Little Hunter
First Nanku checked for additional drones.
There were none. Her mask and the bugs in the air swept thoroughly and found nothing.
Just the one and the one was focused entirely on Tattletale's position. Curious. Did the Pure not care about Fenja or Menja? Just the thinker? Or was the drone controlled by someone else entirely? The last option seemed too infeasible.
It was someone connected with the Pure and they'd left Fenja and Menja to die. Bad bloods would forsake clan ties. Typical.
Nanku hurried.
She kept Dusk and Dawn far from the drone. Stashed the corpses somewhere she could retrieve them later. She considered getting the other bodies but decided the risk wasn't worth it. Either the drone had already seen what happened and knew about Nanku and the twins, or it missed them, and staying out of sight completely was the best option.
Tattletale would split her forces soon.
Nanku guessed the surveillance vehicle would remain. It had the equipment. Tattletale would move to the other vehicle to return to the city.
Planting that tracker was going to pay off early. More fate at her back.
"Alright." Tattletale sighed. "My bet is she killed everyone and is either coming back here or leaving. If you see her don't engage. Just leave her be."
"You say so, boss."
"Watch for anyone else. Someone's bound to come looking and we can follow them."
"What if she wants a ride?"
"Call a taxi. You know the one."
"Right."
"I wouldn't worry about it. She doesn't want our help and she can make her own way back into the city if she wants. Let's go."
She rose and entered the other vehicle as Nanku expected.
Stepping out of range, Nanku proceeded back toward the road. She wasn't hitching a ride on one of the vans again. Tattletale figured that out the first time. The second time, the other thinker might notice.
Nanku needed to procure her own way back into the city.
There was time. Whoever was stalking Tattletale was a shadow of a real hunter. They'd need to figure out where she was and then arrange an attack. That would take long enough for Nanku to make her way back to Brockton Bay.
The house exploded before they'd made it halfway back to the road. The air shook and the ground quaked. Several cars began beeping loudly and flashing their lights. The blast wasn't bright but against the night it stood out. Dusk and Dawn both rocked mid-flight from the shock wave and Nanku turned Dawn's head toward the drone.
It was hard to make out, but the surveillance device flickered into sight for a fraction of the moment.
It turned, rotating to look at the column of smoke rising from the former 'Richter' estate. It vanished from sight before Dawn could see more.
But it had moved from its original position following Tattletale as she entered the second van.
She was hunting the Pure's thinker. And the Pure's thinker was hunting her.
Nanku wasn't one to interfere—unlike someone—but Nazis could 'get fucked.' Especially when they were trying to kill her mother or hurt her sister. There was no rule against hunting a target if it was in a hunt itself anyway. Most Yautja considered that a perfect situation.
The irony of Tattletale becoming bait in a trap after what she did to Bitch and Cassie was just a bonus Nanku was happy to live with.
Just past the front gate of the neighborhood, Nanku found her chance. A large truck stopped at the intersection and waited for the light.
She drew her swarm to her and quietly climbed onto the back.
At the overpass to get back onto the highway the truck moved to go the opposite direction. Nanku stepped off and picked herself up onto the rear of a tractor-trailer in the left turn lane. Turning onto the highway toward Brockton Bay.
She swept the road as she went, searching for potential ambushes.
The Pure must know where Fenja and Menja lived. They may have prepared an ambush en route.
Turned out Tattletale was smarter than that.
The only ambush Nanku found was Regent at one gas station and Foil at another. A dozen armed men between them. And snipers. Thermal scopes must be expensive because they didn't see Nanku as she switched her ride. Dusk flew at the edge of her range and paced Tattletale's van. The vehicle was faster but the road wound in places that let him keep up.
Dawn flew ahead at the other edge, searching.
No sign of ambush.
With her visor, Nanku could make out the drone following Tattletale still.
It hadn't given up yet.
Perhaps attacking her on her way back into Brockton Bay was simply too obvious. Tattletale clearly prepared for it. The Pure's thinker saw it coming.
"This might be worth my time," Nanku mumbled.
Thinker.
She'd come across the word and mostly understood it. Capes with mind powers. Smarter. Seeing or conceiving things that a normal human couldn't. Tattletale called her power 'Sherlock Holmes' and Nanku finally remembered the name. A detective who put clues together.
So what did the Pure's thinker do?
Seeing the future seemed out. Surely a cape who could see the future could have lured Tattletale out without sacrificing so much.
Her mother 'saw things.' Learned them when she touched something or went somewhere. Saw the past. That's how she learned about the R'ka, but it also seemed inapplicable. How did that power create the current situation?
What else was there? Thinkers who made plans. Who saw things. Who learned them.
That was variety and Nanku didn't know how she'd figure out which was which. Quicker to simply go for the throat. The thinker wasn't paying her any mind. They were clearly focused on Tattletale.
…
Which was interesting, when Nanku thought about it.
The Pure wanted her mother dead… but if they were willing to attack her in the open, why not do that? Luring the Undersiders out of position or drawing the Protectorate away with a brawl was one thing. That could leave her mother—and Rose—vulnerable.
No. No, they could have done that whenever.
Maybe Iron Rain wanted revenge on Weaver, but the thinker. The thinker wanted Tattletale.
Nanku climbed onto the back of another truck and rode it back into the city proper. The van drove ahead, and Nanku activated the tracker to follow the vehicles.
Her swarm swept through alleys like a tide.
If not now, then later. The Pure were going after Tattletale. Maybe to kill her in the same way she wanted to kill the Pure's thinker. Maybe because she was the real target of their ire and always had been.
It made no difference either way.
Nanku leaped from roof to roof and vaulted streets with the Twin's help. Tattletale's van pulled into a parking garage close to downtown and then moved behind an enclosed area at the back of the structure. The building behind was a typical office space, but the basement was expansive.
An Endbringer shelter.
Nanku had seen them about the city. Some were empty. Others were manned by a few people tending to the stocks of supplies or equipment inside. Brockton Bay was attacked by Leviathan in the past decade and it seemed the city was preoccupied with being prepared.
A good place for a den, Nanku thought.
She circled when she arrived. Tattletale was inside but there were far too few bugs. The works were too vast for her to get into even with her smallest insect. The seams were tight.
The bunker was far far too secure.
Between the heavy doors, observation equipment, and arrays of electronics she suspected were all security systems, only an absolute fool would attack her there.
The Pure would strike elsewhere.
…
Did Tattletale expect that? Still made no difference but Nanku swept around the surrounding blocks. There were conspicuously placed men and women. They watched the streets from corners and windows. Subtle from the outside, but looking at all of them through her swarm Nanku saw that they covered the area perfectly.
None of them noticed the drone.
It noticed them.
The machine flew unseen, darting from vantage to vantage and turning toward the watchers.
Nanku began to wonder if any ambush would come, but the drone had to go somewhere. It looked at all the guards one by one. Nanku kept Dusk and Dawn out of sight in the alleys. She held herself still and always to the device's flank and in cover.
There was no way to be certain the device hadn't seen her, but it had to land eventually. It had to go somewhere.
And wherever that was, Nanku intended to follow if nothing else.
A pack of three spiders worked their webs at her feet and she brought a flight of wasps out of the swarm. Nanku drew a tracker from her belt and slipped it into the web. Once the spiders finished, she had the wasps pick the lines and fly the device into the air.
It was a struggle but the team could carry the weight.
Nanku focused, maneuvering the little fliers out of the drone's sight lines. She'd watched it watch Tattletale's guards and had a good idea. Its field of vision wasn't narrow but it had to turn to see. An odd design, but perhaps a necessary concession for its stealth capability.
Approaching from an odd angle at the side—Nanku wasn't sure if it could see behind itself—Nanku managed to slip the tracker onto the machine.
It vanished into the stealth field projected around it, but the signal was clear.
Tagging her target with her biomask, Nanku slipped from sight entirely and typed a series of commands into her computer.
The drone moved as she did.
Turned. Circled one last time. Then it took off heading north.
Nanku followed and drew her swarm with her. A mile north. Long but not too far. Into the train yards servicing the port. Lots of warehouses and parking buildings again. The drone went to one marked 'Medhall' in faded white letters.
Nanku kept a distance. Used her bugs to feel the area out by leg and eye. Dusk crept over a rooftop on the other side and Dawn flew high overhead.
Slipping through an open window, Nanku crept along the rafters of an industrial building and found a window. The vantage point was effective. Clear line of sight to a band of men gathered in an enclosed fence with tarps hung from the links. A few vehicles. Several crates and containers.
Three in costumes.
Nanku recognized them easily. There were pictures online and they were veterans of the Nazis groups in Brockton Bay.
Their costumes were distinct. A cage for a mask. Something that looked like a bad wrestling outfit on an overly muscled man who looked preposterous with how small his hands were compared to his thick arms. The knight getup with a pair of spears strapped to his back.
Cricket. Stormtiger. Crusader.
Around them were men in tactical gear, like those who'd accompanied Victor and Alabaster. Nanku never asked what happened to him. Tattletale presumably had him in a cell somewhere.
These men were about as well armed, and they had crates filled with guns lined along a wall with more men parking outside. They entered one by one and Nanku knew an assault in preparation when she saw it.
They were going after—
Nanku's lips pulled tight and she subtly swept her back and the building below.
Clear.
Crusader. Stormtiger. Cricket.
Her lucky day. Damn.
Nanku released her wristblades and readied her shuriken.
Loathe as she was to admit it, maybe Tattletale had a point.
Predicting Nanku would pursue Fenja and Menja couldn't be that hard. Predicting Tattletale would be nearby watching? That was quite the guess.
But sending Stormtiger?
Nanku took note of him. For all the times her cloak had been seen through or detected, he was the one cape she'd prepared for and expected to have trouble with. Manipulating air currents? That seemed like a power that could notice when something unseen was present.
Cricket too.
Super hearing. Heightened reflexes. She seemed like a fun challenge, but Stormtiger?
No.
No Tattletale wasn't the target. They wanted it to seem like Tattletale was the target.
Nanku didn't relax even after securing her flanks and rear. They could have a parahuman like Imp. Someone Nanku couldn't find or see readily.
The drone was still in the air and Nanku dismissed the notion of having gone unnoticed. The machine had seen her.
She was the target.
They wanted her to come down and get caught.
A dozen more armed men in a building to the right.
A dozen more to the left, and six with a woman in what looked like a costume.
Othala or Iron Rain?
Dusk and Dawn flew back. Low and behind buildings. Nanku couldn't count on anything.
It was obvious once she thought of it. The way they moved. The way they watched. Milling about. Waiting.
Waiting for her.
Nanku's annoyance flared. She'd been found too many times and was tired of it. It was one thing if her foes somehow outsmarted her, but powers? Powers were just plain cheating in that regard. No skill to it…
But that was a coward's excuse. Someone who rejected honor.
What others did was their concern.
What Nanku did was hers.
Pe'dte never trained her to shirk from challenge.
She had something great in front of her. And at least one possible advantage. Maybe two.
The Pure brought nearly everything to try and end her hunt. Maybe the thinker saw the future after all. It would explain the precision.
But from how clustered they were and in the open… maybe they knew about Dusk and Dawn. Maybe. But they didn't know about the swarm. And they'd only seen the weapons Nanku had used so far at best.
At least four capes. A full team and another two dozen men with guns.
Nanku dismissed the costumed woman to the side. Othala was nothing without people to use her power on. That was a solvable problem. Crusader was dangerous but from what video Nanku could find he was slow.
Stormtiger and Cricket?
These two were different from Fenja or Menja. Alabaster and Victor too. They were mere thugs. Brutes. There was no real skill. Just powers serving as their crutch.
Just watching Stormtiger and Cricket told Nanku they were artisans. The way they moved was different. The way they carried themselves.
Nazis, unfortunately, but they were fighters.
A challenge indeed.
Nanku slipped back from the window.
She laid some pieces of equipment out. Adjusted settings. Readied some specialized tools.
Programming her computer, Nanku tested the mounting over her shoulder and the targeting system in her biomask.
The Pure wanted to play her game.
She'd play, and she'd play better. Or she'd die, but Nanku doubted it.
"Everything dies," Nanku mouthed without sound. "One way or another."
There was a tingle under her skin. A ready eagerness. Thus far she'd caught everyone unguarded and unready. Even those who really should have known better.
Nanku almost smiled.
Since coming to Brockton Bay it had all been so monotonous. Easy. More time-consuming than anything. Humans weren't hunters. For the most part. They couldn't understand. They'd barely caught on.
Until now.
Now her prey thought themselves ready and waiting.
Only one of them could be right.
Only one of them could walk away.
Nanku slipped out of the room and back onto the roof. She'd live, or she'd die. They'd live, or they'd die.
"Only the Black Warrior wins every battle."