I had to admit, if the Cult Leader wasn’t literally just flying back towards the town I probably would have lost him at some point. Hell, all it would have taken for him to completely slip away was to dip into the forest below, change direction a few times, and I would have no idea where to find him.
Maybe it was a limitation of his powers?
So far I hadn’t seen him move in anything other than a straight line. So maybe the reason he hadn’t tried to ditch me was because he literally couldn’t.
Or it could be because he felt he could deal with me one on one or had something planned back in town.
In the end it didn’t really matter. No matter what his plan was, mine was going to be to beat him up, force him to release the brainwashed townspeople, then go find the girls.
And considering just the New Wave kids were able to send him running without going all out because of his hostages…well, I didn’t expect this to take long.
‘You just jinxed us.’ Ddraig grumbled, but I just rolled my eyes at the grumpy dragon.
‘It’s one man that summons fake angel things.’ I thought back. ‘Even if he can make stronger ones than what we saw earlier I should still be able to deal with him just fine.’
‘Okay, but that means I get the next dinner pick when I say I told you so.’
I didn’t argue and focused on making sure the Cult Leader didn’t pull out some last minute trick. I was confident, not stupid after all. But even as I slowly caught up to him, he did nothing but fly in a straight line over the trees. It didn’t look like he was preparing anything and nothing was summoned as far as I could tell.
So unless he was doing something I simply couldn’t see or sense from this far away, I was going to catch up to him right after he reached the town and hopefully before he vanished into the buildings.
I’d just have to roll with it if he was.
The Cult Leader didn’t change anything up even as he reached the edges of the town. And by this point I was certain there was a reason he was only going in a straight line without trying to summon more of his minions.
So I was on the lookout for anything when I landed a little further back in from him where he was…talking to a camera?
Why was a camera setup here, presumably broadcasting, and why did the Leader think getting in front of it was more important than either facing me or hiding?
Deciding I could just ask later I raised a hand and shot off a lightning bolt at his back, only for his angel minion to dive in front of it as a sacrificial shield. The Cult Leader glanced back at me for a second but almost immediately turned back to the camera.
What was he doing?
I mentally shrugged and raised my hand again. If he wanted to ignore me when I was about to blast him unconscious, then it was no skin off my nose.
Another glowing red spell circle formed and shot out a bolt of lightning that hit the Cult Leader in the middle of the back and did…nothing. He didn’t even stumble as the magical electricity crackled over his form.
…what?
I blasted him again with similar results.
Okay if lightning wasn’t working, how about a Dragon Shot?
The blast of green energy was massively scaled back to avoid killing the man if he was simply immune to the last attack that destroyed his minion or something like that. But, no, he just turned around and blocked the attack with a hand. Even if I didn’t put too much effort behind that attack he shouldn’t have been able to just dismiss it like that.
“Alright, you did something.” I called out, because I needed a second to figure out what made him suddenly stick around and fight when he ran from Crystal and her family just a few minutes ago. “Care to share?”
To my surprise the Cult Leader actually replied. Pretty cordially too. Which was weird because it was a big change from the religious/enraged ranting from earlier.
“Not at all, demon. I simply asked the audience to believe in me so the forces of justice could overcome evil. The belief the children across the country have in me will make it so.”
I paused.
Belief.
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He’d been spouting off about that back in the tunnels too. At first I had thought it was just how he spoke, but the word choice was too deliberate even though the tone was completely flipped.
“So your powers work off belief then? And you just convinced a bunch of kids to back you up.” Probably by hijacking a kid’s network show. Kids wouldn't exactly know to not do something that simple if they thought it was part of a show.
“I suppose I was less subtle than I normally like to be, but your group made me greatly accelerate my plans.” He scowled a little. “This was supposed to be a long term masterstroke, not a rushed job like this. I’m going to make sure you and all your little friends pay for that later. Months of planning…ruined.”
“I’d say sorry but we both know I wouldn’t mean it.” I retorted. “So, shall we get started?”
“Be my guest.”
If energy attacks weren’t working…let’s see how he dealt with a fist to the jaw.
-o-
There were times when Emily Piggot felt the world was conspiring against her specifically just to make her job as difficult as possible.
Her perpetually understaffed department struggled daily to maintain balance in the region against a group of neo-nazis that outnumbered their parahuman forces just by themselves, the asian gangs ruled by a cape that deadlocked an Endbringer by himself, and a dozen other smaller groups or villains that lurked in the shadows hoping to steal any scraps they could.
And while she couldn’t claim to be keeping all those villains in check, she at least could pride herself with the fact the PRT ENE wasn’t losing ground despite technically being surrounded, cut off, and outnumbered.
Not that her fellow Directors would agree with her statement.
But the sudden addition of several new and unusually powerful Parahumans had thrown that carefully managed balance out the window and governmental busybodies were clawing at her door wondering why she hadn’t either arrested the new players or convinced the public that they could be handled like any of the other villains running loose.
It wasn’t like the rest of the country was doing much better than her division was! But because Brockton Bay had been one of the cities that was attacked by what some joker had classified as Kaiju and fared better than any others with only a few collapsed buildings instead of the disasters New York and Los Angeles turned out to be, all eyes were on her. And they weren’t impressed.
They didn’t care that she managed to get a leash on Paladin before the ex-vigilante managed to cause a gang war or that the Protectorate had managed to stop a robot army from overrunning the local mall or that Lung had been finally captured by Armsmaster after an apparently uncharacteristically brutal fight with the Protectorate Leader that left the asian cape suffering from necrotic injuries.
No they cared that she hadn’t caught the robot maker despite him never making a public appearance, hadn’t brought the Empire to heel, hadn’t dragged in the cape that played a major role in not only driving off the Kaiju but apparently reversing death before retreating to her home with a resurrected Panacea.
There was an incredible amount of political pressure to somehow raid the mansion Rias Gremory had set up on the basis that the ability to resurrect certain people should be a National Asset and not determined by a teenage girl. Pressure that only increased when Paladin confirmed there were limited uses and she had apparently blown through almost half already.
Of course that pressure didn’t come with additional personnel or a way to actually breach the demonic themed cape’s protections. Hell, they weren’t even sure she was in the city considering her ability to teleport. That didn’t stop the other Directors from demanding she siege the property anyway.
Just in case they said.
Nevermind it was straining her already thin resources past the breaking point.
So when she was summoned to an emergency meeting with little warning, it was an understatement to say she was frustrated and more than a little stressed. Not that she could directly show it.
She did take a disproportionate amount of enjoyment at seeing the normally unflappable Chief Director looking significantly more disheveled then Emily had ever seen her, tempered by the realization that the bigger picture must look pretty grim if Costa-Brown was looking less than perfectly groomed.
“Emily, good you’re here.” The Chief Director greeted once Piggot joined the conference call. “The Gremory girl, Lucifer, tell us everything you can about her. Powers, weaknesses, points of interest. Anything that would be useful for a strike team to know before engaging.”
Piggot blinked at the complete disregard for the unwritten rules. Yes, the PRT wasn’t above disregarding them when they could get away with it, but they were very rarely this blatant about flaunting them. If only to keep their Protectorate members satisfied they wouldn’t be causally murdered in their beds for the wider organization because of a leak.
“I can…but why the sudden interest? When I asked for assistance dealing with Lucifer’s Shaker/Trump defenses, I was told there were more pressing concerns to deal with. Especially when we weathered the Kaiju Incident so well on our own.”
“Christ, she doesn’t know.” Director Alexander Bell exclaimed and glared through his own screen. Something that surprised Emily since the man was almost unfailingly polite. She began to quietly ponder what could have caused him to act like that while simultaneously checking emails to make sure she hadn’t missed something. But no, no urgent emails other than the one summoning her to this meeting. “Rebecca…this is unacceptable. How can she not–”
“Calm down, Director Bell.” The Chief Director demanded, raising a hand to cut the man off. “We deliberately restricted certain information to reduce panic. And while Director Piggot already informed us about Lucifer’s teleportation abilities, her division has no way of detecting when the girl uses them.”
Emily felt a sinking feeling in her stomach – god dammit, were her men being held off by a literal empty building?
“Fine,” Director Bell scowled. “To get you up to speed, Emily, twenty minutes ago a villain hijacked several broadcasting signals targeting kid’s shows. Less than a minute after that, your devil girl shows up behind him and they start fighting. Now, we have two A-class Parahumans demolishing a small Pennsylvania town on live television and the only reason we aren’t declaring the whole thing an S-class emergency is that every normal citizen seems to have vanished.”
A video popped up showing the unfortunately familiar red-head fighting a man in ornate robes surrounded by three almost angelic projections. Entire streets were destroyed as the two capes fought each other.
One of the projections was cut in half, tanking a blow that sent the man in robes crashing through a building. Lucifer’s hand shot up and there was a wave of green energy that consumed both him and the camera…only for the fight to continue from another angle with the robed man seemingly none the worse for wear.
“We’re preparing teams to deal with both of them, but we need to be as smart as we can. Alexandria and Eidolon are still recovering from whatever fire effect the turtle kaiju hit them with and Legend has his hands full.”
“We’re ready to call him in if we have to, but if other Protectorate members can handle these two I’d rather not risk the only active Triumvirate member we have.” Costa-Brown admitted, shifting like the decision physically pained her. Though considering how used the Chief Director was to ordering the Triumvirate around, the loss of such a convenient option might actually pain her. God knew Emily would have loved to drop one of the country’s strongest capes on her own problems once in a while. “Emily, if you could?”
“Fine. Good luck bringing Lucifer down though. She’s not showing off half her tricks there and – oh hell.”
All eyes snapped to the broadcast video as the Gremory girl had finally managed to put the robed cape on the ground for a few solid seconds. But instead of staying down, the newer cape began to glow silver and started to grow. And grow. And grow.
Once the light faded, Emily could only stare in disbelief at the massive statuesque figure the man had transformed into.
A thirty foot masculine figure with feathery embellishments on its head, neck, shoulders, wrists, calves and midriff that unfortunately reminded her of the Simurgh and a large broken halo that hovered behind its back.
“...dammit, I did not need this today.” Director Costa-Brown muttered before barking orders. “Cancel the strike teams for now. I want all of you watching in case we just saw the birth of a new Endbringer or something but unless it looks like Lucifer can’t handle things we are going to hang back and collect as much information as possible. They’re broadcasting their capabilities. We’ll take full advantage of that.
“Directors, put your teams on standby. I’m not going to sound the Endbringer alerts immediately, but we definitely might need a rapid response team if this turns out to be a new one.
“And someone get WEDGDG on this video right now!”
Emily Piggot very carefully did not smirk at the Chief Director’s frustration, it was understandable considering the situation, but she did allow herself a healthy dose of schadenfreude.
Maybe the world did conspire against her. But at least for today some of the others that sat on the sidelines and gave nothing but unwanted, unhelpful advice were dealing with the same headaches she was.
And if she was lucky, the Gremory situation might even resolve itself…