They'd been more or less certain that Coil's defences would extend some distance from his base.
That part of town had so many cameras that sticking up a few more, or hacking the ones already there, would be a minor task. So they'd accepted as a foregone conclusion that he would spot them on approach no matter what.
As such, trying to figure out a way to get close without him spotting them had been among the most frustrating parts of their planning. It was Taylor who suggested a solution in the end, something Brian put down to her not having been a thief as long as Myriad or himself.
Charging right down the street was not the way thieves did things.
However, as he leapt over another car and dropped to all fours for a little more speed, Brian had to admit that there was something to be said for it. Surrounded by the sounds of screeching breaks and blaring horns, he barked out a wolf laugh and roared at his team to stay close behind him.
The straps across his chest pulled tighter, reminding him to be more gentle with his gait. Taylor's perch on his back had been padded as best they could manage, but it still had to be uncomfortable. A part of Brian was glad of her discomfort, still seething with anger that she'd insisted on coming with them.
She was armed with one of Lisa's spare guns, but she still wasn't bulletproof. She'd also told him point blank that she'd attack on foot if she had to, so there hadn't been much choice in the end.
Up ahead Coil's skyscraper loomed, dozens of floors stuffed with mercenaries and traps and the twisted bastard who had hunted them out of their home.
That was what filled the upper floors at least. Lisa had predicted that the first twenty or thirty were entirely innocent. Not all of them were publicly owned, but that didn't necessarily mean anything sinister or illegal.
Meaning that as they drew closer there was a fair sized crowd of civilians in front of the building. Normal people who had just had their lunch breaks interrupted but several tons of angry werewolf.
Luckily for them, Brian lead the team right past them and leapt high into the air. He cleared the first ten floors easily and slammed into the side of the building in an explosion of shattering glass. His claws sunk into floors and ceilings and outer columns, while the straps across his chest slid and tightened, holding Taylor to his back and away from a very very long fall.
Another impact boomed to his side, but Brian kept his eyes focused on the building as he began to climb. Through the glass he saw pandemonium. People screaming and running for the elevators, the stairs, for anything that would get them away from the monsters climbing up their building. Not that he had any intention of going inside, not this low.
It was probably the most bizarre aspect of Taylor and Rachel's combined gift. How easy some things became.
The climb, which would have been fit for any daredevil action movie if he'd been human, was as easy as climbing a ladder. The glass could not cut him, no matter how he poked his claws through it. The floor held his weight, for all that he could have his fingers on one floor and his thumb on the ceiling below. Wind tugged and screamed at him, but Brian honestly wasn't worried about the fall.
Small hands found a gap in his armour of bone and caught a fistful of his fur. Brian had to hold back a growl at the sharp little pain, but hold it back he did. Taylor didn't have his advantages right now. For her this had to be terrifying.
So he redoubled his efforts and climbed faster.
Then his hand bounced off a window and the wind almost had him. A scream from his back got absolutely no judgement from him because, when he swung out with only one hand holding him to the building and saw just how high up they were...it was all Brian could do not to scream himself.
'Those people are very very small.'
Heaving with his other shoulder, Brian swung his claws a lot harder this time. They punched through the glass, but only barely. Which was when he pulled himself up and got a good look at the floor that had such tough windows.
The first thing he noticed was the complete emptiness of the room. Not even cheap office furniture to break up the space. The second thing he noticed was the cluster of men in dark combat gear and their guns. They almost had him worried before he remembered the glass between them. It had to be at least bulletproof, if not a lot tougher than that.
Which was when he noticed that this floor had smaller windows set into the floor to ceiling ones. Ones with metal frames and- 'Oh fuck it's open!'
Gunfire roared and it felt like he had his own personal hailstorm beating on his chest. Scarring and pitting his armour as they traced their fire back and forth along him.
As tempting as it was to smash the glass, reach inside, and knock them on their asses, he was still too low. A quick glance told him he couldn't be higher than the fiftieth floor, and they'd figured the important stuff would be the top ten of the ninety five storey building.
He hurried to get a hold on the next floor, and carefully kicked footholds in the current one. With the toughened glass and automatic rifles pounding his front the whole time, climbing the ladder had become a fuck of a lot harder.
'I had to fucking think it was too easy.' "Fucking Coil, couldn't have just been another underground base."
Scrambling up another floor, Brian wondered if he'd ever get a chance to visit the big apple. He'd always wanted to, but with the way life was going these days it seemed like it might be too much to hope for.
An empty floor gave him a short break, then there came another unfurnished room with mercenaries waiting to shoot at him. Only this time they brought explosives.
The blast of a grenade launcher wasn't nearly as bad as the last time he'd been hit by one. Weeks ago, in the Empire's underground base, he'd used his hand to trap a grenade against the concrete and shield his team. Which had meant a hole blown in his hand.
This time it just put a shallow crater in the armour on his chest and almost shoved him out into open air. His grip screeched and dug furrows in the building, but he was still pushed out. Worse was the damage it did to one of the straps holding Taylor safely to him, the binding snapping loose and letting a bundle of padding fall away as she clung desperately to his neck and the remaining straps.
Only the very tips of his claws saved them, digging in deep enough to keep his hold, to reach forward and secure his grip again. The mercenaries went to shoot him while he was vulnerable, only for Taylor to stand up on his back, poke her gun through the small window and open fire.
They fired back quickly enough, forcing her back down behind him, but it was enough of a delay to let him get secure. When they fired again he was ready for it and heaved himself upwards with a wolf's grin. The grenade soaring beneath him and thankfully detonating in the air rather than tumbling to the streets below.
The climb continued, though now he had to be careful to check the weapons aimed at him on each floor. Occasionally he glanced down to check that his team was climbing safely, but with the mounting difficulty Brian was forced to keep his attention mostly on himself and Taylor.
It was on the eighty sixth floor that it happened. Four assault rifles were poked towards him, same as all the other floors, no grenade launchers on this one though so he wasn't too worried. Then the bit of black plastic beneath the barrels that he'd assumed to be a forward grip lit up with blue light and split apart into a barrel that screamed tinker tech.
An instant later it was the air that screamed as four lasers punched through the glass and burned across the sky. A shallow wound on Brian's side declared very clearly that the weapons could hurt him and that throwing himself to the side had been a good idea.
Of course, as he scrambled for purchase on the glass, it didn't seem like so much of one. Right as he was about to grab Taylor off his back and curl himself around her for the fall, futile as that might be, his claws caught on the edge of a window and Brian howled in pain as his entire weight was put on the claws of one foot.
He scented blood in the air, felt it pouring from the end of his foot, but there was no time to yelp with the room he'd leapt to already filling up with mercenaries as they ran into the next room over.
They raised their guns again, the laser attachments primed and ready. Brian saw a vicious smile on more than one face and knew that the entire defence so far had been a trap to ensure he was too high up to leap to safety.
Those smiles vanished when he swung his fist forward, smashing his claw tips through the window in front of them. Only to return when he got no further than that. One of them smirked as he raised his weapon but overall they were professional about it. At least until darkness poured into the room through the holes he'd punctured.
A split second was all it took to fill the room, then he swung back to the other window. The one with a big hole melted in it.
Brian scrambled through after knocking away the glass above. He wasn't going to risk scraping Taylor off his back or having her burned by the molten edges. Then they were inside and she could finally drop down to the floor.
He glanced outside to check on his team, then whirled back to face the door when he heard boots approaching.
Before he could do anything, Taylor had poked her head out the doorway and then darted back in just as quick. "Two of them, coming from the left." She hissed to him.
Inside his massive size was more liability than advantage. Even on all fours with his belly on the floor, he had just a few feet of clearance between himself and ceiling. Which meant limited mobility.
The other way to look at it, Brian reflected as he pumped darkness ahead of himself, was that he didn't need to bother aiming. He shoved himself headfirst into the corridor and belly crawled along it at a speed that a human anatomy couldn't hope for. The mercenaries met a wall of bone and muscle and lost.
He tossed them into the room where four more of their comrades were still trying to find the walls, then poked an arm into that room and disabled everyone else in it. He wasn't gentle.
Footsteps behind him revealed the flaw in the arrangement, and the knowledge that Taylor was behind him turned that flaw into panic. Driving him to thrash at the walls. The plasterboard gave easily, as did most of the crap behind it. Partition walls hadn't a hope in hell of stopping him from turning around and...finding a lone mercenary curled up on the ground, still in spasms from the taser sparking in Taylor's hands.
"I hid behind the doorframe, dumbass ran straight for your back." As she spoke Taylor reached down and gingerly picked up the mercenaries rifle. Her movements were clumsy but she held it tight with her finger on the trigger guard. Lisa must have given her a few pointers sometime.
Brian wanted to say a lot of things in that moment. Starting with the terror that was pounding in his chest and ending with how badly they needed to get that collar off her if she was going to refuse to stay somewhere safe, but they didn't have the time to play charades.
So instead he smiled as best he could with a mouth like a dinosaur (one of the cool ones, not some sissy herbivore) and an immobile mask over his inhuman features.
Then they set off deeper into the building. Almost immediately punching through the charade of the outer rooms.
The corridor circled the building for a while, then there was a nondescript looking door leading deeper inside. The other side of which was anything but normal. For one thing he'd had to hit the door, which looked like simple compressed wood from the outside, several times before it twisted inwards to reveal itself as thick metal. On the other side was something that looked a lot less like an office and a lot more like some kind of military base.
Black walls inset with harshly glaring lights. Metal grill floors over wiring and pipes, the innards usually hidden below floorboards. Looking around he saw a keypad and optical reader linked up to the door they'd just torn through, then stomping boots began to echo closer and the two of them had other worries.
Before he'd known about the lasers, Brian hadn't been particularly worried about this part. Most weapons that a normal human could carry were near enough to useless against him. Unfortunately the lasers that Coil's men and women were lugging around weren't most weapons.
Which turned Taylor's presence into a serious boon. While they worked their way deeper and higher in the building, the mercenaries they encountered were faced with a choice between firing at Taylor, keeping her pinned behind cover but allowing him to storm close and beat them down, or fire at him and have her flank them. Her stolen rifle forcing them to pay attention to her and get beat down by him.
Since she could grab ammo off the groaning mercs they left in their wake, it all seemed like a pretty solid plan. The only real problem was how hard it was to find the stairs to each floor.
If there was a single elevator then it was hidden too well for them to find it by punching the occasional wall, especially with the way the walls were thickening and the tougher materials they were made of compared to the outer offices. Meanwhile the stairs were like a TV studio, scattered all over and with a maze of corridors in between, filled with barricades and secure doors. Not that either proved much of an obstacle for them.
There was no way to punch the stairs into appearing however, so they were left to search the hard way. Which meant wandering past rooms and opening every door, either him poking his head in or Taylor stepping inside. Which was how they found her.
Coil was clearly too rich and modern to use anything as old-fashioned as prison bars. No, the cell they came across was divided from the rest of the room by a floor to ceiling wall of what looked like clear plastic and was almost certainly some tinker material.
On the other side was a simple bed, a toilet with no privacy partition, and a similarly open area for showers. Hatches down by the floor were presumably how meals and clothes and such got in and out, given a tray of half-eaten food was sitting on the floor inside the cell.
It was the occupant that drew Brian's attention though, and the sight of her actually stirred a fragment of guilt in his chest.
Othala had beaten his sister, tormented Taylor's father, and was a lifelong Nazi. He had every reason to hate her.
Seeing her eyes, empty and glazed, still made Brian regret his part in putting her where she was. She was scratching at track marks along her inner arm, rocking back and forth as she clutched her legs. A whisper made it out of the cell, so quiet that even he could barely hear snatches of it.
"...ictor...waitin...please..."
Brian turned his head away, Taylor did the same. They said nothing to one another.
Even if he could talk in his form, what could they possibly have said?
It wasn't long after that that they found the next flight of stairs, the first one without a pair of mercenaries at the top of it. At the top was more of the same, but by his count they were up to the eighty ninth floor and he couldn't help but suspect that a guy like Coil would have claimed the top floors for himself. Ninety was a nice round number for him to have started from.
The thicker walls were starting to annoy him though. Not only did they make it harder for him to move around, but the lights set into them were at just the right height to be constantly shining into his eyes. Though he took a childish glee in the fact that his mass was scraping out the front of each bulb as he passed it. Whoever picked up the bill for all this damage wasn't going to be happy about it.
Then he felt it. A slight bump. One of the bulbs had stuck out ever so slightly further than the others.
Instinct screamed at him and Brian grabbed Taylor and tucked her behind his bulk, pushing solid darkness out in every direction. Then the world exploded around them.
Pain tore through him. Plates cracking all over his body and his flesh hissing as his own blood cooled the ball bearings that had been blasted into him.
The walls were slagged. Thick bands of normal looking material blown away by the explosives beneath. The payload it had blasted into him hadn't pierced deep enough to do real damage and he could already feel the wounds healing, his flesh squirming against the shrapnel and beginning to push it out. None of which changed that he was deaf and blind in one eye from a lucky hit.
A flicker of light in his good eye was the only warning he got. Then blue light flared too bright for him to look at and Brian felt real pain.
He tried to roar at the agony burning through him, but he was choking on blood and the world was flickering between the bloody view of the world and a dim view of pulsing flesh. He was losing his connection to Rachel's boost. 'How?'
As a trio of boots came into view of his sole eye, when he wasn't screaming his pain at a wall of skin instead, Brian looked down.
'Oh.'
It was a very big hole. A very very big hole. In his gut. The edges of his armour plates glowed red or faded to a charred black. Between edges he could see deep inside himself, right down to where the sac holding his real body was. In fact he could see inside it.
He could see inside himself.
Bile rose in his throat, both of them, as Brian realised that he was missing his right hip, and the right side of his abdomen. His guts spilled out into the cauterised hole that had been burned through him and through the agony he was aware that it was incredible he wasn't already dead. Regeneration was an amazing thing.
Of course, when one of the mercs strolled up, carrying the end of the massive laser gun that the other two were holding between them...when she shoved the tip against Brian's head...when he tried to reach out and tear them apart but his body barely twitched...
It was hard to think. All he could manage was to hope that Taylor had gotten clear of the blast, and the laser beam. If he'd at least protected her then that would be, something.
Then gunfire roared in his ear and the women holding the tip of the gun collapsed without most of her head. A dark shape scrambled past him and leapt at the other two as they dropped the big gun and scrambled for sidearms. Taylor was faster than either of them, hurling herself at one man and using the rifle as a club.
For all that the mercenary was bigger, stronger, and much better trained, surprise slowed him down enough for the butt of the gun to knock him out cold. Then she swept it back across to knock the pistol out of the other guy's hands.
Brian's vision went to the inside for a moment, then came back to despair.
The mercenary hadn't bothered going for his gun. He'd simply grabbed Taylor by the throat and slammed her slender frame against the wall. Her legs kicked uselessly. She thrashed and spat at him. All while Brian could do nothing, no matter how he roared and pulled at his useless body. It wouldn't move. It wouldn't fucking move!
Then Taylor grabbed the hand holding her up, and hugged it against herself. Coil's minion had a moment to look confused, and then she screamed and spasmed and he was doing exactly the same. Even if she'd let him, the man's hand couldn't let her go with the electricity coursing through his body. It continued until he was limp and smoking, then went on a little longer.
Taylor slumped down the wall, gasping for breath, and Brian managed a smile. His vision went to the flesh sac and this time it stayed there. Which was fine. His wounds didn't include his lungs, and his regeneration was keeping him from passing out, so he could say...
...he could say...
...something...
...so many things...
...he...
...wanted...
…
Pain greeted Brian as the world resumed around him.
The first thing he saw was his own flesh, not Rachel's boosted flesh suit, knitting together incredibly fast but still at least a minute from healing the damage done to him.
He forced himself to stop doubling over, so the second thing he saw was a woman with glazed eyes and hate lurking beneath them. Wearing red even now.
The third thing he saw was a blood-soaked woman holding a gun to Othala's head. Then his brain started to kick in again and he ticked her age down as he looked beneath the blood and found Taylor. She was smiling at him despite still being covered in what he had to assume was the blood spatter from blasting a woman's head off. It was beautiful.
Suddenly he remembered what it had been like a few moments ago, minutes ago? An eternity ago? However long it had been, Brian ached at the thought of the things he'd longed to say as life faded away. He opened his mouth to spit out every one of them...and hacked up a lump of blood and mucus.
Then he threw up.
'Nope. Moment ruined.'
Taylor jabbed the gun into Othala's neck until the Nazi laid her hands on him again, warmth spreading from her hands and giving him the strength to speak.
"Wha?" Okay so it wasn't a lot of speaking, but then again he was pretty sure he'd lost most of his diaphragm.
Taylor's eyes softened and she met his woozy gaze. "I realised your regen was keeping you alive, I thought that she might be able to grant you even more."
"You...right." Multiple words that time. He'd lost one of the three he'd intended to speak, but that was still progress.
"I'm glad it worked. So, so glad..." She trailed off and he saw tears in her eyes. Not that she let the gun waver from Othala's neck.
A few minutes later, Brian's body was intact again, even if it still hurt like hell and had a very impressive scar across the right side of his abs. The pain was fading as he kept still and let Othala do her work, but the scar wasn't shrinking any more.
He shrugged and gestured for Taylor to pass him the gun. She walked over and kicked one of the mercs guns over to him from where she'd clearly set them out of Othala's reach. The healer didn't even try to grab one, which made sense with the shape she looked to be in.
Brian almost felt bad for picking the rifle up and jabbing her with the barrel.
She turned her empty gaze from her hands to his face, but he refused to flinch from it. Not with the idea that had crept into his head.
"You can do invincibility right? Give it to her."
A blank stare was his reply, but behind Othala he could see dawning comprehension in Taylor's eyes. Which was probably why she threw her gun aside and grabbed Othala's hand. Another jab with his rifle and the Nazi healer shrugged, then Taylor went tense and let her go. Brian kept his gun on Othala though, and let his eyes tell her just what would happen to her if she took her gift back too early.
Taylor's collar lit up. Then it began to spark. As Taylor reached up and grabbed it on both sides with clawed hands, the sparks became a ring of lightning rushing along the outside of it. Then she began to pull.
At first it held, and Brian thought he might need to help. As he tried to work out how to do so without leaving Othala unguarded, something snapped and a piece of metal pinged into the corner. Then the collar split into two halves. Taylor heaved them apart, her lean frame gaining muscles that no normal human had, swelling and rippling with fur. She strained at the seams of her clothes, sweating as she pulled apart two pieces of metal somehow joined by lightning. Light and heat pouring off the thing brighter and brighter until...
fss pop
It simply went dark. Taylor's hands shot out to the sides and she winced as she shrunk back to her normal self. Only this time she was all the way normal, with the ears and tail that he'd come to see as a natural part of her.
She smiled at him. He smiled at her. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a taser. As Othala writhed and went limp, Brian grabbed some zipties off the nearest merc and set about binding the healer. He quirked a brow as he did so, wondering just why it felt so breezy...
He snapped his head around to look at Taylor, finding her staring at him with wide eyes and a face that was redder even than the blood spattered across it. His own face took a similar hue when he saw the direction of her gaze, then they were both turning away and blabbering nonsense at one another.
The mercenary she'd knocked unconscious was still breathing and his pants were a close fit for Brian. Once he'd pulled them on -having to cut a hole for his tail- he considered the rest of the man's clothes, only to decide against it. Pants were plenty of clothing for fighting in.
Though Aisha might give him some grief over...Aisha!
He remembered his sister again, and just like that all the bits of the plan that he hadn't quite been able to bring to mind came back to him. By the look on Taylor's face she was thinking the same thing and the two of them shared and grin. Then they stood and waited until Alec's voice chimed from some hidden speaker.
"Traps are down, get to the ninetieth floor."
They both set off at a run. It took a dozen strides to become a race, both of them sprinting to find the stairs and when they did, rushing up them together. They didn't meet one mercenary along the way who wasn't twitching on the floor.
The stairs up to the next floor were different. For one thing there was a door at the bottom of them that would have probably even slowed them down if Brian had still been in his boosted body. Since it was wide open there was no slowing down, and they tumbled up the steps, through another vault door and into the sunlight.
The ninetieth floor had a roof over their heads, but it ended just a few feet away and while the corridor continued to either side of them there was no wall between it and the rooftop garden. Stepping out onto the grass, Brian looked around and saw wealth to make even Madison Clement's room look humble.
In three directions the building continued upwards for another five floors, though only a segment over to the left climbed all the way to that height and there were any number of balconies in sight. It was hard to tell from this angle but Brian thought he saw a helicopter sitting on one of the rooftops.
In the other direction there was only a garden, encircled on three sides by the building, with the last having only a low balcony to obstruct the view out over the Bay. All of the buildings in the city that were as high or taller were behind it, and Brian was willing to bet that none of them had a view into this garden. Especially after he took a look around and realised the pattern to it.
Off to one side was an Asian area. A weird blend of styles from several countries, mostly Japanese. Then there was a small chunk that had been left wild of all things. Choked with weeds and completely untended, except to keep it in what Brian realised was a very particular shape. The rest was bare grass, but he'd done some landscaped work one summer years ago, and Brian recognised newly laid turf.
With that in mind it was obvious. The garden was a map of the gang territories throughout the Bay.
Brian wandered through it until he found a table and chairs set up for someone to sit and take in the view while they drank a cup of coffee. One that had long since gone cold.
Then he greeted Coil. "Your garden is ridiculous."
The supervillain would probably have said something nasty in reply, but Aisha had tore away his mask and jammed a sock in his mouth. He was sitting on one of the chairs and she was standing behind him with her very large knife to his throat. To the side, Alec loomed in his boosted form. He'd definitely ruined the flowerbeds he was standing in.
Since it felt counterproductive to have a one-sided conversation, Brian waited for Taylor and pulled a seat out for her, then he reached across and yanked the sock out of Coil's mouth.
"Will Miss Lindt not be joining us?"
There was a long pause, then Brian snorted and sat down as well. Aisha put a small leather bag down on the table, sliding it over to him, and Brian reached inside. From it he pulled a phone which he immediately used to check the time.
Only then did he turn back to Coil and say, "Isn't this the part where you ask us how we did it?"
"You distracted me while your sister and Mister Vasil climbed my building and dragged me from my office. I'm more interested in where Miss Lindt is."
Again he checked the time, waiting and waiting to reply. Coils' patient mask did not crack, but then, that wasn't what he was waiting for.
Eventually Brian figured it was close enough and spoke. "No, Rachel's job was to break into the lower floors and make sure you didn't slip past us. Since I'm guessing my teammates saw your security feeds," Aisha nodded slightly and Alec's enormous head bobbed with his lolling tongue flapping at the end, "and they haven't signalled me otherwise, she's fine."
The slightest bit of tension that had been in Coil's shoulders fell away. Leaving a man who was far too relaxed for the knife at his throat.
"Well then, this has been enlightening but it is past time for me to be elsewhere and you to all die painfully." Coil did not move despite his words, though Aisha gripped his shoulder and pressed the knife closer.
"Oh, I don't think so." Coil answered him with a sneer, but it faltered a little when Brian's smile remained. "You see," Brian said as he raised his phone and showed their ex-boss the time displayed on it, "we timed this one out pretty damn well."
Then he raised his other hand and extended all five fingers. Checking the display one last time he waited for the right second and tucked his thumb into his palm.
"What kind of bluff is this." Coil spat...but his eyes were fixed on Brian's hand as another finger went down. Then another. Another.
When the last finger fell Coil flinched. Then relaxed as Brian frowned as his phone. "As I said, just a desperate blu-"
The villain cut himself off with a gasp of terror. He tried to rock back in his seat, but Aisha's knife was too close for him to move.
"How!?" Coil cried, fear obliterating his previous calm.
Brian let him stew for a moment, savouring the moment and flicking his eyes up to the security cameras along the edges of the garden that he really hoped were recording all this. Lisa deserved to see his downfall.
"We knew your power from the start. That you like to have one world running where you're in a completely different place, safe and well. You're right to think it's a solid protection, but only if we came at you alone."
Comprehension failed to dawn, so Brian continued. "You really shouldn't have expected to keep your real face hidden for long with Lisa coming for you. Not after she saw your mask. Once we had two of her a sketch was easy. Then it was just matter of dividing the labours."
Now there was realisation on his face. Brian leant back in his chair and Taylor took over with a fierce smile. "You shouldn't have pissed off the Travellers. That trick they do with the clones spreading out and searching for something? Give them a sketch and a few areas to focus on and they can find just about anyone. Then the clone teleports in its friends and..."
"Ballistic." Coil muttered.
"I'm sure you can figure the rest out for yourself. Now if you don't mind we," she looked at him and Brian shared her smile, "have a job for you this time."
Which was the point when Alec's curling horns sparked and split and Coil had a violent fit in his chair.
The first and only warning that they gave came when Brian spread his power across the water.
Darkness poured out from him and quickly covered the bay for a hundred yards in every direction. Then he stepped out onto it, tested his footing, and began to run. Ahead of him the darkness spread, behind him dozens of hulking monsters joined the charge. All of them headed straight for the Protectorate HQ.
Alarms started before they were halfway there. Blaring in time with flashing red lights along the edge of the converted oil rig. Brian had wondered if they'd launch some missiles, but the base was merely hidden beneath a shimmering orb of light. It dipped beneath the water and every villain in the Bay knew that it went right the way underneath.
'Good thing we're not planning to sneak in.'
No, the time for sneaking had passed. Brian roared his challenge as he ran and behind him a horde of monsters did the same.
The HQ was in front of them in less than a minute, distance eaten by long legs and inhuman muscles. Not that any of them could get through the dome of energy.
Brian slowed to a walk and tapped on it, feeling the smooth -almost glassy- texture. Then he turned to his team, his whole team but one, and he howled.
They howled with him, even Aisha, looking like a smaller version of himself...albeit with different coloured plates, smaller ones, and much fewer of them. Plus she didn't have a plate across her lower jaw and the one protecting her face had cute little tusks and horns...so not really all that much like him.
The howl was still echoing across the water when he called up more of his darkness, this time forming a ramp. Up to where the forcefield's curve began to slope inwards and up. The horde surged up it ahead of them, but the Undersiders were close behind. Behind him he could feel solidity leaking out of his darkness, but it didn't matter. What mattered was ahead.
Soon they were arrayed across the top of the field, staring down at the roof of the heroes home base. Their safe haven.
Brian thought of his own safe haven and drew back his fist. It hit the shield with a noise like an electric gong, and below him Brian saw one of the heroes make a jeering gesture.
Then the rest of the horde followed his lead.
Alec and Aisha were stomping instead of punching. Taylor was over by her dad and a few of his most trusted, all of them swinging massive pieces of rebar instead of using their fists. Rachel was focused on getting her dogs to slam their bulk down again and again.
Beneath them the field held firm. Until it didn't.
A slight sag was their only warning before the ground fell away beneath them. Which was Brian's cue to use a trick he'd only thought of after completing the mad climb up Coil's base.
Darkness exploded out from him to cushion their fall. Not fully solid, but with enough resistance to slow them down so that they hit the HQ's roof without serious injuries.
None to them at least. Brian didn't see any injured heroes either, but he saw a hell of a lot of worried ones. Some he recognised, almost as many that he didn't. One look and he could see that they didn't have long before someone threw a punch, not that he was opposed to resolving things that way.
However it seemed risky with Armsmaster holding Lisa right in the middle of them all.
It was what he'd hoped for. The hero had figured what they came for and brought her out instead of giving them a reason to come inside. A smart move on his part, and a welcome one for Brian.
The halberd blade being held to her throat was much less welcome. Taylor began to growl when she saw it, and soon the sound spread throughout the horde. Brian snapped at them and most of them fell silent, Danny stepping in to bark at the rest until they shut up.
Then Brian took a long step forward, crossing a third of the distance to Lisa and Armsmaster with just that, and unslung the bundle of fabric over his shoulder. He lowered it semi-gently to the metal floor, and rolled it over to the hero.
The blade didn't move an inch as he poked at with his foot. Then flipped away the edge of the cloth to reveal Coil's slightly swollen face.
Gasps rippled out through the heroes, muted by the costume of a known villain that Coil was wearing. Then Armsmaster finished flipping the covers away and revealed the sign they'd stapled to his chest.
"Let our teammate go and you get this guy." He read out loud. The set of his jaw said a pretty clear no to that offer, so Brian gestured sharply to his sister and she put her much smaller hands to good use in pulling a phone out of her fur and tapping the screen to start a recorded voice playing. "Or we take her anyway and leave him with you."
Energy crackled through the air, literally, as every one of the heroes reacted by readying their powers and weapons. Armsmaster wasn't going to execute a hostage, so he had no way to make them back down. No way but a fight. One he was certain to lose.
blip
"Is this really necessary?" said a gentle voice from above them. One that reminded Brian of a hell of a lot of press conferences he'd seen over the years, and that tempting fate was never a good idea.
Looking up he couldn't even find it in himself to growl. Not with Legend and four of his team floating above their heads.
The fight had shifted just like that, but Brian had no intention of backing down. No matter what threats Legend made, no matter what he said, they were going to get Lisa back and damn the consequences.
"Armsmaster. Would you please let that young woman go to her friends?"
Alec yipped in confusion, Brian echoing his sentiment if not the very non-threatening noise.
However Armsmaster didn't have their hesitation. He pulled away his weapon and gave Lisa a slight shove. The blonde was wearing a standard villain jumpsuit, with an equally generic mask. Though the latter was a formality with Coil having leaked their names and faces.
She ran straight to Brian, and asked him one simple question, "Did you get it?"
He nodded and directed her to Aisha while Legend spoke again, "I think it would be best if you all surrendered peacefully. Once you've done so we can talk this all out, it's clear that you have things you wish to say to us and I'm sure you understand that we cannot just let you walk free. Why not skip the fighting and spare us all some pain."
The way he said it actually sounded like he wasn't the world's strongest blaster threatening to beat them like a whole pile of drums if they didn't do as they were told. Brian had to admire that. As well as feeling sorry for him as Lisa stepped forward again, with ears and a tail and a very happy smirk.
It was probably just his imagination, but Brian almost thought he saw Legend flinch when he saw it. Just a little.
"I've got another suggestion." Lisa said, fearless despite the sheer number of heroes looking at her and definitely thinking that she was the first one to target if it came to a fight. Before all the two-storey-tall werewolves.
"What would that be Tattletale? And I warn you, if you attempt to use a master power on me it will be taken as an attack."
She shook her head. "Nope, nothing like that. Just let me ask you something. Those super eyes of yours? Can you tell when someone's lying?"
"Usually, but I'm sure you know that such methods can be fooled."
"Still useful." She held up a slender black thumb drive, and Brian felt a wolf grin stretch his muzzle. "Like if you wanted to know if I was bluffing when I said this."
She tossed him the drive as she continued, "You're going to take a look at what's on there. Obviously there are other copies if anything happens to us here."
"And what will I find on it?" Legend sounded curious but not worried, yet.
"I won't embarrass you by saying. When you're done reading you're gonna give us a call, and you're gonna say yes."
"To what?"
"To leaving us be. So long as we're not committing a crime, you don't come after us. You let us roam free again and you don't single us out as targets so long as we stick to petty villainy and selling ours boosts to reputable people."
Now Legend looked worried, staring down at the thumb drive like it was a letter from the IRS. He started to reply when Lisa jerked and blurted out, "Oh! And you leave me to make a few financial transactions in the next few hours. So long as I don't try to hurt any innocents in the process."
The heroes looked back and forth like they were watching a tennis match. All but a few. The smart ones had eyes only for Legend, and when his shoulders drooped slightly they all reacted. Anger, frustration, acceptance, it was a tapestry of satisfaction for Brian. Probably even more of one for Taylor, judging by the rapt attention she was paying them all.
"You don't appear to be bluffing. This must be something very bad."
"Or very good." Lisa said in parting, as she jogged over to Rachel and gave the other girl's leg a quick hug.
Armsmaster stepped forward and a lot of the heroes did the same, but Legend held out his hand to stop them.
With that, the wolves began to leave. This time Brian didn't bother with his darkness. They could all swim to shore easily enough.
"Tattletale. All of you. If you're bluffing to get away from here, this won't end well."
Rachel helped Lisa onto one of her dogs and Brian lead his team into the water. None of them bothered to respond to Legend's final words.
It had been a hard decision, what they'd spoken of in that warehouse corner while they planned the whole thing out. Brian was still pleased with the side he'd come down on, even if the girl he spoke in favour of had sided with Lisa instead.
"The truth shall set you free." He muttered sardonically, taking another sip of the very expensive glass of whiskey he was holding. He'd mostly poured it for the fun of it, but it turned out that he liked the taste better than beer. Who knew?
Of course the truth probably wouldn't have set Taylor free. While withholding it seemed like it would keep all of them out of jail. Even so he wasn't sure if letting Taylor and Lisa go that route had been the right decision.
'Then again,' Brian thought as he leant against the railing stared up at a truly massive full moon, 'I'm having this internal debate on top of our new skyscraper, so they may have made the right choice.'
Lisa had been in a hell of a rush to get back. Enough of one that she conned her way past the PRT cordon around the building instead of waiting for them to be called off like the rest of them had. A very awkward wait of several hours; they'd spent it in an overpriced coffee shop with a dozen PRT agents just happening to be sitting nearby.
Clearly the specifics of their new deal were still up in the air, and Brian wasn't sure how long blackmailing the government could possibly work. However when they'd gotten inside and Lisa had told them about just how much of Coil's financial information she'd gotten her hands on while working for him, and just how much of his stuff she'd transferred across to them...
It was a lot to take in. So Brian didn't try. It could wait for the morning.
For now he had a clear sky and a hell of a view. Even with the city lights, he could see an awful lot of stars. Plus the moon.
"Heh." He wagged his tail a little. "I guess that makes us proper werewolves."
"I think we'd need more biting for that."
Her voice was soft. Gentle. A far cry from the fierce warrior he'd fought his way up this building with. Which reminded him that it would be them paying for all that damage, a thought that still made him smile somehow.
Brian turned slowly to face Taylor and opened his mouth. Then he forgot how to speak.
She was wearing a dress. Not the first time he'd seen that, true, but it was definitely the first time he'd seen this particular dress. Her feet were bare beneath it, but the way it followed her figure drew his eyes up despite himself. Not that Taylor had much of a figure, even with the changes her power had made to them all. It wasn't even very revealing.
'Eyes up. Eyes up!'
Gulping heavily, Brian dragged his eyes up to her face and got stuck at her neck. He'd never noticed how delicate it was before. With the velvet choker she was wearing it was suddenly hard not to. The pendant was odd though, it looked almost like a broken piece of metal. Something slightly bluish.
His eyes made it to her face all at once, the question in them making her blush.
She didn't respond to it at first. Taking the time to walk up beside him and copy his posture. Both of them leaning on the railing and looking at the other.
With a small smile, she said, "It's funny, but for all that I wanted to get that thing off, I kinda got to like the feel of it. Velvet seemed like a better choice than weird tinker alloys though."
It was a small thing to share, but something about it stirred a memory in Brian. His hand drifted to the back of his neck and tugged on one of his cornrows.
"I used to wear my hair long. My dad made me get it buzzed close, like a skinhead. Or a marine." She stepped closer to him, concern on her face. He was grateful. "I actually liked it better short, but keeping it in the same style was like letting him win."
Taylor murmured. "I like your hair." He wasn't sure if she'd even meant for him to hear -there were some things that took more than a few weeks to get used to- but given how much care she put into her own hair Brian was a little bit flattered.
He nodded to her new jewellery. "I like that. It looks good on you. The pendant's from the collar right?"
At the look in her eyes, a little happy, a little angry, a little of a lot of things...Brian decided it was his turn to take a step closer. She nudged her shoulder against his arm, and gave him a warm look. "Yeah, yeah it is. That thing...it was a way to try and control me. Wearing it like this feels like turning that back on them. It's dumb I-"
"No. No you're right." He leaned close as if to whisper a secret, even though they were alone in the garden. "I bet it would piss off Armsmaster to see it."
She grinned and he grinned with her, turning to look out over the city. It was a hell of a view, he had to admit that much.
Peaceful too. So peaceful that he barely noticed himself musing aloud, "It's been two months since we met. Kinda feel like getting you something to mark the occasion."
She made a breathy little sound, one that drew a few more words out of him, "Maybe another choker? They must make other styles and-" He cut himself off as his relaxed brain remembered that he was talking to someone else, not to the air.
"Uh, what were you doing out here anyway?" She changed the subject, mercifully.
"Stargazing I guess."
For a while there was silence, a very loud kind of it that made him long to look back at her and terrified to at the same time.
"If I wanted to stargaze...with you...would you want to?"
There was another question there. One of the ones he could never make himself say, lurking beneath what she'd said and making him wonder if maybe she was finding it hard to say those questions too.
Maybe it was okay not to say it. If they both knew what the silence meant.
So Brian didn't look at her, or say a word. Instead he took one last little step closer to her and took her hand in his own. Then he turned to face the cold night air, with a warm body pressed to his side. A length of silken fur brushing beneath his own tail and curling around his side.
The night crept on, as nights tend to do. In silence, and stillness, they watched the moon creep across the Bay.
Together.