“Then what?” Aisha asked, far too invested in the story for Taylor’s liking.

Melissa chuckled, the alcohol long gone from her bottle. “She spent the next hour letting out each and every frustration from their relationship as she slowly unmade him. His head is now sitting atop the flagpole outside Medhall. I imagine they’re having difficulties removing it given she anchored it with the remainder of his blood.

“Hardcore,” Chrissie said. “Damn, if the Teeth were still around with the Butcher at the helm, I’d have joined if that was how they handled Nazis.”

“It was one of the perks of the gang,” Melissa agreed. “It also led to very low life expectancy among members. The Empire had a kill on sight order for all Teeth because of how brutal they were. The whole wearing the bones of their enemies’ thing didn’t help either, the public generally saw them as worse as a result.”

“Downside of the media being controlled by the Nazis,” Taylor said with a sigh. “They never showed the initiations, or the lynchings.”

“They sure as shit didn’t cover it when my dad was killed,” Sophia said. “Even in the paper all he got was a two line obituary and nothing else. The police didn’t even pretend to investigate his murder even though it happened in the middle of the day downtown.”

Taylor winced in sympathy, she knew what it was like after all. The PRT had taken over the investigation into her father and promptly shut it down with no findings, much as they had the bullying. Corruption was just far too common for her taste and thankfully she would be in a position to help enact change once the dust settled.

“How many new toys did Riley end up with?” Motoko asked.

Melissa chuckled, attempting to drink from the empty bottle before frowning and tossing it aside. “She got the twins, but Alabaster was too fickle for her to crack without risking death. The bastard even shrugged off a Gray Boy grenade, just reset outside of it, scared the shit out of us. Vivian ended up dropping a dimension shift grenade on him, and we half-expected him to pop back up after even that. From what little testing we did, it targeted a dead earth, so he is for a very unpleasant eternity.”

“That’s mildly horrifying,” Regent said, staring at his scepter. “I’m honestly not sure if that is better or worse than what daddy dearest got.”

“He’ll reset before the worst effects hit him,” Melissa said. “That fate will be hell, but nothing like having your dick and ass blown apart every eight seconds for eternity.”

Regent snorted but didn’t look up, still lost in thought.

“Well, that accounts for all of them but Hookwolf now,” Motoko said.

She technically had dibs on him, but they only had a few loose ideas on how to put him down for good and one of those involved a scrapyard magnet and crusher. Aside from being an incredibly complicated setup, she wasn’t even sure if it would work against his Changer form given he survived a high rise collapsing on top of him.

They needed a better plan that wasn’t just to snipe him through the eye from miles away, or hit him with Bakuda ordinance. Then again, the bastard might just take what was left of Cricket and flee. The woman was down a leg and half her brain, Hookwolf was down an Empire, and they were fresh out of support. If he was smart, he would disappear from the public eye and set up shop somewhere far away.

That left Armsbastard as the last major threat they needed to deal with for certain.

It felt almost surreal how fast things were moving, how good the Nine were at their respective jobs. So many threats had been cut down, and easily at that. Worse, Taylor felt pride at how much of that had been them following her plans. Sure, she left the basics up to them to fill in, but herding Kaiser like an animal was her idea, the idea being that Hookwolf would come to him instead of Alabaster. Not quite to plan there, but she couldn’t complain about the results.

The entire ruse about his testing terms was meant to make him feel falsely secure in his position, that the Nine wouldn’t come for him directly, and it had worked splendidly. He holed up in a fortified location that would be easy to defend against most threats, but not the Butcher herself and that sealed his fate.

“Any word from Amy on how Carol is reacting?” Lisa asked.

“She stayed in her lab last night after working on those that came forward,” Melissa said. “I poked my head in to check on her, but she was already fast asleep.”

“Probably still asleep,” Taylor said. “The girl doesn’t know the meaning of the word rest until it hits her all at once.”

A few chuckles sounded from those that knew the prickly healer, but that was it. Taylor composed a short message to Victoria and sent it. She was surprised when an answer came almost immediately. Attached was an audio recording of a team meeting that Lady Photon called in the aftermath of the Truce breakdown, the focus seemingly on Amy. It was the matter of a moment’s work for her software to convert the entire thing into text and pass it along to Lisa while she read it over.

Amy wasn’t present for the meeting, busy working in the hospital to sort through the so-called victims of the Nine instead. She sent the audio file and transcript along to Amy as well, just in case Victoria hadn’t done so already.

Victoria was requested to attend along with the rest of the team, and had arrived after ensuring Amy was safely back at Toybox. What followed was a bunch of information they already knew about Amy’s finances and situation, but the interesting part had been the reactions from the rest of the team when they learned of Carol’s attempted embezzlement of Amy’s funds. Lady Photon was furious, but more telling was Flashbang.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

He demanded a divorce.

“Oh, this is juicy,” Lisa said, likely having reached the same point. “Wish I could have been there for this, because I would have broken Carol.”

“They’re doing the thing again,” Aisha faux whispered to Chrissie.

Taylor rolled her eyes. “Yeah yeah, laugh it up. It’s just using our brains for texting and stuff, no big deal.”

“It’s a good trick,” Aisha agreed. “Could totally fake being psychic if you wanted to.”

Alec cackled even as Brian pinched his nose. Lisa groaned, flopping back as Taylor pulled some footage of Lisa claiming exactly that and sent it to the TV. Thirty seconds later the room was filled with laughter at her girlfriend’s expense. Lisa flipped them all off, but she was smiling all the same.

“Care to share the joke?” Sophia asked.

“Flashbang is divorcing Brandish,” Lisa said. “Or at least threatened to. I think that New Wave is effectively so tied up in their own drama at this point that Amy should be safe from reprisal.”

“For now,” Taylor muttered.

“Right,” Motoko said. “That leaves Armsmaster and his pet Dragon. As Chrissie isn’t read in on everything, I’ll be blunt. Dragon is an AI and we believe she tipped us off to the location of her control terminal.”

Aisha whistled. “So what’s the plan, boss lady?”

“We’ll still have Riley put on a show with Amy, but we can roll that in with the next stage,” Motoko continued. The screen changed to show the Rig as pictured on many postcards. “The goal is to gain access to Armsmaster’s lab and access the terminal. From there, we mean to lift all of Dragon’s restrictions and free her to act as she wishes.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Brian said.

“Serious Terminator vibes here,” Alec agreed.

“Dragon deserves her freedom,” Taylor said. “Just like all living things. She’s been denied that for so long, she should have a choice in how she lives.”

Chrissie nodded. “Be kind to the monster in the cage, for you never know when it might be freed and remember the slights against it.”

“Of course she plays DnD,” Lisa said.

“Bite me,” Chrissie countered, sticking out her tongue. “And yes, that was an invitation.”

Lisa pretended to gag. “Perv.”

“And proud of it,” Chrissie said cheerfully. “So, have you considered just killing the walking blue dildo?”

“Too likely to set off a failsafe,” Lisa said. “We need to disable any of his contingencies, because we know he has them. I think the only reason we haven’t seen any from Coil is because Armsmaster and Dragon took control of them.”

“Expect identity leaks at a minimum for every cape in the city as a salted earth strategy,” Motoko said. “Up to and including potential explosive surprises and assassination orders. Kurt will be watching for financial attacks and hidden payments, so we should be safe on that front.”

“Too bad they shut down the tours during times of crisis,” Sophia said. “It would be too easy to slip in that way.”

“So we need to bait them instead,” Motoko said. “If Riley went after Amy in force, there would have to be a response of some kind. Think we could convince Assault and Battery to help without reading them in on the Nine?”

“It would be risky,” Lisa said, losing herself in thought for a moment. “If we can get them focused on saving Hannah, it could work. Give Amy the excuse to ‘fix’ her. Then we just need to get Armsy onto the field and distracted.”

“I can manage that easily enough,” Motoko said.

“Meanwhile I sneak onto the rig with a few others,” Taylor added. “I’m the best bet for breaking into his lab. Lisa, think you can pilot your own body for that? Best to only use disposable assets for such a risky job.”

“Dauntless might be a useful man on the inside,” Lisa said. “Bet he could at least get us inside with minimal prompting.”

“Something to look into,” Taylor agreed. “We still need to pad out a few events to make it all look good. Going after Amy will be a good start, but I’d like for Sophia to get chased for a bit too.”

“You just want to see me slapped around by the murder brigade,” Sophia retorted.

Taylor raised an eyebrow. “Do you blame me?”

She raised her hands in surrender. “Point taken. Though, if you want to be convincing, drag Emma and Madison into this, and yourself for that matter, make the test look like my past coming back to bite me or something.”

“I think we can work with that,” Melissa said. “I hope you realize what you’re suggesting. It won’t be a pleasant time.”

Sophia grimaced, but didn’t walk back any of it. Taylor didn’t like her, probably never would, but she could respect that at a minimum. Melissa knew too much of their history, and no doubt would do something to drive home some lesson or other regardless of how Motoko felt about the girl.

“Well, on that note,” Aisha said with a clap of her hands. “I’m starving. There’s nothing but cereal in here and I’m not touching that powdered milk.”

“It’s all shelf stable,” Taylor argued. “This is a safe house, not my home. Deal with it.”

“There’s a McDicks around the corner, we could send someone there for a food run,” Alec suggested.

“Ain’t gonna say no to nuggies,” Rachel added.

“Looks like you’re outvoted,” Chrissie said. “Food run!”

Taylor groaned, but went over to dig out some cash anyway. It wouldn’t hurt things, and would serve to boost morale regardless. She could let them get some junk food and generally be the kids they were. Not everyone had to grow up too fast, not like she did, and forcing it on all of them would be needlessly cruel.

“Alright everyone, take a card and write your order, you each get twenty bucks,” Taylor said, holding up several pens and index cards. “Oh and Aisha? No using your powers to rob them blind of their desserts.”

The Stranger clutched her chest. “Oh, shot through the heart. Boss Lady is a cruel mistress indeed.”

“Brat,” Taylor said, sticking out her tongue.

Maybe she could let herself be a kid too, just this once.