Earning Her Stripes

Part Thirty-Eight: Fight!

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

Monochrome

If anyone had told me before all this started that I'd ever get used to roaring through the air on the shoulder of a massive powersuit piloted by one of my ex-worst-enemies, alongside my other ex-worst-enemy, I would've told them that they'd gotten a bad deal out of the Merchants.

(Sophia didn't count as an ex-worst-enemy. She was still very much a current enemy, though incarcerated and exceedingly unlikely to escape. Which was good, since she'd already gone after Dad once, and I didn't want to have to kill her if she tried again.)

As it was, holding onto the grab-handle with one hand and the good-steel staff with the other, this kind of transport seemed almost normal to me now. Emma was less comfortable with it than I was, I figured due to the fact that I could fall that distance and not worry about it, whereas she would have some issues. Not deal-breakers, exactly—I recalled how she'd dive-bombed in through my bedroom window—but it would certainly be problematic for her.

"That's weird." Madison's modulated voice came over my radio earpiece. "There's a bunch of people camped near the ferry terminal."

"Camped?" I asked. "Who's camping there?"

The massive headpiece shook from side to side. "Sorry, I can't pick out many other details. Though the Undersiders are on site. I can see the dogs."

"How about March?" asked Emma over her own radio link. "Can you see her?"

"Nobody on a motorcycle. I guess we'll figure it out when we get closer."

"Or we could ask Tattletale," Emma suggested. "I've heard she has all the answers."

I wrinkled my nose. Tattletale did have that rep, but while I'd never actually met her, or even seen her in action, she also had the rep of being smug as fuck. I had a congenital dislike for smug people, mainly due to my experiences with Emma and Madison before they'd had their change of heart. "Maybe."

"Oh, shit."

"What?" I asked, at the same time as Emma did.

"I just got a better view. It's Butcher and the Teeth, and March is going head-to-head with Butcher."

I met Emma's eyes. Again, we said the same thing at the same time.

"Oh, shit."

Grue

Brian didn't have Lisa's ability to pick out someone's entire life story and motivations after talking to them for thirty seconds, but he was good at fighting. Reading someone's moves and what they were likely to try was second nature to him now, and both Butcher and March were giving him plenty to go on with.

To cut a long and involved story woefully short, it wasn't looking good for March.

While she was faster than Butcher and she had greater reach overall with that rapier of hers, they were each apparently able to anticipate the other's moves enough that neither could tag the other properly. Except that March was smaller and couldn't take any kind of solid hit, Butcher had a few dirty tricks up her sleeve that it seemed March hadn't learned yet (which Brian filed away for future use) and of course, Butcher didn't need to touch March to inflict pain on her, when and where she felt like it.

Oh, and they were both sandbagging to make it look good before the inevitable takedown: Butcher more than March, but it was still a mutual thing. March believed that not only she could win but that she would win. All she had to do was stop holding back at just the right moment.

Unfortunately for her ambitions, he was reasonably sure Butcher was going to get bored with this and lower the boom on her first. It wouldn't be as dramatic or impressive as March was intending to be when she made her move, but it would be thoroughly lethal.

And that was when he heard the thunder.

March

May saw the punch coming long before it connected, and went to pirouette out of the way. The rapier was charged up enough to take Butcher's hand off at the wrist, but the colossal bitch sent a spasm of agony through her arm, causing it to fly off target. Instead of missing altogether, Butcher's fist grazed May's face and ripped away part of the rabbit mask, sending her off-balance and unable to twist away from the follow-up boot. The hard-shell toe took her solidly in the ribs, and she felt several of them break as she sprawled on the filthy, cracked asphalt. Her rapier skittered out of her grasp, gouging chunks out of the asphalt.

She tried to use her momentum to roll to her feet, but the damage to her body prevented her from getting farther up than one knee. Shaking her head, she did her best to dispel the dizziness from the hit to her face. Butcher packed a punch like a freight train; May knew she was going to have one hell of a bruise on her cheekbone, and that was the least of her injuries. Blood dripped from her nose and she swiped it away with the back of her hand as she eyed where her rapier had ended up. She tasted more blood in the back of her throat.

"Go ahead," Butcher invited her with a vicious grin. "Pick it up. I dare you."

May could tell from every line in her body, from her power's analysis of Butcher's style, that the leader of the Teeth would never allow her to reach the rapier. I should've blown her head off earlier. But she'd have time to yell at herself later. Right now she needed to focus, if she was going to get out of this alive.

With a thunder of thrusters and a tremendous impact of metal on asphalt, the party was well and truly crashed; May was bowled over by the jetwash as the massive battlesuit came in for a landing close enough to be actually intruding on the fight. But she didn't care about that. Even as Butcher reacted to the sudden entrance, May found her footing and kicked off toward where her rapier rested in a groove of its own making.

Butcher definitely had some kind of Thinker power going on, because she reacted to May's move, far faster than she should have. But even as agony flared through her body, May's hand found the rapier and she gave it the full treatment. Her roll continued and she ended up on her back … and threw the rapier, point first.

She could have targeted Blockade, or Firebird, or even the black-and-white figure her disbelieving eyes made out on the shoulder of the powered armour. But May didn't play; she knew who she had to take down, and the rapier flew straight and true. For her part, Butcher was a fraction of a second too late in realising the true extent of the danger, because May hadn't thrown her weapon up until now, and the rapier wasn't burdened with the usual limitations due to gravity or air resistance.

It crossed the intervening distance in a fraction of a second, then Butcher teleported with her usual fiery detonation, ending up a dozen yards away. She stood there, swaying, the blade of May's rapier punched in through her right eye and out through the back of her head. "Th'nk … th's'll … k'll … me?" she slurred. "G'nna … sh'v … th's … up … y'r—"

Her hand had been slowly, cautiously reaching up to the protruding hilt of the weapon; just as she got a good grip on it, the fuse finally ran down. The entire rapier, plus everything it was in contact with … exploded.

It was a good solid detonation, one that relieved Butcher of everything from her clavicles on upward, and showered everyone within twenty yards with bits of gore. Her body, remarkably, remained standing for a few more seconds, swaying back and forth until May almost expected her to pop a new head out of the gaping, grisly hole at the top of her torso. Then it crumpled to the ground like the proverbial puppet with strings cut.

Fuck, yeah. I win.

Monochrome

Madison was in the middle of yelling for Butcher to stand down—even as the woman had a sword through her head—when matters took a turn for the worse. The sword exploded, as did the head, removing the woman who'd once been known as Quarrel from the position of 'current Butcher' and relegating her name to the list of previous holders of that title. I hadn't expected that to happen, or anything like it. Neither, apparently, had she.

I figured I'd hold the 'splitting headache' jokes for later, if ever.

"Eww," Madison said over the speakers. "Ew, ew, ewww."

It wasn't hard to see the reason for her disquiet. When Butcher had lost her head, a thoroughly organic spray had gone out in all directions. Emma had had the presence of mind to use the suit for cover; I hadn't, but it was possible to use my outer covering field to discard the … stuff … that had hit me, and generate another one under it. Madison had no such options, and good steel had no particular bio-organic repellent qualities.

I could totally see her building some in for the next iteration of the suit, though. And I was pretty sure she was going to be steam-cleaning this one. For someone who could chug an entire can of soda then belch the first few lines of the national anthem, Madison was oddly fastidious about some things.

"March!" Emma warned, and I tore my eyes away from the crumpled remains of the former Butcher. Because I was under no illusions as to who was the current one.

Through the hole in her mask, I saw March smile as she got to her feet. She showed no signs of the beating she'd been taking just moments before, and I saw her hand scrape the asphalt, gathering a bunch of material. By the time she got to her feet, it was already forming itself into another rapier.

"Not March," I said. "Butcher."

The new Butcher's head turned as I said this, and I saw her concentrate on me. My view of her flickered a few times as my field cut in for full protective coverage; from what, I wasn't sure. She hadn't actually moved, but from what I understood, Butcher didn't need to lift a finger in order to hurt someone.

"O …" she said. "I ha … … mit tha … … pressed. Mo … … ple I kill tend to stay dead." My hearing blanked out at the same intervals as my vision, chopping away parts of her words.

"Meh," I retorted, carefully making sure that my protective field was indeed double layered everywhere I could make it so, even down to a finely-gridded double layer over my eyes and ears. "I got better."

She tilted her head to look more closely at me. "Well, that's irritating." I was pretty sure she wasn't talking about me not being dead, or at least not just that. "And why can't I see whoever's in that damn suit? Do you have someone remotely controlling it?"

"Why don't you come over here and find out?" Madison had evidently gotten over her upset about the mess on her suit. Or maybe she just wanted to use Butcher's rabbit mask to clean off her suit. I could never really tell with her.

"Okay," murmured Emma over the radio link. "This is really bad. We can't risk killing her, because if we do, one of us becomes the next Butcher."

I looked over at where Butcher stood with her rapier at the ready, and kept my voice down. "And in the meantime, she's already tried killing me once, and I doubt having all the other Butchers in her head is actually improving her mental stability."

"Haha, yeah, no," Madison agreed over the link. "So what do we do? Pull back, or go all-in?"

Emma was looking around. "Undersiders are bugging out. We need to plan and prep."

I hated the idea of retreating. Since I'd gotten my powers, I hadn't taken one step back from a challenge. Deep down, I knew that if I vetoed the idea, Emma and Madison would back me up all the way. I didn't know how we were going to beat March/Butcher plus the rest of the Teeth, but I'd been playing a lot of things by ear and coming out on top. And I really wanted to beat her face in (why yes, I did bear a grudge for her sticking a sword in me).

But if Madison had learned how to be pretty damn inflexible herself when she had to, and Emma could read every aspect of a potential fight before it ever happened. If they both thought we should perform a tactical retreat, especially since the only potential near-innocents in the area were already leaving on dog-back, then it was probably a good idea to at least consider it.

"Ugh, dammit," I muttered. It still didn't feel right, but I was learning that going with my gut was not infallible. "Go. Let's get out of here."

Butcher

May grinned inside her damaged mask. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to replace it with, but the whole new selection of powers she now had access to definitely gave her a bunch of options. The ability to always hit vital areas definitely looked useful.

Well, fuck. That sounded like Butcher's voice, inside her head. I didn't see that coming.

Nicely done, kid, agreed another voice. Is it just me, or are they getting younger?

Meh, don't give a shit, a third interjected. Hey, kid, those heroes are about to get away. You gonna do something about it, or you just gonna stand there like a fucking moron?

If you just shut up, I might be able to concentrate. Belatedly aware that she was talking to all the previous Butchers, May focused on collapsing her freshly manufactured rapier into undifferentiated matter then making three throwing blades out of it. She infused all three blades with energy and threw them. Even though she was hampered by Monochrome simply vanishing off her special senses as soon as she did this, and the overly-chunky battlesuit just not showing up with any life at all, she did it all the same. She'd taken down Monochrome before, and she would totally do it again.

The blade destined for Monochrome hit her and exploded; the force field popped, only to reveal another one inside the first. Monochrome didn't seem to have any problem weathering the explosion.

If anything, the blade aimed at the powersuit did even less. It hit the metal armour, but instead of carving through or setting it up to explode, the blade was just … ignored. There was a sharp detonation that didn't even leave a charred spot, and that was it.

May still wasn't sure of the name of the red-headed girl, but neither did she care all that much. There was no weird force field or bullshit powered armour, so she was fair game. The blade curved in, aiming straight for the redhead's carotid arteries, nice big targets that basically guaranteed the target bleeding out catastrophically in front of everyone.

It was a good first kill as Butcher.

Or it would have been, if the girl hadn't blocked the knife, bringing up a wrist-mounted shield almost faster than the eye could register and literally knocking the thrown knife away. Before she could curve it back around, it exploded in midair, well away from anything it could actually do damage to.

Before May could grab more material, the thrusters kicked in at full strength, accelerating the battlesuit upward, along with its two passengers. May tried to hold where she was and do something else—maybe broadcast pain, maybe inflict wounds—but the blast of hot air knocked her ass over teakettle, sending her sprawling on the ground. She could feel her busted ribs grating together, though the pain had gone away; she could, she knew, ignore it selectively.

Getting to her feet, she shaded her eyes as she watched the powersuit accelerating up and away. Would've been nice to kill them, but making them run with their tails between their legs is almost as good.

"Well, then," she announced, dusting her hands off as she turned to the capes and minions watching her. "It seems I'm the new boss around here. Anyone got any objections about that?"

"Fuck, no," asserted a woman with tiny force-field shards dancing around her. "That was badass as fuck. Vex, by the way."

"Animos," offered an ordinary-looking guy.

"Spree."

"Hemorrhagia."

"Reaver."

May's smile widened as she looked around at the small army that she'd just inherited. Mine. They're all mine.

Ours, you mean. One of the voices in her head interjected. You aren't shit without us, kid, and don't you forget it.

May laughed out loud. "Trust me," she said to both the previous Butchers and the Teeth surrounding her, "you ain't seen nothing yet."

Grue

"Fuck," muttered Lisa as the dogs bolted down the street. Nobody was chasing them, which Brian considered to be a minor miracle. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"What are we gonna do, Tats?" asked Alec, sounding actually worried for once. "Because that didn't look good at all."

"No shit it didn't look good." Rachel's tone was blunt as ever. "That fucker is the new Butcher, and she's got a grudge against us."

"We're leaving town," Brian decided. "Now. Today. This afternoon. We're going back to our places, grabbing everything we can stuff into the back of a car, and fucking off."

"But my console," whined Alec. "My games. Can't we get, you know, a moving van or something?"

"Those things take time to arrange," Lisa snapped. "And do you really want one of the Teeth to see it coming in, and follow it right to the loft? Fighting our way out of town, especially with March leading the charge against us, is a losing proposition. We would die."

Her response didn't shut Alec up—that would've required a major miracle—but it did reduce his objections to a mild grumble.

Brian was left to consider one other problem.

What am I going to do with Aisha?

PRT Building

Director's Office

When Emily's phone rang, she picked it up before looking at the caller ID. Firebird.

She frowned. They'd already contacted the PRT to do with Flechette; her understanding had been that they were going to be locating March and coming down on her with all the considerable throw weight at their disposal. Considering their previous track record, she fully expected them to be successful, which was why she was expecting them to appear in person and drop off the young miscreant into the PRT's custody.

Maybe they're too busy to make the trip in?

Whatever the reason, she knew she wouldn't learn it until she answered the damn phone. Thumbing the Accept icon, she held the phone to her ear. "You've got Piggot."

"Director, I've got problematic news." Despite audible wind-rush, Firebird spoke clearly, with no wasted words. "Butcher and the Teeth are in town, up near the ferry terminal. March challenged Butcher and killed her."

"March is the new Butcher?" Emily's eyes went wide at this news. It was bad enough that Butcher had come back to Brockton Bay, but for her to get mixed up with March? That girl had been problematic as it was, especially given her obsession with Flechette. Now, if this report was correct, she had command over a whole bunch of psychotic capes, and ten times as many unpowered mooks eager to perform whatever atrocities she ordered them to carry out. "What are your plans now?"

Firebird ignored the rhetorical question and focused on the legitimate one. "Right this second, we're pulling back to regroup and reconsider. The Teeth should be no real challenge, but we need to figure out how to lock down Butcher and take her out of the game. I'll let you know when we've got that sorted."

Slowly, Emily nodded. "Understood. Keep me posted." She ended the call and carefully put the phone down. Then she turned to her computer and clicked the email icon. Setting the message to deliver to all department heads, and all members of the Protectorate and Wards, she began to type.

URGENT. READ IMMEDIATELY. URGENT.

Flechette

Lily's phone beeped with an incoming email at the same time as Aegis' did. She paused, lowering her arbalest instead of shooting a chain-line across to the next rooftop, and pulled out the phone. Aegis dropped to the rooftop next to her and did the same. "Wonder what's going on?" he mused as he woke the device up. "They only send out mass-mails when … whoa, shit."

Whoa, shit, indeed. Lily felt the breath catch in her throat as she saw the name March, then carried on to where it said what she'd done. Dropping to sit on the building parapet, she read the email through twice more, hoping desperately that she'd misinterpreted what it was saying.

"Oh, my god," she whispered. "No way. She couldn't. Could she?" But she knew she was just shouting at the darkness. March could have, and evidently had, done what the email bluntly spelled out.

"Okay," Aegis said once he'd assimilated the contents of the mail. "I'm calling it. They'll be contacting you soon enough to get back to the PRT building, so we're cutting the patrol short and heading back right now."

"They … might not?" she ventured.

"Hah, yeah, as if." He snorted. "You, out here right now, when we have no idea where the Teeth are? The Director might be a hardass, but she's not going to risk you getting hurt like that. And even if she is, I'm not. Let's go."

Lily nodded. His logic was sound, and the Wards had standing orders to cut short any patrols that felt unsafe anyway.

As they headed back over the rooftops, she couldn't help but worry. Is she going to be March with the powers of Butcher, or Butcher with the powers of March?

She knew which one she'd prefer. Unfortunately, what she preferred and what she got were quite often two different things.

End of Part Thirty-Eight