War felt his Bphone vibrate slightly in the pocket of his tunic. He carefully refrained from pulling it up to see what he’d received. He assumed it was Bob advising him what the boy had learned from stealing his old friend's memories.

“Hellie, it’s been good to catch up. Do you need any help from me?” he said softly, smiling at Liberty.

“No Jack. We’re all good. The information you’ve provided is pretty conclusive. I’ll deal with Belisarius. I’m curious about something though.” She leaned back on the guard rail and crossed her arms. The blue glow from behind her gave her an eerie halo and threw her face into azure shadows, only partially cancelled out by the other portals behind War.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Magic. He’s been… stranger than usual recently. What did the pair of you talk about?” she asked nonchalantly.

“He’s got some plan in the works. A magical weapon to use when the Void arrives,” War half lied. “You can ask him about it yourself if you like but he’s being more paranoid than usual.”

“What does it have to do with the Traveller?” she glared at him pointedly.

“Nothing that I’m aware of. Something to do with ley lines and creating a planetary shield to support the Necklace.” He was outright lying now and beginning to feel that something had gone very wrong. He mentally prepared himself for violence but betrayed nothing physically.

“Such tangled webs we weave. Why would you lie to your old friend?” she asked and her body twitched ever so slightly. Even Bob’s drones would have struggled to notice it but War had senses far beyond what people at lower levels could understand.

His armour coalesced around his body at the same moment Liberty moved. Her fist slammed into his chest and threw him down and away from her. His body crashed through the platform and smashed into the buildings below in a fraction of a second. Even from his prone position, half buried under the rubble of ruined buildings, he heard the rattling barks of the combat drones above opening fire.

Waste of bloody time. Bullets won’t do shit to her, War thought to himself. He levered himself upright quickly, broken stone flying away from him as he rose to his feet. He narrowed his eyes and leapt upwards, his golden cloud appearing under his feet as he circled rapidly up to float above the platform of portals.

“Where is she?” demanded a flying drone.

“You’ll only find out when she wants you to. Leave this to me,” War grunted as he scanned back and forth to try and spot his elusive enemy.

“Take it out of town!” barked the drone. “There’s a lot of civilians down there!”

***

Mindscar had been sitting in a cafe, “enjoying” a puck sandwich and a cup of coffee. Her body had been operating on automatic, taking bites of the food and gulps of the drink without consciously noting the taste or texture. She’d been sitting in the quaint building that overlooked the small river running through the heart of Wayfaire and monitoring the Monarch’s conversation.

It had all been very dull. As soon as Liberty had been called she’d moved to find a spot where she could mentally observe them without drawing any attention. She was on the outskirts of the centre of the city and should be safe from any collateral damage. She had been able to probe War’s mind, to an extent. She kept getting flashes of purple light that threw her probes back but as the two Monarchs had talked she’d gradually wormed her way at least a little into his mind. She couldn’t subvert him. It took a lot of effort simply to keep Liberty from kicking her out and all her orders were fought tooth and nail by the mad woman. At this point you would have thought she’d have given up in resignation but no, the crazy bitch kept fighting to regain control of herself. It had become a constant tug of war between their minds that left Mindscar constantly exhausted.

Not too exhausted to level the playing field a little, though. By levelling the playing field she of course meant to stack the odds so far in her favour that the outcome would become a foregone conclusion. Controlling someone as powerful as Liberty didn’t leave her much leeway to take other strong slaves, hence War was sadly safe for now, but lesser slaves could be gathered in considerable numbers for the same amount of effort.

Her mind spread out and began claiming innocents and bending them to her will. The other diners, only a handful or low level workers and traders, stood as one and marched out into the streets. The café owner snarled and leapt over her counter to follow them. In the houses all along the street people marched out and joined the crowd moving towards the battle on the platform. They broke into a sprint, some moving inhumanly fast. Others floated into the sky while the slowest and least dangerous, the ones with administrative or crafting powers, trailed behind, using their abilities to destroy the city as they moved under Mindscar’s control.

Drones began to swarm down and try to suppress the citizens running riot through the streets. The Guardians, Wayfaire’s police and civil defence forces, began to pour out in Blue Street and rush towards the angry mob. Mindscar stayed where she was and smiled to herself. That should provide enough of a distraction to the local forces and when the faster elements of her swarm caught up to where the action was they’d help give Liberty an edge.

Mindscar looked out through Liberty’s unnatural vision and reinforced her order to attack her former ally. Liberty moved almost without moving. Momentum was hers to control, much like that German prick Breaker, but she was on another level. Too fast for Mindscar to follow Liberty appeared next to War and punched him, her fist phasing out of reality for a moment then rematerializing inside his chest.

Her arm pulled back in a spray of gore and a crimson arc of blood shot out and began to fall towards the ground. Suddenly Liberty was sailing through the air to smash into one of the Department's skyscrapers.

Protect yourself and kill War, Mindscar sent, having to reiterate her command as Liberty struggled to regain control.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Liberty stopped in mid-air as she transferred the momentum to somewhere else. Whether it was another dimension, or to some object drifting through space was something neither woman had been able to work out. The building she had passed through began to collapse and Liberty caught sight of War turning to focus on her, one hand pushed against his chest. The hand fell away and the flesh was once again whole before the armour knitted itself across the damage and obscured the temporary wound. Liberty vanished.

***

War grimaced as he dropped his hand. She was going easy on him. If she had been fully committed Liberty would have put her fist into his brain and ripped that out instead of doing minor damage to his chest. Not even he would have been able to shrug off that type of damage to his brain.

He shot away to the south, looking to lead the fight out of town, but he was swarmed by low level fliers who threw themselves at him with suicidal abandon. He pulled his punches, knocking them away and smiling slightly as Bob’s drones began to swarm the mob and fix power suppressing collars to them.

A beam of light from the clear sky slammed into War. It threw him back towards the centre of town and drilled down, burning a glowing crater where he slammed into the Earth and collapsing several buildings into slag. Dozens of the fliers attacking him had been turned into ash drifting on the wind. Bob? No. The old veteran wouldn’t fuck up a kill shot and he wouldn’t kill civvies like that. Who the hell else was running that kind of plasma beam weapon?

War pulled himself up, molten stone dripping off him as his cloud lifted him back up and he tried once more to lead this battle away from the civilians.

***

“Ryn. Go to the river. About here.” He placed a map marker on her HUD. “That’s where the puppets started from,” said Bob.

“What are we up against?” asked Bad. He was smiling broadly. Bob would have to explain at length about taking life and death situations seriously. Perhaps some kind of brutal training regime would be in order? The boy’s dad would be all for it.

“A puppet master. Probably a former Minder who’s snuck into Wayfaire,” the drone replied. “Shit! Where are those beams coming from?” he cursed.

“Beams?” asked Sally.

“Like my beams. Someone has nicked some of my tech. They just cut a half mile scar across the city. Go! Now!” Bob barked.

Ryn checked the map and vanished. Her friends were wrapped in cool blue flames and appeared next to her. The city was a madhouse. Smoke billowed into the sky and half of the tallest buildings were jagged stumps surrounded by burning rubble.

She glanced around and began blipping down the street as her team spread out. If there was a puppet master here they needed to put them down fast. There’s no point killing the helpless victims of someone like that, you had to kill the master. It was a truly unpleasant power, turning bystanders into victims and hostages. She flashed along the street then back to her friends. Simon was throwing out trinkets and devices, setting up a shielded zone with some active defences. The others had spread out slightly and were studiously watching every angle for any hint of a threat.

“There’s a handful of people still in the buildings.” She pointed to half a dozen intact structures and the team began to advance cautiously. The first people they encountered were quivering in fear at the back of a clothes shop.

“Get out here! We need to move you out of danger!” barked Jane from where she floated above the road.

“No way! We’re safe here! Protect us here!” screeched a semi hysterical woman in a shrill voice. Bad strode forwards and knocked the door out of its frame as he entered the shop.

“Get your arses out of here run for Blue Street! It’s all happening at the Way so Blue Street is safe!” The world went white as another beam of energy fell from the sky and burned yet another strip of the city to glowing rubble and ash.

Everyone had flinched. They’d never seen that kind of weapon in use before, certainly not on a civilian population. Bad had spun towards the door and flung up a hand to shield his eyes. As he did so the people behind him swarmed forward, half blinded by the light but knowing where their enemy had been a moment before. They piled on the boy, dragging him down and pummelling with their fists and feet.

Ryn blinked away the after images and saw what was happening. She wrapped the people in fire and blipped them away to an empty spot outside of town, leaving a bloody and broken Bad stretched out on the ground.

“Get up lazy bones. No way that lot could hurt you!” laughed Sally as she moved over to help the boy up. He took her hand and grunted then let go with a yell. Bars of stone had been summoned beneath his body, pinning him like a butterfly to a cork pad.

“Shit! Claire! Bad needs you!” Sally screamed. “How the fuck did s bunch of lowbies do that?”

“One of them wasn’t so low!” snarled Simon as he glanced through the door. “Ryn, we need collars. Assume everyone is hostile!”

“I didn’t get any! Bob doesn’t have any marked out for me!” Ryn fought down a sob at seeing her friend badly injured. “We’ll need to find the fucking master! Claire, can you help him?”

“I’ll stay here and guard them,” said Simon as Claire nodded and knelt down to heal Bad. Simon began throwing contraptions into the wall that drilled in and vanished in a puff of dust. “This place will be safe. Find the master!”

The others turned and ran onwards down the road. The river burbled happily to their left, immune to the chaos overtaking Wayfaire. A puck broke the surface and leapt upwards only to be reduced to ash by Jane launching a beam of fire into it.

“My bad!” the girl called as steam from the river drifted into the air.

More slaves leapt out at them, having decided their cover was blown, and tried futilely to reach the team. Now they were on alert Ryn and her friends either knocked the people out in quick succession or blipped them out of town.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the last best hope for Wayfaire,” came a voice from all around them. The team skidded to a stop and took up a defensive formation. Perhaps this won’t have been a complete waste!”

“Mindscar?” called Ryn. “Should have known it was you! You know this is the end? We’re going to put you down!” she snarled. Mocking laughter came back.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Taking you out will make it all worth it. On the off chance you do survive please convey my regards to your father, assuming Magic’s little trick hasn’t killed him!”

A glint in the sky was all the warning she got. Ryn blipped all her friends back to the chamber with the off world portals, buried deep underground. Back on the surface Bob had finally gotten a bead on the vessel launching the attacks and another glint shone in the sky, far above the atmosphere.

The Necklace was faintly visible even during the day. At night it was a glittering band that put the Milky Way to shame and during the day faint spiderwebs showed where Bob’s masterpiece wrapped the Earth protectively. It was still too soon to reveal the platform's full potential but he could take out the ship burning strips out of his city.

The clouds blasted apart, a ring spreading out to reveal the clear sky above. There was no beam of light, this weapon operated beyond the visible spectrum. Pure invisible energy slashed through the atmosphere leaving a very faint glow in its wake as it cut into the ship above the city. The stealth field failed and a vast ovoid of dark metal was revealed, over a mile in diameter at its widest point. The invisible weapon carved nearly a quarter of the ship away, the rear section falling away to one side as the main part of the ship began to fall towards Wayfaire. Bob’s weapon left a new line on the face of the city, throwing up clouds of dust and molten stone before it cut off a fraction of a second later.

A series of drones launched from the crippled ship, swarming across Wayfaire to scoop up a number of people before shooting off into the sky and flying East at hypersonic speeds.

The ship’s fall was almost graceful when viewed from a distance. Up close it was rushing towards the ground at a terrifying speed. As the prow of the ship slammed into the ground it buckled and pushed back into the body behind it. As the central section of the ship began to expand outwards the world went white.