel my face getting heated. Thankfully, he couldn't see me blushing under my mask. "I can't take all the credit. Beetle Knight helped a lot."
"Of course." Armsmaster's tone was oddly neutral, then he changed gears. "The PRT van should be here soon. We need to talk about one more thing, where do you go from here?"
My heart sank. I just knew that he was going to bring up the Wards again. I still wasn't eager to join and James – if they knew what his powers really did, they'd hide him away somewhere safe where he would spend all day every day training others.
"If we didn't have witnesses, I would offer to cover for you and take the credit for Lung. I see too many lights on. There will be video on PHO tomorrow at least. Some of them might even try to sell their footage to the local stations for some quick cash. Taking out Lung, that's going to have consequences."
I shrugged. "More attention than I wanted, but I planned to be a hero from the start." I was more concerned about James. We didn't need that kind of focus on him.
"That's a good thing, but think it through. Lung has an extensive gang throughout the entire Brockton Bay area. More importantly, he has two superpowered flunkies: Oni Lee and Bakuda."
"Yeah, the ABB is really going to hate me now. I knew about Oni Lee, like I said the Undersiders fought him tonight, but I've never heard of Bakuda."
Armsmaster nodded, "Not surprising. She's new. What you need to know about her is that she's a bomb Tinker. She has already engaged in a terror campaign against Cornell University. Lung recruited her recently and brought her to Brockton Bay. Even alone she'd be something of a concern, but put her together with Oni Lee and…" he spread his hands.
I immediately put two and two together. Oni Lee wasn't just a teleporter. He left a clone behind. He was already known for making suicide attacks with grenades. Match him together with a bomb tinker… "Oh fuck, that's bad!"
«Your skill in [Tactics] has increased by 1.»
"Now I want you to consider the danger you'll be in once it gets out that you took down Lung. Without a doubt, Oni Lee and Bakuda will be looking to accomplish two goals. Freeing their boss and getting vengeance on the people responsible."
Fuck, no good deed goes unpunished. With all the hated by the ABB messages that I'd received, I knew he was right. Still, I could see his angle. He was pushing this for a reason. "And you think joining the Wards will make us safer?"
"Of course it will. You'll have support of your fellow Wards and the back-up of the entire Protectorate in case of any altercations."
"I'll think about it." I just wasn't ready. I wasn't that tired physically thanks to repeated level-ups, but after almost dying three times I felt tired. I didn't want to deal with this right now. I wanted to get James revived and go home. "I'll need to talk about it with my partner as well."
Armsmaster nodded his head. "Think about it. Talk it over with your partner, but don't wait too long. You'll be much safer in the wards."
«New Quest Alert: Join a Team!»
«Join a team or form one of your own.»
«Goal time: 72 hours»
«Reward: 7500 XP, Increased relationship with new teammates»
«Failure: Loss of training opportunities»
«Accept?»
«Yes» «No»
Even with James unconscious his weird power had to chip in its two cents worth. As far as I was concerned James and I were already a team. Why would maintaining the status quo cause a loss of training opportunities? I heard the roar of an approaching vehicle followed by the death splatters of some of my outlying bugs.
Armsmaster turned to face the approaching vehicle. "That would be the PRT."
"Good." Hopefully they'd give James the antidote and then we could talk. And to think I'd been worried about what my father would think.