"How was your day, Taylor?" Dad asked, over dinner.
"School was… you know," she said. "The usual."
She hadn't told Dad what the usual was, but that was safe enough.
"Didn't get tempted to show off your powers, I hope?" Dad added, and Taylor shook her head with a hidden wince.
"Not… at school," she replied. "But I was on the way home, and I saw Glory Girl go overhead…"
Dad stopped, and put his fork down.
"And what happened then?" he asked.
"She was going somewhere in a hurry, in costume, and I thought I could help out!" Taylor said. "So I went into an alleyway, nobody could see me, and I transformed before going up on top of buildings and heading the same way she was. Just to see if it was important."
"I did ask you to not go looking for trouble," Dad said, sounding disappointed, and Taylor's cheeks flamed.
It felt so… embarrassing, shaming, when Dad said something like that.
"I didn't go looking for trouble," she defended herself. "Trouble sort of… flew overhead."
Dad just looked at her, and Taylor shrank into her seat a little.
"I wasn't going to get involved unless people were actually in danger," she said. "Innocent people. I know I can't be out looking for people in danger all the time, I need time to do the things that keep me sane, but – but if people might get hurt because I wasn't there, then it feels like I should help."
That made her father look contemplative.
"It's not that easy," he said. "But, it's never that easy, and I guess it's good instincts at least, to want to help out."
He frowned. "Was this related to the bank robbery?"
"There was a bank robbery?" Taylor asked. "I didn't actually get there, if that's where Glory Girl was going."
"I heard about the bank robbery, it was on the news," Dad said. "Other things happening in the city too, but the robbery was the big one, it sounded like all the Wards were there… so what did happen, then?"
He smiled a little. "Did Glory Girl outrun you?"
"No, I'm faster," Taylor replied. "I think. But I ran into Rune and Stormtiger, and they were heading that way too, and – well, uh, we got in a fight. But I was fighting Nazis, which I think is a good thing!"
Dad shook his head.
"What am I going to do with you, Taylor?" he asked – but in an amused sort of way. "All right, so you got in a fight with two Nazi capes. Did you win?"
"I think so," Taylor replied. "I had a fight, I beat them up a bit, but I didn't catch either of them because some big hunks of concrete and rock had been dropped in the street and I wanted to clear up. They left before I was done."
Dad smiled at her.
"I'm glad you were listening when I was talking about social responsibility," he said. "All the same… be careful, okay?"
He frowned. "With Lung captured, it sounds like the Empire Eighty-Eight is making a lot more noise and trying to expand their territory, or at least see what they can do now Lung isn't around."
"Is that bad?" Taylor asked.
"It could be," he hedged. "But it's – well, it's hard to say. Obviously if you stop one villain then the rest of the capes in the city get an advantage, that's just how it works out if it's balanced like that. But if you don't stop any villains, they just rule the place."
Taylor thought about that, eating some more of her dinner while she did so.
"I guess…" she began. "If I just go out there and start spreading mayhem, that's going to have all kinds of consequences. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't do anything."
"Sometimes things are messy," her father agreed. "Demonstrations sometimes lead to riots, but without demonstrations, without pressure, things just stay as bad as they were at the start."
He smiled a little. "And, speaking of riots, Taylor, I don't know how you moved that enormous container ship – but, we've been dealing with the results at work for days."
"Sorry?" Taylor tried.
"No, I don't mean in a bad way," Danny replied. "It's a good way. That ship just not being in the way is already helping… it might not revitalize Brockton Bay by itself, but it means we can actually take in ships again."
"Uh," Taylor said. "I thought there wasn't much global shipping any more?"
"Because of Leviathan?" Danny asked. "Nah, it's pushed up insurance premiums, but Leviathan isn't everywhere all the time, and people still sailed in the 19th century – they even sailed when there were British blockades back in 1814! The insurance prices went up, that's all. It was the container ship that was the big one, because it was a flat stop to just about everything… and, like I say, it's still shaking out, but you might just have saved the DWA."
"Wow," Taylor mumbled. "I just did it because I'd heard you complain about it so much."
"That's because it was the biggest problem, of course," her father told her. "But you really did help out, Taylor."
He reached out and patted her on the head.
"Hey!" Taylor complained.
"But you like that when we're watching television," Danny said, innocently. "What should we watch tonight, actually?"
Taylor thought about that, a bit.
"...what about a Shakespeare film?" she asked. "You know, Forbidden Planet."
Near the end of lunch break, on the following day, Taylor found herself dreading the idea of going back into class.
It wasn't anything unusual. It was just that, after everything she'd done yesterday – after helping out – going into school seemed… less important.
Less relevant.
As her Changer forms, the primary one and her eight choices to upgrade it, she felt like she was making a difference. Whereas in school her main achievements were making it through math class without a thumbtack on her chair, or navigating through a geography class with her notes intact and without having juice poured into her bag.
It was constant, and it was exhausting. And it was funny that being a hero was something that was easier to cope with than that, but… it was probably because it was actually interesting to help out, as a hero. While at school, everyone who should have been helping her wasn't, and it was… exhausting.
That was it, Taylor decided. It was exhausting because she couldn't make a difference, and because nobody who could make a difference was. While as a hero, she was one of the ones who could make a difference.
Then the ground trembled a little, and Taylor frowned.
She'd sorted out her own lunch today, slipping out of school and buying with cash because it was easier than trying to get something from the school canteen or – worse – bringing food for the Bitches to steal. That meant she was outside the school grounds for now, and she had a reasonably good view of the skyline.
She still wasn't expecting there to be a second jolt to the ground, followed a moment later by a BANG and the sight of a cloud of smoke rising into the sky.
"The fuck?" she asked, out loud.
Then turned to head for an alleyway.
Whatever was going on, it seemed like she could help out… and it was entirely a coincidence that it would also provide a very good reason to not have to go and suffer through Eng Lit and Advanced Bitches.
"What is even going on?" Assault demanded. "Look at this!"
He glanced at Battery. "Are you seeing this? That was a bomb that exploded into ice! How do you make an ice explosive?"
"Tinkers!" Battery replied. "Obvious answer! Now what do we do with the van stuck inside it?"
"You tell me, puppy!" Assault replied.
Battery rolled her eyes, then checked her radio. "Battery to Console, our van is stuck in a giant block of ice. Assault and I got clear just in time… we don't think we'll be able to get it out. Where do you want us?"
The agent on the console began replying, but before they were more than halfway through an answer Assault nudged her. "Look!"
"Wait one," Battery requested, then followed the pointing finger from her husband.
A sort of yellow-and-orange fluffball had just jumped down from a nearby rooftop. It looked a bit like a cat or dog (which was a strange thing to think by itself) but with rabbit's ears, and now that it was a bit closer Battery could see that the body was covered in close orange fur while a big tail, a little curl on the head and a very fluffy mane were all made of much longer, thicker fur that was more yellow-orange than anything.
It looked like it was an almost illegal amount of floof, if Battery was being honest.
"Are you a cape?" she asked the fluffball, and it nodded at her.
"Not speaking?" Assault asked. "That's a serious crime, you know! Haven't you heard of giving your word to-"
Battery cuffed him on the side of the head.
"He's joking," she said. "Though I'd like to know why you're here."
In reply, the fluffy creature shook itself out, then blew a thin spiral of flame at the van. It hissed as steam boiled off, and both Assault and Battery watched with great interest as the flames melted away all the ice in about ten seconds – leaving the van dripping wet, but apparently unbothered by heat.
The fluffball looked pleased with itself, then changed into a smaller brown fluffball and from there into a purple cat with giant ears and a bifurcated tailtip.
"Huh," Assault said. "That's neat."
Are you going to be all right from here? Sphynx asked. I can't help much past just melting the ice.
"That's going to make things a lot easier for us," Battery told her. "Thank you?"
Great, the feline said, then looked around suddenly as another of those weird bombs went off. Uh oh, got to go! Nice meeting you!
Sphynx ran off, jumping onto a car a moment later and then lighting up with a sort of white glow as it made a prodigious leap up onto the roof of a building.
"...Armsmaster was right, they do have a weird way of speaking," Assault decided, eventually. "So, where are we going, puppy?"
Battery tapped her earpiece.
"Console?" she said. "We have a van again now. Sphynx sighted. Where did you want us?"
Taylor couldn't tell if it was something subconscious or subliminal, like how dogs were supposed to know an earthquake was coming before it actually hit, but she had the feeling that she needed to be over in this direction. Further south, across a city where things seemed to be going mad.
There were people using guns to rob stores or hold people up, but they seemed almost as terrified as their victims. Taylor exerted her telekinesis when she could, making guns drop their magazines or blasting them out of the hands of the holders with jets of force, but they weren't the thing that drove Taylor onwards so she kept going.
Then she reached the place her senses were screaming about, a park not far from Arcadia High, and stopped to stare.
Because… at first glance, it looked like nothing was wrong. Nothing was happening there, people were just strolling around, there were cars, dogs were being walked… until you looked closer.
Nothing was happening.
There was a circle about two hundred feet across, where everything was… frozen. People weren't moving, cars weren't driving, nothing. And, now Taylor was looking properly, she could see that there were PRT agents setting up roadblocks where the circle intersected the road, and Armsmaster's motorcycle and armour stopped nearby.
Taylor jumped down from the rooftop, exerting her telekinetic powers to slow herself down, and padded towards him.
What happened? she asked.
Armsmaster twitched slightly, then turned to her.
"Sphynx asked what happened," he said. "We believe this was one of the bombs detonated by the Tinker Bakuda, part of the ABB."
...why did you repeat my question? Taylor asked, confused.
"Sphynx has asked why I repeated their question," Armsmaster told her, or possibly the air. "I am doing so because your way of speaking does not get detected by my helmet's recording systems, which makes subsequent debriefs much more complex."
Right, Taylor decided. Anyway… uh, I guess Sphynx is me. So… this Bakuda detonated a bomb that froze time?
"Sphynx has realized that Sphynx is their internal PRT and Protectorate provisional name," Armsmaster stated. "They have also asked for clarification about Bakuda's bomb detonation."
With that part of what he was going to say done, Armsmaster paused for a moment, but Taylor didn't press him.
"In order to reduce future questions, I am going to provide more information," the Tinker said. "Bombs have been going off all across the city, which is suspected to be Bakuda's doing. She has demonstrated a number of exotic effects, such as glass or sand conversion, conventional but extremely powerful explosives, glue bombs, ice bombs, pain bombs, and this time bomb. Despite appearing like it has paused the subjects in time entirely, my analysis over the last few minutes indicates that subjects are indeed moving, but they are only moving extremely slowly – which for practical purposes is much the same thing."
Taylor nodded, then her gem and eyes glowed as she exerted her power.
She picked up dust from the street they were on, and sent it gently wafting forwards. The dust wavered in the air, revealing a laser that Armsmaster was directing into the time bubble, then began to thicken.
Releasing the dust, Taylor padded forwards again to examine the boundary the dust had defined. It outlined much more clearly where the bubble began than the roadblocks did, and although there was only a small segment of the edge Taylor could see that it looked like a complete sphere.
Where's the middle? she asked, glancing back at Armsmaster. If this was a bomb, where was it?
"Sphynx has asked where the middle of the time bubble is," Armsmaster said. "Currently I am working on the assumption that it was at the bottom of a salt box in the park."
Right, Taylor said, stepping back, and jumped on top of a nearby parked car.
She could just about see the salt box that Armsmaster was talking about, a locked container full of gritting salt to use on the park's walkways in winter, and it looked like it was about the right place.
As she focused, Taylor's gem lit up again with a red glow. Then a bubble of energy formed on the tip of her gem.
"What are you doing?" Armsmaster asked.
Helping, Taylor replied, most of her focus on making very sure she knew exactly what shape she wanted this to be.
She heard Armsmaster report what she'd said, but she barely noticed it.
The bubble of energy grew larger, defined by a light blue meniscus with nothing but normal air visible inside it, then Taylor pushed with her mind. The bubble detached from her, and floated serenely into the middle of the bubble – into the middle of the park – and settled down on top of the salt box.
Then it expanded, growing until the edge of the pale blue sphere was right at the little dust-layer that Taylor had created. The time-bubble and her bubble overlapped, then Taylor's eyes glowed red as she finalized what she was doing.
And, all over the park, a hundred and twenty people and fourteen cars all suddenly started moving again.
Taylor panted for a moment, then shook herself out and changed from her psychic-form to her lightning-form.
If this Bakuda was setting off bombs all over the city, Taylor had more helping to do, and her lightning-form was as fast as she could get.
"Console to Armsmaster, status?" the operator requested. "Last report had Sphynx doing something?"
"Sphynx broke the time bubble," Armsmaster said. "Then turned into a brown animal, turned again into a yellow one, and left at speed."
"Say again, Armsmaster?" the console asked. "Sphynx broke the time bubble?"
"Yes," Armsmaster confirmed, flatly.
He paused.
"I recommend reassessment of their Shaker rating as soon as there's time to do so."
Taylor sprinted down the street, turning left, right, and left, then heard a shout from up ahead and saw a rattle of gunfire aimed at the roof of a building.
The people shooting all looked like they were ABB gangers, and they had big chunky guns, so Taylor made the to-her-reasonable guess that there was a cape up there. She slowed down a little, judging her next step, then remembered something she'd read about once.
If you were going fast enough, all you really needed to be able to do was to turn it from going forwards into going up.
She adjusted her course slightly, aiming for the closest thing that was a bit like a ramp, then ran straight at it and bounced from there into heading at the building wall at about a fifty-degree angle. Her paws reached out, and she kicked hard as she reached it, then crested the edge of the wall just as the ABB gangers noticed her.
Some of them directed a volley of gunfire her way, and all of it missed – but when she landed she winced, as it felt like she'd damaged her ankle a little.
"Whoa," someone said, and Taylor turned to look.
She'd been right. There was a cape up here, and she could recognize him easily – he was Kid Win, one of the Brockton Bay Wards, and one of the many Tinkers working in the Bay at the moment.
His hoverboard was over to the side, emitting the occasional spark, and he waved.
"So, uh… I'm guessing you're a hero?" he tried. "Or, not a villain, anyway? Or, if you are a villain, not a member of the ABB?"
Kid Win sounded quite nervous, even though Taylor had been nodding since he asked if she was a hero. "Only, uh, they've kind of got me pinned down and stuff is going on everywhere, so I've got no idea when someone's going to turn up to help me. This is low priority-"
Taylor switched through her base-form to her plant-form, deciding to heal herself, and Kid Win stared.
"That's so cool," he said. "Wait, do they all have different powers? You can switch out to whatever you need? That sounds really useful."
The teenaged Tinker held up a pistol. "I can do guns, but that's not nearly as versatile…"
Taylor smiled, then focused on the sunlight, and healed her ankle. Sprained or broken, it didn't matter, and a moment later she was all right.
Then she padded to the edge of the roof, took a brief look, and ducked back as a bullet nearly removed one of her ears.
"Yeah, it's like that," Kid Win said, crawling up next to her. "I just hope they don't think of putting snipers on the roof or something…"
Taylor nodded, then frowned as she smelled something.
She had a better sense of smell, now, but… it was weird. Something about Kid Win specifically was making her uncomfortable, but she couldn't put a finger on why.
Or a paw.
"Look, do you have anything that isn't a Mover or Changer power?" Kid Win asked. "Because it'd be really helpful if you could deal with those ABB goons?"
Taylor looked at him, then nodded – deciding to ignore her unease for now.
She flicked her tail, and a dozen multicoloured leaves appeared in mid-air. Then they flew at a nearby bit of overhang, and landed in a neat Y-shaped pattern.
As a final demonstration, she ostentatiously closed her eyes, looked away from Kid Win, and did it again. Next to the first lot.
"...okay, that's really going to help us out here," Kid Win declared. "How many of those can you do at once?"
That was actually quite a good question.
Taylor swished her tail back and forth three times, leaving behind a trail of little glowing leaves each time. It felt like there were about thirty-six, all told, and she stopped there because that would hopefully be enough.
"Right!" the Tinker said, then grabbed his damaged board and pulled out a weird looking tool. He snagged something from the board, fiddled with his visor, then put the thing from the board right on the edge of the roof. "Right, uh… hang on… there we go. There's… about fifteen goons that way, taking cover… do you need to see where they are? I could take off my visor for it, but I'd need to grab a mask…"
Taylor shook her head.
"Okay, then… let's do this!" Kid Win decided.
Dozens of glowing leaves soared into the air, and the ABB gangsters stared at them.
Then one of them started shooting, more-or-less on general principle, and the leaves barraged down on their targets.
When a funny looking fox thing peered out over the roof a moment later, shortly followed by a visored Tinker, there was nobody in a fit state to shoot at them.
The whole city, Taylor decided, had gone completely crazy.
The ABB gangsters shooting things up, and the bombs, were bad enough. More than bad enough, actually, with half of one building being turned into glass which shattered in a deluge of broken pieces as she watched, while another explosion turned several load-bearing walls of a building into sand and sent the whole thing crashing down like an avalanche.
And that was before getting into the regular bombs.
But it seemed like half the other capes in the city had decided to cause trouble as well. Taylor saw Hookwolf going past at a distance, transformed most of the way into being a giant wolf made of blades and in the middle of a running battle with two PRT vans and Miss Militia, then Leet and Uber went past a street later in the other direction in a bright blue vehicle that would have been an aircraft except for the fact it was going along the ground.
It was just about managing to stay ahead of Velocity.
Taylor wondered what game that was based on – she wasn't exactly an expert – then spotted something moving off down a side-street and kicked off to blur down that way.
She had to pass two intersections, turn right, and catch up to the running battle, but once she got closer she could see… two giant dogs with riders, and ahead of them a cloud of thick black smoke.
Ahead of them was a jeep, with someone firing a grenade launcher out the back, and each of the grenades produced a weird explosion. One of them generated a brilliant flash that made her eyes water and one of the giant dogs yelp, then another exploded into a splatter of glue.
Taylor's eyes narrowed, and she accelerated.
She sped between the two dogs, prompting a shout from someone on one of the dogs, then aimed a bolt of lightning at one of the grenades flying back from the jeep. It exploded, but in a kind of fizzling didn't-actually-work way instead of a massive explosion or a bizarre Tinker-tech detonation.
Taylor strongly suspected that whoever was in that jeep was the one who'd set up all the bombs.
"Hey, animal girl!" a voice called. "Think you can help us out? Get up on here!"
Glancing up at the giant dog next to her, Taylor tensed, then jumped. She fired out another bolt of electricity as she did, and the next bomb sputtered into uselessness before it could detonate.
A moment later, she landed on the giant dog.
"My power says you're so hacked," the girl she'd landed beside said, shaking her head. "Tattletale, Thinker, one of the Undersiders, minor villain. That woman in front of us is Bakuda, major villain, she's the one who's been blowing up half the city!"
Taylor switched to her base form, intending to go to her psychic form in order to have a conversation, but another two bombs came flying at them in quick succession.
She hit them both with a barrage of golden stars that tore them apart before they went off, thankful she had a way to do that in her base form, but there was no way she was going to be able to have a proper conversation when she needed to defend them against bombs.
"If we can get closer we might be able to do something!" Tattletale told her. "Or, she's controlling her bombs with… toe rings!"
Taylor glanced at her, and Tattletale smirked.
"I'm a really good Thinker," she said.
"Vee," Taylor replied, trying to pantomime in case that would help Tattletale get what she was trying to say – half her attention on Bakuda's jeep, as the two big dogs and the smoke cloud swerved around a corner to follow it. "E-Vee?"
"They're starting to get tired, but they can get close," said the girl riding the other dog. "Once."
Taylor blinked.
"Vee-eevee?" she asked.
"Yeah?" the girl replied. "It's obvious. What, can nobody else understand you?"
"Okay, that's bullshit," Tattletale muttered. "Anyway, uh – she's a Tinker, she's going to have Tinkertech everywhere on her jeep, we need to fuck it all up at once. Can you do that?"
"Vee-eevee-veee!" Taylor replied.
"Yeah, but she needs to get closer," her translator explained.
"I really hope this works," Tattletale muttered to herself. "Okay – Bitch! We'll have to take the chance! Can you get us closer!"
"Vee?" Taylor asked, confused.
"That's my name," apparently-Bitch said, then got the attention of the giant dogs.
They began accelerating, paws beating on the road more often, and their panting got louder. Then Bakuda fired one of her grenades for the first time in a while, and Taylor shot it down with a trio of golden stars.
And it went off, the moment one of the stars hit it.
The concussive bang punched at Taylor's ears, the flash left a bright afterimage in her eyes, and both dogs yelped and tripped. Taylor launched herself forwards in a blur of speed the moment she felt her mount starting to trip over, switching from base-form to lightning-form in mid air, then the blackness dissipated for a moment and she saw that inside the cloud had been a third dog and two riders.
The dog jinked towards her, yelping, and Taylor took the offered platform. She accelerated even more, running in five blurring steps from the dog's tail to its forehead, and jumped off to land on the back of Bakuda's jeep.
The Tinker turned, picking up a bomb next to her, and Taylor did a blep.
Then unleashed a blast of electricity, hitting the entire jeep and everything within ten feet of it.
Several bits of Bakuda's equipment cracked or fizzled, overloaded by the discharge of electrical energy, and the bomb Bakuda had grabbed failed to go off. Taylor switched through her base-form to her psychic-form, exerting a flash of psychic energy, and lifted Bakuda up into the air with telekinesis before yanking her shoe off and removing her toe rings.
Then, as the two Undersiders from the lead dog came stumbling up – Tattletale was behind them and Bitch was taking care of the fallen dogs – Taylor dropped Bakuda in front of them.
Keep her from escaping, she said. Turn her in if you want – I need to be somewhere else.
Back through base-form to lightning-form, and Taylor raced towards the PRT building.
Because she'd just realized why the ABB would be making all this chaos.
Lung looked up, at the sound of shouting and explosions. The amount of shouting diminished, while the explosions continued without pause, until suddenly everything went quiet.
Then Oni Lee opened his cell door.
"Master," he said. "You are rescued."
"Good," Lung replied, standing.
The PRT had left him his mask and clothes, at least, though he had no doubt they'd seen what he looked like.
It was going to be a problem in future. The PRT stuck to the Rules, most of the time, which meant that he wouldn't be targeted as Kenta… but it meant that they would be able to identify his movements more effectively.
Still, he was no longer a prisoner. He would never submit to being a prisoner. And he had derived considerable satisfaction from not telling the PRT anything about the cape that had defeated him.
He'd have to work out some way to get revenge, unless his men had already secured it without him.
"How are things?" he asked, as they passed the lobby of the building. There were plenty of PRT employees who'd been neutralized during Oni Lee's attack, dead or trapped in their own containment foam or just unwilling to continue fighting, and some gangsters as well – all casualties themselves.
There was no sign of any capes, though.
"Bakuda organized a plan to free you," Oni Lee reported. "She planted explosives in public places, in buildings, in people, and used these resources to overwhelm the PRT and Protectorate's ability to respond."
"Hmm," Lung replied, thinking.
Planting explosives in people was… probably going to see a reaction against his gang. A greater reaction than he'd like… but, then again, if he'd been the one making the decisions about how far his men should go to rescue himself, if he'd planned this ahead of time in all seriousness, he probably would have told them to go all-out.
Regardless of the consequences.
He was Lung, and he would not be caged… though, admittedly, premeditated mortal danger to Wards was a potential way for things to get even worse than the Birdcage, so that was perhaps a limit he would have placed.
Hello again, a voice said in his mind, and Lung stopped for a moment.
"Kill that cat," he ordered Oni Lee, and his lieutenant teleported away. The duplicate he left behind crumbled into ash a moment later, and Lung heard the sound of gunfire and explosions.
Turning towards the direction of the combat, he watched as the nekomata dodged away from Oni Lee's attacks, gemstone glowing as it slowed the bullets in mid-air and as it hammered Lee's duplicate away with a burst of force just before the grenades went off.
It ducked behind a car a moment later, and Oni Lee materialized on a rooftop. He teleported again a second later, appearing next to the car with two grenades already ready to go – pins out, spoons ready to release.
Lung recognized it. It was Lee's most effective trick – his duplicate would only last a few seconds at most, but that was long enough for the grenades to go off, and nobody was truly ready to fight against a man who could appear next to you and charge at you with live explosives and no regard for his own life. And he could do it again, and again, with as little delay as necessary so long as he held two live grenades.
Lee was taking this foe exactly as seriously as he should, and Lung approved.
What he didn't approve of, though, was that Oni Lee did not simply teleport away, leaving his duplicate to violently explode and kill the transforming cape. He just… stood there.
"Master," Lee said, sounding quite agitated. "My teleportation has stopped working!"
Lung looked at the pair of live grenades Oni Lee was holding in his hands, where letting go of either of them would make it blow up in moments, and remembered that Lee had been using his power as part of his fighting style for years. He simply was not used, or really equipped, to fight in a situation where he couldn't use it.
"Are you a Trump on top of everything else?" he demanded. "Lee, throw the grenades away and shoot it!"
Lee threw his grenades away, as ordered, then got hit by a blast of purple-black energy that knocked him backwards. He didn't roll to absorb the impact, perhaps trying to teleport away by instinct, then as the two grenades exploded some distance away Lee hit the ground and went limp.
Then the pink-and-white ribbon cat jumped up onto the roof of the car, and made a smug face at him.
It meowed.
Lung shot fire at it, and it dodged away from the blast.
"Insolent-" he began, then the ribbon cat hit him with a sparkly beam of light that knocked him backwards into one of the vans the ABB had used to arrive.
His last thought before unconsciousness was that he did not like this cape very much.
"...all right," Director Piggot said, several hours later. "I think we've finally finished the debriefs, at least at this level. Unless anyone's been missed?"
The assembled Protectorate and Wards, some of them with serious costume damage or using their spares, all shook their heads or made negative comments.
"Good," she said. "Now. We're going to be going over this in a great deal of detail, probably for days or weeks, but first I want to make one specific point."
Hitting a button, she brought up several images. Some were from PRT security cameras, others were from Armsmaster or Kid Win's armour cameras, and some were from news helicopters or the internet.
"We are going to need to redo Sphynx's entire threat rating," she declared. "As near as I can tell, an incomplete summary is that Sphynx broke a time bubble in only a little more than the time it took to work out how big it was, defeated more than a dozen gangsters with an otherwise unknown Blaster power, healed itself-"
"Herself," Triumph interrupted. "The Undersiders said one of their member read her as female, and Sphynx didn't object."
"Herself, then," Piggot amended. "Moved at extremely high speed, and was involved in the defeat of every single cape in the Azn Bad Boys. In Lung's case, for the second time."
"We can't keep calling her Sphynx," Armsmaster stated. "That name implies that she is a cat. The majority of her observed forms are insufficiently feline."
Piggot stared at him.
"Are you sure that's the most important detail?" she asked.
"I am recording the meeting," Armsmaster replied. "It will be much easier to understand the recording if we are using the correct term. I recommend Multitude."
"Fine, Multitude it is," Piggot decided, irritably. "Now, what ratings does she get?"
As it turned out, the answer was that Multitude got a lot of them.
And they had suspicions about the ones they couldn't confirm.
"Jesus," Piggot said, once the meeting was over. "The exact numbers are going to be a question, sure, but this is like finding out that Eidolon's got a pet… cat fox rabbit dog thing, and it's in my city."
She rubbed her temples. "At least she took down the entire ABB. But that only means this is more important… Armsmaster."
"Director," the Tinker replied.
"I'm sure head office is going to be ringing me up about this as soon as we submit the report, so I'm going to get out ahead of Costa-Brown for once," Piggot explained. "If you get the merest sliver of a chance… recruit Multitude. We need her, more than any two other capes in Brockton Bay at minimum, so do whatever it takes."
Armsmaster considered, then nodded.
"I understand, Director," he said.
AN:
I'm sure that won't be regretted by anyone involved.
Well, okay, Lung is regretting a lot of things already.
