Chapter Sixty-Six - Yet Another Call

Melanie was almost getting used to being called over by the HRT to deal with Boss-related issues.

Most new heroes... or hero-adjacents, got into a bit of trouble every month or so. In the bigger, busier cities, where there was an actual villain presence there would be more frequent issues, but even then, it was rarely the same person every time.

The Boss and her brats were trying to turn the norm into an exception. Melanie pulled her mask up to rub at her eyes, then tugged it back down. The troopers in the armoured van with her made a point of not looking.

Who could blame her for being a little tired? It was nearing supper-time. She should have been in her little flat, eating canned spaghetti, not being shuttled over to some super-crime scene.

The van rolled to a stop, the back doors opened, and the troopers leapt out of the vehicle. Of the six, four carried non-lethals. Guns that fired electrified nets, or large-bore guns that fired bean-bag rounds. They had tasers and pepper-spray cans on their hips. The last two had proper assault rifles, loaded with a mix of tracer, armour-piercing, and hollow-point rounds.

The HRT met violence with violence in kind. A rogue playing around and landing softened blows while avoiding civilians would get a bean-bag to the face. A villain on a murder spree would be put down like a rabid dog.

That was the price of civilization in an era of heroes and villains.

Melanie jumped out last, then she straightened her back and took on the guise of Melaton. She wasn’t all that keen on acting the hero. It took too much energy, and all the other heroes got from it was some better PR.

She didn’t care if her action figures didn’t sell well or if her Witter didn’t have the most followers. She cared more about getting stuff done. Which had somehow translated into a style of its own which the damned HRT PR-reps adored. It was ‘genuine’ and ‘business-like’ in a way that appealed to a certain demographic.

Point was, she walked out of the van as if she was about to walk up to someone who owed her a heap of cash.

What she found was a few warehouses, some smaller factories, and a couple of empty lots nearby. This was the more active, industrial side of Eauclaire, a city that was very much not known for its industry.

A couple of police cars were parked on either end of the street, and a few more Heroic Response Team vans too, with white-green lights flashing and lighting up the area even though the sun wasn’t down yet.

There weren’t many gawkers out, but she knew that would change. The news crews were probably already breaking speed limits to be the first on the scene.

Most of the attention was on a nondescript building in the middle of the street. Just some warehouse made of cinderblocks with a loading door at the front and not much of a yard around it.

A row of men and women were being held to one side. She counted nine of them, in all-black one-piece outfits that made it hard to make out any details about them. Chubby or thin, male or female, it was all hidden by the bagginess. The pile of helmets nearby suggested that there was more to it than just that.

“What in all the damns is that?” she muttered.

“Ma’am,” a trooper said as he approached her. It was one of the legal-advisor troopers. Lightly armed and armoured, with a tablet computer practically fixed to his hands. “We have the, ah, heroes of the day off to the side. If you want to address them.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. He led her, but stayed close enough to talk. “What’s the situation here?”

“Multiple calls from pedestrians and passersby, they heard gunshots within the warehouse. One distressed call from a young woman whose car was wrecked, just over there.” He pointed to an alley next to the warehouse where a car was, indeed, a write-off. By the looks of it a van within the alley had rammed into its side. “We arrived on the scene to find the Boss and her, ah, brigade, as well as HRT-affiliate hero Glamazon on the scene. They captured a number of suspects.”

“I can see that,” Melanie said. The Boss had a real gift for finding trouble. “Any idea of the timeline yet?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Um, no ma’am. There’s a big gap between the call, and our arrival,” he said.

“Why’s that?” she asked.

“Initial reports didn’t suggest mask involvement. The first responders were the police. Um, it’s possible that the heroes here left, then returned.”

Melanie hummed. That was a little weird. “Why do you think that?”

“Well, they have ice cream.”

When she found the Boss, her many brats (was there another, new one?) and Glamazon, they were all grouped together next to a bus stop. The Boss was straight-backed and looked serious, with her lips in a thin line and what Melanie could see of her brows pressed together. She was holding a chocolate-vanilla swirl in one hand, partially licked.

The kids had ice cream too, though most of theirs was spread across their cheeks and hands and some on their costumes. The bear-girl, Ursa Minor, had her plastic bear mask lifted up so much to eat that Melanie was quite certain she couldn’t see anything.

“So,” Melanie said as she got closer. “What was it this time?”

The Boss shrugged. “They kidnapped my sis-- one of my companions.” She gestured to two of the girls, including the one that Melanie wasn’t familiar with and who didn’t seem to have much of a costume going on except for a half-mask and a lab coat. “And a friend too,” the Boss added.

The legal-trooper was noting things down, though she knew this was being recorded. “So, they kidnapped two kids off the street or something?”

“We were at the dollar store!” Bandit... one of Bandit, said.

Melanie rubbed her eyes. There was a lot she wanted to say. The Boss was being something of a thorn. But, on the other hand, how could you tell a young woman not to act to save her own sister.

The fact that at least one of the Boss’ brats was her sister was an open secret. Money was on two of the girls being sisters and the other being a family friend that just tagged along. Now there was yet another new girl.

It was common knowledge that Power Day tended to work out best for younger people, but that usually meant teens-to-young-adults, with the average age being something like twenty-one. The Boss and her crew were going to skew the entire statistics on their own at this rate.

The Boss nodded, and Melanie snapped back to attention.

“They kidnapped two of them, yes. We knew where they were since... well, keep this between us?”

Melanie touched the trooper on the shoulder, and he paused the recording. She knew he’d start it up as soon as he could. “Go on?”

“Bandit can see through all of her... selves,” the Boss said

Melanie nodded. That wasn't too surprising. A few clone-makers could see and sense through their own clones. Usually it came with a downside, like the clones only lasting a certain amount of time, or something like that. In this case, it seemed like Bandit was limited to three identical or near-identical clones of herself. That was probably for the best. The HRT got really twitchy when people had exponential powers.

“We’ll keep it to ourselves,” she said. “So, you knew where they’d taken her. Or one of her, anyway. Why didn’t you call it in?”

Glamazon looked to the Boss, then back to Melanie. There was something else, but the girl was being quiet about it. Maybe she could poke later.

“We didn’t have time? They have a torture room in there,” the Boss said. “We came as soon as we could.”

“Right,” Melanie said. What kind of mess was all of this? “What’d you find in there?” she asked with a gesture over her shoulder to the warehouse.

The Boss worked her jaw while eyeing the building in question, then she turned her focus back onto Melanie.

When had she gone from a shy, bumbling girl to someone she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet in a dark alleyway? There was something about the kid that had changed, or maybe that had become more obvious since they’d first met.

“Nothing happened that we couldn’t handle,” she said.

And that was that.

They asked a few more questions, got no answers, and then the girls took their leave, which left the HRT and Melanie with a whole lot more questions to ask.