So, following the directions of our new security buddy, Alloy, Trevithick, and I made our way through the building toward the vault area that the bad guys were apparently trying so intently to break into. We ran into a few other scattered groups of security people, but they recognized us and didn’t open fire despite a close call or two. When we told them where we were going, they even helpfully pointed the right way. Unfortunately, none of them could come with us, because they were too busy trying to keep the rest of the building as safe as possible.
Yeah, this gang really knew what they were doing when they came in. They had scattered just enough of their heavily armed troops away to various corners of the building to put people in danger so Ten Towers couldn’t focus their entire response on the vaults. Between that and the fact that they had locked down the building so no one outside could get in, and terminated communications, it was obvious that they had come in with a plan.
To be honest, part of me was wondering how much of what they knew was thanks to my family. Did the Ministry give them all the information about how the security in here worked, the codes to get through, the fact that they could get everything they needed about the courthouse Switchshift door from San’s dad? They had to be at least partially responsible, right? Which would mean they wanted these guys to be able to get in here and take these weapons. Why?
Not for the first and certainly not the last time, I wished I could just ask my parents what the hell they were thinking. Instead, I shook off those thoughts as the three of us approached the elevator that was supposed to lead down to the vault. It was locked down, of course. And according to the guy we had talked to upstairs, it would take hours to drill through the metal this thing was made of. But thankfully, we didn’t have to worry about that. Really, all I had to worry about was getting billed for damages over what I was about to do, but how much could that possibly cost?
Besides, if this worked, they would totally owe us. They could deal with replacing part of their elevator door, no matter what it was made out of.
As we approached the huge freight style elevator with the security doors, I shot a spray of pink paint over it in a circle before adding black paint around it to silence the metal. Then Alloy turned one of her marbles into a battering ram, and it slammed into the pink paint with enough force to knock the circle out, manifesting claws to grab onto the pink-covered metal before it could fall into the elevator shaft and loudly announce our presence.
That left a hole wide enough for each of us to dive through one at a time, which we did without hesitation. Now we were in the elevator shaft, and I used a shot of black and red paint from each hand to pull myself over to the far wall, where I stuck with my boots. Alloy landed on her own marble battering ram, turning it into a platform (which was still holding onto the pink metal from the door). Trevithick, of course, hovered on her boots. They weren’t as quick or maneuverable as her wings, but they still allowed her to stay off the ground.
The three of us looked at each other, then turned our attention downwards through the shaft to the next floor below. We could hear fighting going on, gunshots, shouting, that sort of thing. We were definitely in the right place. Which was good, considering how little time we undoubtedly had. If we’d gotten turned around and ended up breaking through some other elevator so we had to circle back again, I had a feeling we would’ve been too late.
But we hadn’t gotten turned around. We were here. So, together, we quietly made our way down to that lower level. The doors here were just as reinforced as the ones above, if not more so. But that wouldn’t matter any more than those others had. What really mattered was that we had to get out there and hit the Trendscendent Touched before they noticed our arrival. We had to take them by surprise if we were going to actually end up helping rather than hindering. There were only two of us who could actually fight, because there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to let Trevithick get anywhere near actual danger. To do this right, we had to take full advantage of the fact that Trendscendents had no idea we were here.
To that end, I had already covered the three of us with as much paint as I could on our way down here. Alloy simply moved parts of her armor out of the way a bit at a time so I could paint underneath the marble. Even though it would be covered by her marbles, I could still activate it with a glance as long as I knew exactly where it was and could picture the paint in my head.
Trevithick, again, was absolutely not going into combat. She was here to help from the sidelines. Even so, I still gave her all the paint I could, just in case. If something bad happened, I wanted her to have protection. Between that and the gun she’d had Fred send over in case of an emergency, hopefully she’d be okay as long as she stayed out of sight.
Now we were as ready as we were going to be. We just had to be careful about exactly when we showed ourselves. So, I made another pink circle on this lower door, but this time I made it smaller, and down near the bottom so I had to crouch to be in front of it. From there, I gave myself a bit of a purple boost by activating the hummingbird image on my left shoulder (replacing it with one facing the other direction) before giving that bit of pink a poke.
It popped out, falling to the floor on the other side. Thankfully, it was small enough that the people over there didn’t hear anything over the sound of gunfire and all that. Which left a small hole. Too small, in fact, for me to get my helmet close enough to peer through. Even then I wouldn’t have been able to see everything on the other side.
On the other hand, it was not too small for Trevithick to send her bee drone through. Which she did, before flying it into the air to give us a decent view of what was on the other side through the screen on her phone.
The room immediately visible on the other side of those doors through the drone’s camera was a wide open circular area about a hundred feet across with a single desk in the middle where someone was supposed to sit, be it a security guard, receptionist, assistant, or whatever. There were three vault doors around the circular wall, one directly across from the elevator we were in and the other two spaced to either side. All three of those doors were open, but that didn’t mean the bad guys already had the loot. Because through each of those doors was another open area similar to the first one, with another desk and a single vault door behind it. Those were the doors that led into the secure storage areas. The Trendscendents were going to have to break through those second doors to get what they wanted. And that was what Caishen and her people were here to stop them from doing.
There were at least a couple dozen armed Prev troops in that first room alone. Their gang had managed to completely take over that area. Unfortunately, that meant Caishen’s people were cut off from each other within whichever of the vaults they had each managed to retreat to. There was no way to go from one vault to the other without going through that first area.
It took a moment to figure out who was where, even with the drone’s help as it flew around to get a better look at things. Finally, we had it. Caishen, three security guards, and Ephemera were in the vault to the left, fending off Juice, Two-Step, Last Word, and a handful of their guys who weren’t part of the two dozen who were busy keeping that first room locked down. The second room was being assaulted by some three-quarters naked woman with metallic-red skin and blue hair, wearing only a bikini top and bottom along with a metal mask over her face with eye holes in it. The T-1000-like woman, I was going to guess. She was accompanied by another group of the Trendscendant Prev gang members, along with Theory (taking cover while clearly planning out what power to give Praxis next), and Devil’s Due, who was being protected by one of Ten Towers’ own security people. He must have used his power on the guy. Another four Ten Towers people were protecting the vault from them, along with Stick, Bunglebotch, and Linesight. That last one was the one who seemed to be doing the most work in keeping these guys away from the vault, considering his ability to mark four different spots so that if anyone looked at them, a blast of concussive force would hurl them away.
Finally, the third vault was being protected by Skip, another few troops, and a guy I didn’t recognize. Either he was a brand new Touched, or (far more likely) a transfer from one of Ten Towers’ organizations in another city. Or maybe a recent graduate from a Minority program somewhere else? Either way, yeah, he was clearly Touched, considering the dark green, metallic armor he wore along with a helmet with a black visor. In one hand the man held what looked like a billy club that was the same color as his armor.
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Janus were the ones assaulting that vault. They were accompanied by more of their troops, but really, they were the biggest threat. They had already used one massive hand to smack several of the security guards hard enough into the wall that they wouldn’t be getting up again anytime soon. And their other hand, grown to the size of a small car, slammed down against the floor right where Skip had been a second earlier. If she had been an instant slower in teleporting a few feet away, she would’ve been squished.
The Prevs tried to open fire on her just as she appeared in that new spot. Not that it would have done much, but maybe they hoped she was too distracted to skip the effect. Either way, they didn’t get a chance to shoot. That guy I didn’t recognize extended his billy club. He was still a good fifteen feet away from them, but the weapon extended that far. What’s more, it sliced right through the guns to cut them in half. Yeah, the club looked like a blunt instrument without a single edge on it, and yet it still cut through the very metallic guns as if they were made of butter. I was confused, but now really wasn’t the time to think about it. We had to help them, as well as everyone else in there. Caishen’s people were doing their best to hold off the assault, but something told me that wouldn’t last forever. Especially with Theory clearly about to give Praxis what had to be one doozy of a power considering how long it looked like he had been ‘planning.’
“We’ve gotta help them,” Alloy whispered. Obviously, with the fighting that was going on in there, we could have screamed at the top of her lungs, and probably not revealed ourselves, but it wasn’t worth the risk.
My head bobbed quickly. “Right, but we need a plan first. Can we contain Theory somehow?” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I was grimacing before answering my own question. “No, because he can just shift over to Praxis. Even without counting any powers he could give her, they can appear in different places. If we trap Theory in one of your marble boxes, he’ll just make Praxis appear outside it.”
“I’m not sure how we can trap them,” Alloy admitted, “but I do have another idea for you.” She made part of her armor slide out of the way so she could dig into her pocket before coming out with a handful of coins.
“Uh, loose change?” I blinked at that. “Sorry, I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help.”
So, she told me. And it was a pretty good idea. I was still taking that in, holding the coins she had handed me before a sudden, unexpected new voice spoke up from just over our heads. “Hi!” It was still a whisper, but a happy one.
Yeah, we jerked in surprise. Falling onto my butt, I looked that way to see none other than Lightning Bug. She was hovering upside down with her wings right there in the elevator shaft above us, staring down with those large, bright blue compound eyes.
“Bug?!” I found myself blurting, staring that way. “What’re you doing here?”
Landing next to us, the tiny red-skinned girl hurriedly replied, “I was with my mama when the bad guys broke in, so she told me to hide. Well, she told me to get away, but I hid in here instead. Then you guys came. Are you gonna help Mama and Aunt Skip?” She sounded hopeful, looking back and forth between us eagerly.
“Yeah, that’s why we’re here,” I confirmed. “But you should still stay here with Trevithick. You guys keep an eye on what’s going on with her bee-drone.”
“Bee drone?” Bug was suddenly interested. “Like Kenobee? He’s locked up in a safety vault with my other friends.”
“We’ll show you later,” I promised. “But here, sit down right next to Trevithick where it’s safe. Alloy and me’ll go out there and help your mom and the others.” Even as I said that, my eyes were glancing toward the screen itself to check on what was going on. Everything was pretty much the same, as they continued to fight to a standstill. But Theory still hadn’t brought out Praxis. And the longer that took, the more worried I was about what sort of powers she was going to appear with. We had to get in there and help deal with these guys before this whole thing escalated completely out of control.
Unfortunately, we still had no idea how to lock Theory and Praxis down, but hopefully if we helped deal with the others, something would present itself. There was no more time to talk about it or plan. Not if we didn’t want to be fighting these guys all by ourselves after they beat the Ten Towers people.
If. If they beat the Ten Towers people, of course. But that wasn’t worth the risk. Better to assume the worst would happen and jump in now.
“Mr. Ball?” Lightning Bug spoke up hesitantly, raising a hand. “I uh, I heard what you were saying about trapping the bad guy. And um, I think I can help you help Mama.”
That made me blink a couple times at the tiny five-year-old. But what the hell? It wasn’t as though we were drowning in ideas. With that in mind, I heard her out. She explained it in just a few seconds, and she was right, it could work. We were just going to have to be quick about it.
So, I double-checked the paint we had to make sure we were covered before Alloy and I went on either side of the elevator doors. I painted them pink with black along the sides to keep it quiet. Then I added a shot of black to the battering ram the other girl created, just in case. We had to take these guys by surprise before they had any warning that we were there. The two of us looked at each other, nodded, then went for it. Alloy made her battering ram marble slam into the pink doors, knocking a hole through them, which the two of us dove through together.
Even as we dove into the room, I activated the green wings on both of our backs to speed us up. At the same time, I reared back before hurling the handful of coins right at the assembled Prev troops who stood with their backs to us, focused entirely on the vaults. The coins were all painted a mix of blue and green, thanks to Alloy’s suggestion. Just as they were being flung through the air, I focused on that paint and activated it at the very instant that the coins started hitting the bad guys. Sure enough, the coins did their jobs, sending the armed Prev troops flying. Two of them were flung to the ground by the force of the blue painted coins hitting their backs, one was hurled sideways into the desk, three more went forward a dozen feet before crashing to the ground, and so on. The green paint fed into the blue made them expend their entire charge in that single second, making it strong enough to throw these guys around just by being hit by a few coins.
It was fun, to say the least. And something I was going to have to play around with later. But for now, my eyes were laser-focused on Theory. He had noticed us by that point, even as Alloy went flying past me on her marble-board to slam into Devil’s Due with enough force that he wouldn’t be trying to say anything anytime soon. And just in case that wasn’t enough, as he was falling, she slapped a band-aid against the back of his neck. A band-aid that I had painted black and would activate the instant it looked like he was going to try to say anything.
In that same instant, Theory disappeared, replaced by Praxis. She stood there with a raised hand pointed my way. Of course I had no intention of waiting around to see what she could do now, so I used blue paint on my shoes to fling myself upward just as a blast of some sort of laser erupted from her extended hand and tore a hole through the nearby wall. These guys weren’t playing around. Considering how easily that laser punched through the vault wall, it easily could’ve killed me. But I didn’t have time to panic about that. Instead, I hit the woman with red paint, just a quick little shot. She, in turn, sent a second powerful laser beam into the air from her other hand. The beams weren’t ending either. They were a continuous blast, cutting through the walls all around me. She was trying to pen me in, trap me between both beams. Fortunately, I had already managed to hit her with the red paint. Which was phase one of the plan. Phase two came a second later, as I dropped back toward the ground while holding up what looked like a tiny metallic badge just a couple inches across. It already had red paint on it, which I activated to send the thing flying toward the red paint on Praxis’s shoulder.
The woman was so focused on lasering me to death, she didn’t notice the thing until it smacked into her. And by then, it was too late. For her, anyway. Her eyes looked down in confusion at the badge (it said Ten Towers VIB, for Very Important Bug, on the front) while she brought the twin laser beams from each hand closer and closer to my falling form.
I could feel the laser beams practically cooking me in my costume, closing in from either side. Just as I hit the floor, however, the beams vanished. As did Praxis herself. That was Lightning Bug’s idea. She had that badge which, when activated, would teleport the person who was wearing it (supposedly Bug herself) to any of a dozen safe locations, including outside of the city. It was a single-use sort of thing, only for dire emergencies. Her mother intended for her to use it to get out of the building, but she hid in the elevator shaft instead.
All of which meant that Praxis was transported away from the building, to the parking lot of a Ten Towers facility in Grand Rapids, which was over a hundred and fifty miles away. That would keep her from getting back here anytime soon, and effectively removed both her and Theory as a threat.
Unfortunately, Lightning Bug didn’t have any more badges like that. It was rare and incredibly expensive. Another thing for Ten Towers to add to my tab. Which meant that we were going to have to help Caishen and her people deal with the rest of these guys the hard way.
And judging from the pissed off looks I was getting at that moment, as the Trendscendents realized what I had just done, the hard way was about to be very violent.