I had to admit, having an odd schedule made me feel tired. I sure hoped it was doing the same for Handface. But worse. Unfortunately, any glimpses we got of him didn’t reveal his expression or much of anything. Most of the time, we got a few moments of him and very little else.
But gradually, Midnight and I were improving our control. We could pierce through his resistance to some extent, revealing the area around him. Alone, it worked fine, but together we sometimes revealed some or even all of the expected area around him. Even if it wasn’t for long, there was so much Calculator could do with tiny glimpses.
Once we saw out a window- not to the cityscape beyond, but just barely out the window a handful of feet away. “Interesting,” Calculator said. “North facing windows, and likely not directly next to anything else. Given the construction style of the building… hmm, I see,” he muttered to himself.
I wanted to ask what he figured out, but he would tell us when he actually had something. And while I didn’t think interrupting him would cause him to lose his train of thought, I supposed it was better to wait.
Midnight noticed something. “There’s a crack, here in the wall.”
“Good,” Calculator said. “That might go all the way through the brick. We can pick up that pattern from the outside.”
Unfortunately, while we got almost a full minute of non-blurry images that time, Handface eventually shook off both of our spells. “Ugh,” I said. “I’m so tired of this. Hopefully we find him soon.”
“That’s the plan,” Calculator said. “Oh, by the way. Someone delivered something for Shockfire. The doctors are quite excited. But that doesn’t mean you can neglect your work here. If you let up and Deimos gets a period to relax, things might not go so well.”
“I know,” I sighed. During this period of time, I had been thinking about who might help us out. Knowing what we knew about Handface, he still used sniper rifles and had poison breath now. Who would be good against both? First, I wanted Mono if he would help out. The poison shouldn’t be usable at great range, and I had to believe he was a better sniper. We weren’t planning to go easy on Handface, either. To that end, I was hoping Great Girl herself would be available. While she wasn’t strictly bulletproof, she was quite durable and I could enhance that enough. Though I supposed I should ask her about poison in particular.
If I could have literally anyone friendly, Swiss Arms would be great. I couldn’t imagine a full body cyborg didn’t have lung filters and the like. Rositsa? Could her sort of vampires be poisoned? I guess I could text her, but she might not want to get involved in a combat situation anyway.
Who else? Jim, maybe. He might not have to worry about vital organs getting holes in them, and his weird anatomy might not react to poisons meant for normal people. He should certainly be on the list. And then… oh! Sir Kalman might be good. Dwarves were hardy and poison resistant to some extent. He could also help with healing, and I’d seen him shrug off bullets with his enchanted armor. Maybe not from a high powered rifle, but I could add some security on top of that.
Shockwave would likely run into the same trouble that Sprint did, though I couldn’t be sure of that. Perhaps those very shockwaves could shove harmful gasses away? But only if they reasonably had somewhere to go.
Obviously Ice Guy, Acid Man, and Rocker would want to get involved. But how many people was too many? Would we give ourselves away? Or did Handface have a bunch of companions to worry about? Even though he was terrible he seemed to get people to work with him often enough.
I shook my head. That list probably needed paring down. It would happen on its own, depending on how people were available. They had their own things, after all. But if we never asked, we wouldn’t get anything.
Then my thoughts came back to myself and Midnight. “We’re really not poison resistant, huh?” I asked.
“... Nope,” Midnight said. “Can we do anything about poison?”
“Hmm. Maybe if it’s flammable?” I tilted my head. “Otherwise we uh… don’t get near it. It’s not an energy type, and gasses pass through Force Armor.” I scrolled through the spells we had, and what we could get. “Ooh, Water Breathing. We could wear buckets of water on our heads.”
“Or we could just get sealed suits?” Midnight said. “Like diving helmets or something.”
“Good idea,” I said. “We should ask about that stuff.”
Of course, we also had pestering to do. Couldn’t forget that.
-----
Apparently, it was actually kind of difficult to put a whole liver in someone. Fortunately, Shockfire’s body didn’t seem to show any early signs of rejection after the all day- or night, I wasn’t sure if I was on AM or PM hours- surgery.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Eventually Midnight and I swapped enough times of casting Scrying on our wonderful friend handface and enough time had passed that Shockfire was awake.
Ah, daylight. That answered one question. The rest of the squad was already there, and we were quite a crowd. But the doctors knew it was pointless to keep people away for longer.
“I assume you’ve been asked how you’re doing about twenty times already,” I said.
“Yep,” Shockfire grinned. “And the answer is great, thanks to you.”
I wasn’t one for false modesty. I also wasn’t interested in inflating Kendrux’s status for no good reason. It wasn’t really an inconsequential cost, but certainly one worth my friend. But no need to bring that up. “Glad it’s going well.”
“They said I’ll be out of here in a couple days,” Shockfire said. “Mostly to make sure my body is happy with my new liver.”
“It better be,” I said.
“Man, I almost wish I could get a new liver,” Rocker said. “But I’m not really up for all the effort this took. Or the getting shot part.”
There was only so much we could stand around talking about livers, so eventually the team trickled out into the hall. We had things to do, after all. And some of those involved planning an assault on Handface. Should we wait for Shockfire to recover? Well, even if he was released in a couple days, it would take longer than that before he was fit for active duty.
-----
“We found him,” Calculator said, with no preamble. “I believe he’s been hopping between safehouses every day or so. You’ll have to move out ASAP to make sure to catch him. Because of that, your team will be limited.”
I looked around. It was the old squad minus Shockfire. And Jim. “Is this all of us?” I asked. “No offense, Jim, we’re glad to have you.”
He waved his faux humanoid form inside his uniform. “Don’t worry, everyone wants Great Girl.”
“Which is why she is very busy,” Calculator replied. “And we couldn’t pick the timing. So as for this being it, that depends on if you can easily retrieve your dwarf friend.”
“Uh, it will take about half an hour. If he can show up,” I said. “I guess we can pop over to extra during that time?”
“That’s no good,” Calculator said. “However, during an emergency you can use Gate somewhere else, if necessary.”
“Oh. Great,” I said. “Still have to warn him.”
“I’d suggest doing so immediately if you want him.”
I sent the message. Something to the effect of a poisonous half dragon nemesis with powerful weapons trying to kill me, asking if he was available to come through a Gate at the Order of the Lion HQ. It would be a waste of mana if he couldn’t come, but at least we wouldn’t spend the mana on Gate if his reply was negative.
“It’s done,” I said. “What next?”
“You need to use Scrying,” Calculator said. “At the designated time. He might notice the lag otherwise.”
“So we do that, pull Sir Kalman through hopefully, then scurry out of here?”
“That seems to be your option. Of course, if the team is not feeling confident you can delay the opportunity. But I don’t think that would be wise.”
“We’re prepared,” Ice Guy said. “As long as we can get those gas masks.”
“They’re ready,” Calculator said. “Francois made sure they matched your outfits, if you were concerned about that for some reason. Well, I admit it will be more comforting for any surrounding civilians to see brightly colored ones. The rest of your outfit is meant to filter poisons that get absorbed through the skin, but don’t assume it can’t happen.”
“Don’t worry,” Rocker said. “I’m not going to stand in any gas clouds for fun.” To be fair, he was the one most likely to do it out of our group.”
“What about the building?” Midnight asked.
“I’ll show you. It’s fairly simple, on the surface. But it might have escape passages. He’s that type, after all. Otherwise we’d just bring it down on him and sort things from there.”
“Would that be okay?” I asked.
“Supervillain lairs don’t count unless they crash onto nearby structures at your own fault. Otherwise every time one self destructed we’d lose out big, and then no mercs would ever take jobs that have a chance for that. And heroes would have to take the risks. Besides, the city doesn’t want the inevitable code violations of the lairs sticking around.”
“Too bad we don’t have those Building and Safety Division guys here,” I said. “They’d snoop out any secret tunnels real quick.”
“Well, there are similar types here,” Calculator said. “But they’re not quite as bold for the most part.”
-----
We didn’t really have time to stand around chatting, so we Scryed on Handface- at least confirming he hadn’t left that particular lair yet. And I got a response from Sir Kalman.
“I will be armored and in place by the time you receive this reply.”
Midnight and I split the cost to bring him through. And then we had just about enough mana to Stoneskin everyone but Acid Man, leaving us at a bit more than ten mana each as we rode in the deployment vehicle.
Sir Kalman was definitely worth the thirty mana it took to get him. It just meant I’d have to use less other magic, which was fine. I had half a clip of bullets with Handface’s name on them. I mean, not literally. Pretty sure I’d just screw up the bullets if I did that. And I might shoot some at his associates.
He really wasn’t far. After all, he had been hanging around the same district to get a crack at us- and while he was a bit out of our normal zone of operations now, it was reasonable he’d moved around in the last week or so because of the constant Scrying. Hopefully he was very tired. And preferably alone and in a building with no escape routes.
Obviously that wasn’t going to be the case. We approached the building with generous alleys on either side of it, and the moment Acid Man stepped around the corner he got a hole in him. Which was why he was the one going first. Obviously we would have preferred reaching the building without being noticed, but even leaving the transport a couple blocks away Handface seemed to have gotten notice. But he was twitchy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have shot Acid Man.
Ice guy blasted the whole window with ice, trying to get inside the building and block further shots coming out. Then all of us rushed closer. I was tempted to call for Haste, but we didn’t have far to run and that would drain the last of Midnight and my combined mana.
Sir Kalman charged forward towards the door Calculator had identified for us before we approached, his armored dwarf body barreling through. If we had Great Girl, we would have gone through an arbitrary wall to avoid traps. Fortunately, that one only seemed to have smoke bombs. Maybe he didn’t want to collapse his whole lair for random intruders. But I was sure there would be more trouble.