"Salutations o' great Mama Snek I am the great Mouse Protector, I have been hoping to meet with you since you debuted as a fellow animal themed hero, and busting Jackie's skull together is a great first team-up," The chippy and hammy voice of the Independent Hero Mouse Protector went a mile a minute as she introduced herself to Verity, she being one of the three, technically four, out of town heroes that Armsmaster had gotten for the mission of exterminating the Slaughterhouse Nine.
Mouse Protector was… a lot, it seemed. In a good way. It contrasted her simple yet kind of silly costume really nicely, Verity liked it.
The other three being Chevalier, who was once one of the first Wards alongside Mouse Protector and Miss Militia who was also on this team. The man had the coolest power armor she had seen (sorry Colin!) and wielded a giant gun sword. Quiet in comparison to Mouse Protector, but that wasn't a very fair comparison. A better one would be that he was very focused and professional.
The other two being Dragon, who Verity was very excited to meet but hadn't gotten to talk to yet, and her friend from the International team called the Guild that focused on dealing with threats around the world.
Narwhal.
The seven foot tall, mostly naked save the crystalline growths along her body, amazonian buff woman of striking beauty. Also one of the few people to say 'fuck you' to the Manton Limit, which was terrifying (which was hot).
Verity had to remind herself at least three times that she had a girlfriend and it hadn't even been five minutes.
She focused back in on Mouse Protector's words, the helmeted hero having been patiently waiting for her to process the deluge of words.
"It's nice to meet you too, Miss Militia's told me a lot about you." Verity said, genuinely happy to meet her. "You're the only hero I know of who's actually, like, funny, it's really awesome."
"Yeah, many doofuses seem to forget to put on a smile, Armsy was kinda the same way, but I can see he has gotten better," She replied.
"Yes, I have gotten a… reality check as people call it," Armsmaster spoke. "Thanks to Medusa, and it is also thanks to Medusa that after just a few days of preparation we are able to do this, as briefed, a private Cape and their partner came to her to allow use of their abilities, which together allows to create doorways to any destination, but it drains them and they are already bed ridden and sick as is," Armsmaster gave the cover story they had come up with for Doormaker and the Clairvoyant.
Verity would be offering them some proper Treatment once the Nine were gone and she could start giving all the middle fingers to Cauldron, because going off of Bellatrix they were not being treated right and deserved to live their lives as they chose to.
And speaking of Bellatrix, she had been asking for their help to spy on the Nine to get more information on their powers and specifically Jack Slash.
His power as described by her friend was Broadcasting, broadcast his blade, broadcast his thoughts giving him what functioned as a minor master power over capes, as he knew exactly how they thought and could manipulate them accordingly. Because it apparently worked like a psychic spider sense, which was stupidly overpowered and explained how he was still alive.
Though like other powers, it didn't work too well when you knew the secret behind it, giving Verity even a bigger reason to just ignore whatever the man said if he managed to speak.
Not that she would let him.
There was a reason they'd brought in Narwhal, after all.
"Really, we'll need to thank our friends Clairvoyant and Doormaker for making this possible. I'm just the organizer for this." Verity said.
"I say it's thanks to your actions that they gave us this opportunity," Chevalier said. "I have met civilian capes, who despite having a strong power have no wish for the cape life, and I as always respect that decision as this life is not for everybody."
"Yeah, honestly, I don't think I'm cut out for it either, but we're getting way off topic." Verity said, before getting serious. "Does everyone know their objectives?"
"Yes," They all replied, the sound of Dragon's suit activating fully as she was ready for her role.
"Alright then." Medusa said, cracking her neck, all 10 of her snakes forming as she mentally prepared herself. "Let's do this. Doormaker? Do your thing."
And like that seven doors opened up.
Instantly, all seven heroes burst into motion.
Medusa barely took the time to orient from walking through the door to find herself in the disused house the Nine were currently squatting in before her attention had already latched onto her target.
A 12 year old girl in a tattered blue dress and bloody smock, humming a tune as she stood at a worktable, arms deep in an unidentifiable corpse that was being visibly reconstructed by what looked like the spider-equivalent to Skull Servitors from 40k which was putting things through its removed jaw throat that should not be in a body.
Medusa's first footstep into the room caused her to shoot forward like the ambush predator she was built to be.
She swept up Bonesaw in her arms, forcing herself to ignore the squelching sound from her arms being disgorged from the corpse's guts, and (gently, gently as she could) bit into Bonesaw's shoulder and injected her directly with her paralytic venom.
It actually took effort, as her skin was as tough as steel (a feeling she knew from her fight with Hookwolf), as she had seemingly given herself subdermal armor.
But it was still not enough to withstand her fangs.
The girl's body froze in her grip.
The Skull Servitor-rip offs continued doing their work on what Medusa now noticed to be a still breathing body and not, as previously assumed, a corpse.
"Door to Guild Cell 5." Medusa said, the door opening and the guards and medics on the other side taking the still frozen girl from her.
As that door closed, she focused on the victim. A quick grab and squeeze popped the skull spiders, which from previous interactions were confirmed to already be dead. "Door to Scapegoat." She said softly, the door opening up and Medusa moving the body through onto the waiting gurney, ignoring the fact she was now covered in blood and fluids.
Though after giving the room a quick look over, she did see in the corner of this temporary operating room the body of the one called Hatchet Face, and he, unlike the other person, was in fact already dead.
As had been reported(Thankfully).
She quickly stoned the body anyway just in case, they could get it later.
Medusa took a quick moment to steady herself, and then focused once more. "Door to Crawler."
"FIGHT ME! HURT ME! MAKE ME STRONGER!" Came the booming guttural voice of the creature for there was no longer any other way to describe the individual known as Crawler.
"K." Medusa said, before blasting everything she had at it.
"WHA!" Was his only reaction as his body was consumed by the 12-fold beam of petrification fired from Medusa, only giving out when she heard a chiming noise from the Pendragon overhead.
As she blinked the stars from her eyes, she could see the now stone form of Crawler, who looked like a Xenomorph infected a Shoggoth while it got freaky with a Khorne daemon- way too many eyes all over its body, 6 main limbs thicker than her body accompanied by a number of tentacles, a massive jaw with teeth 6 inches long at least filling practically the whole thing, the rest of its armored carapace resembling twisted muscle fibers.
And where before it had briefly been a gradient of black to grayish-blue, it was now a consistent and stony gray.
Medusa gave a thumbs up to the Dragon overhead (she knew it was a drone but it was a fucking mecha dragon that was so cool) which had the alternative to the glass bomb.
And a second later the cage that it had been carrying was dropped, landed on Crawler and began rapidly expanding and filling out, additional panels sliding out underneath creating the floor and fully trapping the boxed supervillain as it was then raised at an angle by pistons.
The the rocket engines on the back of it ignited with a fucking blast making Verity happy that she was superhumanly durable as a normal person would have been ruined by the supersonic object that set out to leave Earth's atmosphere.
"Hope you have a fun vacation on the sun, don't send any postcards!" Medusa shouted at it as she watched it rapidly approach and then exit the troposphere.
She then activated her comms. "Bonesaw and Crawler are down, does anyone need assistance?"
"Negative, Shatterbird exterminated," Came Miss Militia responded.
"Siberian dead," Armsmaster answered.
"Jack got decapitated, though there was another Cape with him, unknown Master, knocked unconscious, tried to mess with my emotions, potential Heartbreaker child." Narwhal stated.
"Me and Chevalier have dealt with Mannequin, didn't take long for him to deal with Burnscar." Mouse Protector reported.
"Correct had to put her down, she… was more power than person at this point in time," The knight stated.
"Damn…" Medusa said with a sigh. "Unfortunate, but acceptable, I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up."
"She looked to be finally at peace when her eyes closed, so I think for her, she finally woke up from a very, very long nightmare." Chevalier said in comfort.
Medusa forced herself not to think further on the subject. She needed to finish the mission first. "Anyone find any other oddities like Narwhal and the mystery master?"
"No." Was the general answer from the others.
"Then… I guess that means it's just the clean up crew, and…" Medusa trailed off as it settled in what they just did.
"We won," Armsmaster said. "We won Medusa. For the first time in a very long time we won."
"And also I found the kidnapped baby." Narwhal spoke once more over the coms. "Does not look experimented on at all, but taking her to Panacea is properly for the best."
Verity let out a sigh of relief.
They did it.
The Slaughterhouse Nine was no more.
Next target: Cauldron.
Xxx
Verity blinked.
A few days had passed since the Slaughterhouse Nine had been dealt with and the Endbringers and Scion had seemingly vanished from the world.
Which meant that the entire world was celebrating after that fact was announced by the Triumvirate that quelled the immense panic at seeing the Simurgh disappear from low earth orbit without any reported attacks happening.
The party was much more intense in the USA, as the announcement of the death of Nine had been at the same time, with Bonesaw officially included in that. As many were still debating what to actually do with her, which going by the bureaucracy that was going to last months.
But in the meantime Narwhal and Dragon had said they were going to be taking care of the girl and try to, well, help her out and plead for her case as was still in fact a girl that has been traumatized and basically Mastered since the age of six by the worst Joker expy Verity had seen.
And as a result of helping with the destruction of the Slaughterhouse Nine, which had been given a Kill Order. Meaning that people could put prizes on their heads.
Which meant that Verity was now staring at the money that been put in her bank account for 'eliminating' Bonesaw and assisting with Crawler.
50 million.
$50,000,000.00.
Verity could only stare at that number in dull shock for the last ten minutes.
Her bank had called her to make sure it was legit, which was how she even knew in the first place, and she had been staring at the number since.
She had always thought about what she could do with even just 1 million dollars, but now…
Her brain couldn't process the number.
To make this easier on herself, she decided to donate half of it to the reconstruction efforts being put into Brockton Bay, and began writing out a list of what to do with that money.
"Hey V what are you doing?" Bellatrix asked as she entered her office.
"Deciding how to spend my bounty money." Verity said, staring at the list with several scratched out figures, twirling her pencil between her fingers as she thought. "Did you get a bank account set up yet Bell?"
"Not yet, still don't have full identity set up even if the Case53 process is a lot easier, not a Protectorate Hero like you so they are not going full out, but they do want me for consulting." She replied.
"Well, if you were worried about being able to financially support yourself," Verity said, writing something on the next piece of notebook paper and pulling it before offering it to Bellatrix.
"Wha?" She asked as she looked at it, and Verity saw her eyes fall out of her face.
Literally.
"What the fuck!?" Verity all but shrieked in shock.
"Huh? Oh right, found out I am 'undead' monster girl," Bellatrix said as she picked her eyes back up. "I found various parts of me are detachable." Demonstrated by plucking off her head.
Even hearing her keep talking, Verity's instincts told her for a moment that her friend had just killed herself. "Just- just don't do that, that's-urgh." The images of all the corpses she'd seen recently began flashing through her mind.
"Sorry," She said as she quickly put it back on. "So… friend, what are your plans now? The city is pretty much villain free, the Endbringers are gone, and the Slaughterhouse has been cleaned out."
"Well, short term, focus on reconstruction and recovery efforts. Take care of and/or spend time with the kids and my gf, that kind of thing." Verity said. "Long term…"
"Well, let's just see how that turns out, we are stuck here so let's make this world the best home we can," Bellatrix said with a bit of sadness in her voice.
"Bell, we have Clairvoyant and Doormaker fully in our corner." Verity said. "That's not a concern of 'if' so much as 'when'. I'm more worried about how to actually deal with Cauldron as a whole- at this point, we have to do this the right way, and I'd prefer getting them to literally confess to everything on the record or something, since while I'm awesome, I don't know if I can actually fight the Triumvirate. Probably not Eidolon. Definitely not all at once."
"Let's hope it works out my friend."
"Are you using the word friend a lot because you aren't used to calling me Verity?"
"Yes, and because I wanna be a drama queen, still not quite used to this body, and it kinda makes me wanna talk all wise mentor-like."
Verity snorted. "You? The wise mentor type? Voice of reason maybe."
"I can totally…" And like that familiar mood settled over the office as the two engaged in nonsensical conversation.
Exactly what she needed.