Chapter 23:

It took three days before they were ready to go after the Villains again.

Tracking the Villains down was the easy part since they could track the cube and one of the Villains seemed to have it. The only catch there was for the first day whichever Villain had the cube seemed to still be keeping it on them. The signal for the cube would seem to come from somewhere in Haven, before moving West later in the day.

Not wanting to escalate things and track the Villain down in what was possibly their house, they were forced to wait until the Villain settled somewhere in the West. Once that happened they finally went and tracked them down.

Unsurprisingly, they were led back to the same warehouse district where the Villains had created a lair last time. There was a reason that part of town was considered dangerous, and it was large enough that searching all the possible empty locations there would have been both time-consuming and very risky. After all, it was Syndicate Territory and Warp Master’s gang was hardly the only Syndicate Gang in the area.

Thankfully, they didn’t have to deal with all that, and soon found the warehouse that the cube had been taken to. And after a bit of surveillance, they were able to verify that it was indeed the new lair.

Unfortunately, though, there were unforeseen complications with the Villain's new hideout. That being that the warehouse wasn’t empty like the previous one. Instead, it seemed to be in active use by what may or may not have been a legitimate shipping company. This meant that they had to worry about catching possibly unrelated civilians in the crossfire if they started a fight, as well as avoiding more people when doing surveillance.

It made it so that they’d have to be just that much more careful. And it also made surveilling the location all the more important, to see when it could potentially be empty of civilians but still have Blitz inside.

Katie’s drones made that a relatively simple thing to do. However, she did have to create some extra small scout drones to infiltrate the warehouse and stay for several days without being caught by any of the workers or Villains. There was also one more complication to their surveillance, that Katie figured out after analyzing the footage of their first encounter with the gang.

It was why even now, during the third night of surveillance and the first night that they might actually make an attempt, none of them were even looking in the direction of the warehouse. Instead, on top of a midrise a street over camped out on the roof, they looked over surveillance footage. Purposely not live surveillance footage.

It was a bit like the first time they went after the cube. Except now Ben had access to Katie’s Bugbot cameras and they were a bit farther away. And Resolve was there. And Ben and Katie were wearing very different outfits.

To avoid attaching their Heroic identities to all this—at least any more than they already were since Blitz had seen Katie that first night—they ended up getting new costumes. Since Dark Resolve didn’t have the same worries, as apparently she was already a vigilante, they ended up deciding to make costumes similar to hers so they’d match. It would make things more confusing for the enemy in a fight, and hopefully leave little details for Blitz to give to the authorities once he was given over to them.

Ben now wore a black version of his super suit, with a more normal-looking bulletproof vest on top, with Katie’s altered anti-grav Bugbot clinging on top of that, along with a sleek black and grey trench coat on top of it all. It was a bit much, but didn’t restrict his movements enough to be a bother. The final touch to his costume was a domino mask instead of his normal one, along with a dark brown wig with longer hair instead of his normal short black hair.

The domino mask was apparently Tinker Tech and a relatively common design. Which made sense. Ben had always thought they seemed too small to really protect people’s identities, but apparently most Supers who used one wore Tinker Tech ones that somehow messed with the appearance of the shape of the face.

Katie wore something closer to Dark Resolve’s outfit, with a detachable cloak connected to her cowl to make her altered Bugbot armor look a lot less noticeable. Her undersuit was black as well, and she now wore a full-face mask with a smooth black surface.

Of course, just new outfits weren’t enough. Ben had a rather distinctive power and Katie’s drones were distinctive as well. Katie dealt with her issue by simply changing the exterior design of her drones, along with changing the way she intended to use them. Apparently with how her workshop was set up, it wasn’t all that hard to change a lot of them at once in a reasonable amount of time.

As for Ben, he needed some new equipment to hide his gems. And also paint.

“So how’s it going,” Ben asked, sitting down next to Katie after getting up to stretch his legs. He picked up one of the tablets she’d lent him and Resolve and scrolled through the delayed video feeds from the Bugbots. Like last he checked, there were still some civilians working but they seemed to be getting ready to leave. “Any more of them show up or is it still just the four?”

“One more showed up,” Katie said with a frown on her face. “They're all just hanging out in their hideout spot, but thankfully the one with the observation power still isn’t here. If we’re lucky she’ll stay away tonight and we can make our attempt.”

Ben frowned at that as he found the feed into their hideout. There was indeed a fifth person now. This one was unfamiliar and wasn’t listed in what Katie found out about the gang either. It was a man and he was walking around with a nightstick spinning in his hands. He had a black and gray costume with a cowl and a utility belt. “Isn’t five a bit much? Shouldn’t we wait for a better chance? There are at least 2 B-Ranks including Blitz.”

Katie turned to look at Ben before looking off to the side where Resolve was. She was looking at a tablet too, but was pacing back and forth like an angry panther. Her body was tense and it looked like she was ready to spring into action and bisect someone at any second.

Given the fact that Blitz was in the hideout and she could probably see him, Ben couldn’t really blame her.

Katie turned her gaze back to Ben. “Obvious issues with holding back aside, five isn’t unreasonable for us. There’s also rarely any less than this at their hideout. At least not when we’ve seen Blitz there. The plan also isn’t a full-on fight and given what we’ve observed so far, I doubt they’ll chase us too hard if we get away with Blitz in tow. We’ll also have the element of surprise and I got a full complement of drones on me. Not to toot my own horn, but you’ve seen what I can do. There are few B-Rankers I’d be worried about fighting, and holding off two while we escape is very doable.”

Ben nodded at that, if a little reluctantly. She wasn’t wrong. About anything she mentioned. Ben had seen footage of other B-Ranks, and while seeing Katie in action in real life probably skewed his perspective a bit, she was very impressive.

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As for the Blitz thing, after surveilling them for three days it was clear that he was not well-liked by his colleagues. One of those colleagues was a young woman who seemed rather terrified of the man. She was also one of the known members of the gang, going by Flamelium, and was a C-Rank Tinker who made potions and had an alchemy theme. And considering the comments made indicating that she might be Blitz’s girlfriend, that said some rather horrible things about that relationship.

The rest though, either ignored him or actively disliked him.

In just the past two days, there were two fights between Blitz and the Monster Projector Villain Mononoke. One because of how Blitz was treating Flamelium. Another was him trying to push around another one of their C-Ranks before Bounce stepped in and then Mononoke as well. Chances were that if they ended up capturing Blitz, the others would only try and step in to preserve their new gang’s rep instead of actually caring about Blitz.

Still, Ben would have liked for things to be more in their favor. Three against five, with them being the three was hardly ideal. But it might be the best they were going to get.

“Alright, then should we head out now?” Ben said, flicking through the feeds again. He could see their main hideout and most of the Villains were just hanging out there, sitting on couches and watching TV. There was also another monitor in the room that showed a bunch of different camera angles. Apparently, the hideout was guarded 24/7 since Flamelium was setting up a lab there.

“Soon. We’ll wait just a bit longer,” Katie said, appearing to look off into space as she did something on her personal interface with a few taps on her wrist. “I’m scanning through our old audio logs and I want to make sure they don’t have any major plans for today. Also, they kinda have a guard rotation and another fifteen minutes should be long enough that no one else should arrive. I want to make sure that one Villain with the observation power is definitely not here cause trying to sneak in and never looking at her would be a hassle. Why don’t you tap into the audio feed and listen in on them to see if they mention expecting anyone else tonight?”

“Alright,” Ben said, pairing the tablet to his Bugbot earpiece and turning on the sound. Soon he could hear the TV playing in the Villain’s hideout and some rather bland smalltalk.

After a couple of minutes of listening to nothing important, Ben couldn’t help but turn his attention to Resolve again. She was still pacing back and forth, tension radiating off of her. Seeing her like this, Ben wished there was something he could do to help, even though he knew there really wasn’t.

Ben’s own experience with loss was just similar enough to realize how little he could truly relate to what she went through. Technically, he’d lost more, having lost his father, mother, and brother. But you couldn’t really compare things like that with numbers. He’d also been much younger, and now almost a decade had passed.

He couldn’t imagine what it would be like if it happened now or even two years ago when he understood so much more about the situation. Nor could he understand just how much it would burn knowing the reason for the tragedy was still out there, living life while his family was dead. At least the monster that took his family away got the same fate that all monsters got in the end.

Death.

Ben frowned and looked back down at his tablet. He took in Bliz hanging out on the sofa. His arm was around a very uncomfortable-looking Flamelium, who he’d seen looking extremely relieved whenever she had to get up and do something in her lab. Just the sight of the man, drinking beer and watching TV like he had no care in the world, made Ben’s stomach clench.

Someone like him shouldn’t be allowed to roam the world freely. Hell, someone like him didn’t deserve to liv—

Ben closed his eyes and stopped his train of thought. It was bad. Wrong. Not heroic. Not how his brother, a true hero, would think. He couldn’t let his anger get the better of him. Resolve was angry enough for all of them. Ben and Katie had to be the calm ones. They’d put Blitz in jail and let justice take place as it should… After they find out who else was part of what happened to Crimson Judgement.

Taking a soothing breath, Ben opened his eyes again and tried just to focus on listening in on the Villains.

“So… Did anyone watch the game last night,” the man with the nightstick asked as he sat down on the couch. Bounce was next to him and Mononoke was on a single seater to their right. Blitz was on the other couch across from Mononoke and Flamelium just walked off to do something in her lab. Last he looked it looked like she was just checking over what looked like a chemistry set.

“No one cares about the Cascade Champions,” Mononoke said with a groan. “Like most professional sports are boring enough, but even I know the CCs suck ass. Their name is also horrible, too. Sounds like a Superhero Group name but they just throw around a pig skin and suck at it to boot.”

“Yeah,” Bounce said, shaking her head. “I’ve got better things to do than watch some football. The men are nice to look at but the game… Ugh. Boring. Maybe if I couldn’t beat all of them single-handedly it might be more interesting but it’s like watching toddlers toss around a ball.”

“Ugh, I work with children,” The nightstick man said, shaking his head.

“Well this child can kick your ass,” Bounce said with a laugh, leaning back and putting her feet up in the man’s lap. “So what does that make you, old man?”

“Strength doesn’t make you more mature,” the nightstick man said with a scoff before pushing the woman’s feet off of him. Then he turned to the other man in the room. “What about you, Blitz? You catch the game?”

The red and black-clad man scoffed. “You’re kidding, right? Watching shit like that is boring as hell for me. It’s like watching people play in slow-mo.”

Nightstick man just sighed at that and shook his head.

Meanwhile, Ben tuned them out for a second to let Katie and Resolve know about what he just heard. It wasn’t definitive, but it’s likely the nightstick guy was just a C-Ranker given that Bounce was the same. He got a distracted acknowledgment from Katie and a grunt from Resolve.

After that, he turned his attention back to the feed. And his attention grew as he heard them finally talk about something interesting. And worrying.

“So, about our next job…” the nightstick man said after some silence. “Are we really doing this? Isn’t attacking a school gonna bring the hammer down on us?”

Mononoke shook her head. “Hardly. And we’re not attacking a school. We’re robbing it. And we’re doing it before school starts anyway so no kids will be involved. People will only care as much about it as any other Villain robbery.”

“What if there’s… I don’t know, a summer program or something?” the nightstick man continued to ask. “What then? And doesn’t Indomitable High have some A-Rank Heroes teaching there? Like Warp Master’s impressive and all, but isn’t that a bit much? And what are we even robbing anyway? It’s a school. Like a Super school sure, but like, what do they have there that they don’t have anywhere else?”

Mononoke sighed and shook her head. “There’s a reason we’re having a meeting with everyone tomorrow, Knight Stick. Warp will go over everything and explain it all. But not all the teachers will be there when we go. And it won’t just be our gang either. It will be fine. Besides, even I don’t know everything yet, so wait until tomorrow when Warp gets here and ask then.”

Knight Stick—which was apparently the guy's name—went on to complain a bit more before Mononoke placated his worries enough. Ben barely heard the rest of that as he processed what he’d heard before. These Villains were gonna rob the school he was going to go to soon…

They would have to do something about that, but for now, he had to focus on the here and now. And considering what Mononoke had said, today might be the better day to move ahead with their plan. The Villains had a meeting tomorrow, but today it seemed to be just them. And Warp Master didn’t seem to be likely to show up today.

Still not ideal but it really might be their best chance.

Ben relayed all of this to Katie and Resolve, to see what the two girls thought about it.

Resolve’s reaction was very predictable. She wanted to go now.

Katie took longer to decide as she considered things, but ultimately she decided that they would try it tonight. Nothing she found in the audio logs indicated that the observation power girl or Warp would be here tonight. And that was her greatest worry.

So with the two in agreement, and Ben in partial agreement, they decided it was time. They would make their attempt tonight.