Earning Her Stripes

Part Forty-Four: The Shape of Things to Come

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

PRT ENE Building, Conference Room A

Regent

Alec glanced up as the conference room door opened, and a guy walked in. Moderately fit, wearing a button-up shirt and pressed khakis, the newcomer looked entirely unremarkable, right up until Alec noticed the blue-and-silver domino mask and the carefully shaped beard. "Well, hey," he said. "You actually showed. I was beginning to wonder."

"I knew he'd be here." Tattletale was leaning back in a chair with her feet up on the table, legs crossed at the ankle. "Director Piggot can't afford not to have us scoping out problem capes for her." She tossed Armsmaster a grin. "Let me guess. She threatened to pull your budget?"

While Alec was no expert at body language, the way the muscles twitched in Armsmaster's jaw confirmed Tats' supposition. "I'm here now. Let's get this over with."

"Sure thing." Alec waved grandly at the other chair, which already had a second controller resting on it. "Though I was kinda looking forward to you showing up in full armour."

Armsmaster stopped and gave him a medium scowl. "While you've been racking up your gaming hours and learning every last nuance of how to play, I've been building and rebuilding my equipment, when I'm not training hard to make sure I'm at my best for stopping crime. My armour gauntlets are good, but they provide little to no tactile feedback for controls of that size. I'm already going to be at a distinct disadvantage here; there's no good reason to make it worse for myself." That said, he took up the controller and sat down.

"Ah. Right." Alec paused, then asked the one question he hadn't thought he ever would, when it came to Armsmaster. "So … you know how to use it?"

The Protectorate hero examined the controller. "I spent the last ten minutes looking up the use of these devices before coming over. As I understand things, one of these joysticks controls movement while the other controls facing. As for the rest of the buttons, I presume they allow your on-screen avatar to perform acts such as crouching, jumping, using weapons and the like, but I suspect it's different for every game."

Alec nodded, mildly impressed. "Yeah, that's pretty well it." Deciding that it probably wouldn't look great for Armsmaster to have no idea how to play before he got a thorough ass-whipping, he held up his own controller and ran through the controls. "Left joystick for movement. Right joystick for facing. A for jumping, X for interaction with stuff, like grabbing guns and ammo. Right hand shoulder button for shooting. Left hand shoulder button for activating the scope. Accessing menu. Accessing stored items. Swapping out weapons." He paused. "There's combos you can use to do more complicated stuff, but that's enough to go on with."

Armsmaster's face took on a look of extreme concentration as, one by one, he went over the controls, touching each one and repeating Alec's words under his breath. Twice more he went through them, then he looked over at Alec. "Will you be using combos?"

Tats caught Alec's eye and grinned. Irritated at how fast she'd picked up on his discomfort—this was supposed to be a fun way to low-key stick it to the Protectorate, not a gaming tutorial—he shook his head. "Not straight away. I'll show you the combos before I start using them."

The game started off as he'd initially anticipated. Even restricting himself to the basic moves, he was streets ahead of Armsmaster, not least because he had muscle memory on his side. While the older man had to visually check his controller to use one button or another, Alec had no such limitations and could play rings around him.

And then Armsmaster started figuring things out. At one point, he actually got a kill-shot on Alec from an unexpected direction, getting his score on the board for the first time. Alec was still faster, smoother, and quicker on the draw, but Armsmaster had begun to use tactics that occasionally allowed him to get the drop on Alec.

Worse, it became harder to sneak up on him, because he was using the facing joystick more fluidly as he got used to the interface. When it came to a head-to-head fight, Alec took him down most of the time, but Armsmaster actually seemed to know what he was doing with the slow and patient stuff. The benefits of having done it in real life, Alec figured.

Monochrome

There were three ways I could get from Downtown to Lord's Port (or vice versa) in a hurry, these days: running, either on the ground or across the rooftops; jumping and gliding the distance; or catching a lift with Madison via the Blockade suit.

Of course, I preferred the latter option. While the suit thrusters were loud as fuck, and everyone knew we were coming, it allowed us all to arrive together. Also, I was pretty good at making an entrance, but a multi-ton set of power armour coming in for a landing blew that clear out of the water.

The cops had set up a perimeter around the Brockton Bay Central Bank by the time we landed, but they'd been nice enough to leave a space clear for us. (Or rather, Madison had radioed ahead, and they'd cleared a space, because the alternative was to see how a cop car fared against a multi-ton powersuit. The general consensus was 'badly'.)

Emma and I jumped off as her thrusters cut out, landing easily on the ground. Along with the cops, there were a few other capes around; the closest was Glory Girl, who seemed to be hanging out with a couple of the Wards. I smiled and headed in that direction.

"Hey," I said. "Good to see you again. So, bank robbery?"

She returned my smile. "Likewise, and yeah, bank robbery. I'm pretty sure there's not even any capes involved. Just idiots with guns, and a really bad sense of timing."

"No kidding." Emma had joined us by now. "Nice to see you, G. G. Anyone hurt yet?"

It was a pertinent question. If the bank robbers were inclined to hurt or kill hostages, we'd have to go in now, but if they were holding off, we could afford to let the situation stew until they maybe gave up of their own accord. The money was not an issue: Dad had explained to me that financial institutions were insured against robbery. The welfare of the victims in the bank was the main thing to worry about.

"Nope." Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "Someone said they saw people wearing Teeth outfits. My guess is they're trying to raise some cash before they leave town, and they're used to having Butcher along."

Madison tromped up behind us. "And let me guess. They didn't expect this kind of response."

A worrisome idea occurred to me. "Or, they could have another aim in mind."

Glory Girl peered sideways at me. "I don't even know what you're referring to, but I still don't like the sound of it."

I opened my mouth to explain, but just then the bank doors opened. One of the Teeth, wearing full gang regalia, stepped into the opening, holding a bank teller with his gun pressed against her head. "Okay, you assholes!" he yelled. "We want Butcher an' the others back, or we kill every last fucker in here! Let 'em go, an' we let these ones go! Fuck us around, an' this shit happens!"

With his last word, he gave the woman a vicious shove, sending her staggering forward to the edge of the steps. Then, just before the bank doors closed, he levelled the pistol and shot her in the back. Red bloomed across her chest as she tumbled down the steps.

Glory Girl started moving at the same time as I did. By a minor miracle, nobody opened fire, but I was sure that every cop on the scene had just memorised that man as someone to be shot on sight. Reaching out, I grabbed her cape as she lifted off; at the same time, I cut my effective mass and wind resistance to zero, so she wasn't hampered at all by my presence.

We landed side by side on the steps, and she turned to look at me with surprise. "What the hell? I got this."

"The Teeth don't play by the rules." I put one hand on Glory Girl's arm and one on the woman who'd been shot, and exerted my power. Though badly injured, she was still alive, staring up at us pleadingly. I knew how she felt. "Where's Panacea?"

"Just around the corner." Bending down, she scooped up the woman, and that was when the Teeth opened fire on us. The bank windows starred, but didn't shatter, as bullets whipped past us. I'd placed myself between Glory Girl and the bank, so some of the shots must have hit me, but I felt nothing. It seemed that they either really wanted the woman to die, or they'd recognised me as the one who'd taken Butcher down.

Either way, the asshole move did them no good at all, because Glory Girl lifted off again with me in tow, heading for Panacea. I was pretty sure I saw bullets bouncing off both her and the woman we were rescuing; as Alan Barnes could attest to, being shot at ten times durability was still no picnic but it was definitely survivable.

Three different force fields went up as we passed over the police line. Shielder's was the strongest, but Lady Photon and Laserdream's added some protection as well. The assholes stopped firing at that point; I just had to hope they weren't going to take out their frustration on their hostages.

Panacea was waiting where Glory Girl had said she'd be, though Glory Girl hadn't mentioned the camp chair and the folding camp bed. A couple of police officers stood nearby, clearly guarding her. She stood up as we came around the corner, a novel discarded on the ground. "Ah, shit. Who did something stupid?"

"Teeth being assholes." Glory Girl carefully laid the woman down on the camp bed. "GSW in the back, through and through."

"Assholes, check." Panacea grabbed a clicker on her belt and clicked it once, then laid hands on her patient. "Okay, Vicky, I got this. You two go save the day. I'll be here to fix your mess after."

"On it." Glory Girl took hold of my arm; I allowed her to do this, of course. We took off and flew back toward the ongoing confrontation. I'd heard no more shots, but that didn't mean anything. A gang called the Teeth would absolutely have knives.

"Does she always set up like that?" I was asking more from basic curiosity than anything else.

"When we get the time, yeah." We landed next to Emma and the Blockade suit. "So, how the fuck are we going to get them out of there in a way that doesn't kill all the hostages?"

I glanced at Madison's suit, then at Emma, who looked back at me. A memory stirred in my head of reading one of Emma's dad's old comics from back before the days of actual superheroes. "I think I might have an idea …"

Regent

When the gaming session finished, Armsmaster was still way down on the board, but that was to be expected. Nobody (except Victor or Uber) could expect to become a gaming sensation in just an hour. What had surprised and (kinda) impressed Alec was how well he'd done overall, and how many times he'd pulled off moves that Alec simply hadn't expected.

"Well, that was fun." Alec got up and stretched. "Good game. You don't totally suck."

"Hrm." Either Armsmaster hadn't heard the comment as he studied the controller, or he was deliberately ignoring it. "I hadn't quite realised how versatile these things were. It shouldn't be too hard to adapt one for use in the workshop."

"Wait, you can do that?" Alec was taken aback. Game controllers were game controllers. Using them outside that context wasn't something he'd ever thought of.

"It's a command input device." Even with the game over and the screen dead, Armsmaster was still handing the controller, working the joysticks and clicking the buttons in what could almost have been a meditative ritual. "What you're controlling with it is immaterial. I could run so many processes in my workshop with one of these."

"So that thing could really help you Tinker?" Alec peered at it, trying to visualise Armsmaster plugging it into his workshop equipment.

"With a few minor modifications for improved sensitivity, certainly." Armsmaster produced a multi-tool out of his pocket—because of course he carried a multi-tool, even out of costume—and popped the back off the controller. "It won't take that much, to be honest. All I need to do is tighten up a few of the tolerances, then program my equipment to accept the appropriate inputs."

Alec cast about for the silliest question he could ask, because why not. "So, uh, you gonna reprogram your bike to use the controller while you're riding it?"

Ignoring Tattletale's muffled snort of laughter, Armsmaster reattached the back to the controller. "Don't be ridiculous." He stood and slipped the multi-tool back in his pocket. "I'd only use one for that if I had it on remote."

With a nod to the both of them, he turned and left the room, leaving Alec blinking in his wake.

Alec turned to Tattletale as the door closed. "I was kidding."

She shrugged and smirked. "He wasn't."

Lady Photon

"Okay, so you've got my attention." Sarah looked over the group assembled before her: Eric, Crystal, Vicky, and the members of the Real Thing. "What's this about?"

"We're going into the bank and dealing with the Teeth." That was Firebird, the nominal spokesperson for the city's newest (and most spectacularly over-achieving) super-team. "Laserdream and Shielder thought you should come along too."

Sarah glanced back toward where the rest of New Wave were discussing the matter with the police on site. "If you've got a plan, maybe you should run it past them?"

"No time." Monochrome spoke with authority. "They'll argue and come up with reasons why it won't work, because they don't know our capabilities. In the meantime, the Teeth are getting antsy."

"It's true." Blockade's voice, even muted, was deep and resonant. "I've got them mapped out on IR, and they're starting to look twitchy. If we're gonna save lives, it's gotta be real soon."

Sarah would've been the first to admit she also did not know the capabilities of the Real Thing. But they had comprehensively kicked the asses of every villain they'd gone up against, with the singular exception of March.

That oversight had been remedied when they had a rematch after she became Butcher, and they took her down in fine style. Butcher was widely known to be very hard to hold on to, but she clearly hadn't escaped yet, because here they were.

She made her decision. "Okay, fine. What's the plan?"

Glory Girl

"Ready?" asked Monochrome. She held out her arms in front of her. Firebird grabbed her left arm, while Vicky took her right arm. Firebird had explained that it was easy to tell when Monchrome was exerting her protective power, because the protected item went black-and-white. This happed now; it was odd seeing her skin and costume in grayscale, though she didn't feel any different.

"Ready," reported Firebird.

Vicky echoed her half a second later, then added, "Let's do this."

"Okay, then. Hang on to your sphincters." Blockade reached out with one enormous metallic hand, wrapping it halfway around Monochrome's (admittedly slender) torso. Vicky felt herself being lifted up like she was weightless, even without the use of her flight power. Turning on the spot, Blockade drew his arm back like he was about to throw a paper plane, only the 'paper plane' was composed of three teenage girls.

When he whipped his arm forward, Vicky didn't feel any acceleration at all, but suddenly she was hurtling toward the bank windows a lot faster than she'd been expecting. They hit the bullet-hole-pocked glass and went straight through, though oddly enough the glass held together around them and didn't shatter altogether. Once inside, they slowed dramatically, and Vicky felt herself being pointed toward where a couple of the Teeth had a commanding view of the room. One held a submachine gun, and was just beginning to raise it.

She let go of Monochrome's arm and kicked in her flight power, arrowing toward the pair with her fists clenched. Even if she wasn't pulling whatever bullshit power stunt Monochrome had done, she still covered the distance in less than half a second and knocked the gun out of the asshole's hands before he had a chance to point it, much less pull the trigger. She considered the fact that she also broke his wrist with the same move to be a bonus, not a flaw. A muffled gunshot sounded behind her, but she was still busy with her own opponents.

A second gunshot, much louder, drew her attention; she realised that the second member of the Teeth she was facing had just tried to hastily draw the pistol he'd had shoved into the front of his pants. His shriek of agony rivalled that of his comrade as he collapsed, blood staining the front of his already-filthy pants. Vicky finished retrieving the pistol and folded it in half, then turned to see where she was needed next.

Instead, it was all under control. Aunt Sarah hovered up near the ceiling with Crystal and Eric, layering force fields over the hostages so no stray bullets were likely to hurt anyone, while Monochrome and Firebird were just polishing off the last of the twenty-some Teeth.

As she watched, Monochrome grabbed the last two and hurled them across the room. They went out through the hole in the window, where the police were presumably waiting to scrape them off the sidewalk and charge them. Firebird, on the other hand, was standing over a pile of groaning would-be hostage-takers without a hair out of place, fitting a throwing disc back on her arm.

"Uh … okay." Vicky rubbed the back of her head. "That actually worked a lot better than I thought it would."

Firebird looked around. "Oh, good. You got yours. Wait, is that guy okay?"

"Probably not." Aunt Sarah swooped down toward the crotch-shot man. "What happened to him?"

Vicky looked down at him dispassionately. "GSW. Self-inflicted. I was just making sure everything else was okay before I got distracted with helping him."

"Yes, well now you can get the idiot to Amy." Aunt Sarah raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Well, get a move on. She won't thank you if she has to spend extra time healing him."

Monochrome

I watched as Glory Girl scooped up the stricken man and flew him out the same hole we'd come in by. The window glass hadn't shattered into a million pieces of shrapnel because I'd reinforced it on the way in, but Lady Photon and the others had enlarged the hole slightly as they followed us into the bank. "I thought Panacea worked on a strictly cash basis," I ventured. "Can't see a member of the Teeth having the money to afford her services, or being willing to pay for them."

Lady Photon sighed. "The BBPD and the PRT have her on retainer. She gets called in for things like this, and they pay her per casualty. Extra for life-threatening injuries. I'm still not sure how Brandish got them to agree to pay for the bad guys too, but I swear that girl's going to be a millionaire by the time she's twenty-one."

"Nicely done." I looked around the bank as the force fields faded away, and raised my voice. "Okay, is anyone hurt, or can you see anyone who's hurt?"

There was a general shaking of heads as people gradually climbed to their feet. They were looking around as though trying to figure out which of us to thank for saving them, which I couldn't really blame. The Real Thing had been kicking ass over the last few weeks, but New Wave had been doing it for literally years, and before that as the Brockton Bay Brigade.

"Well, that's good." Lady Photon scanned the room. "But I could've sworn I heard another shot, just before Vicky's guy. Somewhere over there."

"Ah, yeah, that one's on me." Emma sounded a little sheepish as she pulled back a fallen banner to show a dead man, flat on his back. Not only was he one of the Teeth, but he was vaguely recogniseable as the one who had shot the bank teller. The word 'vaguely' was important, because the pistol in his mouth had blown off the top of his head. It had happened so quickly that his finger was still tangled in the trigger-guard.

Laserdream flinched away. "Ew, gross!"

"Let me see!" Shielder tried to crowd closer. "I wanna see!"

A hastily-formed force field blocked him off. "Not until you're older, young man." Lady Photon raised an eyebrow in Emma's direction. "What happened, Firebird?"

"I saw him with the gun, so I bounced a disc to smack it out of his hand. But I miscalculated; it knocked the gun into his mouth just as he pulled the trigger." Emma grimaced. "My bad. I know we all wanted him for trial."

I carefully didn't respond. Emma never miscalculated with her discs. Madison and I both knew that what she hit was what she meant to hit.

Not that I was gonna say one damn word about it to her. The guy had been scum. He'd deserved exactly what he got.

I wasn't as good at reading body language as Emma was, but I fancied I spotted a tiny hesitation before Lady Photon responded. "Well, yes. Unfortunate, but accidents happen. In a way, it's almost a good thing."

I blinked. "It is?" I didn't even need to act out my honest confusion.

"Mmm-hmm." She turned and started toward the bank doors, where the police were just now starting to enter. I followed. "The rest of them will be held responsible for his death, due to the felony murder statute. But that one would've gotten all the media attention for shooting the teller, and every ambulance-chaser in the region would compete to beat his trial up into a media circus of the highest degree. The publicity would make the Teeth even bolder about getting Butcher back. But he accidentally eats his own gun during a hostage rescue? Barely a footnote. Not even a martyr. They'll fade away."

"Huh," Emma mused as we exited the bank. "I never thought about that."

Uh huh. You grew up in a household with a lawyer, you big fat liar.

Not that we could make a habit of ganking bad guys, but just once, and for this particular asshole, it was satisfying as fuck.

End of Part Forty-Four