Confrontation II: The Reckoning

Part Seven: The New Normal

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

Dennis pulled the whiteboard over to where the Wards were sitting, and picked up a red marker. "Okay, then. The fighting's died down for the moment, but it's not over yet. Kaiser wants more territory and there's nobody out there with the firepower to stop him. So this is … I guess a half-time briefing?" He turned toward us and shook his head slightly. "Yeah, I know this isn't a game. I couldn't think of a better analogy."

I shrugged, because it hadn't really bothered me. Sophia was more my concern. She and I had more or less escaped injury, while the other Wards had been less lucky. Missy's arm was in a sling, Chris's armour had been absolutely trashed (and he apparently had a ringing headache) and Carlos looked like a botched Frankenstein experiment. Dean was absent because he was in sickbay with suspected broken ribs. With all that, Sophia looked absolutely wretched, while everyone else just looked pissed. Except Browbeat, who was currently manning the console. He looked as stolid as ever.

"Okay, then." Dennis uncapped the black marker and drew several columns on the board. The first one was marked ARRESTS, the second GANG INJURIES, the third HERO INJURIES. The fourth one was marked DEATHS. Then he switched to a green marker. "Cape arrests: Rune, by Buzz and Shadow Stalker. Apparently they drove off Grue at the same time. Not gonna say a twofer wouldn't have been nice, but Rune's a large part of the Empire's artillery support, so I'm gonna just give you extra kudos for the fact that you pulled this off out of costume." He wrote RUNE in the first column.

"Whirligig and Mush," offered Chris. Wearing T-shirt and jeans with a domino mask, he didn't look up from the notepad on his lap, where he was busily sketching. "Pretty sure that was Armsmaster."

"Right," agreed Dennis. "Was that before or after Squealer ran down Aegis?" He carefully printed the names in the appropriate column.

"After," husked Carlos. I wasn't sure how he was even talking. Or seeing the board, for that matter. His entire body redefined 'road rash'. "I nearly had her, too."

"Sure thing." Missy went to pat him on the shoulder, then refrained. "Um, I helped Miss Militia capture Othala and recapture Stormtiger. We nearly got Cricket, but she did something weird with sound and got away."

I was impressed. Missy and Miss Militia were a potent team, but Stormtiger had been hard enough to capture the first time around. Something occurred to me, and I flicked a couple of fingers in the air. "Uh, Clock, how about Purity? Did she do anything? Was she in on it?"

"No, actually." He sounded relieved. "Seems the rumour that she's had a split with the Empire are true. Either that, or Kaiser's keeping her in reserve. But given the absolute shitshow out there today, I'm inclined to doubt it." He turned back to the board and finished writing in the names, then swapped out to a purple marker. "Okay, gang cape injuries, anyone?"

Missy spoke up again. "Victor took a hit from Skidmark. Looked like his shoulder was pretty messed up. Cricket took a shot to the leg from Miss Militia, but she was walking on it. And Glory Girl busted Menja's kneecap."

"Victor, Cricket, Menja, right," noted Dennis, writing busily. "Buzz, Stalker, how did Grue look to you when you last saw him?"

I took a deep breath. "Well, we handled him pretty roughly, but he's got those leathers, so I'd be surprised if he's got anything more than bruises. He was on one of Hellhound's dogs, so I'm thinking she was in the area too. Maybe Rune hurt her before going after Grue, but I don't know enough to be sure."

"Hm. Good point." Dennis wrote HELLHOUND? in the gang injuries column. "Nobody else we know of?" After a pause during which nobody spoke up, he nodded and swapped the marker for a blue one. "Okay, then. Hero injuries?"

There was a pause, then Missy cleared her throat and pointed at Aegis. He turned his head to look at her. I got the impression he was trying to look and sound reproachful, but it just wasn't coming across. "I'm good. I can still go out there."

"No, you can't." Dennis shook his head, then turned to the whiteboard and started writing Aegis' name. "Your body isn't any more durable than anyone else's. You need time to heal. I'm pulling you from the patrol roster. You're on monitor duty until I say otherwise."

"No," rasped Carlos. "What if someone else gets hurt because I'm not there?"

"What if you get killed because you think you can take a hit and you can't?" Dennis shot back. "I've been assigned this responsibility, and I'm damn well gonna carry it out. And that means not sending injured teammates out into battle."

"Panacea—" began Carlos.

"—will show up if and when she shows up," interrupted Dennis. "The Director is aware of how badly we were hit. I know this because I forwarded her that information just before we started this meeting. If she chooses to request Panacea's assistance, then that will happen. If she chooses not to, then that will happen instead. I am not part of that decision-making chain, and nobody here is dying of internal injuries right now, and you are going on monitor duty, so can we just put a pin in that and move along?"

I blinked. Even Sophia seemed a little surprised by the outburst. It seemed Dennis's happy-go-lucky, goofy personality had taken a hit. Instead of joking his way through the crisis, he was actually stepping up and making sure everyone knew how serious it was. I'd seen his mature side a couple of times before, especially the time Oni Lee had tried to assassinate me, but this was a whole new level. He wasn't even trying to lighten the mood by calling the Director 'Miss Piggy', which just showed how fraught the situation was.

"Sounds good to me, Clock," said Chris, though even he had to stare at his friend for a moment. "You can put me down as out of combat for the moment too, until I can throw together some spare parts and make new armour. And don't forget Vista's arm."

"Hey!" she protested. "I can use my powers just fine with a broken arm!"

"Let's see you do ten push-ups," Dennis retorted. "No? You're strictly noncombat only. Until that arm heals up, you're not even allowed to look at a villain. There's blood on the streets, guys, and not all of it's villain blood." He turned back to the board and wrote KID WIN (ARMOR) and VISTA in the 'Heroes Injured' column. "Also, Gallant." He put that name down too.

"What happened to him, anyway?" I asked. "I thought his armour was pretty tough."

"It was," agreed Dennis. "But when Menja punts you through a brick wall, it involves whole new levels of stress-testing." He tapped the board with the other end of the marker for a moment. "Assault's down at the moment, too. One of Coil's mercs tagged him with a laser. Damn near took his leg off. Velocity ran into one of Skidmark's skid-fields and got thrown fifty feet into a car. He can walk, with crutches, but he can't run." Both those names went down.

"Geez," I muttered. "We should've been there. Maybe we could've helped."

Sophia's hand closed on my arm. "We couldn't have known," she reminded me firmly. "I mean, yeah, this is probably about Lung, but shit happens. They chose to start this gang war, not us. They're the ones who're responsible for this shitshow."

She stopped and looked around at the rest of the Wards, who were staring at her with varying degrees of disbelief. "What?"

"Are we going to have to call for Master/Stranger protocols on you, Stalker?" asked Chris. "I can't even remember the last time you took the time to be the voice of reason, much less comfort anyone."

"Hey, she can be nice!" I protested. The dubious looks intensified. "Well, she can," I insisted. "You just don't know her like I do. Because you never bothered to try."

"You know what?" Dennis turned back to the board. "I'm not even going to argue that one." Raising the marker, he wrote GLORY GIRL and BRANDISH in large bold strokes.

"Wait, what happened to them?" I asked. I didn't know them all that well, but they were Panacea's family and she'd been nice to me when she didn't really have to.

"Shit, I thought everyone knew." Dennis glanced at Missy, then turned to me. "Glory Girl went for Menja after Gallant got kicked through the wall. Busted Menja's kneecap and put her on her ass, then Fenja came in and shield-swatted her into the ground. Somehow this got through her invincibility. Last I heard, she was still in a coma. Brandish was getting set to take on Fenja when Alabaster sideswiped her with a truck, then drove over her arm. It got pretty badly mangled. That gave the Valkyrie twins time to get away."

"Holy fuck." Sophia shook her head. "It's like they're pulling out all the stops. No holds barred."

"I'm pretty sure that's not what they intended," Dennis said. "For my money, it was supposed to be a straight-up territory grab. But Kaiser underestimated everyone else's dedication to not letting him have what he wanted. They struck back, the Empire struck harder, and it all escalated out of control."

"So where's the Triumvirate in all this?" I looked around at all the other Wards. "Surely they'd be stepping in by now, right?"

"Pfft, are you kidding?" I'd never heard Chris sound so bitter. "I asked Armsmaster. Right now, no heroes have died, so we're theoretically holding the line. The Triumvirate have craploads of crisis points that they've got to deal with, any one of them as problematic as the Bay just got. We're in the queue, but we've got number one million, and they're currently serving number one."

"Goddamn it." Sophia shook her head. "If you'd asked me six months ago about this sort of scenario, I would've been chomping at the bit to get out there and kick heads with no restrictions. But now … it's fucked up, that's what it is. Everything's totally fucked up. And not in a good way."

I had an idea what she was talking about. If the villains kept pushing like this, it was likely to bring on a huge crackdown from heroes and PRT alike. The big guns would come into town and people like the Undersiders, who didn't do much in the way of damage, would be caught in the crossfire. I put an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into me. "Hey," I said. "It's gonna be okay. We'll all get through this."

"Thanks," she mumbled, then she raised her head at the sudden silence. "What?"

Dennis shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "I'm just saying, this new you is taking me a bit of time to get used to. Getting all emotional and stuff? Wow."

"Are you absolutely certain we shouldn't be calling for Master/Stranger protocols?" asked Browbeat from across the room; I got the impression he'd been listening in. "I don't know Shadow Stalker all that well, but this is definitely out of character for her." He didn't sound as though he was joking.

"She's fine, Browbeat," I called out. "She's just had a bit of an upsetting day. I know what happened. I was there. And before you ask …" I gathered a swarm right behind his chair. They buzzed, "It's none of your business."

"And there's the Buzz we all know and fear," Chris chuckled, breaking the tension.

"I, for one, welcome our new insectoid overlord," misquoted Dennis, before resuming his serious demeanour. "Okay, Buzz is literally Shadow Stalker's parole officer. If she says everything's on the up and up, that's good enough for me. So, on to the part nobody wanted to hit." He changed out markers again, for a red one. "Deaths."

"Thank god none of us is up there," Chris muttered.

"Yet," Missy threw in, surprising me. She was as hard-headed as they came out in the field, but normally she let herself unwind once she was in base. The events of the last few hours seemed to have hit her as hard as they had Sophia, but they'd had the effect of toughening her rather than making her open up.

Dennis drew a deep breath. "Okay, top of the hour." He wrote SKIDMARK at the head of the column. "That one's on Kaiser, after Skidmark put a three-foot steel bar through Victor's shoulder then tried to do the same to him."

I winced, imagining Kaiser's reaction to such a slight. Skidmark probably hadn't even had time to scream. It would've been very quick and very brutal.

"What about Hookwolf?" asked Chris.

"We don't know, one way or the other," Dennis pointed out. "Yes, Ballistic blew him out of the city. But the guy's got a serious Brute level for a reason. We can't even count him as injured until there's an official notification."

"Oh." Missy drooped. "I just wish he …"

Chris put his hand on her shoulder. "Yeah. We all do."

Nobody disagreed. I'd never faced Hookwolf, but we all knew he was a bad opponent. Known for his brutal approach to combat, and rarely going easy on anyone he faced, he was on the official do-not-approach list for the Wards. It was an open secret that if and when he was captured by the authorities, he would be Birdcage bound. Nobody in the room (and relatively few people in the city) would be unhappy when that took place.

I made a mental note to go easy on Ballistic if I ever had to face him in combat. Literally throwing Hookwolf out of the city had to take serious guts, and he'd probably saved whoever the Nazi asshole had been fighting at the time.

"Anyone know of any other deaths?" asked Dennis, holding the cap over the red marker. "No? Thank God for that." He capped it, then dropped it back on the little tray. "Okay, then. Let's talk about what's going on, and what's expected of the Wards."

"Wait a second." I flicked a finger in the air again. "What happened with Squealer? She wasn't captured or killed or injured?" As the last cape in the Merchant leadership, what she did would affect the drug-based gang.

"After Kaiser shredded Skidmark, she went kind of nuts," offered Chris. "Tried to run Kaiser down, but he got out of the way. Aegis didn't." He glanced across at Carlos. "Then she vanished, just drove away from the fight."

"So yes, we also have a vengeful Tinker lurking out there somewhere, who's proficient in building big scary vehicles out of scrap," Dennis pointed out. Unlike how he normally might have said it, there wasn't a single element of humour in his tone.

"I'm just glad Bakuda's out of the picture," Chris agreed. "Two Tinkers, both with a rage-boner against the city? I'd be telling my parents to move. I still might."

I shuddered, recalling my last run-in against Bakuda. Only Sophia's skill and a certain amount of luck had gotten me out of that one alive. I really, really didn't want to have to face another pissed-off Tinker any time soon. "So, does Alexandria have any openings in the LA Wards?" I asked, only wondering after I opened my mouth if I was really joking.

"Only if your parents are prepared to move." Dennis left the whiteboard and came over to snag a chair. Turning it around, he sat down with his arms across the back, facing us. "We can take all the leave time we want, or take ourselves off the patrol roster, but there's no way in hell you could convince anyone to transfer into the city right now, so the Director has put a hold on frivolous transfers. That covers Protectorate and PRT as well, in case you were wondering."

"Okay, got it." It wasn't as though I'd been planning to leave anyway. Brockton Bay was my city, damn it. "So what's actually going on?"

Dennis raised his hand and started ticking off points. "Orders from above are that we never patrol alone, and in pairs only in low-activity areas. We don't go after a villain unless we're supporting an approved Protectorate or PRT operation. We don't get into a villain-on-villain fight at all; that's for the big boys. We've had half a dozen incidences where capes could have died, including a couple of ours, and at least one villain's died that we know of. We have no idea what's been going on behind the scenes where we don't have a presence. A lot of the low-end villains haven't shown up at all, and we don't know if that means they're dead or just keeping their heads down and riding this out."

I nodded. "If their henchmen had any sense, they'd be staying home with the door locked and the blinds pulled, not answering the phone." Any cape fight where either side chose to get serious tended to end badly for the minions involved.

"How about Uber and Leet?" asked Sophia, rousing slightly. "If those two fuckwits get involved, absolutely anything could happen, none of it good."

"Put them in the 'out of sight for now' column," Dennis said. "They haven't even been posting to their channel."

That made me wonder. If they hadn't even posted up a "We're staying out of this" message, there was a good chance they'd been taken out by Kaiser's forces early on. I didn't know how to feel about that. It wasn't as if I'd ever met them, and I'd heard they were kinda assholes, but something I'd been closely involved in had led to their potential deaths.

"On the upside," Chris noted. "Schools are shut until all this dies down."

I had to agree that this was a good thing, though my overall feelings were mixed. On the one hand, not having large numbers of children in one place was a good thing in case a cape battle spilled over. But on the other, my life at Winslow was just starting to come together. Emma and Madison were on notice, and I had Sophia to back me up, so I was actually able to get the grades I needed to go on to bigger and better things.

Well, school would still be there after all this settled out. And it would be good to not have that to worry about, just for the moment.

"There is that," agreed Dennis. "Now, Aegis and Vista, you're support only until you're both back up to fighting form. Kid Win, you're the same until you can get some armour together. That leaves Browbeat, me, Buzz and Shadow Stalker."

"I'm taking myself off the patrol roster," Browbeat said. The tone of his voice wasn't whiny or defensive, just … matter of fact. "I thought I was ready for this, until the bank robbery. I barely held my own against the Undersiders. I'm happy to take down muggers, but I'm no more durable than Aegis, and I can't take an injury and keep on going like he can. They're looking for blood out there."

Dennis' expression didn't change. Neither did he look back over his shoulder at the burly Ward. "Understood. I'll make a note of that. Okay, that's me, Buzz and Stalker." He looked at the two of us. "Unless either of you wants out?"

Sophia and I shook our heads at the same moment. "We're a team," I said. "We took down Oni Lee together. We can hold our own."

I couldn't swear that there wasn't a tear of pride in Dennis' eye when he stood up from his chair. "And I will be honoured to kick ass alongside you," he stated firmly. Taking the whiteboard, he flipped it over to show a city map taped to it. Recent movements of gangs, as well as the currently-defined borders of gang territory, had been marked in with sharpie. "So, our patrol tomorrow will commence at nine oh five. We'll make our way north along the Boardwalk …"

… beep … beep … beep …

Victoria Dallon lay in the bed, so very still.

Amy sat beside her, Vicky's hand warm in hers.

She had healed all the outward injuries, all the broken bones, all the minor traumas. Physically, Vicky was as fit and healthy as she'd ever been … except for her brain. She'd suffered a skull fracture and a severe concussion in that one hit. Amy had been one of the first ones to get to her, and she'd softened and expanded Vicky's skull so that the swelling wouldn't cause any cell death, and she'd shut off two separate bleeds before they could do significant damage.

Fortunately, Vicky's brain had ceased to swell, and was indeed starting to go back to its normal state. There was activity going on, Amy could tell. Her sister wasn't dead in there. Signals were passing back and forth between parts of her brain, and other signals being sent to her heart and lungs; she was breathing on her own, and her heartbeat was steady.

Still, Vicky would not wake up. Amy wanted so badly to go in there and fix the damage that had been done in the original hit, but it was Vicky's brain. Any changes she made would alter her sister forever. What held her back wasn't that it would be difficult to do; on the contrary, it would be easy. Too easy. Too tempting. It would be so easy just to … nudge her slightly. Not change who and what she was, just make her more … open to the possibility. Set her feet on the path, so to speak.

But she couldn't. And what made her hate herself more than anything was the certain knowledge that she wasn't refraining because it was the wrong thing to do, but because Vicky knew she could affect brains if she chose to. And if Vicky came out of her coma with an altered view of Amy, she might just realise what had been done. That would turn her against Amy forever.

Amy couldn't bear even the possibility of that happening. So she didn't dare use her power on Vicky's brain, save to monitor it and ensure that nothing was going wrong with it.

Around her, nurses came and went. Vicky was checked on, the IVs changed out or replenished. Members of her family came and spoke to her, but she nodded and said nothing. Eventually, they went away again. The sun dragged down in the sky and eventually set.

Amy sat, holding her sister's hand.

… beep … beep … beep …

It was dusk before Brian finally made his way back to the loft. Brutus tagged at his heels, head low, limping slightly. Evading the cops hadn't been all that hard, but he didn't want to go back to the loft until he'd sorted everything out in his head. So he'd waited until Brutus was back to ordinary size, shoved the helmet and jacket into his backpack and become just another big black guy on the street.

He needed to work things out for himself because he just knew Lisa would figure out something had happened, and the more he refused to answer, the closer she'd come to the truth, because she loved to niggle and poke and pry until she'd figured it all out. It had been bad enough when she'd realised he was going on a date. An actual date, with an actual girl. Alec's blank disbelief was bad enough, and he was fine with Rachel ignoring the whole situation, but the way Lisa had done her best to worm out every detail she could had set his teeth on edge. It didn't help when she figured out how little he knew about Sophia, and insinuated that he was being set up for something.

He'd never come so close to punching her as he did right then.

The worst bit was, though he knew damn well they hadn't been aware of his identity until Taylor spoke up (and how had she figured it out?) Lisa had been right, in a way. A very twisted and convoluted way, but definitely a way. Of course, he'd also been setting up Sophia in the same way; and in fact, in a worse way if he were being totally honest with himself.

Total transparency in a relationship was hard enough, even before the pitfall of a secret identity was brought into it. Was he supposed to lie to her until she found out? Was there a point beyond which it was too late to tell her? If he came clean on the first date, what guarantee was there that she wouldn't immediately use that against him? There were so many questions, and no good answers.

Worst of all, Sophia wasn't a fan of Grue (which as a subject, again being honest, was hard to bring up with girls). In fact, she wasn't merely indifferent or even ignorant of his existence. She actively hated him. He had the best possible evidence of that, both with the scar in his side and the still-sore bruise across his throat. He had to admit, Shadow Stalker wasn't exactly on his Christmas card list either. Having someone literally attempting to kill him every time they met had that effect on him.

Which made the whole situation worse, because he liked Sophia, a lot. She had a certain deadpan sense of humour, and she liked the same things in movies that he liked. It didn't hurt that she was able to kick ass with the best of them, though in hindsight the way they'd handled the fight in the alley should've been a huge neon sign for all three of them that something weird was up. The only one of them he didn't think was a parahuman was Aisha, and he wasn't a hundred percent convinced of that, either.

What he was absolutely convinced of was that he had no idea where to go on from there. Shadow Stalker knew his face and name, and he knew the same about her. They even had each other's phone numbers. This wouldn't have been so bad, except that she had apparently decided they were each other's nemeses, and took it very seriously. Which worried him intensely. What if she decided that as a villain he was clearly going to go after her family, and opted to pull a pre-emptive strike on his instead? Yes, this was against the so-called unwritten rules, but despite whatever Lisa chose to believe on the matter, he'd always been aware that the only people who followed rules were the ones who felt they were bound by them. Sophia, even in the short time he'd known her, had given the strong impression of someone who was more willing to ask for forgiveness than permission.

This had concerned him to the point that he'd reached for his phone; whether to call Sophia and ask her to not do anything rash or to call his father and tell him to get Aisha out of the apartment, he didn't know. But it wasn't there. At some point in the scuffle with Buzz—Taylor—he'd lost it.

Having the police find it wasn't an issue. That phone was a burner, with only Lisa's, Rachel's and Alec's numbers on it. If the cops got it unlocked and tried calling a number, they'd know it wasn't him and dump the SIM cards. The real issue was, with his personal phone back at the loft (because what idiot took a phone connecting them to their civilian identity out in costume?) he had no real way of getting in contact with anyone.

When he finally got back to the loft, he was tired and footsore and the bruises were starting to stiffen. As the door opened, a cacophony of barking broke out, then was silenced with a single whistle. Brutus perked up, and dashed up the stairs before him. He trudged up, one step at a time, bracing himself for the inevitable interrogation. Not that he'd be saying anything, or even needed to.

"Where the hell have you been?" demanded Lisa, looking more ruffled than normal. "When Rachel came in with a broken arm, she said the last she saw you, you were leading Rune away from her. But when you didn't come back straight away, we thought …" She trailed off, staring at him. "What the fuck happened to you?"

"Rune's down, the cops got her, I got away." Brian tried to push past her to get to his room. He wanted a hot shower in the worst way. But first he needed to find his phone.

"No way in hell you took Rune down," Lisa said firmly. "Unless you covered her with darkness and she ran into something. But you didn't do that at all, did you?" Brian mentally facepalmed; he'd seen this kind of work from her when they wanted to know something fast, and she'd finally clicked onto a train of deduction that worked. "Someone else did. You got taken down as well, but …" She frowned, massaging her temple with her fingertips. "Something going on there. They had you down, but they let you go. But there's more. You wouldn't be this upset if that was all there was."

Reaching out, Brian grabbed the front of Lisa's top, and pulled her to him so that he loomed over her. "I'm going to my room." His voice was as controlled as he could make it, but he was sure she could read his desire to yell at her. "You will not disturb me."

"If the boss calls—" began Lisa.

"Tell him we're down a big hitter with Rachel hurt," Brian snapped. "Until her arm mends, we're severely limited in mobility."

"I can kick your ass any day of the week!" Rachel's voice bellowed from her bedroom. "And I don't need my arm to use my power!"

"Can you hang on with one hand while your dogs are climbing buildings?" Brian yelled back. "No! The last thing we fucking need is you falling off your dog and getting caught or killed! It's bad enough Rune ambushed us like that!" Ignoring Alec's complaint of 'how am I supposed to out-shitpost Void Cowboy with all this noise going on', Brian pushed Lisa away and stormed off to his room.

Once he was there, he found his phone. Picking it up, he looked at the screen … and froze. There, in front of his eyes, was a number he didn't know with a text message under it. Call me. Please.

He sat down on the bed, staring at the number. He'd gotten Sophia's number, but this wasn't it. He hadn't gotten Taylor's by some oversight, but why would she be texting him?

Possibilities washed through his mind.

She wants to yell at me for lying to her and Sophia.

She wants to give me a chance to come in peacefully.

She wants to warn me that Sophia is going after my family.

She wants to urge me not to go after Sophia's family.

She wants to trace my phone so she and Sophia can bust in and arrest the lot of us.

She wants to …

He didn't know what Taylor wanted.

For the longest time, he just sat there, staring at the message.

Trainyards
Midnight

All was quiet.

Ever since the Boat Graveyard had killed Lord's Port, more than a decade ago, the locomotive marshalling yards had been slowly falling more and more into disrepair. At first the city had neglected to take action in the hope that the situation would be resolved quickly. Then it continued to not take action because there were other issues to deal with. Now, it was a matter of not being able to afford to. Or, to put it another way, any time the money showed up in the budget, it immediately got earmarked for a dozen other different projects which might do more for the city than 'remove an eyesore that nobody even looks at anymore'.

So, year after year, the Trainyards had remained, gradually decaying, anything valuable or useful having long since been scavenged. Sometimes even by the legitimate owners. What was left had by now become more or less solid lumps of steel and rust. The locomotives were dead and dark, any single one of them needing to be stripped down to the bare chassis and rebuilt from scratch before it would run again. Even the rolling stock was frozen where it sat, the axles rusted solid to the bogies.

Weeds braved the oil and other pollutants that had seeped into the soil over the decades that the trains had been running, curling over the tracks and up through the slowly rusting locomotives and train cars. In recent times, the ABB had claimed it as their territory, signing it with their logo in varying levels of skill, using broken-open boxcars as rendezvous points and places where drugs or other vices could be indulged in.

Now, the ABB had lost its cape leadership. Former followers of the Dragon of Kyushu found themselves without the power they'd once had. With the Empire Eighty-Eight on the street in force, the remnants of the Asian gang had decided to embrace the better part of valour. Colours were discarded and red-and-green jackets hidden away. Men and women had returned to their homes, the illegal casinos and brothels had shuttered their doors, and all prepared to keep their heads down until it blew over. Without a cape to stand behind, no gang in Brockton Bay stood a chance.

So the meeting places in the Trainyards were absent of surreptitious deals. Nobody slunk between the hulking shapes and exchanged quiet gang signals. The occasional stray cat yowled, but even that was few and far between, due to the poor hunting options. Even the rats had deserted the area.

Therefore, there was nobody to witness what happened next.

The locomotive had sat for more than ten years without moving. Once, power had surged through its frame as it hauled ten thousand tons of rolling stock across America and back. Now it sat silent, its very purpose defeated and dead.

A spark popped from the highest point on its superstructure, arcing into the air before grounding in the ore hauler on the next track over. If anyone had been present, they would've remarked at the smell of ozone in the air.

Nothing else happened for a moment.

A hunting owl, curious about the sudden flare of light, swooped closer.

Another spark popped, this time from the ore carrier. One leader found the locomotive, and two more zig-zagged off, forking as they went, to connect to three boxcars, a tanker and a second locomotive. A subliminal hum crackled through the air, along with a sharp increase in static electricity. The owl sheered off, wanting nothing to do with this.

The network of purple lightning crawling over the seven highly conductive pieces of metal faded almost to extinction, then brightened again. More connections formed, arcing back and forth across the empty section of ground bounded by them. Another leader snapped out, and latched onto a switching lever, and through it into the ground.

Power surged through the switch lever, heating it abruptly to a dull red glow. Pieces of rust exploded off it like shrapnel, glowing almost white-hot as they ricocheted from the locomotives and other rolling stock. The crackling intensified, the pulses of power increasing in frequency. Brighter and brighter flared the intricate, ever-shifting network of electrical arcs. The train cars and locomotives, despite the fact that they weighed tons apiece, began to shudder.

And then, with a BOOM that echoed across the Trainyards, a hole formed in the air at the epicentre of the electrical network. Any human witness would have testified to its eye-twisting nature, the way that it seemed to be infinitely deep and not there at all, simultaneously. It pulsated, enlarging then shrinking, over and over, until …

The hole snapped all the way open. There was the roar of an internal combustion engine. A jeep, missing its windshield and a good deal of its panelwork, burst through the opening and rammed one of the locomotives. A lithe figure, wearing the ragged, cut-off remains of clothing, bailed out and scrambled away from the smoking vehicle.

All around, the electrical network seemed to destabilise. It pulsated again, the size of the hole fluctuating rapidly and unpredictably. A tendril of energy linked the hole to the jeep, where it had brushed the side coming through. With a horrible metallic crunching noise, the jeep was hauled backward and dragged through the hole, despite the hole being far too small for it. A single shattered rear-vision mirror fell to the ground.

The hole closed to a point then disappeared. One by one, the electrical discharges ceased, leaving burn marks where they had been. Popping and crackling in the cool night air, the switch lever slowly slumped to the ground, the red heat gradually radiating away from it. Only the sharp smell of ozone remained to prove that anything untoward had happened.

And of course, the person on the ground, clinging to a rail tie as if her life depended on it (and it may well have).

Slowly, she released her grip. Sitting up, she looked around, crazed blue eyes taking in her surroundings. An equally unhinged grin peeled back her lips to show her teeth. Then she began to laugh, and all question of sanity was dispelled. There was none.

Bakuda was back.

And Brockton Bay was going to pay.

End of Part Seven

[A/N: The next chapter of Confrontation II: The Reckoning will be the last chapter.]