I took the clothes and looked at them with the same disdain I would give spoiled food. A new costume. Great. On the one hand, I was about to be thrown headfirst into a fight with the E88, and it would be nice to be wearing something that could actually take a hit instead of my shirt dress and leggings. On the other hand, fuck the ABB. I had already had Octavia try to force me to be somebody else, and that was one time too many.

It seemed, however, fate had something different in mind for me today.

A radio on one of the gangers crackled to life, and though I couldn’t quite make out what was said from this distance, the tension in the radio holder’s posture and words as he grabbed the radio from his belt and barked something back painted a clear picture. He strode forward towards us and said, “Lord Lung, vans approaching. At least eight confirmed.”

Lung whirled around to face me, the fire in his eyes having grown. “PRT?” he demanded of his underling while he did his best to reduce me to cinders through his glare alone.

“Unmarked,” the mook answered, his eyes snapping back and forth between us. It was obvious he wanted to be anywhere other than near the two of us in the event a fight broke out but was too scared to move. By contrast, the unnamed cape who seemed to be in control of the rope creatures looked unperturbed by his own proximity. His mask would hide any facial give-aways, but his body language made it clear he was cool as a cucumber.

“I didn’t call the fucking PRT!” I carefully replied, holding back the urge to snap at him for fear of what he might do to Masuyo. “I would never put her life on the line. I played by your rules to a T.”

Lung turned ever so slightly towards the man with the radio and ordered, “Call the reserves at the alternate locations. Whoever it is, I want to hit them from both sides.”

As his underling scurried off while barking orders into his radio, Lung returned his focus to me and growled, “Can you reach the vans?”

“I don’t feel anything but normal traffic right now. They must not be in my range yet.”

“The moment you feel anything moving towards here, I want you to crush them. Do well, and I will overlook this slight.”

I just told you I didn’t do this! I wanted to snark. I bit my tongue to stop myself from verbalizing that, instead saying, “Y-Yes, Lung.” The truth was, I was bending his rules a bit, and the last thing I needed was for him to suss that out. The less I talked to the bastard, the less chances he had to realize what was going on.

I felt two long, curved metal items swing down towards us in sync with one of those ropey creatures from before, and the unknown cape abruptly chimed in, “I was going to give you these once you had your costume on, but I suppose there is no time to change now. Use them well.”

The beast spit two swords out at me. One was clearly a katana, but the other I only vaguely recognized as the shorter sword the original samurais wore. The sword’s name I wrote off as unimportant, but I did want to know one thing. “So what do I even call you? ‘Rope monster guy’?”

He artfully chuckled. Like, back of his hand to his mouth, gentle shaking of the body, probably fake kind of chuckle. “My creations are not made of rope, silly child. They are made of silk. And you may call me Shamichoro.”

Well that’s a fucking mouthful, I thought, but my attention was drawn outside by the sudden feeling of several vans rushing towards us.

I was torn with indecision. Was it the PRT in unmarked vehicles? The Empire, springing a trap on the ABB before they could do the same to them? It might even be the Merchants, though my limited knowledge of that gang suggested they were unlikely to mount a coordinated attack. Whoever it was, it was safe to say they meant the ABB no good, and that might be good for escaping with Masuyo, if I could figure out how to solve the whole ‘bomb in head’ problem. On top of that, if I crushed the vans now, I might as well be telling Lung exactly how far the limit of my power was. Melanie had preached the wisdom of keeping an ace up your sleeve, and I definitely needed every advantage I could right now.

And so I waited.

I swung the swords around and onto my back like I had worn my greatswords during my brief capture by the Eight, and Shamichoro tsked. “That is not how a samurai wears her blades.”

“I’m a little bit preoccupied watching out for these vans,” I bit out, playing up a look of intense concentration on my face. “You can teach me to be proper or whatever later, old man.”

I ignored his indignancy, as I kept my attention on the vans. A little closer… C’mon, just a little closer… The vans were just about a block away when I felt them abruptly begin to brake. It was now or never. “Got them!” I shouted for show as I began to crumple them far slower than I really could, careful to avoid the doors that would let my would-be allies out. I felt most of the doors swing open, and I flung the rest open for good measure, waiting just a second before properly crushing the vehicles.

The radio flared to life, and soon after the mook carrying it cried, “Empire! Some of them escaped Hitokiri crushing their vans!”

Empire. Well shit. On the one hand, I was glad it wasn’t PRT because I doubted Lung would believe my honest insistence I hadn’t called them. On the other hand, I had zero doubt those nazi fuckheads would definitely be out to kill me. Also, Hitokiri? Fucking really? Of course Lung was trying to change my cape name on top of forced recruitment.

“Get out there and clean up the survivors!” Lung roared, and the gangers around us all scrambled to comply, moving towards side entrances rather than the large bay gates. “Lee, Shamichoro—join them. Bakuda, secure the hostage and resume your work. Hitokiri—with me”

Bakuda roughly yanked Masuyo to her feet and marched her towards a stairway leading up to a suspended structure that appeared to be managerial offices of some kind. I couldn’t feel the bomb inside Masuyo, but that wasn’t a surprise, since I knew from experience that I couldn’t feel things like pacemakers inside of people. Melanie had told me it was the Manton effect at work. I followed at Lung’s heel as he walked towards one of the gates I hadn’t used earlier, and as Bakuda and Masuyo reached the metal stairs, I discreetly twisted some of the metal into a small patch that I slipped up the leg of Masuyo’s pants. She turned to look my way, having clearly felt it, but didn’t acknowledge it beyond that. We locked eyes across the distance of the building, and I hoped she understood that I would be keeping an eye on her.

Despite resisting it at first, she had somehow wormed her way into my good books. Would I have come otherwise? What if Lung had tried this back in September? I wasn’t sure what I would have done. Maybe it was best I didn’t know. I was confident I would have come now, even if Masuyo hadn’t grown on me. I don’t think I could stand the looks of disappointment from Elle and Gregor, if not Melanie.

“Raise the door,” Lung rumbled as we approached the bay, and I quickly raised it up high enough for us to pass under. It didn’t escape my notice he was growing bigger. Not a lot, not yet, but enough that I had to raise the door up a good bit to account for it. The first shots were beginning to be exchanged, and he ordered, “The Empire—stop their bullets from hitting our men.”

“I can’t,” I grit out.

“Do not lie to me,” he growled. “I have seen the video of you in the hospital.”

I knew the video he was talking about. The PRT had been damn near crucified for opening fire in an ER. “Yeah, you saw me stopping bullets from hitting me. It’s a proximity thing.” I debated for a second before tacking on, “I can wreck their guns though. Just say the word.” It wasn’t a huge extrapolation for him to determine I could do that much, and making myself useful would hopefully put me in his good graces. I needed to stay on his good side until I could make a move.

Besides, if the Empire was going to be of any help to me here, it wasn’t going to be because they brought guns.

“Do it.”

The two gangs were pretty clearly divided positionally, so it was a simple matter to reduce all of the Empire’s guns into slag. The ABB gangers noticed the opposing side’s predicament in fairly short order, and between that and the backup from Oni Lee and Shamichoro, several of the ABB’s foot soldiers got bold. I felt their guns move up and forward as they moved out from cover, likely thinking the danger over.

The idiots never saw it coming. Screams rang out that synchronized with their guns clattering to the ground, and I informed Lung, “Guns are toast, but something’s still hitting y— our guys.”

Lee teleported into our path and reported, “Empire capes. Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket.”

I could understand not feeling Hookwolf. I’d had my doubts I would be able to feel the blades of his wolf form. I was surprised I couldn’t feel Stormtiger or Cricket though, since the last I knew he had chains in his costume and she wore a metal cage and used scythes of some kind. At least, that’s what I recalled from my research of them back in September.

“More capes than that,” I disagreed, pointing up at the sky where what looked like concrete was moving towards the back of the building. Even though she was supposed to be in PRT custody, I had begun checking the sky the moment we were outside. “That’s gotta be Rune. Might be more—I can’t feel any metal.”

“Tell Shamichoro to handle the ones in the sky,” Lung ordered Lee. “Hitokiri and I will handle the others while you clean up the vermin.”

I was tempted to remind Lung I could go after Rune, but I held my tongue as Lee crumbled to ash. It would be an understatement in the extreme to say there was bad blood between Rune and I, and I needed to stay focused on the task at hand. “I can’t feel any of those three. I won’t be able to do anything to Hookwolf.”

“I will handle the wolf,” he grunted. If he had turned and tried to walk back under the door we had come through, he would need to stoop despite there having been a few inches clearance just a minute ago. “Take care of the others.”

I lifted myself into the air by the bands of metal I had wrapped around myself earlier, and shot out towards the fighting while running through options in my head. How could I stop Bakuda without setting off the bomb? She had threatened that if I tried to kill any of the ABB, the bomb would go off. That implied she had a failsafe in case she died, and I was inclined to believe her. She was, after all, the person who held an entire university ransom and thought that installing a bomb in someone’s head was a good idea. In theory my power could affect it if we cut Masuyo open enough to expose the bomb—that was a shudder inducing thought—but there was no guarantee Bakuda hadn’t made the damn thing tamper proof.

Would Brood be able to remove it safely? I wondered as I reached the sky over the fight. I had never met the reclusive Tinker myself, but if she could do the kind of intricate work it took to make Ariel, then surely…? I shook away those thoughts for now. Melanie could confirm what Brood could or couldn’t do later. For now, I had more immediate worries.

Namely the condensed air hurtling towards me.

I dodged around them and began to collect metal from the area, particularly the melted guns and the ruined vans. Stormtiger had his attention on me, but that probably had a lot to do with how bullets were flying off course whenever they passed by him. None of the ABB’s gunfire was landing on Cricket either, who was artfully dodging around any bullets that strayed too close. Below me, flames roared into existence as Lung torched a few skinheads that had been trying to sneak up on some of the ABB’s foot troops. Lung was already on his way to becoming monstrous, with metal scales beginning to emanate from his spine. Hookwolf was a whirlwind of blades across the area in the middle of a large cloud of ash, which I could only presume was the result of him eviscerating a bunch of Lee’s clones. He was definitely within my range, but as expected, I couldn’t feel any of the swarming metal that made up his body.

Priorities then. Focus on the Empire capes for now, try to think of a way around the Bakuda situation, and if I can distract the ABB capes using the Empire capes, and had managed step two, then rescue Masuyo and get the fuck out of here.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I formed the metal I had been gathering into a dozen large spheres and guided my makeshift ammo into raining down on Cricket’s and Stormtiger’s locations, but at the last second, all the spheres aimed at Stormtiger flew off course, and Cricket pulled off a crazy mid-air dodge before rushing an ABB mook and cutting his throat with one of her weapons. Ignoring Cricket for the moment, I tried grabbing Stormtiger’s legs and feet with the metal that had crashed into the ground, but he leapt into the air out of reach before falling down into a hover a few feet over the asphalt. He wasted no time in clawing at the air, sending a myriad of wind blades in my direction. These were definitely less in size and probably wouldn’t hit nearly as hard, but there was damn near a swarm of them. With nowhere to dodge, I was forced to form a shield between us, and I was horrified when I noticed how much blood was on most of the metal protecting me.

What the—? I was being peppered with attacks from Stormtiger again, and I grunted under the pressure of so much wind hitting my shield at once. I shoved the makeshift wall between us into elsewhere to free up my concentration, but before I could turn my attention to figuring out where the blood had come from, I was distracted by the low sound of grinding metal rushing towards me. I threw myself backwards, only narrowly missing a swipe from Hookwolf’s lupine form.

Lung was supposed to be handling Hookwolf, but I didn’t have time to figure out where my nominal ‘boss’ was. Hookwolf could apparently jump a very large distance, and unfortunately the arc of his fall put him landing on the roof of the building. I put on a burst of speed and shot straight up to try and put enough distance between us that he couldn’t hit me again. As I rocketed upwards, I caught a glimpse of Shamichoro in the corner of my eye and was surprised to find he only had one of his creatures with him.

I filed that away to puzzle over later as I was forced to once again dodge slashes from Stormtiger, now that the shield was no longer between us. At this rate, I was going to be fighting a war of attrition, and there were far more of them than there were of me. Something needed to give, and I figured I had just the thing.

“Hey blowjob!” I taunted as I grabbed hold of something a bit bigger. “I’ve got a question for you!”

Their only response was more wind blades and another leap from Hookwolf. How blasé. I was honestly disappointed at the lack of witty repartee.

I dodged another barrage of blades and jeered, “Didja ever wonder why my name’s Meteor?!”

I swore I saw Stormtiger’s eyes widen in shock as I hurled the better part of a goddamn crane truck his direction. It was definitely a figment of my imagination—he was much too far away—but god did it make him scrambling to get out of the way funnier. The whole thing was far too heavy for me to lift, and it still was even after I had removed the biggest hunk from it I could. I was tempted to grab another chunk from where it sat on the opposite side of the building, where it had been abandoned for who knew what reason, but I could only handle one of these at a time, and there was no need to complicate matters.

Between gravity and the acceleration I imparted it, my improvised meteor practically detonated the ground on impact. Asphalt went flying everywhere, and though Stormtiger and Cricket were able to respectively redirect and dodge a large amount of it, they weren’t able to avoid it all. The three E88 mooks in the area fared far worse with lacerations littering them when the dust settled.

My meteor though? It was just a huge ass chunk of metal. It came out just fine beyond some minor warping that I easily corrected with my power. I immediately lifted it back up and tossed it at Stormtiger. It didn’t have the same speed without the boost from gravity, but he was definitely the one on his back foot now.

I was deciding whether reshaping the meteor into a wider area would help hit him or not when the sound of an explosion tore through the tumult of the fight. I whirled around in horror and found not only was a decent chunk of the building’s roof missing, but more was crumbling and pulling away, seemingly being tugged down and in.

The distraction almost cost me. One of Stormtiger’s blades rocketed past me and cut my leg open. He was far enough away that aiming precisely was nigh impossible, but he didn’t need to. I screamed in agony as the damned thing burst apart, sending pain searing through my legs and throwing me tumbling head over heels for at least a couple dozen feet. I managed to regain control over the metal keeping me afloat, but the tug of the metal bands on my legs ripped another cry of pain from me and briefly filled my vision with spots. It was honestly a miracle that I managed to notice Hookwolf barreling towards me, and with a quick tug of my power, the katana at my back unsheathed itself and swung around just in time for me to shove it into elsewhere to block an attack on course to shearing my arm off.

Hookwolf immediately pressed the attack, and when I tugged the katana out of elsewhere to try and block with the other, shorter sword, it was ripped to shreds by Hookwolf’s power with a horrible, hair raising shriek of metal on metal. I made to fly away, but Hookwolf was already upon me again with another leap, and in a frantic last ditch defense, I repurposed the bands I was using to fly to block him again. I scrambled backwards as best as I could across the roof, trying to put some distance between us, and like the sadistic bastard he was, kept pace just enough to keep me busy. I was rapidly pulling the shield in and out of elsewhere to account for each new angle of attack while agonizingly dragging myself along, but he seemed perfectly content to simply stalk and strike at me just often enough to keep my focus on him.

“You know, I honestly didn’t expect to find you here,” he abruptly said, his voice that of a normal man. The sound of it coming out of that monstrosity was jarring to say the least. “Thought you were with the mercs?”

“It’s complicated,” I breathed out, unable to manage anything else as I struggled to keep up.

He chuckled. The bastard didn’t even sound winded despite the rapidity of his assault or all the fighting leading up to this. “Then again, I’ve never heard of them killing anybody. Let me guess: You got abandoned when you killed Othala, and you turned to the only people in the Bay who might be able to protect you.”

Wait, what? Someone punched me in the lower back, and I gasped as agony lanced through me. I collapsed to a heap on the ground as my legs buckled, and when I landed on my back, I saw Victor snarling down at me with unadulterated hatred. A massive, ugly scar ran along a large chunk in the middle of his exposed neck, and my mind raced as I tried to piece together how on earth he was alive.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. No, not even that. My mouth wouldn’t—couldn’t?—form the words. My eyes bulged in horror, and his lips curled up in a demented look of satisfaction.

“Stole her ability to speak, huh?” Hookwolf grunted as his lupine body casually stepped over. “I suppose that’s fitting.”

No. No, that wasn’t possible. They had to be lying! I grasped at my throat, not sure what I was doing but knowing I had to do something. That this was wrong—that they were wrong. They had to be!

“I gotta say,” Hookwolf said with a smirk as Victor retrieved a sap from his waist, “it’s nice when I can kill two birds with one stone.”

Victor reared back to lash out at me but lunged to the side when Oni Lee snapped into existence next to him and drove a knife towards where his ribs had been a moment prior. Hookwolf’s arm erupted into a whirlwind of blades that struck out at him, but I could already see another Lee several feet away harassing Victor with stabs and slashes of his knife. Sensing easier prey, he kicked the Lee clone away and started to turn back to me, but a hasty flick of my power made the abandoned short sword behind him slice through the side of his neck and a knife from the clone’s bandolier slash across his eyes.

Hookwolf howled in fury and swiped blindly in my direction, but I was already roughly yanking myself away, my hand clasped around my shield from before in a vice grip. The rough texture of the roof sent renewed waves of pain radiating through my legs and tore a rough scream from me. It seemed Victor hadn’t inflicted complete silence, for what that was worth. I skidded to a halt as the momentum from my frantic maneuver lost the battle against friction, and a glance down showed a bloody streak had been left in my wake. That was not a good sign, but at least Hookwolf appeared to be blinded for the moment.

With Victor occupied with fending off Lee, I wrapped my torso and arms with bands of metal again. Normally I would have wrapped my legs as well, but they were too injured to handle any more stress. The rest of me would just have to bear the increased load.

I was just starting to lift off the roof when Lee appeared next to me. “More capes below. Rune and Krieg. Lung orders you to backup Shamichoro and Bakuda.”

Are you fucking joking?! I wanted to scream at him, but the words refused to take form. A fresh wave of panic tore threw me. What was this? Victor’s power allowed him to steal skills, but he needed time to do that. I had been talking one instant then speechless the next. What if I could never speak again?!

Another Lee appeared, and only then did I realize the first had crumbled to ash. “Do not delay. Lung will be displeased.”

Fuck… Fuck! He was right, and I struggled to pull myself together. Lung had broken the rules several times over by now, and I would not bet against him triggering that bomb in the middle of a fight if he got pissed enough. Masuyo needed me now. I would have to sort out whatever the fuck was going on with me later. I grabbed the bloodied short sword from where it had landed on the roof and took off.

I could feel the metal I had placed on Masuyo’s back like a beacon, and I pushed myself as fast as I could bear towards it. When I reached it, I groaned when I realized she was still inside the building and at an elevated height—the suspended offices. I could have bashed the wall in with something heavy, but not only would that likely hurt Masuyo, Bakuda might construe it as an attack. Instead, I searched and found a regular sized door down at the ground level that led in. It was metal, so I didn’t bother checking if it was unlocked. I ripped the damn thing off its hinges and flew in.

The room inside was a complete mess, and not just because of the on-going cape fight. Centered under the hole in the roof was a void that was sucking in more and more of the roof, and three of Shamichoro’s creatures seemed to be trying to corral Rune, who was flying on a slab of concrete, into its effect. Shamichoro himself was seated on a fourth serpent, ducking and weaving around one of the ABB’s vans, which was being flung to and fro in the air via Rune’s power. Despite his mount’s frantic maneuvering, he was strumming away at his string instrument with a surprising intensity, and I could just barely make out the melody he was playing.

Krieg was off to the side dressed like a nazi stereotype literally come to life, and unlike his flying comrade, he was on the ground. Though he was definitely keeping up constant movement away from the void, he didn’t seem to be struggling overly much with that. Likewise, he seemed to be having no trouble dodging the beast attacking him, which was moving far more sluggishly than its companions. His power as I recalled it had something to do with changing kinetic energy in the area, sort of like Assault but without the touch aspect, which meant he was likely the cause for the beast’s strange behavior around him.

“Hitokiri!” Shamichoro called out as Rune swung at him with the van again. His serpent abruptly split in two, and the one he wasn’t on batted the vehicle away with a flick of its tail. “Get Bakuda and get her where she tells you! Go!”

I wanted fuck all to do with what looked like a literal black hole, so I quickly flew towards the stairwell I had seen Bakuda and Masuyo disappear up earlier. In the corner of my eye, I saw Krieg shift towards me, and something whizzed past me, painfully clipping my arm. I immediately melted the short sword I had brought with me into a shield big enough to cover me and shoved it into elsewhere. I heard several more projectiles smash into my shield, and with my attention freed up, I grabbed one of the bay doors and tore it down before grabbing my meteor from out in the yard and yanking it towards us. There was more than enough metal there to form a wall between us that completely obscured the nazi caricature from my sight, and I promptly swapped the items around in elsewhere so the wall was immutable instead.

With my position properly covered, I resumed my movement to the stairwell. The door at the top sprung open just before I arrived, and as I started to move through it, something hit me in the chest. Every inch of me was suddenly spasming, and I fell to the ground in the offices. My face smashed into the ground cheek first instead of nose first by some miracle, and I was treated to the sight of Bakuda looming over me.

“My hero, come to save me,” her voice modulator said. “My thanks for the effective cover. It should give me enough time to do what needs to be done.”

What?

She reached under me and hauled me by my armpits a bit further into the room before dropping me in the middle of what was obviously a Tinker’s lab. Miscellaneous supplies were strewn all over with seemingly no organization in mind, intermingled with the same spherical objects Lee had been wearing. Masuyo was in the room, but she was spasming just like me. A device was prominently attached to her chest.

“You know, you’ve been just the worst thorn in my side. Lung has been obsessed with you since you beat him, did you know? Now, it hasn’t all been bad. I didn’t mind the orders to design around your power when making my creations. Honestly, I was inspired. Got some neato ideas out of all that.”

She snatched something off one of the tables then rifled around in a drawer for a moment before turning back towards me. In one hand she had a small, circular device that looked to be a centimeter or two thick at most, and in the other, a knife and some kind of kit.

Fuck.

“Problem is, he’s not being smart about you. That whole stunt around your club brought the Protectorate down hard on us, and it didn’t even work because of the blackmail. Then takes my idea for forced recruitment and uses it for this before he works around the blackmail so it isn’t a threat. And finally there’s this whole grand song and dance number he’s thrown you for your recruitment. He didn’t do that shit for Shami, and he sure as fuck didn’t do it for me.”

C’mon.

She knelt down beside me. “You beat him—humiliated him, even—in front of his people, and instead of properly reminding the rank and file why he’s the goddamn boss through fear, he’s choosing to reestablish himself as the big guy at the top by recruiting you. He’s cowing, and that’s un-fucking-acceptable. If that’s where things are headed, then it’s time we had a change of leadership, don’t you think?”

“Now then. You’ve got two choices,” she hissed, echoing her words from earlier tonight. “You can either behave when I turn this off, so I can cleanly put this bomb in your back, or you can be a bitch, in which case I cut you open when you’re twitching around. I’m sure the wound and stitches will be just fine if they’re all jagged, don’t you?”

I doubted I could respond, even if my mouth was able to form words. The spasming just wouldn’t stop. I hope you have a plan, Melanie.

The spasming stopped, and she leaned forward, knife in hand. “Here we go.”

Because we’ll probably only get one shot at this.

A chair across the room hit the floor as I melted its metal legs. Bakuda’s head snapped that way, and she growled, “Hey! Do you have any idea—”

GO!

A flash of orange swung silently through the top of the door frame onto the ceiling of the lab then leapt forward with blinding speed. Newter landed with his hand on her exposed hair, his fingers jutting through to touch her scalp.

She slumped over. No bombs went off.

“Clear!”