Another Way

Part Seventeen: Dealing with Blasto

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

"Well, now I'm asking." Claire loved her father dearly, but he really did enjoy showing off how smart he was. "What does plan B consist of?"

"The first thing we need to do," he said, all business now, "is to keep them off-balance. Blasto has let the genie out of the bottle and if it's got Lung's powers it'll be somewhat larger now, so he won't be able to put it back where he was keeping it. But that won't stop him from trying, and while he's concentrating on that, he won't be overseeing external security. And given that you suborned his guard-creature so easily, he won't want to let them out of his sight, either."

"Got it so far," she agreed. "So, we hit them from the outside? Keep them reacting?"

"That is correct, my dear Marchioness. While you were in there, did you get a read on how he controls his creatures? He seems to have a penchant for using pheromones. If so, that will be his weakness."

Claire grinned savagely, her body already morphing into her full battle-form. "I like the way you think. And yes, you're right. His guard-creatures are all attuned to react to a series of pheromones. I can give you the appropriate emitters, if you want."

"We don't have the time," he said. "I'm coming in, and Palatina will be overhead, but I need you to get close and see what havoc you can cause. The more things that are going wrong with his creations, the harder it will be for him to be proactive rather than reactive."

Beside her, Jonas cleared his throat. "I can accompany her as well, sir," he offered diffidently. "Unless you want me out here instead."

"I think we'll maintain you on overwatch for the moment," her father decided. "After all, one never knows when one needs someone's skull to be converted into a cloud of pink mist."

Claire was barely listening anymore. She slithered out of the evening wear, leaving it in a neat pile with her shoes on the rooftop she was currently sharing with Jonas. Her form was now as sexless as it was sleek and efficient, and owed more to nightmare space movies than anything related to humanity.

The modifications she was making to herself had their basis in the adjustments she'd taken on when the Empire tried to kill her father. However, this time she'd had much more time to think about it, and there were a few optional extras she'd decided to try out. Case in point: her exoskeleton was a glossy black, laced with carbon nanotubes in such a way that bullets would simply bounce off. But with a little thought on the matter, the nanotubes were realigned and set up to contain chromatophores. As a result, her carapace went rainbow-hued, then shifted colour schemes to produce an ever-changing transmission of light 'through' her body. When she moved quickly, she knew the distortion would give her away. But if she held still …

This time, when she smiled, she didn't open her mouth. Transparent covers over her eyes allowed her to see and yet not be seen. "See you later, Jonas."

"See you later, chick." Jonas didn't look up from the sights of the enormous rifle. "Give 'em hell."

"Oh, I intend to." Moving with a sinuosity matched only by snakes and particularly agile cats, she slithered over the side of the roof and down the wall, holding on with a combination of sharp claws and gecko-pads where necessary.

When she'd modified the guard-creature earlier, she'd gotten a complete read on its vomeronasal system and what pheromones had significant effects on them. Including the pheromone that they all emitted, which translated as 'friend; do not attack'.

She smiled an extremely toothy grin. Time to go and have fun.

Blasto

Rey Andino was not having a good day. He was down one guard-beast, and all the others were on edge. Worse, while his newest creation had already healed the damage it took in the fight, it was very much on edge (because the other creations were unhappy) and he didn't have time to settle it down. It was also about eleven feet tall at the moment, and didn't seem likely to be getting any smaller. Damn and blast that Marchioness!

If he'd captured her, it would've been somewhat worth it. But from the way his surviving guards were snuffling around the door, it seemed she'd slipped out during the fight. Which left no fewer than three enemies at large that he didn't know the whereabouts of; Marchioness, Marquis and the as-yet unseen Palatina. And of course, his human minions had cut and run at the first opportunity. Which only proved (once more) that the only good underlings were the ones he created for himself.

For a moment, he wondered if he hadn't bitten off more than he could chew. Marquis was formidable enough on his own, and with Marchioness and this 'Palatina' at his side, he could only become more dangerous. And that was before Lung himself got into the mix.

No. I can take them both. He'd knuckled under to the other gangs in the city for long enough. With the Lung/Marquis hybrid at his command, he could meet any threat and overwhelm it. Between the hybrid's regenerative capability, its command of bone and fire, and the sheer ferocity granted it by the animal components (and of course, Lung himself wasn't known for his quiet and retiring ways), he would back the beast against any cape in Brockton Bay. Even Marchioness would be eviscerated and incinerated before she could repeat whatever stunt she'd used to turn the gorilla/hyena guard-beast against him. And if Marquis himself attempted to use his vaunted powers against the hybrid Blasto had made with his DNA, the creature would meet bone with bone, then trump him with fire.

Gradually, he began to relax. His newest creation was prowling around the interior of his base, glowering at the guard-beasts when they came too close. The beasts themselves were on high alert, especially since one of their number had been skewered with bone, roasted from the inside and then torn apart before them. But they hadn't been given the signal to attack, so they were doing their best to keep their distance from the brand-new hybrid.

It seemed more and more likely that Marchioness had been acting on her own; had her father been in the vicinity, he would almost certainly have intervened when Rey shot her at close range, no matter how little effect the bullet had on her. A stupid teenager pulling a stupid stunt. It wasn't as though there was a lack of those in the world at any given time. And now she was going to sneak back to her father and pretend nothing had ever happened.

On the downside, he'd had to decant the hybrid early, a day before he would've judged it properly mature. On the upside, it had been field-tested and come through with flying colours. He'd seen footage of Lung in action; his creation would ramp up faster, do more damage and be impervious to the hottest flame the Asian cape could muster. And once both Lung and Marquis had been vanquished, in the absence of the Empire, Blasto would be the pre-eminent supervillain in Brockton Bay. With his hybrid at his side (perhaps two or three of them, just to be safe), nobody would dare undersell him anymore.

Still, it didn't seem like a good idea to simply decide everything was going to be fine. Complacency had to be earned, not assumed. He directed several of his guard-beasts to perform another perimeter check, to make sure the building was secure. While they were doing that, he went over to his lab equipment and started the process for creating a second Lung/Marquis hybrid. He had enough samples of the first one to get it right, after all. And this one would be grown to full term; it would be the one he sent out on missions while its older (and less matured) brother stayed at home to maintain base security. The new one's first mission, he decided, would be to track that annoying little girl back to wherever she and Marquis called home, so that they could see what it felt like when somebody else invaded their base.

Two of his guard-beasts let off their howl that meant 'all is not right', at the same time. Jerking his head up, he swore inventively. The problem was, he hadn't given them different alarm-howls, so he had no idea what was going on. Putting the lab gear into automatic for the moment—the tricky bit would come later, calculating exactly what sort of nutrients and how much to feed it at critical stages in its growth—he pulled his pistol again and went over to investigate.

The first guard-beast he came to pointed its clawed digits at a trio of its packmates, which were lying sprawled in a darkened corner of the warehouse. At first he thought they were dead—the way he'd built them, they were virtually impossible to knock unconscious via either chemical or physical means—but then one of them shifted and let out a long rattling snore.

What the absolute living fuck?

That was impossible. It was literally impossible. His guard-beasts didn't get tired in the normal sense. They could stay up for thirty-six hours at a stretch, if he needed them to. They did have a sleep-state they could enter, but only if they encountered a certain pheromone, over a certain level of concentration. Which he hadn't released, even when that one beast had been induced to attack him.

And yet, here were three of them, asleep. Muttering under his breath, he told the guard-beast to watch them until he returned. He had a 'wake-up' pheromone he could dose them with, but that was back in his desk. For now, he needed to check on the second alarm. Still with the pistol in hand, he headed in that direction.

Which turned out to be the rear door to the kitchen, sitting ajar.

He stared at the door (which he'd made certain to lock and bolt when initially securing his base), and at the neat half-circle that had been cored out to remove the entire lock mechanism. There had been no power tool use that he'd heard, and yet the thick wood had been sliced through with terrifying precision. For God's sake, there wasn't even any sawdust on the floor! Whoever had done it had cheekily left the piece of door (with the lock and bolt still engaged) on the counter beside the doorway. It was as if they hadn't cared about being detected.

Which was worrisome. People with that attitude were invariably either so good they really didn't need to worry about such things, or thought they were, which bespoke a lack of forethought that could lead to other really bad decisions. Decisions that it would be up to him to clean up the aftermath.

Unfortunately, he'd already met someone not half an hour ago who matched that description to a T; a teenage girl who had thought nothing of invading his base and throwing out unfounded threats, before just waltzing out again. It was looking very much like she had returned to plague him once more. Well, this time he was ready for her; his hybrid was a match for anything she could throw at him. And once the hybrid had finished tearing her apart, he could use the remains as a basis for creating his own version of her.

Though he still had no idea how she'd removed the lock so neatly. Even the hybrid wouldn't have been able to do that. Destroy the door utterly, yes. Rip the lock out and reduce the door to splinters, definitely. But carve out the lock so neatly, without leaving any debris on the floor? Not a hope in hell.

With that in mind, he turned to the guard-beast, his mouth already opening to issue orders for it to guard the door until he got back with something more sturdy to secure it.

The beast was slumped on the floor, asleep.

Looking around wildly, he backed up to the far end of the kitchen area and brandished his pistol. With his other hand, he reached into his pocket for a specific vial. Lifting it over his head, he threw it to the floor, where it shattered. The liquid within sprayed over the floor, then started to rapidly evaporate. From all around the base, he heard answering howls from his guards.

"To me!" he yelled. In an immediate response, three of the creatures showed up at the entrance to the kitchen, looking around wildly. Their claws flexed at the air as they snuffled at the air. One of them lashed out at a cabinet, reducing it to kindling, then came up with a very surprised rat. Muscles flexed; the squeaking, struggling rodent was crushed to a bloody pulp.

That particular pheromone was designed to put them on extreme alert. Anything alive within the base that didn't match the scent parameters of 'friend' (specifically; him, their fellow guard-beasts, or the hybrid) would be attacked in a berserker fury and torn to shreds. He'd tried keeping the previous generation of guard-beasts in that state on a permanent basis, but even when they didn't attack one another by accident, it led to problems like not eating and (in some cases) walking into walls because they were concentrating too much on their sense of smell.

If you're in this base, you little twit, you're dead. Clenching his hand around the pistol, but taking care to move his finger off the trigger first (he couldn't guarantee that the smell of gunshot residue wouldn't result in a terminally embarrassing false positive), he stalked out of the kitchen area. On the way, he touched a guard-beast on the arm and gestured; come with me.

With the beast at his back, he headed over toward where he kept the 'wake-up' pheromone. As he moved, he kept his head up, eyes scanning from side to side. It wasn't like a girl in an evening dress would be particularly inconspicuous, after all. And if I see her before the creatures do, I won't bother shooting her in the chest this time. He wasn't a really good shot, but he understood that a bullet in the head usually worked. And if one didn't, five or six might.

As he pulled open the cabinet where he kept the pheromone, he heard the guard-beast behind him start to sniff more deeply than normal; glancing over his shoulder at it, he saw it staring suspiciously at a point in mid-air … just before it collapsed to the ground. Then something moved, and he saw the wavering outline of a person that wasn't quite there.

No, not a person. Whatever it was, it wasn't human. He was an expert on human proportions, and that thing didn't have them. Which meant it certainly wasn't Marchioness, leaving the question wide open as to who (or what) it really was.

Not that he was in the mood to ask right then; bringing the pistol around, he braced it in shaking hands. Before he could fire, the hybrid let out its attack call, a rumbling roar that shook the building. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw it charging … right at him. Flames billowed around its metal-clad body as it generated weapons of fiery bone.

With a yelp of terror, he dropped flat. Whatever it was that had invaded his base, he didn't want to get between it and his hybrid. 'Death by out-of-control minion' was about the most embarrassing way a crime lord could go.

The hybrid never even looked down at Rey as it leaped over him, the heat of its flames washing over his back. Turning his head, he saw it slash with a huge sword-like weapon, flames trailing behind the blade. The shimmery form of the intruder seemed to backflip out of the way, faster than humanly possible. Certainly faster than Rey could've managed on his very best day.

The hybrid kept advancing, slashing with its blade and launching more flaming bone spikes; at any minute, Rey expected to hear a death-scream and see a limp body falling to the floor. Preferably in two or more pieces. But nothing of the sort happened. It attacked, over and over again, to no result. He'd specifically designed it to bore in after hard-to-hurt opponents and overwhelm them with damage, and this was what it was trying to do.

As the chase went on, he came to the realisation that this wasn't really a fight. The intruder wasn't retaliating or even standing its ground. In fact, it was retreating as fast as it could, bouncing off the walls and launching itself in unexpected directions. As far as he could tell from the flickering, high-speed movements, it merely wanted to disengage. But the hybrid kept slashing, kept pursuing, growing in size, despite the fact that no return attacks were coming back its way. Every failed attack merely seemed to further enrage it.

Roaring its anger, the hybrid kept after the intruder, now shooting more of the flaming bone spikes. These appeared to miss; three lodged in the wall, still burning, while the fourth punched into a hapless guard-beast. The stricken creature howled as it was impaled by the bone weapon, then fell back as the hybrid slashed it on the way past. Rey looked around wildly for other guard-beasts so that he could order them to assist the hybrid in cornering the intruder, but there didn't seem to be any around. In fact, the only guard-beast that seemed to be still on its feet was the now-injured one.

Oh, come on. Rey shook his head in impotent fury. How did it put all my beasts down? How the fuck did it know how to put them to sleep?

He began to climb to his feet, wondering if he should try to revive the fallen guard-beasts, or do something to assist the hybrid in catching its prey. Whichever it was, he realised he should do it quickly; while the furious hybrid had yet to hit with any of its attacks, those that missed were taking their toll on the interior of his base. Several flaming bone spikes were now sticking out of the wall and support pillars, and the hybrid itself—fifteen feet tall and still growing—was doing even more incidental damage by way of the flames that billowed from it and surrounded it on all sides. With each fruitless swipe of the tremendous flaming blade, slicing through structural members and furniture alike, the interior of the base was looking more and more like a war zone.

Then, with a start, he realised that the chase had turned back toward him. The flickering almost-invisible intruder, darting back and forth, was heading in the general direction of his lab gear, the gestation chambers, his storage … and him. "No!" he shouted, holding out his hands uselessly. "No!" He didn't even consider trying to shoot the intruder; if he missed (and he probably would) then there was a good chance he would strike the hybrid, and he didn't want to do that while it was in full battle mode.

An epiphany burst upon him, full-formed. The intruder wasn't fleeing from the hybrid, and never had been. All it had to do was stay ahead of the monstrous clone, leading his most dangerous minion on a merry chase, so that it wrecked his base while trying to catch up with its perceived prey. The intruder's doing this on purpose. Using my own weapons against me. And now he had maybe five seconds before it lured the hybrid into stampeding clean over the top of his lab gear and specimen storage, destroying everything he'd worked so hard for.

There was a way out, of course. He never built a dangerous clone without installing some way to prevent it from turning on him. The sleep pheromone he'd engineered into the guard-beasts would not suffice in this case, but he had something that would. Hands moving with desperate haste, he yanked open a drawer and reached inside to grab the ultrasonic module.

High-pitched sound waves—not just any high-pitched sound waves, but those of a specific frequency and strength—would serve to disrupt its inner ear functions in a way that its innate regeneration could not easily combat. Swinging around toward the oncoming hybrid, he jammed his thumb on the button. Inaudible sound waves lashed out, and the hybrid faltered—

"Yoink!" The intruder flashed past, giving him an extremely close view of glowing eyes and a grinning mouth full of far too many sharp fangs. He recoiled, then reacted far too late to the tug against his fingers. With growing horror, he stared at his empty hand. Oh, shit. It took the module.

The hybrid roared, no longer afflicted by the debilitating ultrasonic assault. It leaped forward, once more in hot-pursuit mode. Faced with the choice of getting out of the way or risk being trampled by his own creation, Rey dived to the side. Not even bothering to leap over precious lab gear and storage drawers, the hybrid smashed on through. The sound of his gestation chambers shattering brought tears to Rey's eyes, while flames licked over everything. Whatever hadn't been trampled and crushed was set on fire; he stared in anguish as his life's work burned.

There was nothing more for him here. His samples were all—or almost all—destroyed, and none of his painstakingly assembled machinery was salvageable. His only option now was to sneak out while the intruder was busy baiting the hybrid into destroying the rest of the base. And when I get set up again, I'm going to build the most vindictive assassin-beast I can manage, and I'm going to send it back to Brockton Bay to kill whatever the living fuck that thing is. As well as Marquis and Marchioness, just because I can. In his pocket were still the metal scale from Lung and the shard of bone from Marquis; with these he would craft his vengeance.

Thoughts hot with retribution, he began to crawl away toward the kitchen area, keeping low. This served not only to keep him out of sight—so he hoped—but also to keep him below the worst of the smoke that was beginning to gather in the now-burning building. It scratched at his throat, forcing a cough from his lungs.

With a sound like thunder, the roof blew away, smashed sideways into rubble by a golden spiralling beam of destruction. Eyes wide, he rolled on to his back as the smoke billowed upward and out of the tremendous hole thus created. He knew that blast, and whose signature attack it was. Marchioness had called her Palatina, but only a blind man would mistake the glowing figure now hovering over the hole for anyone but Purity, of the Empire.

Not that he spent more than half a second wondering what Purity was doing with Marquis and his certifiably insane daughter (not to mention the semi-invisible thing that had just incited his hybrid into destroying his base). Rolling on to his stomach once more, he began to crawl even more urgently toward the escape route offered by the open back door. Escape now, payback later.

He was almost at the doorway into the kitchen area (and the sleeping guard-beast there) when the hybrid bellowed in agony, falling to the ground not so far away and clawing at its ears. Even now, it was too dangerous to approach; over twenty feet tall and covered both in flame and vicious bone spikes, it was a hazard in and of itself. The very concrete beneath it was starting to blacken. He quickened his pace.

"Uh, uh." The rasping, hissing voice came from directly in front of him. "You aren't going anywhere, mister." As he stared, what he'd thought to be a distortion due to smoke solidified, then cast away the flickering camouflage to become …

Whatever it was, it wasn't human. He'd noted that once before, but now he was in a position to truly appreciate its form (for a very loose definition of 'appreciate'), he could see everything that made it other. Digitigrade legs, leading to a triple-toed foot armed with nasty-looking gripping claws; a semi-crouched posture that evoked images of raptors or other predatory dinosaurs; a long whippy tail that appeared almost prehensile; oddly-jointed forelimbs that looked even more flexible than human arms, armed with three-inch razor claws; claws that could fold back out of the way so that it could hold his ultrasonic module and use it; last but not least, a lizard-like muzzle filled with extremely sharp-looking teeth (currently grinning at him), and glowing red eyes. All of which was clad in a flexible carapace of glossy black material.

He coughed due to the smoke, then cleared his throat. When he spoke, he had to raise his voice over the agonised howls of the hybrid, not so far behind him. "What … what are you?" This was the epitome of what he'd been trying to achieve with his minions. With a dozen of these, he could rule the city. "Who engineered you?" Because there was no way in hell someone had stumbled on a Changer form like this by pure luck. That form was designed to terrify. And to kill.

"I engineered me," the creature said coolly, its voice changing to that of a teenage girl. One he'd heard very recently.

"M-Marchioness?" he stammered, coughing again. "How—?"

She sighed. "Everyone looks at the cute girl in the evening gown and doesn't look any further. Your human minions knew better. They've met me before, you see. They get a second chance. You don't." Despite the nonhuman configuration of features, he read dispassionate death in her eyes.

Moving forward with an effortless speed that left him no chance to dodge, it lashed out with its free hand. He cringed, anticipating those wicked talons tearing into his flesh, but all it—she—did was lay an oddly-warm palm against his cheek. In the next second, he felt a weird sensation, as though he'd just been doused from head to foot in chilled water. Desperately, he tried to move, to roll aside, but nothing happened. "Wh-why?"

"You tried to kill me," she said. "But I would've been inclined to forgive that. Except that you cloned my dad and tried to frame him for mass murder. And then you cloned him again." She nodded toward where the hybrid was still thrashing on the floor. "It seems you just don't learn. You'll keep trying things, and people will get hurt, and we'll have to clean up your mess. It's easier this way."

With the same flicker-fast speed, she broke contact and stepped away from him. He moved, scrambling to his feet. Belatedly, he recalled the pistol he still held, and raised it to point at her. "Give me the module," he rasped. "Or I will shoot you in the head." He was about close enough to have a good try at it, anyway.

She sighed. "Feel free. I just swapped scents with you." While his brain was still parsing that, she raised the hand with the module in it … and effortlessly crushed it. As pieces of plastic fell to the floor, she leaned forward slightly, red eyes gleaming with dark amusement. "You better run," she whispered.

Silence fell in the base, broken only by the crackling of flames. Rey looked back over his shoulder, to see the hybrid hauling itself upright. Its rage-filled eyes were fixed not on Marchioness, but on him. A long inhalation of air through its nostrils inflated its chest, and it began to growl. Then it lunged forward. Far too late, he turned and ran.

He didn't get very far.

Marchioness

"I thought I told you to distract him and keep him busy until we moved into position." Earl's voice was only mildly censorious as they stood and watched the warehouse burn. "Not engage the hybrid which, from all accounts, would've given the entire local Protectorate a run for its money."

"I didn't engage it," Claire (clad once more in her evening dress) pointed out in a reasonable tone. "It spotted me putting a guard-beast to sleep, and once it fixed on me, I couldn't shake it. So, I decided to make use of it, instead." She put a hand on Jonas' arm and nodded to Kayden. "Thanks for the assists, by the way, guys. It definitely kept things from getting too fraught." She was pretty sure Blasto had been unaware of the fact that every time the hybrid had gotten close to catching her, Jonas had put a high-velocity round through the wall of the warehouse and into the centre mass of the pursuing beast. It would've taken more firepower than even that monster of a rifle to put it down, but the shots had certainly hampered it.

"My genuine pleasure, chick," the South African rumbled.

"What I want to know is how you even got in there without them spotting you at once," Kayden said. "From what you're saying, even if they couldn't see you, they would've caught your scent. And it's basically impossible to remove all scent."

"Yeah, it is." Claire smirked. "But I had a read on the guard-thing I turned. So I basically took on its scent signature. I used a monomolecular claw to remove the lock, and they never even paid attention to me once I was inside. The right pheromone put them to sleep, and once the big clone was busy with Blasto, I made sure to give them all a painless end." She didn't say anything about Blasto's death being painless. It had been quick, but that was about it.

"All very fascinating," mused Earl. "But the fact remains that there's a creature in there that bears my DNA. I don't know the PRT will take a sample, but I don't know they won't, either." He paused. "How did you beat it, anyway?"

Claire flexed her hand, then snapped her fingers. "Once it finished eating Blasto, I got close enough to lay a hand on it. I put it to sleep, then dissolved it down to the molecular level. There's nothing left of it to get anything out of."

"Which is definitely something we're going to be leaving out of the narrative, when and if we say anything to the PRT about this," Earl decided. "Director Piggot doesn't need any more ulcers, and you don't need a kill order on your head."

Claire nodded thoughtfully. "I'd rather not get on the PRT's bad side, if only for their sake," she agreed.

"Precisely what I was thinking," Earl said. "They fulfil an important role in keeping Brockton Bay orderly. I'd rather not have to take that on as well, at this stage in my plans."

Some may have considered the implication that he could remove the PRT from the equation to be pure boastfulness. Nobody who truly knew Earl Marchant would have been included in that number.

Director Piggot

Emily sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "So Blasto's dead?" And good riddance, she thought, carefully not allowing the sentiment to show on her face. The cloning Tinker's capabilities had plagued her nightmares ever since she'd found out about them; he wasn't Nilbog, but even a minor correlation was enough to make her grit her teeth when she thought about him. And the resemblance between his capabilities and Nilbog's had been anything but minor. There was a reason he'd had a pre-signed kill order waiting for him if he ever got out of line. The order hadn't actually been her idea, but if she'd had full authority in the matter, she would probably have found an excuse to activate it before now.

"We salvaged a hand from the wreckage," Armsmaster reported stoically. "DNA analysis is inconclusive, but we got three good fingerprints, and they match his. The remnants of the Tinker gear in the base also match what he was capable of." He shook his head. "It was bad. Whatever it was, it ate him. The teeth and claw marks were unmistakable. Also, his remains were severely burned, when there was no direct evidence that they'd been in contact with burning parts of the building."

"Burned?" Emily shook her head. "Are you saying Lung ate him? Or his clone of Lung ate him?" Personally, she suspected she was getting close to the mark. Lung would've been extremely irate if he heard about the clone that Marquis and Marchioness had captured and abducted from the attack on the PRT building. Perhaps not to the point that he would literally eat the Tinker in question, but …

Armsmaster shook his head. "We have insufficient evidence to determine the exact sequence of events. While we found shards of metal in the vicinity that show a fifty to seventy-five percent match with the scales Lung grows over his body, we didn't find any corpses that matched Lung's physique, even partially." He huffed in dissatisfaction. "There was also a large amount of undifferentiated biological material that had been baked into the concrete, but I'm not sure what that means."

Emily snorted. "In other words, the typical aftermath of a clash between two or more unknown capes. Too many questions, not enough answers." Letting out a gusty sigh, she asked the important question. "Was there any evidence, any at all, that would put Marquis, Marchioness or Purity on the scene?" How Armsmaster answered was going to be very important. Marquis had essentially said that he would be going after Blasto for cloning him; Blasto was now dead. But he wasn't dead from being impaled by multiple spikes of bone (as she imagined Marquis might deal with the matter) but from being burned and eaten. On the one hand, she strongly suspected the osteokinetic to be far too intelligent to accidentally leave traces of his presence at the scene of a murder; on the other, he was entirely likely to deliberately leave them, as a message to those who could see it.

"The roof was blown off in a way I could see Purity achieving," Armsmaster said at once. "But she didn't attack anything inside the building. There are spikes of something that could once have been bone nailed into the walls and structural pillars, but those have been burned to the point that even that's conjecture. To answer your question, ma'am; they could easily have been there, but they did not kill Blasto. That's the only bit I'm sure about."

She nodded. "All right, then. Submit your report, with all evidence included, but keep the case open. I have a feeling this isn't going to be the last time something like this happens."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And one more thing before you go," she said. "The reports from the bank that Marchioness turned herself into some sort of creepy horrorshow to fight the clone of Marquis?"

He nodded, showing that he already knew the question she was asking. "All true, ma'am."

She sighed. "Thank you." It was just one more crappy fact in an already crappy day.

He turned and left her office, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

As the door closed behind him, she slumped back into her chair. First the Merchants, then the Empire, now Blasto. The villains are dropping like flies, stopping bank robberies or just plain vanishing. But why does even good news make me feel like there's another shoe just ready to drop at any time?

And what am I supposed to do with the knowledge that Marchioness, the nice safe healer, can alter her form at will?

The answers to both those questions, she knew, would be likely to bother her for quite some time.

Marquis

"Okay, so that's the last of his minions given a mental scrub-and-polish," Claire reported briskly. "Nobody will remember a damn thing about us, and only bits and pieces of working for Blasto." She dusted her hands off. "Those guys will come to in six hours, plus or minus fifteen minutes, so that's plenty of time to go dump them someplace they can wake up and wander off from."

Earl nodded, pleased. His daughter's powers made things so much more convenient. "Good. That's good." He pointed at the two of Blasto's ex-minions who were lying separately from the others. "What about them?"

"Oh, while I had them under, I dug down to their most basic motivations and asked them if they'd be loyal to you if we recruited them. Those were the only two who showed up as full positives, no matter what stresses I put them under." She raised an eyebrow at him. "I was going to wait for the okay from you before I gave them the final treatment."

"Hm." He nodded, somewhat amused. "That's one way to make sure your people are loyal from the beginning. Certainly; once you wake them up, I'll give them the spiel then turn them over to Jonas for induction."

"Sure." She nodded, then led the way to the last room, where a young man in his early twenties slept peacefully on a bed. "This is the clone of Lung. I've de-aged him and given him a total face and body makeup."

Earl's eyebrows tracked toward his hairline. "So I see." The clone didn't look at all like Lung anymore, but that meant nothing at all. "You do realise that as soon as he uses his powers, people are going to start speculating about his connection to Lung. More to the point, Lung is going to take notice as well."

Claire nodded. "I thought about that, and I thought about how his powers manifest. And I did some deep digging in his brain while I was giving him a personality and some rudimentary memories. I can't turn his powers all the way off or even change what they are, but I think I managed to adjust the way they show up. It's a work in progress, anyway."

"Really?" This was a true surprise to Earl. "You can actually do that? How are they going to show up, then?"

She shrugged, apparently unwilling to commit to an actual description. "Less like a dragon with metal scales, more like … I dunno, a knight in armour with a flaming sword? I guess?"

Earl's eyes widened as he looked at his daughter. "I'm going to need to see that in action before I judge, but if you've pulled it off, I will be very impressed indeed." This was the best thing about being a father, in his expert opinion; he never quite knew how Claire was going to surprise him next.

"Thanks, Dad." She gave him a grin, which faded shortly after. "Of course, I'm not quite sure how we're going to deal with your clone …"

And there went his good mood. "Ugh, yes." He didn't want her remodelling the clone as she had Lung's, and asking her to euthanise it just felt wrong in a way that killing the hybrid had not.

There had to be a third option, but he had no idea what it was.

End of Part Seventeen