Slippery Slope

Part Twenty-One: Point of No Return

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

[A/N 2: Due to the recent political unrest in the United States, I feel it necessary to explain that this fic is not intended to glorify Nazism or white supremacy in any way. It is, and always has been, an exploration of how ordinary people can fall victim to the ideology and be sucked into it.]

Thursday Evening
February 17, 2011
Lung

Kenta leaned back in the chair, wondering if it would rob him of his dignity to get a more comfortable one. He'd seen an advertisement for a La-Z-Boy that looked downright luxurious, but if word got out about it, there would almost certainly be jokes. He would hold off for now, he decided.

Jin, one of his more reliable men, entered the office with an envelope in his hand. "Sir," he said. "This … came for you."

"A letter?" Kenta sat up again, with a frown. "Who is it from?" The number of people who would resort to an actual letter in the mail in order to contact him was vanishingly small. Within the ABB, people came and spoke to him directly, while everyone else relied on electronic communications. It struck him that if all electronics within Brockton Bay were wiped out, gang activity would grind to a halt.

Jin stopped on the other side of the desk. "It doesn't say," he replied. "The men it was handed to say that a bunch of white men gave it to them. They would have gotten it to you sooner, but they were guarding a safe-house, and they wanted to make sure it wasn't a ploy to lure them away."

Kenta nodded slowly. While he would've preferred to get the letter sooner, the explanation made sense. After all, his operations were more important than the whim of some guy with a letter. "Have you read it?"

"No, sir." Jin shook his head. "It's still sealed. Nobody's opened it yet." He placed it on the desk and slid it across.

"Good." For a moment, Kenta wondered if this were some kind of elaborate assassination plot, perhaps with a powdered disease vector in the letter. He'd heard of things like this before, but mainly as the storyline of a spy movie. In any case, he was Lung. If there was any such powder, he would burn it to ash. He took up the envelope and tore off the end, then reached inside for the letter itself. The paper was folded once, and looked cheap, as if it had been torn from a notepad.

Lung, he read. The Empire will be making a move on the Merchants on Friday night.

He paused and read that line through again. This was interesting on several levels. Someone had more information about the Empire than they really should, and they were sharing it with him, almost certainly so he would do something about it. He read on.

Taylor Hebert will be with them, as their newest cape. She can control machinery. This will be a test of her capabilities, so they will be standing back and letting her do her thing.

Which meant that she'd be alone, exposed. Kenta smiled, letting his lips draw back from his teeth. There was no signature, but he didn't expect one. It had been two weeks since the humiliating defeat and loss of his arm. Oni Lee was still injured from the beating the Hebert girl had handed him within the car. He himself had only finished growing back his arm a few days ago. Every single day of those two weeks, he had vowed and declared bloody vengeance on the teenage girl who had so thoroughly bested him.

And now she was being handed to him on a platter. He didn't know for a fact who had sent the letter, but he could hazard a guess. It was almost certainly not Kaiser, unless the whole letter was a trick to draw him out. No, he decided. They know that an open challenge would do the same thing. It's not the Empire. Which only left Coil. What does that snake want with the girl? Nothing good, he imagined, but that wasn't his problem. His problem was the hit that his image had taken from the loss he had taken at Taylor Hebert's hands. She'd gone into that fight without powers, without any sort of leverage at all. But she'd walked away after having faced both him and Oni Lee, while Lung had to crawl away with his upper chest and shoulder blasted to ruin.

He still remembered the way the car had reversed up to him. He'd been angry, ripping into the other vehicles and on the verge of turning the tide. The explosion had taken him by surprise, thrown him across the street and torn his arm off almost as an afterthought. Had they gone after him then, they could have ended him, and that thought was intolerable.

Taylor Hebert had to die.

Friday, 18 February
Medhall Building

"An exoskeleton light enough to go under your clothes, huh?" Victor rubbed his chin, stubble rasping under his fingertips. "That'll be an interesting balance. Light enough to be hidden, strong enough to be worth it." He looked speculatively at me, then at his own forearm. "You wouldn't be able to punch any harder because it'll be your knuckles on the line. You don't want to be breaking your hand."

"Not necessarily," I said, holding up my own forearm. "Say there's an extending piece back here under my sleeve. I extend it, and a metal plate flips forward over my knuckles. If I've already got one on my elbow, and a bar down the outside of my forearm, I'll be able to use it in close combat. With the exoskeleton giving me extra power, I'll be the equivalent of a Brute. Definitely enough to break free and run like hell if anyone tries to grab me."

If anyone had suggested such a scenario to me before February, I would've laughed in their faces. Even in Winslow, I'd been there as a punching bag, an object of ridicule. Not someone to be grabbed off the street. But now I had powers, which made me valuable to a great many people. This also gave me a certain amount of flexibility in how I responded. The last people who had tried were the ABB gangsters who had caused Dad's injuries, and Lung himself.

Of course, the gangsters were now dead, and Lung had learned why he shouldn't try to fuck with me. A lesson I'd be willing to repeat, with added extras, once Victor designed sufficiently tough armour for the purpose. I'd had dealings with that sort of person before; rightly or wrongly, they never gave up. The only way to stop them from trying to get at me was to put them down once and for all. It was the only way Dad would be safe.

"Well, it's something I can certainly work on," he said. "But in the meantime, I figure I've made all the adjustments on your armour that I can." He gestured toward the imposing metal figure supported on the rack in the middle of the workshop. "Care to put it on and see how it runs?"

I submerged myself in my power and absorbed the details of the armour before me. "You've increased the flexibility of the joints."

Assume positive control: armour.

He nodded as I stepped up to the armour and turned around. "Yes. It was a tradeoff between that and more power, but you're already able to bench-press a Mack truck, so I figured you could probably do with more agility."

Behind me, the front plates of the armour slid apart. I stepped back into it, then closed the armour up once more. The periscope eyepieces dropped into place and I could see once more, from a viewpoint two feet higher. Flexible metal straps hung limp inside the armour; at a thought, I brought them around myself and clicked them into place. Finally, I took note of an electronic panel in front of me, which included a screen the size of a paperback book. "What does the panel do?"

Victor's voice came through speakers attached to the periscope eyepieces. "I've got cameras set up to be transported via your auxiliary units. They'll feed to the screen. I've adapted as many of the controls for your power as I can, but some things you'll have to use your hands for."

"Understood. That could be useful." The exterior microphones picked up the sound of my voice; or rather, what Victor's voice modulator had done to my voice. It now had a lot more bass, and was unrecognisable as my own. However, it still sounded natural and not electronic. Any foes we faced would almost certainly assume that it was a grown man and not a teenage girl within the armour.

I turned my attention to the 'shoulder-pads'. As the armour was the size of a (very) large man and I wasn't, there was quite a bit of spare volume that Victor had made use of. Part of it was taken up with the auxiliary units. As far as I could tell via my power, the only alteration he'd made was to make the rotors foldable, so that more could fit in the same space. In a separate compartment, he had stacked blocks of aluminium complete with embedded tungsten darts. With one of these, I could turn any of the auxiliary units into a tiny gunship able to shred human targets at will.

The armour had more weaponry to play with, of course. Victor had not been idle. I was familiar with nearly all of it, and what little I hadn't seen before was easy enough to figure out with my power. The chains were especially impressive, or would have been if I were capable of being impressed. However, I had not come down to Victor's workshop to merely admire the armour. Today was the day I was going to take it out for the first time.

I stepped down from the rack, the armour moving smoothly and easily. "I have a suggestion."

Victor picked up something from a workbench; at first glance, it looked like a folded metal umbrella. "I'm listening."

"With remote visual capability, I could pilot this armour from a distance in perfect safety. Is that worth working on?" I turned my power on to the item he was holding. It only took a few seconds to figure out what it was and how it was supposed to work. "Is that for this armour?"

"What?" He looked down at the thing he was holding. "Oh … right, yes. It should snap into the socket on your back. Um, remote sets of armour? Like Dragon uses? That could work, but how many screens can you pay close attention to at once? With your eyes, I mean."

His point was valid. While my power let me control virtually all machines in my range simultaneously, I only had one pair of eyes. Flying several drones at once was one thing; so long as there was nothing in their way, I could manoeuvre them all over the map. But if I wasn't in the armour, it could easily trip over or stumble into allies. One would be awkward, while the other could be catastrophic. Worse, if the armour tripped over while I was remotely controlling it, I wasn't sure if I'd have the same ease of getting up.

Taking the item from him, I reached over behind the suit's back—my arms weren't inside the armour's arms, of course—and clicked it into place. "The extra flexibility is very useful."

"Thank you," he said. I read his slight smile and bow as an expression of courtesy. "Shall we go? After all, the Merchants aren't going to beat themselves up."

I stepped into the elevator. "I understand that's a joke, but they may very well be doing exactly that. After all, these are the Merchants."

Stepping in as well, he pressed the button for the upper floor. "And the sad thing is, you're totally serious … and possibly correct." With a smile on his face that I could not decipher, he looked up at me. "Just do me a favour. Be careful and don't get hurt. Quite apart from you being our brand new cape, Cassie's getting pretty attached to you."

I suspected there was more to his statement than he was saying. He had not mentioned Peter, with whom I held a much more significant relationship than Cassie, which meant he was understating the situation deliberately. However, while I was wearing the armour, I could not relax out of my power in order to analyse his words properly. "Thank you," I said. "I do not intend to get hurt."

"Well, good." I heard a faint thump against my side. "You've got at least an inch of steel plate around you in all directions. It's actually difficult for you to get hurt. Don't make it easy for them."

I looked down at him; he was rubbing his elbow.

Supposition: Victor elbowed me in the side.

Analysis: An expression of camaraderie.

"I will not make it easy for anyone to hurt me," I assured him. "You have built safeguards into this armour to counteract anything that the Merchants could do to harm it. And their heaviest hitter is a Tinker specialising in heavy vehicles." Which meant that, once one of Squealer's creations came within my ambit, I would not be the one in danger from it.

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. I allowed Victor to precede me, so that I knew where he was. Accidentally stepping on his foot at this juncture would be both embarrassing—once I dropped my powers—and a detriment to the entire team.

Kaiser was awaiting us along with the Biermann sisters—I had gotten to know them a little, but not too well—and the other members of the Empire who were coming along. Everyone but Kaiser and Othala leaned backward slightly as I stepped forward. This was not unexpected, as I towered over everyone present by a good two feet. While Menja and Fenja would easily overtop me in their fully-grown forms, this was not the case at the moment.

Crusader was the first to speak; or rather, whistle. I judged the sound to be one of admiration. "Well, damn," he said, in tones that I decided were respectful. "You guys said it was impressive. But you left out scary as fuck. Now I feel just a little inadequate."

"You have capabilities that I do not," I assured him. "We are all members of the same team. I will support you, and I know that you will support me." This was the simple truth. Justin and I had spent an afternoon tearing down his car and repairing all the minor problems I had spotted in it. He had decided to call me 'T-bird' after that, so I retaliated with 'Jaybird'. I liked him, in a 'smartass older brother' way. His car was also very nice, if a little garish.

When I spoke, their eyes widened slightly. Of course. The voice modulator. It appeared to be a success, gauging from their reactions.

"Well stated," Kaiser said. His face was uncovered so that I could see his smile. It was the one that I judged to mean I am pleased with what is going on. "So, Remote. Are you ready to do this?"

Even with my emotions suppressed, I understood his meaning. This was a rhetorical question, intended to elicit a specific answer. In response, I had the armour make a fist, which I pumped once in the air. "I'm ready. Let's do this thing."

Crusader whooped. "Oh, man. Those assholes are not gonna know what hit 'em." He moved forward, holding his hand up. "High-five, T-bird!" Carefully, I slapped his upraised palm.

"High-five, Jaybird," I replied, recalling the nickname which I had devised for him. Our armoured hands met with a clang of metal and he stepped back again.

Expression: grin.

Analysis: self-satisfaction.

I did not have time to dwell on it. Rune came up to me with her hood pushed back. She stared up at my armour. "Taylor? Is that really you in there?"

Moving easily—Victor had really done a good job with my armour joints—I dropped to one knee next to her and switched off the voice modulator. "It's me, Rune," I said in my ordinary voice.

"Oh, right. Cool." She tried to put her arms around me, but I knew that they would barely make it halfway. I kept my arms where they were; with insufficient sensory feedback, I could accidentally crush her in a hug. "Good luck."

Luck was merely a matter of rearranging the odds so that they suited a particular endeavour, but I did not say that to Rune. "Good luck," I repeated. When she released me, I carefully stood up again and looked at Kaiser. "I'm ready. Let's go."

He nodded to me, once. "Let's go take out the trash."

The truck needed heavier suspension. As I sat in the back, I could both feel and 'see' it wallowing under the weight of my armour while one of Kaiser's minions drove it down the road. It could have been claustrophobic but it really wasn't. Inside the armour, it wasn't very cramped; in addition, I had an awareness of what was around me that mere human senses could not encompass.

"Victor, I have an idea." I spoke quietly, knowing that Victor would be able to hear me perfectly clearly, with the radio link established.

"I'm listening," he replied immediately. "What's on your mind?"

"If each of my allies wore an item which was mechanical in nature on each arm and leg, and something on or near the head, I would be able to keep track of them in a combat situation." I paused. "Crusader and Kaiser are, of course, already covered."

For some reason, he chuckled. "Heh, covered, yeah. Good point. That should be easy to do. And you'd be able to keep track of everyone?"

"As easily as you are able to keep track of your own hands and feet," I said simply. "I was concerned about crushing Rune, earlier. If I am near an ally in combat, such a system should keep them safe from accidental injury."

"I'm totally on board with not being accidentally stepped on in combat," Victor replied. "It's a little late for it right now, but you're not going to have any friendlies nearby anyway. I will definitely start work on it as soon as we get back. Your own personal IFF system. I like it."

"Thank you." I was careful to say the words. While I felt no emotional attachment toward Victor when my powers were engaged, I was fully aware of his importance to me as an ally. Thus, I had no issue with expending a few polite words to maintain team cohesion.

"No problem. It's a workable idea." He paused. "Heads up. We're nearly there. Any last-minute doubts?"

"I have no doubts." It was true. While my powers were active, it was impossible to feel doubt, or any other emotion. Everything was laid starkly out to me in black and white. I knew my own capabilities, and I knew the capabilities of the armour that Victor had made for me. The exercise required me to engage with the Merchants without direct assistance, this did not mean that I would be going in alone or without backup. This was a test and a training run, as much for the armour as for myself; in order for it to serve its purpose, my actions had to be observed and judged.

With Peter's assistance, I had studied the known capabilities of the Merchants. I was confident that between my powers and my armour, I faced no untoward danger from any of their capes. Against the rank and file, I faced even less in the way of peril; not that I expected any but the most drug-addled to attempt to physically assault my armoured form.

"Good. It's go time." With his words, the rear doors of the truck opened. I took control of the clamps holding my armour in place and popped them open, then carefully climbed out on to broken concrete. The driver shut the doors, gave me a nod that was probably somewhere between respectful and terrified, then climbed back into the truck. I watched as he started it moving, steering between the potholes that seemed to make up the majority of the street.

I looked around. Deserted buildings lined the street, some with gaping windows, others with boards over them. I saw none with intact glass. Graffiti, some of it so overlayered that it was hard to read, coated every available surface. However, I did not see any of my Empire allies. "Where are you?"

"Your seven o'clock high." Thus clued in, I turned to my left and looked up, to see the ten foot wide metal plate that Victor had prepared for the occasion. It sported a safety rail around the edge, which was a good idea for something that was currently floating about fifty feet in the air. Rune stood at the front, her hands gripping the rail. She'd told me that once she had something 'marked' with her power, she didn't need to touch it to maintain her control, but it was a good habit to have. Standing beside her, his armour impressive in the scattered light from streetlamps, Kaiser looked impassively down at me. Also on the plate were Victor, Othala, Crusader and Fenja—I thought. I could never tell which of the Biermann sisters was which. This was the one with the spear.

"I see you," I said, and waved to make it more obvious. Turning my attention from the hovering plate, I looked up and down the street. No clue immediately presented itself for which way to go. "Should I go left or right?"

"Try left," Victor suggested. "I'm pretty sure they've got a flophouse or three in that direction. Make enough noise and their capes will come out to play. Or not, and we try again tomorrow night."

"Maybe I should have had you install a spraypaint dispenser in the armour," I said. "I understand that the Merchants take their tagging very seriously." I heard a snort over the radio. Analysis: amusement. Victor believes that to be a joke.

"We might have to do that," he agreed, then chuckled. "Tonight, you're just going to have to make do with what you have."

"I believe I can do that." I ran the armour and all of its accessories through a brief self-test, more to assure myself that all joints and pivot points were in full working order. They were. I set off down the street, the sound of my heavy tread echoing off of nearby buildings. It was time for me to prove my worth to the Empire.

Sophia

The vibration of Sophia's phone alerted her to an incoming text. There was no noise, however, so Clockblocker remained in his natural state of cluelessness. Pushing back her chair from the console, Sophia spun it in a circle. "I am so fucking bored," she pretended to groan. "There's nothing happening anywhere. Even the Empire's not out causing problems."

"Well, that's actually a good thing," Clockblocker pointed out. "I'm actually a fan of nobody being beaten up or killed because of the colour of their skin, you know?" He shrugged. "I mean, there's a rumour getting around PHO that something's gonna go down in Merchant territory tonight but nobody knows what, so it's probably nothing."

"Well, good luck finding out what it is," Sophia said as she stood up. "I'm gonna go hit the gym for an hour or two." She stretched elaborately, knowing without looking that Clockblocker was watching her. Part of her wanted to smack him for ogling her body, but the time for that would be later. Right now, she needed to not have him object too strenuously to her leaving him alone on console.

"You know we're supposed to be two-up except for when someone's in the bathroom, right?" His objection sounded weak, and she rolled her eyes behind her mask.

"Yeah, like you've never covered for Kid Win even once when he wandered off to do some Tinkering while you two were on console duty together." Her voice was sharply sarcastic. "And he's never covered for you when you decided to do some console gaming because you were bored." If he'd been wearing the full helmet, she would never have seen the shift in his gaze, but the white domino mask let her see his downcast expression perfectly. "Yeah, I thought so." She tilted her head toward her room. "Gonna go get changed. Unless you've got any other problems with me hitting the gym?"

"No," he mumbled.

"Damn right," she said, and headed off to her room. As soon as she had the door closed behind her, she yanked her phone out of its belt-pouch and turned it on.

T minus thirty minutes, the text said. Same place. C.

OK, she sent in reply, then shut her phone down again. She'd delete both texts from her phone once she got back, but she didn't have time to figure out how to do that right now. Sitting down on her bed she pulled the key out of her bra and removed the cuff so she could take her boots off more easily. Her costume followed, all but the body-stocking she wore under the armour. And the underwear beneath that, of course. The costume went into a gym bag she kept under her bed. On top of the costume went a towel, with one end artistically hanging out of the zipper. Then the mask went back on, because not even the Wards got to see her uncovered face. Especially not the Wards. Lastly, she pulled on sneakers.

"What's the bag for?" Clockblocker asked as she came out into the main living area, obviously having grown back some of his smartassery. "It's not like you're moving out any time soon."

"Unlike some people I know," she said bluntly, "I actually sweat when I go to the gym. And I'm going to have a shower after I finish exercising. And I don't like wearing sweaty clothes around once I've had a shower. So I've got fresh clothes to change into. In other words: fuck you."

"I was just …" He trailed off as she stomped past him toward the exit door. " … asking," he ended lamely as she slapped the button.

For a second, she considered telling him to think before he asked anything in future, but she was pretty sure Clockblocker considered thinking to be strenuous exercise. The door slid open and she exited, then headed straight down the corridor toward the lift. Checking her phone told her that she was five minutes into the thirty that Circus had specified. Gonna need to hustle.

Of course, this time she wasn't going to have to pull the elaborate escape-from-Alacatraz bullshit she'd put herself through the last time. The lift went to the floor with the gym on it and she marched down the corridor as if she owned the place, barely even bothering to step aside for a pair of PRT troopers who lumbered past.

As soon as she was in the gym, she glanced around and grinned. Everyone was either on shift or in bed, just as she'd planned. The lights weren't even on. Darting into the minuscule locker room, she rapidly began to change back into her costume. The ankle-monitor came off and she stashed it under one of the changing benches. She hid the bag itself, with the towel and sweats, in an empty locker. If anyone asked Clockblocker where she was, he'd say the gym, and if they checked the whereabouts of the electronic bracelet it would say the same thing. Only if they specifically came looking for her would they discover her absence. And to be honest, if she managed to fuck up Hebert's entire year, it would still be worth it.

Stepping out of the locker room, she glanced around. The gym was still deserted, so she headed for the windows. Breaking into a run, she dived at the armour-glass barrier, going to shadow just before she made impact. In her shadow state it barely impeded her at all; a moment later, she was gliding through the cool night air.

She touched down on a rooftop across the street and started running. It had taken her nineteen minutes to reach the rendezvous point the last time, and she was determined not to hold this operation up by even one minute. So she pushed herself, jumping farther and gliding longer between buildings to reach her goal faster. She could've gotten there faster by passing up her stash of broadhead arrows, but that wasn't something she was willing to do. Fortunately, the detour wasn't too far out of the way, and she didn't bother thinking too hard about how many to take; she just grabbed all she could carry.

Still, this took more time than she liked. As she closed in on the anonymous street corner and the rooftop above it, she couldn't be sure that she wasn't late. Angering or disappointing Circus and her mysterious boss was less concerning to her than than losing the chance to strike a blow against that weak, wimpy racist whore Hebert.

There was nobody there. She stopped and looked around, suddenly unsure. This is the right place, isn't it? It seemed to be familiar, but at night things could get confused. Fuck. I'm late.

And then her phone vibrated in its pouch. She grabbed it out, fumbling at it in her haste to check the message. Finally, she got it turned on and open to the right screen. The message simply read: Took your time.

At the same time as she scanned the words, an amused voice came from the air-conditioning unit above her. "Took your time."

Her head jerked up and she saw Circus lounging on the unit as if she had all day, a phone in her hand. "Bitch!" she whispered. "You did that on purpose!"

"No, not Bitch. Circus. Learn your supervillain identifications." Circus smirked. Today's costume was another red-and-black harlequin outfit, but this time she was going with a playing-card motif, with hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs here and there. Her domino mask had a heart to the left and a diamond to the right, while her face—covered in theatrical whiteface makeup—bore a spade down on one side of her jaw and a club on the other. She flipped lithely off of the air-conditioning unit and landed on her feet with barely a sound. Somewhere along the way, the phone vanished from her hand. "So if you're done fiddling with your phone, we can maybe get this mission started."

Clenching her teeth behind the mask, Sophia shut her phone down and shoved it back in the belt pouch. "Fuck you. Let's get this done."

"Oh, no, honey. I do enjoy hate-sex with heroes, but you're far too young for me. Come back in a few years and I'll think about it." With a mocking smile, Circus let her fingertips trail across Sophia's mask, then she took a run-up and leaped over to the next rooftop.

Did she just fucking make a pass at me, or did she reject me for making a pass at her? Sophia wasn't sure which it was, but either way she was sure she'd been insulted. That's it. When this is over, me and this bitch are going to have words. And by 'words', she meant she was gonna beat the living goddamn shit out of Circus. Seething with anger, she leaped off the rooftop and glided after the supervillain.

Taylor

"I have not seen anything yet," I reported. "I am going to send up an auxiliary unit with a camera."

"Sure thing," Victor replied. "I've been interested in seeing how those things work, anyway."

I assumed positive control over one of the several auxiliary units I had stored in the armour, then reached out with its graspers and locked on to a remote camera, also stored in the same location. The controls for the cameras were simple enough for me to operate. As I powered it up, I switched on the screen in front of me. Connectivity only took a few seconds to establish, and then I was looking through the screen at the darkened interior of the storage module. I opened the top and activated the auxiliary unit, sending it in a high-speed climb into the night air. I knew exactly where the unit was, of course, but the view on the screen gave me a chance of seeing anything non-mechanical approaching it. Briefly, I considered sending up a second unit with an attack payload, but I wanted to see how well I could handle one on its own first. Besides, I didn't want to kill any Merchants we encountered, whether they were capes or normals. The entire aim of this mission was to demoralise and humiliate them so that when we walked into what they called their territory and took it over, they wouldn't even consider fighting back.

The auxiliary unit buzzed up to where Rune was still piloting the metal platform five storeys up, and made a quick circuit of my fellow Empire capes. I found that I could maintain reasonable control of the unit even when it was flying sideways or backward. This was useful data; it meant I could get footage of something without needing to head directly toward it or hover in place. Crusader gave the camera a broad grin and a thumbs-up gesture, which I interpreted to mean that he was pleased with my progress. Victor did neither, but he studied the unit's progress intently as it flew by.

As I continued down the street, I sent the unit zipping ahead of me. There were alleyways where the armour would have issues travelling quickly or quietly, but for which the auxiliary units were perfectly suited. Of course, the light level in these places was far below acceptable, but the cameras were designed to flip over to low-light when necessary.

Up ahead, I saw the first proper Merchant tag of the area. A good three feet high, it actually boasted a certain amount of artistry, given that it symbolised a degenerate herd of drug-addicted subhumans. Sending the auxiliary unit scouting through the nearest alleyway, I extended the chain from my left arm then lashed it against the wall, scraping down to remove the paint. The first pass didn't do much good, but on the next try I activated the tungsten carbide cutting blades. These screeched against the brickwork, but tore the tag clean off the wall in a matter of seconds. I stepped back out of the cloud of brick dust and studied my handiwork as I retracted the chain. A quarter of an inch of brick had been gouged off of the outer surface, looking almost as if someone had dragged a giant grater down it.

"Huh. Nicely done," Victor said. "A little loud, but it's not like that armour's built—heads up! People coming out of the building!"

"On it," I said, turning toward the front entrance of the building. Sure enough, two men and a woman—as far as I could tell—were standing in the doorway, staring across at me. Neither wore recognisable gang colours, but they had the unmistakable air of long-term drug users. One of the men had a phone to his ear. I brought the auxiliary unit up out of the alley and moved it to scan the rear and sides of the building.

"Hey!" yelled one of the men, pointing at me. "Who the fuck're you? Fuck off, asshole!"

His absolute lack of any self-preservation instinct indicated to me that he was almost certainly under the influence of some mind-altering substance or other. This was underlined when he reached into his waistband and pulled out a pistol. Even taking into account that it was dark out, his aim was execrable, to the point that I was mildly concerned for the well-being of the other two. The pistol went off three times. Two shots pinged off the wall, nowhere near me, and I had no idea where the last one went.

Assume positive control: chain.

Extending my arm, I sent the chain whipping out toward the idiot with the gun. He yelled out in shock as the flexible links wrapped around the barrel of the weapon and wrenched it from his grip. Hoisting it several yards into the air, I activated the cutting blades. Sparks flew, amid the screeching of metal on metal. This time I was more successful than I had been in the lab, and the pistol dropped to the ground in several pieces. As the Merchants stared in stunned disbelief—or perhaps a drug-addled daze—I retracted the chain back into the armour. Then I started walking toward them.

Victor had coached me in how to do a menacing stride, and the armour made it easy. Cutting the gun into pieces had probably raised my intimidation factor considerably, so it was no surprise at all when the two guys lurched back inside the building and slammed the door behind them. The woman yelled profanities at them and beat on the door with her fists, then took one look at me and ran off down the street.

"Well, that was kind of impressive," Victor observed. "I have to say, I'm less impressed by the way they look out for each other." He paused. "Kaiser wants to see how you go with clearing the building out. It's your choice. I know we haven't done building clearing techniques yet."

"I cannot see a difficulty," I replied. I walked the armour up to the front door and pushed at it. It gave a little, then stopped. Drawing back my fist, I punched it in the same way that Peter had trained me. The door shattered into a great many pieces, and the sofa that had been pushed against it skidded away across the floor. "Entry achieved."

"Nicely done. For the record, Menja is jealous."

I did not know what to say to that. Menja could probably achieve greater strength than my armour while fully-grown, but I was stronger than her at this height. Of course, my strength was due to Victor's engineering interacting with my power, but I did not want to make her feel inadequate. It was as I had said to Rune: we all had our strengths and our parts to play. We were all Empire.

Ducking the head of the armour, I stepped through the doorway into the building. When I straightened up, I found I was facing five men, all holding firearms. Three had pistols, one a double-barreled shotgun and the last was pointing an assault rifle at me.

Lung

Kenta stood on the rooftop, looking out over the street. Oni Lee appeared beside him, the fearsome appearance of the Kabuki mask somewhat undermined by the fact that his arm was in a sling. Lee wanted a piece of Taylor Hebert just as badly as Lung did, but two weeks had not been nearly enough time to recover from the damage she'd done to him with that fucking car. As it was, he still couldn't use his left arm at all, and his right wrist was still painful to bend. The first few days after the fight, he'd barely been able to walk, given that he had a broken kneecap and severe abdominal bruising. He would probably have had fewer problems if he'd been in an actual car accident.

"That way." Lee pointed as he spoke. "Kaiser and some others on a large flying metal plate. The girl is in an armour suit, attacking a Merchant building."

"An … armour suit?" Kenta frowned. Was she a Tinker as well as a controller of cars? That made for a level of power that would be frightening to anyone else. But he was Lung. He feared nobody and nothing.

"It's very tall and very strong, and has some sort of tentacle coming out of the arm. I didn't get a good look." Lee shrugged, carefully. "It's no match for you at full strength, of course."

"Well, of course." That went without saying. Lung had gone up against an Endbringer. The number of capes that could equal him in sheer strength and ferocity could be counted on the fingers of one hand. "How high up are the other Empire capes? Can you bring them down?"

"I would have trouble fighting them," admitted Lee. "But fortunately, I do not need to fight to bring them down."

"Good," said Kenta, drawing back his lips from his teeth in a smile that owed nothing to pleasantry and everything to cruelty. "Lead me to them. The Empire loses its head tonight, and then I will have my revenge on Taylor Hebert."

As Oni Lee teleported to the next roof and Lung moved to follow, he began to grow. The superiority of his dragon form notwithstanding, he knew he was going to need all the strength he could muster for the fight ahead. Fortunately, his power was able to oblige.

Skidmark

"So what the sweaty camel nutsack are we facing this time?" Adam Mustain yelled over the noise of the racing engine. "Tell me it's not that flying glowstick!" Purity was as vulnerable to damage as anyone, but she could hand it out in city-block amounts.

"No idea!" Squealer yelled back at him, while she did incomprehensible adjustments to the control panel of her latest monstrosity. "They just said it's some guy in a big-ass suit of powered armour!" Despite the seriousness of the situation, she flashed him puppy-dog eyes. "Can I have it once we're done? I never get to look at anyone else's Tinkertech!"

"Once we've got the crotch-sniffing dingleberry out of the control seat, you can do what you want with it!" he assured her. "Fuckin' marry it, for all I give a shit!"

"You say the nicest things!" she shouted into sudden silence.

Adam realised that the tank had fallen silent and was rolling to a halt. "Hey, the fuck?" he blurted. "Did you forget to feed the hamster, or whatever it is you got running this thing?"

Sherrel shook her head, an expression of confusion crossing her face. "Cold fusion plant, and no. It should have fuel for the next year or so." She scanned the makeshift dials and gauges that made up most of the control panel. "No, it's running at full capacity. But nothing's getting through to the drivetrain."

"How the diseased anal pusbag is that happening?" he demanded. "Something break?"

"No!" she denied hotly. "I'm not L33t, for fuck's sake! It's just stopped, and until I get a chance to pull it apart I won't know why." She looked out through the minimal windshield. "Or you could ask that guy out there."

Adam stared out through the thick glass at the eight foot tall armoured suit striding toward the stalled tank. "What the …? Fuckin' shoot that testicular tumour!"

"I'm trying!" Squealer jabbed buttons and pulled levers, but exactly nothing happened. "I keep telling you, we're shut down!"

"Well, I'm not shut down." Adam unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up. "Time to go out there and give that asshole the royal butt-fucking he's begging for."

End of Part Twenty-One