Little Hunter

Lisa rose from her seat and hurried toward the door.

"This is what you're going to do."

"You all try to command me."

"Fine! It's not a command! Whatever. But this is what you are going to do."

Lisa went down the hall and headed straight for security. She was glad she'd gone full bunker mode. Whatever her evil half was doing, the longer it took the worse Lisa felt and Nanku's explanation was a confirmation of all her fears.

Lisa knew what she was capable of.

No matter how bad people thought she was, she could be worse.

So much worse.

"Imp!"

Aisha craned her head over the back of the couch with a spoon in her mouth. "Huh?"

"Five alarm fire."

Aisha gawked. "Wait. Are you fucki—"

"Now."

"Holy shit..."

Lisa made nearly a dozen phone calls and twice as many text exchanges.

There was a silver lining. A way to spin everything that could clean up a whole lot of messes. Evil Lisa had done some shit and she'd done it well, but no plan was perfect. Lisa just needed to work fast.

And work fast she did.

Within two hours, she was stepping out of a van with four mercs, Sabah, and Lily.

Two giant stuffed bears stepped down from the roof of the van. Regent stepped out of a car alone and...

It was wrong that Bitch wasn't around, but maybe this could start fixing that.

If Lisa played the cards right, and Weaver didn't shove her foot in anything, Bitch and Nanku might come out looking like a shade of gray instead of pitch black. Gray was good. The PRT and the Protectorate dealt with gray.

Lisa inhaled and turned to face the rest of the parking garage. Nothing fancy. A mostly empty space on the edge of town with some privacy but no real room for a good ambush.

The place where you got everyone together to talk about frying bigger fish.

Faultline was already present with her team. Citrine and her Ambassadors. The Red Hands. A few independent villains and rogues from Brockton and the surrounding area. Even Lady Photon and Brandish showed up and they were basically retired.

For the Protectorate, Laserdream and Dauntless arrived first. Then Assault and Battery, and finally a truck with some troopers. Vista's power warped the ground and she led the Wards into the meeting with Miss Militia.

No Kid Win.

No Shadow Stalker.

And, "We need Weaver."

"She's suspended," Militia answered.

"Too bad," Lisa replied. "We need her. This is too important for a bunch of petty office politics."

"Understatement of the century," Assault mumbled.

That wasted another forty-five minutes.

When Annette arrived, she looked a bit flustered but not in a way anyone else would notice. She went right to Dauntless and stood beside her husband while the rest of her team and the Wards kept a very clear and obvious distance.

"She's here," Militia said. "What's so important?"

"First thing's first," Lisa replied. "We have a truce?"

"We just covered that," Faultline answered. "What is so important?"

"Just being sure before I bring our last member to the pow-wow."

Lisa took out her phone and sent a single text.

Five minutes later, Strider flashed into the garage.

And everyone lost their fucking minds when Nanku looked around with Dusk and Dawn at her sides.

Faultline stepped back. Shamrock brought out a shotgun. Dauntless aimed his spear. Laserdream and Lady Photon lit up like a laser show and Brandish flashed two swords into her hands.

"Truce," Lisa reminded.

"What is that thing doing here?" Citrine asked.

"Maybe saving our asses from our worst nightmare."

"Which is?" Rook asked.

Lisa held a hand out to Nanku while Strider stepped back.

"You're the one who called me like the world was ending," Lisa said. "So. What's the S-Class emergency?"

Nanku looked at her, but really it was because it meant she didn't have to look at her mother at all.

Weaver was stiff and silent. Miss Militia hadn't raised any guns at Nanku. Her hand was angled toward Weaver.

That was not good.

Raising her arm, Nanku began tapping at the computer on her wrist.

A moment later, her mask flashed and some beams shot out from the lenses.

They formed an image on the floor. Life-size, Lisa knew. A creature with insect-like features. Shaded green by the technology being used. A long segmented tail. Weird tubes on its back. An uncomfortable penile head and sharp teeth.

It was still at first.

When it moved it moved sharply, jumping and hissing. It ran wild. Jumped. Ducked. Coiled around something. At one point its jaws opened wide and another mouth shot out like a pistol. The tail stabbed and the claws cut.

"What is that?" Assault asked. "Looks—"

"That's what killed all the kids at the camp," Weaver said mutely.

"Nilbog's things?" Newter leaned forward. "Looks pretty fucked."

"What does it have to do with now?" Citrine asked.

"Not Nilbog," Nanku said. "R'ka. They're parasites."

"And?"

"And there's one left."

A few glances were exchanged.

"Meaning?" Leave it to Faultline to cut through the shit. "What of it?"

Nanku glared.

"One becomes two. Two become four. Four become eight. Eight become sixteen."

That finally got Miss Militia's attention. "How?"

"Because they take their victims and grow inside them," Weaver said. "That's something I discovered investigating the camp."

"There were no bodies at the camp," Rook recalled. "That's what I heard."

"There weren't," Citrine confirmed. "There was a near total lack of physical evidence."

"Because there's a group of capes who hunt these things," Lisa lied. "Go back and check. There was a string of murders across Europe ten years ago. Most of the companies involved were fronts for Gesellschaft."

Weaver stiffened and her hands dropped to her side. "Medhall."

"Technically it was a shell company called Qualicare," Lisa offered, "but yeah. It was Medhall. Citrine. Remember when Valkyrie was killed in Boston?"

"The Teeth—" Citrine stopped.

Lisa pointed at Nanku. "That was her big bad mentor, hunting after these things eggs."

Nanku gave Lisa a hard look.

Her body language was still hell to read. Defensive of course. Whatever her hunter mommy was, Nanku did not want anyone asking questions. She didn't want to be responsible. She also didn't like this meeting being sprung on her as a surprise but it was the only way to maybe pull her ass out of her own fire and save Bitch in the process.

"I've never heard of this," Faultline declared.

Which was a problem. Faultline was pretty in tune with the seedier and more secretive sides of the cape world. For someone who wasn't a thinker. Damn bitch knew things. Which was inconvenient when manipulating people based on what they didn't know.

"I can send you case files," Weaver said. "I started looking into it when—When she first appeared. There's dozens of cases. Too many similarities but too little evidence to draw attention."

"And you wouldn't lie," Citrine replied.

"Didn't the Teeth disavow any credit for killing Valkyrie?" Lisa crossed her arms over her chest. "Check it out if you want. Weaver and I aren't bullshitting. The moment she"—Lisa pointed at Nanku—"appeared like that, we started looking."

"Plus the PRT fucking knows about it," Imp declared.

Heads turned.

"We do?" Assault asked. He looked at Militia. "Since when?"

Miss Militia didn't answer, which was the worst thing she could do.

"They busted out new gear the other day," Lisa added. "Huntress here actually used it to capture Stalker and pump her for info on Evil Me."

Heads turned back Lisa's way.

Because sometimes, commanding a situation was really simple.

Throw shit no one knew about out there until they had no time to really think about it and just understand that things were fucking bad.

"Yeah." Lisa raised her hands. "I confess. I'm pretty damn sure we missed one of my clones from when Noelle went on a rampage and she's been behind all the shit for the past year. Including the Pure and I'm pretty damn sure she now has that thing"—Lisa pointed at the 'R'ka' image—"in her hands."

"Fuck," Faultline said.

"Mildly," Gregor agreed. "You didn't say anything before now?"

"Right to this moment half of you think I'm doing some crazy shit behind your backs"—to be fair that was just how it usually was—"and would have interpreted the truth as more crazy shit! Weaver's not-so-dead daughter coming back some kind of warrior badass and throwing her for an absolute loop isn't exactly helping."

Annette kept her mouth shut and instead looked annoyed, which was Thinker for embarrassed.

She'd had to have caught on by now to what Lisa was doing. Hopefully.

"But now Evil Me has that thing and that thing is bad. It's fucking Nilbog all over again and if it gets loose in a city the size of Brockton Bay we might not even be able to contain the situation before it's already an outbreak."

"They will lay low first," Nanku explained. "In such a crowded place they'll build numbers in their hive before making any appearances."

"Are they intelligent?" Rook asked.

"Smart enough."

Rook looked to his team. Cozen nodded and he sighed. "Alright. Let's say I'll entertain the idea this isn't all crap. What's the story? All this time Huntress has been murdering the Pure trying to find this egg before anyone else?"

Lisa shrugged.

"That and the Pure were trying to kill her mom and attacked her sister in broad daylight, so I think who crossed the uncrossable lines first is kind of academic and not even close to the point now."

"You're making it all up." Faultline was glowering behind her mask and she knew Lisa knew. "If any group like that existed, I'd know about it. This is—"

"No," Weaver said. "You wouldn't."

"Weaver," Dauntless warned.

"I put in a record request," Weaver revealed. "I'm suspended so I have nothing but time to try and figure out who they are."

Militia angled toward her. "Weaver."

"Shoot me," she replied. "That'll make it all go away. I was shut down. The Chief Director of the PRT called me instead of the archives and threatened me to quit while I was ahead."

Nanku's head jerked.

"Looks like news to her," Cozen said.

"She's young," Lisa deflected. "Their bosses probably don't tell her shit anymore than the Protectorate tells them."

"This is no longer a truce," Miss Militia declared. "You—"

Lisa raised her voice and stepped forward.

"I am telling all of you that we are in deep fucking shit! Evil Me sent Huntress on a not-very-wild goose chase in Boston to hunt down Krieg. Krieg is the one who buried Qualicare ten years ago. He knew where the skeletons were buried."

Nanku's reaction said he didn't. Bad luck but as long as she kept her mouth shut it didn't matter.

"She pretended to be me," Lisa continued, "and used that to get Huntress to cover her tracks! Now she has that egg and we are lucky we know about it! It's time to cut all this bullshit."

It really really was.

"We have been playing by Evil Me's fiddle for the better part of a year at least. She is trying to tear all of this"—Lisa waved her fingers—"down. And I don't mean this shitty abandoned garage. I mean the peace we built where kids can walk down the street in safety because we keep our bloody business off the street and no one is dealing at schools because we beat the shit out of anyone who so much as thinks about!"

"We cover for criminals," Laserdream grumbled. "We know."

"Find me a perfect fucking place and we can all move there and sing campfire songs!" Lisa snapped. "Until then, this isn't perfect, but it's better and we made it that way and however much you all hate me for whatever reason you hate me, a Noelle clone of me is a thousand times worse than I could ever be!"

It was, to be fair, the one thing everyone more or less had in common. Barring some exceptions.

Everyone fucking hated her, and Lisa knew it. Whatever. She'd paid worse prices and this was good enough.

"So." Lisa looked around. "Are we going to do this, or do we keep slapping each other? I gotta be honest. Dead Nazis don't really bother me."

"I feel like that's only half the point," Newter mumbled.

"I still say you're lying," Faultline declared.

"The question isn't, am I lying," Lisa replied. "It's do we care that this gives all of us a clean way to save face, end the bullshit an outsider started to begin with, and come together to clean our house?"

Behind her, Imp randomly appeared to gawk.

Brian was dead. But Brian was right. Face and reputation mattered, and not just to the Undersiders. Evil Lisa had used it to start tearing the alliance in Brockton Bay apart with little petty bullshit and the Pure and they'd played to that tune long enough.

"And if that's not good enough," Lisa added. "We're fucking villains! Who gives a shit if I'm lying?"

Faultline scoffed but Lisa could see it on Gregor, Shamrock, and Newter's faces. Rook and Cozen didn't hate her that much and the other little bands of villains benefited from restoring the order rather than continuing to see it decay.

"Am I allowed to applaud that?" Assault asked.

"No," Battery answered.

"Can I applaud her anyway?"

"The Director might get in the way," Vista warned. "But he doesn't command the Protectorate."

She looked at Miss Militia, who clearly wasn't happy.

"Night and Fog," Nanku said.

"What about them?" Lily asked.

"They talked to her."

"She means Evil Me," Lisa added.

"How bad is this in all seriousness?" Rook asked.

"They'll overrun the planet," Nanku answered. Her reaction was odd. Very of—

"How long do we have?" Lisa asked.

Nanku glowered.

"How long what?" Citrine inquired.

"Before the rest of her little club shows up to clean up the mess, and I'm not sure we'll like their method." Lisa pointed. "That computer on her arm? It's also a tactical nuclear device."

There were about a dozen 'what's' and a few 'holy shits' plus Assaults 'naturally.' It technically wasn't true but if it kept anyone from stupidly trying to take Nanku out, all the better. But Lisa could read enough of Nanku's body language to know that was her last resort.

If need be, she'd blow herself the fuck up to take the R'ka out.

Lisa glanced at Annette but couldn't tell if she was in it enough to notice.

"It's that bad?" Faultline asked.

"So we say," Lisa confirmed.

"Fine," Faultline relented. "Your ass if this ends up being bullshit anyway."

"That's fair."

"Night and Fog won't be involved in this," Annette said. "They couldn't care less about things before. They only showed up after Aster was arrested."

"We can flip them?" Sabah asked.

"Probably. They were loyal to Kayden, and they haven't been involved with much since she died until now."

"The attack three weeks ago was a distraction," Lisa added. "I think. Or maybe a commitment she couldn't change even after her plan shifted. I doubt she knew about this egg before Huntress showed up. Access to information on the other end meant she found it before we even knew it was there."

Lisa looked at Nanku.

Nanku was staring at her mother… Which she'd have to figure out later.

"Nanku."

That got her attention.

Lisa pointed at her wrist. "Can you track this thing?"

Heads turned back to her.

Lisa could guess. There had to be something that confirmed to her that the egg was out there. And something she thought would call the rest of her new family to Brockton Bay.

"I can," Nanku confirmed.

Shamrock pursed her lips. "And you didn't notice the egg before?"

"Hidden."

Rook nodded at the alien image still projecting from Nanku's mask. "What do we need to know about that?"

"Acid for blood," Nanku warned, as a start.

Assault threw his hands up. "Fuck it! Why not?"