Leaf
Chapter Sixteen
Miss Militia's motorcycle hummed softly along the cracked and broken road. Despite the blackout, there was enough light to see by though the sun had yet to rise. The city was starting to feel familiar in a way she didn't like. It wasn't the ruined buildings, no, those would have been as mansions to her childhood self. Three out of four walls was simply a house with an open door. It wasn't the smell, either. The smoke, the ash, the gunpowder weren't too different from the city's usual fumes, and the ocean breeze would blow even that away in time.
No, it was the fear. It was an atmosphere. Her power, shifting between pistols and rifles, knives and machetes, provided an outlet for her negative emotions, but this new fear—this old fear was something she could breathe into her lungs.
She pulled over to the side of the road next to a collapsed building and found a child half buried in rubble. Sex, female. Age, ten to twelve. Name, unknown. Time of death, unknown. Next of kin ... Miss Militia closed her eyes, cutting off the report she'd already been writing in her mind. There were dozens of such cases all over the city, and soon exhausted work crews would arrive to clean up the debris and deliver the body to the morgue for processing.
You've made quite a name for yourself in a short time, Bakuda, she thought. You may come to regret that.
She continued on her way, being able to do little else. While the rest of her team could use this lull in the fighting to rest or prepare, Miss Militia could continue her patrol. She could witness and remember the tragedies of Bakuda's attacks, and be ready to react to the ABB or any opportunists seeking to take advantage of the chaos.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text, from a number she hadn't saved but one she recognized. Tattletale had called her less than an hour ago, wanting to know if the PRT had recovered Leaf's body.
The message began with a picture of a girl, maybe twelve, with a strand of blonde hair peeking out through her hood and a black cloth wrapped around the lower half of her face. She was ragged and worn, and just barely recognizable.
We have Vista, the message continued. Be at the intersection of Norton and Evergreen in ten minutes or she dies.
She read the message, looked at the attached image, then read it again. Her power dulled her anger, but not her capacity for violence when violence was called for.
Tattletale, she thought. You have chosen a terrible time to play these games.
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"Vista," Grue said. "I want this whole building turned into a fortress, nothing wide enough to squeeze through, and everything too thick to break into."
"On it," she said, squeezing the broken windows around her into pin pricks. "But that could take a while with people already inside." The more people there were in an area, the harder it became to warp space.
"People? What people?"
Vista hesitated, feeling around for numb spots with her power. "Three ... groups. I can't tell how many are in each."
Grue swore under his breath. "Thanks for the heads up."
To the side, Regent twirled his scepter around his fingers. "You know what this reminds me of?" he said. "That one zombie game. You know the one where you're locked down in a cabin or whatever and you have to barricade it so they don't break in and eat your brains?"
"There's at least ten of those," Grue said. "And none of those zombies had artillery, which is what Bakuda's going to use on us if she starts taking us seriously."
Just then, Tattletale strode out of his darkness, a smile on her face and a spring in her step. Vista resisted the urge to back away from her. Grue and Regent acted so much like Aegis and Clockblocker it was hard to remember they were villains, but Tattletale ... Tattletale seemed like the sort of person who could cheerfully shoot someone without warning.
"What's the situation?" Grue asked.
She inhaled deeply. "I feel absolutely wonderful. No really, I may burst into song like a Disney princess."
Regent groaned. "Please don't. There's a reason we never did Karaoke again. You were almost as bad as Grue."
"How's Leaf?" Grue asked.
Vista stared at the patch of darkness in the room. Leaf was in there. The girl who had brought her back to life. The girl that Vista had ... that Vista had tried to kill. She had seen her only for a second, with Panacea of all people before Grue had covered them both in darkness. It blocked Bakuda's trigger signals so the Tinker couldn't blow them up, but ...
"Well, here's the bad news," Tattletale said. "I was hoping that we could just fill her up and let her tank the blast, but her bomb freezes people in time."
"Bakuda's doing time manipulation now?" Grue demanded.
Regent chuckled at what was likely some inside joke, and Tattletale grinned. "Yep, because that always makes things interesting."
"Like Clockblocker's power?" Vista asked.
"Yeah, only it doesn't wear off after a few minutes," she replied. "Or ever, so maybe more like Gray Boy."
Gray Boy. Vista had seen some of his work. The Slaughterhouse Nine were known for gruesome, drawn out murders, but most of them killed their victims eventually. Not Gray Boy, though. Even after having been dead for years, he was still killing his victims, drawing out their deaths until the end of time.
It won't happen. She thought about Leaf sliding around the PRT building like a penguin, treating the whole thing like a game while Vista was treating it like a war. Not to her.
"Can we run?" Grue asked.
Tattletale shook her head. "If we're slow and careful, we'll get surrounded and massacred. If we rush it, Bakuda might get a signal through, and ..."
Grue nodded. "Right."
"We could go on the offensive," she continued. "Capture Bakuda, force her cooperation. We might take her by surprise through sheer stupidity."
"That does sound pretty stupid," Regent agreed.
"The last option," Tattletale said with a grimace, "is to convince Panacea to help us."
A silence fell over the room. Vista looked at the Undersiders, wondering what she was missing because it seemed really obvious.
"Do it," Grue said. "But if that doesn't work, we'll have to play offense."
WWW
Plenty of villains go out of their way to be detestable. One of Carol's cape lectures. It's the other kind you have to watch out for. The affable villain. The false veneer of friendliness and respectability. Don't let it fool you. Don't listen to their shallow justifications or their false ideals. Hold on to what they are and never let go.
Because if you do ...
Then she'd wind up where Amy was now, alone in the dark, surrounded by enemies.
Leaf licked chocolate off a candy wrapper, smacking her lips loudly. Taunting her. It was disgusting, really, the way she ate, shoving it down her throat, smearing it all over her face. Leaf caught the look Amy was giving her and, misinterpreting it, offered her a Reeses.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak, not trusting herself not to shout. How did I ever let her fool me? Leaf had even admitted to being a villain, and Amy had ignored that, so desperate to have someone to hang on to, so desperate to not be alone. And where had that gotten her? Leaf had manipulated her every step of the way and had led her from Bakuda's prison to the jaws of hell.
"It'll be alright," Leaf said. The space they were in was dark, pitch black except for the light coming off of Leaf's body. Grue's power, to "protect them from Bakuda" or some such nonsense. "They're my friends. They'll figure something out."
That's what I'm afraid of. Bakuda may have been a deranged maniac, but at least she didn't have a reason to hold a grudge. Amy thought about the last time she had seen Tattletale, her face crushed and swelling up like a purple balloon, her head twisted at an impossible angle. Not a pretty sight, but it had shut her up.
Just then, the devil herself strode in, smug and confident and sickening. "Did you girls miss me?" Tattletale asked.
"I did," Leaf said. She held up her chocolate covered hands. "Got anymore?"
"Sorry, kid, fresh out. You can have as much as you want when we get home, okay?"
Amy wondered how long the villain spent in front of a mirror practicing the doting big sister act. Or maybe that level of BS just came naturally to her. Tattletale glanced at her, and Amy responded by imagining her bursting into flames.
"So here's the situation," Tattletale said, her voice dropping all warmth. "We can hold off the mob for another five minutes before Bakuda decides to get involved, but we won't have to if you get Leaf's bomb out of her head."
Leaf's bomb. There was no plan at all about how to get Amy's bomb out. "I can't. Not without killing her. I've tried four times—"
"And found out that the bombs go off when exposed to changes in heat or pressure," Tattletale said. "Build a capsule around it, take out the whole thing, toss it out the window, and you'll be home in time for breakfast."
"I like that plan," Leaf said.
"You shouldn't," Amy said. "It's a stupid plan. The bomb is placed under the skull right next to the brain. I can't 'build a capsule around it' without pulling off a chunk of gray matter—"
"So do that. Leaf can heal brains as easily as anything else. Take out a piece of it, she'll grow it back. Make her think she's an OCD IRS agent, she'll be back to normal a second later."
It seemed like an easy choice. Too easy. But she couldn't trust them, Tattletale least of all. If she started with a brain that she couldn't screw up, it would be that much easier to go just a little bit further, and then a little bit further after that.
No. She had to hold on to her rules. It was the only way to make sure she wasn't being manipulated. "I don't do brains." No compromise. No negotiation. "And you know what? There's no promise you can make that I trust you to keep, and nothing you can threaten me with that I don't expect you to do anyway. Don't pretend that this is a truce, Tattletale. I've simply gone from being Bakuda's prisoner to yours."
"Why not?" Leaf asked. "What's the big deal about brains?"
Amy looked at Leaf then glanced at Tattletale. "It's ... complicated."
"Because she's obsessed with her sister, and she's worried that if she starts affecting brains, she'll brainwash her into falling in love with her."
Amy stared at her, choking on her own tongue. To hear her deepest fear, her deepest shame spoken aloud felt like having something ripped out from inside of her, and to do that in such an offhand way ...
Not even Carol had ever done something like that.
"Huh," Leaf said. "Is she pretty?"
Tattletale shrugged. "Seven out of ten."
"H-how dare you—"
"I dare," she said, turning on her. "I dare to make the point that no one cares. No one cares about you, your arbitrary rules, your family drama, or your sordid sexual fantasies. All we care about is getting out of here alive. Are you going to help us, or are you dead weight?"
Amy clenched her fists. One touch. One touch, and she could make her as ugly on the outside as she was on the inside. Withered skin hanging from her bones, warts all over her face constantly oozing pus. No mouth, most of all. That would shut her up.
But she didn't. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. "So you want me to put aside my personal issues and focus on the big picture?"
"It's not a lot to ask."
Amy forced a smile, and found it easy to hold onto as soon as she put it on her face. "The big picture is that Bakuda is in her lab right now making God knows what, and every day her weapons become more terrifying. What she comes out with might not stop with just this city. It might not stop with just this country. So, big picture? Every second you're here distracts her and draws the city's attention to her location. Bringing the heroes down on her will do more good for the world than anything I could ever do."
Tattletale gave her a look that could have been disgusted or amused. "And we can't leave until Leaf is free."
Amy shrugged, not looking at the younger girl. She shouldn't have thrown her lot in with the Undersiders.
"And if we all die fighting her, then that's just a bonus for you, isn't it?"
If you all die fighting here, Victoria will never know what you know. You'll never be able to tear my family apart. I'll never have to be afraid of you. She shrugged again. "You said it, not me."
Tattletale laughed—and pulled out her gun and pointed it at her.
She's bluffing. There's no way she'd—
"Panacea? Go to hell."
WWW
The floor shook as something crashed into the wall from the outside. One of the dogs let out a low growl and Bitch scratched him behind the ears.
"We're still good," Vista said. "The wall's ten feet thick right there."
She sounded like she was trying to assure herself more than anyone else. Which Grue thought was strange considering how long she had been a cape, until he realized that Vista had usually been on the other side of the line.
This was like the bank robbery. They were inside the building, trying to get the job done and make their getaway as quickly as possible. Meanwhile they were surrounded by enemies, and each side was trying to catch the other off guard.
He ... he hadn't escaped that fight. Neither had Tattletale. And he didn't expect Bakuda to take prisoners.
"Keep up the good work," he said instead. "Just a few more minutes and—Jesus Christ!"
Regent, Vista, and Bitch all looked around, but the sound of the gunshot and the explosion were blocked by his power. Grue stared as Panacea's body fell to the ground and Tattletale strolled out of his darkness like nothing had happened.
"Well, that was a blast," she said cheerfully.
"Really," he said. "That's what you're going with." Leaf scurried over and began resurrecting the healer.
"What's going on in there?" Vista asked. "Is ..."
"Is Panacea going to help us? No, that was a bust, but I'm giving her a moment to cool off and pull herself back together." She winked at him like it was a big joke. "So what's plan B? Run away with a literal time bomb that could go off without any warning, or attack a Tinker in her workshop?"
Regent glanced toward Grue while Bitch ignored the discussion entirely, so it was up to him. As usual.
If they ran, all they could do was hope to get lucky. Hope that a stray shot didn't make one of them fall behind. Hope that with all the fighting and running, he'd be able to keep Leaf covered enough to prevent a signal from setting off her bomb.
He wasn't feeling lucky. Going on the offensive was insane, but at least they would have some control.
"We attack." He had wanted to beat that woman to a pulp from the start, hadn't he? It looked like he was going to get his wish. God help us all.
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I want to go home, Amy thought. I want to go home, go to bed, sleep in till noon, and ... and not be here anymore!
But she was here. She was in darkness, surrounded by enemies who wanted to—who had—killed her. Her own blood splattering her clothes was proof of that.
Leaf reached out to her, but she pulled away.
"You'll be okay."
"I'm fine."
Leaf looked at her, the light wafting off from her making her eyes look like they were glowing. "No you ain't. But you will be."
"Shut up. Shut up. I trusted you, I helped you escape, and—"
Grue stepped inside, cutting her off. He had a physical presence that towered over her and made her flinch as though expecting a strike. He had replaced his costume from the bank robbery with a simple motorcycle helmet and leather jacket, which made him look less like a villain and more like a thug.
"You doing okay in here?"
The words weren't directed at her, so she didn't answer.
"Deevy, Skullface. When are we leaving?"
"Right now." That caught her attention. "You'll be riding right behind me. You won't be able to see a thing, but it's the only way we'll be able to keep you safe."
"What?" Leaf demanded. "Are you gonna keep me in the dark still?"
"Until we can be sure Bakuda isn't going to set your bomb off, yes."
"She could've done that this whole time and hasn't yet!"
"That was before we came crashing in to rescue you. As far as we know Bakuda is standing by the kill switch right now waiting for a chance to kill you and anyone standing close to you."
Leaf folded her arms petulantly. "So I'm stuck doin' nothing 'cause you lot are noisy."
"Yes, and we are going to get you out of here in one piece, noisy or otherwise."
"I thought you couldn't leave until you got her bomb out," Amy said.
Grue turned to her, and she regretted speaking up. "We're not going home. We're assaulting Bakuda's workshop. Maybe she'll be more helpful than you are. As for you, do whatever you want."
She blinked. "What?" They were actually going after Bakuda?
"Tattletale thinks you're dead weight, so feel free to stay behind. Maybe the ABB will recapture you. Maybe they won't notice you. I don't care. If you're coming with us, you'll be riding with Vista. No one else wants you within reach."
"Wait," Leaf said. "Vista's here?"
Grue nodded.
"Huh."
Vista. Grue made it sound like they were working together, but that didn't make sense. Vista wouldn't throw her lot in with villains, at least not by choice. Maybe she was being tricked or blackmailed or something or, or ... she didn't know.
But she was free to go. She was free to wander around in an area full of ABB members who would try to capture or kill her on sight. But she didn't have a bomb in her head anymore. Tattletale had removed it in the messiest way possible, but it was out and she was free. If she could make it to the roof and borrow Vista's phone or something ...
Or maybe that was what Tattletale wanted. Maybe this was just a ploy to get Amy killed by the ABB without New Wave blaming the Undersiders. They seemed to want her to leave, so maybe she should stay.
God, this is like trying to outwit the Simurgh.
On the other hand, the Undersiders were going after Bakuda. Bakuda, who could be building some kind of weapon based on her own powers. Would the Undersiders be able to recognize a Tinkertech biological weapon? Would they set it off by accident?
She thought about all the things her power could do unleashed. She thought about going home, only to find one of those things had become part of a real atrocity. She thought about running but having nowhere to run to, knowing that she could have stopped it long ago if she had acted now.
Dammit, she thought. Even without the bomb, she was still trapped. "I'm coming too."
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"Everyone ready?"
Leaf sat behind Grue on one dog, Vista and Panacea sat on another, and everyone else sat on the third. The only person who looked ready was Bitch. She always favored the direct approach.
"Stay low, keep looking ahead, and try not to get shot. On the count of three. One."
He took the lead. If he got shot, Leaf could heal him. Panacea could heal Vista, assuming that Vista could take a shot and stay mounted, and everyone else would just hope to get lucky. But the odds weren't terrible. Their destination was a warehouse a couple hundred feet away, guarded by a few dozen ABB members, maybe half of whom could hit the broad side of a barn. They'd be fine.
"Two."
Keep telling yourself that.
"Three!"
Vista stretched out a hole in the wall to the size of a garage door, and Grue's dog charged out. He trailed his darkness out in thick clouds to either side behind him, hoping to give his team some cover without blinding them. Taken by surprise, the people in his path screamed and dove out of the way.
Stay scared, he thought. Stay scared and run!
Judas' claws dug into a rusted, blue truck and he leaped off of it, nearly throwing Grue off. Gunfire cracked the air like a whip, then filled it as more people joined in. Judas stumbled and snarled, taking a hit in the flank. He kept moving. Was Leaf healing him, or were the dogs just that tough?
He didn't know. "Visa!" he shouted. "Cover!"
They pulled away from the main crowd of people, and out of the corner of his eye Grue saw the street rise up on either side, forming walls.
But not fast enough. The initial shock had worn off and the ABB was starting to organize. A bullet tore into Grue, nearly knocking him off the dog, hot agony searing through him. Leaf squeezed him tightly from behind and he felt his body repair itself as quickly as the bullet had ripped through it.
The others following behind him fared better, covered as they were by his smoke and Vista's barriers, but there was no way to do the same for him. A scream tore itself from his throat as he took more shots in his arms and chest. He felt one of the bullets get lodged inside his shoulder as the flesh healed around it, a dull and persistent pain remaining. That was going to be a problem. He tried not to think about it.
You've died before. You'll get through this too.
The warehouse was drawing close, so close that Grue could tell himself that they were going to make it. One of the ABB members with a crazed expression on her face placed herself in his way, aiming a shotgun at him, a weapon with an almost comically wide barrel.
Hold on, that's not a shotgun, that's a—
He banked left, throwing up a cloud of darkness as the woman yelled out and fired her grenade launcher.
The force of the explosion hit Grue like a wrecking ball, knocking him out of all sense of up or down. He hit the asphalt and rolled limply, his head spinning. Judas let out a pained whine as he crashed in a heap by the wall. Grue stared up into the predawn light of the sky, too stunned to even feel pain. For a moment he could've sworn he saw a figure looking down at them from the roof of the warehouse, something with the shape of a man but the face of a demon. Then it was gone, replaced by Leaf's face bent over his, so close they were almost touching.
"Whoops," she said. "Ya slipped." Holding a large, silvery shield over them with one hand, she blew white light into him and he became lucid again.
He sat up, scanning the rooftop, but there was nothing. I saw Oni Lee! Hadn't he? He looked over at Leaf to ask if she'd seen him too, only to realize that she was no longer shielded by his darkness. He cursed, covering her up again.
"Aw, really? Do you have to?"
"Yes," he said, even though she could no longer hear him. He picked up Leaf in one arm, grimacing at the pain in his shoulder, and took her shield in the other. "As long as Bakuda can kill you with the push of a button, I'm keeping you safe. No matter what."
Bitch thundered past them atop Brutus, screaming Judas' name as he whimpered on the ground. The ABB member shoved what looked like a Tinkertech grenade into the chamber, even as other gang members around her broke and ran. Before she could fire Regent waved a hand, jerking the arm holding the grenade launcher down towards the ground at the last second.
There was a blast like the shattering of icicles, and even at a distance Grue felt a wave of freezing cold wash over him. Brutus slipped on the suddenly icy ground and threw everyone but Bitch off his back.
In his hand Grue felt the shield transform into a sword. He staggered over to the outer wall of the warehouse and plunged the blade into it, finding that it cut through the brick and mortar as easily as paper. With one arm he could only make a small hole, and a sloppy one at that, but it would be enough.
"Vista!" he shouted.
The hole abruptly expanded, forming an opening large enough for the dogs. Battered but alive, their party stumbled through it. Bitch brought up the rear, carrying the real Judas in her arms, having retrieved him from his fleshy cocoon.
We made it.
WWW
Vista slid off her dog as soon they got inside, clutching her knees and breathing heavily. She wasn't hurt, but ... but God that had been close.
"Are you okay?" she asked as Panacea jumped down.
Panacea glanced toward a growing pillar of darkness in the middle of the room. Leaf was in there, healing her team. Vista had only gotten a glance of them before Grue had taken them into the darkness, but they looked like they'd be okay.
"I need to borrow your phone," Panacea said, her voice low.
"Oh, sure." She probably wanted to call home. Vista thought about doing the same, but that would just make her team worry more instead of less.
Panacea dialed a number and held the phone up in the air. "No signal? Seriously?"
"There's too much of Grue's smoke here I guess."
Panacea looked like she wanted to throw the phone against a wall before handing it back to her. "This is just ... I feel like I'm almost out and then ..."
"I know what you mean."
"Do you? Why are you even here? You can't say that it's to stop Bakuda, because you'd have a better shot staying with your own team than teaming up with them, and they wanted to avoid her until two minutes ago." Panacea hesitated. "Did they kidnap you? Threaten your family? You're not in costume, so you can't tell me you came by choice."
"I did come by choice." Vista watched as Regent strolled out of the darkness and joined Grue on the other side of the room, good as new besides a few rips on his costume. How was she going to explain this in a way that Panacea could understand? If they got out of this, she was going to need to explain her actions to her team as well.
"Why then?"
"Because ..." She thought about fighting Leaf at the PRT building and seeing what she'd seen on the security footage. She thought about why she wanted to be a hero, and about the story the old man had told her. "Because I want to be a good person."
"I don't think—"
"I'm not done." She swallowed and took a breath. "I stayed at the PRT building during the bombings. The ABB used it as a distraction so they could break Lung out, and I guess the Undersiders had the same idea. Near the end of the fight, I found Lung chasing Leaf up the elevator shaft." A silhouette with diamond eyes, a backdrop of fire and rage. "He was so huge and she was so small, and they were too close together for me to squeeze the shaft closed between them. If I had let one out, I would have let them both out. Instead, I trapped them together where I knew Leaf would die."
On the other side of the room, Grue glanced her way but said nothing.
Panacea let out a sigh. "Vista. When two villains fight each other, the hero's top priority is protecting innocent bystanders, not the villains who are causing all the problems. Villain's kill each other all the time, even in prison. Besides, Leaf made it out alright." She hesitated. "Alive, at least. No one's going to tell you that you did the wrong thing."
"I did do the wrong thing. The right thing wouldn't have felt like that!" She could taste the hypocrisy in her own words. She hadn't cared—or at least had managed to convince herself that she hadn't cared—until ... until ...
Hellhound came out of the darkness, healed, and the three mutant dogs plodded over to join her.
"She saved my life," she whispered. "I found out about it later, but Oni Lee cut my head off and Leaf stuck it back on. It takes a lot out of her, and maybe if she hadn't ..." she shook her head. "And it's not us against them. It's us against us. Who we are against who we want to be." That sounded flimsy when she said it out loud. "I'm not explaining it well."
"So then the Undersiders guilted you into teaming up with them on this crapshoot of a mission?"
Vista hesitated. "I convinced them to let me help them." That was what had happened, wasn't it?
"Sure."
Vista stared at the pillar of darkness in the room for a long moment. Without even knowing her, Leaf had believed that she had been worth saving. Was she? Maybe, maybe not, but she would be.
"Hey, Panacea?" she said. "Tattletale said that you refused to heal Leaf. Why?"
"I ..." Her voice trailed off as Tattletale herself emerged from the darkness. She didn't look their way, but Panacea grew tense and glared at her. "It's complicated."
WWW
"I can't believe you fell off your dog," Leaf said, healing Regent of a few scrapes. "Those things got so many handholds you can hang onto them with your feet. Wait, were you posin' again?"
"Of course not!" Regent said indignantly. "I pose on solid ground and on solid ground alone, thank you very much. I was gesturing."
"Do you need to gesture while dog riding?"
"No, but it makes it more fun." He made a rude hand gesture as he walked out of the darkness, and Leaf laughed and gave it back to him.
Leaf turned to Bitch. "So what's wrong with you?"
"Just heal me and get it over with."
Judas had been hurt so badly that Bitch had needed to take him out of his flesh suit and empower him all over again. It took a lot out of her to do it quickly, especially on top empowering all three dogs to start with. Bitch accepted Leaf's healing with a grunt and left.
"You're welcome!" Leaf called after her cheerfully.
Happy to be included, Lisa's power told her. Doesn't want to be left behind. Doesn't want to be left alone.
No useful information there. Nothing new, either.
Chose to heal you last. Wants to talk to you.
Again, obvious. Still, she wasn't badly hurt, so she didn't mind.
Leaf took her by the hand and looked her in the eye. "Lisa."
Tattletale in costume, but with the two of them covered in Grue's power and her identity already known to the PRT, it didn't matter much.
"I didn't think you'd come for me."
That stung, but she smiled anyway. "Hey, you'd do the same for me." She had done the same for her when Tattletale had been imprisoned by the PRT with a broken neck.
Captured, alone, waiting to die. Smiling to pretend like everything is fine.
But while Leaf had managed to heal her with a breath, Tattletale hadn't been able to do a goddamn thing since she got here.
"Yeah, well I ain't smart. But ... but there are worse things than bein' stupid."
Coming here hadn't been a smart move, just a desperate one. If they had thought that Leaf could survive a week without ticking off Bakuda, they would have waited to come up with something better. "Look, we don't have a whole lot of time, so say what you need to say."
"Okay." Leaf took a deep breath. "You shouldn't've shot her."
"Maybe, but talking to her wasn't getting us anywhere and she was really annoying." Besides, it had gotten the bomb out of her head. Not that Leaf was the sort of person to understand that. Sometimes people needed to die. Sometimes they deserved to.
"She's hurtin'. You know she is 'cause you're smart." That wasn't a compliment, it was an accusation. "And you know she's scared."
"Of course I do." Not for sympathy, it was just how her power worked. It recognized weaknesses, and she exploited them. "But that doesn't change what she did—what she's doing. You heard what she said! She wants us to die fighting Bakuda so better people don't have to, so better people don't have to deal with us. Right now, Bakuda isn't the one holding you hostage, she is."
"She gets mean when she's scared. That don't make her a bad person."
Tattletale smiled bitterly. "It's easier to break people down than to build them up, and I'm playing to win." It would have taken the girl a few minutes to save Leaf, but instead they had to attack a mad Tinker in her workshop because Panacea wanted to be as frustrating as possible.
"There are worse things than bein' stupid," Leaf said again.
Tattletale pulled away and smiled, trying not to think about staring at the hospital ceiling, her jaw throbbing in pain and unable to feel anything below the neck. She'd turn Panacea inside out if that was what it took to keep Leaf safe and call it a bargain. "Not today, kid. Not today."
WWW
Grue looked over his team and tried to convince himself they were ready. In the next room was the main section of the warehouse, and somewhere in the building Bakuda had set up her workshop. There was no telling how many of her people were waiting for them, or how many of them had Tinkertech explosives. For all he knew, the whole lot of them could get turned to glass the moment they opened the door.
No, they weren't ready. They would never be ready, but they were here now and they would not turn back.
"Vista," he said. "Open the door."
Vista stretched out the crack between the door and the wall wide enough for Bitch's dogs to fit through. On the other side was the main storage area, a vast space with high ceilings and narrow aisles between towering shelves.
A row of ABB members were using a stack of crates and heavy equipment as a barricade, with dozens of guns and other weapons pointed at them.
"Fire!" one of them yelled.
Grue pumped darkness through the gap as fast as he could. At the same time, Vista ... folded the space between them like a hinge, making that entire section of the warehouse drop out of view. The gang members fired blindly at where they thought the Undersiders were. They were undisciplined and afraid, and soon ran out of bullets. Their empty guns clicked as they stared into his darkness, not sure if they had won.
"Now!" Grue shouted. Bitch whistled, and her dogs barreled right into the barricade, knocking it over like bowling pins. The gangsters were thrown into disarray even before Grue's darkness swept over them.
"Tattletale?"
"That way," she said, pointing. "Administration office."
Grue nodded and started running. Bitch's dogs overtook him, shielding the group with their bulk. They were tough enough to absorb stray bullets, and terrifying enough to make the ABB want to keep their distance. More and more fire came their way as scattered groups began to respond to their incursion.
"Next right, empty aisle!" Tattletale shouted.
He banked hard around the corner. The aisle contracted as he ran through it, and he got to the other side of the warehouse with a few steps. Regent and Bitch were right behind him, and Tattletale—
Clink!
"Look out!" Tattletale shouted, and she turned and ran away back down the aisle. Too late, Grue saw the grenade right before it exploded.
But it didn't explode. It burst into a flash of light, and a blast of wind pushed him backwards. Then the grenade generated a vortex, dragging them all towards it. He grabbed onto a shelving unit for dear life, seeing his darkness vanish into it, feeling his own screams vanish into it. The dogs howled and snarled as they dug their claws into the concrete floor and boxes were yanked off the shelves and into the Tinkertech implosion.
The vortex weakened as Vista stretched out the space around the grenade to give them all some breathing room. At least, that was what Grue assumed happened. The aisle was now about the length of a football field, but in the middle the slate-gray racks were bent and warped around the implosion. Regent, Bitch, and the three dogs were alive and with him, but the rest of the team were still on the other side.
His first instinct was to go back for them. Had they survived? At least Vista must have. The dogs could climb the wreckage and cross the distance, but ...
But they had reached the door labeled 'Administrative Office'. If it was where Tattletale said it was, it was right there. No army between them, just Bakuda and whatever last ditch tricks she had left.
He hated leaving Tattletale behind, but this had been the plan from the start. Hit them hard and fast, take out the target before they could regroup.
I'm sorry.
He burst through the door—it wasn't even locked—and amid the shelves of half-finished devices, he found Bakuda sitting in a chair. He covered her in darkness before she even noticed him, and he tackled her to the ground before she could get up. Grue hit her again and again in the face, her mask granting little protection against the blows.
"Please," she whimpered, her modulated voice sounding mechanical. "I surrender!"
The Tinker operated like a Master. Once separated from her minions, there wasn't much she could do. Still ...
This is too easy.
"Tell your men to stand down, Bakuda," he said, pulling his darkness back so she could hear. "And deactivate your bombs, all of them."
"I can't!" she said. "I'm not Bakuda!"
He stared at her. He could see her frightened eyes through the broken lenses of her mask. Regent followed him into the workshop while Bitch waited by the door.
"She made me wear this," the woman continued. "Told me to stay here and ... and ... oh, God, it hurts."
She exploded, and Grue felt the blast go through every cell in his body, incinerating every nerve. Blinding, white-hot pain was all he could feel, hear, or see.
A trap.
As he fell to the ground, a single thought pierced the fire.
Tattletale would have seen this coming.
WWW
Tattletale lay under the rubble. She wasn't trapped, just hiding. She could get out anytime she wanted, but then she would have to deal with people trying to shoot her. That was working out alright for Vista, but Tattletale had learned long ago that you can't beat guns with snark.
Besides, it looked like the fight was about over. If she was right, and she often was, the rest of her team had reached Bakuda's workshop, and now it was only a matter of time before—
She heard an explosion from their direction. Well, crap. Bakuda wouldn't blow herself up, which meant either there was a terrible accident, or, more likely, Bakuda wasn't even here.
Fortunately she had an ace up her sleeve, a way to come out ahead by losing as badly as possible. She pulled out her phone and called the boss. She had a pretty good idea of his powers, which she did her best to downplay, and if she was right, if she told him exactly how they had screwed up he could ...
No signal.
Well, crap.
WWW
You gonna bitch out now, boy? Drop your guard, what do you expect will happen? That they'll go easy on you?
His father's voice, come to torment him one last time.
No, they'll just kick you while you're down. Like this.
"Stop it," Grue whispered, so softly that he might have mouthed the words.
Or what, son? We never got nothing from begging, and we never got nothing from crying. You want me to stop? Then get the hell up, and make me!
Grue opened his eyes to glare at his father, but instead he saw someone else looming over him, a man in the process of wrapping zip ties around his wrists. He let out something that might have been a yelp, might have been a growl, and the man jumped back.
"He's still awake!"
The handful of men backed away toward the doorway, reaching for their guns. Grue tried to rise, but everything hurt, like his skin was made of fire. Instead, he made his darkness rise, a large humanoid shape to stand up and face them, a cloud at the bottom but sharp lines on top. The men fired at the figure, their bullets missing Grue by several feet and shattering glassware behind him. His darkness glided toward the men, making them back up further out of Bakuda's workshop, and ...
One of the men fell over, letting out a scream. The canister that hit him exploded into a cloud of smoke that, unlike his own power, he couldn't see through. He heard the screams though, and gunshots. Then the screams fell silent one by one.
A final explosion blasted the smoke away, and a new figure stepped into the doorway, her movements swift and professional, holding a riot gun. She had dark hair and tan skin, and she wore green military fatigues with an American flag bandana across her face.
Her eyes narrowed when she saw him. "You!" Miss Militia said. "I'm for Vista. I know you've taken her." Her riot gun transformed into an assault rifle. "Where is she?"
WWW
A/n All the recurring characters have arrived, and it will all wrap up in the next chapter. I can't tell you how much time I spent writing and rewriting this, and I couldn't have done it without the help and support of my editor, Exiled. I would also like to thank all my Patrons, Exiled, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, Apofatix, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Svistka, Lady Charon, LordXamon, Victoria Carey, Bridie, and Kurkistan. Finally, I would like to thank you, the readers, for literal years of encouragement.
Now for something a bit more out of the ordinary. The tone of this story has changed dramatically in the current arc to something darker and more serious when originally it was more cheerful and upbeat. The previous arc, for example, took three chapters to rescue two people, while this arc has been going on for six. It's not bad writing in my completely unbiased opinion, but looking back I've realized that it has started to feel less like a Lift story and more like a Kaladin story, which is still Stormlight, but not what I had started out doing. If I could do it all over again, I think I would do a lot of things differently.
But here's the thing. I can do it all over again. I can go back and rewrite the entire arc, reducing these six (which will be seven) chapters down to one or two. I'd have to cut out a lot of the character development that a lot of the side characters have gained, but the pacing and the tone would be much more in line with what was going on before. I would of course finish the current arc, only I would declare it to be apocryphal and only the rewritten version would be canon.
Personally I'm on the fence on the matter, though some people have strongly supported the rewrites while others have strongly opposed it. That's why I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter, yay or nay.
Once again, thanks again for reading.