Chapter 21
In the command center on HMS Agamemnon, Beth conversed rapidly and intently with Lisa over the Communications Console.
At one of the Visual Scanner Consoles where she'd been helping, Dinah suddenly stood up and excitedly declared, "I can go home now!"
That got everybody's attention.
"How sure are you? Before you always said you were likely to get kidnapped if you did." Simon asked.
Dina nodded emphatically, "Yep, the chance of getting kidnapped in the next week if I went home has dropped from 87.9% down to 1.2%. I get to go home!"
"Well then, what can we say but 'bon voyage'? We wouldn't want to delay your joyful reunion with your family," Ron said.
Simon offered, "we'll miss you."
"Yes. Thanks for all the helpful information you've given us. Is there anything you need to get before you go - any stuff you left in another room or things like that?" Boz asked.
"Nope, I'm ready to go now," Dinah replied, while Simon gave her a silent, misty-eyed goodbye hug. "But first, I wanted to tell you to watch out - my power says you basically broke Cauldron - as a group, they're done - but they still have some operatives out there and at least one of them can and will strike back at you soon. My power also says that Lisa can give you more details on that an hour from now, when she is done taking over Coil's organization and breaking into his computers. I don't know more than that."
Beth looked up from her conversation and said "Lisa says she needs to talk to you, Dinah."
Dinah smiled, "I know, and I'll give her a call soon."
Boz interrupted, "Dinah, we have you keyed into our Communications Console, so wherever you are, you can just say 'sprich mit Lisa' and speak to her directly. But that will only work while the battleship is still on or near this planet, which won't be much longer. So get Lisa's regular contact info too. Also, if you need anything from us, just say 'sprich mit base' and ask. We'll be happy to help."
Dinah nodded, "Thanks. Take care, all of you. I'm ready to go now. Please put me by the elderberry bushes in my back yard."
Boz obediently opened a teleport portal and Dinah stepped through
The crew watched her on the main screen as she went in, greeted her parents and hugged them, then turned it off to give them privacy.
Ron sighed and said, "Vacation time! I'm headed off to the Virgin Islands for a while, who is with me?"
Most of the command crew agreed and left.
Captain Basil called to their retreating backs "I'll stay an hour or so to hear what Lisa has to say."
Then he commenced 'fishing' - or at least he thought of it as a form of fishing. He cycled through various consoles, trying to find the best way to find Bakuda, or other villains that would be good to banish to Saint Helena island in Dimension 211.
He figured that, for every villain thus banished, this world became a little bit of a better place.
He thought, "they're so intent on hurting others for their own advantage, let them try it when there are no innocents around to oppress, only other super-powered villains." He grinned a feral grin.
Boz used the Chemical Sniffer Console to scan a couple of the special grenades Bakuda had made for Oni-Lee & which they'd captured from him.
That gave him the chemical signature of those special grenades.
Use of the Chemical Scanner Console showed that several locations within the area of the city which Dinah had designated as ABB gang territory showed up as having one or two grenades of that type present.
And one location showed up as having quite a bit of that particular mix of chemicals present.
Quick use of the Visual Scanner Console to take a look showed that that location was a bomb lab.
But nobody was there at the moment.
So Boz kept looking.
He'd have liked to have used the Detect Mind Console to locate her 'mental thumbprint' - that would have been easy. But they had not bothered to register it before, since it had seemed like Bakuda had been dealt with already.
So next he tuned the ships radio in to the local police-band radio frequencies. It took him a minute to find the right frequencies and get them set to a 'pre-set' button so he could return to them easily.
Then he spent another few minutes listening to routine updates and minor issues, before he heard the type of call he was looking for - a supervillain was reportedly assaulting some gang members near a gas station.
The call gave the location of the fight, and Boz tuned the Visual Scanner Console in to look there.
He saw a typical suburban street - well, typical for here anyway: some buildings were abandoned and others dilapidated. On one street corner was a gas-station that appeared to still be in-business, though not just at this moment. At this moment, several gang toughs sheltered near it, behind dumpsters and parked cars, while shooting at StormTiger, who was advancing from the other end of the street.
Boz couldn't see why the gang members were taking cover - StormTiger didn't appear to be shooting back. Maybe it was just habit. Or maybe they anticipated something.
None of their shots hit StormTiger, who was apparently using his wind-powers to block or deflect the bullets.
The bullets did hit plenty of other things though, and some had started fires.
As he watched, he saw StormTiger clench his fists and condense some nearby smoky air into a set of claws, which darkened as more and more smoky air got compressed into them.
It wasn't long before StormTiger, for lack of a better word, 'launched' a smoky claw at some gangers. It flew up to their dumpster and effectively exploded as all the compressed-air was suddenly released. The explosion tossed the gangers and the dumpster in the air.
Then in rapid succession, all the other smoky claws got launched similarly, hitting gangers, their cover, and even a passing car full of people.
StormTiger was indiscriminate with his targeting.
"Yup," Boz commented to himself, "that's all the confirmation I need. Dinah said this is a bad man, and we had our own experiences to back it up - he ambushed our vehicles twice. Part of me still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but this took care of that. This bad man gets to go bye-bye."
As he spoke he'd been setting the controls on the appropriate consoles. It didn't take long, and a moment later a portal opened underneath StormTiger and he was telekinetically shoved down through it, into the air 10 feet above Saint Helena Island in Dimension 211.
Boz grimly commented, "you seem to think you've found some great advantage - almost a super-power - in being willing to break or ignore rules and to take advantage of people. Well, try that where everyone else has the same attitude. Where you are now, there are no rules and I doubt you'll get away with anything."
Then he set out to do the same to more villains.
It was slow-going, monitoring the police-band radio, and that gave him time to think. And it wasn't long before he thought of a better way to go about this.
He thought through his other consoles and realized he had the perfect answer - something that fit this need nicely.
He was looking for super-villains so he could exile them, and what better way to find them than the Detect Danger Console and the Detect Affinity for Hurting Others Console.
Anybody who showed up on the Detect Danger Console was, to some degree capable of hurting the battleship, and those with super-powers would register much higher on that scale than would those without powers.
And villains such as he was looking for, would show up bright and clear on the Affinity for Hurting Others Console.
So all he had to do was bring them both up, overlay the screens, and whomever showed up well on both was a likely target - someone he should focus the Visual Scanner on to get a better look.
Using the consoles that way, within just 3 minutes, Boz found the super-villain Fog.
He wasn't sure whether gravity or telekinesis would be effective for shoving Fog, in his vaporous form, through a portal, so, since it looked like Fog was just finishing up and leaving the scene of a crime, Boz waited a bit longer for a better opportunity.
Sure enough, once Fog was a block or so away from the liquor store he had just helped rob, he turned back into human form to move faster.
That's when Boz nabbed him, using both increased gravity and a telekinetic shove to get him through the portal to Saint Helena as quickly as possible.
Even still, Fog had turned wispy again before hitting the ground on the island of his exile.
Boz, curious how things might turn out on the island, took a few moments to emplace some Replicated spy satellites above it. He set them to record all they saw and transmit it to him when he signaled.
Then he set about hunting a few more villains to exile.
Before it was time to call Lisa, he'd found and exiled not only Bakuda, but also two of the super-villains running the gang known as the Merchants: Skidmark, and Mush.
Then it was time to call.
He didn't like dealing with Lisa - she always made him feel like he was off-balance and playing catch-up.
He thought it was great when Beth did like talking to Lisa - that got it taken care of without involving him.
But Beth was off vacationing right now & he couldn't blame her for that.
He might have avoided or procrastinated the call, but Dinah had made it plain their safety was on the line.
He didn't shirk when it came to safety.
So there was nothing for it but to go ahead and call.
"Sprich mit Lisa," he said, and the Communications Console connected him immediately.
She didn't say 'hello' or ask any questions - the type of the call: not arriving by any type of phone - and the hesitation on his end must have given her all the clues she needed.
With enthusiasm, Lisa said "Why Captain Basil Snodgrass, what an unexpected pleasure to hear from you!"
"Huh? Beth said she'd told you what Dinah told us and that I'd be calling about it. Did you forget?" Boz responded.
"Humpf! I'm trying to build an ambiance here - don't spoil it!"
She pronounced ambiance as if it were spelled "om-bee-awnce".
Boz had learned the word by reading books, and had seen it a hundred times before ever hearing it pronounced, so he had his own ideas of how it should be pronounced.
She evidently guessed something like that from his pause, and she responded "don't be boorish - that's the high-class way to pronounce it and I'm rapidly rising in social standing!"
"Yes, Dinah said you would probably take over Coil's operation. How does it feel to be a mob boss?"
"I'm sure I don't know! My organization will be classier than that, for one thing!." Lisa snarked. "But more importantly, I can't be sure until you let me know that Coil really is gone!"
"Yup, he's gone." Boz affirmed.
"How gone? Can he come back?" Lisa pressed.
"He is marooned on a small uninhabited island, twelve hundred miles from the nearest mainland. That island is also in another dimension, on a world which has no human life on it, nor even animal life. And he doesn't know where he is. Even if he did, he doesn't know what dimension he is in, or what dimension he came from." Boz explained.
"Yet despite all that, you aren't sure he can't come back - why?" Lisa demanded.
"True. The reason is that we marooned Lung there too, and he came back successfully - twice. But - with your help - we figured out that it was an organization called Cauldron doing that, and the battleship hit them with a full broadside bombardment last time they tried it. Lung has remained there since that bombardment, so we think they're done, but we can't be certain. We don't know what dimension they are operating from, so it's kinda hard to check on them."
"I can tell you a little about that," Lisa offered. Coil was a bad boy and kept, in his computer, records he shouldn't have kept. And he didn't know enough about encryption and passwords either - he just bought something off-the-shelf that said it would securely encrypt his files, and probably never gave it another thought. Hah! It didn't take me half an hour to crack that open. So I've been reading his files. And between that, and the footage Beth sent me including your bombardment, I can tell you that Cauldron is basically broken now."
She paused for breath, and Boz just waited, happy to let her talk and glad to get the information.
She continued, "You took out most of their leadership. Doctor Mother is dead. She was their overall leader and had no super-powers. Numberman is dead. He used to be a part of the SlaughterHouse-9, by the way - that's a very nasty group of murderers. More recently, he was high up in Cauldron's leadership and ran quite a few illegal financing operations of all sorts for various people. Doormaker is dead, and he is the one who made portals from place to place for them. He worked a lot with Clairvoyant, who you also killed and who basically saw everything everywhere. So Clairvoyant could tell Doormaker where to put portals to and from, & between them they could accomplish quite a bit - including rescues such as Lung's."
She took a deep breath, "but most surprising is this: there was a frame in your video - just one frame mind-you - that showed a bit of the next room after the wall was breached. In it, I could clearly see Eidolon's face get splattered by the same railgun slug that pierced the wall - apparently his set of powers at that moment did not include any that would protect him from such an attack. It also appeared that the rest of the Triumvirate may have been in there with him, but I'm only 60% sure on that point. other clues point to them being in cahoots with Cauldron, which is Earth-shattering news, I can tell you!".
She paused again.
Boz said, "great, what else?"
She countered with "you have no more praise than that for all my magnificent sleuthing? Bah! I should hang up now & see if you can't learn some gratitude."
Boz started to speak and she cut him off, saying, "but I, of course, personally know about gratitude, and in gratitude for you taking out Coil, the bane of my existence, I will tell you the rest. It is that one of Cauldron's main operatives, Contessa, was not there and will be gunning for you. Her power, according to Coil's notes - he knew a bit since he worked for Cauldron - is called 'the Path to Victory', and is a pre-cognitive power where she can decide on a goal - say for example killing the person responsible for the bombardment that took out Cauldron - and her power will give her careful step-by-step instructions for how to succeed at that goal."
"I gather that stopping her is not as simple as having guards and security systems?" Boz asked.
"You gather correctly, my dear Captain Snodgrass - on the subject of which, by the way, can I say Ouch, what a name! Growing up must have been a constant festival of miserable teasing!"
"That's why God invented home-schooling," Boz replied. "Adults are usually civilized enough to restrain themselves on this kind of thing."
"Are you saying I'm not Civilized! You cad! How can you imply such things about such a sweet little girl as myself! But regardless, I, will still magnanimously grant you the boon of my helpful information."
When he didn't rise to the bait, she huffed and continued, "from what Coil could piece together, your defenses won't matter: if Contessa decides to go after you, you're as good as dead. And she will come after you. Oh Boz honey, I'm so sorry to have to say that. And our relationship was just starting to get interesting. I'll miss you. But maybe we could spend some time together? You're not planning to leave for 2 days yet, so while it is certain she will hit you during that time, you probably have several hours left at least. Want to hang out?"
"She can't be that good - you're kidding, right?"
"Oh no, Boz honey, she isn't that good. But her results are. Her power will list steps such as which place to go, and when, how long to pause and where, plus which route to take in and what to bring. And the results will be totally out-of-proportion to that. If you were a mob boss in Venice and surrounded yourself with guards who were instructed to check everything and everyone entering the area, she'd just happen to come in the one way they didn't think to check. Then she'd just happen to walk right in-between two guard patrols who each thought the other were checking the spot she came in by. She'd pass by other guards the moment they happened to not be looking due to a sneeze or something. She'd just happen to have worn one of those metallized emergency-blankets as a rain poncho, and consequently not show up well enough on infrared scanners to trigger your alarm system. Then she'd just happen to pass your waiter in the hallway, as he's briefly set your food down to tie his shoe or something. She'd poison your food when he wasn't looking, and get away clean. And you'd die from food poisoning even if you had a food taster, since in that case it would be a food allergy which you would have and the taster would lack."
"Wow, there's a lot of information in those files." Boz commented wryly.
"More than you'd think, actually. Coil was sneaky and his powers aided him somehow. My point is that no security system is perfect, and whatever cracks exist, she will flow through them. So there it is. You are doomed. I'm sorry, Boz my love. Oh, and, not to be crude, but can I have your battleship when you die?" Lisa asked.
"I'm going to choose not to die, actually."
"Oh my poor dear, I hate to say it but that's not up to you." Lisa countered.
"There was a movie I saw a while ago, where they wanted something to say that sounded wise, but they really bungled the attempt. The line they used was 'there is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.' It is trite, not wise, and it didn't really fit the situation anyway. Yet I find myself surprised to be repeating that line now. Contessa may know the path, but let's see her walk it." As Boz said this, he was working at the Determine Destiny Console, setting it for the most bad luck he could give Contessa.
He was thinking "Let's see her walk through her steps while getting, at a bad moment, a sprained ankle or jammed gun, or similar."
"So in that case you won't mind signing over inheritance of your battleship, since you're not going to die, right?"
"Drop it, Lisa," Boz said flatly.
"Spoilsport. You're no fun at all. You're not even responding to my playful flirting. Why should I even keep talking to you?" Lisa pouted.
"You're just flirting to make me uncomfortable."
"Oh, well done!" Lisa replied cheerfully.
"Well, you're not the only one that can figure things out."
"That debate will have to wait for another time." Lisa quipped.
"OK then, thanks for the information. Goodb..." Boz got cut off.
"One more thing my dear Captain - be very careful who else you exile to that island. Neither of us would want them working together to escape, would we?"
Boz replied, "you're good at figuring things out - what are the odds they'll work together? I estimate they are pretty low - villainous people rarely work well with others."
"The odds of them working together are zero, but they are nearly 100% that the strongest will enslave weaker ones and force them to work for him. Yet what they get will be slave labor - only as much work as they can force out of them. Certainly not their best work, not even counting possible subtle sabotage out of spite. So we should be fine. Just don't banish someone like the late Eidolon there, or any other cape who can possibly travel dimensionally. If in doubt, ask me." Lisa finished.
"To be frank, I'd rather ask Dinah, she doesn't play games with me as her toy." Boz replied.
"Oh Boz my dear, you wound me! But really, ask me - I like talking with you. I'll grant you a boon if you agree."
"What boon?" Boz asked.
"It's called a UAV, for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, and you haven't developed them yet on your world. It's a remote-control airplane - of any size but these have about a 6 foot wingspan, with solar panels along the tops of the wings. They fly themselves to some degree. They go where you tell them, and send back live video the whole time. They have optional infrared and other sensors too, and can even drop grenade-sized bombs. It seems to fit well with your military motif. Coil had, I mean, my organization has, boxes and boxes of them. What do you say to a dozen or so, just for calling me?"
-0-0-0-
Coil was growing more and more confident that he'd finally figured out why he was here on this island and what he was supposed to do here.
At first, he hadn't known anything except that only Cauldron could make portals like the one that had sent him here.
He'd worked for them, and so it was plausible they'd dump him somewhere and expect him to take care of business for them. But in that case he'd at least have expected some instructions.
But he'd had none.
What he did have, was some equipment. He was sure that was no coincidence and so had wasted no time before using it.
The UAV's had shown him he was on a deserted island, about 50 square miles in size.
Other than a few small islets - little more than rocks - just offshore, there was nothing in any direction but ocean as far as they he, or the UAV sensors, could see.
The island rose fairly high above the sea, was well-watered, temperate, and had lots of plant life.
But it had no animal life.
And, at first, he'd thought it had no human life.
Then he'd spotted Lung.
After that, he'd had his 6 UAV's all fly higher, so Lung would not see them. And he'd had them look for possible hiding places for him.
Lung had been stalking around restlessly and Coil didn't want to be found by that maniac.
He had found a cave in a small islet 100 yards offshore. The cave was in the seaward side of the islet, so it would not be visible from the main island. It was above the high-water mark and looked to be a very good hiding place.
Coil had expected to have to swim out to the islet, but it turned out that there was a sandy bottom about 4 feet down all the way out, so he could just walk, chest-deep in water, out to his hiding place.
That had made it easier to carry his two crates out there, as well as several other things.
He'd been to summer camp a few times while he was a boy, and had learned some things there.
So he'd brought sticks suitable for building a small fish weir, for catching fish.
And he'd collected lots of fruit, Jerusalem artichokes, and berries as provisions, and had stocked the cave with them.
He was working on some clay pots, for water storage, but that'd be a few days. For now, coconuts would partially cover that need.
By the time Lung had completed his first circuit of the island and started around a second time, Coil had been able to hide in his cave and work at things there.
And while watching his UAV screens there, he had seen the cape known as Stormtiger arrive on the main island.
Stormtiger's arrival had also been seen by Lung who hurried to greet the new arrival.
Lung greeted the other cape in Lung-style, by attacking.
Lung charged and swung a punch, which Stormtiger met with a ball of highly-compressed air, which stopped the punch cold.
Then they went the rounds for a while, as Lung kept punching and Stormtiger kept defending himself with strong winds and compressed air.
Lung was ramping up all the while - becoming scalier, more fiery, and larger, but he hadn't yet grown wings when Stormtiger ended the fight, by the simple expedient of blowing Lung over a cliff and into the sea.
Stormtiger then took to the air, apparently to try to see if he could fly off the island.
Coil had a UAV watch him from a safe distance, then return when an exhausted Stormtiger returned.
He did note that Stormtiger returned to a part of the island distant from where he had fought Lung.
Apparently he did not want to be bothered.
That wasn't a risk right now - Lung was currently bothering Fog, who had arrived while Stormtiger was trying to fly off the island.
The ongoing fight between Lung and Fog wasn't very interesting anymore.
Fog was in vaporous form, and could corrode Lung's flesh while in that form, but Lung just regenerated, so there was no net result other than to get Lung more ramped-up..
Lung, for his part, could punch the thin cloud of Fog, but his punches did nothing to the vapor but make it swirl around a bit, which didn't seem to bother Fog in the slightest.
Lung was also flaming brightly, but all the flames seemed to do to Fog was heat the water-vapor he was made of. Water doesn't 'get hurt' by boiling or freezing & apparently neither did Fog when in the form of water-vapor.
So Lung was busy chasing around a slow-moving cloud of steam, punching and kicking at it, roaring at it, and making all the fire he could, all to no avail, while the cloud of steam seemed to be moving in search of a way to disengage.
Soon enough, he found it, and made himself a bit wider and flatter, to obscure Lung's vision of what Fog was leading him to. Then Fog condensed around Lung's face, and swirled around as best he could to try to disorient Lung.
It worked well enough for Lung to be falling down another cliff moments later.
Lung would regenerate from the fall, of course, but he'd have to work hard to find Fog again, as the latter was already leaving the area as fast as he could.
But Lung would not be bored for long - Coil had just seen 2 new capes arrive on what he was coming to think of as Arena Island.
They arrived together: Skidmark, and Mush.
From all of this, Coil inferred that he had been sent here by Cauldron to help this venture of theirs be a success.
They'd equipped him for it too, making sure he had the right crates of equipment to help him.
The UAV's were a big help in that. With them he could keep on top of what was happening around the island. And he could do it all day long and partway through the night. The UAV's had solar panels along the tops of their wings and fuselages, and so could stay airborne as long as the sun was up, then for at least an hour after that on battery power.
Cauldron's venture here, Coil figured, was to train capes rapidly in a no-holds-barred gladiatorial-style boot-camp, of sorts.
Such cage-match fighting could be deadly, and Coil knew from past experience that Cauldron was very focused on preserving the lives of capes so they'd be available for some big fight they anticipated in the future.
And that was where he came in - he could use his alternate time-lines power to try to keep capes alive, dismissing the timelines where they died, when possible.
And Coil wanted to do a good job for Cauldron, since they could either reward or punish people and those punishments or rewards could be quite potent.
He thought about it for a moment, then brought his UAV's in to land, one at a time, and loaded them with two egg-sized rocks each, plus one of the grenades from his crate of mercenary supplies.
The UAV's could drop such payloads with reasonable accuracy, even from high enough up that the UAV's themselves would not be seen.
And that would give Coil the edge he would need.
If he saw that 2 capes were about to meet, he could split the timeline, and in Timeline B drop a rock - or, if necessary, a grenade - near one to distract him and get him searching in another direction, so as to miss the potential meeting.
Then, if one cape killed the other in Timeline A, he could dismiss that one and keep Timeline B, where their meeting had been avoided due to distraction.
Coil was excited about his plan and the rewards it would bring when Cauldron eventually came for a reckoning.
He planned to keep good notes, and he also stored video files on his laptop, so he could prove to them how well he had served them.
He'd just re-launched his last UAV, armed with rocks and a flash-bang grenade, when he saw that Lung was about to meet Skidmark - the nearest one of the new group of 2, who had separated to look around.
Coil hurried to split the timeline and drop a rock near Skidmark, as planned.
It worked, in Timeline B, Skidmark went off towards the sound the rock made, and missed meeting Lung.
In Timeline A they met and fought.
It was a sort of anti-climactic fight: Lung charged, met one of Skidmark's acceleration fields, and got thrown backwards.
Then as Lung prepared to charge again, he met another one of Skidmark's acceleration fields, and got thrown further backwards.
So it went, with Skidmark jogging to keep up with Lung's rapid backwards progression, and keep him in range of more acceleration fields.
Lung was ramping up, but it didn't help him.
The island was mountainous and, in places, very craggy.
So it was no surprise when Lung went over another cliff.
What was a surprise what that, at the base of the cliff, he ran into Mush.
Mush usually gathered junk to himself to form a sort of battlesuit. He'd arrived without that, but proved, in this case, that it didn't have to be junk.
Rocks, sticks, leaves, and even dirt-clods flew together to form a battlesuit around Mush, while Lung regenerated his rib cage, which had been crushed by the fall.
Then a very dragon-like Lung charged Mush.
As Lung reached Mush, he opened his mouth to roar and breathe fire.
Mush responded, not by dodging, but by lunging towards Lung, and jamming his left arm shoulder-deep into Lung's throat.
Lung was clearly caught off-guard. Nobody respected Mush, who wasn't much of a fighter most of the time.
While Lung stumbled back, clutching at his throat and trying to breathe, Mush dismissed the left arm of his battlesuit, leaving it inside Lung while Mush formed a new battlesuit arm around his left arm in case of further combat.
But no further combat occurred. Instead Lung stumbled around for a couple minutes, trying to breathe and doing all he could to try to aid that process, yet failing.
When Lung finished suffocating and collapsed dead at Mush's feet, Coil dismissed that timeline.
Then he congratulated himself at how pleased Cauldron would be with his work.