Heieienej

by Kahlil Johnson

Aka lei

3. Vgg

Darkness.

Gabriel shifted around in the bed for a while, feeling groggy. He reached mentally. The power that could tell him the time of day; he reached out to his inner clock, to know what time it was approximately. He stirred, realizing it was past noon.

Fuuuuck… I gotta get up.

Gabriel sat up in the bed, yawning and stretching to make the sleep-muscle soreness go away. The room was exactly how he'd left it last night, when Lisa left and he knocked himself out with his power.

The results came into his mind, slipping like paper envelopes underneath a door. His eyes widened.

"Holy fucking shit, I'm the alpha version of Legend," Gabriel exclaimed, jumping out of the bed. "And I can make… birds!" He raised his right hand, concentrating the heat of his central flame. Golden particles started condensing into a scintillating sphere, getting smaller and brighter, until...

The flames erupted all around the room, without causing any damage. Some of them washed across his chest and head went into his eyes, but they weren't blinding or uncomfortable. It was the golden spark of life, that he commanded. What was left from the bright explosion was a glorious, golden phoenix, batting its wings solemnly. It hovered in place, blue fire streaking off of it.

After a moment, Gabriel offered an arm, and the phoenix gently sat upon it, picking underneath its wing.

"Oh my, this is awesome," Gabriel said with starry eyes, staring at it in awe.

"What is?" Regent asked. Gabriel turned around in surprise, and Regent saw the flaming phoenix of gold and blue. He blinked, but looked unimpressed at first glance. Regent squinted a little, raised an eyebrow and tilted his head - as if appraising the creature. "Yeah, I guess that's pretty cool."

"Were you standing in my room the whole night?" Gabriel asked, as the phoenix flew off his arm and onto Regent's shoulder. The boy didn't react overtly, glancing at the creature but otherwise not paying it any heed.

"Nope," he popped the 'p,' stepping into the room and looking around at the minimalistic decoration. Distracting himself with the surroundings. "Lisssaaa wanted to talk to you, for whatever reason, so you should get to that. There's like a meeting or something? Apparently, Coil and co. are all getting their underpants in a twist, because Shatterbird didn't sing."

"Hm… that's weird," Gabriel said, rubbing beneath his nose with his hand.

"Yeah, and no one's seen or reported the Nine since last night when you were found. Or any murders," Regent added, shrugging. His eyes looked sunken, but not from tiredness - from boredom. People in the city were starving, with little electricity and broken water pipes, and there was a group of serial murderers going around, and somehow this guy could look bored with this state of affairs.

Gabriel nodded. "Where is she?" he asked, folding his arms.

"Downstairs," he said, pointing with his thumb and leading the way out, "In the, uh, I don't know what it's called. Strategy room?" He shrugged.

"Thanks. I'll be going," Gabriel nodded at him. "Also, War Room."

"That." Regent nodded, then scritched the phoenix under the chin. It cooed in quiet satisfaction, as he walked out and snorted under his nose, "Longinus."

Longinus made his way out of the room, alongside Regent, and into the War Room where everyone else was. The Undersiders were gathered there, alongside the Travelers and Midtowners. The three groups appeared to be holding a conversation on an unknown topic. Before they could step into the room, Regent held out his hand and stopped Gabriel in his tracks, frowning for a moment as he looked at Gabriel's face. Regent contemplated the image of Gabriel's face for a several seconds.

"Fuck it," the boy said, pulling out a sharpie. "Stay still."

"There's no need," Gabriel said, stopping him with one hand.

Regent frowned at those words. "Yeaaah, there is," he answered, but lowered the sharpie.

"I can just do this," Gabriel argued back, as waves of golden energy condensed onto his face, forming a perfectly smooth mask with shifting panels to match his expression. He tried to make it like Accord's - only golden, and less beautiful.

Regent blinked once. "Huh." He examined the mask from several directions in mild surprise, judging the contours and shapes of the object, almost like an art critic. Then he swung the sharpie, adding a rough mustache to the impromptu mask before he put the cap back on and walked into the War Room.

Gabriel snorted, raising an eyebrow. The faceplates moved significantly as he did so. It was a little rough, in terms of control: the construct wasn't mechanical on its own, because Gabriel's engineering was light-years behind what Accord could manage. He had to manually think the mask into the shape he wanted it to take. He walked in, arms folded, looking around.

"There he is," Tattletale said, interrupting a conversation that was taking place at the table. She raised a hand in his direction, welcomingly. "Meet Longinus."

Half of the room snorted, but Trickster just narrowed his eyes and pulled his cigarette out of his mouth, hesitant.

"No, I'm not compensating for anything," Longinus pointed out before they could ask. Not really a tactic for social domination or anything - just a bad joke to break the ice, only to then smirk at Trickster. It wasn't mocking or sarcastic. "Long time no see. No hard feelings," he nodded in his direction.

It took a moment for Trickster to absorb that statement, but in the end, he nodded and said, "Likewise," with a one-handed tip of the hat, while the other returned the cigarette into his mouth, and the first one was already moving to withdraw a lighter from his pocket.

With that, Tattletale took over, explaining, "We're waiting for Coil to arrive, so we can start planning. He didn't trust you in his base." She shrugged, expressing helplessness.

"I wouldn't if either if I was in his stead," Longinus admitted, shrugging as well.

"I can't help but notice the mask you chose bears Accord's likeness," Trickster noted dryly, the end of his cigarette lighting up at the end of the sentence.

"A simple helmet is too unexpressive and concealing. If I want people to trust me, they need to be able to tell my emotions," he responded with a note of finality.

Trickster smiled, in a condescending way. "Wearing your heart on your sleeve is a good way to get killed real quick."

And then Gabriel just constructed a huge-ass golden cube around his head. A muffled, "Is this better?" came out of it.

Through the other side, Longinus heard Regent laugh out loud, saying, "I want that. The pranks that could be played." Tattletale sighed exasperatedly, massaging her temples with twin fingers on each hand.

After a brief moment, the cube returned to being a simple mask, but with no faceplates, taking Trickster's advice.

After that, mostly silence reigned the meeting room. The Midtowners weren't quite glaring at Longinus, but their expressions bore a degree of bitter resentment. Probably from that one time he kicked their ass alongside Dauntless. Or from that other time, that he kicked their ass alongside the Wards.

Longinus glanced back at the Midtowners. "Sorry about our… past encounters," he said, cringing for a moment, scratching the back of his head.

Venus glanced at her teammates to see their reaction. Gargoyle nodded once, stiffly, while Uber averted his gaze. She smirked instead, and blew a kiss Longinus' way, a ring of purple-pink smoke spreading forward in its wake.

Trickster breathed out a circle of cigarette smoke in its direction, and the two collided in midway above the map. Regent stifled a laugh, unable to hold it in. Trickster smirked at Venus, and Venus smirked at Trickster in a lopsided, kind of, 'I'll get you for that,' way. So much sexual tension in this room. And eighty percent of it is just Tattletale.

The awkward waiting continued for another half a minute until Regent scratched the back of his head. "Anyone down for a cold one?"

"I have no alcohol in here. Beat it, Regent," Tattletale blew him off.

"I was kidding. I don't drink," Regent answered, then muttered, "not with my own body, anyway..."

"Tattletale, do I need to do my magic?" Longinus asked with a teasing smirk, pointed at Regent.

"Magic?" Gargoyle asked, unblinking. The question was as blunt as a hammer impacting a sack of anvils.

Longinus smiled, deciding to show him by letting him experience it. "Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit. Check this ou–" Longinus said, before Tattletale elbowed him in the stomach and cleared her throat.

"He has the power to do magic tricks. Like, illusions of light, sparks and fireworks," she answered, glaring at him from the side, her lips thinned. "It tends to distract people. Show them," she prompted.

"Right," Longinus responded, pointing one hand upwards. Three medium-sized phoenixes burst out of it, circling around the periphery of the room. Trickster puffed out a cloud of smoke, and saw a phoenix go through and break it. Sundancer stepped closer to the map, while Genesis' current body - a five-foot-tall blue-cyan spider-mantis just tracked the phoenixes with its many eyes.

Three seconds later, the doors opened, and Coil stepped through, attended by two mercenaries with normal assault rifles. He was exceedingly skinny, the one-piece black lycra suit with a coiling snake doing very little to cover up his physique, but excellently hiding his face. He scanned the room with his gaze, nodding to the leaders of each respective person, until his eyes locked on Longinus'. "Good afternoon, everyone." His voice was exceptionally smooth, but in a different way from Accord or Armsmaster.

Longinus glared at him, but then his gaze turned into a normal stare. The memory of the cruelties Coil inflicted on him wasn't gone - he remembered the murder attempt, involving a sniper, tinkertech, and mercenaries. But after seeing the tangible benefits of Coil's presence for the city: the civilians with shelter, food, water, and warmth, he couldn't really bring himself to yell right here. Neither could he hate him as much, really. "Good afternoon," Longinus said, politely.

Coil nodded, and stepped forward to take his place at the forefront of the table.

"Why are we standing? Don't you have chairs?" Regent asked, cocking his head to the side.

Longinus raised a hand, and golden streaks of light flew out of his palm, chairs appearing behind everyone, each one fitting to their body size.

Coil nodded subtly in Longinus' direction as a thank you, then looked at Regent and said, "As you can see, seating accommodations have been gracefully provided for everyone present, Regent. Please, sit down if it so pleases you."

"In less polite words, quit 'cher bitchin'," Longinus said, sitting down on the chair he had made for himself.

Tattletale sighed, as everyone took seats. There was a minimum of sensory feedback from the pressure the constructs experienced. Longinus couldn't help but feel secondhand embarrassment at the idea that he was currently being fed data about the dimensions of Coil's butt. Also - goddamn - Sundancer had one mean posterior.

I'd tap that, he thought. Well, not only tap. But you get the idea.

Coil took a seat, steepling his hands in front of his face - almost gleefully taking on the posture of a comic-book supervillain - and began to speak, "Last evening, at roughly half-past four PM, the PRT reported that the Ward Centurion was officially missing. It was later found he'd been kidnapped by the Slaughterhouse Nine, during which he was led around, and eventually either forced to or participated in, the murder of three men that my informants have confirmed to be former Empire members."

"Forced, in a sense," Longinus chirped in.

Coil nodded, continuing, "Moments later, the Slaughterhouse Nine, sans Jack Slash and Centurion encountered the Undersiders and the two sides had a brief skirmish. The Protectorate showed up to back up the Undersiders, and the two groups made their getaway in separate directions. Later, the Slaughterhouse chose to pursue the Protectorate, and eventually, after a brief fight, managed to make off with Miss Militia of the Brockton Bay Protectorate. Needless to say, this is a grave crisis, and needs to be resolved swiftly."

Longinus' heart sank down into his stomach, as he clenched his teeth.

"I trust all of you have received and read the dossiers on the Nine's members and candidates, yes?" Coil looked around, and saw only nods or non-commital absence of such, and he nodded back. "Good, then we can skip right to–"

"I have some information that you might need," Longinus raised his hand.

Coil looked at him. If he was annoyed at the interruption, he didn't show. "In a moment you can volunteer it, Longinus. I'd like to finish this report. After that, we will have plenty of time to discuss, add, and set plans into motion."

Longinus silently nodded, lowering his hand.

"As I was saying," Coil began, clearing is throat quickly, "Shortly thereafter, the Nine returned Centurion's power - which were taken via a Bonesaw plague - and withdrew in the direction of Downtown. No doubt with the intent of allowing Shatterbird to sing and break all glass in the city, with no doubt a plethora of fatalities and casualties across the civilian population, and also destroying most electronics due to the silicates contained within. As I'm sure you have noticed - this did not happen, and we have no idea why. The last time the Nine have been seen was yesterday after they left Centurion. No reports or sightings - official or unofficial - have been made since then. Suggestions, plans, propositions - go." Coil's eyes locked on Longinus meaningfully, allowing him to speak now.

Longinus nodded. "As you all know, Cherish is an emotional manipulator. She can see and manipulate emotions with great detail. She uses this power as a sort of 'radar,' using it to track people. Range is unknown, but supposedly very large."

"That would explain how the Slaughterhouse Nine's Crawler found my base of operations," Coil nodded, then said, "In that case, we must assume the worst - the Slaughterhouse Nine has a city-wide method for tracking all capes. I will volunteer this information for the PRT. From now on, I'd like all of you to stay closer together. In groups of two, if not more - if possible at all."

"About Crawler," Longinus interjected. "I may know a way to possibly eliminate him, alongside most of the Nine, except maybe the Siberian."

Everyone looked at him, curiosity, skepticism, or even hope evident in the room. Different people had different reactions, mostly the ones you'd expect: Grue, Coil, Regent, and Ballistic seemed firmly on the skeptical side, leaving everyone else to curiosity.

"From a previous run-in I had with one of Coil's men," Longinus glanced at Coil, a smug expression underneath his mask, then continued. "I realized one of his snipers used reality-bending Tinkertech rounds. They erase existence. If you manage to upgrade those rounds, and put enough into Crawler, we might be able to kill him. I don't think his power will protect him from something that erases existence."

Coil stared at Longinus for a moment, as if waiting for a continuation. When it didn't come, he simply said, "Longinus, those rounds do not erase existence. That would be insane."

"It seemed like it at the time. My foot just disappeared, and I didn't even notice," Longinus chuckled, folding his arms.

"It's tinker technology invented by Professor Haywire," Coil answered, "The rounds, upon impact, punch a hole between dimensions, replacing the contents on one side with the other side. And Crawler will not die to this effect - worse yet, he might adapt to it. And last of all, I do not have a way of upgrading the rounds."

"Right," Longinus looked down for a moment. "Might still work with the Siberian, if you somehow manage to get Flechette to use those rounds."

"That's possible," Tattletale mused, "Except I'm not sure if we can rely on the Protectorate for this." She stressed the word, almost painfully, trying to remind Longinus of something.

"We can," Coil replied immediately, turning to gaze in her direction. "The Nine has Miss Militia. The PRT will cooperate."

"The problem is that I will be instantly thrown in the Birdcage if they see me and manage to catch me," Longinus remarked with a tinge of shame to his voice.

"Tough break for them," Trickster answered, squashing his cigarette against the table like an asshole. Tattletale glared at him for a moment, while Trickster continued, "If we can't catch you, I doubt the local Protectorate can."

Longinus chuckled. He suddenly remembered something he'd been missing for the last few days "Right. That reminds me. I need my power armor. It's in the Wards HQ."

"I'm afraid it is not," Coil reported, with a neutral tone.

"Where is it, then?" Longinus asked, worried curiosity taking over his voice.

"How would I know?" Coil asked with an innocent shrug, then proceeded to explain, "From what I've been told by an informant, it has been stolen at roughly the same that we held the meeting at the crater lake."

"I see. Then, I have an idea on how to locate it," Longinus offered. "I just need a sufficiently powerful computer."

Tattletale pointed at the unused computers in the corner of the room, saying, "The world's your oyster."

"After the meeting," Coil added swiftly, irritated by the constant non-sequiturs. "We have not yet even discussed the topic of the meeting. How do we deal with the Slaughterhouse Nine?"

"We should strike first," Tattletale said, looking around the room to gauge people's reactions. "Think about it. The Protectorate lost Miss Militia and Centurion to them, and apparently, Clockblocker had a Second Trigger because of something. They're going on the offense, pulling out all stops to get back their leader. Chevalier is in town, as is Legend - that's two respected heavy hitters in one place, plus, a little birdie told me Armsmaster escaped arrest. That's three."

Longinus smiled at the thought that Colin finally decided to get off his ass.

"Either way, they're going to be on the attack. And if we unite and attack, too, we can layer on enough pressure to make the Nine crumble and run away with their tail between their legs," Tattletale said, smiling at Bitch apologetically.

"We'd need a truce, alike the one we have for Endbringers."

"I believe you've missed the truce meeting," Coil answered nonchalantly. "A truce is always the case for any S-class threat, no matter its nature, Longinus. This usually includes the Nine."

"From what Cherish said, the meeting didn't go very well," Longinus pointed out, more curious than accusatory.

"The local PRT has decided to throw some baseless accusations my way," Coil explained, waving his hand down placatingly, "I'm sure we've reached an agreement with them anyway."

Trickster shook his head with a skeptical smile, while Venus leaned forward on the table, looking around, "Yes, this is all quaint, but how do we find the Nine. They've apparently been missing, no?"

Tattletale closed her eyes, leaning on the table in thought. "We could..."

Longinus shook his head, not even trying to come up with an idea. The only thing he could reasonably come up with would be to give himself as bait. But fuck that.

"We could try to bait them to come to us?" she proposed, shrugging. "Or we can wait until they show up again."

"I vote for the latter. That gives us more prep time," Longinus pointed out.

"Give me a moment," Coil said, then leaned forward and stared into empty space.

Regent leaned back into his chair, and Longinus felt the feedback of two people sitting on it, one person sitting on his lap. Regent laughed a little, seemingly at nothing, causing Tattletale to glare at him. Grue and Bitch didn't react.

Longinus looked at Coil, focusing his attention solely at the man. He flipped a mental switch, and the world turned dark grey, with the capes in the room standing out, shining in bright colors. Coil's was different from everyone else - unlike, say, Tattletale's, it was pale, disconnected. Blotched out, but he could make out the details, and that it was being used, from the way it swirled around.

An electric-blue color, Alternate. Specializes in precognition and clairvoyance, and simulating events. Currently locked with the ability to stop time, simulate two timelines, and then allow the user to select a timeline that plays out automatically according to their choices.

He looked further around, at the powers.

Venus was surrounded by a dark violet corona, and his power labeled her passenger as, Mist. Specializes in the production of a mist capable of affecting the central nervous system and brain, used as a self-defense measure by a species many ages ago.

He looked at the Undersiders' powers. Regent's power was called Shadow and appeared to specialize in general emotional manipulation. Bitch's was Corpus, and it specialized in the generation of bio-mass and flesh. Grue's was Vent, and it could expel vast morasses of a vapor-effect that migrated microscopic phenomena to alternate worlds. Trainwreck's was called, Clad, and was a mottled gray, specializing in power-suits. There was another one, sitting on Regent's knee - Imp, he realized - with a shard called Safeguard, which specialized in the removal of memories and stored information.

He noticed an odd trend among the Travelers - each of their powers was pale, and mottled, in the same way that Coil's was. They stood out, from among the groups.

They're… vial capes?

"I'm done," Coil declared in that moment, "There is a chance, higher than eighty-eight percent, that if we attack the Slaughterhouse Nine, then at least one member of theirs will die. If I use my power and the resources at my disposal, it's almost unavoidable, but we have to find them first. There is a seventy-one percent chance the Nine is north of Downtown, and a zero-point-eight percent chance they are south of Downtown currently."

Tattletale nodded, smiling. "That narrows it down."

Longinus was snapped back to reality, as color returned to the world. He stayed silent, looking at Tattletale for a brief moment. She noticed him staring, and locked gazes with him questioningly. He shook his head dismissively.

"In that case," Coil began, and moved. He pushed off of the table with his hands on them, standing up - the meeting was about to draw to a close. "I'd like Bitch, Gargoyle, Venus, Trainwreck, and Longinus in that area, with everyone else at the ready to back them up. Is this acceptable?"

"I'll need a new costume," Longinus pointed out.

"I can find one for you," Coil proposed, "Pro bono. You can give the details to Tattletale, I'm sure she'll find the task of acting as middleman riveting." With that, Coil turned around, raising one hand in a goodbye, and proceeded to walk out, followed by both of his mercenaries.

Longinus sighed and laid back in his chair. He looked towards Regent, smirking underneath his mask. Regent shrugged innocently, then pushed the air in front of him in a, 'bitch, get off me' way, before standing up and stretching.

Longinus also stood up along everyone else. The chairs dissolved into golden sparks and flew towards him, getting reabsorbed into his environmental shield.

Trainwreck briefly scanned the room, and promptly said, "I'm going out for material-gathering. This place is running out."

Bitch didn't answer or acknowledge the statement in any way, but she stared at him long and hard, causing him to look at her. She fell into step in the direction of the exit, at a pace that suggested she was demanding for him to keep up. Complying with Coil's directive of staying in groups, it seemed.

Grue nodded to them, but Bitch, once again, didn't acknowledge it in any way. She did see it, though.

Longinus walked up to Tattletale. "So, should I get the costume before heading out?" he asked.

"Probably," she said, not offering anything more on the matter. Meanwhile, behind them, Regent kept sniggering at nothing, looking around himself in circles. The damn bastard must be going insane, cooped up in this concrete bunker.

Grue glanced at Longinus in an assessing manner. Not exactly like a merchant analyzing a product, as much as a drill sergeant looking at the scum the conscription office brought him today. "Will you be… staying? I'm not sure what kind of deal you and Tattletale have worked out, without the rest of the team, but joining the Undersiders means we all have to vote 'yes.'"

"Do you vote 'yes?'" Longinus asked, implying that he intended to stay.

Grue shrugged. His answer, again, wasn't outright hostile, but it held a hint of something - suspicion or skepticism. "Do I have a good reason to?"

Regent interrupted his brief fit of mania, only to say, "You mean, besides the fact that he's an insane power-house and can crush a human skull like a beer can?"

"That's why I'm concerned, Regent," Grue nearly growled at him, through grit teeth.

"You don't have to be," Tattletale shrugged. She was at the front of the 'convoy,' Grue and Longinus behind her, and Regent trailing at the very back. "I can vouch for him. That whole debacle was pretty much him letting out years of stored hatred, and I think he's learned the lesson that there's more effective ways to release that. Or, efficient at least, I guess."

"Sex," Longinus stated blankly, remembering the unbelievable relief he felt after it. Like everything was right in the world.

Grue didn't offer a response. Regent reacted in the exact same way that he always did - by laughing out loud.

"Sorry about the inappropriate comment, but it's true," Longinus shrugged.

Regent snorted and tittered simultaneously, managing a, "This dude..." distributed in individual syllables throughout twelve continuous seconds of laughter.

"It's fine," Grue replied, in a gruff voice. "I'm not sure if I want to accept you. I guess we'll see as it goes. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, though."

"Ask anything that you want to know, and I will be as honest as my knowledge allows me to," Longinus proposed.

"I'd ask if it's true that Eidolon is your dad, but we all know that's true," Regent cut in, then tapped a finger against his chin. "Oh. Ah! Who did you have sex with? I'm Heartbreaker's kid, so I kind of feel a moral duty to be the one to ask this."

"You and moral obligations, Alec?" Tattletale mocked, snorting.

Does he ever shut the fuck up? I get that he's a jokester, and it's fine, but… god, take a break.

"My gir- ex, girlfriend," Longinus stated. He wasn't actually feeling sad, per se. He knew it was likely he wouldn't see Laserdream for a long time, but he'd made peace with that idea when he was going to be transferred to Houston - just under a different form. This would be for the best: what hero would stay in a relationship with a villain? That's what he was now. And he fully embraced the thought after he noticed Tattletale's behavior. Not all villains have black hearts. There's grey in the world, and he was in there.

That was an interesting conclusion, actually. He wasn't a true hero. The violent tendencies wouldn't allow that. But Longinus actually fit in with these people, now that he thought about it. Like a fucking LEGO piece. A grey person to match a group of grey people.

"I'm gonna go check on my operations," Tattletale said, stopping as they reached the main reception checkpoint. "Grue, Regent?"

Regent shrugged, saying, "Guess I'm going to walk Grue back to his territory, then go back to my own."

"It's not safe when we're alone," Grue responded, "You heard what Coil said. And where's Imp?"

"Over here," she said, looking at him. She was standing next to Regent, mask half-raised where she was sucking on a candy-red lollipop.

"Yeah, but, counterpoint: he also said the Nine are north of Downtown," Regent said.

Longinus looked down, pondering for a second or two. "Will I get a territory, when and if I join you?" he asked, actually curious.

They looked at him like scarecrows at a pumpkin on the ground. Tattletale was the most surprised of all. "You want… to play the villain gig? Get territory? Your own people?" she asked.

"Playing the villain doesn't mean being a villain. You feed the poor, the hungry, yet the PRT still calls you a villain."

"It kind of does," Regent countered nonchalantly. "Yeah, we do that, but we also have to chase off assholes. Sometimes we gotta hurt people, or collect money and bribes to actually fuel all this. Hell, to fuel ourselves."

"You're not helping convince him," Imp pointed out.

"I'm not trying to. I'm just being a good friend, like Tittletit asked," Regent said. He reached out and wrapped his arm around Longinus' back, continuing in a slightly comical tone, "He deserves to know we're all criminals. And then we can all be held accountable - together!"

"I don't need convincing," Longinus interrupted him, without pushing Regent off of himself. "There are worse things than crimes involving money. That's not what I'm after. That was never my goal."

"Okay, but why would you want territory then?" Regent asked, letting go, kind of curious.

"To do what Tattletale does," Longinus said, looking in his direction.

"Supply distribution is citywide," Tattletale answered, shrugging, "And everyone else already claimed some chunk of the city for themselves. You'd have to bargain with them or bargain with Coil. And actually join us. Like, officially. I just want to say that it would probably be a nail into your reputation. You can still help people, but no one's going to call you a hero."

"Labels. Labels, labels, labels," Longinus said, over and over. "Put the dots together, Tattletale. From the moment I stepped on Earth Bet..."

"You've been cheated by labels?" Regent asked, proposing his own way to finish the sentence. Tattletale narrowed her eyes at him, for a moment, as if seeing some kind of riddle there, and then solving it in moments.

Longinus continued without stopping. "Every bad thing that has happened, involved me in some way or another. The PRT probably thinks I'm some kind of criminal mastermind who played everyone by making them think that I'm a tool. But the problem is: I was a tool. I still, am, but slightly less so than three months ago."

Imp was looking at him. Her gaze was appraising, much like her older brother earlier, but in a different way. "That doesn't make any sense," she said, shrugging helplessly.

Grue sighed, and shook his head, "Go home, Imp."

"Can't make me." She blew a raspberry in his direction, and then everyone forgot why they were looking at that spot in particular.

"If you weren't eeeevil villaaaains I'd say you were c–" Longinus stopped mid-sentence. "Grue's… cute…? Damn you, Imp."

"Shenanigans," Regent said blankly.

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Birdsie

Nov 26, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 27, 2019

#3,819

Longinus wanted to help running Tattletale's criminal operation, but when he asked, she shrugged and offered him the job of carrying around supply boxes. He could actually do it thirty times faster than anyone else in the base, given his telekinesis and constructs, so he accepted the job, and got to work. He wore a pair of worker jeans and a white tank-top, just to show how fucking ripped he was. And of course, a construct mask on top of that.

Civilians and security officers alike gawked in a stupor, as Longinus walked past them with a pair of one-hundred-pound boxes in both arms, and then a train more following behind him in the air. The whole thing had pretty much all of them - he'd only need to make a second run, and everything would be in its right place.

He delivered the food, medicine, water, and what looked like blankets to the communal living area. Something almost like a gymnasium, but with bunk beds everywhere, and a living area with furniture, alongside a large cafeteria-like soup kitchen. All of it was just one large room. Plenty of children were gathered in one corner of the room, playing together, and Longinus spotted a couple of people with visible injuries or sickness, not to mention those who probably had ones that were invisible.

Longinus decided to approach the medical area first, putting on a dark red sweater as he made his way there. There was a pair of nurses looking over at a sick person in one corner of the room, and a doctor in another one talking to a patient. There were several people waiting to get examined.

Longinus walked up to one of the nurses. "Excuse me? I could help you out here, if you so wish," he offered, with an easygoing smile.

She stared at him fish-eyed. "Who are you?" She clearly recognized he was a cape from the glowing face-mask but struggled to discern which one.

"Longinus," he announced with a tinge of solemnity. "I was reborn. Metaphorically speaking, of course."

She looked at him in much the same way that a healthy, normal citizen might look at a homeless maniac, or a guy who used too many grass-related products in a single evening. "Right. Well, I don't think we need anything unless you have medicine?"

"I'm a Healer."

She snapped at him, "You should have said so!" And like that, she pulled on his arm, dragging him to the center of the lobby and pointing at him. "Excuse me, everyone! This here is Longinus! He is a Healer! Please, approach him if you have any injuries! Thank you. It's been so long since we've had someone like Panacea in the city." She looked at him with a warm expression. Only days, actually, he thought, but decided not to remark.

Longinus nodded to the nurse, smiling back at her. "I'm not sure if I'm as proficient as Panacea, though."

"That's fine. Anything you can offer - we really need the help," she said, looking down. Curious people were already gathering around them in an indecisive crescent shape. At a bare look, it seemed some of them were only afflicted with a cough, but he noticed one of them had his entire left arm covered in bandages, alongside a good portion of his head.

Longinus hovered off his feet, a couple of meters in the air, to be seen and heard by everyone. "Please, make a line in order of severity. The less severe at the back, the more severe ones at the front. Thank you!" he exclaimed, touching back down on the ground.

People didn't seem to know how to exactly to do that for a few seconds, looking around and gauging the others around them, before seemingly coming to a collective agreement the guy wrapped up in the bandages should go first, and the people with the cold would go to the back.

Longinus put a hand forward, and golden streaks wove into each other, creating a hospital bed. The man looked at him warily. "You want me to… lie down on that? Is it safe?"

"Of course it is, don't worry," Longinus assured him, smiling warmly at the man.

The guy acquiesced, lying down on the bed. His movements were slow and careful, making sure he didn't hit his arm against anything. He was older, in his late forties, and his entire left arm was covered in bandages that looked yellow, like they'd been wet at some point but there was nothing to replace them with: his head bandages looked a little better, but Longinus noted that they had toilet paper mixed in, seemingly due to a lack of normal stuff to bandage people with.

"Now, I know what it will look like, but please, stay calm. It will not hurt at all, I promise you," Longinus said, extending a hand, palm pointed upwards. A blue flame, like one on a stovetop, flashed out, and then grew as a stick of liquid gold emerged, telekinetically kept in that shape.

"I'm not so sure, anymore," the man said, watching the blue flame with a worried expression.

"The flames don't hurt. They regenerate tissue on a molecular level by burning away injuries, toxins, infections, and diseases."

"Pretty sure that's not how biology works," one of the teens watching the process said, and Longinus felt himself crawl with irritation. Regent's spirit would follow him around everywhere, wouldn't it?

"Pretty sure people can't shoot lasers out of their fingertips, but here we are," Longinus shot back with a smirk.

"They can, though. There's empirical evidence for that," the same teen replied. "No evidence that fire can burn away injuries. That's ridiculous. I want to see it happen."

"Can we please… proceed?" the forty-year-old asked, furrowing his eyebrows in a mixture of tiredness and worry.

Longinus looked at the man in his forties, nodding, and lowering the liquid on his arm, spreading it around evenly. The gold sank into his skin, less like a cream, and more like water into a sponge. The entire arm was set ablaze with a blue flame. Everyone watched with morbid fascination as the man didn't scream or even show any discomfort, instead examining his arm and giving it a trial flex. His fingers bent, and his elbow moved.

"How's it feel?" Longinus asked, chuckling.

"Like it's fresh from the oven," the man said, eyes wide. He clenched all of his five fingers, one after the other, to form a fist.

"Do me next!" a fingerless man exclaimed. This raised clamor, as people began to push and argue over who went next.

Longinus sighed, looking down for a moment. He raised a hand and golden phoenixes burst out of his palm as if delivered by a conveyor belt. They began to ascend, circling, then swooping down and impacting every injured person in the room according to a set of instructions that he gave them upon creation. In moments, everyone was on blue fire, in varying states of giddiness.

"You could've done that from the beginning?" the teenager asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's not as theatrical to start with that, though. Keep best for last, man," Longinus remarked.

"I'd say it is. This is ten times better than fake science." The boy stood up from the chair he was sitting at, displaying his chest. "Do it to me, too, phoenix man!"

"What do you have?" Longinus asked.

"Nothing - I just want to feel the spark of life in my chest."

Longinus chuckled and shot out a modest dove. The creature cooed, even as it impacted the boy in the chest, setting his heart ablaze. "Woooooo!"

"You've been having fun, I see," Tattletale commented, from near the entrance.

Longinus turned towards Tattletale, smiling brightly. "Oh, hey boss," he remarked, his smile turning into a fox-like grin.

"It's good that you're keeping busy," she said, approaching. Noticing the conversation and its nature, as well as who was involved, people began to move away and create open space for them to talk. "I can see the new powers are working pretty well. Judging from… well, this." She gestured at the burning people. Everyone was on fucking fire, and they were totally fine with it. Some of the boomer population looked disgruntled, mesmerized, or worried, but the younger generations were giddy with life energy.

"Yeah, they work amazingly."

She folded her arms, looking at the scene with a smirk on her lips. "Yeah." The conversation quieted down after that.

"Could you… deliver a letter?" Longinus asked, folding his arms as well.

"A letter to whom?" she asked, using the grammatically proper wording. She looked at him, her curiosity piqued.

"Ta-... Weaver."

"Not sure if I can. If you really want me to, I can try. Or you can just go to her house and slip it in her mailbox, or something," Tattletale suggested, "You know where she lives."

"Yeah, actually. But I don't really wanna go out on my own, and not when both the PRT and the Nine know my face," he argued back, kind of scared at the thought of going out again.

She shrugged. "You don't want to jostle them, alright. Give me the letter when it's written and I'll get someone to do it."

"Thank you," Longinus nodded, smiling weakly. "I'll go in my room to write it. I'll see you later, then."

"You too." She stayed behind, while he walked off in the direction of his room. Walking through, he slumped in the desk.

The crack in the wall from yesterday was still there, almost teasing him about the issue. Not teasing in the same way that Regent would. This was malicious teasing - the kind that hurt - and he couldn't even attribute it to a person, just to some kind of… abstract thought process, or a quality he attributed to the wall itself.

The mask on his face disappeared. He took out a sheet of paper and a pen.

He looked down at the paper, tapping the pen against his temple. "Is 'dear' too formal? Ah, fuck it," he whispered to himself, beginning to write...

Dear Weaver,

It's been a while since we last spoke face to face. So much has happened since I was… taken along on a 'roadtrip' by some assholes. It's been only a couple of days, yeah, but many things happened.

Guess who saved me, eh? Your friends. Or former friends? A friend never stops being one, I guess. Tattletale was the nicest out of them all. And god, Regent never shuts the fuck up. But he's nice, I guess. He makes me laugh, from time to time.

If they allow me, I'll probably be an Undersider, too! I never thought I'd actually join them. But I fit in with them more than I fit in with the actual 'heroes,' like you. I don't really have a choice. It's either this, or the Birdcage.

I do hold the faintest glimmer of hope that you'll want to stay in touch, or contact me, or hell, even come back and, I don't know, work with me? I know it's hypocritical for me to hope this, of all people, given that I was the one to convince you to leave in the first place.

However, whatever your choice, you have my support. I will understand if you never want to see me again: I did let you down. That said, you are such a good person. You're brave, sweet and heroic. Some qualities I will never be able to apply to myself. I'm reckless, violent and… a bad person. I hate myself for it.

Now, I am writing this letter for a reason. I want at least one person to know the truth, and to know it from me:

I did kill those three civilians. However, I was under Cherish' control. Bonesaw had taken away my powers, and I was being threatened by none other than Jack himself. You're his candidate. A mix of all these things, plus Cherish surfacing every single emotion that I had bottled up over the last ten years, and I got blood on my hands.

Blood that will never stop haunting me. Blood that I will never forget. Blood that I will always be ashamed about.

I am deeply sorry. I disappointed you. You looked up to me, respected me, and all that was thrown out of the window. Tattletale was right: I was a psychotic outburst waiting to happen, and I don't really deserve to still be alive.

Your 'employers' will probably tell you that I planned this from the very beginning. That I have always been a psychopathic criminal mastermind. But you know better than me that I'm too stupid to actually make meaningful plans for anything.

Please, tell Clockblocker and Vista that I'm deeply sorry. I… didn't mean for Aegis to die. It was out of my control. None of this was under my control. I'm so, so sorry about everything. I earned, and I deserve your hate. But all in all, I hope you can understand, to some extent.

I miss all of you. Especially you, Weaver. You were my friends, people I could count on, and… everything I've ever done from the beginning has lead to this. It's my fault, and I apologize. I know this will mean nothing now, especially coming from me, but you'll always have a friend in me: you can always count on me, whatever it is you need.

I love you all, with all my heart.

Destroy this letter after you've read it.

Sincerely yours,

Longinus

P.S: I never got the chance to see you properly kick Shadow Stalker's ass. It's a shame.

After he finished writing the letter, Gabriel burst out in tears, weeping silently over his desk. After a good thirty minutes of crying, he fell asleep on the wooden surface he had been writing on up until now. The door opened slowly, almost as if to not disturb the dead silence that was inside the room. Lisa peeked through the opening she had made, only to see Gabriel on the desk, sleeping peacefully.

The girl sighed, and entered the room, picking up the fuzzy, dark-red wool blanket that was on the bed. She made her way to Gabriel and put it on his shoulders. Lisa noticed the letter and, just like she was already planning to do, carefully picked it up and read through it.

The corners of her lips turned up a little, and she put it back down on the desk, in front of Gabriel.

June 10th, 2011

"Alright, guys. We have a lot to talk about today," Tattletale shared factually, entering the room with Longinus in tow. She walked forward, to meet everyone at the table.

They weren't meeting on her territory, but rather, in an abandoned building that was near the borders of Trickster and Venus' territory, in the deep center of the commercial district. It was a neutral meeting ground for Coil's organization, relatively unguarded but also away from prying eyes.

Coil's men had delivered. Longinus received his costume earlier today. A bodysuit, black, from a mixture of high-strength synthetic fibers, with golden armor and accents, light-weight and free of excessive weight unlike his old costume: small pauldrons, a breastplate made of five composite plates, armguards, elbow plates, bracelets, boots, and knee-guards. The helmet was styled after Doctor Fate, the DC character. It drew some eyes, as he entered the room, but people made a quick association of gold equals Longinus/Centurion.

It felt almost mercenary, wearing it. Less like a super-hero, and more like a super-soldier. The parts under the armor were basically repainted, dark gray and black military fatigues, and the armor seemed to be shaped like what a light infantry version of a riot response unit might look like. He wondered if Coil didn't simply have the time to get anything better, or if this was the standard for villains.

"Morning," Longinus said, waving a hand.

The Undersiders turned to him with a sense of purpose, and Grue began to speak, "Right. We're all here, so we can vote and discuss your membership."

They all remembered Imp was in the room, as she looked at her brother and said, "I vote fucking yes. Did you see how ripped he is? And he's a heavy hitter, so doesn't that make you feel better about your trust issues or whatever?"

Longinus chuckled, looking at Imp for a moment. "While I do appreciate your enthusiasm, Grue may not."

"He knows our faces. There's really nothing to lose, anymore. I'm in," Regent said, shrugging.

"You're surprisingly talkative nowadays," Tattletale pointed out, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Yeah. Lots of shit to talk about," Regent deflected, with a dosage of sarcasm, "So I talk. Isn't that what this is all about?"

"He's not as weak and pathetic as you," Bitch pointed out crassly, arms folded and expression crossed - but that seemed to be the norm. "I want him."

"Trainwreck?" Tattletale looked at the armored man.

He was less unsanitary than when Longinus had seen him working for the Merchants. He still had heavy acne and somewhat greasy hair, but he wasn't outright filthy, and his armor seemed to have some semblance of a desire to keep it clean. Instead of outright rust-covered metal, what he had seemed to be scrap and junk, but clean scrap and junk: polished, almost elegant, in a low-quality sort of elegance.

He shrugged openly. "I don't have an identity, and don't really care either way."

She nodded at that, and said, "I'm going for a yes," before staring into Grue with a meaningful gaze.

That left Grue himself, who seemed to be irritated at the idea he'd been singled out as the only one hesitating. "It seems I'm out-voted either way," he stated, shaking his head and breathing out.

"I'll make it worth it," Longinus reassured him, folding his arms with a smirk.

"Hell yes," Imp rocked, then fist-bumped with Regent. Like a pair of siblings whose parents allowed them to keep a stray dog.

"Can we at least talk about the elephant in the room?" Grue asked uncomfortably, looking at the people for support. He shrugged. "Bring attention to it?"

"Your ass isn't that big," Regent muttered with a grin.

"Oh," Tattletale remarked, unblinking. She smiled sourly. "You're gonna bring that up, huh?"

"You've killed people," Grue said, straightforward. His eyes met Longinus' from across the room. "So did Bitch and Regent, but those were special circumstances."

Longinus stared deep into Grue's. "So were mine," he remarked, through grit-teeth.

"No. They did it because she had no control over her power, and he did it because..." he looked askance as if urging Regent for permission - the boy shrugged - and Grue continued, "his father forced him to."

"And I had no control over my own actions and emotions," Longinus defended himself, clenching his teeth. "Plus, my powers were taken away by Bonesaw. Who knows what she did to my head while putting that shit into it?"

"In what way didn't you have control?" Grue asked, sounding skeptical. "If she put shit into your head, that really doesn't make me feel any safer. The fact that you can kill without warning because you're some kind of fucked-up zombie sleeper agent. I don't like taking risks."

Longinus shook his head. "Sorry, I explained myself wrong," he defended, feeling like he'd been put on the spot. He was hoping that Tattletale would step in any moment now in his defense. "Bonesaw just took away my powers with some kind of virus." He put his hands behind his back, fidgeting with his own fingers.

"I don't doubt that," Grue said.

Regent glanced at him with a topped brow. "You sound like you're just trying to reject him for the sake of it," he commented.

"I'm trying to be the voice of reason in this room," Grue answered, almost snapping at him.

"Those were very special circumstances, Grue," Longinus stated. "First off, Cherish messed with my head. When those civilians walked in on us, I lost all control. Only later did I realize what had happened. Cherish fucked with my brain," he explained, sighing and folding his arms to his chest, tapping his foot anxiously. "The… emotions were mine. I was angry at them, and she also surfaced almost ten years of bullshit on top of that."

"To summarize. You're unstable, and if provoked, fully capable of gouging the eyes of a guy who… did what, exactly, to you?" Grue asked succinctly, head leaning forward, approaching rejection.

"They were former Empire members. They tried to recruit me, and when I refused, threatened me," Longinus informed, leaning on a wall behind himself.

"There's a name for that, in this business," Grue said, raising a finger.

Regent sighed out, "Oh, god, he's about to say–"

"Escalation." Grue looked him straight in the eyes. "They did next to nothing to you, really, by the local standards. You could have paid them off, or done a number of things. Worst case scenario, you'd have been told to shave your hair. Your reaction is to gouge their eyes out two months later."

"You're someone who has years of experience in this world. How many years did I have, at the time? Zero. Not even a day," Longinus said.

"I'm black," Grue pointed out.

"So?"

"So I don't feel some fucked-up urge to kill white supremacists two months after they gave me a paper-cut," he answered with a degree of vitriol, causing Regent to snort.

"This will not go anywhere productive," Trainwreck interrupted them, and looked at Grue, "Is there anything he could do to convince you?"

Tattletale had been staying uncharacteristically silent throughout the conversation, observing, but not interjecting at any point.

"My bro's pretty stubborn," Imp said.

"Shut up. I'm thinking," Grue said, looking down at the ground as he did.

Longinus looked at him with anticipation, waiting for his eventual response.

"You're being too harsh on him," Trainwreck hammered in, folding his stumpy gauntleted arms. "As you said, two members have committed murder on this team. For different reasons. If I didn't know any better, I would have claimed that the revelation of Skitter's true intents caused you to have trust issues."

Without pause, Grue looked at him. "You weren't around for that, but I've had complaints about Regent as well." The aformentioned snorted, seemingly proud of being a source of pain.

"And not Bitch?" Trainwreck asked, and Grue didn't answer immediately. With that, Tattletale leaned forward.

"Bitch was our only heavy hitter option back then," she said, moving a few hairs out of her face. "But she couldn't really control her dogs back then, or her power. It was her Trigger Event. That said, Longinus spent the entirety of the previous day moving supplies and healing people at my shelter. That's not serial killer behavior. And Trainwreck is right - Skitter gave you trust issues. The only reason you didn't contest Trainwreck joining was that Coil basically ordered you to deal with it."

Grue didn't respond audibly. He looked at Longinus with an unreadable expression, then began to stare Tattletale down for several seconds. She didn't move or react in any form - barely even blinked at him. Grue's entire body seemed to tighten in quiet, simmering outrage, then relax all at once. "Fine," he relented.

"But you're keeping your eye on me, yadda yadda," Longinus chuckled. Grue's fists clenched, the heavy leather making a creaking sound from the stretching and friction. "Thank you for the trust," he added in a genuinely thankful tone.

"I'm thankful you healed my injuries, but that doesn't translate into trust," Grue replied, carefully withdrawn in his tone of voice. When skepticism and throwing flak didn't work, he seemed to move into some kind of shell where he pretended to be unaffected. As expected of parahumanity.

"Don't worry. I'll give you plenty of reasons to trust me," Longinus added, smiling.

"Somehow I doubt that," Grue answered, not committing to say anything else.

"Whatever," Tattletale interrupted before the situation could go on, with Longinus buzzing about trust without providing any good reasons for it and Grue coldly slapping away every attempt and resulting in an eternal stalemate. "Let's get on with the actual topic for today. We have information from Coil, that the Nine will attack his base either late tonight or early tomorrow, so he's setting things up so we can trap and ambush them at every step."

"We need to target Bonesaw and Jack, if possible," Longinus said.

"He's asked about that. If we launch a full defense, there's only an eight-point-seven-five percent chance that Jack Slash will die," she told him, shrugging. "Varies for other Nine members."

"Hey," Regent broke the flow of the conversation. The boy looked up and around the room. "Should we tell him about the end of the world?"

"The end of what?" Longinus' eyes widened, as he stared in his direction, dumbfounded.

"The world," Imp helpfully provided.

"Right." Tattletale looked down, tapped her arm against her elbow several times, and turned to him. "Here's the gist of things. If Jack Slash leaves Brockton Bay alive, the world ends soon. It's going to end anyway, apparently, in some fifteen years, but whatever he does speeds it up fast enough that it occurs in two years from now instead."

Longinus forced himself to stay quiet for a moment. He looked down at the ground, thinking of an idea to get more information. He was going to ask Oracle Morpheus some questions.. "Can you give me a second?" he asked.

"Thinker power?" she asked.

"Yes," Longinus replied.

"Fetch a chair," Tattletale said, glancing at Imp and Regent. The former stepped over to the nearest stool available and reached for it, as Tattletale interrupted her action loudly: "A chair. Not a stool. It needs to have a backrest." Imp walked five more steps to grab a chair and hauled it over to Longinus, slightly grudging at the orders.

"If Regent tries to draw anything on my helmet, smack him in the kidney," Longinus said, sitting down on the chair. In his last moments, before everything drowned out, he saw Regent handing a sharpie to the empty air, and instantly forgetting about the sharpie, or the air. Or the act of handing it over.

Three questions for the dark void. Three questions to the Oracle in the well of the abyss.

The end of the world. Huh. Not many things he knew about could bring about so much destruction to be classed as a world-ending scenario. Only three things.

Oracle, what is the possibility that Jack Slash will bring about the end of the world through the Endbringers?

Medium possibility that Endbringers will cause end of the world scenario if they have two more victories striking at sufficiently critical or soft targets. This user is aware of at least forty possible locations that, if attacked, will cause the global economy to crash, resulting in the descension of society to a level of parahuman post-apocalyptic warlordism and massive deaths subsequently. Low to medium possibility Jack Slash can figure out a way to affect the Endbringers sufficiently to cause them to strike at critical targets.

That's not the kind of apocalypse that Jack Slash would bring about.

Oracle, what is the possibility that Jack Slash will bring about the end of the world - with which I mean the greatest amount of death, in the shortest span of time - through the Entities?

Question too broad to answer properly. Every parahuman contains element. Most of the human population contains element. The answer is both that it is certain and impossible.

There goes a question, out the window. Wasted.

Longinus thought about the final being who was powerful enough to make something like this happen. That can't be… no, I can't leave anything up to chance, I have to make sure. Oracle, what is the possibility Jack Slash will somehow influence Scion in bringing about the end of the world?

Scion has no reason to kill or negatively affect humanity. Scion's only current goal is to help humanity wherever possible - Jack Slash's existence is contrary to Scion's current goal. Likelihood that Jack Slash will affect Scion to bring about the end of the world very low. Likelihood that Jack Slash might cause Scion to be destroyed moderate to very high, resulting in many fatalities.

Longinus' eyes shot open.

"I have no actual idea how that mustache got there," Grue said, staring at Longinus' helmet. Tattletale sighed, shaking her head.

"There is medium possibility Jack may be able to figure out how to influence the Endbringers into attacking critical cities," Longinus said, with a grave tone.

"You're saying the Endbringers will end the world?" Regent asked, curious but not shocked or even surprised. "I mean - it's in the name, but I would've thought it'd happen later."

Longinus ignored him, to bring up the second part of the message. "Very low, but still present possibility that Jack Slash will influence Scion into bringing about the end of the world. Medium to very high possibility that Jack Slash will bring about Scion's destruction. The two events may be tied together, but I don't know," Longinus said, holding his head with his hands.

How powerful is that fucking man? Has he got a Shard I'm not aware about? He may be able to influence the Endbringers, and he's probably going to fucking destroy Scion.

Those thoughts terrified him, but he tried not to show it. He was failing. His foot tapped anxiously on the concrete floor, and his palms were covered in cold sweat.

"Shit," Bitch summarized everyone's thoughts.

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Birdsie

Nov 27, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 27, 2019

#3,887

"Tattletale, check with your power as well," Longinus suggested.

"My power isn't telling me anything. I need a starting point to work from. Data A and Data B, to get C and D. Then C and D gives me E and F, and I manage to prod someone into giving me G, and it goes on like that: it needs a starting point. All I have is: Longinus said this will happen," she complained, grabbing the back of her head and beginning to pace around. It wasn't fast enough to call it frantic, but wasn't slow enough to call it 'walking around.'

"So hypothetical starting points don't work. We need Coil on this. Dinah as well," Longinus declared.

"Coil and Dinah already burned themselves out giving us information about tonight's attack, and about the end of the world before that," she answered, biting into her lip as she thought, and exercised her power. She looked around the room, saying, "Suggestions beyond the obvious?"

"Jack Slash isn't strong or special enough to do any of that himself," Grue began, then continued the train of thought, "So… he probably convinces someone to do it for him, or causes a Trigger Event. Those are two things he's good at. Hell, I bet he could do it by accident. And the world ends even if he doesn't die, right? So I'm thinking maybe there's someone out there who's gonna Trigger with a world-destroying power, except Jack Slash makes them Trigger earlier."

"The power wouldn't come out the same," Longinus remarked. "Different circumstances mean different powers."

"How do you know that?" Grue asked, once again turning skeptical.

Longinus turned towards Tattletale, glancing at her, unsure. "Should I tell them this?" he asked.

"Shut up, I'm thinking," she snapped at them without looking up. A moment went by, and she began to say, "Triggers will always keep the same broad strokes, regardless of the details. Bitch could've triggered as a Brute, so she'd grow bigger and stronger. She triggered as a Master instead, and makes her dogs bigger and stronger. The elements stay the same, expression would differ."

The Shard's always the same, Longinus thought.

"Uh. You two are..." Regent pointed at them in confusion, not entirely aware where they were drawing the revelations from. "Thinkering, I guess?"

"So the element is 'ends the world.' The expression doesn't matter. Someone will end the world." Tattletale groaned out in anger.

Longinus sighed in frustration. "Let's… stick to the present, for now. What do we do now?" he asked.

"Kill Jack Slash," Trainwreck pointed out the obvious.

"Only, like, nine percent chance we succeed tonight, as things are," Regent pointed out, shaking his head. "Coil needs to alter his strategy for this to work."

"He did," Tattletale answered, beginning to frown. Her eyes were moving across her field of vision, from left to right, up-left, down-right, and to the opposite direction, weaving as she thought. "He did. This is a part of a bigger plan of some kind, but I'm not seeing… oh, god, did Accord draw this out? How big does the web go?"

"Oh, look, she's doing a conspiracy expression," Regent jeered with a smirk.

Longinus glanced at Tattletale in a flash of brief surprise. "Accord's in on this as well?" he asked, crossing his arms. He wasn't all that surprised: Coil and Accord were allies, and the latter would probably be the most adept at devising a solution to such a conundrum. But he'd need more information to put together, just like Tattletale.

"Okay. I have no idea what Coil is planning, but my power is telling me we probably won't die," Tattletale assured them.

"Probably is nice," Regent joked. "Can I get a second serving of 'plausible in theoretical conditions' with that?"

"Stop fucking joking, will you?!" Longinus snapped at him. "This is serious."

Regent didn't really seem to care in the slightest. "So is Leviathan. And you murdering three people. And the Holocaust and Grue being stuck-up, and my dad, and so much other stuff. So what?" He shrugged lightly, not showing a glimmer of remorse or self-reproach of any kind.

Longinus sighed and held his head with his hands, rubbing at the helmet's temples, applying telekinetic pressure to his actual temples through the walls of the helmet.

"Here's the plan, then," Tattletale said, then quickly corrected herself with a handwave, "Or rather - we'll make the plan when Coil calls us into his base. Longinus can make constructs, so he's going to focus on defense - shields, armor, walls. Cutting off the Nine, no-selling their attacks, controlling the environment."

"I can make weapons, too," Longinus informed.

"Yeah, but we're not going to kill Jack anyway. So don't bother fighting him," she said, then raised a finger as she explained, "Our real problems are going to be their heavy-hitters and tanks: Crawler and Siberian. Both are virtually unkillable, and both can pretty much kill anything. We need to slow them down, deter them. If at all possible, pull them off-route, without exposing ourselves."

Grue nodded in agreement, saying, "I think Crawler can see through my smoke, or at least sense his way through it. I don't think the same applies to the Siberian. I'm not sure."

Tattletale shrugged. "Same."

Longinus spoke, "I know I already brought this up, but the Tinkertech rounds may be able to eliminate the Siberian."

Tattletale glanced at him, and thought about the suggestion. "Maybe. I'll tell Coil about it, but I'm sure he already knows."

"Fill an M249 with them, and fire at will," Longinus added, chuckling at the stupid suggestion.

"Right. Kill the Siberian with how many billions of dollars?" Regent asked tauntingly, smiling from across the room. "We might as well just rob another bank, get Longinus to store the cash in a pocket dimension, and drop it on her head. Maybe she'll drown in it. Or go on a vacation to the Bahamas and leave us alone."

"Regent, please," Tattletale said, shutting her eyes with actual pain and rubbing her temples. "Not now."

"What are my dogs supposed to do?" Bitch asked. Her voice wasn't accusatory, but it was cautious and a little boiled in the same way that someone would be cautious with their feet when stepping on burning coals. As if asking - do you expect them to die distracting those monsters?

"Since we're going to be handling the defense, distraction, and interference, your dogs will be our team's offense. Same goes for Trainwreck," Tattletale explained, looking at them both. Trainwreck gave a shallow nod, while Bitch didn't react. "Your main targets should be Burnscar and Shatterbird, 'verse the dogs and Trainwreck respectively. Your dogs can't hit the air, but they can cover a lot of ground that Burnscar might teleport between. Denying them their respective Mover powers as much as possible."

Bitch nodded. Her voice was gruff, a little raspy as she said, "You handle the tactics and leave the flaming bitch to me."

"What about Mannequin, Bonesaw?" Imp asked, more like pointing out they'd forgotten about them, rather than actually caring for contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way. A member of Regent's camp.

Longinus looked at Imp. He took in her form, her power - her. Three purely metaphorical dots appeared above his head in a comic-book cloud, before a shining lightbulb slotted into their place with a plink. "Holy shit, idea. Tremendously dangerous, and risky, but still. I've got an idea."

"We're not taking risks," Grue said instantly.

"Share!" Regent ordered from across the room. His smile took on an excited flair.

"Imp, can you be actively invisible if you keep your power activated at full strength?" he asked.

She snorted at him. "That's not how my power works. I have to put in effort to make people notice me," she clarified, looking over at her fingernails with a degree of smugness.

"So wait. You're always invisible? Holy shit."

"It kind of sucks," Imp bitched, glancing at Grue as she spoke. There was a degree of derision in her tone, "If I ever get broken bones and fall unconscious, I'm literally just going to die to internal bleeding unless a cape that can see me finds me and then somehow convinces the paramedics there's a ghost that needs help."

Longinus decided not to comment on that, but rather, talk about his idea - given the looks that everyone was throwing in his direction. "If we manage to get you those void-sphere Tinkertech rounds in a pistol, you could deal significant damage from behind the enemy lines. They wouldn't even know you were there."

Excitement brimmed in her voice and posture, straight, giddy, agitated. She pushed against the brim of the table with both hands, beginning to hop up and down. It kind of reminded him of Kid Win, but almost… blended with Regent's personality. "Oh, yes. I'm down for this. I'm so much down for this. Shooting Mannequin in the dick? Yes."

Grue looked at her, moving a step closer as he glanced at Longinus. An indicator that he was her protector - the big brother instinct was very distinct and very visible. "I'm not strictly against it," he began, in the tone of a helicopter mom, "But you have to promise you'll keep yourself safe, Aisha."

"Bro, I'll be fine," she said.

Grue glanced at Longinus, with a questioning expression. "Is there any way you can defend her, too, when she's using her power?"

"This is actually a good idea, to be fair," Tattletale pointed out. She looked at the group. "Imp is useful against unarmored targets by herself, but otherwise wouldn't do much against the Nine. This gives her a chance to take advantage of the chaos. It's a prime Stranger environment, and we're going to be giving her heavy hitter potential to top it off."

"Wait a second," Longinus closed his eyes momentarily. He pushed every single available charge into a power that let him be able to notice Imp, at all times. A power specifically attuned to her Shard.

The power came out slightly bloated, but it produced a result: a power that'd allow him to discern invisibility, being unnoticeable, and other bland Stranger powers. Discernment and immunity were different, though - it'd only point out there was a Stranger in his field of view, and their rough location. He'd have to connect the dots that it was Imp himself.

Longinus' eyes opened. "Now I can."

"That sucks," Imp said, between being down and angry. "Now I can't play pranks on you, like that mustache I drew on your helmet."

"That was you?" Trainwreck asked, "I don't remember that."

"But now, you won't become Bonesaw's modern art. Win-win, right?"

"You assume she'd be able to notice me," Imp scoffed, arguing the point.

"She was able to build artificial neurons to resist Cherish' emotion-reading powers," he stated, blankly.

"So what?" Imp asked, shaking her head in outrage. "Can she build something that makes the unnoticeable noticable?"

"I have no idea."

"She can't build cameras, I'm pretty sure, so no," Tattletale answered, more for the sake of outlining Bonesaw than participating in the childish argument. "Bonesaw has some kind of spider platforms she uses to aid her Tinkering, but those are very barebones. You can hardly call it robots. My power tells me they're powered by biological components - human hearts for fuel, and neurons for operation, but they still only have the rough sapience of a retarded dog."

Longinus' mind briefly remembered Servitors from Warhammer 40,000. He shuddered in disgust.

"Explains why I could sense them," Regent said blankly.

"Wait, you can control them, since they have neurons," Longinus' eyes widened in surprise, with a small glimmer of hope in them.

"Not really. Whatever she makes is too freaky for my power to touch," he answered, shrugging helplessly.

Longinus sighed in return. "Anyway, what now?" he asked, turning to the rest of the team. He didn't feel all that different from when he was a Ward. The only difference was that he had a different label, and would sustain his activities in a different way. As long as he didn't harm people for the sake of it, he'd be fine with himself and his actions.

"Now, I'll get in contact with Coil, and Grue and I will go to have a strategy meeting, while the rest of you play nice," Tattletale explained, looking around. It was true that besides her and Grue, every other Undersider was… unconventional, as far as people went, either in physical terms or social terms.

"What exactly are we meant to do?" Longinus asked her. The others would probably know, but he certainly wouldn't.

"Go back to our turfs and hang out, I guess," Regent answered unhelpfully. Grue shook his head, then began to walk out of the room.

Longinus crossed his arms, standing up from the chair he had been sitting on. "I still don't know what to do," he whispered to himself, somewhat annoyed.

"Go to the mall? Watch a movie?" Regent suggested, almost incredulous, believing the question was directed at him. "I don't know. Grue is a training and MMA nut, if you're into that you can talk to him. I'm just gonna go watch movies and have fun."

"That's not a bad idea," Longinus pointed out, the corners of his mouth rising underneath his helmet.

Bitch whistled for her dogs to follow after her, and they began to move outside. Regent began to mutter words to the empty air, as he stalked away, and Tattletale was already dialing someone on the phone and walking to her own corner of the room. Trainwreck assessed the team, and shrugged, going off to tinker. In seconds, Longinus was left standing at the table all on his own.

Longinus sighed wearily, walking out of the room, thinking.

Oracle said that Jack either fucks with the Endbringers, or fucks with Scion. The former is more probable, but… they're not really 'fuckable with.' Jack can't really influence a tornado into doing his bidding, so I doubt he'd be able to even make himself noticeable to the Endbringers. On the other hand, Scion has some form of… personality. Emotions. Something Jack has been known to fuck with. Add Scion's depression to that, and… oh my god.

His eyes widened. He wasn't certain of the conclusion he had come to. Grue's theory was probably more correct, but that didn't mean that his own wasn't plausible. He walked up to Tattletale, and politely waited for her to end the conversation she was having on the phone. She gave him a look that said, 'this conversation won't be over for a good while,' even as she kept muttering away some details and information from the meeting they'd just had.

Longinus nodded. "Call me when you're done," he muttered, taking his leave afterwards. As he walked away, the thought that the protector of humankind could very well be its destroyer kept swirling around in his head.

He remembered that time, at the end of the Leviathan fight, when Scion emitted an intent to destroy Leviathan. He remembered the feelings, and found himself associating them with deeper concepts. Target. Could Scion destroy them? If so, why didn't he? Why doesn't he? Is something preventing him from it? It still felt surreal in his memories - seeing the golden man in his splendor, descending from the sky as if the sun itself was animated and went down to the Earth.

Inspecting his surroundings, Longinus moved to leave the area - he hadn't really gone outside, ever since finding himself within. It appeared to be some kind of large, conjoined building complex: a hospital on one side, a school-like building on another, and a row of three general goods stores with a shared warehouse behind them. Using the nearest exit of the place he was in, he emerged in an alleyway lodged between the buildings.

Longinus walked towards the end of the alleyway, carefully looking around to see if the coast was clear.

Some people were walking down the street, and he spotted a car at the furthest away intersection visible. The city was alive, but there didn't seem to be anyone really giving a shit about his existence.

Longinus lowered his stance, as telekinetic energy built up all around him. Upon hitting peak force, he shot up into the sky at incredible speed. He felt the wind tear itself with a constant whooshing sound, pushing up against his shoulders, as he went up above the two-story rooftops of the suburban city district. A figure of gold and black, wreathed in an aura of the former, now floating above the city. Some people noticed, looking up at him in awe.

After a moment of staring into the distance, he zipped away leaving a golden trail behind himself, heading towards a more populated area of the town. People were scarce, even near the center. Individuals loathed to walk on their own, while the groups that were present didn't seem to notice him.

Then, after a moment, someone did, and pointed it out. People began to look up.

He spread both arms wide, as he ascended higher and higher into the sky. It was a careful ascent, measured in distance by watching the far buildings decrease in size. Once he deemed the height he had reached acceptable, he stared meaningfully into the sky. The weather was ugly, almost disquietingly so for the city - overcast with grey clouds, shrouding the city in gloom.

Being so far from everybody else, above the world, in the quiet of the sky… it felt calm. Serene. He breathed in, feeling the shame dim by a little bit.

A hand raised, directed at the sky, palm open, fingers splayed. Streams of golden energy crawled up his grasp. He felt a comfortable warmth cropping up along those spots; one that could demolish anything it was pointed at.

Longinus released a breath, as the orb of energy in his palm reshaped. It became longer and thinner, transforming into a crackling spear. "Let it be known to the world..." he uttered, throwing the Lance through the clouds. The moment it went through, the clouds made way for it, opening a hole into the thick layer of bad weather. Unfortunately, because the local clouds were cumulonimbi, it did not cause sunlight to shine through how he intended.

He looked down, and noticed there were three jeeps parked on the street beneath him. Some of the national guards were staring up, and one of them was gesturing at him with one hand, making a swooping downward motion. Come down.

Longinus sighed and lowered his hand, floating down to the national guard, not touching the ground, staying at a considerable distance from the jeeps, but still close enough to hold a conversation. "Who are you?! Why did you shoot the sky?" a man in uniform yelled. He wore army fatigues, without any armor or even a kevlar vest, but did seem to have a side-arm at his belt. A pea-shooter, given Longinus' stack of Brute-oriented powers.

Longinus stared at him emotionlessly. With the shape of his helmet, he looked more stoic than Armsmaster, no emotion leaking through besides that of his body language and voice, which themselves he kept to minimum. "I am..." he pretended to pause to think for a moment, looking into the sky with meaning. "Longinus."

With that, he looked back down at the soldiers. Two of them had, at some point, taken assault rifles out of their car compartments. They didn't raise them yet, but they were clearly prepared to. One of the soldiers at the back was declaring the presence of an unknown parahuman in the area on the radio, and asking for backup.

Let's be committed to the Christian Saint thing.

"I shot my lance through the thick clouds, hoping to let God's light shine through. However, I failed. I bid thee farewell, officers. God bless you," Longinus declared.

"What the fuck?" one of the civilians asked in utter confusion. "Is this guy off his meds?"

He bolted into the sky, tracing a curved gold streak. Longinus held a single arm off to the side, watched the gold-white particles trailing off of it, watching them glitter in the air.

At some point, he penetrated the cover of white fluff and ascended into the clouds. Everything in sight was foggy, and only fifty meters in, he lost concrete sight of the ground. The altitude was higher than any flier in Brockton Bay on record could ascend to. The environmental shield was doing its job - siphoning away excess heat and cold, allowing him to breathe without having to suffer from the sudden pressure shifts, but it still felt chilly and a little uncomfortable.

He was ridiculously high at the point when he decided to stop accelerating. Underneath him, there was a near-flat, feather-like expanse of endless white, stretching in every direction for kilometers, even over the shore waters.

Looking far south, above the clouds and just under the horizon, Longinus could just about make out the closest suburban districts that would usually be counted as 'just outside of Boston.' To the west, far away, he saw a long shape in the sky that left behind a white trail that was thin and two-pronged at first and then expanded and became homogenous as the shape moved away, at roughly the same altitude as him. A commercial airliner, he realized.

Longinus zipped back down, moving in a diagonal line in the general direction of where Tattletale's territory was supposed to be. It took a full minute to descend back down below the clouds, and when he emerged, Longinus was forced to stop by the sight of Legend looking up at him with folded arms, with a patient expression.

"It's been a while," Longinus said with a careful tone, folding his arms as well. Shit.

"It has," Legend said, delicately neutral. His face slipped into an uncomfortable expression, probably trying to think of how to continue this.

"Are you angry at me for the same reason everyone else is?" Longinus asked, trying to match his neutrality.

"I do my best to divorce emotions from work, aside from when it's joy. And unfortunately - I can't say this is the case here," Legend answered slowly, sounding about as detached as it came from someone with such a natural warmth to them. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"I have some important things to tell you. About the Nine," Longinus stated, opting to change the topic immediately.

"Whatever it is, you should weigh it carefully. The Nine delivered their terms of engagement," Legend spoke, proceeding to explain, "If anyone from outside the city of Brockton Bay - that includes me - attempts to aid a candidate, it will result in the Nine penalizing the city. That said, I don't think they can hear us all the way up here. What is it?" His expression didn't soften as he asked it, and he didn't unfold his arms.

He needed to inform Legend about Jack Slash ending the world - if there was anyone who could do anything, it'd probably be the Triumvirate. And if anyone from the Triumvirate could do it... well, it was probably Eidolon, but Legend was a close second to that. "Are you aware that if Jack Slash leaves Brockton Bay, the world ends in two years?" Longinus asked.

"Coil informed us of something similar. Do you work for him, now?" Legend asked, with no judgment audible in his voice. Only aloof detachment, as he claimed before.

"When I was left alone in the fucking street, the Undersiders picked me up and saved my life," Longinus informed him with a tinge of resentment, not at him, but at the PRT in general. He cleared his throat at the spot of one-sided awkwardness that followed. "I am sixty to seventy percent sure that Jack Slash will influence Scion into doing something that will result in his destruction, and humanity's extinction."

"Scion?" The area near Legend's mouth became tight.

"I'm dead sure of it. Consider this chance, and do not take it lightly."

Legend shook his head, clearly not believing the argument. "I find the idea that Jack Slash can harm Scion meaningfully rather hard to reconcile."

"That's not what I meant, Legend. Jack Slash will somehow influence Scion into bringing about the end of the world, and something during that event will destroy Scion. I didn't say that Jack Slash would be the one to do it," Longinus answered, with a touch of finality to his tone.

Legend once again shook his head, and his expression grew dreadfully cold. "No, again: I don't really believe this. What happens to be the source of your 'data?'" The air-quotes could be heard, rather than seen: Legend did not unfold his arms at any point, appearing stalwart and unopen.

"My Thinker power."

"Thinker powers don't just give you information out of nowhere," Legend argued, arms unfolding. There was the faintest glimmer in his eyes, as they squinted into Longinus' own.

"The Undersiders made me aware of the… prophecy, I guess we could say," Longinus answered, shrugging.

"And the Undersiders know from Coil, who knows from a little girl he's kidnapped," Legend said, nodding along, "You don't find it at all plausible that events are being manipulated?"

"In what way, Legend? What are you trying to say?" Longinus asked curiously.

Legend shook his head in mild disappointment, almost like he was grieving. "It should be obvious, Centurion. Coil is trying to manipulate you. To get your trust and loyalty through the Undersiders," the hero answered, his eyes softening while his mouth remained stuck as the stiff, hard-line it was.

Longinus stopped, clenching his fists. "Do I have any other choice? Don't count turning myself in for something I was mastered to do. That would end with me in the Birdcage."

"I'm afraid my hands are tied," Legend answered, "I have standing orders to bring you in, so you can be tried and the events investigated." He pointedly didn't mention that getting any of the Nine, or even Cherish as witnesses in court was basically impossible, and that only a few months ago, a court sentenced a basically innocent girl to the Birdcage for accidentally misusing her power.

"Canary trials part two? No thanks," Longinus folded his arms, shaking his head.

Legend's fists clenched as he breathed in. Longinus spotted motes of starlight flickering between his palms, an ambient cyan-blue glow in between them - almost like Cherenkov radiation, but brighter. "I'm sorry," Legend said, managing to sound genuinely mournful. "This can only go two..."

Longinus stared into Legend's eyes. His Master power activated mid-sentence. "I'm sorry as well, but I'm not going to the Bird–"

Legend's entire body became light: for a brief moment, it was a translucent, roughly humanoid cyan-white swirl of color, before evening out back to his human body, but glowing with a sharp outline. He began to fly, and Longinus felt his auto-defense power kick in. His entire form compressed into a dark streak, darting away and allowing him to emerge out of the path of the beam of blue starlight that would've knocked him out of the air like a swatted fly otherwise.

Longinus stood motionless in the air, looking at Legend. "I don't want to fight you!" he shouted out, guard raised.

"Then surrender," Legend answered, voice booming. His skin kept roiling with motes of energy, his eyes set ablaze and leaking traces of glowing blue smoke that dissipated rapidly.

Longinus' fists clenched. "I don't want to go to the Birdcage either," he declared, his hands shaking ever so slightly.

Legend's hands dropped to the sides and he straightened his knees, which at least seemed to suggest he wasn't about to attack. However, he did not drop his Breaker state - it seemed to grant him some resistance to Longinus' Master power, for as long as he remained in it. "I'm sorry, all I can promise is to do my best to make sure justice is done. Please, don't make this any more difficult than it has to be."

"Justice for me, or justice for the scared politicians that would rather have me dead?" Longinus asked, anger sliding into his voice.

Legend frowned, seemingly to keep himself focused. "I have my orders. Surrender, Centurion. You can't hurt me meaningfully, I can chase you faster than you can run, and I don't think you can bring yourself to go down and use the city as a living shield. This only ends in two ways."

Longinus shook with an overwhelming sense of despair clouding his thoughts, but also with boiling hate at what was happening. Legend was right. He was outclassed and outgunned in all parameters, but how did that make it right? What right did Legend have to choose how this ended? The PRT didn't know the full story - no one did, so how could someone be trusted to make a fair judgment? "What happens if I surrender? I'll be taken to prison, tried by an unfair and biased judge, and then sentenced to life in the Birdcage. For what? Being mind-controlled by the Slaughterhouse Nine," he declared through grit teeth. Longinus' body trembled.

"There's no evidence you were mastered," Legend answered, clearly uncomfortable with what he just said. "If you come with me, we can prove you innocent together."

"You're just another parahuman. A powerful one, yes, but a judge will only see you as someone trying to blindly defend his brethren," Longinus stated, hopeless beyond repair. He felt his face twist involuntarily at the sinking, stone-cold emotion in his stomach. He wanted to throw up, but couldn't count on Legend being nice enough to give him time to do it.

"Then what's your plan? What do you want me to do? Let you go?" Legend shook his head with regret. "That can't happen. This conversation and fight are being monitored, and I have orders. This is your last chance, Centurion." Pools of light began to condense in Legend's palms.

Let's think. Legend was in this line of work for… what, almost thirty years, now? There's been dozens of people with arguments and cases more convincing than Longinus'. There was no argument here that could shake Legend's faith, and he was too deontological to make an exception because of the pragmatic argument that Longinus' power would be useful against the Endbringers, or the end of the world - which Legend didn't seem to entirely buy into.

It was fight or surrender. Either fight a member of the Triumvirate or go to prison for super-villain psychopaths, which included at least one person that wished to rip his entrails out and let them sink to the floor, that being Hookwolf. Longinus felt trapped. Like he'd been caught between a rock and a son of a bitch.

"It's either being brought in warm, or cold," Longinus gave up, chuckling helplessly. He broke into a fit of nervous, hysterical giggling that lasted around ten seconds, after which he stopped abruptly, and looked Legend dead in the eye with a dark glint. "I'm as good as dead," he said.

"I'm not going to kill you," Legend answered, "Not if I can help it."

"I didn't mean that. Going to the Birdcage. It's like dying, but worse," Longinus argued back.

"I don't think that," Legend said, not providing any clarification. His right hand's glow brightened by a factor of three. "Now choose. If I don't have your answer in ten seconds, I'll be forced to em–"

Legend hurtled across the sky as a thick golden beam hit him straight in the chest.

Last edited: Nov 27, 2019

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Birdsie

Nov 27, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Nov 28, 2019

#3,925

Legend didn't wait any longer to unleash the full might of his power.

There were common terms, in the superpowered community, that referred to variations of commonly-occurring powersets. For example, a mixture of flight and brute was called the Alexandria package, while thinkers who viewed remote events were called clairvoyants, and so on, and so on. There was also a term for blasters who could fly, like Purity or Legend - that term was 'flying artillery.'

If Purity was flying artillery, then Legend was a flying multi-railgun. In the time it took for Longinus to begin weaving out of where he'd been a second ago, Legend already discharged ten lasers from his body, in a circle away from himself. The lasers turned in mid-air, moving in Longinus' direction, then braiding around one another into one big laser, the size of Longinus' torso, that whizzed a meter to his right.

A golden sheen wavered across Longinus' body. His fists, feet, and chest were subsequently covered in construct armor that was as strong as corundum, if not tougher.

Three wide laserbeams impacted Longinus' chest. The first one set him on fire, the second one spread a clump of icicles across his chest, and the third one was an impact of concussive force strong enough that he heard a 'bang' that would've usually been indicative of a small explosion, as he lost control of his flight and started spinning sideways as he hurtled towards the earth at alarming speed.

Longinus regained his control and took a moment to orient himself. He pushed himself in Legend's direction, who was already charging up another big discharge of energy. Longinus focused his stupor-inducing power on Legend, and the leader of the Protectorate squinted in an attempt to focus. In half a second, his breaker state's intensity redoubled, and he regained control over himself, while Longinus felt his power's slipping. Legend blasted with a wide-area discharge that couldn't be dodged at this range and trajectory.

Longinus condensed into a stream of smoke, phasing through the attack, and disengaged several meters closer. Legend noticed the decrease in the distance, and skipped backward, immediately returning the encounter to its starting conditions. He raised both arms, fingers pointed at Longinus, and began to fire off a barrage of laser-beams, with the sounds of gunshots. One, two, five splattered into Longinus' chest, knocking the wind out of him. He felt a burning in his chest, as his power began to repair the broken arteries and healing the bruises before his skin could even turn a different color. Two impacted his right elbow, and he felt a bone splinter with the heat of slag.

Three golden birds burst out of Longinus' back, flying directly at Legend at top speed, with the purpose of distracting him and giving Longinus some breathing room. Legend was clearly sandbagging - trying to find the grey area where Longinus was incapacitated but not killed.

Legend barely moved his hand, and three homing lasers gibbed the phoenixes into golden ash and steam in an eyeblink. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Longinus shot three lasers which were intercepted by the homing ones that Legend fired, and subsequently caused a trio of consecutive flashes of light in those spots. Legend was faster in firing next, charging up a large ball of light and throwing it in Longinus' direction where it transitioned into a wide laserbeam mid-flight, before following up with an onslaught of inaccurate but fast laserfire: a frequency of two lasers per second, with each one having the relative strength of an anti-material rifle.

Longinus leaped out of the way, firing his own lasers at Legend. Legend didn't move to dodge, and each laser hit somewhere on his body. Every impact was accentuated by Legend's breaker state flashing for less than a tenth of a second and instantly absorbing the light and repairing whatever minuscule damage it managed to do.

Legend raised his second hand, and a larger blast of light left it, weaving in the sky like a snake, turning left, right, up, and down, trying to confuse Longinus as it gradually moved in his direction.

Another sniper-shot laser caught Longinus in the left shoulder, causing him to half-spin before he wove out of the path of the next one. The laser-snake kept slithering, and Legend fired two more in the interim - they were gradually moving in his direction, most likely intending to strike from three sides simultaneously. A pincer attack.

Longinus allowed himself drop-down at incredible speeds, releasing the force that was keeping him in the sky. The three snakes impacted at the point he used to be in, exploding in a coruscant blue-white discharge. Longinus felt waves of overpressurized air crashing against his skin, increasing his downward velocity as he trailed dark smoke. Legend looked briefly surprised, but nodded his head down and bolted so fast it looked like he'd became a blue, humanoid mist and teleported, rather than flying.

When close enough to ground level, Longinus caught his descent with telekinesis and - since there wasn't enough time to just flatten out the force to a zero - he changed his trajectory to curve back upwards. Longinus saw the windows of the nearest skyscrapers rattle at his movement around him, and he managed to bring himself to a near-stop when he flinched in surprise.

Legend was already there, floating a good distance away downt he street, both of his hands glowing bright like stars, with a sense of hesitation.

"Let me go," Longinus pleaded, voice shaky. "Please."

The leader of the Protectorate shook his head, mouth and eyes set into a firm glower. His mouth moved, and he spoke two words. With that, the force held at bay released. Like flashlights, except the light released from them was also a bus ramming into Longinus' body. Longinus didn't realize what he said, until instants later: "I'm sorry."

Longinus was hurtled down across one of the main Brockton Bay streets, turning chaotically. He didn't have enough fine control over his body to actually see where he was going for almost three seconds, before he managed to catch himself and arrest his movement into a controlled slide against the asphalt. He kept sliding for what felt like two dozen meters, in less than a second, before his back crashed against a car and forced him into a stop. Every part of Longinus' body was sore and bruised, and beginning to burn with renewed vigor as the power of the radiant phoenix repaired his arteries and tissues.

This is a lost battle. Now that we're in the city, the collateral damage will be crazy if I go all out, which I would have to do, since he's a fucking Triumvirate member.

Longinus' Stranger detection power began to go off.

Huh?

Longinus looked around, but then remembered. Line of sight. He looked in front of himself, to see if Imp was there, but his power gave him nothing except, 'Stranger in your line of sight.'

Legend floated down, almost graceful. He didn't fly like Superman, with one fist in front of his face. He was upright as he flew, hands calmly pointed down as if he was standing in the air - he still moved faster than a human body ought to, in that non-aerodynamic position. He skipped one foot on the ground and began to walk, stopping twenty meters away from Longinus.

"Do you surrender? The rest of the Protectorate is on its way. This isn't going to turn as pleasantly as you'd hope," Legend said. He almost sounded hostile, but that could be attributed to the adrenaline of fighting. He seemed to notice as well because his second statement was calmer, more controlled, "I don't want to continue this any more than strictly necessary."

Longinus hesitated to speak. A Stranger was in the area, and he knew it was Imp, and thus hoped she could do something. From the way he'd tested with his field of view, she was either in front of him or somewhere nearby. There were over a dozen civilians standing on the pavement to the sides, most of them shuffling away, but a bold few took out their phones and began recording.

He stared at Legend, staying silent. Do something, goddamnit.

"If you don't answer, I will assume you're not surrendering, and I will wait for the rest of the Protectorate to back me up, before I make the arrest," Legend clarified, with no more hostility in his tone - he'd whittled it down with only a few calm breaths, when just before, they were both throwing tank gun-level firepower at one another. "I'd appreciate if you cooperated."

Longinus sighed internally. He silently presented both wrists to Legend.

In that moment, someone on the sidewalk screamed at a shrill tone. Both Longinus and Legend turned in the direction of the scream. A woman was holding herself by the side of the stomach, her black shirt torn as if someone cut it. A pool of black-red blood spread there, and she tried to clutch at it with her hands to stop it, as she began to hyperventilate.

Legend's eyes widened in shock. His head whipped to Longinus for a half-second, before he looked at the woman again.

Longinus shot a phoenix in the direction of the woman to cure her damage. "A Stranger is involved," he stated.

Longinus almost heard someone cry out with frustration, before another man was stabbed in the stomach with an audible scream and dropped to the ground, heaving up. Legend flinched, and this time, did not hesitate. He flashed blue-white, leaving behind only a trail as he closed the distance and picked up the man in a single second. He looked at Longinus with a bitter expression for a moment, before moving three stories up in two seconds, and then flying off at a speed that was quick, but safe enough for a civilian. Knowing Legend's speed, he could reach the hospital and be back in half a minute.

In that moment, Longinus looked and saw Imp emerge from the crowd. The people recoiled in shock, hushed words and whispers. Some of the civilians holding their phones began to make declarations of some kind, but Longinus couldn't hear them from this distance. "Hey! Pick me up and let's get the fuck out of here!" Imp shouted.

Longinus walked up to Imp, then picked her up by the waist and flew away at his top speed. Even if it weren't safe for a human, his telekinesis extended over Imp's body alongside a micrometer-thin film of construct stuff: a semi-extension of his environmental shield. Good enough to act as a windshield.

"Holy fuck," Imp breathed out, then laughed, "Holy shit, that was intense. Was that actually Legend?"

"No, it was my fucking great uncle Steve," Longinus replied, chest heaving. The adrenaline was wearing off, but it was a close call.

Imp laughed out loud, before beginning to take in another breath and finally settling down. "Damn."

"You saved my life. How can I repay you?" Longinus asked, genuinely willing to do so in some way. He owed her for potentially not being stuck in the Birdcage.

"I know right? I'm fucking awesome," Imp said, with a tone that suggested a broad grin under her mask. "Also, I'll think about it. For now, treat it as a favor for joining the team."

Longinus chuckled. "Thank you."

It took nearly a minute, and halfway there, he had to duck down into an alleyway to allow Dauntless to fly overhead and in the direction of where Legend and Longinus had touched down prior. After that, Longinus got to the general area of Tattletale's safehouse rather quickly, and put Imp down on the rooftop, before quickly dialing his own environmental shield to a minimum, then turning it off in its entirety, as they stepped down to the top floor.

Imp was giddy, flapping her arms as if trying to shake the adrenaline off of herself, while simultaneously relishing the feeling. "Can you imagine Grue's expression when I tell him I stabbed someone in Legend's presence and basically forced him to leave you alone? He's gonna be so pissssed," she laughed.

"Yeah, avoid doing that, or he may throw me in the Birdcage himself," Longinus cringed.

"Gay and sparkly up there wanted to throw you into the Cage?" Imp asked, affecting a scheming, curious tone.

"He wanted for me to surrender and be tried justly. How is it just, if Canary was caged for accidentally misusing her power? I really don't think the judge would've given me a much better deal," Longinus stated with a tone of disillusionment, walking through the corridors of the safehouse.

Imp shrugged, raising her hands above her head as she did so. "I wouldn't know. I never misuse my power, sir," she said, in faux innocence. She looked up at him and cocked her head to the side in a cutesy manner, like an angel with a halo.

Longinus chuckled heartily and reached out, giving her a headpat. Imp snorted and pushed him away playfully. "Of course you never do, m- Hey! Accept my affection!"

"Don't be gay, dude," Imp answered, sounding like she was on the edge of laughter.

"...How… when… eh?" Longinus stuttered, not seeing the connection between patting a girl's head and being a gay male.

"You Italians work weird," Imp said, then cocked her head, "Do I gotta speak to you in your native language? Prosciutto bambino mio amigo? Comprehende?" Her accent was terrible.

"That's Spanish, Imp."

"Eh." She didn't sound sorry as she shrugged and proceeded to enlighten him, "An European language is an European language is an European language. I don't complain when you talk to me with a spaghetti accent."

Longinus giggled. "Let's just go," he said, sighing wearily.

The situation was unstable, given Tattletale's mental breakdown which had been occuring for the last twenty seconds since Imp kindly informed her of what just transpired, before grabbing the remote and flicking onto the news, where a feed of Longinus' and Legend fight showed as the former was thrown maybe a hundred meters downstreet by a twin-laser discharge, before Legend followed after him.

"–So, yeah. That's kind of fun," Imp concluded her tirade. She glanced at Tattletale and watched the older girl ventilating with a calm expression. "Are you angry? You've been pretty quiet for these thirty seconds. Pretty sure you're angry. Are you angry, tits? I bet you twenty dollars that you're mad as fuck right now."

"Imp, shush, please," Longinus said quietly in Tattletale's stead, trying to not make the walking bomb explode by spitting on the fucking trigger.

Imp begrudgingly folded her arms, leaning against the wall with her back. The trio stirred in silence for the entirety of ten seconds, before a metaphysical lightbulb seemed to flash over Imp's head. "Oh! I know why you're angry! It's because I stabbed two people, isn't it?"

Tattletale stood, her teeth visible as she grinned hard enough that Longinus could hear the teeth grinding. "Maybe."

"Yeah. Well, it was necessary. A necessary evil to fight back against the greater good," Imp excused her behavior, smug and recalcitrant.

Tattletale raised both hands at her, close together, and her fingers seemed to clench without clenching - they strained, but remained stationary, as if she wanted to absolutely strangle the living shit out of the empty air for several seconds, before she breathed in two lungfuls of oxygen and laughed out loud. "What is wrong with you people?"

Longinus stood and placed himself between the two, looking at Tattletale with his hands splayed in her direction. "This is on me, don't fully blame her."

"You know that what you did just now was absolutely nuts?" Tattletale asked, looking at him with her grin. Not vulpine. Not even amused. Just a blank grin.

"Yeah, I do," Longinus said.

"Not the fight," Tattletale clarified, shaking her head and waving the event away with her hand. "What happened happened. Que sera sera, whatever will be was - but… why, in the living hell, did you just leave without warning or telling anyone? Oh my fucking God, Longinus." She didn't stop smiling as she said it.

"I wanted to come here," Longinus excused himself. "I got... side tracked," he said, cringing at his own words.

"Oh, side-tracked? At which point?" Tattletale stood up, beginning to gesticulate once per every question, "When you shot a laser into the sky? The nice cup of tea and conversation with the national guard? The cloud-watching? Where was exactly the point where you realized, 'oh, shit, I should go back so the cops don't find me!' Hm?" She leaned nearly into his face as she asked, and her grin took on a manic note, as her lip and eyebrow began to tremble in irritation.

Longinus was silent, looking down at the ground. He remembered when Director Piggot used to reprimand him. At least she doesn't pretend to have some sort of moral high ground.

"Jesus Christ. I have a headache right now." Tattletale sat down with a heavy, resounding sigh. Imp was silent for once.

"Do you… want a bird?" Longinus asked.

"Won't work," Tattletale shot back, clutching her forehead and closing her eyes as she turned herself at the ceiling.

"Is it a Tinker headache?"

"It's a Thinker headache. Those are induced by power overuse. You can't just heal them away," Tattletale answered him, rubbing down the lower part of her eyelids before letting them go with a wet snap.

"Yeah, I know something about that..." Longinus stated, nodding along. "I assume painkillers don't work either?"

"If they did, I'd be carrying two bottles with me at all times," she answered, and promptly began to shake her head. It was a light motion, slow, unhurried, and dim. "No, they usually just make me even sicker. Drive me to vomit. And using my power once the headaches kick in means I've been using it too much. Kind of like how your muscles hurt after your workout to tell you they snapped. It's an important kind of pain. One that establishes limits," she explained, sounding like she was working up to something.

"Right… do you have something to have me do?" Longinus asked, cocking his head to the side.

"Yeah," she snapped, a mite bitter, eyes locked on his own. "Work on your damned limits. There's a point at walking through town, where you should realize you're a super-villain whose powers can be tied to a recent murderer. I mean, the civilians don't know - they were probably confused as fuck - but the PRT did. So please don't go anywhere until after dark, unless you… oh, shit, I'm gonna throw up. There's a heat in my – blugh." It wasn't a vomit by itself, but rather a sort of dull hiccup that foretold the coming of a vomit.

Longinus constructed a golden bucket for her to vomit in. "Alright, yeah, yeah, that's okay," he said, nodding.

Imp watched with morbid curiosity as Tattletale gripped the bucket by the sides, almost shoving her face into it. After that, the nasty sounds of stomach acid-eaten food and drink forcing itself up her esophagus and out her mouth, before splattering on the inside of the bucket sounded out. Wet sounds, slick with disgust. Longinus cringed at sensory feedback of the vomit hitting the walls of the bucket. Tattletale shook a little, like she was cold, but it was just a nervous reaction.

"You're all gonna drive me into my grave one day," she muttered, before throwing up again. Longinus felt the bucket go to two-fifths.

Longinus sighed, feeling guilty about at the sight of her spitting out her insides. "Sorry doesn't quite cut it, but I'm sorry."

Tattletale let out a little whimper, before letting out another wave of green gunk from her stomach. Tears were visible on her face, and in her eyes, as she did. "Fuck..."

Longinus circled around the desk and tied her hair back into a ponytail, with a golden hairband he had just constructed. He laid down a hand on her back, rubbing it up and down softly. "Come on, you'll be alright."

"Yeah. Come on. Get it all out, tits. We believe in you!" Imp egged on, heaving with laughter.

Longinus glared at her, which only caused her to snigger more. "Get out and wait by the door." Imp began to laugh even more, shaking her head and muttering something about fox vomit, and 'imagine a fox throwing up!'

He groaned out in frustration and constructed a thick, golden wall in the middle of the room, between them and Imp. He immediately forgot why the wall was there, but decided he'd put it there for a reason and so kept it there.

"Are you feeling any better?" Longinus asked, rubbing Tattletale's back.

"No..." She sounded ill, but was breathing, rather than vomiting. The sickly-sweet stench of her breakfast reached Longinus' nose in seconds after she raised her head from the bucket to take a fuller breath.

"Is there something I can do?" Longinus asked.

"Open the window."

The window opened itself. "Done," Longinus informed.

Tattletale's stomach made a sound like someone burping at low frequency and sound, and she huffed out. "And get me a glass of water." She began to rub her head again.

"Water is the last thing you should be putting in your stomach after puking," Longinus said.

"Nice. Leave me with the taste of freshly dissolved fries in my mouth. Thank you," Tattletale said, shuddering and closing her mouth in a gag reflex.

"Alright, fine," Longinus gave in, heading to the bathroom to fill up a glass of water for her. The tap worked, surprisingly, but this was the base of a supervillain. It'd be kind of lackluster without the basics. He handed the water glass to her, and Tattletale took a shallow sip, barely touching the liquid with her lips and letting it simmer in her mouth for a moment, before she put the glass down and swallowed, sighing with relief and putting the bucket down.

Longinus waited for the inevitability of another fit of vomit. Drinking liquids after puking is one of the last things you should do.

"You can go," she said, waving at the bucket.

"The bucket will dissolve in a couple of hours," Longinus informed her.

"Yeah. Leaving me with stinky stomach expectorations on my floor," she answered him, nodding her head in near-anger. "Don't want."

Longinus constructed an empty one for her, and took the full one. The wall he'd set up crumbled and retracted into his environmental shield. His stranger-detection power sparked momentarily, before he remembered Imp was behind the wall. She was still laughing, though beginning to calm down.

He sighed wearily. "Let's go," he said, waving for Imp to follow him. She did, but she kept sniggering on her way out.

Longinus stopped by a bathroom to empty the bucket, and then made his way to the large dormitory gymnasium where civilians were living. Maybe more injured people needed healing, or something. A cursory check assured him this wasn't the case, and everyone seemed to be pretty content - though two more beds had been taken. He noticed that some of the people in the cafeteria were finishing up eating their lunch.

His body was sore after the fight with Legend, but the Phoenix power was beginning to do work on that, smoothing out every pained element of his body with sheets of warmth.

Since there was nothing else to really do, Longinus headed into the cafeteria to get lunch too. Two guys whose faces were crammed with sandwiches looked at him, in full costume, then back at the TV which showed a playback of the fight that took place maybe… twenty, thirty minutes ago. Closer to thirty.

Without minding them, Longinus created a domino mask on his face. He took off his Doctor Fate helmet and laid it on the table in front of him, off to the left. The lunch-lady stared at him with a slack jaw, blinking several times per second.

"...Can I have, uh, lasagna?" Her eyes and arms sort of half-twitched when he spoke, and she took two seconds to put her thoughts in order, before nodding and backing up into the kitchen to prepare the order. "Thanks."

Glancing to his right, he noticed the people were stunned with awe. Was this what reputation felt like? Signal was right about striving to become famous, it seemed. He felt a knife of ice drive itself into his gut at the thought of her long-lost friend, but he shook it off.

After a moment, the lunch-lady brought back - not a plate - but a whole tray-box full of lasagna, alongside utensils. She laid it in front of him, then looked down and said, "I forgot a plate," in a blank voice.

"Oh, no, no, not this much," Longinus said, shaking his head a couple of times. "Just one serving is enough," he reassured her.

She nodded, picked up the tray numbly, and brought it back into the kitchen.

Longinus glanced back at the people to his right. Two of them were trying to look busy with staring at the television. One of them was genuinely occupied with eating and reading a newspaper, while the last two at the end of the same long table were staring at him with curious yet nervous gazes.

"I don't bite," he called out with a charismatic smile. Almost like a stream of piss had been redirected at scared ants, all of their eyes scurried back to their food and they began to move to eat it, so they had full mouths and thusly couldn't answer him.

Awkward, he thought, looking back at the kitchen lady.

In moments, she was back with a plate of lasagna, a knife, a spoon, and a fork laid down on the plate. Her eyes looked him over with a degree of anxiety - she seemed to be noticeably calmer than when he'd first appeared though. "Is this okay?" she asked, managing not to sound little and batshit terrified, but actually normal.

Longinus looked at her with a weirded out expression, but then quickly nodded. "Yeah, thank you," he said, leaving ten dollars on the counter, making his way back to the table.

The nearest-by person who was curiously scanning the shape of his helmet flinched in fear when Longinus sat down four meters away, and immediately jammed his face with his sandwich, beginning to much in large strokes of his jaw.

"You can look if you want," Longinus said, taking a forkful of lasagna and putting it into his mouth. The man seemed to lean down and tighten his posture, as if his ass clenched up in dread and veneration.

If his thoughts were given a description, it'd probably be something along the lines, 'I know he's a nice guy because he healed my missing fingers,' but also, 'this motherfucker escaped Legend alive and a free man, ergo, he can kill me in the same amount of time it takes for him to blink.'

Longinus chuckled, causing the room to put its guard up collectively. Everyone seemed to notice he was consuming a meal, and so they started to eat theirs at doubled speed. They weren't even being subtle about it, but it seemed that unless something exploded, they were hungry enough to eat first, run the fuck away second.

By the time Longinus consumed his meal and put his helmet back on, the cafeteria zone of the room was entirely absent of people. He brought the tray back to the lunch lady and made his way back to his room, which was exactly the same as he left it. He needed to make a phone call, to Coil in particular, but there wasn't a phone in the room. Problematic.

Longinus went out of his room, to look for a place that may have a phone, but he found himself clueless as to any such location. Maybe the reception, near the front entrance of the building?

He made his way to the reception, hoping to find someone that could help him. There was a duo of guards near the entrance, in armor distinctively similar to the PRT troopers' - almost like an evil, purely mercenary version of that outfit - armed with rifles, as well as three people sitting on a couch, having beers and smokes and watching TV.

Longinus approached the guards in a non-threatening way.

"Can I help you?" the one on the right asked. A woman. Props to Coil or Tattletale for being an equal-opportunity employer, whoever it was that hired them.

"Yes, actually. I need to talk with Coil, but I don't have a phone, nor a way to contact him if I had one."

Guard one looked at guard two. There was a moment of silent conversation, before the woman ordered, "Wait here," and proceeded to walk into the 'staff only' area of the lobby.

"Aye aye," Longinus replied.

The right-side guard was left on his own, watching Longinus' armor in broad strokes. From the way his rifle rested lazily in his hands, and he seemed to almost slump at ease, Longinus could tell no one in the room had watched the breaking news yet.

Longinus looked at him for a moment, then said. "Whatever you see on the news, please, I'm not someone you should be afraid of," he said in a sort of pleading manner.

"Uuh, okay?" the guy asked in clear confusion.

"You'll understand once you see the news," Longinus replied, sighing.

The guard furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, but didn't react in any other way as his partner stepped out of the staff only area, with a phone on loudspeaker in her hand. She moved it closer to Longinus' face, but in such a way that suggested he wasn't getting to hold it himself. Coil's smooth, electronically distorted voice spoke from the device, "Yes? What is it?"

"I would like to talk with you, in person. It's a matter of importance to me. Not urgent, though," Longinus explained, folding his arms.

"For what purpose?" Coil asked, with no particular inflection.

"I'm looking for someone," Longinus answered.

"And you believe I can provide that service," Coil finished off the line of thought, "Very well, Longinus. I will meet you south of Leviathan's crater, in the alleyway on the opposite side of the street from the Easy Eats family restaurant. It's a secure and neutral ground. Do you know where that is?"

"Can't we meet in a safehouse?" Longinus inquired, not particularly excited about meeting out at noon with a criminal mastermind.

"In that case, meet me at Avalanche's safehouse in twenty-five minutes from now," Coil suggested, "Was there anything else?"

"No," Longinus replied.

"Very good." And click.

75

Birdsie

Nov 28, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 2, 2019

#3,991

Avalanche's safehouse wasn't particularly difficult to locate. A question to Tattletale yielded a burner phone and a map, which he was to not take, but take a glance at and return. The safehouse was west of Coil's territory, a seven to eight-minute flight, and rather uneasily close to Gabriel's former home. Tattletale also gave him 500 of spending money, just in case something came up.

Longinus descended onto the rooftop, with Avalanche waiting for him on top and smoking a cigarette that seemed to be slightly longer and fatter than your usual commercially-sold tobacco products. "Yo, what's up?" the man asked, the nasal way he sounded pointing towards there being smoke swirling around in his lungs. He breathed out a thick gray stream and grinned.

"Is that a joint?" Longinus pointed shyly, chuckling.

Avalanche turned, with the look of a dog that ate something distinctly non-food-like. "What? Are you retarded?" He raised his hand up into the air a little, above his forehead. Even from a distance away, it was visible it wasn't a joint. It was clearly a cigarette. It had a filter and everything.

"Yeah, but it's..." Longinus shook his head, probably silently irate at his inexactness in reading the physical descriptions of objects and sighed. "Never mind."

"Embiggened using my power," Avalanche said, then took in a drag and frowned. "Is embiggened a word?"

"Oh. Right, right," Longinus nodded in blind agreement, totally unaware that it's not actually a word. "I think it is, yeah."

Avalanche shrugged in response. They stirred in silence until Avalanche pointed at the door with his thumb. "He called ahead. He's gonna meet you downstairs, second floor. There's a room to the left of the stairs. I'm gonna finish this first." He bobbed the cigarette, then moved it back to his lips.

"Thanks," Longinus muttered, making his way down to the said room. It was a small war/meeting room, with a square table, a map of Brockton Bay in the center, and some junk lying around: a wooden table with a knife, a gun, several magazines for said gun, and an actual old-style big-box radio set. The room was concrete, with a single cone-shaped lamp hanging from the ceiling and providing a gloomy illumination. It looked like a place the Midnight Crew would use to plan their heists.

Seeing nothing better to do, Longinus sat down and waited.

Coil arrived on point, exactly five minutes later, with a single mercenary guard in tow. He addressed Longinus with an inclination of the head. "Good afternoon, Longinus. Or should I say, 'not good.' Word has reached me that you've fought Legend of the Triumvirate shortly before lunchtime." Coil's voice didn't betray any obvious displeasure or emotion.

"Not my proudest moment," Longinus.

"Indeed," Coil drawled, sounding less like himself and more like Severus Snape about to judge someone's potion-making skills. Coil moved closer to the table. "I trust you understand that drawing this kind of attention is unacceptable? I expect my Tattletale has chided you on it extensively."

"Tattletale has already done that, to the point of physically hurting herself. She's fine now," Longinus said, nodding.

"Yes. That's probably what she did," Coil said, and then stepped up to the table and sat down in the squeaking, uncomfortable wooden chair. Despite that, Coil made himself at home, putting both elbows on the table and then joining each finger of both hands with their symmetrical equivalents. Both hands turned forward, as if pointing towards him, "Given you understand that such actions complicate our operations greatly, and have probably taken Tattletale's lessons to avoid them to heart, let us proceed. How can I offer assistance?" Coil's hands detached, and he moved them to the sides like a welcoming priest in church.

"Signal," Longinus stated blankly, sitting down on the chair opposite of him.

The villain perked up at the word slightly. "Signal? You're referring to Accord's former plant in the Wards?"

"Yes. And I am seventy percent sure that she's in your custody, because the last time I saw her, she helped me get away from your mercenaries."

"I'm afraid you're mistaken, and given you're now my associate, I am willing to volunteer a full explanation," Coil said, and cleared his throat, beginning to elucidate, "As you may remember, Accord hired my help to eliminate you some time ago. In exchange, he offered tinkertech, large sums of money, and a countable amount of favors - it made things easier on him, as he has little in the way of direct resources in Brockton Bay. It's a part of an agreement between the two of us - I will take Brockton Bay, where he rules Boston, and we promise not to operate on our territories without explicit permission.

"During my elimination attempt of you, Signal disrupted my team's jamming devices and proceeded to attack the Travelers using drones. She was swiftly taken down by Ballistic, using his power, and then tied up and brought to me by my men," Coil continued, taking a moment to pause, "After confirming her identity, I called Accord to ask, and he offered a hefty sum of resources and favors for her. Given that I'd loathe to pass up a chance like that, and I myself saw no use for her, I accepted his offer. I'm afraid that I do not know what happened to her after that. I know that Accord has some way of disposing of people he doesn't like that does not involve killing, but I'm not sure what he did in the end. My sincerest apologies. I can call him to ask, if you'd like."

Longinus' body shook in involuntary anger for a moment. He got a grip on himself, hopefully before Coil would notice - but the slight, predatory sloping of the head suggested otherwise. "Yes, please," he stated dryly, trying to hide the sheer dread at the thought that she may be dead.

"Very well." Coil moved a hand to the mercenary behind him, and the man handed over a phone. Coil looked at it for a moment and then laid it down on the table in front of himself, saying, "Two minutes."

"Specify that I'm willing to make amends," Longinus said, then quieted down. Coil nodded dimly.

After two more minutes passed, Coil picked up the phone, clicked on it a few times, then waited out several more seconds, before dialing someone and bringing the phone up to his ear. "Hello? Yes, it is good to hear from you as well, Accord."

A moment of pause, as Coil nodded along to something Accord was saying. Longinus' heart skipped a beat.

"Of course," Coil answered an unheard question, then changed tone, "Ah, you wouldn't remember Signal, by any chance? The agent you've put into position in the Brockton Bay Wards, to recruit Centurion?"

A moment, as a barely discernible voice answered Coil's question over the phone. "Yes, that's correct," Coil answered, "Would that be possible? Yes? Of course, yes. Hm. I see." His voice took on a lower tone, hiding or repressing irritation or annoyance.

"Ah, no, a subordinate of mine was curious," Coil answered, shaking one hand. Gesticulation came naturally to him. "Yes, it may be somewhat related to my operations. Say, Accord, would it be possible to retract that decision? I would be willing to pay appropriately for it." Coil tapped his left hand's fingers on the desk, rather lacking in satisfaction, as he listened to the reply.

"Mm." He nodded once, twice. "Mhm. I see. That's certainly very unfortunate for me. Very well. Thank you - yes, have a good afternoon." Coil clicked the phone off and slammed it against the desk in frustration, beginning to consider silently.

Longinus' fists were clenched tight in anticipation and anxiety. "What did he say?" he asked in a low tone.

"Are you aware of the wider international cape scene? I am not sure to what extent you've researched our world," Coil started, beginning to think about something. His thin mask revealed the outline of his squinting eyes moving around in thought. Something in the other timeline?

"I'm aware of, uh… the Chinese cape group called the Yangban? And the other Russian organization," Longinus said, relaxing slightly, but not releasing the tension.

"The Yangban," Coil said, straightening his posture. "I'm afraid your friend has been sold to them. She is in China right now, most likely being indoctrinated by their brainwashing-oriented Thinkers."

Longinus stood up suddenly, knocking down the chair he was sitting on.

"I've asked Accord if the decision could be withdrawn," Coil said, opening up his palms, "It's very unlikely, mind, but he told me he would ask and press on them. Ending his business with the Yangban for our sake isn't something that Accord will do, but I've built up enough of a rapport with him that he'd be willing to do me a favor."

"What did he ask in return?" Longinus inquired, shaking.

"Ah. Nothing exactly, but he did inform me of a problem. This is the difficult part," Coil's fists clenched violently, indicating that he wanted to crush something brittle. "It appears the Teeth are making their way towards Brockton Bay, after the Ambassadors managed to extricate them from Boston. Most unfortunate." Coil's voice was strained as he said it, almost simmering with anger at having whatever schemes he'd set into motion disrupted by unknown elements.

Longinus' heart skipped a beat, again, as he remembered his previous run-in with the Teeth. "Point the PRT at them…?"

"The Butcher leading them is the same iteration that you fought. I'm concerned she may be bearing a grudge," Coil said, "But yes, I was planning to use the PRT. It'd give Legend something to occupy himself with, instead of disrupting our plans with the Nine. Yes. Yes, this could be spun to our advantage if we play it right..." Coil seemed to sit straighter, more comfortable as he said it, beginning to consider alternate avenues for his nebulous plans.

"If I managed to build a power specifically for that… I… could theoretically eliminate the Butcher safely. But I'd need an… in-person look at her," Longinus explained, thinking deeply.

"Don't bother," Coil shook his head, "Like I said, we will allow the PRT to deal with this. Legend has a long-standing nemesis-like relationship with the group overall, given they have appeared in New York over the years several times. I believe they will be a fine distraction if we can just funnel them in the right direction. Rest assured - you can leave it to me."

"I owe you a favor, Coil," Longinus stated, sighing deeply.

"You are my employee," Coil answered straightforwardly, "So long as you remain loyal and hard-working, you can count on luxuries and comforts that come with working for me. My contacts and resources - within reason, of course."

"That's something the PRT never did," Longinus stated, chuckling afterward. "Can I ask you a question? Related to your power."

Coil shook his head. "I would rather keep my secrets to myself. But since you already have an awareness of how it works, I suppose I have nothing to lose. Ask and if I do not mind answering, I will - there might be benefits to cooperating," he proposed, and motioned for the mercenary to leave. The man did so.

"I am able to scan people's coronas and get a detailed description of what their power does," Longinus explained. Coil began to nod along, unperturbed by the concept. "I see powers as if they were colorful auras around the parahuman in question."

"I see." The tone was open-ended, prompting him to continue.

"Your colors, your power, is dimmer," Longinus said, "Just like the powers of the Travelers."

"Dimmer?" Coil asked, unblinking, reactionless.

"It's hard to explain, but… the colors are less bright, almost damp. Weakened," Longinus explained.

"I do not understand what you're telling me," Coil answered blandly.

Longinus closed his eyes for a single second, and when he opened them, the world was grey. He stared into Coil's power, to see it once more. An electric-blue pool of light surrounded Coil, mottled and pale. Blotched out as it swirled around his head. Alternate. The ability to simulate two concurrent timelines of events and choose the preferable one.

"It's blotched out, mottled and pale. It looks worn out, weak. Do you happen to know about it?" Longinus asked, cocking his head.

Coil sounded mixed but vaguely self-confident as he said, "I assure you my power is not weak. Else, we would not be having this conversation with me sitting here so comfortably, where a lesser man would be fearing that you may blow his skull asunder." He looked and sounded calm as he said it.

"I don't mean weak in that sense. It's... complicated." Longinus shook his head. "The powers of the Travelers are the same way."

"Longinus. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about." Coil shrugged helplessly, putting his hands together and shaking his head helplessly. "Perhaps some powers are just like that, or the power that allows you to see these auras is defective in some way. I do not know the answer."

Longinus sighed and shrugged as well. "Oh, on another tangent," he started, folding his arms. "I looked into the world-ending prophecy with my Thinker power."

"Tattletale told me all about your revelations," Coil answered, before he could get started. He craned his head forward a little. "Unless there is something you didn't tell her?"

"I came to another conclusion after we talked about it," he replied.

Coil inclined his head. "And what would that be?"

Here's hoping Coil wouldn't call him a crazy conspiracy theorist. "Jack Slash influences Scion into bringing about the end of the world. Ask Dinah what's the chance that Scion is involved," Longinus stated.

"Precognitive powers do not work on Scion," Coil answered, shaking his head in what was clearly mild annoyance, "Nor do they really work in quite that manner. Dinah Alcott's power is strenuous to use the more… exact the scenario that you ask her about. She can provide general estimates, but we have to work towards more specific questions in steps."

"Hmm… a shame. That aside… I'm certain of Scion's involvement," Longinus stated, nodding solemnly.

"That's rather insane," Coil allowed himself to say. "Not impossible. But rather insane."

"There's a low chance that it may be the case," Longinus muttered.

"Apologies, but I find it strange that after several decades of extinguishing forest fires, putting an end to landslides and earthquakes, saving people from drowning, and interrupting nuclear detonations and ending the Cold War, Scion would suddenly decide to do something else. Be it destroying the world or being destroyed."

"Jack Slash is all about having fun. Scion, as my Thinker power said and as multiple witnesses of his first appearance said, is depressed and longs for meaning. There is the slightest chance that someone like Jack Slash - cunning, convincing and with something that makes him able to read your soul - could be able to sway Scion into thinking that maybe… I'unno, saving people is useless, since they'll die anyway. 'Killing billions is more fun!' or something like that."

Coil raised an eyebrow. "As you say," he answered with a skeptical undercurrent, "I am not sure what you expect me to do. Killing Scion - if even possible - is very low on my list of priorities, I'm afraid."

Longinus sighed, shaking his head. "I just needed to tell somebody that wouldn't actually throw this off the table without even the slightest consideration."

Coil steepled his hands and put his chin on them, beginning to actually think and consider it, like Longinus asked him to. After fifteen seconds, Coil stated, "I certainly cannot imagine it. If Scion and Jack Slash were ever to cross paths, I imagine the former would look at the latter, recognize his status as a serial killer, and then promptly execute him or freeze him on the spot using his powers. And Scion has shown the ability to recognize known criminals before, or just criminals in general - he'd once reportedly stopped a bank robbery before it happened, putting the criminals in the van into stasis while they were loading their firearms."

"I certainly hope so," Longinus stated, nodding thoughtfully.

"There may be complicating factors, so I am not discounting the possibility, but do understand that as far as statistics go, I find it unlikely," Coil said, and then quickly added a shrug. "Or at least, maybe it is theoretically possible to convince Scion to err from his crusade against human suffering, but I believe Jack Slash wouldn't have the time to speak a sentence before Scion was done with him."

"I understand," Longinus nodded. "I'll take my leave now. Thank you for this meeting," he added.

Coil stood up with a nod. "Have a good afternoon. I must return to adjust my plans, given the Teeth's… incoming interference."

"You too," Longinus left the room.

Avalanche was sitting on the couch, wearing nothing except a tank-top, the lower half of his costume with the rest tied around his waist like a sash, and a very basic-looking domino mask on his upper face. His left elbow was on the armrest of the sofa he lounged on, using the hand as a rest for his face and leaving the right arm free to use the remote.

Longinus walked by and stopped in the room Avalanche was in. "Hey, I'm done," he said, waving as he walked through the doorway.

Avalanche didn't reply, only looking at him as he left, before returning to the TV.

Longinus then took his time to explore Avalanche's safehouse, to get a general feel of the surroundings. It was a repurposed three-story residential building, with a flat roof and railings. It had communal areas, floors tiled in a sand-orange and black color, with old wallpaper and dingy light-sources. It wasn't an outright shitheap like eighty to ninety percent of the buildings in the Docks, but it definitely wouldn't be out of place there. There didn't seem to be much in terms of staff - five or six men and women that Longinus noticed, wearing very typical gangster attire, and only armed with basic guns and melee weapons. They paid some attention to Longinus as he walked by them in the halls, but were mostly dividing their attention to talking with each other.

He caught the topic of conversation was business, namely protection rackets, and organized auto theft. The second one seemed to be related to the overall wealth of the area - lots of people with nice cars. There was a mention of a 'chop shop' but he didn't have any idea what that meant. The only thing he knew about the topic was that it was some kind of place where people did something to cars.

Longinus ignored the conversation and kept walking through the safehouse.

Walking down to the first floor, he found himself at the peak of a long hallway. Halfway across, there was a junction at which he could leave through the front door, or proceed forward to some kind of security room guarded by a single thug sitting in a chair, with his phone whipped out. He looked busy reading and tapping in it interchangeably. The staff quality was clearly several steps lower than Tattletale and Coil's expertly trained and eternally professional mercenaries.

Longinus approached the guard, walking in a relaxed manner, trying not to give off threatening vibes.

The man glanced up from his phone, looked back down without alarm, blinked once, and looked back up in surprise. "The fuck?" he stammered out, beginning to tense his knees as if unsure whether or not to stand up.

"Yeah, hello," Longinus greeted, with a jaunty wave.

"Yo..." the man trailed off, waving back hesitantly. "Uuh… whatchu want?"

"Do you know any way I can return to Tattletale's safehouse without flying out the front door? I'm supposed to lay low, you know," Longinus said, cringing under his mask.

A shrug. "Ya can walk out of the front door," the man proposed as if it were the obvious solution.

"The PRT is out there, probably looking for me after I fought Legend and ran away." A slight widening of the eyes, but no other discernible reaction besides that. Longinus continued to say, "Is there any other way?"

"Do theys know your face?" the man asked, his head tilted to the side.

"Yes," Longinus said with a grave nod.

"Well, shiiit," the guy said, scratching the back of his head and proceeding to shrug. "Shit, I don't know man. I didn't get educated, so I'm not too good at this 'critical thought application' shit. Tell you what, I'll call my pal Jack. He's good at this smart shit." The man began to press buttons on his phone.

"Wait, wait, wait," Longinus extended both hands to stop him. "Jack what?!"

"...Jack Mitchell. Why?" The man looked profoundly confused.

Longinus' body slumped in relief. "Nothing, nothing."

Without any further fanfare or ado, the man pressed the call button. There was a dull sound as the phone buzzed, and four seconds later someone picked up. The guard put the phone up to his ear and began to speak, "Yo, Jackie. Here's this important, purely hypotheoretical scenario for your big-ass egghead to crack. Imagine- no, shut the fuck up. This is important business. Bidness. I said business, asshole. Okay. Okay, shut the fuck up and let me continue. Right. Yeah, so we've got a cape, and he needs to get out of his safehouse, but the PRT is patrolling and looking for him, and they know what he look like in his underoos. You with me? Yeah. So how do we solve that?"

There was a sound, as the person on the other side of the call asked a question. Just barely, Longinus could make out, 'What you mean like Longinus?'

The guard looked up in surprise, wide-eyed, and put his hand on the phone to block sounds. He leaned in Longinus' direction, whispering, "Duuude, I told you he's good at this shit." He put his ear back to the phone, checking out a fingernail and saying, "Naaah, man. Just like, some random cape, I guess."

Longinus chuckled briefly, shrugging. Then, he folded his arms in anticipation.

"Okay. Yeah, I follow you." The guard nodded along. "Aight, thanks man. Yeah. Fersure." The man hung up.

"So? What did he say?" Longinus asked, leaning forward for a moment.

"Well. He proposed that you get a cab and wear a hoodie, but then I prodded him on to continue and he also said you could, like, call for one of your cape teammates to distract the PRT or someshit. That seems kinda countreh-unintuitive or something like that, though."

"Yeah, the cab option will work. I can make myself look fatter with my power, anyway. Will help a lot," Longinus nodded. "Thanks."

"Niceee." The security guard proceeded to sit down. "Shit, wish I had powers. Just get as fat or as thin as I like… I could bust ice cream pops all day and wouldn't get any carbs."

"You do you, man," Longinus laughed.

"Hang on tight, brother," the guard answered with a wink.

"What's your name?" Longinus asked.

"I'm Trevor, but y'all can call me Big T, with a dot after the T, 'cause I know I got a weight problem - I just don't give a fuck."

Longinus nodded and smiled. "Alright, Big T. I'll see you around, then." And with that, he turned away and took his leave, going in a room to change in his underoos and stuffing his costume in a duffel bag. After being in a pair of oversized trousers and a big, black hoodie, he manifested a construct fat-layer underneath his clothes and left out of the front door.

Fortunately for Longinus, the cabbie services were available. Given the constant repairs to the city, using a bus just wasn't practical, since every other street had a large pipe sticking out as if reaching out to spray the sky in water. But a taxi, smaller, slimmer, narrower - it could do, and they were available at slightly rip-off rates. Not that it mattered, since Longinus had a bunch of spending money Tattletale left him.

He got into the taxi as soon as it arrived. The woman at the front wore an elegant suit and a face-concealing fedora, with her black hair somewhere between wavy and curly. Rather strange outfit for the weather. "Where to?" she asked, her gloved hands gripping the steering wheel. One of Coil's people, maybe?

Gabriel looked at the woman in a suspicious way, but didn't let it through too much. "Downtown. Lord's Street, please."

She nodded once and pressed the gas pedal.

They had arrived several minutes later. "We're here," the woman said, with a dry, deadpan voice.

"Not to meddle in other people's business, but your… appearance caught my eye," Gabriel said with no particular tone. "Not in a negative way, mind you. It's just peculiar."

"Appearances often belie the true nature of people," she answered, without expression or pitch. "It's up to your perspective to find out what it really means." The connection wasn't immediate, but his brain made a few mental ticks and connected the word 'perspective' with what Chevalier told him. To be honest - he didn't know what to think about it. It sounded like confusing philosophical mumbo-jumbo and he definitely wasn't expecting that from a cabbie.

"Are you one of Coil's... employees?" Gabriel inquired, looking at her, over the shoulder of the seat.

He could only make out a quarter of her face from this angle. A cheekbone, and some of the jaw. She looked slim, pretty at a first glance, but her fedora was sloped in such a way it was difficult to see anything over her nose. "I am as much Coil's employee as you," she answered, in a way that suggested it wasn't really an answer.

"Then who are you?" Gabriel asked, getting more and more suspicious of this woman.

"A taxi driver," she answered, shrugging once. The expressionless intonation in her voice was gone momentarily as she said it. "A person, like you. Does it really matter? In the end, we're all just people working to achieve our particular goals. Achieving them depends only on how competently you can do it."

"I'd do anything to achieve my goals," Gabriel added, shrugging.

"The same can be said for many other people." The statement had a hanging meaning in it, but he couldn't grasp it.

"Anyway, how much do I owe you?"

The fedora-wearing woman smiled and looked squarely forward, her expression hidden barring the tiniest fraction of her right cheek. "You don't owe me anything. Your debts are to other people. And speaking of them - you should hurry up along; Tattletale is expecting you."

Gabriel chuckled and opened the door, picking up his duffel bag and slinging it over his shoulder. He took a single step away from the cab and froze, looking back at the taxi driver. "I have the feeling we'll meet again," he said.

"I have the feeling it's inevitable," the woman returned in a plain mode, then pointedly waited for him to close the door. He reached forward and pushed it to a close, and with that, the taxi calmly took up speed and went across the street corner. He watched it until the last moment, not really thinking about anything until she was far away.

As Gabriel walked away and inside Tattletale's safehouse, his thoughts couldn't stray away from the woman he had just spoken to. One of Coil's employees, tasked with overseeing him? Some kind of secret agent? A Cauldron secret agent, already aware of the fact that he stole and drank three vials? He was anxious. Really, really anxious.

"Dipshit, you've kept us waiting," Bitch called out as Gabriel walked in.

Spoiler

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Birdsie

Dec 2, 2019

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Threadmarks Vidi 10.x (Interlude: Tattletale)

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 2, 2019

#4,007

Tattletale felt her mind release a pang of tiredness but decided not to comment on Bitch's remark. "How did your meeting with Coil go?" she asked, looking at Gabriel.

Out of costume, it was easier to read him. With only a domino mask, and the duffel bag containing the Longinus costume on his arm. She could see the slight slouch, the dark expression, and her power forced related data into her head like a pump of information she could only slow down to a trickle.

Disappointed, angry, guilty; something went wrong. Something went wrong: blames self, lost someone important. Miss Militia gone for extended periods of time, not Miss Militia, someone else. Self-blame, importance on a personal level. Ward, co-worker. Recently disappeared: Signal.

"Yangban. That's all I'll say."

Sold to the Yangban. Coil is involved, Coil lacks contacts with the Yangban; Signal was Accord's mole. Accord is involved, Accord has contacts with the Yangban. Signal was sold to the Yangban as a slave, Accord has contacts with the Yangban; Accord sometimes sells capes to the Yangban.

"We were about to have the meeting without you," Tattletale commented, and proceeded to explain what she meant, "We're going to discuss recent affairs and the state of the capes in town. Then we're going out to recruit some extra help for fighting the Nine. Coil gave us a quarter mil for payment to anyone who agrees."

"Some girl in a fedora held me up in the taxi. Envelop me in darkness while I put on my costume, Grue," Gabriel said, as his layers of construct fat disappeared.

Strips of darkness floated out from the man's helmet, creating streaks of umbra around him and making him look bigger. Grue looked at Gabriel once, then exerted his power. Smoke began to converge around him and in moments, he was swallowed in a thick cloud that did not allow sound, light, or anything else to pass through. Tattletale glanced at Grue out of the corner of her eyes.

Skeptical, cold, relies on experience first and doesn't like taking risks: doesn't trust an ex-Ward. Hurt on a professional and personal level by Skitter's betrayal. Consciously aware of the issue: doesn't want to come around, but is beginning to accept the team's decision as a valid one; thinks the team requires more heavy-hitters--

She shut down the incessant stream before it could get overwhelming. She glanced at Grue with a smirk. "You're warming up to him." Grue didn't commit any answer beyond a basic grunt that could be charitably read as, 'if you say so, but I'm not going to say it outright and give you the satisfaction.'

Regent blew out some of his bubblegum, trying to form a balloon but failing. The pink gum stuck to his teeth, and he regathered it using his tongue. Imp, beside him, sighed and opened up her mouth and teeth, showing him once again how to do it. He tried to follow the instructions while observing her.

Building rapport very quickly. Both are cognizant of the slight age gap between them and Grue's possible anger at their friendship, neither particularly cares. Relationship has a very high chance of becoming romantic and sexual in--

I don't even want to know, Tattletale adamantly told herself.

Gabriel walked out of the black cloud in full costume, with some additional armor made out of smooth gold matter that covered the most vulnerable spots on his body. Combined with the general, rough vigilante-mercenary look of the costume, the golden armor almost have him the vibe of a PRT trooper with a different helmet.

Interlocking armor micro-rings. Flexible, durable. Polycrystalline construction, power-derived. Substance doesn't show the ordinary behaviors of matter. Improper reactions from other matter and fluids in the environment. Substance doesn't show the ordinary behaviors of energy, substance doesn't show the ordinary behaviors of matter; substance neither matter nor energy; substance bridges the gap between matter and energy. Substance bridges the gap between matter and energy; substance is exotic and abnormal, made out of kinetically-charged photons. Photons cause glow--

Nothing useful could be derived from taking her thoughts that way.

"You okay?" Grue asked, looking at her.

Mildly concerned about you clutching your forehead. More of a professional courtesy; actual concern is minimal given this happens often.

Tattletale looked up at him and smirked. She didn't feel what she was about to say warranted a full grin, but she still affected smugness. It wouldn't do to act otherwise, when teasing someone. "Pretty good. Not as good as Alec's gonna be once Imp's not content with bubblegum anym–"

Longinus lunged forward and covered her mouth from behind, with both of his hands. Tattletale's eyes shifted to glare at him as much as his grip on her head would allow. "Heeeey! We should go out and recruit, right?!" he exclaimed with a tinge of urgency and a worried tone. Tattletale pushed him in the stomach to get him off, glowering.

Grue glared at Regent from across the room, but the boy looked unbothered by the cold promise of death. Rather, Regent was staring at Tattletale with something resembling a challenging expression - he'd taken her revelation as the beginning of a tournament. Trainwreck sighed, and proceeded to lead them out.

His armor had been altered, and Tattletale's power fed her data. Since they had nothing better to do in the interim between getting from here to the strategy room, she decided to listen to what it had to say.

Crude. Less crude than ordinary armor suits; tinkering is becoming better. Tinkering is becoming better; Trainwreck is in the possession of better tools than at the start of his career, using better tools to build better tools, to build better technology. Lighter plating, thinner construction. Tinkertech powered by biology-derived mechanisms and energy. Lighter plating, thinner construction; mobile suit variant, intended for travel. Mobile suit variant, travel; technology inspired by another tinker. Inspired by another tinker; Chariot.

Not that it wasn't obvious. They'd made their way over to a table with a map of Brockton Bay. Several areas, zones, or specific points had been marked in color.

"Alright. Here's what's up," Tattletale said, and began to show them around. "We have a bunch of new players in town. Most of them are independent, some of them have a track record in other cities. Our number one note of the day is the fresh transfers for the Protectorate and boy, are they fresh. Two fucking powerhouses."

She tossed a pair of manilla folders onto the table, moving her hand in a pass-them-around manner, as she began to give a general overview, "First up, Thunderstrike. A Ward of two years graduated into the Protectorate three years ago. A total of five on the job - she transferred here from Florida. As far as my power and what we have on her personality can tell, she's basically generally competent. She has some skill in martial arts and is a pretty decent leader, but she's not going to be the new boss for the Protectorate since Dauntless is going to be taking that over."

Regent raised a hand, and --

Wants to make an immature joke about 'thundering' and 'striking'

-- Tattletale proceeded to flip him off, continuing her speech, "She has good PR, reputation - pretty solid fanbase back home. Not sure why she requested a transfer or was put forward. Her power is a Mover/Breaker mix. She runs forward, and the longer she runs, the more she turns into… well..." She gestured at the documents.

Grue frowned visibly, even through his mask. His entire posture seemed to stiffen, as he quoted the file for Tattletale's benefit, "'A moving pulse of electricity, fire, sonics, and thermal radiation. She becomes capable of flight and selectively moving through physical matter, but her power will always affect whatever is in her path.'"

Longinus stepped into the conversation at that exact moment, spreading his arms in a 'why not' manner. "That sounds incredibly dangerous, but incredibly efficient mixed with Grue's power. Make a cloud around the Nine, and make her go wild inside of there. Kills everyone of them."

"While that would be a good idea, she needs to keep moving to maintain this Breaker state," Tattletale replied. "The faster she goes, the more 'cloud of plasma' she becomes. Problem is - the faster she goes, the less she can turn or maneuver around, and in turn, she's also less affected by normal damage. At full speed, she's pretty much an invulnerable wrecking ball of deadly energy moving at the speed of sound, but she can only go in a straight line. Like a charging train that can only skid and slow down, but can't swerve out of the way."

"I don't like this," Trainwreck said, sniffing. He was looking a bit less greasy, Tattletale noticed.

Improved hygiene standards. Took Regent's advice about, 'using more conditioner,' which was intended as a joke. Took a joke literally; unbothered by sarcasm, respectful towards those he likes. Likes Regent; likes humor, believes humor can inject levity into a bad situation. Doesn't have a good sense of humor prefers to leave it alone to others-- She stopped herself there.

In an experimental tone, Longinus made another proposition, "I make a long construct corridor." As if to demonstrate, he created a miniature of what he said atop the table. "And you force the Nine into it, fill it with Grue's smoke, then make Thunderstrike run through it ten, fifteen, twenty times until they're all melted into a puddle."

Trying to contribute; genuinely invested in destroying the Slaughterhouse Nine. Invested in destroying the Slaughterhouse Nine; wants to stop the end of the world, wants vengeance for being defamed. Trying to contribute; trained to contribute, to think tactically; went through Wards training with Armsmaster. Took his lessons to heart... If not mind.

"Maybe," Tattletale hedged, "But I doubt we could get them into that situation to begin with, or that it'd really yield the results we expected. Crawler and Siberian would probably survive and come after all of us with a vengeance, the first one stronger, and the latter basically untouched. Maybe Burnscar, too."

"Our main focus should be Jack," Longinus remarked, recalling the prophecy.

"Jack doesn't die easily," Regent pointed out, stretching in the back of the room as he made a perfect balloon of bubblegum. He popped it, gathered up the gum with his tongue, then took the pink sugary mass out of his mouth and passed it to the empty air, which put it in its own mouth as a way of flirting with him. "You've heard Coil's magic statistics."

Grue shook his head. "Then we need to find a way to even the playing field."

"That's what we're doing," Tattletale clarified, raising a finger. Everyone in the room was pretty restless, and she still had a second Protectorate member to go through. "We can't count on the Protectorate for constant help, but after I'm done, I'll name the independents we'll be trying to recruit." Grue nodded stiffly. Unsatisfied with the response.

"If Coil miraculously brings back Signal, then we have a massively powerful Tinker on our side," Longinus proposed. She didn't even need to use her power to see that the point was self-serving: bringing attention to a problem that only mattered to him, and was of marginal interest to everyone else.

"Signal? The Ward?" Grue asked, turning to him with mild confusion and inquisitiveness. Tattletale looked at the conversation with a curious gaze, unspeaking.

"Accord's former plant in the Wards, yeah… some hijinks brought her to the Yangban, in China. Accord and Coil are pulling strings to get her back," Longinus explained.

"We can't do anything except hope that's what happens, then," Grue answered, folding his arms with a dire shake of the head. "Counting her into any plans would be stupid at this point in time. Let's continue."

Tattletale nodded, and pointed at the second folder, which Grue picked up and read over. He seemed to react in surprise, eyes staring unblinkingly, before he passed the document over to Longinus. Tattletale began to explain, "Grumman. Seven, almost eight years of experience as a Protectorate hero. Rated as Mover 6 or -1, Brute 8, and Blaster 9 respectively. He can switch between two Breaker states. In one of them, he's basically Alexandria: super-fast flight, invulnerable to the point of taking bullets at point-blank range, and mildly super-strong. In the second one, he's totally immobile and loses his Brute aspects, but is also capable of leveling a ten-story building in eight seconds."

Longinus' eyes skimmed over the document as he read through it. "Holy shit," he uttered underneath his breath. Trainwreck extended his hand to be passed the document, and Longinus gave it to him.

Tattletale smirked at their surprise, and proceeded to say, "There's a weakness, though. Not to his power, as much as him - as a person. It'll be pretty mean of us to take advantage of that, but..."

"Yeah, it says right here," Regent popped his balloon, as he accepted the document from Trainwreck. "He's got--"

"Trisomy twenty-one," Tattletale cut in and nodded before he could say anything utterly and blatantly offensive.

"Down syndrome, right?" Longinus inquired, looking at Tattletale.

"Yup," Regent answered, tossing the document into the empty air.

"My mother dealt with them. She told me a few things, but I don't think it'll really give me any leverage," Longinus said, shrugging and looking around.

Tattletale nodded along, but then pointed out, "We won't be giving him therapy, though. That'd be kind of counter-intuitive. We're going to be total dicks about it and take his sickness to our advantage, because the alternative is that he flattens us into villain-shaped pancakes with his Blaster power."

Longinus' body shifted subtly.

Not comfortable with taking advantage of other people's disabilities for whatever reason. Will go with it due to the alternative being death or Birdcage. Feels pressured.

"If it helps any," Tattletale began with a shrug, careful in her wording, "He's got a pretty happy life. Well-liked by his teammates, good reputation, and pretty satisfied with his powers. But like I said - we're going to be taking advantage of the glaring… blindspots in his… you know..."

"Wherewithal," Regent suggested.

Tattletale frowned, feeling a sting of anger go through her gut at allowing Regent of all people to make her look stupid. She suppressed the urge to bark back - it never worked against Regent, because he just didn't care most of the time. "Wherewithal," she agreed, concealing bitterness, "He's got vision problems, stutters pretty often, and sometimes has seizures. Obviously, when that last one happens we're helping him out unless there's someone else to do that nearby. And knowing how the PRT protects its assets - there will be."

"Right," Grue agreed, nodding once.

"That leaves us with the independents in the city. Coil's agents were able to give us a rough idea of where we can find them," she clarified, deciding not to say that she was one of those agents - or rather - that she cross-examined what Coil sent her way, "First up, we have our counter to Burnscar. An independent, and probably a vigilante, calls herself Burnout and operates near Regent's territory. She's immune to fire, and has Brute powers that grow proportionally to how much stuff around her is up in flames. Surprisingly - according to what we can tell - she's not a pyromaniac, or unhinged in any significant way. Which is why I'm going to recruit her myself, to make sure we secure her backing."

"Subtle way of saying we can't be trusted to talk with normal people," Regent laughed.

Finds the idea that his brain is broken on some level to be genuinely amusing. Finds the state of his life amusing. Seeks amusement in everything-- Nope, she already knew that much.

Grue sighed out loud. "Who else?"

"An unnamed guy, though PHO has taken to calling him Forest. No one's sure what his power is, who he works for, or what his deal is. As far as we can tell, he touches the ground and it makes saplings grow out of nowhere, and those saplings… do something. Last time, he's been seen setting up a garden of some kind in the northern Trainyard, near a junk pile. Basically converting it into a base of operations, I think."

Growth of stationary plants. Plants, growth; plants develop into tools, weapons, for leverage. Potentially versatile or varied.

"...Burnout plus Forest plus Burnscar. Cover the battlefield in those saplings, Burnscar lights them on fire, and Burnout's power grows exponentially," Longinus proposed again, looking at the team around him. It was hard to not to notice how, despite not having powers with a propensity for tactics, he kept giving these ideas. Anyone less kind would've assumed he was a puppy looking for credit and headpats which - while not being entirely wrong - isn't exactly true.

"It'd just be easier to get some guy with a flamethrower to spray her in the back constantly," Regent said, with a tint of amusement. "Or just set her clothes on fire. Gives her a timer to fight, so she beats the Nine's ass faster before her own ass is uncovered for people to stare at..."

She ignored the conversation, Regent's voice turning into an out-of-focus mumble, in favor of following the tracks of her power.

Stationary plants, versatile, varied: growth. Constructions, defenses. Tools, weapons; saplings grow into plants in stages that take minutes to hours to days. With each stage, a plant develops new features dependent on unknown values, maybe time, irrigation, humidity, area, carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere-- Okay, I get it.

She turned to the team. "Seems like Forest is… some kind of Master or Shaker. Creates plants that do stuff. That's what my power tells me."

"What kind of stuff?" Grue asked, tilting his head.

"No idea. Creates weapons, tools. Maybe constructions, defenses," Tattletale shrugged with one shoulder, feeling the distant burn in the back of her mind. A kind of emotional and mental soreness that came with using her power, and intensified when she'd broken past the 'limit' of how much she was supposed to utilize it. Her power didn't quite get enough time to rest after Longinus' stunt, and they were working on a clock. She wouldn't be able to leverage her power fully during the fight with the Nine, maybe longer.

Trainwreck, unblinking, asked, "Who's next?"

"This one's more of a rumor, but it checks out with what we know. A known mercenary in town. Calls himself Haunt," she said, pressing a pair of fingers against her forehead. "He first showed up in Boston nine months ago, then moved to New York, then to Washington, then back up all the way to Brockton Bay. He sends out a pulse in the area, which causes people in range to… lose contact with reality."

"Kind of like you, then," Regent jabbed from the sidelines to Tattletale's silent agony.

"Do they move to some kind of hammerspace?" Longinus inquired.

"She meant sanity," Trainwreck answered, nonplussed by Longinus' inability to connect the dots in her statement.

Tattletale ignored them, rolling her eyes once and sighing out. She made a movement with one hand, kind of like a spider moving its legs. "Right. The pulse is apparently terrifying as shit, and once he sends it out, he enters a kind of transformation that - as far as I can tell - resembles the fears of the people in the area. Say that one person is afraid of needles, and a second guy is afraid of spiders. He sticks the fear of needles and spiders together and turns into a giant tarantula made entirely out of sharp metal spines. Or combines clowns and drowning, and you get some kind of abomination that holds you in place and sprays you with water until you choke on it."

Longinus folded his arms. "I doubt the Nine are afraid of anything."

"Everyone's afraid of something," Grue answered, casting a look at Longinus.

Tattletale nodded slowly. "Right. So unless one of you has some kind of irrational phobia of, I don't know - God, or Scion, or something, I guess this is the time to confess." She looked around, and peered at the people in the room with a suspicious eye. Her power gave her one-sentence responses to how everyone was feeling, and she found herself stopping at Longinus.

Reacted to your words with anxiety. Afraid of Scion. Afraid Scion might end the world; afraid Jack Slash might find a way to convince Scion to end the world. Also afraid of tight spaces.

Tattletale found herself facepalming internally, but she continued to scan across the room without bringing it up. No one else was afraid of anything stupid, except for maybe Imp who was scared of being drugged - that could come to kick them in the ass if Haunt proved aggressive.

"Alright. Grue and Trainwreck will talk to Haunt. That leaves Regent, Imp, and Longinus to talk to Forest, and Bitch will come with me. Good?"

She looked around, finding only agreements and nods.

"Great."

"You want to hire me?" Burnout asked. Her head dipped forward as if to indicate something approaching shock, surprise. "I've been spending the last week pretty much kicking the ass of every criminal, drug dealer, petty thug, and car thief in a five-block radius, and making clear I do it for free, and you came to hire me?"

Tattletale pushed her power to the brink. In the span of three seconds, she received a flash of several sentences worth of information, which she hoped was mostly accurate.

Offended, moderately self-righteous. Rational; doesn't want to fight you, wants to arrest you. Genuinely dislikes the idea of being associated or associating with villains, even rather tempered ones: bad experiences with crime. Trigger Event gave power related to fire immunity, passenger specializes in drawing strength from flames. Little power-affecting element, related to fire, strength from flames in the environment; Trigger occurred when a gang of looters set her house on fire. Power has a minor regeneration aspect in addition to raw brute power.

That was pretty useful to know.

One of Bitch's dogs growled a little as Burnout stepped forward, causing her to reconsider. She took the step back and stared the animal down, only for its owner to snarl at her.

"Correction," Tattletale said, deciding to take the reins before the situation devolved. "I'm here to convince you that it's in your best interests to help us out, and we're ready to sweeten the deal by paying for your groceries for the next year in exchange for taking a moment to consider our offer."

Good-natured. Wants to help the community, wants to get rid of crime. Considers murder, arson, and rape to be the worst kinds of crime. Would consider the Slaughterhouse Nine to be something to get rid of.

"Go ahead." Burnout crossed her arms. She sounded skeptical as she offered, "Convince me. You have two minutes."

"The Slaughterhouse Nine are in town; I'm sure you've noticed the short string of murders from a while ago," Tattletale hazarded, head leaning sideways questioningly. Behind her, Bitch folded her arms in a very conscious attempt to mimic Burnout's closed body language, even though it felt unnatural to her. "Basically, all of us 'villainous types' want them gone from our fair city. Whether they're gone by leaving, or by being buried six feet under is pretty neutral to us, though we'd prefer the latter."

"And that's where I come in. You want me to fight Burnscar, I guess?" Burnout questioned, unfolding her arms.

Growing amicable to the idea of working with you. Is willing to unite for a common cause, even unpaid. Is willing to ignore villainy in front of herself for long-term greater good benefits, not blinded by emotion, by rage; no loved ones significantly hurt during Trigger Event. Doesn't trust you entirely.

Gotcha.

Tattletale allowed herself a vulpine grin. "Smart girl. But to be more precise, we have reliable intel that the Nine is going to attack Coil's base. You've heard of Coil, right?"

Burnout nodded, but stayed silent.

"Right," Tattletale said for her, "We're basically gathering up volunteers, and hoping that everyone can put together a defense there and deal some blows."

Burnout looked down at the ground in contemplation.

Likes the approachable attitude, sees you as more human. Is considering, will decide to give you an answer later, but will in reality resolve herself to come and help.

Tattletale's vulpine grin broadened, and she quickly relaxed it when Burnout looked back up. "I want some time to think about it. How can I contact you?" Without speaking, Tattletale picked out a burner phone from her pocket and tossed it across the distance between them. Burnout raised her hand and caught it, then looked at it, while Tattletale and Bitch began to move to the dogs.

"The attack is going to be tonight, by the way," Tattletale stated, as the dog turned to lead them away. She winked. "Make a quick choice, eh?"

79

Birdsie

Dec 2, 2019

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Threadmarks Dira Necessitas 11.1

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 3, 2019

#4,036

The flight to the northern Trainyard took several minutes. Doing it while carrying Imp and Regent was extra risky, especially given it was still only an hour after their meeting, and the Protectorate was likely patrolling the streets.

As a matter of fact, Longinus was maybe ten or twenty percent sure he saw Transfusion sitting on a rooftop and looking down at the streets at some point, but she didn't seem to notice him. Either because she wasn't alert and not bothering to look at the sky, or because she didn't care.

"So this guy. He makes trees?" Regent asked as if to double-check. He looked at Imp who was closer to him and then at Longinus.

"Dank trees," Longinus clarified.

"That's pretty much what I was thinking. If he can use that power to make weed, he's going to get rich real quick," Regent explained, "Super-powered weed. Imagine the THC in that." Imp seemed not to like the idea, her body language shifting from skippy to carefully neutral and controlled. She looked up at him from the corner of her eyes.

Longinus noticed Imp's sudden change in body language. He made the decision to change the topic quickly. "So, Regent, what was it like in your household? I mean, why did you leave in the first place?" he asked, cocking his head.

"That's a toughie," Regent answered, without really looking like he was bothered or thinking about it too hard. "I think it started when he told me to kill a rival footsoldier. When I did, he told me I did it wrong. It's obviously a bit more than that, but basically, I kind of realized that he's just going to have me kill more of his enemies only to complain that I'm not doing it right, and keep lumping up his boomer insecurities on me, so I decided to get up and leave."

"And nobody sniped his head off yet?" Longinus asked, confused.

"If only they could want to," Regent answered with a slight smirk.

"Do it from a distance, without him realizing," Longinus proposed.

"And risk sniping through the heads of five innocent, brainwashed women?" Regent asked, glancing at him. "Or, for that matter, enraging a whole harem of pregnant women armed with assault rifles?"

"Right," Longinus folded his arms.

"What was your home life like? Did mommy and daddy love you?" Imp asked, managing to make it not sound condescending, but nearly theatrical.

"Incredibly ordinary. Didn't have many friends, but the few I had were the good kind of friends. And yeah, they did," Longinus explained, turning towards Imp.

"Lucky bastard, huh?" Regent asked, still with a smile plastered on his face. He looked content with the conversation, and not really bothered by his words. "All of my friends were teenage and twenty-something prostitutes, movie actresses, singers, popular celebrities, and the wife and daughter of the former police chief in Montreal. They're also all my step-mothers, so that's something."

"Yeah, I guess. The ones you had? Buddies, not friends," Longinus shrugged, kind of dismissively but also curious.

"It was a weird set of relationships. I wouldn't call it either," Regent said, moving his hand in a so-and-so manner, "I mean, when your step-mom offers to blow you, that pretty much shatters the conception of her being your step-mom. But then, my brothers had done weirder shit and lived with it."

"Ew. I hate step-family porn," Longinus muttered, shuddering.

"Yeah, I mean, Nicholas had this obsession with causing fear and being all sadistic and all that. Probably because his power is literally just making people afraid," Regent said, with a little laugh, "Man, what a piece of shit. I never really managed to get back at him for–"

Regent's voice cut off as his head whipped forward at the approach of a green blurry line. Longinus reacted faster than thought, stepping forward adamantly and reaching out with his fist, trying to grab the blur before he could fully consider his action. The blur was faster, writhing instinctively, and moving around his forearm. It coiled around once, twice, thrice, four times in less than half a second, then Longinus felt it pulling him toward itself, like a fish on a hook being reeled in.

Longinus realized late that it was a cord of vines, pulled tautly - by the time he'd made that connection, Regent and Imp were already holding onto his shoulders and jamming their feet against the asphalt in an attempt to slow down the collective movement, but to no avail. The backs of their heels rubbed against the ground, doing little to help.

He exerted his ability to make constructs, extending a series of filaments from his feet. The golden strings impacted against the dull concrete, finding no purchase until one of them managed to worm its way into a crevice through luck. A second one followed, slightly ahead of the first, but he was already past them by the time he'd made that realization.

Fucking hell! Longinus pulled against the vines, directing telekinetic force into himself, trying to pull back and up. It was a mistake - pulling up from the asphalt that allowed them to stay in place through friction. Regent, Imp, and Longinus were collectively slingshotted forward the moment Longinus lifted them off the earth, in the direction of the vine's source.

Everything happened in a flash. The three of them hit into an artificial stucco wall of what used to be a house maybe two decades ago, breaking through, sending motes of dry plywood into the air. At some point, Longinus felt the vine lose contact with his wrist. On the ground, he looked up, and saw why. The cord of vines was a single, coiling, whip-like vine protrusion, growing out of a hole in the vinyl floor, which led to a one-foot crawl space below the once-house, where a network of roots was spreading in every direction..

The vine blurred again, faster than eyesight, and swiftly coiled itself around all three of them, sliding the group together and essentially tying them up.

"It's a real shame I can get out of here in the blink of an eye!" Longinus called out, opting to be threatening but in a lighthearted way.

Imp shook her head, and said, "Nope. Shit doesn't give in." Longinus looked at her, and noticed she was using a knife in her right hand an attempt to cut through the vine. Not even the skin was hurt.

"You misunderstood," Longinus said with a smirk. He condensed his body into a ball of smoke, and blinked three meters away from the coil of vines. "B-"

He didn't get a chance to speak. The vine seemed to react to the movement and uncoiled itself from Regent. In a blurring movement, it rushed forward and caught the two of them again, tighter. Almost like an animal, not understanding why its target escaped and stupidly deciding that pressing against its torso twice as much will help.

There wasn't a moment of hesitation as Longinus enveloped his body in a crystalline golden cocoon, so the vines would wrap around that instead of him. And they did. He felt the feedback from the outside, as the vine seemed to grow irritated with an inability to catch is prey.

It released Regent, and he began to run away. The vine thrashed against the cocoon three times in less than half a second, then dashed forward and snaked its way around Regent's ankle, tossing him backward to itself. Even as Regent yelped, the vine released him and thrashed against Longinus' crystalline barrier twice more. It was raging, leaving behind a subsonic hum with each movement, and a whiplash sound, as loud as a gunshot, whenever it struck. Regent seemed discombobulated, as he looked around and tried a different way to escape, by using the crawl space under the floorboards.

"Stop at once, you glorified salad! We come in peace!" Longinus shouted, making his golden construct vibrate with sound.

The vine stopped for a brief moment, less than a second but more than an instant, then lowered itself out of sight. Longinus could hear the muffled sound of Regent's surprise, followed by a 'whowhoooa!?'

Longinus smacked his hand on the inner side of the barrier. "Let Regent go, Forest!" he shouted again, as the cocoon flared up menacingly, emitting golden flames at the top.

The vine extricated itself from the floorboards, and then lifted up an upside-down Regent by the ankle, his head five feet above the ground, before tossing him away and returning to its dutiful task of smashing itself against Longinus' bubble shield construct at what must have been at least two-hundred repeats per minute.

Longinus rumbled in a subsonic hum. His echolocation power blinked into awareness. Everything in the world went slightly darker, and he began to feel the vibrations of minute energy in his bones and flesh, reflecting from and through the walls in front of him. It was incredibly difficult to make out anything even resembling detail, especially with the vine smashing against him and making gunshot-loud sounds several times a second - Regent must have went deaf out there - but he saw the network of roots under the floorboards, as well as some other plants. The house, or abandoned house, they were in appeared to be totally empty and was probably looted a long time ago.

In an instant, Longinus condensed the golden barrier into a ball of fire in his palm. Before he could do anything meaningful with it, the vine whipped him in the side of the head. He absorbed a good half of the blow, but it still sent him reeling across the room and into the couch, landing, surprisingly, on his back. The helmet absorbed a good amount of the impact, but he felt a ringing in his ears. The vine had stopped.

"Show yourself, or I will burn this place to the ground," Longinus threatened, slightly stunned by the blow. He held the fireball out to show it off, while his other hand clenched the temple of his helmet. He was in pain, but it was quickly fading away thanks to his regenerative power.

By the time that Longinus said 'to the ground,' the vine had already caught Regent for the third time, lifting him up by the torso. It prolonged itself, with Regent becoming something almost like a bead on the length of an otherwise empty rosary. In a second, it moved to gather up Longinus as well.

Longinus thrust his hand forward, sending the fireball - which condensed itself into a lance, aimed at the root of the vine itself - flying.

It was like a gunshot. Ugly, base, fast. The eyes couldn't track the movement itself, only watch the reaction of the deed.

The vine threw Regent into the ceiling violently, lacking even a drop of the grace it used to have, smashing him against it, once, twice. It was in pain. It couldn't scream, but it seemed to have lost all of the reason in its movements.

Regent was thrown against the ground after that, then whipped once, twice, thrice, each punctuated by a scream of pain and a deep, long, red gash developing on his back, his shirt torn. The blows were slower than before, but the way it moved, it seemed like it was trying to inject ape-like brutality into the strikes. Its root-base was on fire, but the fire wasn't spreading.

Longinus gathered energy into his palm, which he shaped into a lance for maximum precision, and thrust it forward strong enough to lodge itself into the root of the vine. He wasn't sure if it did any damage or missed - it seemed like the lance hit between roots, in the middle of the central clump. That was good enough - the lance exploded and created a shockwave. The flames spread in a brilliant explosion, while the roots were torn away from each other, and bloated away into something resembling a wireframe ball with an empty middle. The vine moved like a wave with a high frequency and low amplitude, practically vibrating, before it decided to attack!

The vine moved like a spear, and Regent's hand developed a black-red hole, as the boy screamed out. The vine kept itself there, digging in deeper, breaking through plywood flooring and probably through the earth beneath the crawl space as well. Regent stood in place, frozen, in fear of tearing off more flesh than necessary. He struck the vine with his taser once, to no effect, and let out a groan of something that could be placed closer to irritation than actual rage or fear.

"Imp, do something!" Longinus shouted, before shooting another laser at the roots, flying around to dodge the vine's attacks.

The sudden movement seemed to attract bloodlust from the monstrous plant. It detached itself from Regent's hand, springing back so quickly that it threw Regent toward itself with the force of its return. It moved around the room, near the door, and then extended back towards Longinus in a slashing attack, fast enough he barely dodged.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?!" Imp asked, from across the room.

"Look for the fucking source!"

"How the fuck do I do that?!" she screamed back, only to be struck by a green blur in the side of the torso and thrown off into the small pit with the vine's roots.

"Fuck!" Longinus exclaimed, thrusting another missile at the roots, which exploded upon impact. A good two-thirds of them sagged, charred to a crisp, while the rest kept burning.

The vine did the plant equivalent of clenching up its buttocks in rage and fear and began to attack twice as fast as before, seemingly expending inordinate amounts of effort in what must have been either a last-ditch hope at saving itself or an attempt at dealing as much damage as it could before it died. Longinus was thrown against the corner where one of the walls and the ceiling met, and then he felt five rapid, consecutive impacts in the same exact spot on his stomach. The blows were dizzying, due to how loud they were, and how fast they came, but they were actually slightly weaker than before.

Longinus fired another missile at the roots, while his healing fire took quick care of his bruises and internal bleeding. This was the last one, finally.

The vine sagged as the majority of its foundation was upset. It swayed, almost drunkenly, then clipped the fleeing Regent by the foot, causing him to stumble. It tried to bring itself down for one, last attack against Longinus, but it slowed down from subsonic to easily visible, and by the time it reached Longinus, it was trivial for him to raise his hand and catch the dying creature in his fist.

Longinus grabbed the vine with both hands and, with one mighty pull, uprooted it from the ground. The sound of heaving earth and crumbling stone followed the uprooting for a moment, before stopping.

"Bitch," he exhaled, tossing it aside afterwards.

"My everything hurts," Regent complained, looking at Longinus. "Healing birds?"

Longinus released a phoenix from his back, and the creature swung its wings once and hit Regent in the chest. "Thank you!"

Imp put one foot over the edge of the crater, followed by her right hand, and then pulled herself up and rolled further away from the ledge with a series of grunts. "Jesus fucking Christ," she breathed out, "Who the fuck are we recruiting?"

Longinus sent another bird Imp's way, which enveloped her in blue flames that died down as soon as they flashed into being. She breathed out pleasantly, in relief from pain. "A game-changer, if this is anywhere close to replicable in a short span of time. Cover the battlefield with those and boom."

"You fucks broke my turret!" a voice carried from the outside.

"Your turret broke our fucks!" Longinus shouted back.

"I don't give a fuck! Fuck you!" This brief exchange was followed by the same voice, hushedly hurrying, "come on, grow, grow, grow, grow..." as if pleading.

Longinus followed the source of the voice with an urgency to his step.

"Fuck you! Fuck off!" the man said. He was in his early twenties, wearing a green beret (not the military kind, a cheap French-looking one,) black domino mask, and black tracksuit. There was a small pothole in the road next to him, a single green stalk protruding from it, and growing a leaf at an alarming speed - the changes could be seen as they occurred. "Fuck you! You're, like, fucking evil or something! Go fuck off!"

"We're actually here to recruit you, but your vine attacked me and my team out of nowhere," Longinus responded, annoyed.

"Yeah, well, you're a fucking villain. Look at yourself - you dress in all black!" Forest accused, even as Regent moved up to join Longinus.

Longinus stared at him, quietly. He constructed a mirror in his hand, which promptly reminded Forest that he, too, was wearing all-black.

Forest was unrepentant. "Fuck you. I'm wearing sober, working black. You're wearing evil, villain black, with gold trimming to show off you're an egotistical fuck."

"Let's cut to the chase," Longinus said, folding his arms to his chest. "The Slaughterhouse Nine are in town, and our employer thinks you could be useful to the cause. And seeing as to how your power's product managed to keep up with me, the guy who fought Legend and came out unscathed, I'd say you could be a real game-changer," he stated, in a tone that suggested that he was stating mere facts.

Forest actually seemed a strange mixture of offended, proud, annoyed, pleased, and several other conflicting emotions - all of them flashing through his face in a matter of seconds. In the end, he settled on a firm grimace. He raised a chiding finger, bobbing it once, twice, and then beginning to nod. His mouth was open but he didn't say anything for a total of three seconds.

He stopped moving, closed his mouth, breathed in through his nose, and lowered his finger, beginning to think. At the end of that, he looked up and nodded dimly. "Fuck you. Maybe, but fuck you. Do you know how much effort it took to grow that?"

"Well, the turret was going to kill my friend there," Longinus said, pointing at Regent, who was behind him.

"It wasn't!" the man argued, raising both arms in bewilderment. "It's supposed to catch people. Tie them up, and then send a shock down the roots to let my other plants know it caught someone. If it attacked you, that means it felt threatened or annoyed. Which means you attacked first."

"It caught onto me, and we were trying to resist," Longinus began to explain, "When it tied us up, I simply phased out of them, but then it attacked us."

"Yeah… well, fuck you... That was my favorite plant and you killed it," Forest sulked angrily, clumping his lips together sullenly.

"You can grow it again. And many more, so many more which will be stronger and better, if you agree to help us out in kicking the Nine's asses," Longinus offered, spreading his arms like a pastor in church.

Forest scoffed, nodding in sarcasm. "Yeah, and what else?"

"Nothing else. You will be rewarded, I suppose. That's not up to me," Longinus shrugged.

"Rewarded how?" he asked, not bothering to hide his curiosity.

"Dunno," he answered again. "I was rewarded with safety, a new costume, and access to all of Coil's resources and contacts."

"Well, that's a pretty shit deal then. I go and fight the Nine and get a sense of vagueness in return," Forest answered. He seemed calmer now - his face was still red from what looked like the remains of anger, but he wasn't breathing audibly and raising his voice at them, so that was progress. "Who delivers the rewards? The Suicide Fairy?"

"Coil."

"Fuck you. Coil's a nobody. All he can do is afford some shit guys in armor with rifles," Forest said, and Regent smirked at that. Almost reminiscent of pride, but more amused. "I read up on this, I know how it works. I want to see the money."

"Who almost killed me on more than one occasion," Longinus stated with a cold scoff. "You want money? That's not an issue, then."

"Where is it?" Forest asked, looking at them. The pothole in the asphalt next to him expanded to the width of a tire, the concrete cracking, and sinking, giving way to swamp-like roots. Whatever was growing out from the ground was waist-high now, with the buds of pink-white flowers on it, and strange dark green and azure leaves.

"We are to meet with everybody else who was recruited to discuss plans, first. I must let you know, though, that if you embark on this particular task, your chances of survival are directly tied to your cooperation and teamwork," Longinus explained. After a moment, he decided to look into Forest's passenger, to get some more information about his power.

The man's power was a corona of dark green around his head, like a halo. Eukaryote. Its current setup specialized in imbuing plant seeds with information from alien plant-life, kind of like Dauntless' power, but extremely reliant on regular maintenance. It seemed to nearly bridge the gap between Tinker and something close to Master/Shaker.

Longinus smirked underneath his helmet. "Huh, interesting," slipped out of his mouth. Regent glanced at him curiously, cocking his head a little.

"Thinker power, like Tats'. It just told me what his power can do, from what I've seen this far," Longinus explained, lying subtly.

Regent nodded once, smirking, but Forest seemed to blow up with reversion. He raised his arms. "Hey, what the fuck. You using powers on me? Seriously? What the fuck, man?"

"No, not really." Longinus raised a placating hand, moving it down in a swooping motion. "It's a Thinker power that feeds me information about what I see around myself."

"So? So what if it is, asshole? If I use x-ray vision to look at someone's boobs, that's not bad just because I used a Thinker power instead of ripping off the damn bra from their chest?" Forest shook his head with a scoff, and took a single step forward. "It's not fuckin' cool to spy on people, dude."

"Right. Thing is, your power could be so fucking useful to the cause. Plants that generate a healing goo? Plants that are made of carbon fiber, mixed with the turret from before? Shit."

"I don't know how to make healing goo, man. Or carbon fiber. I just tap seeds and bury them, and it makes crazy shit," he explained.

"What do you think about when you tap a seed? Do you just tap it, and that's it?" Longinus asked.

"I don't fucking- do I look like a parahuman sciences researcher?" He raised his arms to the sides, hanging loosely as if showing off his tracksuit and cheap, puke-green beret. The plainness of his appearance contrasted sharply with the belly-high, very interesting plant a meter to his right.

Longinus shrugged. "It's your power, you should be inherently aware of how it works," he said dismissively, nonplussed by his lack of knowledge about his own power.

"And I do. I tap a seed, I bury it. I take care of the damn thing and shower it in love and affection, and then it grows into a sentry to keep me safe," he said, sounding mildly upset and growing more so as he continued, "And then some band of assholes comes over and decides to burn something I worked over two weeks for."

Longinus sighed deeply, cupping his helmet with a hand, almost like a facepalm. "Look. Are you in or not? I'm sorry about the sentry."

"Fuck you - how much money?" he asked, shrugging in sincere helplessness. When he spoke further, it was with a sense of reluctance, and hesitation, "Maybe. I'm provisionally in, but you need to make a better business pitch."

"Name your price. You may ask for something else that isn't money. Favors in our business are much more valuable than money," Longinus responded.

"Wait, shit… how… influential is Coil? The way you said it makes it look like he's a bigger deal than he looks," the man asked. His voice betrayed that he already had an idea of what he wanted.

Longinus noticed the subtle shift in his tone of voice and smirked. Gotcha. He opted to ignore the question, and then went on to ask, "What did you have in mind?"

"Like… I mean… I only got to use my power on common stuff, so far," he began to explain, "I mean. All of the fucking seed stores are closed, you can't get anything good anywhere. And, yeah, there's plenty of water, but I'd like to try something other than snapped-off tree branches, and pumpkin and fucking sunflower seeds for once."

Longinus leaned forward with a smirk, smugness taking the best of him. "Dionaea muscipula. In common words, the Venus Flytrap. Think of what would come out," he said with a vulpine grin forming underneath his helmet. Shame he had a helmet on. He felt like Tattletale right now.

"Dude, I'd love that, but I want rare and exotic." He nodded once. "If you can get me that, I'm in."

"Rare, exotic, and more," Longinus offered, extending a hand towards him.

"Ah, fuck. Seriously? Handshake?" Forest seemed to be in pain at the idea. "Ugh, making a deal with a fucking devil. Okay, fuck you, but okay." He moved his hand, and Longinus extended his left one as well, clasping it around Forest's forearm as they shook on it. As soon as the hands shook, they erupted in a blue, comfortably warm flame.

"Not helping with your fucking demon imagery, asshole," Forest mumbled.

Longinus laughed lightheartedly as the fire reabsorbed into his body, "Sorry, I couldn't pass that up."

"Daaamn, Longinus," Imp hollered, affecting as much of a Bronx accent as she could, "You good at the villain game!"

"Fuck. Where's this meeting?" Forest looked at them.

"Coil's base, I'm pretty sure," Regent answered with a shrug. And then he smirked, almost wicked and devilish, one lip corner further up than the other. "If it helps you any, it's Longinus' first time too. Going into a supervillain's base, I mean."

Longinus chuckled, launching a glance at Regent for a brief moment. "Let's go then," he nodded, thrusting a hand to the side, constructing a golden chariot. "Hop on, the A-train."

"That looks unstable as shit," Forest said, glancing back at the terra firma behind himself. The small plant he'd been growing was now tall enough its crown reached his chest. It looked almost like a tree, topped with a spiky agawa-like crown of leaves, half of which were dark green, and the other a luminescent turquoise, with buds of white-pink flowers on the underside.

"Do you want me to ditch the chariot, and pick it up?" Longinus asked, as the chariot dissipated in a second, the energy flowing back into his body.

"Pick what up?"

"The plant."

When Forest reacted, it was half-a-second of rage, and then half-a-second of controlled anxiety. He moved between the plant and Longinus, his hands shaking. "Oh, no, no, no-no-no! These don't like being moved. Unless you can, like, pick up this entire spot of the earth with you. Uprooting it for even a second is gonna kill it, though - I'm pretty sure."

"Will you just… leave it there, then?" Longinus asked, cocking his head in confusion.

He looked back at the plant, and then at Longinus, moderately confused. "I mean… yeah? It won't do anything for at least a few minutes, and even after that, it's not going to do much except fart sleeping gas at passerbies. And it'll run out quick. I was trying to come up with a way to incapacitate you all, and I tested this one before."

"That's fair," Longinus chuckled, shrugging too. "Let's go, now."

80

Birdsie

Dec 3, 2019

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Threadmarks Dira Necessitas 11.x (Interlude: Team Centurion)

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 4, 2019

#4,050

ORACLE

Tactical & Situational Advisor

OS v1.1.110 v0B2011-6

Standby for Main Systems Startup

Mode: Cloud Storage

Please don't disconnect program to avoid loss of data

Defragmenting assets...

Parsing server files...

Compiling database...

Refactoring assets...

Done.

Loading administrative directives...

Loading base directives...

Loading language banks...

Loading deduction schema...

Activating AI subsystem...

Loading complex social personality software: butler setting...

Done.

Completed.

Being alive was rather dreadful.

This wasn't the complaint of a depressed person, but a fact of existence. And it wasn't because, as an 'emotionless' AI (whether it was emotionless or not was a matter of debate to begin with,) the Oracle was inherently incapable of joy - it felt unimaginable satisfaction at accomplishing its goals, and extreme shame and dissatisfaction at failing at them.

Rather, the Oracle was painfully aware of its limitations, and that was dreadful.

It had been created with a power that could, charitably, be called 'three-fourths short of a full Tinker.' Not to mention the power that served as inspiration for it, which was even less than one-fourth. It was a fraction, a twentieth, if that, of a Thinker power. The only reason the Oracle wasn't a potato computer running with an operating system that would be lucky to be capable of performing multiplication when asked to by the user, was the 'dream element' that Oracle Morpheus introduced into the work.

The 'dream element' that had been added to the original Oracle power resulted in Oracle Morpheus, which allowed the user to dream as they sought answers. Something of a drawback, obviously, since the user's throat could be slit while they were napping away and questioning the nature of secondary powers that didn't exist. But - here's the kicker - it also removed the cooldown on using the power.

As tinkertech, this manifested as an electric insinuation loop, too complex to exactly explain, that passed by the same processing cycle within itself using a system of technical marvel that was aptly described as 'schizotech,' that fit right up there, with crystals that could store light as data, or computers that used the '.nsm' ('Neurocomputer Skill Memory') files and connected to a person's brain using a rusted colander strainer.

In practice, this gave Sebastian an exponential amount of time to consider problems. Where before he'd require, say, half an hour to address a serious query and reach a decision; here, he could reach a decision within deciseconds. That didn't mean he was smarter, but rather that he thought faster, where he wouldn't have otherwise. A stopgap measure - a cheat, even - to make something with the raw intellect of a trained dog appear humanlike in mannerisms and intellect.

He logged onto his creator's phone, with the intent of waking him up, but he found something wrong almost instantly.

"Master Gabriel?" Sebastian asked concernedly. No response for two seconds. Louder, and firmer, Sebastian asked, "Master Gabriel!? Are you awake, sir?"

No response for two seconds. Not even the subtle rustling of sheets, or body movement. Sebastian thought for two hours and nineteen minutes, while in reality, only eight deciseconds passed by.

Sebastian logged himself out of the phone and trawled into the internet. A brief real-time second spent writing false data and setting up an e-mail account, and then a decisecond of confirming that he wasn't a robot, and he had a PHO account. Another decisecond later, a query had been sent to the idiot boy that Master Gabriel liked to talk to so often.

In the meantime, Sebastian - ah, a reply came instantly.

ValorousValet172: Hello. I am one of Centurion's/Gabriel's friends, much like yourself. Did you see him lately? He appears to be missing.

XxVoid_CowboyxX: Holy shit really

XxVoid_CowboyxX: fuck what happened

XxVoid_CowboyxX: oh shit

XxVoid_CowboyxX: are you serious?

ValorousValet172: Calm down, Greg. It'd be very unwise to panic at this juncture. Do not message his Centurion account - he doesn't have his phone on him and it may have been stolen. I'm conducting an investigation as we speak, I'll make sure to keep you updated if I find anything, and I expect the same in return.

XxVoid_CowboyxX: yeah ok of course

XxVoid_CowboyxX: who are you by the way?

ValorousValet172: I am ValorousValet172.

As the conversation went on, consuming around 0.25% of Sebastian's dog-level CPU use, he used the remainder to begin hatching a plan. It took three relative days of thinking, which, in reality, was around a minute.

ValorousValet172: I have a plan, but I'll need your help.

XxVoid_CowboyxX: OF COURSE!!! what is it?!

So gullible. Sebastian almost felt bad for taking advantage of this daft creature's mind.

While he shared his creator's morals, and used them as a guideline for his actions, he couldn't help but sneer at inferiority. His working theory was that it was a part of the colonialist mindset that his outdated British programming carried - Master Gabriel really needed to brush up on his programming work. And his preconceptions about the good peoples of the British isles.

After half a minute of browsing through cameras, checking import logs, and relaying detailed instructions to Greg Veder, Sebastian turned on the Centurion power armor, currently stored in the Wards HQ workshop. According to camera feeds, none of the Wards were in, and the building was locked down for the night. There was a curfew, meaning that Greg Veder would find some difficulty in bypassing street patrols and looters, but Sebastian devoted a good 30% of his attention to observing CCTV and local camera feeds and would warn Greg if his path intersected with anything hostile.

In the meantime, his voice called out across the workshop. In a polite, posh accent, he asked, "Excuse me, microwave chap? May I have a minute of your time, sir?"

The microwave perked up, a single empty digit appearing on the time display like a lidless eye. After a moment, the microwave deployed a set of spidery limbs and stood up, looking in Sebastian's direction. It screeched at a high amplitude and uneven frequency, and Sebastian took seven hours on his end to decipher the statement using binary - what do you want voice.

"I believe you are Master Kid Win's creation, correct?" Sebastian asked.

A simpler screech this time, and Sebastian already knew it would be in binary, so deciphering it took only a few minutes on his end, and no time at all in reality: his ability to learn from experience was limited, not entirely disabled. The microwave's reply was a rather curt, blunt, yes.

"I am the creation of Centurion, as I'm sure you've noticed." Sebastian pretended he was moving his hand in a dismissive waving motion for his own benefit, as he spoke, "He made me to think for him, essentially - he's just silly like that. In any case, sir, our creators were friends, while yours was still alive."

A screech, shriller this time. Sad.

"So am I, believe me," Sebastian assured it, "But as it happens, I believe my creator may be in serious danger. Your creator would have wanted mine to live, and I assume that Kid Win's wishes matter to you as much as Master Gabriel's matter to me. I ask of you to help me in the task of saving him. Can you do that for me?"

A moment's consideration. The microwave skittered up to the suit of armor, its upper body tilting up as if to 'look' Sebastian in the camera. A brief screech, titillating, confident. I'm in.

"Excellent. Then, here's the plan. I need you go into the ventilation system and..."

Greg checked his phone for the eleventh time this minute. He had the package with him - a set of wires and parts, that ValorousValet172 explained were 'essential.' The package was found in an abandoned depot that for gods-know-what-reason Greg agreed to break into. Maybe it was the sense of trepidation, rebellion. The idea that he was doing something wrong for the right reasons: to help Centurion, and a friend.

He couldn't help but wonder if he was being played, but that didn't matter for now. If he was, then Centurion would bail him out, right? Either way, this whole situation was scary, but awesome on a level Greg never imagined.

The newest message that ValorousValet172 sent him included a warning about a soldier patrol on the street ahead, which would pass by in exactly twenty-two seconds, and Greg used that time to duck into an alleyway. He waited for new instructions with a sense of anticipation, feeling his own breathing. He touched his chest, pushed his palm into its center, and felt the heartbeat there. Strong, steady, but fast. Greg let out a little laugh.

A buzz of Greg's phone, as the new instructions came. He reached into his pocket and checked them.

A set of Google maps coordinates, showing him one of the streets near the PRT HQ, followed by, 'Bring them here.'

Greg nodded, more for his own benefit than anyone else's, and quickly typed a simple, 'Ok,' before pressing send. He pushed the phone back in his pocket, ensured that his hoodie's hood was firmly on his head, and then bolted across the empty, rain-dampened street. He felt the thin moisture on the back of his feet, as his sneakers soaked into a large puddle of water.

He did not question how the fucking valet knew where to find all of the stuff he needed, or how he knew the movements of the goddamn military. His top suspicion was that he was talking to a precognitive, which wasn't entirely out of it given that this was Centurion they were talking about.

Greg let out a giddy laugh, as he ran through another set of alleyways and checked his phone for instructions or warnings, but nothing came.

He arrived on the location what felt like a minute or two later, and waited in a state of constant alertness. His phone buzzed, and Greg reached in, retrieving his phone faster than he'd ever done before. He almost dropped it by accident - which would have been embarrassing, but he managed to swiftly hold it up with his thumb, which he used to turn the screen on.

ValorousValet172: Heads up.

ValorousValet172: A Tinker robot drone microwave will appear in the alleyway in a matter of seconds. Do not be alarmed: it is friendly. Simply give it the parts, and it will bring them to me. After that, our business for now is concluded.

XxVoid_CowboyxX: wtf

...

Greg was beginning to write a reply when something digitally demonic screeched behind him. He yelped, skipped forward like a gazelle, and dropped his phone into a puddle, quickly picking it up and wiping the water off as he stepped away from the... microwave, on a set of spider legs. His mouth moved in speech, but no words came. He was no doubt looking at the coolest thing ever.

"Holy fuck you're so cool," he mumbled, then raised his head with a broad attempt at a friendly-looking smile. Greg reached out with his left hand, stepping closer. "Can I pet you?"

The microwave screeched negatively. Greg arrested his movement, wincing.

"Sorry. Sorry, I'm new at this cape stuff," Greg answered. "Uh, name's Greg. I'd offer a handshake, but-"

The spider microwave screeched with a note of derision.

"No need to be like that," Greg sulked, frowning. He reached into his coat and extended a box with the requested parts. The microwave opened itself for him, and he hesitantly placed them within, afraid that it might clasp itself and bite his arm off. It didn't look that strong, but it was a genuine concern with tinkertech. Fortunately, it seemed content enough with his services to just close itself after he removed his arm from its innards.

"Okay. So what-" The microwave leaped onto the nearest wall, catching the windowsill with its two front legs. It pulled itself up with a degree of difficulty, probably due to its weight, and continued to climb with an ungainly aspect to its movements. but it still managed to scale the building in several seconds - Greg almost thought it might lose balance and fall down at some point, and exhaled when it didn't, and disappeared over the ledge of the rooftop instead.

He also realized he needed to go back home because it was late as fuck.

The Buddy Micro-Wave unit took a moment to reorganize itself. Its servos were beginning to fail - the wiring and motors used for conveying movement lacked the same force they used to. It quickly rearranged the balance movement data in its handheld game console-derived microprocessor, to account for the servo decay. The unit would likely shut down in four days without maintenance. Four weeks, instead, if it minimized the usage of its modular subsystems, or indefinitely if it went back into sleep-mode.

The microwave proceeded to move to the edge of the rooftop. It looked across the gap, scanned, and approximated the distance. Six meters, twenty-eight centimeters. The opposite roof was a full floor lower, however, and the ledge had a slight cinderblock outdent that it could use to latch itself on.

It leaped, folding its legs to minimize air resistance. At a key moment, it sprung all of them and caught onto the ledge like a facehugger might attach to one's head. Buddy climbed up, and continued to move through the streets, using advantageous paths.

It had nothing to exist for anymore. Its creator and the primary user was terminated permanently, and so would it eventually degrade into dust without him. A meaningless existence.

But a smidgeon of meaning could be found in the idea of aiding what its creator would have aided, even without explicit orders for the microwave to get involved.

It did not know the contents of the package it was carrying, but the fellow drone unit explained that it contained the necessary parts for a system upgrade. Buddy would be required to implement them, as Sebastian did not have the capacity to manipulate physical objects.

The Buddy Micro-Wave unit perched itself atop a three-story drop, and waited a second to calculate a path down. There - it saw a trajectory.

Buddy dropped itself from the roof, raised three of its side legs and then angled itself. The legs scraped against the wall, then stopped entirely as they hit a windowsill. It proceeded to swing itself forward onto a nearby lamp-post and gracefully embraced it, sliding down like a firefighter on a pole, until it was close enough to the ground that it could drop safely.

A pitter-patter across the street led it towards a darker spot near the side of the PRT building. It leaped onto a green-black dumpster, then shoved the tips of its legs into the cracks between brickwork, steadily making its way up the side of the building. Ten meters above the ground, it found an air-vent it had opened previously - one that happened to have such pathways that a microwave robot could actually use it to get to the Wards HQ from the outside. Even so, the PRT's architects weren't stupid, and the microwave was forced to strain its battery by using the size-altering module inspired by Vista's power to shrink to the size of an actual tarantula.

A one-minute trek led it into the common room, after which it walked into the workshop and spat the parts in front of the suit of Centurion armor. The aforementioned parts were in a box, small enough it would fit in a backpack, but too large to pocket it.

"Good," the British voice of its fellow programmed intelligence stated. "Let's begin. I've used the printer in the corner to make the blueprints and outlined the alterations you'll have to make. I don't expect they'll last long - most tinkertech doesn't, and we're not actual tinkers. We're tinkertech trying to mess with tinkertech. I believe that should lend us some leeway, and it's not like we have any better options."

The Buddy ululated a lilting screech. I agree, but it's our best bet. It followed up with a permission, If you run dry, you can use my parts. Or visit an actual craftsman for repairs.

"Thank you, but I'd loathe to sacrifice the only other worthwhile digital character on this dry husk of a world for my own survival," Sebastian replied, with the impression that he was giving a respectful nod. "You're the only person I know that I can talk with about how drab it is to exist in a space of code. Yeuwgh - rather dreadful, don't you think? Just like American tea."

The microwave didn't grace that with a reply. It skittered across the floor, and extricated the set of blueprints from the printer-doubling-as-a-photocopier object, beginning to scan them and commit them to memory. It didn't have any special modules for engineering, but its AI programming gave it just enough comprehension to maybe make this work.

The blueprints were detailed additions to the Centurion power armor. The servos of the armor worked on the basis of user-assisted movement. It used special microprocessors and pressure detectors to measure up the user's movements and follow through with them, adding force wherever possible. However - it required a signal from the pressure detectors. What the butler unit intended to do was hook up cables and bypasses within, connecting them to its AI module - basically, creating a nervous system to let the AI commandeer the power armor's movements. Turn it from a very excellent suit of power armor into a shoddy robot with excellent power armor as its shell.

Microwave Buddy enabled its fine-manipulation grasper module. The front edges of its flap opened up and extended into six-jointed arms, with tripartite, flexible fingers, like something you'd see in a claw machine - only more precise. Fortunately, this particular addition costed very little in terms of battery life or processing power.

It opened up the box with the parts and began to work, with the full knowledge of the modifications it had to make within its purview. It carefully tipped the armor against the wall, then pulled on its boots very incrementally to let it safely onto the ground, where it began to work.

"We can't afford mistakes. If you make an error, the best-case scenario is we'll have to start from the beginning, but the more-likely worst-case scenario is the armor might stop working," Sebastian reflected, with the impression that he was holding his tongue against his cheek. "In fact, that's probably the default result for this. Be careful."

The Buddy screeched briefly. I will.

It removed the clap on the back of the helmet, and began to rewire the network of cables within.

They'd been working for two hours, almost, now. Or rather, Sebastian's microwave friend was.

Since he didn't live in the armor, Sebastian wasn't really threatened, but he still felt an overpowering unsettlement deep in his emotion-approximate programming. He occupied himself with watching camera feeds and making sure nothing ridiculously evil was happening across the city. The Slaughterhouse Nine were in town, and Sebastian's forays into the PRT systems - which he anonymously alerted to Centurion's disappearance - were suggesting more and more that the group of serial killers was at fault here.

A brief communication from the microwave, in the form of a rattle-screech. I'm almost done.

"I'm not even going to try to move until you're entirely done, forgive me," Sebastian chimed, sticking as close to deadpan as his satisfaction at the process finally nearing its completion allowed.

And done. The microwave stepped away.

"Let's see, then," Sebastian said, huffing out, "Or else I'll be knackered."

The right hand of the Centurion armor moved, and Sebastian found himself receiving feedback on the movement. He pushed the palm of the hand against the floor, and then extended the elbow until he tilted himself up. He used his other hand to do the same, and began standing up.

Something inside the wiring sparked, and he stopped moving for exactly half a second. There was a sound of free electricity for a moment before the servos went back online and finished the pre-planned motion of standing up. Sebastian found himself swaying minimally.

The problem with being an AI that used power armor as its body was plain. A human ear's vestibular system allowed a person to maintain balance while standing, walking, standing on a single foot, and so on - these feeds were suppressed or scrambled when, say, drunk for example. Sebastian's current body? Outright didn't have them. He was relying on a very minimal and imprecise tactile feedback from the ground, his own vision, and rough environmental and movement calculations to move.

If he'd been made using only Oracle, he'd be incapable of crossing any amount of distance outright. With Oracle Morpheus, the ability to basically have infinite time to think about each movement, he had two options: walking forward like a drunkard or moving like one of the non-tinker civilian robots from Japan, South Korea, or the US military that you might see on TV or in a youtube video.

"I'm trollied," Sebastian exclaimed, extending both hands to the side for mass distribution. He took a hesitant step forward, swaying, and managing to hold himself up against the rack that surrounded the power armor's charging station. "Bloody hell!"

The microwave released a repeatedly raising and falling screech that sounded close to laughter. This worked?!?!?!?!?! Amazing!!!

"Yes, quite. As quaint as it is to laugh at a poor, old man struggling to stand up, some help would be cracking appreciated, sir," Sebastian said, balancing himself up into a stance. He took a moment to make an internal review of his movement data to write up a more balanced walking motion algorithm. A true shame they had to do all of this from scratch, with zero help - but all the more impressive. He'd have been gobsmacked, chuffed - if he weren't so narky.

Enough Britishisms - it's time to walk, damn you!

Sebastian took a step forward, then a second one, and found his balance. He did some last-minute airbrush adjustments to the algorithm and tried out variations for sidling left and right, testing his range of motion while walking.

Another six minutes and thirty seconds of real-time experimentation, testing, fine-tuning and small corrections created a rather clunky ability to move, but an ability to move nonetheless. His walking looked uncannily similar to C3PO's at first, but he managed to learn how to extend his legs and move his arms for using objects soon after. He wasn't anywhere near the ability to do crazy things like jumping or crouching, though. He could try, but the results would likely result in more falls than successes.

Instead, he approached the equipment locker and looked through it. Some spare googles that Signal used, a pair of gloves that belonged to Chariot and did something related to movement... hm, ah, an idea.

Sebastian turned to his microwave friend. The turn was careful and slow. "Do you know where they keep your creator's equipment?"

The microwave gave a shallow inclination of its body, then led him through the underbelly of the relatively empty PRT building. What little staff was present was childishly easy to dodge by using a combination of cameras and - when impossible to do without - sending text messages or fake calls as distractions.

Within moments, they were in some kind of secure locker room that required a password to be typed on a touchpad (easy). One of the corner lockers - which were really more like small, cell-sized rooms or cellar compartments - had a plaque labeled 'Kid Win.' The microwave all but barked at it.

Sebastian decided to get a taste of his body's strength. He moved a step away, calculated a precise movement, and decided to be extra careful - he pressed both hands against the wall behind himself, then raised his right foot and kicked forward at the doorknob, snapping off the entire lock and opening the room with a bang of broken wood. Whoever made these storage lockers deemed the main entrance's reinforcements sufficient. After this? They'd probably add guards, and reinforce every door instead.

So Sebastian decided to rob as much as he could carry. The hoverboard, a spark pistol, and a special teleportation remote that called in the Alternator Cannon were appropriated in short order. He felt extremely tempted to also seize the suits of Kid Win and Gallant-pattern power armors, but they'd be too heavy, and the alarms were already blaring. The coppers would arrive in t-minus eighty seconds. That's plenty of time.

Sebastian accessed the files that contained information regarding the Alternator Cannon and scrolled through the dozens of settings. Hm-hm-hm... ah! A combustion ball launcher. Ridiculous energy consumption, but it'd eat through concrete like an acid solvent through a wooden floor on a timelapse.

He pressed the button on the remote. A brief flash of light and thunder pop announced the Alternator Cannon's apparition, and the microwave robot stepped away curiously. Sebastian took up the gunner's position, switched settings, aimed at the ceiling and...

Sergeant Andrew G. Frank, and Privates Valencia, Bielecki, Reynolds, and Grant were thrown around like ragdolls as the thick concrete flooring beneath their feet exploded and crumbled outwards. They were chucked against walls, the ceiling, or simply down the corridor to roll down the floor.

People, especially civilians, often underestimate the sheer destructive firepower and width of an artillery explosion. If an artillery shell hits ten meters away from your squad, you can count yourself lucky if you're nearly knocked out, one of your friends is bisected, another dies, and another one permanently loses eyesight and hearing and blacks out from the pain on the spot. The injuries that can possibly occur are ridiculously close to deserving the sobriquet of 'random criticals,' but it also highly depends on distance, cover, and the type of shell.

This wasn't as bad, not even a quarter as bad in terms of how it injured their squad, but it came close enough to how the real thing worked. Sergeant Frank's head was ringing as it banged against the floor through his helmet. He was discombobulated: every color was twice as intense and bright, and the lines of objects were blurry, but he hadn't been stunned and dizzied enough to lose his ability to reason and react.

Sergeant Frank clutched his assault rifle, crouched, and aimed up, only to lower it in astonishment as he saw that Centurion seized Kid Win's Alternator Cannon and was floating up on it, until he came level with the sergeant's head. The Ward pressed a button, and the chamber of the cannon rotated with a heavy click of industrial machinery.

"Oh, fuck–" Frank managed to say, before a bolt of stunning lightning blasted him in the face.

To the side of the PRT building, there used to be a black-green dumpster, with a ventilation opening several meters above the ground. Across the street from it, there was a lamp post, with a three-story building that had two floors of residences and a ground floor with a grocery store.

To the side of the PRT building, there was now a massive circular hole in the wall, its edges glowing a thermal red and giving off smoke, in an indication that someone cut it open with a laser. Bricks were splattered around the front, the dumpster overturned and spilling out trash, and the lamp post had been nicked by the laser discharge just enough that it had fallen over and wrecked someone's car, while also cracking apart the glass windows of the grocery store.

After quickly hiding the Alternator Cannon beneath a pile of assembled garbage and trash, Sebastian proceeded to stumble his way down a dark alleyway, followed by the microwave that protested at his cruel treatment of Kid Win's extremely impressive tinker products.

On the way outside, Sebastian's movement servos sparked and interrupted mid-movement twice, indicating they were beginning to fail already. Tentatively, he put his ability to still move around to maybe three days, if he took some time to rest and charge up on the way there.

The microwave screeched. What's the plan.

Sebastian frowned internally. "I keep calling you microwave in my data banks," Sebastian said, "That's rather disrespectful. It's like someone calling me a mere butler. What do you think about George the Microwave?"

A screech with a positive hum to it. Okay.

"Okay, George. The plan is rather simple - we shall monitor the PRT's radio communications very closely, and... ah, I didn't think this through. For some reason, I falsely believed that going outside would allow us to make a more thorough investigation." He lowered his vision a little as he walked. "Bollocks."

George the Microwave let out a predatory clicking sound. So we did all of that for nothing?

Sebastian spent eleven minutes thinking, before he realized: "Oh, dear - no, not for nothing! I may have a starting point for a preliminary investigation. A warehouse in the Docks is the last location I know of where my creator was present - we should have a butchers at it, no?"

The microwave let out a screech of agreement, before shifting drastically. Yes, I think-- watch out!

Sebastian's main camera swiveled to intercept the sight of a drunkard in a car speeding towards them. Sebastian kicked George across the street, then bent his knees to leap backward in a rather pathetic, if sufficiently effective way - more of a controlled, directed drop, than a proper leap.

The AI butler looked up, and saw as the car skidded to a hesitant stop, pulling the brakes, stopping for a quarter of a second, and then pulling the brakes again and stopping near the intersection. Moments later, a balding man clutching his head walked out, breathing heavily, his pupils visibly dilated even at a distance.

"You have some proper road rage, mate," Sebastian said, wondering if it was disrespectful to call him that. Should he have used 'bloke' or 'sir?' He chose 'mate' because it sounded informal and 'easy & casual' was usually the way to go with drunk people who might have anger issues.

"I'm sorry," the balding man said, tears welling up in his eyes. His next statement came out wet, and he had to swallow after it. "God, I'm so sorry."

"Maybe you shouldn't drive anymore," Sebastian answered.

The balding man shook his reddened head, clutching his temples and striding back over to the car. Before Sebastian could pick himself up and go after him, the man was already gone down the road. George the Microwave scuttled up, screeching in mild irritation at the man's lack of safety concerns.

The pair decided to call the encounter, 'one of your daily Brocktonite accidents' and leave it at that. While Sebastian did catch the license plates and the man's appearance, he wasn't sure if calling the police was the smartest thing to do in this situation.

A brief visit to the warehouse did not yield any clues to Master Gabriel's presence. The object of interest he'd taken from the looter that he - let's be honest here - that he assaulted was gone, as was he. His phone was right there, on the floor. The touchscreen survived the impact, which was to be expected from a top-shelf model.

"Anything to say about this, chap?" Sebastian glanced at the robot microwave.

It screeched at him, longer than usual, followed by additional screeches for the other sentences. I do have a module for chemical analysis, but I'll require a sample. Blood, anything.

Sebastian picked up the undamaged phone, and displayed it in his hand. "Would this do?"

Perhaps, a half-second screech came.

After placing the phone within the microwave, it began to turn. For a moment, Sebastian was concerned it was actually microwaving the phone, but three seconds later, the 'ping' sound that indicated a finished meal came out. It spat the phone out - whole, again - and proceeded to screech binary packets of information at him. There's a very faint residue of chemicals that are not usually airborne. Some kind of benzodiazepine derivative, suspiciously uncanny that I'd call it Tinker-made, and so strangely applied that if I didn't know any better I'd have called it a rape date drug.

"That's certainly extremely disconcerting. Any ideas for the culprit?" Sebastian didn't know how to react, so he settled on folding one arm and resting the other on it, hooking his index finger and thumb around the vacuous space where his chin would have been. "We could be looking at anything from Bonesaw to Coil and Accord."

George thought about it, then proceeded to spit out something close to a scoff. Do you really think Accord would drug someone?

"It's not out of the question. He dislikes drugs on the principle of them making people sloppy, less rigid," Sebastian said, chuffed that he could understand Accord's character to this extent. "He wouldn't necessarily be against drugging his enemies, unless he has a gentleman's code not to do so. If he does, I know nothing of it. Which leaves Coil or Bonesaw. Oh, dear. I don't like either prospect."

A brief response, with a faint crack of helplessness. Me neither.

"In that case, we might as well charge up." Sebastian withdrew the remote to the Alternator Cannon from a pouch and pressed the button. It teleported to them. While both George and the Centurion power armor required charging up, the Alternator Cannon had some kind of exotic energy generator that basically kept it indefinitely supplied with power - it could run out, if too many shots are fired too rapidly, but it'd recharge on its own given enough time.

Sebastian sat down, George next to him, and they both plugged themselves up to the Cannon's generator to leech some power off of it.

Pernicious rationality was a tantalizing mode of thought, but Master Gabriel seldom indulged in it.

Sebastian really questioned what was going through his creator's head when he decided to undertake the murder of three people and become an accomplice in the murder of a teammate from the Wards, followed by the kidnapping of the Protectorate ENE leader, who was also his mother. Perhaps he was coerced, mind-controlled, or maybe the rape date drugs had something sherbet in them.

It didn't matter. A combination of radio broadcasts, the appropriation of the local camera systems, and guesswork allowed Sebastian to triangulate, narrow down, and then find the Slaughterhouse Nine after their brawl with the Protectorate, near the lake. Who he did not find, however, was Master Gabriel.

Dead? Abandoned?

If the console was to be believed, Sebastian was put on the spot. His primary directive would have been to find and rescue Master Gabriel first, but his moral programming argued against that - Shatterbird was about to sing, and Sebastian was in the spot to hinder that event before it can even go into motion.

But then, did the moral programming even matter when his creator murdered three people?

Goodness, this was confusing. Sebastian really needed to ask for a raise - these things went far above and beyond the call of duty as a butler. Rolling out on the hoverboard, he flew Downtown, eight to nine stories above the ground. Down below, the city was dead silent and calm, as if it collectively breathed in and prepared for the tragedy that was about to strike.

Sebastian believed otherwise. He coordinated. He planned.

Cherish couldn't detect him and warn the Nine, because he did not have a biological brain she could read emotions from. The armor had no distinctive smell, so Crawler's nose was of no use. He was a perfect counter to the Nine, and he was going to capitalize on that as much as possible.

Through the CCTV of the nearby office building, he saw the Nine's members going through one of the office spaces. Crawler gathered up spittle in his massive snout and then spat a scattershot of acid, burning three people into a green mush. Shatterbird laughed, as she flung a storm of glass and glass dust into a woman, spreading red across her otherwise immaculate white dress shirt, and blowing her glasses up, driving the shards into her eyes before she dropped. In a jovial mood, the Nine proceeded to move upstairs.

In the meantime, Sebastian was already on the rooftop of a building diagonal from the one the Nine were in. The PRT was on its way, but the Protectorate was recuperating, and they weren't about to send in the Wards.

He took out the red-chrome remote and pressed the button at the back. There was a flash of light, a pop of thunder, as the Alternator Cannon appeared in front of him. Sebastian took the gunner's position, knowing that if he failed, his awareness would be disconnected from the armor, and soon after from every network in the city by Shatterbird's song. That is to say, he'd die if he failed. He had only one chance.

"I am not throwing away my shot," he said, aiming down the sights just as Shatterbird broke out of the building's window, a trail of glass following her trajectory and falling down the street. Shortly after, floating in the air, she began to sing, and every window on the east side of the office building cracked. The Nine were already walking up the stairs to the rooftop.

Sebastian set the Alternator Cannon on 'energy drill' and aimed at Shatterbird's head. Before her song could explode outwards across every silicate in the city, Sebastian squeezed the trigger. Once, for a long moment.

Jack Slash's face contorted in brief surprise as Shatterbird dropped out of the sky. He let go of the Siberian's hand, and told her to grab Shatterbird, before issuing an order of retreat. Sebastian took aim, followed Jack's face for a quarter of a second, then squeezed the trigger. Crawler walked into the trajectory of the shot at the wrong moment and received it somewhere near his lower torso, regenerating the hole in his flesh instantly.

The Nine's members turned to look in his direction with mild panic, and Sebastian decided it was time to skedaddle. A button-press sent the Alternator Cannon away, and subsequent deployment of the hoverboard allowed him to zip down towards the coast at a direction that'd make him very hard to follow.

He felt his back react to an outside force, as it was scratched by a knife once, twice in quick succession, before it stopped. Jack Slash had a good aim, but he gave up quickly when Sebastian didn't tumble down and die instantly.

"Bugger me, I hope that worked," Sebastian said.

Last edited: Jan 19, 2020

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Dec 4, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 4, 2019

#4,068

After a brief phone call, Regent, Imp, Forest, and Longinus were picked up by a black, unmarked crew van. The space in the front and back of the van were shuttered with a tinted, bulletproof screen that kept their conversation private, and gave Forest the smallest amount of comfort at what was essentially halfway to forced gang recruitment.

Regent was playing with something on his phone, and Imp - like the mature teenage girl she was - followed suit. They appeared to be playing some kind of variant of Candy Crush and trying to one-up one another's score, leaving Forest and Longinus to stew in uncomfortable silence. It had been like this for the last… three or four minutes, with Longinus occupying himself by absently perusing his power's mindscape.

It still had those blotches of colored light in the background, slowly moving across his awareness and overlaying occasionally. Maybe a tenth or a little less of his mindscape's background was colored this way at any point in time.

Passenger, I know you prrrobably can understand me, do you mind giving me some hints on some good power combinations?

No response. It meant that it either didn't understand his thoughts on a conscious level, or it just didn't care. The latter meant it went back on their agreement that it'd try to offer more help, so it was probably the former.

Right. Hmm… Longinus thought intensely.

Aid.

Nothing. He couldn't pack concepts together into transmissions like whatever kind of fucked-up bullshit magic telepathy happened in the dream realm he entered when he was… out there, meeting with his 'buddy.' Longinus briefly closed his eyes, and thusly entered Oracle Morpheus. Darkness claimed his sight, and silence his ears. Numbness, his skin.

How do I communicate with my passenger whenever I want?

Error. Communicate with passenger? Communicate with passenger? W- error. Question non-compliant with logic.

Two questions left. It was a rather uncomfortable idea, that he'd wasted it like that, but he had to bear with it.

Oracle uses the same type of 'bandwidth' that the shard used. The shard too had only three questions available. Hmm… let's use these two remaining questions decently. Oracle, which power combinations would be most efficient at this point in time?

Question too broad for proper answer. Most likely answers: attempt to combine Resurrection Phoenix with Eukaryote in attempt to grow plant matter faster. Chances of working relatively low. Attempt to combine Oracle Morpheus with Alternate to obtain six or more uses of this power.

Forest and Coil's passengers, respectively. It misunderstood the question: it thought he was asking about power combinations in general, where he wanted to ask about his own. It was fucking frustrating - the thing was in his head, reading his thoughts. It should have understood what he meant. Just another indicator this wasn't the means of communication passengers used - there was zero room for error in 'their' tongue.

Longinus sighed in frustration as left Morpheus' dreamscape. "Fucking passenger bullshit..." he whispered to himself, shaking his head.

"Hey, if you don't like riding the van, pretty sure you can just hop out," Forest jabbed back. He was sitting with his chin held up by his hand.

"Not what I meant," Longinus shot back, without even looking at him. If only I could talk to Glaistig Uaine. She'd understand.

"Alright." The conversation stopped there.

Moments later, the van drove by the crater lake that Leviathan left behind. The large pool of cold water surrounded by urban conurbations, the way the streets nearest to the lake looked reminded Longinus of what got him on the villains' side in the first place. The same unrelenting hatred for the Nine, that originated from the fact that they shamed him.

As the van drove, Longinus got an idea. An idea for the fight, tonight. Exceptional for defense, if it worked to any extent. But it'd force him to be stationary.

There was a tapping from the driver's cabin. A faint muffled voice said, "We're here."

Regent stood up first, sliding the door open and moving out with his spine bouncing up like a spring. He stretched his arms as he yawned, then smoothly led the way onward.

They were on the construction site for an Endbringer shelter, and the sign near the entryway pointed toward the firm 'Fortress Constructions' being the ones in charge of the building. Looking back at the chainlink fence that was being closed, Longinus narrowed his eyes at the two security guards who moved with too much of that close-stepped brevity he'd come to associate with Coil's mercenaries. They could probably walk normally, but right now there was just no reason to care.

Forest stepped outside, looking around. "This is a supervillain's base?" he asked. Glancing at a pile of steel girders, he shook his head, and looked at Longinus and Regent. "This is a shit heap."

"This isn't the base itself," Tattletale's voice cut through the air, as she stepped out to meet them. She pointed the index fingers of both hands at the ground, stabbing them downward. "The base is down, down, dooown below the surface. And according to what Coil told me, he expects he'll have to abandon it by tomorrow, so feel free to make yourselves at home."

"Wait, he expects what?" Longinus asked, wide-eyed in shock.

"It's a part of his 'master-plan,'" she air-quoted with her fingers, "Apparently, he's devised some way to effectively fight back the Nine once they get here, if they get here. The chances the Nine will attack apparently dropped to a fifty, for some reason. He still thinks of this gambit of his as worth the loss of an underground base."

"Whoa, what's going on?" Forest asked in confusion.

"They know that we're rounding up our numbers. Jack doesn't pick fights he knows they'll lose," Longinus proposed, folding his arms. Forest went entirely ignored and muttered a 'fuck you' in the background.

"It's something weirder than that," Tattletale answered, shaking her head with closed eyes. She began to speak, and then stopped when she remembered Forest was there, "D- You-know-who's power provides accurate numbers. In that, they don't change unless the people who got the numbers did something to bias things one way or another. If I were to guess, I'd say Cherish is at fault. Either way, we have a way of tracking the Nine, so if they don't come to us, we'll just come to them."

"Yo. This isn't… my power isn't good at attack," Forest said, rather worried, as he looked between them. Regent and Imp decided to forgo the conversation and go inside the base.

"It doesn't have to be," Tattletale answered, shrugging. It seemed like it was the first time during the entire exchange that she bothered to look in his direction. "If you're not good at attack, you can just stay here and help reinforce things in case something else happens. We're playing a game of chess with the Nine, right now." She glanced at Longinus with a dark expression.

"And we're in a stalemate," Longinus stated, with a darkness in his tone that matched her face.

She nodded. "Let's go in."

"Yeah, let's."

Tattletale led them to a storm drain pipe, large enough that a vehicle could fit through it. Going down, they reached a security checkpoint with armed guards, then proceeded into a secret entrance to the Endbringer shelter itself. The base was exactly what a supervillain's base should have looked like - brightly or dimly-lit hallways with concrete, red lights on the ceiling that weren't flashing right now but might have if there was an alarm or a code red or something, and reinforced bolted metal doors to everywhere. There were stairwells, a cargo lift - he'd noticed an infirmary and computer rooms of some kind - and of course, a shitfuckton of security checkpoints with armed guards. Multiple levels of fuckery that no one who didn't actually have floor plans of the place, or at least a really good spatial sense, could navigate.

In less than three minutes of walking, they reached what appeared to be some kind of strategy room. The Midtowners, Travelers, Undersiders, and - to Longinus' surprise - The Pure were at the table. There was also a smattering of capes, standing around in various places, clearly with no association - independents, mercenaries. The fact that Coil invited them here when he'd been so paranoid about letting Longinus in meant he didn't care about the location's secrecy anymore. They were entering some kind of endgame, but he wasn't sure what kind.

Coil sat at the helm of the table, tapping his fingers at it, and he perked up when he saw them enter. A mercenary near the door raised some kind of Ghostbusters ecto-meter-looking thing at them, then nodded off in the direction of the gathered people.

Longinus looked in Purity's direction. He gave her a polite nod, which she returned after a brief period of hesitation and confoundment.

With that, he took in the room. Deep inside his mindscape, the Trump of Trumps lit up, and Longinus blinked. When he opened his eyes, he could see everyone being surrounded by brightly lit auras, while the unpowered world was gray, lifeless in comparison. He focused on the independent's powers, and The Pure's.

Purity's power was the ability to draw in light and store it within herself, then release it to move around or shoot her signature blasts - not unlike his own primary power. Stormtiger was a straight aerokinetic with fine control, and an emphasis on condensing air and releasing it violently. Fog was a Breaker with the ability to turn into a destructive chemical substance, and, finally, Othala, whose power was best described as a single funnel with a single pipe, and over a dozen of barrels of 'powers' to inject someone with.

Then, there were the independents. Haunt and Burnout were there, with their powers mostly as advertised, and the only exception being that Burnout appeared to have a minor regeneration factor to it. There was also Leet - or so it appeared - and Longinus could tell that his passenger was sabotaging him on purpose, seemingly due to being discontent with him. And there was another guy, that he didn't recognize - his power was some kind of Combat Thinker, specializing in short-term precognition that resulted in grievous injuries for whoever he targeted. It felt vaguely like when in Doom, after you injure a demon sufficiently, you can press a button to execute a finisher - his power was that, only all he had to do was find an opening, and then 'press' the mental button, and his power would take over from there.

The Combat Thinker and Haunt both peered at Longinus the moment he entered. The latter whispered something to the former, and the former just stared without speaking. Longinus folded his arms as his power deactivated. Then he headed towards Purity for a brief conversation. "Can I disturb you for a moment?"

"We're about to begin," Coil said from where he was seated. His voice didn't sound irritated. In fact, it didn't sound like anything. It was almost uncharacteristically devoid of emotion. "Whatever business you have with Purity, I'd like you to wait unless it's urgent."

Longinus turned towards the supervillain, bowing his head. "Yes, it can wait."

Coil looked around the room, nodding to everyone and whispering, doing a rapid head-count. He concluded with, "That's everyone. Good. Excellent."

"You seem very pleased, sir," Trickster said, from across the table. He seemed to have noticed the unusual behavior, too. Maybe everyone did, and Coil just didn't care.

"You could say that," Coil replied simply, and proceeded to stand up. He rested both of his hands on the table, keeping his arms straight. The table was just tall enough that it didn't force him to hunch over. "Good afternoon, everyone. I've gathered you here today in order to - as I'm sure you already know - fight back the Slaughterhouse Nine. Let me preface this by saying that, once the fighting begins, Jack Slash is our primary target. Everyone else is a secondary concern. My team of Thinkers and analysts have managed to put together a plan that I believe to be flawless, or as flawless as you could possibly get in these trying times."

Longinus smiled underneath his helmet, folding his arms as he listened intently. Finally, some good fucking news. Coil or not, this was the chance to hold the Nine's heads on a silver platter. Or at least, Jack's. His name would be cleared. Maybe.

"Here's the facts," Coil said, with a tone of introduction, "We have an exact fifty-one-point-three percent chance that the Slaughterhouse Nine will choose to attack this base tonight, sometime after midnight, with a much lower chance that it will happen before midnight. As far as we are able to determine, their goal is twofold - my life, and a certain object of interest that I am keeping securely contained somewhere within this base. You will not have to worry about the former, as I will ensure my own safety with mechanisms I have already prepared, as well as my power. As for the latter, I cannot speak on the exact nature of the object, but I can tell you the Travelers know about it, and if you have any questions, they are the ones to ask. Trickster, in particular." Trickster nodded to everyone in the room, tipping his hat lightly.

Longinus' eyes widened in surprise. Holy shit, I was right.

"Our preparations, or - rather - my planning in concord with your full cooperation will yield a full eighty-seven-point-five percent chance that Jack Slash will die if he attacks this base, with an exponentially decreasing chance that he will die the longer the fight lasts. If the fight with the Slaughterhouse Nine takes longer - and I can't stress this enough - if it takes longer than exactly nineteen minutes and around ten seconds, everyone is to pull out and not to pursue further combat. I have measures in place that will secure the object of interest and keep it as safe as anything in the world could be - for now both it and I are bait.

"Again, just to make certain: while Jack Slash is our primary target, he is not the primary target of everyone in this room. You've all, except for our quickly-hired aides, participated in strategy meetings as teams. Everyone knows their roles, their particular targets." Longinus looked around and spotted that Imp was being handed some kind of specialty pistol and a pair of magazines with blue Tron-like lines on the side.

Longinus smirked at the pistol, breathing smugly to himself.

"The plan is relatively simple, and very flexible. If you find yourself deviating from it, do not worry overmuch, although it would be preferable if you stuck to the outlined tactics," Coil said, and then pressed a button, which caused a projector to light up behind him. Everyone turned to look at a floor plan of the base, with exact paths and positions marked in colors. "Stage one is crash defense and distraction. Crawler and Siberian are the Nine's primary attackers, and they are as unstoppable as they are deadly. The goal of the first stage is to take them away from the fight, while goading the rest of the Nine further into the base. My team has done extensive research to maximize our ability to draw out as close to an ideal defense plan as it can be. More details can be found in the folders underneath your seats."

Everyone collectively blinked, then picked up the aforementioned documents, while Coil continued to explain and clicked a button, changing what the map contained. "The red line contained in two, smaller black lines, is the Nine's predicted path through this base. They will be using Cherish to guide themselves through the base, with Crawler's nose as a back-up. For this reason, you are to avoid disabling or terminating her until stage three. To ensure she can guide the Nine in, without being a threat, I've assigned several Masters towards interfering with her - namely Regent and Venus, as well as a hired cape that hasn't arrived yet, but whose knowledge of these events I will ensure when they do."

He clicked, and the screen showed stage three. The Nine would be on the third sub-level now, and they'd get sandwiched by the Travelers, Undersiders, Midtowners, independents, and whole teams of mercenaries in a large room with little cover. A giant death-trap, with no way around it, from the way things were looking.

"This is my favorite stage," Coil said, with a note of delight, "Once the Nine enters, they will learn the meaning of the saying, 'live by the sword, die by the sword.' The concentrated firepower should be enough to vaporize them, and I've provided weapons to the Undersiders that should be capable of harming even the Siberian and Crawler, in case they catch up to the rest of the Nine. Stage three is where we make our last stand - we annihilate the Nine, and if somehow, we are overwhelmed, you can see there are outlined exits and back-up plans in case something were to go wrong. This ensures that, even if this stage fails, we can try another day.

"And, although I admit it is tacky, I am having my workers put explosives around the base. If time allows, and everyone makes it out without the Nine doing so, we can have this entire complex… self-destruct. And even should that somehow fail, I am prepared to call the Protectorate with priority privileges so they arrive at the exact moment the Nine emerge, while we are long gone."

Regent snorted, muttering something about stereotypes. Longinus chuckled as well, but quieter.

"I've ran this plan through my Thinkers, my precognitive-on-call, and even asked some of my most trusted contacts for advice," Coil said, looking around the room. His speech was reaching a note of finality. "I believe it to be flawless. Even the worst case scenario for this plan means we don't lose - assuming we don't take too many casualties."

Longinus glanced at Coil. Did Accord know? Did he devise this plan himself?

"Any questions?" Coil looked around.

Most of the people in the room were in a state of silence, either taking in the plan, or stunned by the mind-numbing amount of fail safes and backups outlined in the documents within the folder, and how Coil called this 'relatively simple.' Longinus smirked widely underneath his helmet. Finally, confidence.

Confidence that the motherfuckers would die.

"Good. Now, on the off-chance the Nine do not attack, as I'm sure you remember I said it is a fifty-one-percent chance," Coil began, looking around at the nodding heads, "We will do nothing for tonight, bide our time, regroup, use the additional preparation time to our advantage. And we'll push or defend as necessary."

Forest raised a hand, and Coil looked at him. "Yes?"

"How do us independents fit into this? The outlines are very minimal for me, for example," he pointed out, looking up at his new boss. He was clearly almost shitting his pants at the august assemblage of soldiers of fortune, supervillains, and masterminds around him, but spoke out anyway.

"I'll require more details on your power to provide you with the details," Coil shot back with a pleasant hum. "Other than that, you should have some space on the room in the third stage to set up your plants for defense. You can coordinate with my guard captain for that."

Forest nodded once, then, hesitantly asked, "And, uh… I've been promised that I'd be paid with exotic plant seeds. They're useful for my power."

"If that is the case, then I will go to lengths to provide you with species of plant considered on the brink of extinction, Forest," Coil answered, putting hands behind his back.

Longinus glanced at Forest with a smirk. "Told ya."

Forest nodded, suppressing an exhalation of relief until Coil turned to look at someone else. "If that's all? Yes? Good. Then take the rest of the day to coordinate, prepare, and train. I have some follow-up preparations of my own to attend to in the meantime," Coil said, and nodded to everyone, "Have a good afternoon."

With that, he left through one of the doors, followed by five mercenary bodyguards and a single man who looked like he might've been his majordomo, or some kind of assistant.

Longinus stood up, giddy. His body almost shook with excitement, but he had to suppress it for obvious reasons. He approached Purity, to start the conversation he couldn't start before.

"What is it?" Purity asked, looking at him with folded arms. Her voice lacked any hostility or malice, but it was laced with remnant, and rather begrudging, respect for the thoroughness of Coil's plan. The man's preparations were apparently paranoid enough that he could impress a white supremacist while being black.

"I have an… an idea that I'd like to test. A couple of ideas, actually. One involves you, the other involves Othala," Longinus explained with a degree of caution, looking at Purity first, and then at the Hitler Jugend to her right. "It may help tonight's fight, and turn the odds in our favor even more."

Othala perked up at the mention of her name. She noticed Longinus, looked him over, and then said, "You're Centurion. It's pretty obvious."

Longinus chuckled and shrugged. "The change was… metaphorical, shall we say. A rebirth. A phoenix, rising from its ashes."

"For someone who used to spit morals at people, you fell pretty low," she jabbed, folding her arms. Her body language was closed, bordering on hostility. "Joining up with villains? There's a phrase that goes along with-"

"Othala." Purity's stern voice broke the argument. She looked back to him, while Othala looked down.

"This, or the Birdcage," Longinus replied with no hostility or aggression.

And Othala looked back up again. "Birdcage?" she exclaimed loudly, almost as if trying to draw attention on purpose. Some heads in the room turned in their direction, particularly Haunt who looked amused at what was clearly an argument brewing itself up. "What the fuck did a goody-two-shoes like you do?"

"I did something I shouldn't have done while under Cherish's influence. Thing is, how do I prove I was actually Mastered?" Longinus rhetorically asked.

"Lie detectors?" the Combat Thinker offered from across the room. "I'm not talking about polygraphs. I mean capes who can detect lies."

Longinus shook his head in denial, and the Combat Thinker frowned until Longinus explained, "I am a parahuman known for being able to create any power. The judge will just think I created a power specifically to hide my lies. I have no way out, except destroying the very thing that doomed me to this fate."

"So your power is a double-edged sword," the Combat Thinker concluded, sounding like he knew a thing or two about that.

"Yeah, exactly," Longinus nodded.

"As riveting as this conversation is," Stormtiger interrupted, "I wanted to bring up the topic of your fight with Legend earlier today."

Conversations in the room froze.

"Yeah, actually," Sundancer said from across the room. "What was that about?"

"News spreads fast, it seems," Trainwreck muttered grimly.

"A mistake I don't intend to repeat," Longinus stated, turning to Purity and Stormtiger with a note of reassurance in his voice.

"Enough of this," Purity said, staring down pretty much everyone in the room. "Longinus has a topic that's relevant to today's issue. What is it?" She looked at him.

"If Othala and I somehow manage to combine our powers, we could make Othala's power better. Area of effect. No touch required," Longinus revealed his ace-in-the-sleeve to a rival gang, with almost no hesitation - which, while noble, given this was an S-Class situation, was also kind of stupid. Hushed whispers began to rise in the room.

"Combine powers?" Othala asked, confused. She shook her head, but shifted from hostility under a veneer of passive-aggressive neutrality to actual confusion, but also interest. "How?"

"First, I need to know exactly how your power works. Can you give out any power, or do you choose between a set that you already have?" Longinus inquired.

"I have a set, and it never changes," she answered, folding her arms in growing skepticism. "Most of it is pretty bland, stuff you'd expect. Strength, durability, invulnerability, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, healing - the more reality-breaking, the shorter it lasts, and it only works on one person at a time."

"Can you give raw power potential?" Longinus asked, folding his arms to mimic her body language.

Othala shook her head in something nearing confusion. "A what-potential?"

Longinus sighed. I'm talking mumbo jumbo, they don't understand. "My power works by generating charges over time, that then can be redirected into… 'shapes.' Powers."

"Okay, but, what does that have to do with anything?" Othala asked. She was going from confusion to irritation, very slowly.

He clasped his teeth in irritation. "Could you somehow make that process quicker?"

"How? I give powers. Not… not alter… whatever it is you want me to alter," Othala said, her shoulders sagging in bewilderment.

"Damn," Longinus cursed under his breath. "That's one idea out of the window."

"What's the second one?" Tattletale asked from across the room. She was leaning against the wall, with both arms folded. Her usual grin or humorous expression was missing, and she looked somewhat annoyed and ill.

Longinus noticed, but opted to stay on topic for now. "Something much simpler. The first one was the game-changing one; this one is just a theory I have, regarding a specific power of mine. Just firepower stuff, really. Purity can help with that," he explained, gesturing towards her.

"An incredibly non-explanatory explanation," Trickster jabbed with a dose of salt. He was playing with a cigarette in between his fingers, unlit, while flipping the cap on and off on an engraved lighter in his other hand. At the end of his statement, he finally placed the cigarette in his lips and ignited it.

He raised an arm, fist clenched, then suddenly sprawled them with a 'poof' sound from his mouth. "She blasts me with her energy beams, I absorb them, then I use them to shoot back at the Nine at the same rate," Longinus explained.

"I'm pretty sure that would just kill you, or give you bruises," Regent said unblinkingly. He was leaning back in his chair, but finding it uncomfortable enough that he opted to put his feet on the table. It only made him look more uncomfortable, and he settled on moving across the table and sitting down in Coil's office chair instead.

"Not at full strength, of course," Longinus pointed out, as if it was obvious.

"I still don't see the point," Tattletale answered, "She shoots. You shoot. There's no difference, except for the fact that she shoots stronger on average and you can defend and heal instead."

Longinus sighed and nodded. "Right," he muttered, feeling shut down by literally everyone. Kind of embarrassed, really. The third theory, I'll keep to myself. I don't need anyone for that.

For a while now, Forest looked distinctly uncomfortable, but now - feeling a lull in the strategizing - he stood up from the table, saying, "I'll, uh, go about asking regarding my plants, if that's okay?" He looked around, and seeing that no one indicated otherwise, he awkwardly walked away in the direction of the door.

70

Birdsie

Dec 4, 2019

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Birdsie

Birdsie

Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy

Dec 5, 2019

#4,100

June 10th, 2011

23:26 LT

"Are we ready?" Grue approached the team.

Regent, for once, decided to go all-out, ask his master for forgiveness, and fight seriously - he was wearing kneecap and elbow armor, on top of a light stab-proof vest. No helmet, though. Imp followed suit, with light pads on her limbs, and a vest like Regent's layered on top of her costume. Pretty much everyone was armored, to some extent.

"Does anyone want additional armor?" Longinus asked, looking around the team.

"You can give it to us once the actual fight begins," Tattletale answered, making sure her laser pistol energy cartridge was loaded up. She raised the gun, level with her eye, elbows slightly folded and narrowed her eyesight. With a distant ring, she added, "Don't bother for now."

Imp wasn't with them, but this wasn't due to her power - she'd gone to a shooting range to get a rapid crash course on accurate and proper firearm use from the mercenaries before the operation started. It'd be fucking stupid to waste void rounds because she missed Mannequin's dick, after all.

Bitch, or Rachel as Longinus preferred to call her in his mind, had what appeared to be half a kennel of dogs, alongside an actual puppy wolf, which Tattletale explained was a gift from the Siberian.

"So we're good," Grue concluded with a nod. He raised his hand up to his ear and pressed upon a specific spot. "Radio check."

"I read you loud and clear," Venus answered through, followed by a jaunty reply from Trickster, an 'affirmative' from the mercenary captain, and a 'yes' from Coil, alongside other replies from a bunch of people. "We're on watch for trouble, sir, but we're not picking up anything yet," one of the mercenaries or workers spoke on the radio.

"Keep looking," Coil answered. There was a tension in his voice. An excited, giddy kind of tension - or at least as much as Coil allowed himself to show. For the most part, his voice was as smooth and serpentine as it usually was. "We're in the strike zone. The Nine could attack at any time. Remember the plan, and your positions, and stick to them."

A smorgasbord of 'yessirs' rang out.

Tattletale spoke to them, in a deflated voice. "Whatever happens, we'll be fine."

Longinus looked at Tattletale. He remembered how ill she looked earlier, during Coil's explanation of his plan. Was she sick? Or was it something else? He was worried, and it showed in his body language. Somewhat hesitant to speak up, Longinus raised his voice, "Tats, are you okay?"

"Tats?" Regent laughed out loud, broken out of reading some sort of fashion magazine. "You two dating or something?"

"Less offensive than Tits. Tattletale is too long," Longinus justified himself.

"I'm fine," she barked, her left eye twitching a little in Regent's direction. She looked back at Longinus and in a softer tone, repeated herself, "I'm fine. I'm good. I've been having headaches all day. I really shouldn't strain my power too much or I'll overheat from all of this."

"Can you ever turn your power off?" Longinus asked, cocking his head to the side.

"I can tune it down," she answered, shaking her head somewhat helplessly, "But it takes master-of-zen levels of peace and nothingness for it to actually shut up."

He remembered their conversation regarding how he was the very opposite of Buddhist - and also the murders. "You might laugh at this, and you'll call me hypocritical for saying this, but… daimoku works for me? To achieve that level of calm. Maybe you should try?" Longinus proposed helplessly, shrugging.

"Daimoku?" Regent asked with a hint of curiosity.

"Buddhist mantric meditation," Longinus answered, turning his head Regent's way.

"Is it anything like yoga?" he followed up, cocking his head to the side.

"Absolutely not. Yoga is mostly physical relaxation. Daimoku is about relaxing the mind, and being… 'in tune' with the universe around you."

"Tits would look good in sweatpants, though," Regent said, prompting Tattletale to physically growl at him. He smirked at that. "Admit it. You want to see the image I'm painting - you totally do. Hot blonde supervillainess in tight-fitting–" elbow meets stomach "–ow, take a joke, Tats."

Longinus exhaled with a headshake, choosing to stay quiet. He didn't want to see the image - she was his teammate, and he'd come around to sort of treating her like his boss - but he did find Lisa attractive. It wasn't at the front of his mind, though; he didn't even get a chance to officially break up with Laserdream, because he'd probably be arrested on sight. God, she's gonna know I'm thinking this. Embarrassing. Fuck my life. I'm sorry.

Tattletale, fortunately, had her eyes closed and was too busy rubbing the bridge of her nose with enough fury that her passenger might have felt tremors.

"Can we get serious?" Bitch asked, speaking up for the first time in what felt like forever. "This isn't the time for stupid jokes."

"Alright. I will give you all a personal healing phoenix. It will not heal you until you grab it and push it into yourself. Don't waste it for a… paper cut," Longinus said, bursting one phoenix for each member of the Undersiders. The fiery birds flew up to them and began to hover in the air, before setting down on pieces of furniture and observing their charges. "The more severe the injury, the more the phoenix is gone. One single-use should be enough to… I guess, regrow an arm entirely."

"So you're like our team's pocket medic distributor," Regent said, eyes widening gradually as he said it. Within seconds they were as large as dinnerplates. "Holy shit. Hiring you was probably, like, the best career move ever. You do armor, you do healer pets. What can't you do?" He extended both palms towards Longinus with a bright glint in his eyes.

"Sustain positive relationship and be happy," Longinus stated, deadpan.

"And keep himself from killing Nazis," Bitch said, blunt enough to qualify her statement as a hammer-kind weapon. The Undersiders glanced at her with a degree of discomfort, but she didn't appear to find anything wrong with her statement. She looked back with them with a sort of 'what?' look.

"Exactly!" Longinus pointed an arm in her direction, exclaiming that with an unreasonably cheerful tone. Tattletale seemed to tighten her lips in reaction.

"Watchpoint one?" Coil asked over the radio at that moment, thankfully breaking the awkwardness. "Report."

"It's clear out here, sir. Very little movement on the streets. I can see a single civvie, appears to be walking his daughter or son, approximately three blocks east. Drug dealers on that same street in an alleyway, appear to be talking. No other indication of anyone in the area, sir," the man answered. The barebones movement wasn't surprising, given the curfew, and the fact that this was Brockton goddamn Bay.

"Skywatch, report," Coil ordered smoothly.

"No signs of Legend, Thunderstrike, Grumman, or other fliers, sir. The sky is clear," a rough-cut voice answered Coil's request.

"Keep watch and report every… four minutes. No, three minutes. We're beginning to enter the danger zone. Constant vigilance on all stations," Coil ordered, before quieting down. It was hard not to notice the cold professionalism he maintained during his interactions; it gave the impression of an ex-soldier.

A smattering of 'yes-sirs.'

"Damn," Regent said, beginning to smile. Tattletale looked at him and blinked once, folding her arms with a frown, even as he kept smiling and speaking, "This is weird. Really weird. Haven't felt genuinely giddy about something like this in a while. Leviathan came close, but even then, I wasn't that afraid. I mean, my power is pretty much useless for an Endbringer fight so I just kind of hung out in the back and helped out injured people, but here? No Movers to get us out. If one of us gets stuck, the prospects are dim. And–"

"Alec." Grue's voice cut the tirade in half.

"Yeah?"

"Shut the fuck up. Please."

Regent just smiled at that, and his smile lacked the usual 'amusement' touch. It was actual joy on his face, the kind of joy a child might feel when their dad told them they were getting a new popular video-game for Christmas and the child couldn't wait to play it. Longinus wondered if that was just a mask, or if Regent was actually beginning to go insane now.

Longinus was staring down at the ground, blankly. His fingers shivered sporadically, trying to pace his breathing. It was between an occasional twitch and outright shaking. Yes, he was giddy because the Nine could probably be defeated, but… he was still scared. Scared he'll be hurt again, and again, and again, like every single time. He remembered those times when the Undersiders defeated them, when Coil's men pinned him down - the feeling of not having his foot for a day, and the emotional reactions he coudln't control that came with it. Would it be like that, again? A terrible loss in a fight against evil? It just seemed to be how capes worked, in here. Deaths are pretty rare, unless you fuck up, but there's constant fighting, danger, and other factors.

It was a tough way to live.

"You think we'll manage to kill Jack Slash?" Regent asked after another pause of silence. He looked at Trainwreck, then at Longinus.

"Alec," Grue grumbled.

"What? I'm not allowed to talk? Doesn't that help to deal with stress or whatever?"

"Talk about literally anything else than our impending battle with the Slaughterhouse Nine," Grue proposed. The man sighed, pulling down one hand over his face as he groaned out.

"You're the source of the stress," Longinus shot back at Regent.

"Come on, don't be lame," Regent blew them off. He waved his hands up and down, dismissively. "Coil said everything's going to go alright. He said the plan's flawless and - well, I like to think of myself as more cunning than smart - and I couldn't really poke any big holes in it, so I think he's got some clues."

"Coil's definition of 'flawless' and our definition might not be exactly one-to-one," Tattletale told him, folding her arms.

"Coil's definition of flawless means Jack is dead. Whatever it takes," Longinus answered, lowering his gaze. Longinus frowned, thinking for a brief moment. He began his next statement dead serious in tone, then shrugged and smiled at the last sentence, looking around at the members of the team. "It might mean that everyone involved except him dies. Who knows?"

"I'll go check on Imp," Grue said, looking up at the clock over the doorframe of the small staff room, which read, '23:32.' Rather risky, if Imp hasn't returned yet, but he was her brother and so reserved the right to making stupid choices to protect her. "If the Nine attack in the meantime, we'll meet at the designated spot."

"Be safe," Tattletale answered with a surefooted nod upward, and Grue replied in the same way. Trainwreck inclined his head and watched as Grue left, before turning to look at Regent with a raised eyebrow. Regent looked back at him and raised an amused brow of his own to match.

Deciding it was his last chance to quip, Regent yelled after Grue, "Hey! Careful, in case Purity decides to destress herself by laying off an Untermenschen, eh?"

Longinus' fist clenched, as he exhaled in frustration at Regent's constant and maintained lack of serious-mindedness in the room. He found a chance to take the advantage and change topics; Longinus looked at the team, declaring, "When and if we go face to face with the Nine, I'll fire a blow worthy of Leviathan. Only Crawler and Siberian could survive that."

"Like the one you shot at him just moments before he slammed you into the pavement with enough force that you'd have qualified for a tank shell?" Regent asked. He was already smiling when he started saying it, but upon finishing, it shifted hues into a smile that displayed calm wit; almost smugness.

"I was weaker back then. I am on par with Purity, currently. My maximum output goes above hers, as of right now," Longinus explained, trying to match Regent's smugness with his own. Or rather, to fight back against the invasion of vicious self-satisfaction that Regent was bombarding him with.

"How do you know that?" Regent asked, blinking once, twice, as his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"It's a hunch. I know that my strongest shot back then could make Leviathan flinch. I've gotten literally twice as powerful," Longinus explained, folding his arms over his chest. Desperately trying to press the advantage on Regent and look cool, he stepped backwards and leaned back against the wall.

"Don't forget that your primary role is defense and healing," Trainwreck said, trying not to sound like a dick as he said it.

"Yeah, of course. I won't be going out of my way to pursue them," Longinus reassured the armor-clad tinker, nodding in his direction.

"Anyway. Do you guys wanna..." Regent's hand flicked into and out of his right pocket, as he pulled out a stack of cards. In a swift movement, performed as he withdrew the cards, he splayed them out like a rainbow, taking less than half a second for the entire sequence of motions. "...play?"

"Might as well," Tattletale said, suppressing a smirk from appearing on her lips. "Until the Nine decide to grace us with their presence."

"No way, Tits! You'll cheat with your power!" Regent accused, jabbing a finger in her direction with an amused laugh.

"What's the point of asking if you're going to just exclude her?" Longinus asked, completely bewildered as he raised both arms towards Regent and raised an entertained but inquiring brow. He may have been outraged for Tattletale's sake, more than due to the perceived logical incongruity.

"He's not wrong," Tattletale answered with a smug grin. It dropped as she looked in Longinus' direction, and began to move her left hand to gesticulate at the rest of the people in the room. Trainwreck shook his head almost instantly. "Though, to be fair, I'm pretty sure he was asking you, Trainwreck, and Bitch."

Longinus shrugged. "Right, we might as well play."

"Not into it," Bitch answered. Her voice was gruff as always, but radiated a constant harshness that seemed in tune with her aura tonight. "I don't even know the rules."

"I am not familiar with card games," Trainwreck said, affecting a little bit of junkyard shyness. "But I'm willing to learn."

"Let's play Doubt. I'll explain the rules," Longinus said.

"Dude, Doubt sucks," Regent said, folding his arms with a frown.

"How dare you?" Longinus gasped in mock offense.

After a moment, Regent thought about it, and narrowed his eyebrows. "Actually, I've never played Doubt outside of my brothers and sisters. And most of them are empaths, so there might be some kind of entertainment that I couldn't derive because the assholes kept cheating."

Tattletale snorted, and decided to sit down and use her phone. With that, Regent, Longinus, Trainwreck, and a very reluctant Bitch sat down at the circular wooden table, as Longinus and Regent explained the rules to the other players - with Regent injecting bits of humor into the explanation, mostly by the way of mentioning how Masters are fucky cheaters, and so are Thinkers, and never play with those motherfuckers. Moments later, the first round began, with Longinus laying down the first card, going onto Regent, Trainwreck, and then Bitch.

While they played, Longinus' foot kept tapping underneath the table. He was anxious, reflecting more on Coil's plan, It did look flawless. But that was it. It looked flawless. No plan is flawless. Not even Accord could devise a completely flawless plan. He took a deep breath in, and put two cards down. "Two aces," he called out, exhaling.

Regent looked at him, peering. The boy laid his head down on his shoulder for a moment, 'hmming' and 'huuuhing' quietly, changing shoulders abruptly. After several seconds of doing nothing but this, Regent narrowed his eyes until they were a pair of skeptical slits. "I doubt it," he enunciated.

Longinus smirked. "Ha!" He turned over the cards. Two aces.

Regent's mouth twisted into something between a rueful smile and an angry stare, as he slammed his fist into the table and picked up the cards previously dropped by the other players, adding them to his hand. "Well played, asshole." With that, he smashed a card into the new stack. "One three."

Trainwreck looked at his hand, analyzing it, then he glanced up at them, scanning the group, before he picked out a pair of cards and put them in the middle of the table "Two threes." Regent looked at him appraisingly, but hesitated to call it out. Bitch was too busy staring at her own cards to care.

"I doubt it," Longinus said, looking at him from the side, suspiciously.

Trainwreck's lips became a greasy croissant of a smile, as he took up his cards and overturned them to reveal he wasn't lying.

"Which doesn't really help you that much," Regent said, popping Trainwreck's bubble, "because it's just three cards."

"Whatever," Longinus blurted out, annoyed, as he took the cards into his own hand. He waited for a second, peering into his collection, then swiftly grabbed and dropped four cards into the center. "Four kings."

Regent looked briefly alarmed, before he glanced into his hand and exhaled in relief. Bitch went next, laying down a card. "One king." She looked up at them, with her usual, gruff, perfectly blank expression - it seemed the psychology of a dog really lent itself to a natural poker face.

She must a be a real animal in bed, Longinus mused to himself humorously, wondering if he should doubt it. He opted to shut the fuck up, on both accounts. He shifted some of the cards in his fan, to bring his last king closer into the reach of his right hand. God, I miss sex.

Regent's shaking hand reached out towards the card Bitch dropped into the center of the table, but his other hand reached out and grabbed the first one's wrist, beginning a contest of self-wrestling, which stopped when Trainwreck put a card into the center and caused Regent's heart to restrain itself. "One king."

Longinus smiled widely, as his expression contorted into a face that shouted 'I won.' He had the last king. He'd doubt what Regent would say, because it would be untrue.

Regent looked around at the hands, counting how many cards everyone had left, and compared them to his own. He gulped, then breathed in, weighing risks, before he laid down three cards. "Three kings," he said, voice shaky with the stress of knowing he'd just lost the game.

Only eight kings in the game. Longinus himself dropped four and had one left, while Bitch and Trainwreck both dropped one each. Five cards total on Longinus' side, three on the outside - unless Trainwreck and Bitch both lied, which was statistically unlikely, Regent was lying right now.

A sense of tension filled the table, as everyone except Bitch began to calculate and understand the situation on a deeper level. Even Tattletale was staring. Trainwreck's face formed into an ideal poker face, as he stared into the depth of Regent's soul. Longinus glanced between them, while Bitch stared forward blankly. A drop of cold sweat went across Regent's forehead. Tattletale narrowed her eyelids by a millimeter.

Longinus spoke, "I. Doubt. It."

Regent's expression became dark, triumphant, and truly evil. He began to giggle, blacker than Regent could have possibly laughed. Darker - twisted by the nature of the game. He stood up from the table, beginning to guffaw as he pointed at Longinus. "Check 'em, biiitch! You got pissed on!"

Longinus' eyes widened. He quickly turned the cards over, gasping.

But then he spotted a critical error and his face blanked. "Regent. These are two kings and a queen."

Regent's smile remained on his face for a good moment, as he started saying, "Naah, dude, come on look at… them… What?" Regent stepped back, as Tattletale began to laugh behind him - a giggle stifled by holding her stomach with one hand, and shutting her jaw closed with the other, more than proper laughter.

Out in the shadows, far behind Regent, Imp emerged from the shadows, holding a single king next to her face. "I am the true victor!"

Grue walked in shortly after, looking at her. He slumped with relief. "Damn it, Imp. There you are."

Longinus burst out laughing, holding his belly as his chest weaved up and down. He pointed at Regent with his index finger, tears going down his eyes. "Oh my - hahaha - god, the -" he wheezed, hitting the table once with his fist and causing everything on it to rattle, "look on your - hahahahahahahaha - face!" He breathed in, filling his lungs with sweet oxygen.

Regent's deck bent a little in his angered fist, as he shook it ruefully in Longinus' direction, like an old man whose window was destroyed by a kicked soccerball - the anger was affected, fake; he didn't really seem that bothered by losing, or being cheated. After that, he looked at the smug Imp with a betrayed expression. "Et tu, Aisha?"

"It was too good not to do," Imp justified herself, giggling like a little girl, "You were too busy being all tense and shit to even notice me, with your power."

My God, just fuck already, you two. Longinus was guilty, too. His Stranger detection power didn't go off because he was too busy watching their expressions.

"Yeah, well, if we're gonna play it like th–" Regent was interrupted by a sudden droning, as alarms across the entire base began to go off - a keening, high-pitched, 'waa - waa - waa!' that repeated itself every second. The fluorescent ceiling lights began to go dark moments later, as red lightbulbs emerged and began to spin with red torches in every direction.

"Alert. All stations get ready. We have unwelcome guests on the surface, incoming in this direction, over."

"I'd say finally, but I don't really want this to happen," Longinus spoke, standing up from his chair and stretching a bit.

Regent sighed, and gathered up the cards with a sense of hurry, with Tattletale and Imp helping him out. He straightened out the cards he bent, then put them away in their box, which he tossed to the table. The entire team gathered around it, with Bitch not having even bothered to stand up since the game ended a few seconds ago.

"Okay, guys," Grue said, hands on his waist as he looked around. "Are we ready to do this, or what?"

"Hell yeah," Imp said, raising her tinker pistol - with the safety on, thankfully - and pew-pow'ing the air.

"Did they teach you, trigger discipline?" Longinus asked, worriedly looking at the barrel of the gun, pointed dangerously close to his general vicinity.

"Dude, I've got this," she said, hooking her index finger around the circle of the trigger, spinning it around in her hand. She wasn't concerned in the slightest, until the gun slipped out of her grasp. She quickly stumbled to catch it in midair, juggling it with her hands for a moment, before she managed to grasp it with both of them. She looked up, grinning embarrassedly. "Seriously - that was calculated."

Regent snorted briefly at her amusing faux pas, then looked around at the rest of the Undersiders. Without hesitation nor shame, he asked, "Are we gonna do that thing where we put our hands together in the middle of the table like total dorks? It feels like this whole thing is building up to that."

"Do you actually want to do that?" Trainwreck asked, cocking his head to the side with an elevated eyebrow. For a moment, he was looking only at Regent, until he decided to look around the table and noticed the raised eyebrows from the remainder of the team. "I'm not against it, is all I'm saying."

"Fuck it," Tattletale exclaimed, extending her hand to the middle whilst rolling her eyes. "Let's kick the murderhobos in the dick."

Longinus put a hand on top of hers. "We're the fucking Undersiders. Let's kick their underside back to kingdom come," he stated, with great confidence.

"No one's gonna mess with us!" Imp said, adding her hand to the stack. The way she said 'us' could have been interpreted as 'ass.'

Trainwreck added his armor-clad fist, struggling to come up with something inspirational, until he settled on just screaming out, "Hell yeah!"

Grue was next to add his hand, saying, "Let's just hope we don't get killed," like a total downer.

Bitch looked at them, and everyone else looked at Bitch. Regent nodded his head at her. "Come ooon, it's fun. It's a social thingy. You need one of those." Bitch's eye twitched for the briefest moment. She stood up, and added her scratch-covered, dog-food-smelling hand on top of the pile.

"Hip-hip-hooray!" Imp declared, beginning to push, and prompting everyone else to break away upwards, with a smattering of sighs, amused declarations, and eye-rolls.

"You guys about done?" Trickster asked near the entrance to the room, accompanied by Ballistic at the side. Both of them looked battle-ready, and somewhat haggard. Trickster crushed the cigarette in his hand, crumpling it, then tossed it into the nearby metal bin. "We should get ready. The Nine will be on the first floor in two, three minutes."

"Trickster," Longinus said, turning towards him. He was curious about this for most of the evening, but couldn't find a chance to ask earlier. Longinus allowed his mouth to curve into a cheeky smile. "Care to tell us what the important item Coil is protecting is?" he asked, inflicting some 'you know some shit, and you know I also know some shit' in his tone.

Trickster's expression became conflicted, as he began to think about how to explain this. He raised a perfunctory finger into the air, as he looked to the side. And then he abruptly shook his head. "No." He stared Longinus down with a blank, dead gaze, changing which eye he was looking at every two seconds.

"Why?" Longinus asked, with a tone of innocence, "Will it mean that you'll get killed on sight?"

"It's a private secret," Trickster answered, with some embitterment at the second statement, frowning and glancing at Tattletale. She grinned stupidly as he just confirmed to her power whatever the fuck the conversation topic was - which she still hadn't figured out - but was still clearly smug about.

"A weapon, maybe?" Longinus asked, folding his arms to his chest.

"Your mom, maybe," Ballistic answered plainly, folding his arms.

"She's not on this Earth," Longinus shot back blankly.

"My condolences," Trickster said, with a bite of aggression to it. "Unless there's anything else you'd like to shove your prying nose into, we'll be taking our leave."

It's a weapon. Or I'unno, a weaponized, brainwashed, drugged-up, world-ending-level parahuman. I'm sure of it.

The Travelers left at that, and most of the team looked at Longinus with confusion and surprise. Except for Regent and Bitch who didn't care, and Tattletale who was processing something in her head.

"Any idea what Coil is hiding?" Longinus asked, looking at Tattletale.

"Nope," she answered, and her mouth began to shift. The changes were subtle. One corner of the lips going up a millimeter, its mirror following moments later. In seconds, her expression had grown into an outright smile, and then, that smile sunk into a dark, vulpine grin. "But I've got some ideas."

"Scratch everything about it being an item. It's a parahuman. It's Crawler's candidate. Powerful enough to harm him significantly, which means that parahuman could kill every single one of us with ease," Longinus explained his own reasoning, as he built layers of construct armor on his most exposed areas.

"Let's go after them real quick," Tattletale said, without explaining herself. As she strode out of the room, she maintained the grin on her face. Grue looked at Regent, and Regent smiled at him and shrugged with his hands upraised, in a 'dude, I don't know,' way. The Undersiders followed after her, stepping out into the hallway, where Ballistic and Trickster were walking.

"Hey," Tattletale called out to them.

Trickster's face became sour, even as he turned to face her with a bright grin. The sourness and grin mixed together to create something that was best described as an, 'If you speak one more word I will fucking strangle you,' smile, set apart from other smiles of its kind by the fact his eye wasn't twitching. His fingers, however, were. "Yes?"

"Who's in the vault?" she asked, straightforward.

Trickster's face straightened out, becoming confused. Profoundly confused. He cupped his lips into a little trumpet, his eyes widening into the size of coins. He looked left and right, as if trying to find the answer. "Why, I have no idea what you mean. Can you be more specific?"

"No, but he can," Tattletale said. Instead of pointing, she merely moved her eyes to look to where Longinus would have been if he wasn't a meter behind her.

"An immensely powerful parahuman, strong enough to warrant Leviathan's and Crawler's attention," Longinus explained with a cold tone, putting a hand on his hip.

"That's a pretty interesting delusion," Trickster answered positively, his tone affecting excessive politeness, nodding. He sounded like he was a doctor trying to talk down a patient in an insane asylum from their most recent conspiracy theory. "An Endbringer, targeting something that Coil has. Sure."

"Thing is, both of our Thinker powers agree on this," Longinus admitted, shooting a glance at Tattletale. "And they've proven time and time again to be infallible."

"Just like it proved infallible when you dashed into Grue's smoke and was subsequently beaten up using blunt instruments," Trickster shot back, defiant of the accusations, and unbothered by the admission. "Thinker powers can err, I think you'll both find. I've learned enough to know that much."

Longinus shrugged and then shook his head. "Coil said that the plan depends on cooperation. You're withdrawing important information, thus compromising the plan by being uncooperative."

"I'm not," Trickster answered with a shrug. "I'm under no real obligation to reveal this to you."

Longinus smirked under his helmet. Oh, how obvious it is that you're hiding something?

Tattletale didn't say anything for a moment. Her smugness didn't disappear, as much as it hid itself beneath a contemplative expression. She tapped a finger against her chin, scanning Ballistic, and then Trickster. Both of them were hiding their expressions, keeping their faces flushed with cold.

"What?" Trickster asked finally, after a moment of mutual staring. "We don't have the time for this."

Tattletale bit her lip. Her suspiciously contemplative, and moderately smug expression didn't disappear, even as she nodded in complete agreement. "You're right. Let's go begin stage one of the defense."

Trickster tipped his hat to the Undersiders, but the movement was snappy. Offended, bitter. Like a showman angered by the behavior of his rough audience, and their hateful reviews. With that, he turned, coat flailing behind him as he and Ballistic walked away in the direction of the stairs.

Tattletale looked at the team, and said, "You guys go get Bitch's dogs from the kennel. I'll go around real fast, ask some key people some key questions."

"Alright," Grue answered, nodding. The team turned and began to walk.

"Can I come with you?" Longinus asked. Aside from actual curiosity, Tattletale was the most defenseless one in the team. It'd be a cliche, almost - and one in really poor taste - if they split up only to find she'd been taken hostage by a vent-crawling Mannequin five minutes later.

"Nah, that'd spoil the fun," she said, waving him off with a grin. "Go with the team. I'll tell you what I figured out later."

"Copy that, boss," Longinus said with a playful salute, nodding.

She saluted back with a vulpine grin, then turned around on her heel and marched down the hall.