“Remember everyone, this is an unrestricted mission,” Drim called out over their comms to every member stationed around the area. “We must be successful no matter the stakes or cost. If you meet any resistance, you have full permission to do whatever is required to resolve it. Try to restrain or disable any enemies if you can, but don’t take chances. Wait for my signal to start.”
He then fielded a question. “Yes Kaizu, you have permission to kill anyone the glove detects.” Then as the last bit of preparation, he called up Victori to give her the go ahead. She wasn’t present, but she didn’t need to be.
‘To all those in captivity at the hidden laboratory known as the Power Station, help is on its way. It would be best to relax and listen to the instructions of the Fiends For Hire. They are trying to get you somewhere safe.’
‘To all those running, employed, aiding, or abetting the hidden laboratory known as the Power Station, retribution is coming. You should fear for your lives. It is best to surrender immediately if you want to save yourselves.’
The lab was called that because it was actually in a power station—though not one accessible by conventional means. It was all a cover, both in name and export. They wanted it not to appear on anyone’s radar, and it could also be talked about publicly among their employees without raising any eyebrows. For quite some time now they’d been able to hide in plain sight.
They’d first gotten wind of the Power Station about a month ago. A few of their newly recruited members had been targeted by the Red Eyes Gang for abduction. The gang must not have been aware that they’d joined the group yet, since every other time they’d come across the gang, it seemed they’d been on strict orders to flee as fast as possible.
After the incident with Mazie, they’d done a little bit of digging into the gang but didn’t get too far. This time, one of the members had been brought back for questioning, and through Phon’s ascended Curse, along with some ‘motivation’, they were able to uncover a lot of the gang’s plans and operations.
Most of it was petty crime—best left for local law enforcement, but the Fiends For Hire could step in if it ever got out of hand. It seemed the gang had a lot of clans and subsidiaries spread out around the world, so bringing them down entirely would be a gargantuan task.
However, the Fiends For Hire simply could not leave the Fiend abductions alone. Through a lot of digging by Phon and Feyjrusa over the span of two lives, they’d eventually tied them all to the Power Station. In almost every situation, Fiends and Lessers that were kidnapped went to the secret lab.
There were a few obscure cases. A couple of Lesser’s got sent to an underground fighting ring. Nachi had seen to their liberation herself by going undercover as a contestant, winning easily before she brought the whole thing crashing down. The only case where it was a Fiend sent elsewhere was Senli’s incident. They speculated it was because of her ability to find out information and secrets. Since they didn’t quite know how her Curse worked, they couldn’t risk being compromised.
The generals very briefly entertained a discussion about whether or not this information should be passed along for the Central Peace to handle. This kind of infraction of their treaties and laws was certainly more suited for direct government interference. They probably would have if there weren’t Fiends directly involved. But unfortunately, they just couldn’t trust such an organization to ensure their freedoms in the end.
Plus, there were a few rumors and inklings that the Central Peace, or at least a small group inside of it, might have their hand in all of this. They’d already linked the beginning of a connection between the Red Eyes Gang and a CP Rep, though they weren’t sure which. Finding out they were also involved with the Power Station wouldn’t really be surprising, and it was something they were hoping they could also confirm during this mission.
Now with everything in place, Drim signaled the start of the mission. Kada rushed ahead, trailblazing the path forward for everyone else. It was her job to take down the exterior defenses.
The Power Station was built next to a river, so they could feign using hydroelectricity to generate their output. The main entrance was a bridge across the river to the building on the other side. To stop people from randomly wandering into the facility, there was a checkpoint and guard station. But this was something fairly typical that wouldn't cause any undue suspicion.
Behind the Power Station was nothing but empty woods, or so it would seem. Of course as a first line of defense, there was a large fence encircling the entire area and marking it as private property. But for anyone bold enough to ignore that, there were a bunch of hidden defenses and traps. Hell, they even went so far as to place transmitters that emitted a frequency normally unhearable by humans that would dissuade them from pressing forward.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Kada touched the fence and it vanished into a line of goo around the perimeter. Since it was supposed to be as inconspicuous as possible, it didn’t have any fancy aspects like being electrified. “Let’s go, Tize!” she shouted before diving into the ground, orange light trailing after her.
She erupted from the dirt a moment later, her mermaid tail breaching beautifully into the sky before she dived back in. This let her swim faster than any other person alive, and most animals.
It didn’t take long before the defenses activated. A few fake hollow trees slid open revealing turrets hidden inside. They started firing to no avail. Even with how advanced this facility was supposed to be, they were still behind the times in their standard defense. No living ammo, no paralysis energy shots, just regular bullets that couldn’t even touch Kada. They must have never guessed that she herself would come attack them personally.
Kada dove through one of the fake trees, melting it and several around it. She didn’t want to dispose of every bit of standard metal nearby, though, unsure of what infrastructure she could be ruining that was for the citizenry of the local town.
After clearing out one section of anything that would attack her, Kada began speeding around the area in a circle, hoping to draw in new attention. Phon was also in direct communication with her, pointing out tripwires and mines for her to hit, able to find them through all the dirt and clutter.
After a bit of thoroughly trashing their defenses, it seemed someone noticed and decided to take the initiative. Drones began swarming the area and firing at her. They were smart enough to stay higher in the air than she could reach with momentum alone. But unfortunately for them, she wasn’t alone.
A few of the scales slid off of Kada’s tail and began flying around. They attached to the drones, useless by themselves. But since Kada and Tize were synced, Kada could funnel her Curse through them, melting the annoying pests out of the sky.
It was around this time that Xard began his assault. If they were being reactionary enough to send out drones then there wasn’t any further point in acting stealthy. He strode across the bridge right up to the front gate.
The two guards stationed there of course tried to stop him. He couldn’t fault them for doing their jobs, but how many power stations hired Lessers as guards and gave them full-auto shotguns to defend their gate? The two tried to surround him, yelling orders to get down on the ground.
Just to humor them for a moment, Xard held up his hands like he was surrendering. But then he quickly swung them to his side and blasted energy out of both. The guards went flying off either side of the bridge and were swept away by the rampaging river.
All gloves were off at that point and any pretense was dropped. Turrets popped out of the building itself and a few dozen guards rushed out of the building. They really didn’t want someone to steal all their precious power.
Xard made quick work of them, to the point that it was almost trivial. The only one to give him trouble was a Lesser using some kind of wind gun. It sent a constant jet of wind his way, knocking Xard off his feet for a moment. But he was able to recover without incident and blasted forward with more energy than the gun could produce. After taking out that Lesser, it was just a tedious cleanup job of the rest.
The rest of the Fiends For Hire descended towards the Power Station once the all clear had been given.
“Still quite a few guards down there,” Phon gave her report. “So we still need to proceed with caution. Oh, found the containment area. Damn, they’ve got it packed tight. Too foggy to move on my own, but maybe with Tize I can—kuh!”
Her head suddenly reeled backwards as she clawed off her ribbon. She blinked her eyes a few times and rubbed them, like she’d been hit with a sudden bright light. “What the mawhg… They just surrounded the entire building in someone’s aura. I can’t see zjik inside now.”
“Well, at least that gives us the kind of idea of the experiments they’ve been doing here,” Drim looked on the brightside. “Any clue whose aura it is?”
“Just some schmuck Lesser,” Phon was unimpressed, but she did find a bit of interesting information after examining them with Phontext. “Huh, they have them stuffed into some machine like a battery. If someone on the inside removes them, I should be able to use my Curse freely again.”
“Well, having you teleport everyone out would have been too boring anyways,” Niloy piped up. “How am I supposed to gain more adoring fans if you generals just do everything yourselves!”
The Fiends For Hire had never anticipated this mission to be hard, but they still brought along quite a few members anyways. It was likely more than they’d need, but it was better to play it safe when so many lives were on the line.
“Well, you not being able to teleport negates the first few plans,” Xard pondered which one they should go with now.
“I can still mark the edges of the building for excavation,” Phon informed them.
“Woo, plan J it is then!” Kada followed Phon around while she dug some scratches into the dirt. Once the outline had been drawn, The Mermaid shoved her hands into the soil and got to work. Everyone else had to take a few steps back as waves of liquid dirt washed around the area.
The Power Station was a bit small compared to most of its ilk, but that was only the building set above ground to fool the public. What lay beneath was far more massive and sinister. Like excavating an ancient ruin, the facility became exposed to the world above. Kada didn’t stop until every inch of the building was uncovered.
They could have just gone in through the top, but this way gave them several more infiltration points and means of escape. Especially since they’d need to be leading the captives out in person now, the shorter the route, the better.