Alabaster. Empire Eighty-Eight. Brute. Body resets every four seconds or so, negating all damage. I remembered him well from the PRT files. Apparently he was one of the few local capes known to carry a gun, which seemed grossly unfair. Maybe no one expected better of him, seeing as he was a murderous racist, but really? It was starting to feel like the unwritten rules—like the written ones—were something heroes had to obey to the letter and villains followed if they felt like it.
Fog. Gesellschaft. Changer. Transforms into a toxic gas. Him, I was less familiar with. He wasn't on the list of active Brockton Bay capes, having supposedly left for the Boston the previous year. Still, that mysterious fog could be hardly anyone else. Even out in the street, I could see wisps swirling around in the apartment building's windows. The working assumption was that Kaiser had recently coaxed him back to the Bay, in anticipation of a turf war breaking out.
Night. Gesellschaft. Changer. Transforms into a powerful monster when no one's looking. Fog's wife. There was less direct evidence of her presence, but she tended to go where her husband did, using his power as cover for her own. To be safe, we'd prepare as if she were here too.
So we had at least two, possibly three hostile capes. Plus an unknown number of trapped civilians. Plus maybe Aegis—he'd definitely engaged with Alabaster, but Console had lost contact with him a couple minutes in. Those were the parameters. Put that way, it sounded almost like a hostage situation. My brief reading of Fog's file hadn't made it clear how much he could perceive in mist form. If he figured out reinforcements had arrived, was there a risk of him doing something drastic? I frowned beneath the helmet. I didn't want a potential massacre on my conscience. On the other hand, a bunch of neo-Nazis had just turned a minority-occupied building into a literal gas chamber. We might be way past a hostage situation already.
Well, Armsmaster surely had more experience in these matters than me. If he thought it was best for me to go in, then I would follow orders.
"Ready to go?" Trooper Ortiz approached, leaving behind the foam-encased forms of a half-dozen Empire members. With bigger fish to chase, we'd leave the small fry for the police. I took a deep breath, then nodded. The time to refuse had passed yesterday, before I'd agreed to this whole operation. Ortiz moved to my right shoulder, with more troopers watching my flanks and rear. I'd thought it polite to learn their names given I'd be trusting my safety to them: Brady and Brown, two tall men, and Clark, the only woman of our squad. Their job would be to serve as extra pairs of eyes, and deal with any normals who approached with suspicious intent. Unfortunately, given I could only nullify Fog within my personal space bubble, there were only so many who could come along. They had brought oxygen bottles and their helmets could serve as gas masks, but his power was nothing to trifle with. Even inhaling a tiny amount would mean irreversible lung damage.
I drew my taser once more, holding it in my left hand. With my right I unclipped the baton from my belt, snapping it out to full extension with a swing and a click. We were drawing near to the building's north entrance. The glass panes were opaque, obscured from the inside by white-gray mist. "Blank Squad, going in." Ortiz radioed. I shifted the baton a bit so I could grasp the handle while retaining my grip on the weapon. Then, in a fluid motion, I yanked the door open and stepped inside.
The fog parted smoothly in my wake. That—in case it wasn't blindingly obvious already—proved there was nothing natural about it. There had only been a thin layer obstructing the exit, presumably to keep the building's occupants penned in place. Beyond it was a scene of pandemonium. Here, in a cramped reception lobby, half the neighborhood seemed to be huddled in a pocket of clear air. /Haunted, frightened faces looked at us, the vast majority of them Asian.
The opposite end of the room was blocked by more fog. And also by Alabaster.
The pseudo-albino Nazi twirled a bloody knife, crouching over the still form of some guy in a green shirt. His eyes, unnaturally white and blank, widened when he saw me. Remembering the gun, I lunged at him. So long as I closed him down quickly enough, at this distance he wouldn't have time to draw. The scenario had come up in PRT combat training; apparently a cop in Utah or some such place had done the math. Sure enough, Alabaster opted to instead jump over the body toward me, knife brandished. Around us, people screamed and panicked. I raised my arms in a defensive stance. My costume's armor rating was good enough that it should be able to tank a stab, if worst came to worst. "Fucking chink—" Alabaster spat.
Two meters away. He cried out in surprise as he hit the invisible boundary. He stumbled, knife lashing out blindly. I sidestepped and depressed the taser's trigger. His clothes looked padded enough that I doubted the barbs would penetrate, but luckily he still had a large amount of exposed skin.
So I did the logical thing and shot him in the face.
Alabaster howled. It was loud. Louder than Lung, even. Stepping back in, I wound back my right arm and cracked the baton over his head. Maybe I was being paranoid after last time, but I didn't want to give him the chance for any dirty tricks. Down he went like a sack of bricks, still screaming and convulsing. "Foam him!" I shouted.
Trooper Clark leapt into action, blasting Alabaster with a stream of liquid confoam from her back-mounted tank. I moved aside and it hardened immediately, trapping the Nazi firmly in a makeshift cocoon. That would have to be good enough. We couldn't exactly carry him with us as a prisoner, and his power would kick in again once I left. At least this way he'd be neutralized for the time being.
The crowd was making an awful lot of noise in reaction to all this. "Get out of here!" Ortiz bellowed. With what happened next, I hoped they were listening. Up ahead, the mist churned in an agitated pattern, then suddenly came surging forth. Looked like Fog was on to us. The troopers bunched up close. I advanced, taking care not to leave them behind. When our powers collided Fog's fog flinched back, clearly unable to penetrate the null field. So I pressed on. We continued down the hallway that connected to the back of the lobby. The miasma kept receding with every step I took, but the path forward remained clogged with Fog.
That was troublesome. It made it rather difficult to see where we were going, first of all. Second of all, while it was nice that Fog couldn't do anything to me, it was hard to tell if I was have any effect on him. Would he be forced back to human form if I cleaned up enough of his fog? Would we remain locked in a stalemate until one of us gave up or a third party intervened? I didn't have enough data to say. At worst, we might have to wander around in the mist for an indeterminate amount of time, searching room by room until we found Aegis and Night, assuming they were here in the first place.
It sounded annoying. But, I supposed, things could be going worse.
The first sign of something wrong was the pain.
Geoff Schmidt was no stranger to pain. As a boy, he had learned to endure all sorts of tortures in Gesellschaft's training centers. He had come out the other side tempered and hardened, a worthy soldier of the master race. But pain was something he associated with his weak flesh, not his superior Changer form. When he was Fog, he was safe from the slings and arrows of petty men. So when he felt a sharp stabbing in his—well, in this form he didn't have any identifiable body parts—it came as shock.
Recovering his presence of mind, he turned his attention to the place it had happened, just in time to see Alabaster struck down by a cape in a mirrored helmet. So the PRT had seen fit send backup. It was the new Ward they'd recruited, the one who'd killed Oni Lee and driven off Lung. The one who was, indirectly, the reason Geoff and Dorothy had returned to this city. He reached out to choke the intruder and—he recoiled. Not a molecule of his gas could get close. The very attempt had sent another burst of pain through his currently nonexistent nerves.
To make matters worse, the Ward kept moving forward. The boy's power shredded through his fog. It felt as if it were shredding through him. His imaginary pain receptors were set aflame. Burning. Searing. Geoff had no mouth, and he could not scream.
It was almost unbearable. The animal part of his brain urged him to shrink from the agony, retreat into his human form, but no. Kaiser had ordered him to demonstrate the Empire's might here, and fleeing like a coward made a poor demonstration. Good soldiers followed orders, and Geoff was nothing if not a good soldier. Besides, the boy was heading Dorothy's way. He had to stall. He would stall while he thought of something—Gott im Himmel, pieces of him were being torn away—no. This wasn't even his real body. Pain is an illusion of the senses, fear an illusion of the mind. He would hold. On his honor as an Aryan, on the Führer's sacred memory, he would hold. He would not break in the face of some Asiatic sub-human's tortures.
He would not—
He would—
He—
We were halfway down the hall when, with no warning, the fog vanished. I could see everything clearly now. This was a broad central corridor leading from one end of the building to the other, with an open doorway at the far end. The sides were lined with smaller branches leading to ground floor apartments, stairwells leading up, and rickety-looking elevators no one in their right mind would ever trust. Maybe a bit nicer that the building I'd used to live in, but pretty typical for the Docks.
Also, there were several motionless bodies on the ground, about four or five. From somewhere past the doorway, a woman screamed.
"Shit." Ortiz swore. We ran for the end of the hall; I tried not to look at the bodies as we passed by. The troopers were first through the door, rifles drawn. I followed a couple steps behind. We found a lobby identical to the one on the other side, except much emptier. Only three people were within. Aegis's red outfit immediately caught the eye, and I winced at the sight. He was bleeding heavily from multiple deep gashes that scored his body, and no doubt the color of his costume masked the worst of it. Pink liquid, presumably a consequence of breathing in too much Fog, dribbled from his mouth. Yet he was still alive. Still fighting. He was grappling with a woman in a black cloak, pinning her to the floor as she flailed about.
That had to be Night. It would certainly explain how Aegis had gotten so messed up. She must've changed back when Fog stopped hiding her from view, and now the shoe was on the other foot. Aegis slammed a punch into her jaw, snarling through bloody teeth. I thought about going to lend a hand, then hesitated. Aegis was in bad enough shape that his power was likely the only thing keeping him alive. If I got close, would he drop dead on the spot? Thankfully, Troopers Brady and Brown acted decisively where I couldn't. They simply ran up and started beating Night with their batons.
With that matter well in hand, I turned my attention to the third figure. The gray-clad man lying on the floor could only be Fog. I went to stand over him, just in case and—oh dear. This didn't look good. Drawing nearer, I detected the scent of copper in the air. The tiles under him were turning red as his life's blood spread out in a growing pool.
I inched closer, very carefully. I didn't want to get my boots dirty, after all.
Now I was no medic, plus I was reluctant to actually touch him for confirmation, but he looked...not alive, put it that way. In different circumstances, seeing a corpse might have been a traumatic shock, but here and now it merely registered as dull realization. You saw some shit growing up in the Docks, and besides Oni Lee had died right in front of me too; he just hadn't left a body behind. Not to mention that I'd seen worse on Gray Boy duty, albeit not that much worse. The state of Fog's body was rather gruesome. Random chunks of flesh in varying sizes seemed to have been scooped out of him, like a parahuman Swiss cheese. Here was a golf-ball sized divot in his thigh, and there was a big hole in the side of his head, and there was a gaping chest wound with what looked like a rib sticking out—I didn't feel the need to perform a detailed catalog. Save that for the coroner. What the hell had done this to him?
...had I done this to him? It didn't make sense. Lung was a Changer too and he had only turned back to normal, not died a horrible death with his meat flayed from his bones. But—no, there was precedent. Weld, the metal Ward I'd briefly met on my trip to Boston. My power had completely erased his hand instead of restoring it to flesh. Maybe Fog, like him, was too far removed from the baseline human form to change back. It made a disturbing amount of sense, the more I thought about it. Even Weld at least had been solid and roughly person-shaped, but Fog was a gas, spread out over an entire building. How would that reversing that even work? Turn the fog back into severed body parts one piece at time? That sounded even worse than what actually happened—
And, oh shit. I'd just killed someone. Again. I looked up guiltily. Night lay unconscious and foamed, except with her head sticking out so we could maintain line of sight. Two of the four PRT troopers were looking at me now. So was Aegis. I couldn't tell how the troopers felt about all this behind their helmets, but my coworker had a decidedly wide-eyed expression.
"I, uh, I think Fog's dead." I said awkwardly.
"...it wasn't your fault." Aegis rasped just as awkwardly, voice weak from lung damage. I noted he was very slowly scooting backwards.
"Thanks." I said. I really hoped Director Piggot would agree.
There was another mess waiting when we went to collect Alabaster.
Reinforcements had arrived while we were occupied with Night and Fog. The lobby where I'd entered was now festooned with crime scene tape and guarded by more PRT. They had their hands full holding back the crowd that had assembled outside. Whether they were trying to get back into their homes now that the Nazis were gone, or just here to gawk, I didn't know. Armsmaster stood sentinel in the center, his halberd out. "Blank!" he snapped when I walked in, tone agitated. "Fix this!"
'This' was Alabaster. He was still where we'd left him, covered in a glob of foam. That was the good news. The bad news was, he was still screaming. With the residents evacuated I could hear it clearly now, even through the foam covering his mouth. As I listened, the scream stopped, then resumed at full volume. I counted off. One second. Two. Stopped. Three, four. Restarted. This time, the realization hit with a jolt. I'd heard the tortured cries of enough Gray Boy victims to recognize the sound. Alabaster was stuck in a loop.
Well, in a way, he'd always been in a loop, hadn't he? He was constantly resetting himself to a base state. I had no idea how he'd originally triggered, but when my power interrupted his, it must have screwed up his save point somehow. It was the only explanation. Meaning, then, that he'd been feeling continuous taser shocks for the last ten minutes or so without pause. I remembered from his file that his power normally prevented him from feeling any pain, too. Ouch. That almost made me feel sorry for him.
It was a little disconcerting that my power seemed to be looking for excuses to do horrible things to people today. Still, I'd used it to free forty people from Gray Boy loops; I might have accidentally put someone into one but I was still net positive—
"Blank!" Armsmaster called my name, louder this time.
"Um, yes sir!" I stammered. How embarrassing. This wasn't the time to be wool-gathering. "Uh, someone hold Alabaster down, please. I'm going to un-foam him."
Troopers Brown and Brady grabbed ahold, roughly where his arms were. I walked by Alabaster, melting the foam away. The screams grew louder. He thrashed for a couple more seconds, jaw agape and milky white eyes bulging from their sockets. Then he fell back, silent and limp. Brown felt for his pulse. "He's alive. Passed out, is all."
Good. I wouldn't have to explain a third dead cape to Director Piggot. This mission had technically been a success, I supposed: three Empire capes taken down, Aegis rescued, most of the civilians saved (I thought), but I wasn't in a mood for celebrations. There was headache brewing behind my eyes. I just wanted to get out of this place, hopefully confirm I wasn't facing charges, then go back to sleep. "Sir?" I asked. "Do you need anything else from me here?"
"No. Return to Forward Command." Armsmaster pointed out the front door. "I'll finish up here and join you. The Director will want to debrief both of us."
Wonderful. With an air of resignation, I headed out the door with my PRT bodyguard in tow. It was funny—the crowd outside had been clamoring to get in, but once I appeared they parted like the Red Sea. Not a single person came up to me or tried to speak to me on our way out to the van. They gave me a berth a mile wide, as silent as guests at a funeral.
I thought I heard at least one person clapping, though.
Emily closed her eyes and counted to five. She had to keep that blood pressure down, damn it. Doctor's orders. The urge for a stiff drink was strong, except her kidneys couldn't process the stuff anymore and getting drunk in a crisis was a terrible idea anyways. Two lethal force investigations and counting. And to think, she'd hoped Blank would be a low-maintenance Ward.
"I hope you realize," she began. "that when I told you Oni Lee wasn't your fault, I didn't mean for you to make a habit of it."
"Yes ma'am." Blank said over the video call. He sat stiffly at attention, like a schoolboy called to the principal's office. "I apologize for any trouble I've caused the PRT."
Of course that was he apologized for, not for ending the life of a second parahuman in two days and putting another in a torture loop. Deep down, Emily didn't disagree with his priorities per se, but it had taken her the better part of a decade to grow so cold-hearted. It had taken Blank all of two months. "Trouble remains to be seen." she said. From the PR side, this might be a wash or even a slight benefit, if recent PHO activity was any indicator. A lot of Brocktonites were surprisingly bloodthirsty when it came to dealing with villains; who would have thought? From the Empire side, well... "Tell me. Did you know what your power would do to Alabaster and Fog?"
"No ma'am."
Emily detected no lie there. "And now that you do, do you think you did the right thing?" Silence. She waved a hand impatiently. "It's not a trick question. Be honest."
Blank shifted in his chair. "...yes. Well, mostly. I could've taken an extra second to check on Alabaster. But, I mean, I was following orders." God. The irony using that as an excuse for killing Nazis. "I didn't even do much, really. Just...walked around, and things happened. And they were definitely a threat to innocent lives—pretty sure they'd killed some people already—so, um, I think I was legally justified. Ma'am."
Again, Emily couldn't say he was wrong; hell, he was probably right. But she'd seen the pictures of Fog's body. To so matter-of-factly dismiss that as 'legally justified' was just—well, they did say it was always the quiet ones. The image floated around her surface thoughts, and in her mind's eye she pictured Nilbog's corpse replacing Fog's...no, no. Enough of that. She was a PRT Director; she was above petty revenge fantasies. "Hm. Speaking of orders." She turned to the other cape on the call. "I'd like to hear your rationale for them. Sending a Ward to storm a potential hostage situation?"
Other capes might have quailed under that sharp question, but not Armsmaster. "All three Empire capes involved have a long record of racist violence." he retorted. "The civilians were in extreme danger, whether we stayed out or went in. There were at least five murders before the PRT even arrived."
"Blank's power was the only one guaranteed to get past Fog. He was our best chance to end the incident, and it worked. Fog's death is regrettable, yes." he allowed with a perfunctory shrug. "but I agree with the boy. The lives of hundreds of civilians—and perhaps Aegis too—outweigh the life of one villain."
Emily pursed her lips. Put that way, his decision-making did sound reasonable. On the risky side, perhaps, but if so the risk had paid off. What nagged at her was how it seemed to fall in line with a recent pattern. Advocating for confronting Lung head-on, launching a full-scale takedown of the ABB, and now this. None of those were indefensible calls; she had signed off on the first two herself, even, but taken on the whole, it was a remarkably aggressive sequence from Armsmaster. The status quo in the city frustrated him; she could understand that. It frustrated her too. Some days, she wished all the villains in the world had one throat so she could...
Well, perhaps she was worried for nothing. After all, two days ago there had been five experienced, dangerous villains on the loose. Now? Oni Lee, dust. Lung missing, his gang in shambles and his reputation permanently damaged. Alabaster, comatose in a cell. Night, under heavy sedation with two agents watching her constantly. Fog, lying on a slab in the basement morgue.
Oh, and Mush had been captured too. PR concerns aside, for once the PRT was actually winning.
"We'll table this for after the emergency." she finally conceded. "For now, we have bigger concerns. Armsmaster, stay behind if you would."
Both of them, she trusted, were intelligent enough to realize Empire retaliation was likely. Armsmaster nodded grimly. "Of course."
"Blank, dismissed. And try not to kill anyone else." she added tartly. "Consider the paperwork it'll cause me, at least."
Topic: South docks empire attack!
In: Boards / Places / America / Brockton Bay
(viewing page 1 of 26)
Jihoo94 (Original Poster)
Posted on October 30, 2010
Think I almost died. Still shaking. So I live in south Docks, things were quiet all day then BAM Alabaster, Night and Fog all show up. Aegis tried to fight them but wasn't doing too well. Fog went into our building. Saw someone get gassed to death. Ran outside, got chased by Nazis, PRT showed up and beat on the Nazis.
Blank was with them. He went in. Saw him fight Alabaster through the door. Tased him and hit him with a stick, then they kept going. Didn't dare follow. Armsmaster came a bit after and cordoned things off. Alabaster got really fucked up somehow, he kept screaming for like 10 minutes straight. Blank came back, did something to him and made him pass out, then left. Looks like he took out Night/Fog too. Saw some PRT taking Night away on a stretcher. Think Fog died, they had a body under a sheet and there was a lot of blood.
Family is ok, thank God. Still trying to process.
trashking
Replied on October 30, 2010
wtf, he killed someone AGAIN?
MSCohen
Replied on October 30, 2010
Glad you and the family are ok, OP! Wishing you all the best.
Sounds like there are three less Empire capes out there at least. I know I'll sleep easier if the walking Auschwitz isn't with us anymore.
Exploratorium (Veteran Member)
Replied on October 30, 2010
Three in one go? Someone was pissed about missing out on Lung.
I can feel autograph values going to the MOON, guys. And y'all made fun of me for being hyped.
WalkInThePark
Replied on October 30, 2010
I got video of what happened with Alabaster before the PRT made me stop filming. Scary shit. I know what a Gray Bay loop must be like now.
XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied on October 30, 2010
I TOLD YOU! I told you he was Gray Boy!
Laser Augment
Replied on October 30, 2010
Damn it Void, not this again. Okay, I'll grant you that was fucking disturbing, but GB was a little white boy. Blank's at least a teenager and pretty much confirmed not white.
Greentext Enthusiast
Replied on October 30, 2010
holy shit I KNEEL
cringe Aryan villains vs based Chinese war criminal KEKW
User received an infraction for this post: Don't join a thread just to post edgy memes. This is PHO, not some image board.
(viewing page 10 of 26)
bothad
Replied on October 30, 2010
This thread has been like 50% celebration and 50% memes...am I the only one uncomfortable with this? Blank's killed two capes in two days now. He put someone in a Gray Boy loop. Villains have gotten Kill Orders for less and we're just going to laugh this off? Like, I know they were horrible people but jesus, this isn't the Wild West. There are laws. Or there are supposed to be.
But maybe I'm corny for still caring about human rights and shit. God knows plenty of you seem ready for a police state.
Exploratorium (Veteran Member)
Replied on October 30, 2010
Yeah. There are laws. If Fog had followed them maybe he'd still be alive.
Laser Augment
Replied on October 30, 2010
I think we passed the Wild West long ago, man. The PRT's tried to do things by the book for years now, and it wasn't working. If making a few examples out of people who deserve it is what it takes, I can live with that.
I know, I know, slippery slope and all. At least given who they're fighting, I don't think it'll end in a fascist dictatorship. Hopefully.
skipper98
Replied on October 30, 2010
Doing bad things for good reasons, like the trolley problem! Except the one guy is a murdering Nazi who tied the others to the tracks to begin with, so...
comrade chekhov
Replied on October 30, 2010
wow. always thought prt is usa imperialist lackeys but blank you are true brother comrade. remove nazis like in great patriotic war. ussr and prc may be gone but spirit of revolution lives on. to victory!
User received an infraction for this post: Do not post tangentially-related political spam. Also, learn to capitalize.
Laser Augment
Replied on October 30, 2010
God, a few Nazis go down and we've got communists coming out of the woodwork already. I hope we don't get a new gang called the Soviet 1918 or something. That would be dumb.
(viewing page 19 of 26)
Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied on October 30, 2010
I'm seeing a lot of speculation on this thread. We don't have all the facts ourselves yet but wanted to clear up a couple things:
- Alabaster and Night are in custody. They're expected to make a full recovery.
- Fog is confirmed deceased, cause of death pending autopsy. There's no immediate disciplinary action planned. However, we will be conducting a full investigation once the state of emergency ends.
- Seven civilians were killed, and at least sixteen hospitalized with likely permanent lung damage. Some of them have known ABB links. Most don't. There were over 300 people in the building during the attack, so it's likely the Wards' actions saved many more lives.
abenmao
Replied on October 30, 2010
He can't keep getting away with this!
LaBourneIdentity (New Member)
Replied on October 30, 2010
grabs popcorn
I gotta say, police brutality is way funnier when it happens to Nazis. Asking again for Hookwolf to get captured and definitely not die or get horribly maimed ;)
(there mods, you happy now?)
Greentext Enthusiast
Replied on October 30, 2010
- 1 week from now
- Blank executes Kaiser on live TV
- slow slicing process lasts for 8 hours
- turns Kaiser's bits into sausages and force-feeds them to Fenja/Menja
- screams give us all nightmares until we die
- PRT declares it justified self-defense
User was banned for this post: OK, that's enough. Keep your revenge fantasy torture porn fanfics to yourself.
Max Anders was too young to really remember the time before capes, but his father had told him a story or two. He remembered hearing about the atomic bomb, the wonder-weapon of a bygone age. A bomb that worked based on standard physics, yet had destructive power which put all but a handful of Blasters to shame. The Americans and Russians had had thousands of them pointed at each other, more than enough to end the world at the push of a button. What stopped the world from ending was rules. Unwritten rules, almost. Each side tacitly agreed to stay within the red lines, to not fight to their full ability, in order to prevent an endgame where there could be no winners. There was a special term for this situation: mutually assured destruction.
Of course, with no formal rules, there was a gray area. There was room for misinterpretations and miscalculations and escalations, for a chain reaction leading to a fiery end. Normally, Max wouldn't have thought of that old story—except right now, he had the uncomfortable feeling someone had miscalculated.
It was supposed to be a simple welcome-back mission for Night and Fog. Seize some territory on the outskirts of ABB turf, terrorize the populace, maybe kill a few—certainly not enough to earn a Kill Order, seeing as even Hookwolf hadn't gotten one yet. They would strategically retreat once enough PRT reinforcements arrived, but the slants would get the point. With Lung's days numbered, the Docks were no longer their sanctuary. Soon it would be the white man's neighborhood again, not the yellow's.
But things had gone wrong. The heroes' response had been far more extreme than anticipated. Max and his sources didn't have the full details, not yet, but what he had heard sounded almost more like the Slaughterhouse Nine than the PRT.
"So much for Gesellschaft." Hookwolf scoffed. He looked as hairy, greasy, and unwashed as ever, comically out place in the Medhall CEO's sleek corporate office. Max suppressed a wince as his bare feet dirtied the carpet. He'd have to make sure the janitor did a thorough cleaning. "Germany doesn't make them like it used to, huh?"
Krieg, standing stock-still like the Aryan soldier he fancied himself, bristled. "You dare mock the Fatherland?" Max could tell he was upset. His carefully cultivated American accent was slipping to expose his natural Teutonic pronunciations. "The cradle of the Führer and the master race? We were conquering Europe while you were practicing miscegenation—"
"The loss of a comrade is always difficult to bear." Max cut in. "I'm sure Hookwolf speaks out of anger and grief."
Hookwolf grunted. "Uh, yeah. Sorry." That was as good as they'd get from him. He'd never really been close to the Gesellschaft contingent, back when they worked together. Night and Fog had always been too cold and stoic and foreign for his tastes.
"Fog was a loyal champion of our people, and he will be missed. May his memory live on in the ranks of our honored dead." Max continued. Retrieving a bottle of schnapps from his desk, he filled three glasses. "To Fog."
"To Fog." Krieg murmured.
Hookwolf drained his glass in one go, then slammed it back down onto Max's desk. "All right. That's done with. Now are we going to keep moping like a bunch of old women, or are we going to go out and strike back?"
Krieg finished his drink as well. "That new Ward of theirs is a menace." he said darkly.
"I'm still surprised they kept him on duty after Oni Lee." Hookwolf added. "Ha! Who knew Armsmaster had the balls?" Max certainly hadn't. What he wouldn't give to know what his opposite number was thinking. Was Armsmaster in a panic over the an unplanned escalation, or was it something more deliberate? Was he throwing the old rules of engagement out the window, now that he seemed to be gaining the upper hand?
Max didn't know, and that bothered him.
"It's utterly barbaric." Krieg spat. "As expected of a Mongoloid, really. What do their kind know of civilization?"
That raised the question of why Hitler had bothered allying with Japan, but Max held his tongue. God forbid they think he was less than utterly devoted to the Austrian painter's memory. He nodded. "Yes. I think we all agree the PRT's actions can't go unanswered."
Hookwolf bared a wolfish grin. "Seems simple to me. Just say the word, and I'll bring back Blank's head on a pike."
Krieg glared at him. "If it were that simple, Night and Fog would've come back. On PHO they're saying the boy can twist your own powers against you—"
Hookwolf scoffed. "Please. I was a pit fighter before I was a cape. Not brought up in some fancy-pants European daycare. I don't need powers to be strong. I am strong."
"Gesellschaft's training centers are not daycares!" Krieg objected. "They are crucibles, that take weak children and forge them into—"
"Enough." Max interrupted his bickering lieutenants. He had a choice to make. Except, in a way, there was no choice at all.
Hookwolf might be a brute, but he had a good feel for the pulse of the rank-and-file. Despite the airs of culture that the European faction brought, the bulk of the Empire's membership consisted of—to put it bluntly—white trash. They wouldn't care about political considerations or the balance of parahuman power. They'd want blood. If one of his capes was murdered by one of the 'lesser races' and he he didn't take revenge, what would it do to his position? Max wasn't foolish enough to assume his network's loyalty to him was ironclad. He had, after all, inherited most it from Allfather, not built it personally. Coward. Race traitor. Unworthy. He could predict the insults that would be hurled his way, whether whispered or spoken aloud.
No. He couldn't afford to back down. So there would be blood, and vengeance, and mutually assured destruction. "Rest assured, we'll make them pay for this." he declared. "Summon the others. We have a war to plan."
Another one. I promised 'unhinged', and tried to deliver.
So, the Lawful Neutral/Lawful Evil campaign continues. That interpretation of Alabaster's power is admittedly a stretch, but I thought it would be ironic for Blank to put someone into a Gray Boy loop for a change.
Until next time.