Little Hunter

If it wasn't one thing, it was another thing entirely.

She raised the phone back to her ear. "Define 'it's off.'"

"Just what they shouted," Aisha answered. "'It's off.'"

Lisa sighed and leaned back in her seat. "I knew Weaver was never going to keep Nanku indoors—fat chance of that—but I didn't expect she'd go Rambo first chance."

"Yeah." Aisha paused. Dramatically. "Probably should have thought of that. Probably should have thought about letting Bitch run into a trap too."

"Rachel's a big girl. She can handle it."

She was probably happy they were finally doing something. Not that Lisa had a choice. Once the Pure started baiting Bitch with dead dogs there was only so much delaying that could be done. Might as well set the trap off in full knowledge it was a trap.

But a bunch of guns on trucks and the wonder twins? As a prelude to something bigger that was ambitious, to say the least.

Fucking thinkers.

"Doesn't make any sense," Lisa mumbled.

"Tell me about it."

"Fenja and Menja aren't enough to contain Bitch and anyone who might come to help her. Nanku or no Nanku."

"I wasn't actually—"

"And just those two? That's not a sure thing in the least."

"Maybe I'm not emphasizing the stupid number of guns they had. Fifty cal shit too. Like army stuff."

Still not enough. That wouldn't stop the dogs. Only slow them down. It was a delaying tactic at best.

"How many?" Lisa asked.

"Let's just say there's a big ass parking lot here and you'd have an easier time looking for a needle in a haystack than finding some part of this place not shot to hell."

Okay. That was a lot of guns. A whole lot of guns.

Still. "The point is, where the hell were the rest of the Pure? What kind of trap is that?"

"We could have let Stabby McStabsFace stab some face."

Lisa shook her head and glanced at one of her other phones. Coil might have been a bastard, but he paid for professionalism. His goons were her goons and they might not be capable of taking on capes in an open fight but she hardly needed them for that.

"The twins are too hard to hold," Lisa lied. "We've still got Alabaster and he's easy to hold."

Twins would just grow and break out unless drugged up and drugged up meant Lisa wouldn't get much from them. Better to let them run and see where they went. Whoever was running the Pure was too smart to let that go too far but it was a start.

Only a damned arrogant idiot goes running at a thinker with no idea what their power even does.

Lisa knew full well what Coil's power did and she still got fucked.

"Welp," Aisha mused, "what now?"

"Now?" Lisa spun her chair around and faced the room's other occupant. "Pick through the place. Grab phones. All that shit."

"Right. What about the dead meat?"

"One upside, I doubt the PRT will think Nanku could cross so much ground so fast in one night. And who the hell would expect her to go from awful family reunions to killing a few dozen people?"

Lisa shivered. She'd made her peace with killing the occasional asshole a long time ago. She even accepted that a good number of people died who did not have it coming. Life was fucked that way. Some people just drew the ultimate short straw.

She never went about killing anyone and anything who so much as minorly offended her.

She sure as hell didn't view every living breathing thing as an equal killing opportunity.

Lisa wouldn't shed a tear for Nazis, but Nanku's entire moral framework was downright alien. And she wasn't like Rachel. Nanku's powers weren't fucking her head. It was all upbringing and that was so much worse.

"Where'd she go?" Lisa asked.

"Fuck if I know," Aisha replied. "You know she can turn invisible, right? Like legit."

"Regent."

"His shit ain't that precise and you know it."

Damn. "Now she's back to running around and probably making corpses."

"Oh no. Dead Nazis. The tragedy."

"I don't give a rat's ass about Nazis. I care about literally everyone else. You remember how this shit went down before Aisha. Grue—"

"Want to take a moment," Imp asked coldly, "and think about that one Tats?"

Lisa hissed. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah I get it, but Bitch has a point too. All the scheming isn't making the Pure go away and looking like we're doing nothing makes us look weak. Brian might have been a total ass about the importance of street cred, but he was right. We need our reputations and we're pushing it."

Lisa wasn't dumb. She knew the score.

What no one else got was that they were dealing with something way more serious than Iron Rain Two-Point-Oh and some old Nazis they'd driven out of town once before. There was a serious thinker backing the Pure and tonight proved it. There'd been a plan and the only thing that threw it off was Nanku's sudden appearance.

Baiting Bitch took no genius, but that only worried Lisa more. It was such a simple thing to do, yet it took weeks for anyone to do it. And what was 'it' and how did all the other Pure capes tie into it?

There were too many damn questions to be going large.

As much as Rachel wanted to think Lisa had lost her nerve since Calvert's fall, Lisa worried Rachel and the others had lost their edge. They weren't thinking long con anymore. They'd gotten used to being able to brute force every annoying problem away.

That shit wasn't going to work now.

And Lisa felt like a broken record in her own head.

"What about the dogs? The fighting ones."

"Bitch, Cassie, and Sabah are loading them up now."

"Get out of there fast. And let's check around to see if we can find an ambush at any of our safe houses. We'll have to sweep the city."

"Oh joy."

"You know you're the best one for the job."

"Until there's a claymore tied to a door."

"One time that happened!"

"That's too many times, Tats."

"You were fine!"

"It's funny you think that's the point."

Lisa hung up because at that point Aisha was just having fun and there was work to do.

Spinning her chair around, Lisa stood and walked across the room to the obnoxiously white Nazi hanging from a line made of a material unknown to man.

Nanku somehow managed to forget about it.

Which was good because Lisa learned a few things. First, that it couldn't be cut. Tinker-tech bolt cutters gave before whatever the line was made of. Second, the alloy wasn't tinker-tech. It was some kind of super-material that couldn't even be properly analyzed because it just didn't break.

As if they didn't have enough problems.

Lisa crouched and looked Alabaster in the eye.

"You have any idea how hard I work to cultivate this image?"

Lisa flicked at his brow.

"It's fucking hard. First I had to get over being pissed anyone might think I'm not the smartest person in the room. That was a damn quest, let me tell you, but it's a whole lot harder to appear like a broken sad-sack when you're getting uppity over every little slight. So yeah. I had to work on myself for that one."

Lisa tried not to linger on the bitterness that came with that journey. She knew what Calvert was about. She saw the gears turning in his head. Thank god the guy was just an abusive control freak and not a full-out rapist.

He was enough of a creep.

"And it's not like I'm not damaged. I am, but playing it up? That's a vulnerable place for me. I got to wear my scars on my sleeve and let everyone know they're there. That really fucking sucks. It works. Everyone thinks I'm putting up a strong front because I am. Don't even have to fake it."

She was pretty sure Aisha and Alec knew. They played the fools but that was only because being serious wasn't enough fun. She thought Bitch knew too but Lisa wondered. They'd never been the closest and she'd long learned her power was far from infallible.

Parian and Foil were too busy blaming her for their own choices to ever think much about it.

"So," Lisa mused, all diatribe'd out, "anything you want to say?"

Alabaster stared blankly. "Are you a natural B-cup or is that a pushup bra? Cause you're Aryan enough and I'd fuck you but—"

"Yeah." Lisa pushed the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. "Should have seen that coming."

Five seconds later Alabaster was fine.

So she shot him again.

"Huh. That is therapeutic. Guess mindless violence is totally fine when it's directed at complete wastes of human life. Which I recognize is an ironic thing to say when repeatedly shooting a Nazi in the head, but, paradox of tolerance and all that."

Alabaster shook his head as he came back. "You know that hurts right?"

"And you know you're numb to it so don't tempt me."

"And they call me a sociopath."

"Thank Coil." Lisa smiled sardonically. "I used to just be a bit bitchy."

"That's your supervillain origin story? Lame."

"Right? Just really? One douchebag blackmails me. Makes my life hell. Totally screws me over. You'd think I'd come out better for it, not"—another pull of the trigger—"that. That right there."

She waited until his power kicked in.

"Maybe it's just 'cause you come back, I don't know. Or you're a Nazi and frankly, you can just go straight to hell. If anyone deserves it, it's fucking Nazis."

Alabaster rolled his eyes. "Like I've never heard that one before."

"You're used to it. We can skip the pity party. If you're gonna complain about anything, I'd think you'd complain about Rain and her stupid revenge scheme. I mean come on. You were there. Weaver didn't get Purity or Theo Anders killed. That shit's on Panacea and we all know how that spiraled into the shitter."

Alabaster shrugged from his upside-down position. "You know the Nazi National anthem. Just following orders."

"Oh come on. You're a Nazi but even you must hate your boss. I'm my own boss and I hate me sometimes."

"Little brat wants revenge. Oh well. Is what it is."

"But on Weaver? I mean, why not Carol Dallon? She's still alive and believe me she did Amelia zero favors. That girl needed therapy. All the therapy. Or at least an institution. At least two of the Travelers are still alive. Why not go after them? One crisis in BB we could have handled but Echidna spiraling into Phage was a clusterfuck five steps off from ending the world."

"You really think that's gonna work?"

"What?"

"The whole getting me to reveal things by buddying up to me."

"Well, it is worth a shot." Another shell casing clattered against the floor. She apologized after he came back. "Sorry, just—It was right there. Had to go for it."

"Jesus." Alabaster sighed. "Why do you even care? She's a hero."

Lisa shrugged. "Maybe I'm gay. Promise not to put me in a camp?"

"Really?" He clearly didn't believe her. "Suit yourself. The bitch popped two brats out and she's still flat as a board."

"Hey, you're into idolizing a fucking moron with a bad haircut who killed tens of millions of people you also want to kill while at the same time insisting he didn't—"

Lisa froze.

"Oh no," Alabaster deadpanned. "You psycho-analyzed me. Clearly, I'll just turn my life around now. Join the good guys. Makeup for all the things I—"

Lisa rammed the gun into his mouth to shut him up.

"Two, you say?"

He mumbled around the gun but Lisa kept the barrel pressed into his jaw.

Two. He absolutely said two.

"How do you..."

Her power whirled as she uncorked the cap.

They knew Weaver had two children. That wasn't possible by just looking at her figure or guessing by her age. That demanded concrete information.

Maybe they could guess one child. The whole summer camp thing and the aftermath. Weaver's crusade against Nilbog—misguided of all fucked up shit cakes to throw atop the horror show. Someone could guess she'd lost a child in the camp.

Could someone have tracked her real identity down from that?

Didn't matter. Weaver wasn't even a very public cape until after Rose was born. There was no absence to pin on a pregnancy and the PRT was prepared for that anyway. No, they knew.

"Fuck."

Lisa pulled the trigger and spun on her feet.

She dialed quickly and barely waited for the tone to pick up.

"Jesus," Aisha answered. "Tat's we just star—"

"Get going to Weaver's apartment now."

"Um, I wouldn't dare to—"

"NOW IMP!"

Lisa hung up and dialed another number.

"Come on, Anne. Come on. Answer."

She didn't and Lisa cursed.

She tapped a text out and started toward the exit.

EMERGENCY
Pure know where you live.

Her mind raced, spiraling around the questions that mattered.

Perfect time for a text to come in from the survey team.

Got a problem
Truck is dragging
Think we have a stowaway

"How the hell did she even…"

Lisa trailed off. Going after Weaver was one thing. If they were going after Annette, that was entirely different. Dauntless was her fucking husband. An attack on her was an attack on him and then Aster's petty revenge and Nanku's kill-everything attitude would only be two problems in a heap of shit.

"Alright, genius. You've got a team, a cooperative hero, and someone who likes killing things for sport and isn't going to stop. What next?"

She sighed. Sometimes being a thinker really sucked.

"Screw it. Have lemons, make lemonade."

~ ~ ~

There were times Sarah wondered if it was all worth the trouble.

They were all such drama queens.

"No!" Jess threw the shield and left it to clatter past her sister off-screen. "It was it."

"It?" Crusader's frown was clear in his voice if not his stance. He tried too damn hard. If not for his power the act would never work. "Define it."

"It!" Jess screamed into the microphone. "That fucking thing that killed Heith!"

Heads turned left and right across the screens. Most of the Pure's capes were present on the call. Only Storm Tiger and Cricket were absent. The two never were team players, and less so after Hookwolf bought it in the years after Phage.

But Heith?

"Who is Heith?" Sarah asked.

"I don't know."

Figured. Aster didn't know anything. Never did. Never would.

Oh well. You work with the tools you have.

"Is that what killed Victor?" Othala asked. She sat at the back of a room, facing away from the camera. Moping, of course.

"Yes!" Jess snapped. "Yes! That thing! The invisible fucking thing that came out of nowhere and cut her fucking head off!"

"It's not it," Nessa answered. "That cape was ten feet tall. This one wasn't."

"Define it," Crusader repeated. "What happened? What cape?"

Jess hissed and threw her hands up.

Rune watched from an apartment and muttered something to someone off-screen. Quiet and miserable about her life choices. Too proud to admit it though. That was oddly common. People who knew they'd done something shit and were suffering for it but just couldn't admit it.

They'd rather do anything than admit they were wrong.

"Someone explain," Crusader insisted. "What happened?"

Nessa's expression softened. "Stranger. Lots of knives and points. Ambushed the trucks right when we started and began killing everyone."

"Just like the house Victor and Alabaster went to," Othala mumbled.

"How'd you see anything if it was invisible?" Crusader asked.

"Wounds," Nessa answered. "Got a look at a few and it announced itself. Sort of."

"While invisible?"

"Invisible except when its eyes flashed. That's what's setting Jess off."

"Why?"

"Because the cape that killed Heith did the same thing!" Jess snapped from somewhere the camera couldn't see. "Flashed its eyes right after to fucking mock us!"

"But it had a visor," Ness said. "This one had six eyes and it was smaller."

"And it played no games! No holds barred! It went right for the throat. It killed first and asked questions later and this is the same thing, Ness! It tried to—"

"Do something," Aster said.

"Do what?" Sarah asked back. She leaned in, looking closely at what appeared to be bruises on Jessica's throat. Like she'd been strangled.

"I don't know! Everyone's fighting! They shouldn't be fighting! We're supposed to be making Weaver pay!"

Work with what you have, Sarah told herself.

Reaching over, she pressed a button and spoke through the microphone..

"It's probably Accord's group," she lied. Heads rose and turned. Shoulders tensed. Crusader was scowling under his mask, not that anyone else could see it. "I told you this would happen. The Undersiders can't keep the other groups in line if we start picking at them."

She could see the gears turning.

Not one of them really believed that, or at least, they saw through the attempt at manipulation.

But that's what made Nazis so damn perfect. It's not that they were idiots—they were but so was everyone.

It's that they were conformist little twits.

"Seems someone brought in a ringer," Sarah continued. "One not afraid to get their hands bloody. Question is, do the Undersiders know about it, and is it targeting them too?"

"It helped Bitch," Nessa said. "If not for whoever they were—"

"Is Bitch flipping sides? We don't know. That's why we called it off. We might have had a bigger impact than we expected."

And conformist little twits loved being told what good boys and girls they were.

"We're making progress," Sarah encouraged. "We'll just have to try a little harder."

Aster shifted behind her, obviously confused. Of course she was. Phage wanted a new sister so badly, she'd all but ruined the poor girl. Five and a half feet of teenager at the mental development of a first grader.

Not quite a conformist twit, but still easily managed.

"And then Weaver pays?" she asked.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Of course. What else are we doing?"

Aster pouted and turned away. "Don't care then."

"Leave the details to me."

Sarah watched her go and looked back at the monitors. The wall displayed the various hideouts and the entire bunker as well. One of Coil's old places. And hilariously, one poor little Lisa hadn't even had the thought to look into. Knowing her—and Sarah knew her better than anyone—she tried to think of the place as little as possible.

That someone might dig the entrance open and slip in was beyond her. For the moment.

And in the little conference call, heads were looking about and waiting.

Nazis just didn't know what to do without someone to tell them how 'strong and independent' they were, with an appropriate target to point them at.

"Let's check around," Sarah said. "This cape is stalking us. We should assume everything is compromised and switch all communications and vital locations until we know more."

Jess glared at the camera nearest her. "That thing—"

"I'll figure out who it is. For now, you busy bees get back to work. There's a race war to win."

With that, Sarah cut the line and refocused. She didn't really care if they liked her. They didn't and never would.

But the mystery cape.

Well, that was an unexpected development.

Sarah brought the camera feed up and looked closely. The angle was poor. A street corner facing the old distribution center they'd set their ambush in. Sarah hadn't even noticed the cape at first. The angle was bad and their cloaking tech was advanced enough.

The only clue—aside from the corpses—was when a shimmering figure approached Jess after she started shrinking to escape something winding around her neck. It most appeared only when the lenses of a mask flashed. At least, they appeared to be lenses. Six of them arranged in trios on either side.

Like a bug's eyes.

Sarah tapped her chin curiously.

Heith died what? Ten years ago? Curious.

Very curious.

"Alright," Sarah mused to herself. "We've got a team of useful idiots, a stupid other me with no idea where she's standing, and a mysterious corpse generator. What next?"

Sarah's twisted mouth grinned.

"What would Lisa do?"