“Clear!”
Newter set about securing Bakuda using zip ties, and Faultline strode into the room. Her movements and air exuded the same professionalism they always did when she was on a job, which made the bright red Etch A Sketch she held in her hands look all the more out of place.
She glanced my way before turning her attention to Masuyo, who was still convulsing quite violently. Clearly having triaged the situation, she asked, “Did you see what device Bakuda used to control the Tinkertech causing the spasms?”
I tried to speak but still couldn’t piece together how to make my mouth form the right sounds. Fortunately, while whatever Victor had done to me had sapped me of my understanding of how to talk, it had left my ability to write intact. Displacing the aluminum powder in the toy was far more difficult than simply writing, since my power really didn’t handle fine movements well, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to write with on hand. Besides, it had let me remotely convey what information I could to the crew, so the last minute purchase from a toy shop on the Boardwalk had been a very wise decision.
I gestured at the tablet, and she looked down at my simple, [No].
“Unfortunate,” was her simple reply. She could have been referring to my not seeing the Tinkertech, my inability to talk persisting, or even both.
“Bomber lady is secure,” Newter piped up. “Just an FYI, I’m really fucking glad no bombs went off. That would’ve been super bad.”
The thought of Newter touching Bakuda to disable her had very briefly crossed my mind earlier, but I’d been worried whatever dead man’s switch she had setup would account for that in some way, since it was my understanding that his power was pretty common knowledge. I’d never encountered a Tinker during my time with the crew, so my knowledge of how to deal with them was rudimentary, mostly based off of trawling PHO and what nuggets Faultline had mentioned in lessons. The main rule of thumb I had for a situation involving unknown Tinkertech was ‘Presume the worst about what it can do.’
Faultline shifted the Etch A Sketch to one hand and withdrew her phone from the myriad pockets hidden within her costume’s skirt. She tapped out the PIN, and a few taps later, the ringing tone began to quietly emanate from it.
A woman’s face appeared on the screen. I had no idea who she was, but her curly, dark blonde hair and makeup looked so perfect it bordered on unnatural. “I take it your bomb Tinker is sedated?”
“Yes. Meteor is safe.”
“Well I doubt you’d be quite so composed if she wasn’t,” was the mystery woman’s dry response. “To what then do I owe the pleasure?”
Faultline pressed a button on the screen as she walked over towards Masuyo. She knelt down next to her and aimed the back of the phone at the device attached to her chest. “It’s Bakuda’s and causing uncontrollable spasms. Any thoughts you can provide would be helpful.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you mad, Faultline. You can’t honestly expect me to dissect Tinkertech over phone footage of someone shakier than a Mexican jumping bean.”
“Anything at all could help,” Faultline repeated. “The last thing I want is to break it in half only to find out it’s fried her nerves.”
This woman was a Tinker? There was only one Tinker I knew of that Faultline would call in a situation like this. This lady had to be Brood, the Tinker who had created Ariel. I didn’t doubt Brood’s protestations—I doubted even Hero or Dragon, the world’s greatest Tinkers, would be able to pull it off—but fortunately, we had another example to work with.
I banged the short sword I’d carried with me from the roof on the ground to get Faultline’s attention, then pointed at my own chest before moving my finger to the red tablet in her hand, where I had written, [Same tech].
Faultline glanced at the tablet before abruptly crossing over to me and maneuvering the camera over the disk on my chest. “Meteor says this is the same tech that’s on M. If you think it’s safe to remove, then I can take it to a table and crack it open for you.”
“No need,” Brood said after several long seconds. “One did a search and found a hit. Lucky you, this is from Toybox. Or it was, anyway. Product of the late—”
“Is it harmful to remove from M?” Faultline cut in.
“The power source is located in the center. You’re safe to touch it from the outside, so use your power to break that. The seizing will stop, then you can remove it without issue.”
Faultline moved to hang up, only for Brood to add, “And do be sure to keep your bomber under until you can get your people to my lab. I imagine she won’t take being drugged very kindly.”
The call died with a tap of Faultline’s thumb, and she slid the phone back into her costume as she crossed over to Masuyo and laid a finger on the center of the disk. The blue and red light of her power briefly flared, and Masuyo slumped onto the floor with obvious relief.
“T-T-Tha-a-a-nk y-y-y—”
“Save your strength,” Faultline commanded, though not unkindly as she grabbed an ear bud from the pockets of her costume and pressed it into Masuyo’s ear. She quickly moved to me and broke the disk on my chest as well, then she reached up to her ear while handing me a bud. “Gregor, what’s the situation outside?”
I slipped the device into my ear just in time to hear, “ABB reinforcements have arrived, and most of the Empire’s henchmen have been killed because they are unarmed. The cape fighting outside is still contained to the roof and the parking lot, and Lung and Oni Lee are driving back the Empire capes.”
“Then it’s time we left as well.” She turned to me. “Gregor is with Labyrinth, and they’re on the opposite side of the building. Can you tell if there’s anyone on this side?”
I could feel two large weapons I guessed were assault rifles based on their size moving a bit down on the ground. Their movements were frantic, swinging from pointing at one area to another, shaking around a bit, then repeating the process all over. That didn’t necessarily mean they were the only ones there, since it seemed like every villain in this goddamn town had removed metal from their attire to make themselves invisible to me, but then, Gregor had said the cape fights were elsewhere.
[Two on ground], I spelled out before shifting the aluminum around a couple seconds later. [Guns - can melt].
She nodded. “Are you stable enough to carry yourself and M?”
It was a valid question. I’d flown our van with our entire team in it before, but I’d been in good health then. With the obvious extent of my injuries, I was unsurprised she had asked. I figured I could handle the two of us fine, so I nodded then pointed at Bakuda’s prone form, cocking my head to the side.
“Newter can carry her, and I’ll handle myself. The goal here is to vanish. Lung will go to Palanquin when he realizes we have Meteor and Bakuda, so we need to go back to the safe house. We’ll avoid the fighting by exiting west then going south. Gregor, Labyrinth, you two head south as well. Aim to meet up at the intersection of Chester and Lord Street and move as a unit wherever possible. If anyone gets separated, then get back to the vicinity of the safe house and wait for radio contact.”
“Roger, boss!” Newter said with a playful salute and grin, though I could see the tension in his stance.
I gave a thumbs up to show my understanding, and Gregor simply said over the comms, “Understood.”
“Gregor, Labyrinth, go now. Everyone else, I’ll make us an exit. Get ready.”
Newter scooped up Bakuda, making a point to stick his fingers down through her hair again, and I wrapped Masuyo using what metal I could safely scrounge up from the lab. Afraid of booby-trapped drawers or unstable bombs, I stuck to things like the hinges on the door, some nails in the wall, and the chair legs I had melted earlier. It wasn’t a lot, and by my estimation, it wouldn’t be quite enough to lift her without putting a bunch of stress on the areas I was lifting. I was about to get more material from the guns below us though, so that wasn’t an issue.
Faultline pressed her hand against the wall and held up three fingers on her other hand. One dropped down, then another. When the last one fell, her power flared across the wall, and it crumbled outward. I felt the guns snap up at the disturbance, but I had already ruined the internal mechanisms unbeknownst to the goons holding them. The guns flowed out of their hands in a stream that I quickly yanked up to us to fortify my grip on Masuyo. Newter had already shot out the opening with Bakuda over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and Faultline was almost done securing her climbing gear to rappel down. I lifted myself and Masuyo, and we flew out once Faultline began to descend. Despite being hampered by the unconscious Tinker, Newter was still little more than an orange blur as he swiftly dispatched the mooks with a touch, leaving them to collapse on the ground.
“Go!” Faultline ordered as she initiated the release on her climbing gear to tug it down. I flexed my power to bring it to her quickly and safely, so she was able to quickly follow us as we rushed towards the chain link fence framing the west side of the property. I made it part like water for us, and we all slipped through the opening and across the street towards an alley between two rows of townhouses.
I paled when I felt knives abruptly appear behind Masuyo and immediately yanked us forward fast enough that I nearly gave us whiplash. My caution was vindicated when I looked over my shoulder and saw an orb clatter to the ground where we had just been. It exploded into a sphere of a clear liquid that hung suspended in the air for a blink of an eye before collapsing under gravity, splashing to the ground and causing everything it touched to instantly begin dissolving.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Subdue him!” Faultline bellowed as her hands plunged into the pockets under her costume’s skirt.
Newter dropped our captive and dove towards Lee, but I could tell he had already moved by the sudden appearance of knives up above us on the roof of a dilapidated townhouse. Unfortunately, any hope I had that I could continue to track Lee vanished when he tugged off and tossed away the extra bandolier of knives he had donned when the Empire was arriving. He was already reaching for a new bomb, and I noticed that none of them were missing from the bandolier still on him.
I was already moving Masuyo and myself, anticipating another of Bakuda’s dangerous grenades would be tossed our way. I whirled around as we did so, scanning for where the next bombs might come from. I didn’t see where the true Lee had moved to, but I saw the bomb from the Lee on the roof sailing straight towards Faultline. Another Lee appeared across the alley on the next roof over and threw two, one at Newter and another at me. I managed to move Masuyo and me out of the way in time, slipping deeper into the alley next to the townhouse, and thankfully both my teammates were able to get out of the way in time as the bombs went off with varying results. Faultline narrowly avoided the one by her, which exploded into some kind of crazy distortion that hurt to look directly at, but she took it one step further than simply dodging and began rapidly tossing several objects all over.
I wanted to grab all of us and take to the skies where the bastard wouldn’t be able to follow, but the pain in my wounds was already beginning to get too overwhelming from all this sudden movement. I saw yet another Lee appear back by the fence with who knew how many more already lying in wait, but as he began reaching for his bandolier, Faultline announced over the comms, “Smoke.”
Right on cue, smoke began to billow out of the objects Faultline had tossed around. Far more importantly, two grenades fell to the ground practically at my feet. With them this close, there was literally no time to dodge, so I yanked the wall back in the factory out of elsewhere while scrambling to cover the bombs with a metal shell that I immediately shoved into elsewhere instead. The ground under my hastily constructed barrier burst into burning glass, and both of us yelped as the superheated substance exploded, peppering us with scalding hot shards. We collapsed to the ground as my concentration broke, and if I hadn’t already moved us away by sheer luck, then we would have fallen directly onto the slagged glass.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I clutched at my injured legs in agony, and I struggled to blink them away as I stared at what had come of Faultline’s smoke grenades. I wasn’t a weapons expert of any kind, but I was 95% confident normal smoke grenades didn’t put out anywhere near this much smoke. In the few seconds that had passed, they had practically become pillars of smoke that easily reached up to the rooftops Lee had been on. There were obvious gaps in between the opaque columns, but with how badly they interfered with my view of the area, I had to presume it was interfering with Lee’s ability to see. Hopefully that would put a hamper on his movements.
Apparently Lee agreed, though I had to say I didn’t care for his solution one bit. Bomb after bomb began to fall to the ground everywhere I could see, one right after the other.
“Scatter!” Faultline hissed over the comms. “Stay out of sight!”
I struggled to marshal myself, to just move, but trying to focus through the pain was like trying to run through chest-high water. I was able to move the metal on us, but my dexterity was shot, and we flew straight into the wall of the alley. We fell to the ground again, and I had to clamp a hand over my mouth and viciously suppress the scream of pain that threatened to slip out of me.
Something large swung around the corner of the alley behind us, and my worries of an ambush evaporated the moment I spotted, of all things, a giant, stuffed gorilla and lion. Though I had never seen Parian in her costume beyond the few pictures on her website, it was impossible to mistake the person riding the lion like a horse as it bounded down the alley towards us as being anyone else.
Thank fuck I called you, was my only coherent thought as her creations skidded to a stop next to us. I frankly hadn’t been sure she would come when I had hastily explained the situation by phone while Elle bought the Etch A Sketch—she had, after all, made it very clear that she wanted nothing to do with situations like this—but it seemed the threat to Masuyo’s life had managed to spur her into action after all.
“Hang on!” she said, her voice tight and frazzled as the gorilla scooped us both up in its arms. Being manhandled redoubled the pain in my legs, but at least my wavering concentration wouldn’t lead to us crashing again. The creature tucked us under one arm then began lumbering down the alley after the lion.
“S-South!” Masuyo told our rescuer as I tried to crane my head around the gorilla’s bulky bicep to check if we had been seen. After all, van-sized stuffed animals weren’t exactly discreet means of transportation.
Lee was still chucking bombs at the area with the smoke grenades, and the smoke was beginning to quickly dissipate as the explosions obliterated the sources of the spewing vapor. To keep him distracted, I reached out to the chain link fence we had passed through earlier and ripped it from the ground. I could feel where Faultline and Newter were, so I haphazardly tore the fence into sharp, jagged pieces and used them to create a hurricane of shrapnel everywhere I could reach while leaving pockets of safe space where I and my teammates were. The shrill screech of metal against metal filled the air, and Masuyo, Parian, and I all winced at the cacophony. Still, I couldn’t let up. It wasn’t neat, and it wasn’t pretty, but if it could keep Lee preoccupied, then I needed to keep it up.
I would have thought the sheer amount of things I was controlling would have been taxing, but it strangely seemed my power was perfectly content with it. Emboldened by the unexpected success, I didn’t stop there. I began tearing metal from everywhere I could feel, all thoughts of avoiding property damage foregone in the face of keeping us all alive. Cars, street lamps, dumpsters, and drain pipes all broke down and began bolstering my improvised storm. It was only when the scarf around my face slipped from my control and began to slide down that I realized just how much material I had grabbed.
We reached the point where the range of my power didn’t extend to the far side of the debris, and I abruptly realized Lee would eventually figure out exactly where we were if I kept it up—all he would have to do was follow it. I dropped the rest of the storm and held my breath in anticipation. Bombs were still going off, but the sound of explosions were well north and a bit west of us, which meant my group was clear, at least. Faultline was to our north but further east, and Newter…
Fuck.
I tried unsuccessfully to signal to Masuyo that something was wrong, but I couldn’t properly wiggle my arm free to gesture to her. Instead, I grabbed hold of the aluminum in the Etch A Sketch in Faultline’s pocket and rapped the toy against her leg.
Unfortunately, Newter spoke up, distracting her. “Gotta problem here, guys. I grabbed Bakuda, but I think Lee’s tracking her or something. I’ve been in and outta the sewers, zigzagging and doubling back, and I keep running into him. No way it’s chance.”
Judging by the rapidity of his belt buckle shooting back and forth, he was doing his absolute damnedest to lose the teleporter. I’d never seen Newter get tired from running, and I was glad for it. Anyone else definitely would have collapsed by now. Unfortunately, that was only half the problem, and Faultline needed to know the rest ASAP. I more aggressively slapped the toy against her leg a few more times, afraid she might be mistaking the movement as a side effect of her running.
“You’re at the location of the bombs?” Faultline confirmed. I felt her welder’s mask shift to look down as she turned to run west, and the Etch A Sketch moved from her leg to a bit below it.
Finally! I thought as I held my message against the screen. You were supposed to shake an Etch A Sketch to clear it, and the bounce caused by her jog would definitely have been enough to wipe it in ordinary circumstances, but I was fairly confident I was managing to hold my message in place. [Lung => Newter]
“Yeah,” he grunted out as a sound like thunder, likely a bomb exploding, rumbled in the background. “Tried to hit him with a water gun, but—”
“Newter!” she cut him off. “Lung is on his way to you!”
“Oh shit!”
I shifted my message to say, [Tell go west], while silently cursing both my inability to speak and the limited screen space on the Etch A Sketch. I needed to get back there to help him, but the gorilla’s arm was surprisingly strong. Moreover, prying it open would also cause Masuyo to fall, so I needed to get Parian to stop.
I could see a car parallel parked along the street up ahead at the mouth of the alley the gorilla was… Sprinting? Galloping? Moving down. I ripped it apart and hastily assembled it into large, bold letters suspended in air. [STOP!]
Parian’s inexperience with controlling creations this size was made very, very clear when the lion stopped too fast, causing the gorilla to collide into it. Masuyo and I were fine, held tight as we were against the gorilla’s chest, but Parian shrieked as the impact sent her tumbling off. Fortunately, we were almost on top of my letter by that point, and I managed to catch her before she slammed into the sidewalk at speed.
Faultline was giving Newter directions in my ear, but my focus was on Parian for the moment as she stuttered out, “W-Why are we stopping?” She was clearly flustered, though whether that was from her near injury or the general situation I had no idea.
I twisted the car remnants I hadn’t used to catch her into a smaller, longer message that I placed in the air between us. [Set me down, then you two get out of here.]
Her mask obscured her emotions, but I imagined it was confusion on her face when she glanced my way. The gorilla shifted Masuyo to its other arm and set me down, and I did the same with Parian. “Why aren’t you talking?”
“She can’t,” Masuyo breathed out. She still sounded awful, but she wasn’t stuttering anymore. At least one of us was recovering their ability to speak. “Meteor, I’m coming with you.”
“What?!” Parian blurted in sync with my previous sentence swiftly shifting into two bold letters, [NO].
“I might still be able to help!” she insisted as I took a moment to wrap my legs in a makeshift metal cast to keep them as stable as possible. It would probably hurt like a bitch to remove later, but I needed to minimize the chance of being distracted by pain.
[Faultline said safe house - Go], I spelled out as I ripped apart another car for materials. I needed everything I could muster if I was going to help my teammates.
“Mete—”
I took off, flying northwest as fast as I could while gritting my teeth against the flare of agony the sudden movement sent radiating down my legs. I didn’t have time for Masuyo’s protests—Lung was almost on top of Newter. He had been running mostly west but had also been zig zagging at random, likely to avoid Lee, which meant Lung had nearly caught up to him despite being slower. I could feel the scales coating Lung’s skin and spine as well as two large metal spears jutting out near his shoulder blades, but any attempts I made to hold him in place casually slipped off of him, just like what had happened with Miss Militia’s gun at Bayside.
Faultline’s welder mask was facing up and forward again as she hurried in Newter’s direction, so I jiggled the Etch A Sketch still in her hand and wrote out, [On my way - plan?].
She looked down at the message then asked over comms, “Gregor, Labyrinth, status?”
“We’re in the van and on our way,” Labyrinth replied. I could hear some nervousness in her words, which was understandable given her power was at its weakest right now, but there was still an undercurrent of determination in her voice.
“Meteor is en route and still cannot speak. I’ll try to relay messages where possible,” she huffed out. She wasn’t anywhere close to breathless, but unlike Newter, her power didn’t give her an unfair advantage when running. “Newter, focus on keeping yourself and Bakuda safe and keeping her under. We’ve never put someone under your influence through this much rigor, so touch her as often as you can to be safe. Gregor, Labyrinth, and I will aim to neutralize Oni Lee, so we can make a clean escape. Meteor, that means we need you to hold off Lung. He’ll continue to grow stronger in a fight, so contain him if you can, but otherwise just keep his focus off of us.”
Contain Lung, huh? Well, I’d done it once before. Whether I could pull off a repeat performance remained to be seen. Hopefully the Magic Lung Ball’s in my favor again…
A roar reached my ears, startling me. Not because I hadn’t been expecting one—after all, we were likely about to discover whether the rumor Lung becomes a dragon when he fights long enough was true. No, I was caught off guard by a roar coming from the south. A suit of armor atop a motorcycle rapidly pulled into my range, and I hurried to shake the Etch A Sketch.
[Armsmaster incoming].