Leaf
Chapter Fifteen
Everything wanted to explode. Bakuda could feel that drive in everything she touched, the desire to break down, to break out, to break free. Bakuda herself had done all three that fateful night not so long ago. It had hurt, a lot, knowing that no matter how hard she worked she couldn't excel or even keep up while following other people's rules. Then she saw their rules for the garbage they were, and she hadn't had a bad day since.
She peered through a microscope at her latest project and thought about Panacea. How wretched could you get? As badly as Bakuda had underestimated the girl, that was nothing compared to the degree to which she had underestimated herself. She'd been holding herself back even as her power wanted to break free.
Bakuda wondered how long Panacea could keep up that restraint and how gloriously she would explode when she finally let loose. She was half tempted to give the girl a pat on the head, send her home, and watch the fireworks from a safe distance. But she couldn't wait that long. She had a deadline to keep.
A knock on her door interrupted her thoughts. She sealed her bomb in an airtight vault and checked her mask. It was the power of life and death, and life was a bastard to control. Number three-one-nine stood on the other side of the door. She couldn't remember the face attached to it, but three-one-nine warped a victim's personal gravity, causing him to implode when triggered. A bit boring, but very little mess.
"Come in," she said, her modified voice sounding distant and alien to her own ears.
A middle aged man with a round face poked his head in. "Um, ma'am? I have a message for you." He held up a scrap of paper. "It's a phone number with the word 'parley' on it. I don't know who it was that gave it to me, but one of them carried a cloud of black smoke with him, and they all rode monsters." He cleared his throat and added, "One of them grabbed my head with its mouth."
The Undersiders. It sounded like Grue and Bitch's dogs. Only career criminals and cape geeks could recognize more villains than Lung and Kaiser, and most of her new recruits were neither.
"Leave the note and go."
"Yes ma'am."
"And don't call me ma'am," she added, but he was already gone. Honestly, she was nineteen years old. She didn't need people twice her age calling her ma'am.
Parley. What could the Undersiders want to parley with her about? Did they know about Leaf somehow? She hadn't announced that acquisition like she had with Panacea, but it was possible. And if they didn't ...
She dialed the number, and it was answered on the first ring.
"Bakuda." The voice was female. Tattletale, most likely. Bitch had a reputation for being more gruff.
"The one and only. What do you want?"
"To congratulate you, first of all, on becoming the leader of the largest gang in the city. I was kind of hoping for the Azn Bad Boys to split up into splinter groups with better names, but color me disappointed. Secondly, we've been stepping on each other's toes in the worst ways, and I'd like to organize a parley meeting to clear that up."
"A parley meeting." Her mental image had a lot of pirates in it, but she had a feeling Tattletale meant something else.
"Yeah. Like an Endbringer Truce meeting, but less formal. There's nothing wrong with a little healthy competition, but we're both losing more than we're gaining. We've been minding our own business since we started, but when Lung decided to murder us last week, we didn't get much and he lost nearly everything. Just last night, we could have cooperated with our jail break missions or we could have just ignored each other. Instead, you lost your chance at freeing Lung, and we ... we lost something too."
Oh. So they didn't know she had her. Interesting.
"So in the interest of not being idiots, we should meet up face to face to iron out the details of our peaceful coexistence. Neutral territory is traditional, but I'd settle for, say, an empty lot on Forty-fourth and Pine? You can't miss it."
That was ABB territory, but half the city was ABB territory. Bakuda kept most of her recruits in a single city block until they were hardened or broken enough to be trusted, and that address was about a five minute drive away from that.
But do rival villains really meet face to face like this? Lung hadn't since she had joined—that she knew of—though she had tended to stay in her workshop more than focus on the management of the gang until recently. It seemed easier to pretend to meet, blow them to smithereens, and then go home instead of talking to them.
Much easier.
"I'll be there in ten minutes."
WWW
"And then I found out that not only was he not dead, but his whole body was made outta bugs!" Lift said. "So there I was in an alley with two dead capes in the middle of a storm with this nightmare thing, and what does he do? He starts talkin' philosophy at me!"
A Case 53, probably, or maybe a Changer. Not one that Amy had heard of, though honestly she wasn't following the story very closely. It was likely made up to entertain the guards, though why Leaf wanted to entertain them was beyond her.
Her gaze drifted up to the ceiling—and she saw a face looking back at her. No, not a face, a weed that only looked like a—
"Excuse me," the weed said. "Please do not be alarmed."
"Ah!"
"I know!" Leaf said. "I mean, who does that? And there are all these pieces missing from his body as all these bugs are reforming him, and he won't shut up!"
One of the guards, the man with the crowbar, glanced up at the ceiling, but he didn't seem to notice anything.
"They shouldn't be able to see me," the thing said. It grew, spreading vines down the wall. Its face stayed in place, however, and it grew new faces in its place, forming a sequence of expressions like a flipbook. Quartz-like crystals grew alongside the creature's leaves as it reached the floor. "And I won't hurt you. I honestly can't. I exist only slightly in the Physical Realm, and I really don't have the constitution for violence anyway. But Mistress Lift is always dragging me from one thing to another, and I did technically agree to this, so ..."
Amy glanced over toward Leaf, but if the girl noticed the creature, she gave no sign. Were they connected? She didn't remember anyone mentioning invisible talking plants among Leaf's abilities, but the girl's cape name implied something botanical.
The creature cleared its throat. It did not have a throat. It cleared it anyway. "We need to talk. There is a limit to how long even Mistress Lift can extend her story, so we should use what time we have. If you could ... face away from your captors, but in a way that won't arouse suspicion? That would be best, I think."
I'm going insane, she decided. I'm going insane, and I'm hallucinating a talking plant suffering from anxiety.
A better liar would have yawned and stretched, but Amy just curled up on the floor and faced the wall. Behind her, Leaf and the ABB members continued talking like old friends instead of captors and captives.
"Was this here?" one of them said. "Because I know a guy who got swarmed by bugs just last night. Looked like he slammed his head into a hornet's nest."
The plant creature flowed across the wall until it stopped right in front of her face. "That should be good enough," it said. "My name is Wyndle, and I know that you are Panacea. If you have any plan of escape, I can pass it on to Lift. Um, you do have a plan, don't you? One that doesn't involve exploding heads or, or being forever frozen in time?"
Amy stared at him, feeling strangely numb to the entire situation. "I don't even know what's real anymore."
"Oh. Well, I suppose that is to be expected. I'm not certain I count as real myself, going by the admittedly limited definition currently in fashion. But I am a friend, a category of greater pertinence considering your current predicament."
She blinked. "What?"
"I'm sorry, I don't get out very much, and I don't think I've spoken to a human besides Mistress Lift since that Alethi queen. So, no plan then? You mentioned being able to make a lunchbox tree. Could you make the lunchbox without the tree? Or perhaps make the tree small enough to go unnoticed? What I'm really asking for is food, if your powers allow you to produce some."
Amy blinked. "You're ... hungry?"
"No, no, for Mistress Lift. Her powers require food, and if she had some, she might be able to devise an escape for the both of you."
Oh. Well, that made about as much sense as anything else. "What are her powers?" she asked. "They said something about healing and a sword?"
"Ah. Well ..." Wyndle began to talk, using terms that Amy had never heard of before but sounded technical. Abrasion. Progression. Growth and Regrowth. Investiture. Realmatic Theory. Even if her brain hadn't been fried from stress, lack of sleep, and nonconsensual brain surgery, half of it would have still gone over her head. But she understood the gist of it. She hoped.
And she began to form a plan.
WWW
Grue's knuckles twinged beneath his black leather gloves as he crouched behind an air conditioning vent. There was something romantic about what people expected from cape fights, something childish and silly that wasn't going to happen here. No more games. No more theater. Just a piece of garbage that had hurt someone he cared about, a piece of garbage that he was going to beat into the ground until he had their blood on his fists and they were begging him to stop.
It was what he was used to.
He resisted looking up at a nearby rooftop where Vista was hiding. Everything depended on her. All it would take was Oni Lee scouting ahead and stumbling across her and things could go badly very quickly. And even if they didn't spot her, there were a hundred other ways this could blow up in their faces.
"Can she handle the pressure?" he whispered.
Tattletale raised an eyebrow beside him. "You're asking me? I'm running on fumes right now. The only thing my powers are giving me is a killer headache and a desire for a bullet between the eyes."
Tattletale always seemed confident, in control, but looking at her now he could see cracks in her facade. The way her eyes looked sluggish, her voice sounded strained. Part of him had wanted to leave her back in the loft, but they needed all the help they could get and she insisted on coming. "Forget your powers then. What do you think?"
She winced and closed her eyes. "She's a kid. She's not afraid of dying nearly as much as she should be." She smiled at him. "Or maybe I'm mixing her up with someone else."
Grue grit his teeth behind his mask and turned to the others. "You okay back there?"
Regent twirled his scepter in his hand, knowing how much it irritated him. If he screwed up the mission by tasering himself ... "Can't complain. I know I should be worried, but I kind of feel like if this goes south, I can just reload an old save. Is that weird?"
"Not really." Not for you. "Bitch?"
"Bored to death waiting," she growled. "Just wish they'd get here already so we can get on with this."
You and me both. Rachel didn't deal well with friends, at least not human ones, but she found fighting as cathartic as he did.
A rumble rose in the distance. Car engines, a lot of them by the sound of it.
"Three guesses who that could be," Regent said.
Grue took a deep breath. "Stay focused. We only get one shot." He scanned the skyline, but if Oni Lee was there—and he knew he was—then he wasn't standing anywhere obvious.
The location they had chosen looked like an empty lot surrounded by dilapidated buildings on three sides, with the fourth opening out onto the street. It was a wide space and mostly flat, with only some vents and exposed pipes and a surface that looked weathered and dirty from years of urban neglect. At the very back of the lot, where the Undersiders were huddled, Grue was already using his power to subtly mask an open doorway leading into one of the adjacent buildings. No matter how this went, that would be their escape route.
The lot they were in wouldn't look any different from any of the hundreds of undeveloped or abandoned lots in Brockton Bay, not in the predawn gloom. At least, that was what he was hoping.
The rumbling grew louder. He saw the headlights first, heralding the arrival of the vehicles until they stormed into view. There were over a dozen cars in the convoy, old and dented but in working order. A few parked out in the street, but most of them drove right into the lot to stick closer together. That was human nature. Even though the ABB outnumbered them twenty to one, none of them wanted to be the one guy that got picked off first if things went south.
In the middle of the group one of them was one wearing a gas mask with a grenade launcher slung over her shoulder. Bakuda, he assumed. He had never seen her before, not even on the news, but she was the only one in costume.
"Any chance she sent a decoy?" he whispered. It seemed the smart thing to do, to stay safe in her base while other people risked their lives. The other gang members gave her more than a respectful distance, but that didn't prove anything by itself.
Tattletale shrugged. "Talk to her and find out." Grue gave her a sharp look that he knew she couldn't see, but the rest of his body language got the message across. "What? I am ... ninety percent sure she won't blow us up without taunting us first."
Ninety percent? He took a glance and saw Bakuda standing up in her Jeep, one foot on the dashboard. She was reaching for what looked like a megaphone. Yeah, she'd taunt them before killing them. Probably.
Grue let more of his power flow out of him, blackening everything below his waist, and stepped out of cover. Tattletale and Regent were right behind him, and Bitch took the rear.
"Bakuda!" he shouted. In the enclosed lot his voice seemed to echo louder than normal. "Our demands are simple. You leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone."
"Really?" Bakuda's voice was mechanical and monotone, amplified by the megaphone. "My demands are simple, too. Die." She swung her grenade launcher toward them, but her arm spasmed at the last moment, throwing off her aim. The grenade hit the next building over and exploded—then exploded backwards, sucking all nearby debris into a vortex before falling to the ground as a compressed lump.
Grue threw up a wall of darkness as the ABB opened fire. He glanced at Tattletale as they dove back behind the air conditioning vents.
"So, her or a decoy?"
"Oh. Yeah, that's her." She grinned. "I'm ninety percent sure of it."
He pushed his power outward, filling the lot with darkness and engulfing the ABB entirely. He ducked his head to make himself as small a target as possible as they booked it for the open door. "Now!"
Looking over his shoulder, he watched as the ''abandoned lot'' sprang upwards into the building that it had been all along. He could hear the panicked screams of gang members, both from those still on the street separated from the bulk of their forces, and from those trapped on the roof of a condemned apartment complex.
A few moments later the Undersiders broke into an alley, where Bitch's dogs were already waiting for them, fully grown. Vista was there too, scrambling down the side of a warped and slanted building, her hood up and an old rag wrapped around the lower half of her face. Grue mounted the nearest dog and grabbed Vista by the arm, pulling her up in front of him.
"It worked!" she said. "I can't believe it!"
He looked down at her. "What?"
"I mean, I was pretty sure it would. But, like, if someone was standing half on the roof and half off, it would have blocked everything." She ducked her head sheepishly, as though worried that he, a villain allied with her only through necessity, might think less of her. "At least the backup plan was a sure bet, no matter what happened."
The backup plan. Squeeze the buildings together like bricks in a wall so no car could drive through. It would slow the ABB down, but they needed more than to just delay them. They needed shock and awe.
So when they were choosing the meeting ground they'd found a crumbling tenement building that had been marked for demolition, and Vista had flattened the whole thing down to the level of the sidewalk to make it look like an empty lot. Anything Vista warped would return to normal after a few minutes in her absence, but the building that she had already reverted to normal with people trapped on top of it? That would stay in place forever.
The dogs ran as fast as they could, no longer bothering with stealth. The roar of engines warned him that the few ABB members they'd missed had started following them. Four vehicles, and there was no telling how many of the people riding shotgun were armed.
"Vista." He blanketed the street with his power. "You're up again."
"On it," she said, and the road rippled beneath the thin layer of darkness. With his power obscuring things, the drivers didn't notice the change until it was too late. Uneven terrain was no problem for the dogs, but when the cars hit the unnatural bumps at fifty miles per hour, tires screeched and the road tore through their suspension like a wrecking ball through glass.
Even after Vista's power wore off, those cars wouldn't be going anywhere. "Good job," he said.
"I was saving that one for Squealer," she replied, her voice filled with pride, sounding nothing like the frightened wretch of a girl they had encountered half an hour earlier. "But this one? This is for everyone." She reached out with her hand and the empty road in front of them telescoped in on itself like an accordion, entire city blocks passing by them as though they were only a few yards wide.
For the first time in days Grue allowed himself to feel triumph. With Vista's help they'd make it to the ABB's headquarters before Bakuda and be out with time to spare. It wouldn't even be close.
WWW
Bakuda looked over the edge of the building, holding back the sense of vertigo. Where the hell had that come from? The Undersiders couldn't grow buildings out of nothing! That was ... was that Vista's power?
She might not have recognized it if she hadn't spent days studying the girl's power for some of her bombs, but there it was, space warping up close and personal. Bakuda hadn't risen with the building, the streets were just further away.
Around her, her soldiers had begun to panic as the darkness dissipated and shock settled in. She made one of them explode, shutting up the rest.
"Get a grip!" she shouted. "That was a cute trick they played, but don't forget who's in charge here!" Control. A leader needed to be in control. The rank and file needed to fear their leader more than they feared the enemy. "See that door? Go through it and see if the stairs work." There was nothing like a firm word and a violent murder to restore order. They would have to leave the cars behind, which would slow them down ... but there were some still on the street, weren't there?
She glanced down again, assuring herself that Vista couldn't tip the building over and drop her to her death. She was mostly sure the kid's powers didn't work that way.
The soldiers who'd been left at ground level were already getting in their cars and speeding off after the Undersiders. Good. At least some people didn't need to be ordered to tie their own shoes.
But right as her men were catching up to the Undersiders, their cars broke down, brown-grey smoke mixing with Grue's black clouds.
Bakuda shook her head in frustration. If you wanted a thing done right, sometimes you had to do it yourself. She hefted her grenade launcher onto her shoulder and took aim. It was a moving target and pretty far away, but what she lacked in accuracy she could make up for with sheer blast radius. With the dogs in her scope she pulled the trigger.
The projectile arced through the air, but before it could land the air itself warped, along with the grenade's trajectory. Bakuda watched as the wrong street exploded.
An irritating brat with an aggravating power. A pleasant mental image played in Bakuda's mind of her using her Vista bomb on the girl who had inspired the design, but that would have to wait. She had more important things to worry about.
If Vista had joined forces with the Undersiders, who else was involved? The Wards, naturally. The Protectorate too. After all, Bakuda had attacked the entire city. If she had managed to free Lung, then she'd be able to stand against the city's heroes easily, but without him ...
She gritted her teeth and reached for one of her matter displacement bombs. This one was special, designed as a last resort in case she needed to escape a dangerous situation. Her soldiers panicked as she held the bomb to her chest, but she didn't owe them an explanation.
The flash of light nearly blinded her through her closed eyes, but when she blinked she was back in her workshop. It had taken a chunk of the rooftop with her, and what looked like an arm from one of the men who'd been standing too close. That last bit was unexpected, and was making a mess. Could it be used offensively to ...
Well, she'd go down that rabbit hole later. Now she had work to do.
How long would it be before the Protectorate came knocking on her door? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Even with half her manpower up on that rooftop she still had numbers on her side, but those numbers amounted to a lot of trash. She'd rally them anyway, of course. Hopefully the heroes would waste time arresting the lot of them, buying her more time.
Because she didn't need them anymore. She didn't need Lung anymore. All she needed was her masterpiece, and she would become everything they feared.
She had declared war on the city the night before. She recognized that, and they did too. But she was more motivated than ever now, and with just a little more time to work, the city wouldn't be her enemy. It would be her hostage.
WWW
"So then he winks at me," Lift said, "and jumps into the thing's starvin' mouth!"
"So he died?" Crowbar said. All four guards were focused on her, which was the whole point. She usually worked hard to avoid notice, but she could be the center of attention when she wanted to be. All it took was a good story, and Lift had learned from the best.
It helped that the guards were bored out of their minds and the only other person there was staring at the wall, pretending to be asleep.
"Ha! No," she said. "The greatshell must've pooped 'im out or something, 'cause a few years later I—"
"Oh, shut up already!" Amy snapped, sitting up. She threw a handful of debris at her. Hopefully the guards wouldn't notice the seeds mixed in with them. "These people aren't our friends, they're our jailers, and with one word from their boss they'd be our executioners!"
Even though Lift knew she was faking everything, the words still stung. That was the point, and the guards all turned from her to glare at Amy. Wyndle circled around one of the seeds eagerly.
"This one, Mistress. Green for food, black for escape."
She grabbed the green seed between her toes and turned away from everyone as though she were sulking. Then as Amy became the center of attention, Lift held the seed up to her mouth and breathed.
She didn't have much awesomeness left. She had eaten everything that she could get her hands on, but she wasn't in control anymore and she couldn't eat whenever she wanted to. She was trapped, a Shardblade in her head ready to trap her as herself forever.
Set me free, little seed, she thought as the faintest wisp of light escaped her lips, and the seed began to sprout.
Just a stem, just a stubby leaf, but it was bigger than it had been. Lift nibbled at it, and it was bland and mushy, but it was food. It felt more substantial than it should have in her stomach, and a moment later she felt some more awesomeness inside of her, and she breathed out again. Again it grew, longer, thicker, more, and again she ate it down to its base.
"It's working!" Wyndle said. "The Investiture required to grow the plant is less than the Investiture gained by eating it. Do you know what this means?"
She didn't and she didn't care. She was hungry, and she was eating.
"It means that you don't metabolize Stormlight, you metabolize a perpendicularity! I wouldn't have thought it possible if I hadn't seen the Blackthorn do it, but clearly you can do it too! Not on the same scale, but ..."
Lift patted him on his vine face and kept on eating her plant. It tasted like freedom. It tasted like hope.
"Hey!" one of the guards said a few moments later. Baseball Bat, by the sound of his voice. "What's that you got there? Are you eating something?"
Uh-oh. "It's nothing important," Amy said. "She's a kid. Kids always have candy."
Storms. Nothing made people want to look at something like telling them not to look at it. Baseball Bat stood up and came closer. "Show me," he ordered.
Lift shoved the remainder in her mouth and turned around, her cheeks bulging with the green mush. "Oh oo aht?"
He glared at her, but none of them had their fingers on the devices they could use to trigger her bomb. They wouldn't use those unless she forced them to. "Spit it out."
She chewed rapidly and shook her head. "Mm-mm."
She swallowed, filling her stomach, filling her soul. Her awesomeness had returned in full.
"Look, when I tell you to do something, you have to do it. It's nothing personal, kid, but—"
On the floor in front of her were the black seeds Amy had made. Lift touched one with her toe and poured a load of awesomeness into it all at once, and it exploded into the shape of a tree. Black like the obsidian trees of Shadesmar, as thin as a skeleton, its roots prying into the cracks in the concrete floor, but other than that it was like any tree. And like any tree, it grew toward the light, branches spearing the ceiling and plunging the room into darkness.
That made the bomb-triggering fabrials that much easier to see. Baseball Bat moved to pull his out of his pocket, but she got her hands on it first and slicked it until it fell to pieces. After slicking his shoes too, there were only three left to go.
Lift saw Amy run at the guard on her side of the room, so she focused on Crowbar and Knife. Crowbar swung his weapon at her, missing even though she was the only thing he could see in the darkness. He swung again, and she realized something.
He's stallin' me.
Behind him, Knife stood against the wall, his face illuminated by the glow of his fabrial. How long did it take for those things to work? Lift didn't know, and she wasn't going to wait to find out. She brushed against one of the roots that carpeted the floor and directed it toward him. Most trees had a bit of stubbornness to them, and Lift had to push them around if she wanted them to do anything special, but not this one. It seemed happy to do anything Lift imagined for it, and she visualized it growing a branch at Knife and sprouting a bushel of leaves in his face.
Knife tried to back away, but he was pinned to the wall. Lift grabbed onto the branch with slick hands and slid down toward him, kicking his fabrial out of his hand and slicking it to pieces.
"Mistress!" Wyndle shouted.
Lift ducked under Crowbar's attack and slipped a hand into his pocket, slicking something fabrial-shaped. "Yeah?" She grew a root up his ankle and around his legs so he couldn't cause more trouble.
"Over here!" Wyndle was circling around Baseball Bat, who had managed to get his hands on a second fabrial. Lift raced across the room and jumped on it, then tangled him up in roots too.
And just like that, it was all over. Lift's three guards were trapped in a tree, and Amy had managed to knock out hers and left her lying asleep on the floor. The older girl was staring at the scene, breathing heavily.
"I ... I don't usually do this sort of thing," she said. "And when I do ... it usually doesn't work out this well." She forced a smile. "But it worked. We're not dead."
Lift grinned back at her. "Yeah! We're free!" And because she was no longer starving, she released some more of her awesomeness and grew her hair back. It had been bothering her for a while ever since she had woken up and found it burnt short from when she had kicked fire in the face, but she hadn't had enough to waste on it until now.
Amy put her hand on each of the conscious guards, putting them to sleep. "Not quite," she said. "Bakuda can still blow us up whenever she wants to, and if we get out of range the bombs will go off on their own." She looked around on the floor. "Hey, could you stand over here? I can't see a damn thing, but if I could get my hands on one of their phones I could call for help. I knocked hers out of her hand, but it should be somewhere around ..."
"Oh, I slicked it," Lift said. She shrugged. "Baseball Bat was reaching for it, so ... You know how to work 'em?"
"Work what, a phone? I think they just had apps to trigger the bombs, or maybe they could just do it by calling a number." She grimaced. "Which means that we could be killed at any moment from a misdial or a telemarketer. That would be a fine way to go."
"Same as them," Lift said, looking down at the former guards. Now they were either sleeping or struggling against the vines, but everyone in the room was still trapped. Random chance could kill them, and Bakuda's whims were just as bad. Lift took risks, stupid risks that Wyndle whined about, but if something happened to her she had always been able to say, "This is me. I made this happen."
Bakuda took that away from her. She took that away from everyone, and had killed so many people just to make a dumb point.
"I guess," Amy said. "I try not to think about it too much. But I'm pretty sure these ones were criminals long before Bakuda showed up."
"So am I."
Amy rolled her eyes. "I mean real criminals."
"I am a real criminal," Lift said. "I stole Lung's dinner ... three? Three times so far. And I kicked him in the face."
"Of course you did. But come on. We're wasting time here. Maybe we could, I don't know, sneak out and ambush another group of guards in another room? If I could get my hands on a phone I could call for help, tell all the heroes in the city where Bakuda is hiding, and save everyone. After I find out where we are."
Save everyone. Lift always felt a disconnect when people talked about saving everyone. Saving the world. Everyone didn't have a name. Everyone didn't have a face. The people on the floor around her did.
"I got another idea," Lift said. "It's probably a waste of time. Probably really stupid."
Amy raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"
Lift glanced down at the people around her. "How good are you with heads?"
WWW
Lift knelt down and breathed on the corpse, regrowing the person's head.
"That could have gone better," Amy muttered.
The first time the older girl had seen this part of Lift's powers in action, she had freaked out. No, that wasn't quite right. She had freaked out when the man's head exploded and had shouted stuff like, "Oh my God, oh my God, I've killed him!" The first time she had watched Lift fix her mistake she had stared like an idiot. Four times in, she seemed only slightly dazed as she simply touched the man to make sure that he would remain in a peaceful slumber.
Lift glared at her. "You're really bad at this."
Amy rolled her eyes. "Thanks. Really appreciate the encouragement. Really helpful."
"No, I mean it. You blew up number four even faster than the first one."
"Hey, I never said I was a bomb technician! Hell, I never said I was a brain surgeon! I never said I could do any of this, so don't get on my case when I can't do impossible things just to make your life easier!"
Lift took a bite of her vegetable stalk and slumped against the wall, chewing angrily. Amy had made her a new one, but it tasted as bad as the first one had. Like a mix between celery and asparagus. Made her sick. She took another bite and wanted to cry.
"Leaf?" Amy said. "I ... aw, crap. Look, I didn't mean to ..." She came over and sat down next to her. "I'm really not the best person for this sort of thing. I'm not even a real hero, I'm just a healer, and I got my bedside manner from watching sassy medical dramas. There's this one show where ... never mind. What I'm saying is that if Glory Girl were here, or Laserdream, or basically anyone else, they'd say something really brave and encouraging, and you'd feel okay because you'd know that no matter how bad things look, you're going to be alright. But instead you've got me, so if you could, I don't know, bottle up your issues for another twenty minutes? By then we'll be either out of here or dead—I mean out of here, so ... yeah."
Lift snorted despite herself. She had been so close, but freedom was still dangling just out of reach. "You're really bad at this."
"Like I said. Sassy medical dramas. The main character of my favorite show's a complete asshole. But it was a longshot anyway, and we can still find a way to call for help."
"No, I mean ... if you could get their bombs out, you could get my bomb out. Then I could get yours out, or at least heal you after it goes off, and we could just walk outta here. It'd be like stealin' her dinner. Ol' Splatterface would come down here lookin' for us, and she'd be like, 'Hey! Where'd those two girls go? I was gonna eat 'em!' And we'd be wherever we wanted to be, eating pancakes or something weird and awesome that Knowitall made."
Amy stared at her. "That's it? You wanted to pull a prank on Bakuda? Also, I'm pretty sure she doesn't eat people."
Lift shrugged. "It's my thing."
"Well. My thing is getting rescued when I'm way in over my head. And I know being the damsel in distress isn't exactly an empowering role, but ... but it means that someone cares enough to come save me, and ... and that's not something everyone gets."
Someone cares enough to come save me. That got her thinking about her first fight with Lung when Oni Lee had taken her legs. And when Brian and Lisa had been arrested, Lift had helped save them both.
Lift rubbed her arm on her sleeve and looked up. "Do they always come?"
She nodded. "Always. One phone call, and my sister will come crashing through the wall to punch Bakuda in the face. Might even break her neck. That's what happened to the last villain that went after me. It might even stick this time." She smiled wistfully for a moment. "And who knows? Maybe your friends—they're capes too, right? Maybe they'll show up too."
Lift smiled at the thought. Sure they had taken Lung by surprise last week when she had needed help, but now? She tried to imagine the four of them charging down Bakuda's army like they were storming a fortress, and shook her head.
"Yeah, but they ain't coming. They're way too smart for that."
WWW
"This is by far the dumbest thing we've ever done."
"I don't know," Vista shouted over the sound of gunfire. "When I first met you guys, you were robbing a bank in broad daylight. This seems like a step up for you."
"We were outnumbered only four to seven," Regent said. "By, and I must emphasize this, people who weren't trying to kill us. Though I will say that these people are terrible shots and none of them are taking advantage of the upper story windows for sniping positions."
Defenses already organized, gunmen expecting an attack. Warned ahead of time. Bakuda warned them. Bakuda in the building. Bakuda returned by—
Lisa clutched her head and pressed hard on her temples, feeling her pulse pounding through her skull.
Of all the times to hit my limit, it had to be now. But that wasn't true. She had hit her limit finding the approximate location of Lift, exceeded it when they had run into Vista, and she felt like she had been dragging her brain against the asphalt ever since.
"I think Bakuda beat us back here somehow," Lisa groaned. "I don't know how. Tinkers."
The plan had been to get in and get out while the thugs inside were leaderless, with Bakuda and most of her forces delayed by their trap. It would've been the type of quick smash and grab, hit and run operation that the Undersiders specialized in. So much for that. Now they were surrounded, pinned down by gunfire, with only Vista's warped road for cover.
"We don't have a choice," Grue said. "We'll have to rush them. Regent, you, me, and Bitch are charging ahead. You trip them, I'll confuse them, and the dogs will scare them. Vista ..."
"There's too many people here too close together," she said.
"Then ... wiggle space to throw them off or something. Anything you can do will help. And Tattletale? Just ... just tell me that we'll find her in there."
Enemy numbers, firepower too great to overcome. Avenues of retreat becoming—Lisa gasped in pain. Casualties—
Lisa gritted her teeth and forced a smile, pretending that she didn't want to throw up or start crying. "Bakuda won't kill her until she proves either dangerous or useless, and the only building around here that's more secure will be her actual workshop." She wasn't likely to keep WMDs next to her prisoners. "She'll be there."
And when they found her, Lisa was going to trade a candy bar for a headache cure, and they'd all go home. Somehow. She wasn't too sure how that last part was going to pan out, honestly. With every passing second, the ABB was getting more deeply entrenched while her side was increasingly bogged down. For a team that prided itself on brilliant escapes, their only escape plan now was to hope for the best.
She was starting to think that wouldn't cut it.
The rest of the team mounted the dogs and charged over the barrier Vista had made, leaving the two girls alone in a foxhole. How did that saying go? There are no atheists in foxholes, or something like that? Well, someone in a position like this would call anyone for help, even ...
Lisa took out her phone and snapped a picture of Vista. The girl wasn't in costume and her current attire the exact opposite parts of her face of what her visor did, but she was hopefully still recognizable to the people who knew her. Frazzled, but still her.
Vista glanced at her. "What are you doing?"
"Using a lifeline," she said, typing out a text message. "Phone a friend. I figure the situation calls for it."
"You have friends?"
Lisa spared her a flat look.
"I mean, cape friends that can help us? That aren't already here?"
"Fine, I'm phoning an enemy." The usual emergency lines would put her on hold, but she still had Miss Militia's number on her phone from the last time she had called her.
"Because ... we need more of those."
"Enemies that don't want to kill us? Absolutely." Worst case scenario, the heroes arrested them and they broke out of juvie a month later. An embarrassing end to what had started as a jailbreak, but not a tragic one.
She could have asked for help, but the heroes would tell her no. She could have explained all the facts, but by the time they were done calculating the risks it would be too late. So she sent them a message that her tired, migraine-addled mind hoped would get results.
We have Vista, the message read. Be at the intersection of Norton and Evergreen in ten minutes or she dies.
It wasn't even a lie.
WWW
Amy looked toward the exit of the basement she had been trapped in for so long, ready to leave this place behind her forever. But when she reached for the door, Leaf didn't follow her. Instead she remained standing there, her glow being the only light in the room.
"Hey," she said. "What do you think will happen if we wake them up?"
Amy glanced over at the four ABB members, asleep and entangled in roots. "They could tell Bakuda we've escaped and we lose the element of surprise." When their enemy could kill them with a thought, the element of surprise was all they had. "Best case scenario, they go away and leave us alone." They might decide to help them, but she seriously doubted it.
"What'll happen if Bakuda finds out they let us go?"
Amy thought back to her first set of guards, people who had been prisoners as much as she was. "She'll kill them."
Leaf nodded and squatted down, blowing glowing smoke into the face of one of the guards. His eyes shot open like he had been doused in ice water. Should she stop this? Part of her wanted to. This lowered their chances of getting out of here, and Amy didn't like the idea of risking their lives to save four gang members.
She wasn't even being selfish. If she managed to get in contact with the heroes, they could bring down Bakuda and save the hundreds of people she had forced into working for her, so it wasn't four lives against two, but four against hundreds. The greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.
But she didn't try to stop her. That would require her to convince the girl who was glowing like an angel to not try to save people. And ... and she thought about her first set of guards, and remembered Bakuda killing them in front of her.
The man who had woken up looked around as Leaf began to cut him free with a silvery knife that appeared in her hand. "What ... what's going on?" he said
"We're setting you free," Leaf said. "What does it look like? And stop struggling. Or keep struggling. Yeah. Here, take your own knife back and struggle till you're out." She hopped up and strode over to the next entangled gang member.
"I'm serious." He sounded more angry than confused. "What are you planning?"
"That would have been a good idea," Amy admitted, "having a plan. We planned to subdue the four of you and escape, but right now it looks like we're just winging it."
With most of his roots cut, he ripped and tore himself free the rest of the way and pulled himself to his feet. He glared at her, knife in hand. Her powers ... really weren't that good in a knife fight. Leaf could heal her if the man tried something, but that wouldn't make getting stabbed any more enjoyable.
"That's it?" he said. "How do you know I won't tell Bakuda you two have gotten loose?"
"You might," she admitted. "But while Bakuda may reward you for your loyalty or punish you for your failure, either way she's going to notice that you don't have a bomb in your head anymore."
He frowned at that, then he slowly, gently felt the back of his head. It was so easy to get used to, the bomb. The dull ache. The hot, swollen lump. The threat. When he found it gone, his eyes grew wide in wonder, almost afraid of how much his world had changed in just a few words. Then he walked past her. No questions, no gratitude, just the desire to be gone.
He stopped at the door. "I heard that Bakuda started a new project in her workshop. A bomb idea she got from your powers. I thought that was weird. Why would she want a bomb that heals people?"
Amy felt herself go stiff. One by one the other three were freed and one by one they left as well, not even saying a word to either of them. Maybe they thanked her with their eyes, but Amy was staring straight ahead as they passed by, looking at nothing.
A bomb based on me. How would that work? Her powers gave her a perfect knowledge of someone's biology and required her to visualize what she wanted to change. If Bakuda took that away and reduced it to a blind Shaker effect, what did that leave? Random mutations?
Bakuda had seen her use her powers to try to escape. One of the guards she had paralyzed with pain, and all of them she had put to sleep. So, a pain bomb? A sleep bomb?
What's the worst case scenario? she thought. What's the worst thing I could do with my powers?
She had never been blessed with a good imagination. For a brief moment, she found herself cursed with one.
Amy stopped the last gang member, the only girl in the group. Amy had knocked her out herself while Leaf had taken care of the rest, if only because she had been the closest and the only one who wasn't twice Amy's size.
"Hey. Where's Bakuda's workshop?"
The girl glared at her, but she answered anyway. "Big red-brick building, diagonal across the intersection from here. Can't miss it."
Amy continued to stand there for another moment, her mind racing from nightmare scenario to nightmare scenario. Body horror bombs. Bombs that birthed monsters. A freaking zombie apocalypse. Amy had spent years helping people, striving for that greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, and in one day an insane terrorist might undo everything she worked for.
Leaf tugged on her sleeve, watching her with her uncanny, pearlescent eyes. "You comin'? Or you wanna stay here and I'll go on ahead?"
"No! No, I'm coming." She wasn't about to stick around in this room any longer than she had to. It was bad enough when the lights were on, but now the only light left was Leaf. Look around. Find a phone. Hand this off to someone more qualified. But ... who was more qualified to deal with a weaponized version of her own powers? All the heroes in the city suffered the handicap of having flesh.
But Amy's powers probably wouldn't work on herself, and Leaf might be able to heal herself faster than whatever Bakuda was making could mess her up. Most of all, they were practically across the street from where they needed to go.
It was a stupid plan. It wasn't even a plan, it was just stupid. But it was all she had.
"Hey, kid," she said. "If you had to take down Bakuda, how would you do it?"
"Oh, that's easy. I'd sneak up on her and give her a hug."
Amy blinked. "You might want to workshop that a bit. Into something, you know, not moronic."
"Why? It's a great idea." She held up a finger pointedly. "She can't blow me up if I'm hugging her."
That was ... almost decent, actually. And if Leaf had her invisible vine-faced thingy as a lookout, it might even work. "Alright. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to sneak into Bakuda's workshop, and we're going to destroy it." God, it sounded better in her head, and it sounded pretty bad there too. "Hopefully it's unoccupied. And unguarded. And no one notices us on our way there." They were so dead.
Leaf, though, grinned. "Awesome! We're gonna steal her dinner!"
"No! I mean, I guess, if she left some food there. Or is that a metaphor? I don't ... I don't understand you."
She laughed. "It's okay. I like you anyway. Let's go!"
Together they left the room they had been trapped in for so long and worked their way through the building. It was some kind of abandoned factory that had been falling apart long before the ABB moved in. Leaking pipes, fluorescent lights, cracked, concrete walls.
But no people. When they finally found stairs to the ground floor, she found out why.
There were sounds of screaming and gunfire coming from outside. The ABB were fighting someone. A rival gang? Or had the heroes arrived?
Leaf peered out through a broken window, projecting a silvery sheet of metal with an eyehole to shield her face.
"Well?" Amy asked. If it was New Wave, Bakuda might follow through on the threat she had Amy read in the hostage video and kill her, so hopefully it was just the Protectorate. The worst case scenario was the Empire Eighty-Eight. If they knew about Bakuda's dead man's switch, they'd see it as a bonus rather than a deterrent.
"They're here," Leaf whispered, stepping back from the window. "They're here!"
"Who?"
A grin split across her face and she laughed, sliding down the hallway at an impossible speed.
Amy chased after her because she didn't want to leave the kid alone—she didn't want to be left alone—but then a monster crashed through the front door of the building, one that Amy recognized. Larger than a horse, a mouth full of fangs, and bony spines stretching out its leathery skin. Two more followed, carrying riders, and darkness pooled around them like a black miasma.
Not them. Anyone but them. She wanted to run, to hide, anything to keep her from finding her here, but Leaf, goddamnit Leaf, she shouted and ran toward the Undersiders.
"Leaf, no!" she shouted. "Come back! You don't—"
Leaf spun on her knees, her hair covering up half her face, grinning brightly, glowing in contrast to the darkness behind her. An instant later, that darkness surged toward them like a tidal wave, swallowing them both.
And then there was nothing. No light, no sound. Amy couldn't even hear her own breathing or her own heartbeat. She swallowed, trying to come to terms with what was happening.
Then she could see Leaf glowing like a lantern, the darkness opening up to surround them like a bubble. And like she was greeting an old friend, Leaf embraced the girl who knew too much, the girl who spoke poison with every word.
I'll make you a deal, Gloryhole. Get in the vault and I won't speak the one sentence that tears your family apart.
"You were right!" Leaf said, looking back at her. "Someone was coming to save us!" She turned back to the Undersider. "And I thought you were too smart for that!"
The villain smiled at the jab, a strangely human expression on her face. "What can I say? Sleep deprivation brings out the worst in me." She glanced at Amy, and the smile on her face shifted into something better suited to her nature. Too knowing, too smug, too cruel.
It's not about you, you textbook narcissist. You won't be the one dealing with the fallout of this dirty little secret. The shame. The heartbreak. She is.
"You've been making strange friends while you were gone. There seems to be a lot of that going around."
Leaf hadn't been with them at the bank, but she was with them now. Amy had taken her for some kid with powers playing at being a cape, claiming to be a villain because she liked telling stories. But Leaf had played the guards with the stories she had told, and now she had played her. Amy wanted to run, she wanted to throw up, she wanted to scream, but more than anything she wished that she had let the mocking, taunting villain die on the bank floor instead of keeping her alive.
"But I'm sure if we put our differences behind us, we can all get out of here in one piece," Tattletale said, smiling like a devil selling a used car. "So what do you say, Panacea? Truce?"
WWW
A/n And I managed to get this done before the end of the month!
I set a goal for myself to write twelve chapters this year. Not for Leaf specifically, not if they're all going to be nine thousand words each, but if I'm aiming for an average of one chapter a month, I'm on track!
I really need to thank my editor, Exiled Immortal for this one. This chapter has required a ton of work on his side as we tried to get that balance of just enough awesome without being stupid and just enough smart without being boring. He's always been able to understand what my story is about more than I do, and he's the one who keeps it on track.
I'd also like to thank my Patrons, Exiled Immortal, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, Apofatix, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Svistka, Lady Charon, and LordXamon for their support. And I'd like to thank my readers. If you're reading this, that means you!
On a side note, Leaf has a tropes page. Check it out if you haven't already.
The ABB arc will conclude next chapter if all goes according to plan, with maybe one more chapter after it to serve as an epilogue. I'll see you all then!