Author's Note: So here we are in lovely 2019! I do hope you all had a lovely X-Mas and New Year! Here is chapter 3 of Justice for All and I hope you enjoy it.

On another note, another of my ficlets has been adopted, and has been for a while, actually. The ficlet is 'My Body is the Shield', which makes me pretty happy. The guy who picked it up is Tale Swapper and he posts it exclusively on Significant Velocity under the title of 'Rising of the Shield Heroine' so please go over and check it out!

"Iustitia!" – Regular Speech

'Mistress!' – Thoughts/Telepathy

[Justice for All]! – Skill/Ability being used.

Beta'd by BigCC

Session 1.3

The sound of a raging Glory Girl quickly drew our group down the tunnels. As we got closer new sounds were quickly added to the chorus, first high-pitched chittering squeaks and shrieks that obviously came from the rodent denizens of this abyss and the loud echoing sounds of powerful impacts smashing said rodents across the room.

"She must be under attack by those giant rats." I decided to state the obvious.

"That wouldn't make her this angry." Gallant countered sharply, sounding worried. "Shit, something must have happened to Panacea!"

Abruptly, the tunnel ended and widened into a cavern. On one side of it was a girl dressed in a white princess-like outfit with a short skirt, a tiara and a cape. Slumped against the wall behind her was a shorter figure in a white costume with a red cross on it. It was also stained with blood. The look of utter rage on Glory Girl's face was almost frightening to see.

Surrounding the two Dallon sisters were several large rats. There were also the pulverized remains of several other giants rats scattered about, obviously the raging Alexandria-type hadn't been idle while we were rushing to help.

"Shit, I hate being right." The armoured empath growled. "Kid, Justitia, go!"

Not needing any encouragement, Kid Win and I charged in. With a thought, Iustitia silently redeployed into her Sword and Scales form as I rushed toward the center of the rat horde. The Tinker on his hoverboard fired several blasts from his laser pistol that killed one of the oversized rodents instantly and injured two more, forcing them back and giving me room to move as I finally reached a point where my ability could reach all the gathered enemies without touching the Wards.

"[Balance the Scales]!" I ordered. The blast of light from my scales struck every giant rat nigh simultaneously before I used [Blade Charge] to slice into an injured rat and then whirl and behead another.

With a whoop of relief at the reinforcements, Glory Girl started punching more enthusiastically at her enemies. Between the three of us, the floor of the cavern was soon littered with smashed, cut, and flambéed rat corpses.

"Sis!" the flying girl swept down to kneel next to who I had to assume had to Panacea.

"Vicky, what happened?" Gallant asked as he ran over.

"This robed bastard showed up while I was picking Amy up from the hospital and sent us here, wherever here is, with a flute." The blond girl snarled. "That was about ten minutes ago. We got ambushed by those mutant rat things just a few minutes ago. She got bit on the shoulder by one of them before I tore it off and started sending them flying."

I walked over and knelt next to her and peered at the wound on the world's greatest healer. I was no doctor but even I could tell that it was really bad, particularly since I could see bone. "She's losing too much blood. Iustitia, Maiden Form. Use [The People's Welfare is Supreme]."

"Yes Mistress." My Embryo transformed into her form as a little girl, although I quickly noticed her appearance seemed to have aged a couple years since the last time I saw her. She clasped her hands, bowed her head and started glowing white.

"What the…?" Glory Girl stepped forwards, but stopped when Aegis raised a hand.

"Justitia, what's your projection doing?" he asked calmly.

"It's one of Iustitia's abilities. [The People's Welfare is Supreme] is a healing power that heals everyone within a couple of meters of her. Unfortunately it's not instantaneous like Panacea's power, but it should be able to heal her in a few minutes." I answered. Something I left out was that it was slowly draining my Stamina gauge in order to work. If it depleted fully, I'd be knocked out. Fortunately, I'd levelled up during that fight, so my Stamina had shot back up to full. I should have enough to heal Panacea.

"Whoa…it's working." Clockblocker put in, pointing as the wound on the healer's shoulder slowly sealed itself shut.

"Seriously? From nothing?" Kid Win said, clearly in awe.

"It isn't from nothing." Iustitia spoke up, sounding rather insulted. "My Mistress is utilizing her own life force and channeling it through me in order to supply energy for my skill. She will barely be able to move for a period of time once we are done."

I winced. "Iustitia…no giving away the secrets and weaknesses of my powers without permission."

"They had to know, Mistress. Otherwise you would have been forced to move while completely bereft of energy and unable to defend yourself."

Stubborn little…

"So she's using her own energy up to heal people…OK then. That makes a bit more sense." The Tinker nodded, seemingly happy that I wasn't totally abusing the Law of Conservation of Energy.

"Will you be able to walk after your projection is finished healing?" Aegis asked.

"Her name is Iustitia. Use it." I told him flatly as I sat against the wall and wrapped my cloak around me, vanishing from their sight. "To answer your question, yes, but if you want me to be more than baggage if we get attacked by more of those mutants, let me rest for a while after she's finished."

"You have a sword projection that changes into a little girl that heals AND a Stranger power that lets you vanish from sight?" Glory Girl raised an eyebrow. "Who the heck are you?"

"Justitia, a newly Triggered Parahuman who was kidnapped out of costume by Hamelin. Nice to meet you, Glory Girl." I said flippantly. "You two are the newest members of the Hamelin Kidnapped Persons Association, so what's been happening since the Wards and I got sent here?"

A lot, it seemed. Apparently, Hamelin had slipped the noose that the PRT and Protectorate had tried to throw around him after he zapped the Wards. After the point that I had gone missing (unknown to Glory Girl), Hamelin had led Velocity on a merry chase through the Docks, having a power that let him outpace anyone who chased him. Seriously, he was one hell of a grab bag Cape, as in he had grabbed the bag and ran with it!

The Wards then filled her in on everything that had happened to them since they had entered Hamelin's World, as Clockblocker had dubbed our current prison.

"Uuuuhhh….Vicky?" a groggy voice groaned as Iustitia's healing light vanished. Panacea was awake.

"Ames!" Vicky beamed and I could feel her aura pushing onto my mind.

"Vicky, aura." Gallant said in a way that told me he'd done it a dozen times before.

"Oops." Glory Girl winced and the pressure on my mind vanished.

After Amy Dallon was caught up to speed and introduced to me, we rested for a quarter of an hour (thank god for Kid Win's visor-mounted clock) before continuing on.

"Soo…what's with the odd power?" Glory Girl asked bluntly as we walked…well, I walked, she floated. Stupid fliers living the dream while we groundling are forced to walk.

"My Mistress received me as a power because of the path she sought." Iustitia answered for me.

"I don't follow." The famously called 'Alexandria Junior' said with a tilt of her head.

"My Mistress knows exactly who is responsible for torturing her into Triggering." My Embryo revealed. "Were she a lesser person she would have asked for vengeance. If that was the case, I would have developed and emerged as Nemesis, Maiden of Retribution. If she were a more cowardly person, I would have become Pax, Maiden of Peace. If she was a short-sighted person, I would be Maat, Maiden of Truth. My Mistress rose above all of those and had the desire for Justice over Vengeance, for action over inaction and for results instead of words. I have lived as part of my Mistress for a full month, Glory Girl, and I know all she knows. I know who my partner is as a person on a level even she does not and I am more proud of her than I can put in to words, because she chose the higher path."

There was silence as the Wards and the younger generation of New Wave digested this.

"And she's a part of your power?" Panacea asked in disbelief.

"I've only had her awake for a day." I defended. "I haven't had time to get her to not drop conversational nukes like that."

"So wait…you really were plainclothes when you were kidnapped?" Glory Girl frowned. "Where'd the costume come from then?"

"Part of my power kinda turns me into something like a MMORPG character." I admitted. "I have levels, jobs and stats. I also get loot from defeated enemies. I have no idea if I have to kill them to get loot or not, but my gut is currently telling me no. Anyway, I collect it by tapping the corpses with Iustitia's sword form. She altered it so I'd get a costume out of it. Two seconds…"

I pulled out my mirror and ran through the screens to equip my new [Rat Skin Leather Boots], [Rat Skin Breeches] and [Rat Skin Belt]. This completed the set for me and granted me slightly increased stats while I wore the whole set.

"Shit on a stick."

"Vicky!" Panacea scolded on reflex.

"Let the loot come naturally from here on out, Iustitia." I told my partner. "Unless it's bones and skin and stuff."

"Roger that, Mistress." Iustitia nodded.

"Can you lay off the Mistress thing? It feels weird to hear a twelve-year old call me that." I said with a sigh.

"You are my Mistress, Mistress."

I mask-palmed.

"Seriously, how big is this place?" Vista complained after five more minutes. "I mean, I think that Justitia's right and this place is a dimensional pocket of some sort, but how can one Parahuman maintain such a large space like this? It's nuts! He'd have to be stronger than Eidolon to do this!"

"I haven't a clue." Aegis admitted. "Kid, insights?"

"I'm just as stumped. Dimensional stuff isn't my specialty…hell, I don't even know what my specialty is, but it isn't dimensional manipulation." The young Tinker answered, scratching at the side of his helmet in confusion.

"It could have already existed." I offered up hesitantly.

"What?" Clockblocker asked skeptically.

"No, listen. If the pocket already existed in some way before Hamelin triggered, it could be that all he's doing is linking with it with his powers and altering the insides to suit his desires." I said, letting my thoughts babble a bit. "Considering how many Tinkers have been alive, there has had to have been at least one who specialised in dimensional theory or creating pocket dimensions or something like that at some point."

"Ten that I can think of off the top of my head." Kid Win stated slowly. "About another fifteen others worldwide that were suspected of it before either dying or being Zized." When I gave him a curious look, he simply shrugged "I've studied a lot of other Tinkers work, hoping to get a clue on what my specialty is. So far it hasn't helped, but I've got some neat trivia out of it."

"That isn't including any other Parahumans who could have created this with…I dunno, a Shaker effect?" Vista chipped in. Judging from the body language and the way she looked at me, she was impressed.

"Okay, so …just to be clear here, he isn't a godlike Cape, merely one who is insanely powerful enough to manipulate a dimensional pocket of this size?" Clockblocker sighed. "You really haven't lowered the bar by much."

"Suck it up." I shot back, trying to sound confident. "We're going to have to confront this guy in order to get out of here in all likelihood, so stop making demons in your mind about him and start walking."

"Jeez, you're as big a hardass as Halbeard." He complained.

"That's Armsmaster, not Halbeard." Aegis said in a censuring tone.

"Yeah, yeah, it isn't as if he's here to hear me…"

"Is he always like this?" I asked Panacea in a bit of disbelief.

"No…ordinarily, he takes one piece of possible innuendo and runs with it all day until he's flogged a dead horse into mincemeat." The healer replied dryly.

"I resent that!" said flogger responded petulantly.

"So…he gets worse?!" I shudder to think of the possibility.

"Now you're just being hurtful!"

"Oh yes. Then Vista has to spatially slap him into submission."

"Oi! Ow!"

"Just like that, actually."

I had to admit, seeing the Wards as themselves rather than the posing heroic figures on TV and at press conferences was…nice. Odd, but nice. It made them real people rather than caricatures that were popped out by the PR Department of the PRT.

The air turned tense again when a female scream, this time one of pain, rent the air. I didn't recognise the source, nor did anyone around me, but we all sped up into a run as soon as we heard it.

At the end of the tunnel was the entryway into a large cavern. Wide enough that the bay of Brockton Bay could have fitted into it comfortably, with room to spare, and high enough to fit the Capitol Building from spire to lowermost foundation. Dotted about the place were the remains of buildings of all types; wooden cabins, corrugated iron warehouses, brick houses and even what looked like the toppled remains of a high-rise apartment building. In around about the center were four crosses with figures tied to them. Floating around the surface of the cavern were several screens of some sort, each the size of the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler, all of which displayed several locations that I recognised in the Bay, as well as the John Hancock Tower in Boston, and Independence Hall, Philadelphia.

"Ohhhhh…so that's how he does it." I breathed, understanding what was going on.

"Care to share with the class?" Clockblocker asked in a whisper.

"Those screens are Tinkertech, aren't they?" I hissed. "I'll just bet that they let Hamelin teleport to anywhere that he has a picture of loaded into them, as well as back here."

"Teleport isn't the right word." Kid Win corrected me absently, eyes locked on the screens. "Dimensionally shift would be the better term. But I agree. That's also how he got us into this…place…in the first place. He had us spread around so we'd be easier to pick off at his leisure, but apparently he forgot about Vista's space bending abilities. That let us travel faster than normal."

"Well, not many people outside of the PRT and Protectorate know exactly how powerful my Shaker abilities are, Kid." Vista said, with a shrug. "He could have taken my public profile as gospel."

Gallant, who had been silent up until this point, suddenly cursed. "Damn. The Undersiders've been crucified."

"What?!" I squeaked.

"Oh, not with nails and the like, but they are hanging by their wrists from those crosses." The armoured hero said grimly. "Looks like someone kicked the crap out of them first too."

"Who are the Undersiders anyway?" I asked. "New kid on the block here."

"A gang of teenagers, we think, and this confirms it." Aegis explained. "Hellhound, Tattletale, Grue and Regent. They're villains, but they're small timers. Robberies, hit and run style. That's pretty much all they've done. Pretty low priority compared to the big three gangs of the Bay."

"They're out cold and look like they've been here for a while." Kid Win observed. It turned out both Gallant's armour and Kid's armour had a zoom function on their HUDs, which is why they could see so far into the cavern. "Think he went after them first?"

"Makes sense." Clockblocker said with nod. "None of them have any top tier powers. If he caught them off guard, they would've been zapped here before they could react. And if he made sure to exclude Hellhound's dogs, they would have been overwhelmed quickly by the rat monsters."

"But then…what brought them here?" I voiced the question that had been bugging me since Gallant had revealed their presence. "It would have taken quite some time to carry four teenagers, unconscious or not, here through the tunnels and tie them to those crosses. Unless Hamlin has other projections aside from those rats, he's been busy in the Bay for most of the day. So, I repeat, how did they get here?"

"That's…yeah, that's a good point." Aegis nodded. "Clearly this Hamelin guy captured us for a reason, whatever it may be. I wonder if it's worth the Kill Order he's going to get for it."

"I hope they wait until we get out of here before they kill him." Kid Win said uneasily.

"Why?" Glory Girl asked in puzzlement.

"Because if he has taken over someone else's dimensional pocket, then once he dies, it'll either pop out of existence completely or revert back to whatever it was before he took it over." The Tinker replied. "If it's the first, we will probably die. If it's the latter...we might wish we were dead. We could be absorbed into the structure of the dimension, still alive. Not pleasant."

"On that cheerful note, let's find a way out of this place, tout suite." I remarked dryly, surprising a laugh out of some of the queasy Wards. We snuck into the cavern after that. It wasn't easy given the complete lack of cover aside from the sparse and widely dispersed buildings and none of us wanted to give them any chance to possibly collapse on us.

"Look at that one!" Vista hissed, pointing at one giant screen in particular. It was displaying the inside of a building…and it was also moving.

"A livestream of Hamelin's point of view?" I frowned. How on earth…?

"Oh crap…that's the Wards base under the PRT building!" Aegis cursed. "He's going after Shadow Stalker!"

"Would she be there?" I asked with a jolt of shock. Going after the Wards in broad daylight was one kind of crazy, but attacking the PRT Building itself in order to kidnap one was on a whole other level of sheer nutso.

"Maybe. It is staffed by PRT troopers, and she'll have a guard on her with both us and the two most active members of New Wave being zapped away like we have been." Gallant answered. "Only safer place would be the Rig in the bay. No lone Parahuman would be stupid enough to attack the Rig when it has all of Armsmaster's Tinker tech defences in place and the rest of the Protectorate on standby."

"Just like no lone Parahuman would dare kidnap the Wards and seven other teenaged Capes in the space of a single day?" Clockblocker asked pointedly. "Whoever Hamelin is, he's as ballsy as he is batsy. He does what no one expects because it would be foolish, and yet he manages to do it. That moment of surprise is what took everyone here off guard and let him teleport -sorry, 'dimensionally shift'- us here."

"Actually, he caged me before shifting me here." I countered. "If he hadn't, I would have attacked him or run. Maybe…that's it! Maybe he can only 'shift' someone if they're standing still? Or relatively still at least."

"Shifting a moving target would be hideously complex compared to a stationary one. Or at least, targets moving outside of a predetermined pattern or series of coordinates." Kid Win agreed, his voice a bit distant as he stared into space. "With us, he had stationary targets, ditto for Glory Girl and Panacea. With you, well he might not have known what kind of power you had or how you'd react, so he threw up a cage to keep you contained, or at least…it could have been a cage…or even a soft light hologram to cause you to freeze up long enough for him to shift you."

I froze at that before groaning in realization. Hamelin had totally bluffed me, in all likelihood. I was feeling more than a little stupid for that. Urgh, tricked by a guy wearing a technicolor bedsheet. How embarrassing.

Setting aside my feelings of utter embarrassment, we made our way to the center of the cavern and the four figures who were crucified there. Two were girls and two were boys. One was wearing a purple and black costume with a purple domino mask while another wore a frilly, ruffled shirt like you'd see at a renaissance faire along with a mask with a mocking smile on it. The third wore rough clothes along with a dime store dog mask, while the last wore motorbike leathers and had a modified helmet rather than a mask. The light wasn't good enough for me to see what the mask looked like, however.

All of them were ragged, with cuts in their costumes and bruising on their visible skin. Not wounds from the rats, those nasty little bastards leapt in head first with their maws open. No, they had been beaten down by something, someone, with intelligence and the knowledge of where to hit to disable, but not kill.

I should know; the Bitch Trio had made a point of hitting me where it would hurt but not be visible. Aside from the bruises on the arms, from blocking punches and the like I guessed, there were no visible bruise marks at all, aside from where the costumes were ripped.

"Shit. Panacea, can you heal them up so they don't bleed all over the place once we have to get out of here?" Aegis asked quietly.

"I can." The healer nodded. "I don't usually heal someone unless I have their permission to do so, but these are very extenuating circumstances."

Unfortunately, the Wards had no knives or anything with which to cut the ropes that bound the Undersiders to the crosses. Something about minors wielding knives being bad PR.

"And that's just one more reason I am never joining the Protectorate." I snorted. "PR shouldn't take precedence over practicality."

In the end, Aegis flew me up and I cut the teen villains down, Glory Girl catching them one at a time and lowering them to the ground. Panacea quickly healed them and then moved to the next.

"Right, let's go." Gallant said firmly. He'd been keeping an eye on the monitor that showed Hamelin's current location and he was in the middle of chasing Shadow Stalker through the PRT building's corridors. The former vigilante was shooting at him with crossbow quarrels that bounced off of some sort of personal forcefield that suddenly sprung up around the technicolor weirdo. Was he a Tinker, or did he know a Tinker?

We started to leave, only to hear the tell-tale sound of rats on the move, but there were a lot more of them than before. The sounds were coming from the tunnel on the other side of the cavern from us, but we wouldn't have much of a lead on them even if we booked it the whole way. Damn rats were fast bastards.

"Fuckburgers." Clockblocker said eloquently.

"Vista, get ready to twist space so we can run quickly." Aegis ordered. "Clock, you, me and Glory Girl grab the Undersiders."

Tattletale and Regent were skinny enough that Glory Girl could grab both of them, while Aegis threw Hellhound over his shoulder and Clockblocker grabbed Grue.

With that, we started running like hell.

"Why're the rats coming now?!" Vista grunted as we fled towards the exit we had entered from.

"Dunno." I answered with a gasp. "At a guess? He had some kind of all alarm on the Undersiders' crosses that went off as soon as we removed the first of them. That probably sent the damn monsters towards us."

"Less talking, more running!" Glory Girl shouted. I noticed that Panacea was starting to flag, so I grabbed her hand and pulled her along with me. Peeking over my shoulder, I saw a positive wave of the monsters emerging from the other tunnel. There had to be at least fifty of them and they all looked pissed as hell.

"Crap!" I cursed and added some extra speed into my feet from somewhere.

"They're going to catch us at this rate!" Kid called from his hoverboard.

"Make a stand in the tunnels!" I shouted back. "With the size of them, it should act as a bottleneck and keep them from overrunning us with sheer numbers!"

"Sounds good. We'll do it after we enter the tunnels and run for a couple of minutes." Aegis said flatly.

Even with Vista's space bending abilities, that would only give us a little while to set up.

'Iustitia, any ideas?'

'Sadly no, mistress.'

Well hell.

We ran until Aegis landed, then put the Undersiders, who were still unconscious, down and turned to face the direction that the giant rats were coming from.

"Justitia, can that Shaker power of yours affect all of the rat monsters that are coming at us?" Clockblocker asked nervously.

"It'll affect as many of them which are within ten meters of me the moment that I activate it." I answered steadily. "I also can't activate it again until all of the ones affected by it are either defeated or dead."

"Lovely. Well, just as long as they're all within ten meters of you, that's fine." The Wards' leader said with a nod. "Glory Girl, can you spot for her?"

"On it." The blond girl said and floated up. I deployed Iustitia in her sword and scales form and waited for the word to activate her power. In a manner of seconds, the sound of paws beating at the ground could be heard and the wave of giant rats could be seen charging at them in the distance.

"Kid, do you have any other weapons?" I asked steadily. "I kinda think that a pistol isn't going to cut it here."

"A rifle, but it isn't much more powerful than the pistol, and it doesn't have a lethal mode." The Tinker answered.

"Give it to Vista then. We need all the firepower we can get." I said as the ravening horde of rats drew closer. The Tinker nodded and handed his second weapon to the younger girl, who nodded in thanks.

"I found a Glock on Tattletale." Clockblocker volunteered. "Only one clip though."

"Use it sparingly." Gallant told him. "My emotional blasts won't work very well on the rats aside from the baser emotions, and no way am I gonna use anger on them. Heck, if they're projections, would my emotional blasts even do anything to them?"

"Aside from the minor physical impact, squat." Aegis told the armoured hero. "Just use the armour to punch them. With the minor strength boost it gives you, it should do something."

Then they were almost upon us.

"Glory Girl…" I said with trepidation as the horde drew closer, only a few meters away.

"Not yet."

"Vicky, I think we can handle a few at full strength, so just give the all clear." Gallant said firmly.

"Spoilsport…OK, now!"

"[Balance the Scales]!" I shouted and the energy wave slammed into the incoming horde like a tsunami, weakening the rats down to my level of stats. That wasn't as bad as it had been a while back due to my level up, but it was enough that the Wards, plus Glory Girl, had a distinct physical advantage. Panacea kept back with the Undersiders and out of the line of fire.

Kid Win and Vista opened up with their laser weapons, with Kid Win's obviously being more effective, the red beams lancing out to strike various rats in the line, burning holes clear through them. Vista's rifle was less effective, the paler bolts it fired only impacting and sending rats flying back or into each other, but it still obviously hurt them. Yet still did they advance.

Gallant fired a blast of his own at one, but it did exactly nothing, just as Aegis predicted. Then Glory Girl and Aegis swooped in and started laying in to the horde of monsters. I joined them, swiping with my sword. I killed one and felt the warm tingling feeling that Iustitia informed me was the sign of a level up being stored until after combat.

The world turned into a whirling melee of sword, fang and claw. I was repeatedly thanking Iustitia in my mind for getting me my costume, as it prevented me from more than a few serious wounds from those blows I couldn't dodge or block in time. My [Swordsman's Eye] skill was also a lifesaver, as it gave me a few seconds of warning before the rats actually moved.

I must have killed five more rats before the rest finally seemed to develop a sense of self-preservation, breaking their mad charge and retreating back down the tunnel. There were at least twenty more on the ground, so the Wards, Glory Girl and I must have killed over half of the damn things.

Pulling my mirror out, I chose to level my [Swordsman] job again and then checked my stats.

Name: Taylor Hebert

CapeName: Justitia

Gender: Female

Level: 4

Title: None

Job(s): (1) Swordsman (LV4)

EXP: 53/400

Embryo: Maiden of Justice Iustitia

EmbryoType: Maiden with Arms

EmbryoFormsAchieved: 1/7

Stats

HP: 400

STA: 1500

MP: 155

Strength: 32

Toughness: 30

Endurance: 32

Intelligence: 20

Wisdom: 15

Luck: ?

Additionally, I gained two more swordsman skills, [Blade Sweep] and [Sword Arts Proficiency]. The first was another generic basic attack skill of the swordsman and was a powerful horizontal cut, while the other added extra damage to every attack made with a sword, any type of sword. This was in addition to the [Sword Mastery] Passive skill, which did pretty much the same, but capped at level ten.

Still, we weren't out of the woods yet. Those rats had only retreated and were still lurking around somewhere. Plus, we still had no idea how to get out of here.

'Life's certainly interesting.' I thought with a chuckle before going to gather the loot from the dead rats.