Rachel was the only active member of the Undersiders who I had not yet met in person. This wasn't surprising given just how little time I'd actually spent with the group but was one I needed to get to know if I wanted continued good relations with them.
Also known as Bitch or Hellhound depending on just who you asked, the young parahuman was both the small time gang's main source of muscle and their primary transportation and like any good cape, she did this mostly via her powers.
Or rather the subjects of her powers.
Much like the Empire Eighty Eights Othala, Bitch's abilities didn't work so much by giving her direct combat options, as empowering others. Specifically, she empowered dogs. She could layer them up in a sort of muti-sized biological powered-armor/mini-mech type things that went anywhere from pony scale to minivan. The latter just as strong and tough as you'd expect something that size to be while able to retain a dog proportional scale of speed and agility. They could run pace with cars, jump buildings, and slug things out with clarktech dragon themed self repairing battlemecha.
Which was freaking awesome. Though with the slight complication that it was still a dog piloting the thing, and not one psychically, or even emphatically guided by it's master.
This was both helped, and made dramatically worse when you combined this with the further complication that Rachel herself had her mindset altered. Her powers, and what I suspected was simple conditioning, had ended up giving her a much more canine like social behavior set.
Add all that up and, well, you could see where the problems would crop up.
Long story short, after first manifesting her powers as an early teenager on a puppy being drowned by an abusive foster mother. The ensuing rampage, plus her sudden, near complete inability to read human tone, facial expressions, suddenly viewing exposed teeth as a threat posture, and most of her life experience spent being shafted by the system, plus the fact fewrealizedshe did not have such control...
Well, let's just say that if Brian and Lisa followed my advice on rebranding. They'd have some PR work ahead of them for more then just Regent.
So needless to say, being a known associate of hers would be... problematic of hers, on a public relations level.
Not that I particularly cared about PR. At least no more then as far as it went to getting me the key to the city anyway. Plus, connsidering my power set, playing up the more 'anti' side of the hero equation wasn't something I was afraid of. And, hell if I did talk Grue and Tattletale into rebranding the Undersiders it might even end up helping my image.
Besides, if it really caused problems I couldn't recover from. I could always just give up on my current approach, accept that yes, people are in fact that stupid, and then go punch out Nilbog's little monsters until my eldritch patrons figured that was enough.
You had to have backup plans for little stuff like that.
And speaking of plans...
I met Rachel about halfway down town. Asking to meet up by Eli's was just asking for trouble, and The Empire was mostly stationed out of downtown as far as I knew. I'd have gone for the Docks to meet her directly, but she was pretty wary of new people.
Honestly trying to reconcile the concept of a dethatched ally with the pack instinct to keep 'outsiders' out was going to be hard enough.
As was evident by the two large looming hulks of muscle and bone in a vaguely canine like build looming at me from either side of the wide service alleyway we'd picked to meet.
"You want to talk to me?" Rachel herself wasn't much less imposing. Tall, muscular, with a mop of blonde hair, and the sort of build you'd expect of someone who both fought for their lively hood and was good at it. She was still obviously young. A little bit of puppyfat clinging to her otherwise blocky face. A face that wasn't so much stoic as just plain not expressing at me outside of a hard, appraising look, watching warily for any kind of threat or vulnerability.
It wasn't really enough to intimidate. Even if she had the third of her main frontrunners waiting behind her but that was entirely because I could frankly be a nastier monster then them in an instant if I wanted to.
"Yep," I kept it short. No jokes, no sarcasm. She didn't get tones, so it'd only confuse her. Disarming humor would be anything but disarming in this situation, best to just be blunt. "I want to hurt the empire. You want to rescue dogs. You know where any of their fighting pits are?"
She watched me for a moment, thinking. Canidae social instincts didn't mean her powers effected her intelligence or logic, only her behavior. She could do a cost benefit evaluation like any other seasoned survivor.
"I know a place," she told me frank as could be.
I smiled as wide as I could without grinning.