Bud 3.6

Air vent above, scatter, enter, reform inside. Fog creeping inside, monster close behind, back up. Left turn, down turn, right turn, through the vent, into the hallway. Run.

I had some space now to take stock of the situation. Any two of those hits felt strong enough to pop my Aura like a bubble, and they'd been coming faster than anything I'd ever fought save maybe Weiss under one of her haste glyphs.

I needed my weapon.

I raised a hand to my ear. "Console, Scatter. I've made contact and am currently falling back. We're dealing with a pair of capes; the first one is male, grey featureless costume, transforms into some kind of fog. Second is female, black costume, powerset unknown but with a lot of offensive power. Sound familiar?"

"...aw hell." That wasn't comforting. "They're called Night and Fog, a Breaker Nine and a Changer Eight, pretty obvious which is which. Fog's power is pretty obvious, worth noting that his Breaker state is both toxic and acidic. Night turns into a high-powered Brute and Mover whenever you can't see her with your own two eyes. They've been in Boston for years, though, and we never expected them to pull something like this. I'm running it to Intel as we speak. What do you think your odds are on fighting these two if it came down to it?"

"Not good, Console," I responded. "I'd have better odds if I was armed, but I'm not totally sure even then."

There was a pause on the line. "Armed. Your weapon, do you know where it is?"

"Armsmaster's lab. Can I access it, or will I need his permission?"

"One moment, patching in Armsmaster and the Director."

By the sound of things, those two had given up their pursuit and were back to breaking into the cells. I was safe, for the moment anyway. Those two didn't seem to be able to move with any amount of stealth here, at any rate. For lack of a better option, I started looking for a path to Armsmaster's lab on the north side of the fifth floor.

It was less than a minute later when Armsmaster spoke into my earpiece. "Scatter, Armsmaster. Why do you need lab access?"

I thought I picked up a vaguely accusatory tone in his voice, but now wasn't the time to question it. "The intruders are working on busting out the twins. I'm going to have any chance of stopping the four of them, I'll need my weapon."

"Have you finished the modifications we required?"

Ugh, the modifications. "Not quite, but-"

"Then the answer is no. Fall back if you need to, work on evacuating the Wards if you need to. Backup will be there momentarily."

I was about to argue when the Director cut in, and there was a tightness in her voice that I'd never heard before. "Belay that, Scatter. Your modifications are for the public eye, and that shouldn't be an issue inside the Rig. Armsmaster, what exactly do you think it will look like when the PRT, Protectorate, and the Wards are seen by the news chopper that's still in the air leaving the symbol of our defense to a quartet of supervillains? Give Scatter her weapon."

Armsmaster's silence over the next few seconds said more than any sentence I'd ever heard. "...Yes, Ma'am. Scatter, I'm setting the lab to unlock for you. Your weapon is in the third locker to the left of the door - do not touch anything else."

Right. He wasn't happy about this, but I got the impression that his surprise at Piggot was overriding it somewhat. I wasn't about to argue, at any rate. "Yes, Sir. I'm on my way."

I'd spent enough time in Armsmaster's lab over the last two weeks that I had a decent idea of where it was in relation to everything else, so it wasn't that hard to track down based on where I was relative to the training cube. Or my room, on the floor above the lab. One wrong turn and a half-dozen right ones later, I found myself at the right door.

Like Armsmaster had promised, it slid open as I approached. Crescent Rose was right where he'd said she would be, though I took a brief second to make sure she was still working at her best. She'd never failed me in a fight before, but I'd seen friends learn the hard way that there were no guarantees when it came to this.

Satisfied that there wouldn't be any problems with her normal operation, I turned my attention to the new features. I'd been procrastinating on actually swapping out the blade, which I was thankful for now. Somehow, I doubted that the blunt taser mode would faze Night and Fog much. Or Fenja and Menja, for that matter. Still though, the blade was as sharp as ever, and crackling with enough electricity to zap a small bear into submission. I could find a use for it, I was sure.

So, now it was time for a plan. The twins weren't the big threat here - their Semblances would be limited in the comparatively small hallways, and they were unarmed to boot. Night and Fog were a lot more dangerous though. I'd only gotten a general idea of the PRT's threat system - though I could already see its usefulness, and I'd be bringing it back with me to use on Remnant once I got the chance - but it seemed like a bad idea to send a Seven to fight an Eight and a Nine. I could do it, probably, but I'd need to be smart about it.

A plan started forming as I left the lab and heard the lock click behind me. I had to find them first, though. I stepped directly under one of the air vents, collapsed Crescent Rose to her smallest mode, and scattered upward. The vent was a little tight for me to comfortably fit inside without scattering, but once I got a grip on the grate to hold myself up to it, feet braced against the wall and ceiling and an ear to the grate itself, I was able to close my eyes and listen.

The thunder was making things difficult, but not impossible. Echoing through all the base's vents, I could hear a tearing, scraping noise that had to be the monster moving through the base. The echoes made it hard to place, but it sounded like it was coming from… below me, moving back down toward the ocean. Was their plan to just have Fenja and Menja swim away? Sure, they could move pretty quick, but it still didn't really seem feasible.

Whatever. I'd deal with that when I came to it. For now, time to give chase. I scattered through the grate, then got moving toward the base of the structure. I figured if I could get ahead of them, the surprise might be an extra advantage.

The vents weren't nearly as complex to navigate as the hallways were, funnily enough. I might have to start using these more often. By the time the scraping had moved back down to the third floor, I'd made it down to the training cube and simply fallen back to floor two. By the sound of things, they… were going through the walls again? The twins couldn't shrink, right? It was hardly impossible for someone human-sized to follow that path - I had managed, after all - but it wouldn't have been easy for them. How were they fitting in there? Were they taking a different route? If so…

"Console, Scatter. Am I wrong, or have the twins split off? Can you spot them on cameras?"

"You'd be right, we were just about to call you. The twins are moving toward the top floor, Jenkins' men are moving to intercept and fortify. We're not sure about Night and Fog, but the last time we had a camera go out it was-"

"They're not exactly quiet, I know where they are. I'm on my way," I interrupted, scattering the instant I finished talking and rushing the vent. Eight seconds later, I was on them, approaching from further down the pipe they were in the middle of tearing out.

I materialized the butt-end of Crescent Rose in the middle of the vent and shoved the speartip into the cloud at random. I felt an impact, drew back, and thrust forward again, then once more. By the time I drew back for the fourth hit, I felt the same stabbing sensation in my aura of a half-dozen attacks incoming in the span of around a quarter-second and fell back, shoving myself back fifteen feet and out the grate at the end before tentatively reforming in the hallway. I'd need room to maneuver if I was gonna pull this off.

I heard the beginning of a rumble of thunder that was cut off by the sound of tearing metal as Night ripped through the wall, tumbling through in human form with Fog trailing behind her. In another instant, she was shrouded and the pair were rushing me again.

I threw myself backward, half-scattering to help push myself further, raised Crescent Rose and snapped off a trio of Dust rounds into the cloud. I didn't see a flash from behind the cloud, so I was definitely hitting something inside the cloud. It didn't seem to faze her much, but then I wasn't really expecting it to.

The third shot was different. I landed, having built up a lead of maybe thirty feet, planted Crescent Rose into the floorboards, and scattered for just long enough to move a single Dust round from the spare magazine at my hip to the firing chamber. I saturated the very tip of the barrel with Aura, pulled the trigger, and watched a green flash herald the appearance of a swirling cone of wind wider than I was tall.

I wasn't able to see much in terms of their reaction, but the wind did exactly what I was hoping it would. Fog was pushed back almost to the end of the hall before he must've realized what had happened, and Night was left standing in the breeze, about to fall in the wind but reflexively trying to keep her balance. I cocked my scythe once more and shot her in the chest with a low-caliber Fire round before rushing forward to try and finish her off.

Night had other plans, though. She'd been blown backward off her feet, but she'd also somehow managed to get a grip on something under her cloak in the moments before I'd fired. The flashbang caught me completely off-guard, and by the time I managed to blink away the flash behind my eyes she was back on her feet, the scorched bullet wound gone and in the process of throwing her cloak over my head.

What had happened there? She didn't have regeneration or anything, did she? Maybe the monster did, but her human body-

Oh. She healed when snapping between forms, didn't she? That was gonna make this… hard.

The cloak's inside was lined with barbed hooks. They skidded off my Aura for the most part, but a handful caught on my own cloak and kept me from just yanking it off. The moment the cloak went on, my Aura started pounding in warning and I scattered out from underneath it just in time to avoid the strikes that came through the space I'd been standing.

She was smart about her using power's limits. I reformed to find myself facing her once again, as she held her cloak out in front of her such that just her eyes were left looking over the top. If I shot her again, she could raise the cloak and be healed in an instant, and then she'd be on me. Behind her, Fog figuratively pulled himself together and started moving back our way. I had seconds at most before she was shrouded again.

I rushed her before that could happen. I ran toward her, not scattering so I could keep my eyes on her, Crescent Rose collapsing in my grip into a form more suited for the close-quarters of the hallways. The blade straightened, folded out to full extension, then slid down the barrel as the speartip on the opposite end collapsed and retracted into a more convenient grip. It was a five-foot broadsword that I swung at Night's centerline when I reached her a half-second later.

She managed to raise the cloak before I could reach her, but I managed to slice it in two with the attack meant for her, leaving her off-balance when she transformed back behind it. That didn't stop her from dropping the smoke grenade she'd pulled out from behind her cloak during our brief standoff, and she jumped back into Fog to avoid any serious wound on my follow-up swing.

The instant she vanished from my sight, I heard the scraping of Night running deeper inside her partner's cloud. Shooting wouldn't have accomplished much of anything at that point, so I started walking carefully backward while considering my next move. They'd be wise to the Wind Dust strategy this time, but I didn't have a whole lot of other ideas.

I missed my team. If they'd been here, Weiss could have locked these two down in seconds, leaving the rest of us to take down Night. Blake could totally have figured out a way to keep Fog out of his form for long enough to knock him out as well. Then Yang would probably crack some dumb joke involving Night going to sleep, and we'd all-

My Aura screamed, and I instinctively scattered around the flurry of spiked legs that blew through me. Where in the world had that come from? I had better control than that. Focus, Ruby, you can mope later if you really need to.

I half-felt it before I reformed, but the momentary distraction was enough to keep me from really noticing anything out of the ordinary. When I came back to human form, I was blind, deaf, and I choked on my first breath. All I could see was grey, and I felt the air stirring as something massive moved behind me before my Aura flared in warning once again.

I'd found myself inside Fog. More importantly, he apparently couldn't seriously hurt me when I was scattered. Night still could if she landed a hit - I couldn't see her while I was scattered, and if she got me, then I'd probably be done for - but if I could avoid her for long enough to pull something...

I thought to my mental map of the Rig's exterior, figured out exactly where I was, and scattered away from the incoming attacks with a new plan in mind. Fog couldn't directly hurt me, but apparently he was strong enough to very slowly whittle my Aura down. It'd take him forever to break through it, but while he was trying it was enough to tell me that I was inside his cloud. That would be important in a few minutes, but for the moment, I had to get them into position.

I ran, scattering out of the cloud before shifting back to human form so I wouldn't get too far ahead of them. I fired off another trio of rounds into the cloud, including another Wind shot to keep them guessing, and made sure that they were moving to chase me before rounding the corner.

Had to get to one of the exterior walls. A higher floor would be better, but I doubted they'd let me lead them that far out of their way. They were trying to get out of here, after all.

The closest side was the north wall, but the maze of hallways threw me off. Even with Night and Fog following as fast as they could and my continuing to pepper them with Dust rounds, it took a good two minutes before I got anywhere that would work, but the place I found was perfect. A pretty big office with a view of the city, on the west side of the Rig with enough room to move around and swing my scythe as long as I was careful. I entered, heaved the desk and a couple of chairs to one side, spun around toward the door and waited.

The clattering scraping got closer. A flash of lightning and crack of thunder struck the outside of the forcefield, and I caught a slight flicker of light in the next instant as the shield compensated for the excess energy. The whump-whump-whump of the 'chopper' hovering just outside the dome, slowly orbiting and looking for any action.

Well, I'd sure be giving them some action. Maybe not the kind of thing they should be sharing on a public broadcast, but hopefully they were smart enough to put it on a delay.

Fog crept around the door a fraction of a second before I heard the sound of Night ripping through the wall to reach me. She wasn't wasting any time, and I wasn't either. I scattered forward as sight and sound became a distant memory and shot forward the instant she got inside. I felt a weak fizzing, popping sensation in my Aura as I entered Fog's radius and reformed Crescent Rose's double-blade mid-swing.

From the feel of it, Fog was fighting me. The first attack was slowed by some impressive air resistance and barely grazed her, but she was in mid-lunge when I made it. I shoved myself out of the way of her strikes, but it was a close thing. I felt a light tearing where my Aura barely caught the edge of what I guessed was one of her limb-blades, but I was behind her and shoving a spearhead into what I assumed was her centerline before she had fully registered I was moving.

I missed that attack too, which wasn't too surprising since I was operating in effective sensory deprivation and relying on vibrations and memory to tell where she was. Based on how far I'd moved, the destroyed wall was just behind me, which meant there was likely debris that could interfere with any attacks I made from right here.

I got more warnings from my Aura, and scattered around the incoming blows once more. Step two of this plan was riskier. Before Night could draw back, I closed the gaps I'd formed around her limbs with enough force to keep her momentarily pinned. Once she figured out what was going on it would be easy to rip my Aura to pieces, but I hopefully wouldn't be giving her enough time to think about it. I simultaneously reformed all three major components of Crescent Rose into two separate pieces; the railgun and spear shaft oriented straight through me and aimed at Night's body while the electrified blade swept into her side as hard as I could push it without reforming anything.

The railgun fired behind me, the round slamming into the hallway bulkhead behind me and throwing the spearhead forward. I felt resistance as it skidded off her skin before catching what felt like a joint and penetrating, as the scythe blade slammed into her directly above that point. The resistance ended, the limb was separated, and I scattered both parts of Crescent Rose before they could continue past the bounds of my Aura. One limb gone, thirteen to go. As long as I could keep her from transforming again, I could pull this off.

Three incoming attacks, at the exact moment my scythe dematerialized. I rematerialized and spun it around where my body would have been, had it not been made up of a loose cloud of rose petals at the time. It built up speed and slammed into two of the incoming limbs as I allowed the third to pass through me. The first impact was stopped as the limb severed, and the second limb was deflected as I curved the blade around and cut the third off at the midpoint.

She was recoiling now, most likely. No attacks were incoming, and I'd guess that there wouldn't be for a few seconds at least. I went on the offensive instead, firing a trio of explosive Fire Dust rounds in the direction I'd last seen her in before lunging forward and… missing entirely. Where had she gone? I couldn't feel the vibrations of her movement anymore, so she couldn't be running, unless...

The pressure I'd been feeling this whole time was gone. I was out of Fog's radius, so unless they were running away… crap.

I reformed as fast as I could with Crescent Rose in rifle mode and scanning the room with my eyes from the moment I could use them again and there he is fire.

Fog, having shifted back to human form in order to look at his partner and let her reform, lost the left side of his chest and got blasted against the wall from the Dust round that I sent at him before I was even fully reformed. His limbs briefly turned smoky as he tried to force himself into his fog form, but the mist dissipated as he collapsed.

I heard a tink of a metal pin hitting the floor, and turned just in time to see Night's flashbang sailing toward my head before it went off. I scattered again, aware that I was once again dealing with the full complement of Night's limbs, and started cutting into her.

One second passed, then two. Even as fast as I was, I missed as many hits as I landed. She caught me once as well, twin lines of fire tracing across my Aura in an instant, and that was when I felt it. The floor was shaking, just barely enough to notice, but in a pattern that I recognized.

I reformed, jumping over the attack I knew was coming eyes still blinded from the flashbang for the moment, but able to hear as the light damage to my ears was regenerated. Just outside the dome, as close to this window as was safe, I heard a rapid whump-whump-whump-whump.

Night was still in monster mode, but why? I rolled, waiting for my eyes to come back as I dodged another quartet of strikes. If they were there, they had to have seen us, right? I scattered around a flurry that seemed to come from three directions at once, reforming ten feet toward the window.

It hit me just as I started to see more than a bright blur. The hadn't seen us, they'd seen the flashes of light. The window was tinted, you couldn't see in from the outside, but they'd heard the gunfire and explosions timed with flashes of light from the window and put two and two together.

Well, there was a simple solution to that. Night rushed me from behind, and I scattered behind her, reforming in midair with my rifle aimed back where I'd come from. I fired two shots - the first to the left half of the window, the second to the right, both of them exploding into rocks the size of my head in the middle of their flight. The rounds impacted, the window shattered, and I almost got re-blinded by the spotlight that came through in that instant.

I could see Night, though, silhouetted against the light ahead of me, and I rushed her before she had a chance to react. Crescent Rose whirling around me, crackling unfamiliarly with Armsmaster's tech, I slammed the blunt end into Night just as she whirled around to face me. She was shoved backward with enough force to shatter a Deathstalker's armor, and practically flew out the window. I rushed to the edge to watch her fall, but it wasn't necessary. The news crew was following her descent with their eyes and the spotlight, and she smacked into the water below before bobbing back up to the surface.

I gave the chopper a wave, then turned back. I checked to make sure that Fog was dead - he was - and raised my hand to my earpiece. "Director, Scatter. Night and Fog ar-"

"Yes, I can see that. That chopper is reporting live, the entire city just heard what you did."

She sounded upset, which I guess made sense. "Sorry Ma'am, but they're no longer a threat. Where do you need me now?"

She didn't respond for a minute. I spoke up again; "Ma'am?"

"...We'll discuss this later," Piggot said. That was...ominous. "For now, get back inside the Rig and stay there. The Wards and PRT have the Twins pinned, Challenger is back on his feet and he and Armsmaster on their way."

"Is there anything back out in the city I can help with? Things sounded pretty bad out there."

"No, Scatter. Things have cooled down, and we've caught several of the Empire's capes. Protectorate debriefing is scheduled for twelve-thirty unless something else comes up. Rest up, you're done for the night. We will be having a conversation about your actions."

And we're done. I've been looking forward to that final scene for months.

One chapter to go, and then an interlude pair to wrap up the arc. Don't have much else to say here though, so see y'all next time!