The police took a good ten minutes to finally arrive, during which we managed to get all of the ABB members up to the top, all but throwing them out of the warehouse. It was hard not to get a little rough with them. They deserved it, after all, for just being involved with this monstrous undertaking. I ended up leaving most of the work to my golems as I quickly found myself too tempted to enact my own justice.

When the police arrived, most of the team returned to the surface to watch for ABB reinforcements. I was pretty sure they weren't going to, as the only reason the Farm was useful to the ABB was because it was hidden, and from what Alya could see, there was no cash or resources stored at the site. There might be some interesting information on the computers, but if there was, they didn't care enough to try and take it back. There was no reason for the ABB to come try and take the facility back when we had already found it.

While the rest of the team kept watch, I remained inside the building, as I was asked several times to heal some of the more worrying wounds, treating the scared women gently as I washed away things that were likely to or were already infected, as well as a few broken and fracture bones that Alya couldn't have detected when I asked her to check on the victims.

As I stayed behind, I was treated to a horror show. Victim after victim was gently coaxed from their cells, revealing horrific living conditions. Even worse was the condition of the victims, with severe bruising being the absolute minimum injury. One woman in particular bore a split lip that reached her gums, while almost all others had tears and sores along their ankles and wrists, severe bruising, and quite a few stress fractures along their bodies.

I wasn't ashamed to admit I lost my last meal after running a scan on a particular unconscious woman. She had refused to calm down, traumatized past the point of sense, so the paramedics had been forced to sedate them. Her injuries were plentiful, but it was the trauma below the belt that undid my self-control.

Despite our involvement, the PRT did not show up during this entire process. Whether out of respect for the scenario or fear of the message of only showing up after everything was over, they never showed their face. At that point, I had more or less accepted their uselessness. If we wanted to help this city, we would have to do it ourselves.

Eventually, after almost two hours, the last woman was brought away, and it was time for us to leave. I had certain duties that I had ignored for the sake of taking down the Farm, but now that that was over, I needed to get them done. New Wave agreed to stay on watch for a little while long, and when I offered to bring Crow home, she said she would walk, fading into a shadow and disappearing.

I watched after her for a moment before cursing under my breath and teleporting away. When I arrived back home, I immediately stripped and climbed into the shower. I felt dirty and sick after what I had witnessed, and a scalding hot shower only just barely helped. When I felt marginally cleaner, I teleported off to the hospital.

I should have seen it coming, but when I arrived, they were already busy, as they had taken in all of the injured women from our bust. Kicking myself that I hadn't realized that sooner, I immediately volunteered to heal them.

One by one, each woman was treated delicately, and after their wounds and damages were documented, I healed them completely, doing everything I could to wipe away any reminder of their experience. Most of them were too traumatized to do anything but watch me nervously as I approached and carefully healed them. Only the woman who I saw, who had stepped out of her prison cell only to cower back inside, was cognizant enough to whisper a broken and tear-filled thank you when I was done.

After the women were healed, I completed my normal healing rounds more or less on autopilot. When I was done, I teleported to my usual spot near the PRT Headquarters so I could complete my duties there. Thankfully, there were only a few people who needed healing, and when I was done, the PRT officer escorting me through the building began to escort me back to the public areas. Despite the fact that I was at least still partially on autopilot, I did notice when my escort took a turn that I knew I did not lead to the exit. I stopped with a frown, my golems stopping with me. The guide made it a few steps before he noticed, stopping in the hall and looking back at me.

"Is there something wrong?" He asked.

"Why are we not heading back to the front door?" I asked with raised eyebrows.

"Director Piggot wishes to speak with you," He responded. "She wishes to discuss your recent success locating and clearing the Farm."

I looked at him for a moment, wondering what his superior could be thinking, before giving up and shaking my head. Resisting the urge to immediately assume the worst and snap, I let out a long breath.

"Did Director Piggot perhaps mention asking me if I was free?" I asked, looking at the fully uniformed agent. "I don't report to her, and my schedule doesn't revolve around her. She certainly doesn't get to drag me into a meeting without asking first. "

"I… " He started to respond, trailing off when the agent realized he didn't really have a way to respond without pissing me off more.

"Right. Well, tell Director Piggot that if she would like to make an appointment, she has access to my phone number. She can call me," I responded, before turning back and walking down the hall I knew led out.

"Hold on a minute, you are not allowed through restricted sections of the building without an escort," He responded, making no move to follow me, the tension in the room just slightly clicking upward. "If you would just meet with Director P-"

"Are you saying I'm not allowed unescorted… and then refusing to escort me?" I asked, turning back to look at the agent. "Are you fucking seri- You know what? Am I being detained?"

"No, you are not being detained," He responded. "The Director just wants a-"

"Good, then I'll be going."

I pulled out my staff, the curled wood straightening with a silent quick cast spell. The tension in the room suddenly spiked, and my guide pulled his pistol, though he kept it aimed at the ground. I could also hear the sound of several other weapons being pulled from behind me, but I ignored them. I whistled, and my golems moved in, gripping onto my arms.

"Tell Piggot not to bother calling me any time today," I said, before rapping my staff down on the floor, the iron cap thunking on the linoleum tiles. "Probably tomorrow either. Goodbye!"

One of the crystals on my staff, attached to a wooden loop by a strip of leather, glowed for a moment as I spoke the activation word for the spell trapped inside. The teleport spell activated in seconds, dragging me and my golems away instantly, landing on the ritual platform at the compound.

The golems immediately backed away, releasing my arms as they looked for threats. Meanwhile, I stood there, my eyes closed as I tried to contain my rising temper. After a long moment, Alya spoke up.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Was that smart?" Alya asked.

"No, it probably wasn't," I admitted easily, shaking my head. "But I find myself not really caring. She isn't my boss. She has no right to order me around or just expect me to follow her demands."

As I responded, I pulled off my coat, hanging it in a branch, perhaps a bit rougher than necessary.

"Well… I thought you wanted to remain on good terms with the PRT?" She asked, shifting into her corporeal form and floating down, following me as I practically stormed to the fire pit area, dropping down roughly into one of the seats.

"I know, I know," I said, rubbing my eyes as I leaned forward, sitting on the edge of the seat. "But I just waded through the closest thing to hell that I have ever seen, and their response is to try and strong-arm me into a meeting, all after I just finished healing their people!"

Somewhere along my response, I had stood back up, beginning to pace around the compound, walking back and forth on the grown wooden boards that made up most of the latest additions.

"The Farm has been here for years, and they did nothing about it! I mean, we didn't even do anything special! You found it, but I'm sure there are plenty of thinkers who could have done the same. I might be a potent jack of all trades, but what we did wasn't all that impressive, we just beat up a couple armed gangers!"

"What about Lung?" Alya pointed out. "Not to play devil's advocate, but he was a rather large threat, even to a large, powerful group. You said it yourself. The most likely reason you managed to beat him was that you didn't come off as a threat but were able to deal with his low-level ramping stages."

I stopped pacing, letting out a long, almost ragged breath. I reached my hand up to run it through my hair, only to find my mask was still on. I took it off and tossed it onto one of the nearby seats, missing it completely.

I took another deep breath and, begrudgingly, accepted that she had a point. The local Protectorate didn't really have one silver bullet that could take down Lung by themselves. Dauntless was close, but even he wasn't nearly as tough as I was. Still, that did not absolve them from their sins.

"If the local ENE PRT couldn't take care of him, then the PRT as a whole should have," I eventually responded, my point remaining strong despite the fire leaving me. "None of this 'Gotham belongs to Batman, Metropolis to Superman bullshit.' For fucks sake, there was a sex slave ring operating in the city! And people knew it existed! The only way the ABB could have been more obvious about it is if they took out an ad in the paper to talk about it! The PRT may not have known where it was, but they knew it was here somewhere. The fact that Lung wasn't crushed by someone who countered him inherently, or squashed flat under the Triumvirate boot is… Fuck, it's really unacceptable."

"I… cannot argue with that," She admitted. "It is as if this town had been abandoned, but nobody warned the civilians to evacuate. The local Protectorate is in a holding pattern while the gangs slowly progress, barely restrained."

I stood there, in the relatively warm space around my compound, looking out into the forest. I could feel Kali, just under the surface, doing her best to support me as I worked through the frustration and anger that ran under my skin.

"I'm… I won't be like them," I finally said, shaking my head. "Is it their fault they are stuck like this? I don't know. But I refuse to stop or slow down. Tomorrow, I'm going to talk to Crow, if she will even talk to me, about pushing this further. I am sick of ignoring the ABB and E88 and just letting them hang by the side, just because they are keeping quiet now. We will start with drugs, work our way down to guns, then crack down on their money."

"Obliterating the ABB is going to cause even more of a power vacuum," she pointed out. "The Empire won't stay away. Even gangs from outside the city will be tempted.'

"There won't be a power vacuum because I'm going to fill it," I explained, standing up straight. "For now, New Wave and I can fill in and keep the E88 out when they try to expand. But in the next charge cycle, I will figure out something specific to invest every point I can. Something that will let me create help at a level that can work on its own. Maybe it's just pure golem creation or something else entirely. I'm not sure what it is yet, but whatever I settle on, I will use it to make a whole group of people watch over the territory.

"Something sentient?" Alya asked. "That's not usually simple."

"Maybe. It's not a requirement, but it would likely solve the problem," I answered, shaking my head. "I'll have to explore the limits of my golem-making with my normal ritual crafting, see if there is any way to make it work."

Sentience was a complicated subject when it came to magic, as it was heavily tied into soul magic, which was far from something I could tap into. The entity that put me on this Earth had made it very clear, as did what Alya knew about it, that I would have to invest dozens of points into soul magic to even scratch the surface, and those were points I still couldn't spare. My golems lacked any sentience, and I was pretty sure my rituals couldn't create it without a significant sacrifice, either by me or someone else. It wasn't something I could do willy-nilly, especially since I had already created Kali.

"I have a feeling my golem work isn't going to cut it, and my ritual skill will probably lead me toward a darker angle than I would feel comfortable with," I said after a long moment of thinking. "That said, there is definitely a solution out there. I just need to find it. Once I do, I can make an army of 'capes' loyal to me and to making this shithole of a city safe.

"That is going to scare the hell out of a lot of people," Alya pointed out. "Not just the PRT."

"If they didn't want to force someone to solve their problems, they should have fixed them first!" I fired back, before taking another long breath, once again pushing my fingers through my hair, before shaking my head and letting out a long sigh. "Sorry, I'm just… I'm not in a good head space right now. Not after what I saw. Whatever I need to do to make it work, whether it's to make them seem like real people or pass them off as projections, I will make it happen. If the PRT isn't going to save this city, I will."

Alya floated just a few feet away, slowly flowing cooling air over me, a gentle breeze that was refreshing, even as it made me shiver. I could feel Kali too, pushing from her space inside the land around us. She actually appeared, no more than a shimmering flutter of air, colored by spinning and dancing leaves. Still, it was impressive, a mark of her progress and growth as a Genus Loci. She didn't say anything, only stepped forward and wrapped me in a hug, rubbing the back of my head. From beside me, one of her living wood wolves pressed against my leg.

Silently, I leaned on her for support, an anchor through the horrific scenes I had witnessed throughout the day.