Gleaming – 9.9

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When we were children and we were feeling insecure, we clung to the powerful authority figures in our lives.  Mine had just torn down an interior wall of a prison.

It would be so easy to stop fighting.  I was walking into a headwind, swimming upstream, alienating myself from my friend, doubts welling up inside me.  Somewhere in all of this, I’d almost killed someone I’d grown up with- and I had less apprehension or regret about that near-murder than I did about momentarily meeting Capricorn’s eyes, seeing him give me a small nod, as we flew and jogged forward.

We were the frontliners, each of us taking cover at different sides of the same hallway.   Goddess walked down the center.  She indicated one direction, and without words, Capricorn acted.  Orange lights appeared in a swirl, and someone that was sprinting forward nearly stumbled into them.  They scrambled back, ducking out of view.

Capricorn shouted a warning to them, and I barely heard it.

That I didn’t hear it told me a lot about how well I was processing things right now.

I could tell myself that for right now we would go after the one threat we felt unambiguous about, but thought and feeling both told me that I would feel just as wrong about betraying Goddess later on.

Goddess indicated my side.  I pulsed out with my aura.  I saw her react- and I heard the people who’d been approaching stop what they were doing, backing off.

I opened my mouth to apologize, and no words came out.

“Do it again,” Goddess’ voice cut through the noise.

Sure, I thought.  I found my voice.  “Yes.”

I hit her with my aura, soft at first, like a taste of fear in the mouth or a flash of something amazing in the eyes.

Her head moved, as if she was getting a sense for it.  When I tapered it off, she moved her fingers in an almost absent beckoning gesture, like she wanted more.

She nodded all at once, definitive.

“It won’t affect me now,” she said.

I wasn’t in a good place, and I could recognize that the inexplicable gratitude that welled up in me at hearing that wasn’t good.

Focus, I thought.

We’d been in this building before.  It was shaped like a plus sign, with the intersection in the center being the place we’d been held up, a heavily reinforced desk, including the gates we had to pass through.  We’d entered from the one corridor, and the corridor opposite opened into the prison itself.

Opened more since Goddess had taken that wall out.

Our current issue was the corridors off to the sides.  They were apparently for staff, and prison employees had retreated off to either side.  I looked back at Goddess, who hadn’t advanced.

“Deal with it,” she said, without stepping forward.

She’d have her reasons.

On our past visit, I’d noted the shutters.  The shutters were meant to be brought down from the other side, but…

Capricorn was crouched in the corner by the wall that framed the metal detector and gate.  Just past that short wall was the corner and the left turn to the corridor where staff had retreated.  Prison officers, security.  People with guns.  I got his attention, then indicated the shutters, moving my hand to emulate the shutter coming down.

He gave me a nod of confirmation.  I saw orange lights start to move along the ceiling.

I was crouched by the same wall on my side of the hallway.  Behind me, Sveta, Natalie and Lookout were all gathered against the wall.  Lookout was ignoring the situation and focusing on her phone.  Her primary goal right now was in keeping the Warden and his deputy from accessing any computers to start detonating ankle bombs.  Her secondary goal would be to keep an eye on what was going on.

She looked laser-focused on her task.  I felt less like a cape than I had on my first night out in costume.

“Tress,” Goddess said.  “At the desk.  Someone with a gun.”

I barely had time to turn my head before Tress had sent her arms forward.  She grabbed the sides of the metal detector, then slingshotted herself through it, straight at the window of the desk.  The scrape that followed was sharp, suggesting she’d scraped away some paint.  The red light and the buzz of the metal detector was immediate, but she moved fast enough that it seemed like it followed too late.

I didn’t stay to watch.  As off as I felt, I had to act.  I flew up, hands and feet going up and back as I landed with my back to the ceiling, my extremities catching the impact and minimizing the sound.  I flew while keeping as close to the ceiling as possible, cloth skimming across painted ceiling.  I had a glimpse of the people in the hallway, crouched by short walls and benches like I’d been crouched by the wall.  The shutter and its mechanism provided some limited cover.  The fact that the fluorescent lights focused on lighting the lower half of the room more than they focused on covering the ceiling helped.  If anyone saw me and reacted, they didn’t shoot.

The Wretch struck the locking mechanism, disappearing an instant after it had appeared-

A violent image, the Wretch visible to me like it had been in the hospital room, except ghostly, existing only in the form of streaked raindroplets and rain breaking against an invisible surface.  And beyond it- Amy.  

Focus.

I worried I’d have to haul it shut.  I didn’t.  The shutter’s own weight brought it down, with my destruction of the mechanism serving much the same function as hauling down on any release lever or pressing any button would have.  It was built like a garage door, but it was heavier, double or three times the thickness, and it was raucous, metal striking against the metal seat with a sound that would be heard next door.  Most likely the intent.

Capricorn materialized his power, bringing down the other shutter, rock cracking as the metal moved and the individual slats bent.  The impact wasn’t as much of a metal on metal sound as it came down to its housing.  He glanced at my shutter, then stood straighter for a better view.  Orange lights began to move along the shutters, covering each surface.

Sveta.  I flew down to the window, to check that she was fine.  She was already at the window, peeking out.

“It’s fine,” Goddess said.

I extended a hand for Sveta to take.  Too late, as her prosthetic hands seized my wrist, I realized it was the burned one.  It hurt, but I ignored it, pushing through it, as I helped pull her through.  She found the positioning for her legs after they were through.

My arm buzzed and prickled with the pain even after Sveta let go.

Stupid mistake, and a mistake that bad could get us hurt.  Focus, Victoria!

Goddess pushed down the additional barriers and barred walls that we would have had to be buzzed through.  The group fell into step around her, the staff in the two side hallways effectively bunkered in.  Capricorn made a gesture of his hand for effect.  The orange motes became an additional wall of stone, flush against the metal shutters.  It was very possible that it would make the shutters impossible to open until…

Until after.

It was a cold shock to think about how we had to handle the after.  We’d just interfered with law enforcement, and the law was supposed to be one of my go-tos.

Follow the law, if that wasn’t possible, do what was right.  If that wasn’t possible, we were supposed to reach out.

If I set that law aside- and I didn’t want to, but the situation was complicated, then I had other laws.  In the morass of doubts and concerns, I had to get centered and focus again.  I needed to put the events of twenty minutes ago behind me.  Now that we were here, I couldn’t be numb and unthinking like I’d been on the flight in.

Black and white text.  Protocols.  Rules to be followed.  Take all of the feelings and bottle them up, except those warm feelings of Dean, that give those protocols and stark letters their life.

Challenging each other, being competitive and trying to get the higher score.  Getting in actual arguments over it, where we were both pissy the next day.  Making up.  Dean telling me, as we cuddled, that competitive was hard for him, because his dad expected so much, and he could sense his father’s disappointment when he didn’t do his best.  I’d had such a distinct mental picture of Dean’s dad standing in the doorway, because so often when I went over there with Dean, there would be that kind of distance.  As if Dean and I being in one of their living rooms watching a show together meant the room was ours and his dad couldn’t or wouldn’t intrude.  I’d been so able to imagine the disappointment and distance both.

My mind jumped from that to an image of Amy standing in a doorway in the same way.  It-

My heart had already dropped.  The warm memory was wiped away and replaced with a chilled, ugly feeling.  I tried to reason my way through it, think around it.

It hadn’t been when Dean and I were cuddling, but we’d been together.  Another time.  Why had I connected that image to Amy?  The distance?  She hadn’t been disappointed- or, no.  Maybe she had, but I hadn’t known it then.

The ugly feeling persisted.

Had I known?  Had there been some glimmer of a suspicion?

It wasn’t a rhetorical question or a revelation.  Just… a very real question, where both answers were bad in their own way.

The ugly feeling got worse, as I dwelt on it.

I couldn’t cling to that for strength, so long as other memories attached themselves.  Both the times she’d been there when I was with Dean and the times she hadn’t been there when I’d been with him were mucked in together, muddled and muddied, shat on by her proximity to them.  That he’d had to have known.  That she could have saved him and she hadn’t.

I couldn’t.  The kernel of love I felt for him was too hard to reach for.

Then- then the other direction.  Reaching for that other direction meant getting close, meant walking through a corridor of memories and ignoring the person who kept on peering in through the windows and stood off to the side, punctuating so, so much of my early life.

What wasn’t hers?

In the hospital room, studying like I’d studied the master-stranger protocols.  Being the powers geek with the patrol.  Yes.  It was an identity I could and had wrapped around myself like a security blanket.

Never hers.  Untainted, but for a few intrusions looking in on Dean and I.

I wasn’t moving any faster, walking in line with the others, my jaw set, but I felt like I was.

There was another identity, one from another world that had never been hers.   It was a world that’d had- it had had its problems, but it wasn’t hers.  She’d defied it, as a matter of fact.  Where I’d longed for it, thrown myself into that world, she’d run from it.  She’d wanted love and acceptance from our family, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to join in.

I reached for my mask, where it lay at my upper thigh, the curvature of the mask making for a neat fit.  I slipped it on, hooking it to the metalwork where my hood met my hairline, a band of chain going around the back, securing it in place.  It clicked in a satisfying way.

I wore a face, my face, but it was cast in alloy, untouchable, unmoving.

My breath was warm against my face as we stepped beyond the corridor, through the wholly unnecessary if impressive opening Goddess had made.

The sky was so bright, and it was warm.  There was only a sliver of sun, but after the darkness and the rain, the harsh coldness, the setting was eerie.  Less of a crossing over to another Earth and more of a crossing over to another world.

And there were guards.  The long distances and the open spaces with only chain link blocking off access meant that getting from A to B was more time consuming, and that was a dangerous thing when anyone with a gun had an open shot, often with next to nothing on the far side of us, the targets.

Capricorn began drawing out orange-red motes, clearly intending to give us some cover.

Goddess beat him to it.  With a sweep of her arm, she used her telekinesis to carve a great furrow into the earth.  Dust and dirt was sent flying, and there was a great opaque cloud.  Again, in the moment I saw the earth react, before the dust cloud covered it, I saw the pattern by which Goddess’ telekinesis touched the world, like a hand used to push would leave a handprint.  A line that zig-zagged out, back into itself, out.  The first gunshots erupted, the sounds louder because they could skip off the flat ground like a stone could skip on water.  Our group ducked down, and I put the Wretch out, shielding Sveta, Kenzie, and Natalie.

The dust was clearing, however.  Goddess had pushed out the earth, and where it had piled up, it formed a loose general barrier, thick with stones.

Goddess’ head snapped around.  She reached out, and part of her barrier exploded outward, stones and dirt flying.

“Don’t hurt them!” I said.  My voice was almost drowned out by the follow-up strike.  Something more localized.  Taking out one person who was still after her, following the initial strike.

“Hurt- you hurt the guards?” Sveta asked.

“Maybe they were bad people,” Kenzie said.  “Right?”

“Would you rather be shot by them?” Goddess asked, ignoring Kenzie.

“We have to live with the consequences after,” I said.  “We can do this in a good way.”

“One moment,” she said.  She paused.

I clenched my teeth, lips pressed together behind my mask.

Four hundred feet away, at one corner of a building, brick and glass shattered, a window and balcony coming to pieces.  From what I could see of the follow-up, a series of blasts and destruction within the room she had targeted, she was removing the floor from the room.

“That-” I started.

“A moment,” she interrupted, firmer.  Her focus was wholly on that spot.  There was a pause.  “One fucking moment.”

I remained silent, letting her do what she needed to do.  She turned her head slowly, looking around.

“There was a sniper.  There’s one more on the other side of the complex.  They’re not taking a shot.  They’re too far.”

With a finger, she indicated a building.

“Girls’ side,” Kenzie said.

“The men and women have fled.  Retreating to a fortified position.”

“I could spot them on my phone,” Lookout offered, helpfully.

“No,” Goddess said.  “It’s not a question.  I’m saying it because I know it.”

“Oh, cool,” Lookout said.

Goddess indicated the nearest building on the boy’s side.  “You’ll escort me.  Teacher’s pawns are close, and they were picked to stop me.”

“Is that the plan?” I asked.  “Visiting each building in turn?  Rounding up the capes, dispatch the guards and anyone Teacher set up?”

“Why does it sound like you’re questioning me?”

I hesitated.

I am Antares.  I am a scholar of powers, I was born to capes and raised to be a cape.  I-

I reached, grasping for the strength to push through my doubts.  Me with my mom and dad.  A weird scene, because I had been young, and I’d had a debate with my parents while we’d been out in costume, and I’d been thrown off balance.

I didn’t have time to replay the whole memory in my head.

“Yes,” I said.  The fuller answer found me as I grasped the rest of the memory.  The debate with my parents had thrown me off because they’d talked to me like equals, had considered my opinion valid, conceded points, or defended them.  “You wanted people close to you who weren’t just yes men.  It’s why you had- you had Amy, who you weren’t…”

I trailed off.  Bringing up Amy had slowed my momentum.  Trying to find a word to encapsulate this killed it.

“Aligning?” Lookout offered.  “Inviting to the coolest cool kids club?  Except we’re not all kids, um-”

“Aligning,” I said.  “Thank you for the word, Lookout.”

“Anytime.”

“I did,” Goddess told me.  She turned her head, looking for something.  “I don’t like standing in this open field, when we don’t know what Teacher has prepared.  We’ll walk to our destination.”

I nodded.

Capricorn created barriers to one side of us, as Goddess watched over her shoulder in the same direction.  Natalie looked scared- it might have been the passing mention of a sniper.

“You wanted people who debate with you, offer differing points of view.  You listened to Cryptid, so… is it okay if I bring up some points?”

“Cryptid may not be your best example, Antares,” Goddess said.

There was something ominous in her voice as she said it, even though she looked at me and smiled like there was almost a joke in there.

“I don’t understand.”

“He came to me with a form prepared to counter me.  And that is, as far as I detected, only one of three levels of deception that boy was putting into practice.  You don’t want to tell me that you’re following his suit.”

I wasn’t sure most members of the team weren’t shocked at that.  Looks were exchanged.  Of alarm, concern.

“But he’s helping you,” Lookout said.

“He is.  He’s clever enough that I want to work with him.  Antares, little Lookout, is a little more blunt about questioning me and making me wonder about her, and she already attacked one of my new lieutenants.  Did you have an actual argument, Antares, or are we going to talk about him?  Because if you didn’t have a problem to raise, I won’t be happy you questioned me.”

“Actual argument,” I said.  It took me a half-second to refocus myself, taking my thoughts away from Chris and back into thinking like a cape, the kind of cape that could debate approaches with my parents.  “The assistant warden of this prison is on our side, and he’s holding off on detonating the ankle bombs because Foresight convinced him.  He’s presumably watching through surveillance cameras-”

“He is,” Lookout said, looking around.  She sounded alarmed as she said,  “Nobody said I should stop him from doing it.”

“It’s good,” I told her, reassuring.  “It’s good.  If you stopped him, he might start panicking and doubting Foresight.  But if this group with a strange person in it starts assaulting his guards and collecting his prisoners…”

“He’s going to shit a brick, use that brick to break the glass, and hit the big red button that blows up those prisoners,” Capricorn supplied.

“Can you block him like you’re blocking the warden?” Goddess asked Lookout.  “Don’t actually do it.  I had a feeling as I asked.”

“I could,” Lookout said.  “But it’d be hard.  I’m already splitting my focus, and unless I want to shut off all power across the complex…”

“Leaving us in the dark,” Sveta murmured.  Her pale face turned to look in the direction of the sun.  No longer a sliver- it was a glow across the sky.  The ‘slivers’ were now only the crimson-purple linings around some of the rare clouds at that end of the sky.

We’d reached the building.  It was the same one the sniper had been in.  It was less like a proper apartment building and more like six cargo containers organized so it was two side by side, another two stacked facing a different direction, and then two stacked at the top, with the original orientation.  Staircases that led down or through were exposed.

Rain and Ashley’s buildings had four people per.  This is a six.  It’s almost like a threat rating, but the buildings with six have the easiest prisoners to manage.

We weren’t going inside just yet.  Goddess was hesitating.

“I think I know why.  If she does that then we become the bad guys,” I said.  “Foresight will find out or think something’s going on- they have good thinkers.  Right now they’re telling him that his staff and superiors are compromised, something dangerous is going on.  He’s listening.  We don’t want to give him a reason to think he’s being played.”

“Then we go after him.  Tress, if I tell you to go to him and keep him quiet and cooperative, can you do that?”

“I don’t know if I’m that convincing.”

“You might not be, but a knife to the throat is,” Goddess said.

I saw Tress’ expression shift.  Hesitation.

“Is anyone else capable?”

“I could try,” Lookout offered.

“You couldn’t be older than twelve, and I need better than try,” Goddess said.  She looked in the direction of the entry-building.  “Trouble’s coming.  It feels like Teacher.”

“It might be,” Lookout said.  “Let me look.”

She turned to her phone.  I turned my focus to the immediate problem.  We had to protect the leadership.

“If we grab everyone, they’ll panic and you’ll get nobody,” I said.  “We told Foresight we’d reach out to our team members and their undercovers.  They’ll let the guy in admin know.  Let’s get our forces together.”

“Teacher realized he can’t get in,” Lookout reported.  “He could’ve figured it out if he’d tried to make a portal a hundred feet in the air, but I guess he’s not that smart.  Like, helloo…”

“He’s attacking the front door,” Goddess interrupted.

“Yes,” Lookout said.  “I was getting around to that.”

“Our guys?” I asked.

“The teams we pulled together are going to be holding him off.  Fume Hood, A.G., Auzure,” Lookout said.  “And others.”

“They won’t succeed,” Goddess said.  “I wouldn’t be aware of the imminent danger if he was going to be scared away.”

“Then tell them, Lookout,” I said.  “Let’s not have them commit to a fight they can’t win.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“Get your people,” Goddess said.  “Lookout and the unpowered girl stay with me.  The rest of you- gather your forces.  I don’t care how you do it, but do it fast.  You know Teacher’s key players?”

“Yes,” Capricorn said.

“We’re doing what I did when I claimed my Earth.  Start from the top.  A prison warden has to be easier than a collection of world leaders.  You can manage this?  Remove Teacher’s pawns, that would give him control.”

“Would help,” Lookout said, her attention back on her phone.  “I’m spending half my time keeping these guys hemmed in, now that they’ve split up.  They’re gathering guards too.”

We don’t know what Teacher’s people are going to do.  They could blow up everyone not on his shortlist, and that could include Ashley and Rain.  It could include Crystalclear and Foresight’s other peopleOr they might do something that isn’t using the ankle bombs.

“We can manage,” I said.

“Um, here,” Lookout said.  She had her bag slung over her back, and she retrieved one of the projection discs.  “It’s kind of broken since last time.  But it has enough charge to draw lines.  It’s hooked up to the computer at home, the surveillance-”

“Short version,” Goddess sounded testy.

“Points at people!” Lookout said.

“Good!” Capricorn answered her, before bumping her shoulder with one fist.  She laughed in response, but we were already heading away.  Further into the prison complex.

I did glance over my shoulder at Natalie though.

She’d been silent, quiet.  What was she thinking or doing?  Did she have a plan?

If she just looked after Lookout’s welfare, I would be happy.  But there was a chance that wouldn’t be enough.  There was a good chance that we needed more than that.  Master-stranger protocols.  We needed one level head in our group.

Fifty or sixty eyes were at windows, staring down at us.  We were in the sixes, the buildings with six ‘apartments’ each, where the minimum risk prisoners were.  There weren’t many.  The fours were more numerous.  More dangerous prisoners who were deemed cooperative enough to have full privileges.

Sveta, Capricorn and I jogged.

“Rain and Crystalclear first,” Capricorn said.  The disc he held had lines extending from it, and some of those lines lit up.

“Yes,” I said.

“I can’t figure you out, Victoria,” Sveta murmured.

“Master-stranger protocols,” Capricorn said.

Sveta looked at him, “What?”

“Master-stranger,” I said.  “We’re under the influence of a power.  We can’t trust our own judgment.”

“And you’re on board with this, Capricorn?” she asked.  “You’re okay with this?”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Not like this!” she exclaimed, stopping in her tracks.

“Do you trust me?” he asked again.  “Forgetting this specific situation, do you trust me?”

“It’s more nuanced than that.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Stop that.  Don’t play your games with me, Capricorn.”

“Do you-”

“Yes!” she shouted.  There was a pause as she gathered her composure.

In that pause, the jeering and shouts from prisoners was audible.  Catcalling, threats.  Offers to get us money if we let them out.

“Most of the time,” Sveta added, more subdued.

“Do you trust Antares?”

“Most of the time,” Sveta said.  She looked at me.  “Yes.”

“Do you trust Weld?”

“What does Weld have to do with this?”

“The protocols we’re talking about are Ward and Protectorate protocols.  If Weld was here he would be following the rules too.  Do you trust Weld?  Do you believe in the Weld fan club?”

“That is the most manipulative shit, Capricorn.”

“If you don’t answer with a resounding yes, I think I win.”

“Fuck you, no you don’t, and yes, of course I believe in my boyfriend, but bringing him up is a stretch.”

“Sometimes our feelings get screwed up.  I’ve had to deal with it before,” I said.  “You know that.”

“Yes,” Sveta said.

“The rules for the protocols are simple.  We listen to the people we can be sure aren’t affected.”

“And you aren’t affected?”

“We’re all affected,” Capricorn said.  “Me, my brother, Antares, the kids.”

“Only Natalie?” Sveta asked.  “She didn’t say anything.”

“I think she thinks that if she’s quiet she could get an opportunity to make a phone call or reach out,” Capricorn said.  “And I don’t think Goddess is that stupid, to let her.”

“I don’t know,” Sveta said.

“Trust us, trust in the rules Weld would have followed.  Because they’re the guidelines of effective heroes.”

“Do the guidelines say how we handle this situation?” Sveta asked.  “Teacher’s attacking, he’s focusing his efforts on the front door.  Goddess is… she wants to fight him here, and we’re supposed to help her.  This is going to become a battlefield, and…”

“And a single mistake could mean our friends lose their lives, or dangerous prisoners get free,” I finished.

“Or Teacher wins,” Capricorn said.  “If he forces us into a retreat or captures us-”

There was a sharp whistle nearby that stood out from the lecherous ones one guy in particular seemed to be doing.  I turned my head, searching for the source.

A prisoner, standing at a balcony, where he had to look around the corner and along the length of a building to see us.  He was a black guy, with tattoos outlined across his face and arms that looked like they had been put on his skin with white-out.  He pointed down, and he held up his hand.

I couldn’t tell if his thumb was out, at that distance, but it sure looked like he had all four fingers up.

I saluted him.

“We’ve got company.  Officers, I’m guessing,” I said.

“We run, instead of fighting,” Capricorn decided.  I nodded my agreement.

Capricorn created cover, orange motes tracing out walls, which appeared just as we reached them.  I flew alongside, the Wretch active.  What the walls didn’t cover, I hoped Capricorn’s setup would.

Which was fine, so long as we just had the one squadron of officers coming from around the back corner of the building.  One squadron, one direction to watch, all good.

But there were others.  We approached the building that Lookout’s compass was pointing us to, and I could see the broken window on the ground floor, with no less than four officers lined up along it, guns pointed out.

I had to push hard to fly out in front, my arms outstretched wide and Wretch stretched out wider.  A momentary stop, working on the assumption the bullets would be accurate, turning to face one direction while flying the opposite, in an effort to confuse-

The Wretch caught a bullet.  In the moment the Wretch was gone, so soon after that I imagined it would have been blocked by the Wretch had it been a tenth of a second faster, Sveta grabbed me by the cloth at the small of my back.  She was already pulling herself to a destination, and in the process, she pulled me too.

I went high, because I could, and because I knew the people shooting at us wouldn’t be aiming that high with their initial battery.  For a moment, I was kind of Sveta’s kite.

We didn’t get away unscathed.  Each of those four officers fired off multiple shots.  I saw bullets hit my teammates.  I saw Capricorn fall in the wake of one shot.

Metal prosthetic body- not all that durable, with the lightweight metals.  As Sveta collapsed into a heap, the three of us stopping at the base of one building.  In the moment we passed through some of the light that reached down past the rectangle of a balcony, I could see the groove in Sveta’s body.  It looked more like someone had buried a hatchet in her side than anything.

And Capricorn- he crawled to the base of the wall, sitting up, before twisting his leg around.  It looked like his armor was up to snuff.  Whatever it was made of was denser, and it hadn’t parted or let the bullet through when it had taken the grazing shot.  Maybe a deflection, maybe a graze.

“All good?” I asked Sveta.  “No damage?”

“Nothing I can tell,” she murmured.  “Get me a patch?  At my back, actually only a short distance from the damage done.  I’ll try not to grab you.”

I found the patch.  I had to fumble with it, finding the way it attached.  There was a part that went inside the armor, inside the damaged portion-

Sveta grabbed it from within, pulling it flush against the armor.  “I think I’ve got it.  Thanks.”

I nodded.

Capricorn leaned out to peer around the corner.  There was a gunshot, and he pulled his head back.

“Night vision goggles or something,” Capricorn said.  He looked around.  “It’s too dark for them to see me, normally.”

I glanced up at the sky.  The sun had set.  No light from above that wasn’t from the moon, and we weren’t near any cities.  The only light pollution was from the prison complex.

“Guys who were behind us are going to catch up with us,” I said.  “If I was willing to hurt these guys, I would.”

“Patched,” Sveta said.  “So long as I don’t pick at the wires.”

Capricorn looked out.  Another bullet made him pull his head in.

“Stop doing that, you’re making me nervous,” Sveta said.

“I guess our assistant warden isn’t telling all his men to stand down,” Capricorn said.  “Antares, you’ve got-”

Something landed on the ground near us.

Trash?

No, not just trash.  An adult diaper.  Used.

I craned my head up to look, saw a wide-mouthed, wild-haired face peering down, and took flight, flying up toward them.

They shrieked, and then slammed their balcony door closed.

I lowered myself to the ground.  Capricorn had already dealt with the diaper, burying it in a pyramid of stone.

“Get my phone?” Capricorn asked.  “I’m wearing gauntlets.”

He indicated where, and I reached for it.

He moved it to the edge of the building, so that only the camera peeked out, and looked at the screen.  The night-vision mode wasn’t great, but even looking over Capricorn’s shoulder, I could see the general shape of the building.

I could also see the bright spots that were his sparks.  He was using the camera to help place them.

I kept an eye out for our pursuers at our rear.  In a prison complex that was inconsistently lit, we were now sitting in the shadows just beside the illumination that came down from diaper-man’s balcony light.

No, nothing was that easy.  I could see the first hints of flashlights mounted on guns.

“Hey Lookout,” I murmured.  “Since you’re messing around with power and systems, if you happened to want to throw these guys for a loop…”

The lights went out around the pursuers.

“Uh,” I said.

“Coincidence,” Sveta said.

“Blocking the window,” Capricorn whispered.  “We blitz.  Go in three, two, one!”

We rounded the corner.  A wall of rock blocked the window.

The door near them opened.  Sveta reached out, missed the knob, threw out another hand, and caught it.  She shifted her stance and hauled the door shut.

A gun fired from within.  The door handle came away.

Sveta, halfway to reeling her arm in, whipped it.  It reversed direction, extending in the direction of the hole.

She grabbed someone or something on the other side and yanked.  They collided with the edge of the opening door, which promptly slammed.  It was only a moment later, and after seeing Sveta’s expression, that I remembered the height that the usual doorknob was at, and what she might have grabbed.

The guards shot out the hinges, and at that point, there was no keeping the door up.  I flew to intercept, and as I saw their movements as they turned to track me, I shifted course, flying up.  With the Wretch active, I hit the ceiling just above the door, where the light was.

We still have pursuers from behind.

“We’ve got two red lines from the compass!” Capricorn called out.

Red line?

I flew back and away, so I’d have a second to think.  I was in the middle of evasive maneuvers when a bullet hit the Wretch.

Changing course, I put myself close to the building, so the overhang above the door would provide some cover from the shooter.

They shot elsewhere.

“Stop shooting my body!” Sveta called out, arms up in front of her face.

I flew straight down.  Wretch out, flat out, all out.  A full speed descent, a downward swipe of the Wretch aimed at the concrete pad that the building was seated on.

The pad shattered.  People all around me stumbled- shadowy silhouettes in more shadow.

I swung backhanded, aiming a punch with no enhanced strength active, but with my aura going from zero to ten.

A hand deflected my swing.  The woman stepped in close, with an underhanded punch.  The first hit my breastplate.  The second, same hand, hit my side, where the breastplate didn’t protect me.

People were cowering, backing up, but this person didn’t flinch.

And the one with the gun wasn’t either.  They brought their weapon around, aimed at my head.

I ducked right, relying on flight to keep me moving, when otherwise it would have been me landing on my side.  At the same instant, Sveta had a grip on the gunman and pulled them away, hauling back on the torso, not the gun-arm.  And, still also in the same moment, they fired.

With me moving one way, and Sveta pulling the gunman the other way, the bullet still clipped the edge of my mask just by the left eyehole.  My head was twisted to the left, pain singing in my neck in a way that promised I’d ache tomorrow.

And the martial artist woman in the prison guard uniform was after me.  Her body was a blur of grays and blacks against a black background, and I barely saw her leg come around.  A kick aimed at my neck, while I was still reeling.

Teacher thrall, I realized.  I brought the Wretch out.  She kicked the Wretch, and the Wretch might have been lashing out or growing out in her direction, because I saw and felt her leg break.

She landed on the three intact limbs, centered herself, and then pounced at me.

“The hell?” another officer asked.

“You’ve got moles!” I shouted.  “It’s why we’re here!”

The gunman was maneuvering to get a shot, his focus on Sveta again.  The second teacher thrall.  The night vision sniper Capricorn had remarked on wasn’t using night vision.  They had something else going on, courtesy of Teacher’s gifts.

And they were dead inside enough that my emotion power wasn’t affecting them.

Capricorn closed the distance with the gunman.  Sveta grabbed the pouncer.

The Wretch’s first hit was deflected, but only barely- the woman was hit hard enough that she was pulled from Sveta’s grip.  She didn’t have a second leg to catch herself on, so she wobbled unsteadily as she dropped to a one-legged squat, put her hands out to either side, and then sprung forward at me yet again.

I ducked low, using flight to orient myself, and kicked out.  She was ready for it, pulling her leg up out of the way- but the broken leg that dangled wasn’t so adroit.  I’d kicked it, hard, and as dead as she was inside, she seemed to feel sufficient pain or shock.  She landed hard across broken concrete.

“Hey!  Stop!” one guard shouted.

Capricorn had been punching the gunman, his gauntleted fist coming back from what couldn’t have been the first hit, starting to move in for a third or fourth.

He stopped himself.  When he let the guy fall, the guy fell limp, unconscious.

His head lowered, fists clenching.

“Can’t stop,” I said.  “We’ve got more coming.”

There were others in the incoming squad.  Capricorn looked down at the compass.  I saw two more red lines.

Teachered people that Lookout had noted and marked in her system.

Fuck me.

“Two of these guys are compromised too,” Capricorn said, more for the benefit of the other guards.

There was an eruption.  The incoming squad was scattered, various members thrown in every theoretical direction.

Rain and Crystalclear leaped from a higher point.  Rain stopped them mid-fall, then let them fall the rest of the way.

“We’re clear?  I’m not going to blow up?” Rain asked.

“You’re clear,” I said, before raising my voice.  “The rest of you who’re listening aren’t, by the way!”

“What the fuck!?” a guy on a balcony shouted down.  “What’s going on!?”

We ignored him.  My phone was buzzing, and the ‘compass’ that was the projector disc showing headings of various threats that surveillance had spotted was lighting up.  One big magenta line, then another, and another.  Red lines were converging.

“I’m really hoping we can close the portal if we need to,” I said, because I’m going to guess that those magenta lines are… bigger threats.”

“The people at the gates,” Sveta said.  She was working on patching her body where she’d taken bullets.  “Powered people.”

“No sweat.  We’ve got the Lady in Blue,” Rain said, smiling.

“Yeahhhh,” Crystalclear said, sounding very unsure.  “Hey, how are we feeling about that?  Because things are looking odd to me here, cracks in places there shouldn’t be cracks.”

His vision.

“We’re feeling master-stranger protocols?” I tried, with a note of hope, wincing a little at the same time.

“I’m not up to date on my protocols,” Crystalclear said.

I sighed.

“Things are screwed up,” Sveta said.

“Okay, it’s not just me then,” Crystalclear said, sounding relieved.  I wasn’t sure he’d sound as relieved if he had the full story.

I pulled my phone free.  My side hurt like a bitch where I’d been punched.  Hit-in-the-organs hurt.

But that hurt was almost welcome.  Hurt was part and parcel of wearing the costume, being in that zone of being a cape.  It was me not being Victoria, for just a little while.

A different headspace.  One of two safe refuges.

And… looking at my phone, I could see that I might need to tap the other- the powers scholar.

Kenzie had surveillance footage, looping between a few isolated clips because the people entering the prison now were destroying the cameras as they came across them, and one of those people was making cameras twist on their mounts to look away.

That would be Blindside.  I was pretty sure that another one was Kingdom Come.  The same guy I’d seen blow up… he must have reconstituted.

And they had a leader.  These squads liked to have a big bad brute in charge, and these guys had picked one I knew well.  Hometown brute, already growing in metal scales that punched through tattooed skin.

Fucking Lung.  Fuck him.

They weren’t alone.

I showed Tristan and Sveta, before turning the camera around for Crystalclear and Rain to see.

As the focus shifted away, my vision remained on Capricorn.  He’d wrapped up ‘cuffing’ the compass-marked threats.  His hand was shaking, and he seemed to be trying to settle down.  There was still blood on the gauntlet.

“Let’s get moving.  We’ve got to get Swansong and whoever Foresight sent to that side.”

“Ah geez,” Crystalclear said.

“We can do this,” Capricorn said, with a courage and conviction that I one hundred percent did not believe rang true, after seeing his hand shake like that.  He looked back at the guards that had backed off after hearing about the moles, as if for validation.  “We’ve got this.”

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118 thoughts on “Gleaming – 9.9”

  1. Huh. We knew they were using Kingdom Come as slave labor, and Lung doing jobs for Teacher isn’t a surprise, but Blindside? I didn’t get the impression they were the sort who’d be down with working for someone who does what Teacher does. Perhaps Teacher figured out how to get around their power and mastered them?

    Hopefully the situation is confused enough that Victoria can continue to get the guards on side without awkward questions about Goddess.

    1. Scapegoat means he can offer the power without the influence.
      And Blindside… Blindside I can see wanting some refinements to their power, except that without any alteration I couldn’t see even if they wanted me to.

  2. Is it me or is the wording on Victoria’s initial though about maybe murdering Amy implying that it’s mostly Goddess’s fault?

    1. It’s… Odd. Though I’m pretty sure nearly murdering Amy for touching her is what an unmastered Victoria would have done. Maybe it’s an effect of how Goddess mastering insinuates her into your worldview? Makes things revolve around her?

      1. No one going to talk about her blaming Amy for Dean’s death by Endbringer there? He was a non-Brute hit by Leviathan. No, Antares, Amy could NOT have saved him.

        1. IIRC Dean died of his injuries in the emergency field hospital, so Amy would have been able to save him. However I’m pretty sure one of Dragon, Alexandria, or Miss Militia made the call on who got Amy’s attention first; there were a hell of a lot of people in that hospital and the need to maintain the Endbringer Truce imposed the additional constraint of needing to persuade villains they’d get assigned healing post-battle on a fair basis. Victoria probably understands this intellectually but it’d be hard enough to emotionally process even without everything else.

          1. He was in the hospital. He wanted to speak to Glory Girl, but she was looking for Amy to fix him up. If she’d not been looking for Amy, he’d have been able to warn Glory Girl- or somebody- about Amy’s imminent and inevitable emotional breakdown, and possibly even tell GG that Amy loved her as more than a sister.

            He reads emotions, but never got the chance to pass on his knowledge.

      2. I’m almost wondering if there’s not some sort of feedback loop forming between “hates Amy” and “Do what Amy’s ‘friend’ says”. That’s the sort of thing that can become… volatile.

        1. I think indirect. Probably it’s not specifically from the Master power, but it has created a scenario where she’s highly loyal to someone who brings Amy along for sufficently sound reasons Victoria can’t just say to stop bringing her. It’s likely she’d act similiarly if… I guess right now only Jessica… needed Amy along to liase with Marquis.

          Goddess appears to recognize this is a thing but is responding by just ordering Victoria to stay on task and not bringing Amy along unneccessarily. Which isn’t good for Victoria psychologically but is easy and has gotten her to be productive, so Goddess considers it a satisfactory resolution.

  3. Good to see Blindside and Lung again. Wonder what Blindside’s getting out of it; his power prevents direct contact, so he’s reasonably safe from Teacher’s power and other strikers as well, for that matter.

    Lung’s working for Marquise, or at least allied to him; I don’t think he’d be a student. Too proud of his own abilities to accept them from elsewhere. I’d… Quite like to see Lung against Lord of Loss. Interesting to see the Brute who gets stronger the longer a fight goes on fight the Breaker who gets stronger the more things he hits.

    1. If Teacher could con Blindside into letting him use his power of them, it could work. When he used his power on Scapegoat, it involved them touching the backs of their hands together. No one can touch Blindside, but their power doesn’t prevent them for touching others themselves. Teacher could extend his hand out and then Blindside could place their own hand against it. I can imagine someone in Blindside’s position might be willing to give up a great deal to have the power to let people look at them when they wanted it.

      1. I’m not sure if Teacher can grant the ability to turn off a passive power like Blindside’s. Would that be a Thinker power? I’m not sure it is. Ingenue could probably do it, though, but we haven’t seen or heard of her for a while.

        1. Yeah, I’ve no idea if Teacher could do that for Blindside. I think I recall him telling Lung he could give him more control of his transformations. He definitely gave Scapegoat a better ability to handle injuries. That’s what I’m basing the idea on. It’s definitely plausible enough for Teacher to make that claim…

          1. Probably he could for any activated power that isn’t fully controlled by the user, but not powers that are stuck on.

      1. You know what this prison needs at this very moment? A pissed-off mama Simurgh seeking to screw over Teacher, Lung, and everyone else tangentally involved. Right when Lung and a huge chunk of Teacher’s assets are engaged, only able to withdraw through one portal, and in a context where no other reinforcements can arrive.

        Also? Kenzie said a portal a hundred feet up would work. Who would know that, can fly, and may remember how to make a portal generator and definitely could relearn?

        Though the clusterfuck would be somewhat reduced by Goddess noping the hell out. She has previously demonstrated she knows better than to unwisely piss off the Simurgh.

          1. It really wouldn’t be a good thing. Not yet. The story’s crossed the Simurgh treshold once before, in Gold Morning, but this isn’t nearly as bad.
            Like, they could just let Teacher win, and it’d most likely be less destructive both in the long and short term than anything the Simurgh would do.

          2. Well probably not a net good thing for anyone onsite unless they get away in three minutes. But if the Simurgh’s motives are confined to furious mama bear vengence (I think they aren’t but don’t know what they are) then she’d put in her appearance for the sake of just totally fucking over Teacher and time it to perfection. Like when Teacher has just sent a huge chunk of his assets into a situation where there can be no retreat.

            And while the prison has enough capes for an Endbringer fight, most of them would not meet the psychological standards for even brief engagements with the Simurgh, the ones most capable of hurting her aren’t with Teacher and are liable to say “oh fuck run” if she lets them leave, and the heavies on Teacher’s side can sustain engagement with an Endbringer but not actually kill the core.

          3. Oh right, and the capes onsite who might be able to kill the core currently rely on Tinker hands to direct their powers. Tinker tech is unsuitable for use against the Simurgh because she hacks it or rips it apart with her TK. So even if everyone here teamed up to kill her they probably couldn’t. They’re amazingly well-set otherwise, with Goddess’s Aligning probably able to override her like it did Khephri and Lung able to charge up enough to wrestle her and Teacher’s precogs degrading her perfection to mere hypercompetence, but they lack a kill method and with Lookout onsite the Simurgh can make a portal blocker to stop anyone from showing up, letting her just stay in the fight instead of retreating when injured to avoid Scion.

        1. Placing the portal 100 feet up would work because she is shifting the portal’s end position 100 feet down.
          So 100 feet up would end up on the ground.

  4. Interesting that they don’t have any Dragonteeth guarding the prison. Seems like an effective security against invading capes

    1. The Dragon’s Teeth not being mentioned at all, much like Dragon before the portal attacks, is a bit worrying. Did Dragon and the Wardens have a falling out at some point? Have maintenance costs become prohibitively high leading to the program being discontinued? Or are all the Dragon’s Teeth, like the Wardens, busy dealing with constant A and S class threats with no time for things that aren’t immediately exploding?

      1. Well, there is that rapidly advancing machien army that is far closer to the portal than it;s supposed to be, and Valkyrie called for assistance becasue she wasn;t up to her task by hersself…

        Basically the teams thata re left on earth Gimel are msotly scraped together second stringers fighting against issues that are supposedly out of their league. And they take serious his even after alliances of necessity. Just look at the Breakthrough/Underside .. um.. ‘teamwork’.

        Also, I am now coninvec that Lung witll be the villain protagonist of Parahumans Three.

        1. Naw, Lung is not interesting enough. You’d have to chop his character up too much and it would break continuity.

          1. It’ll be Lung’s illegitimate son, Ling, who has to deal with wanting to be a straight A student and have a normal life with everyone wanting him to join their cape team because of his Dragon Power.

      2. The Dragon’s Teeth memorably got Scion to rotate his choice of offensive powers to deal with them. I think a number survived the experience, but their gear was probably trashed. Likewise, I’m pretty sure literally all of Dragon’s combat capable craft were crippled or destroyed by Scion or Khephri.

        Currently we’ve seen Dragon’s avatar and one of her combat craft. I think it’s pretty likely she has several, but I’m not sure how her code came through being unshackled from Teacher and some of Richter’s shackles may be back because she’s like ten billion lines of undocumented code and random things break when she’s modified. And all the industrial capacity she had is wreckage on Bet, so she’s definitely well short of her production capacity relative to peak during the S9000 fight. Making new Dragon’s Teeth gear has to compete with literally everything with this attempt to build a 21st-century civilization in a handful of years, and any that is available is probably committed to battlefields rather than rear security duty.

        1. Wiki check: Dragon’s Teeth were defending Warden HQ in the epilogue. Presumably MIA from the portal attack. Probably a number deployed on the front lines against the Machine Army and similar threats.

          1. Notably, most of their equipment is likely gone, as is the networking capability used by Armsmaster’s combat analysis program, whether or not the people themselves were trapped.

  5. Well this is turning into a bigger clusterfuck. But hey Lung, nice to see you. Good news I don’t think Vicky has the ability to rot your crotch off. Or is going to cut your eyes out.

    Goddess master power is pretty insidious. And Um, without amnesia for the first like 19 years of your life, you aren’t going to be able to avoid thinking about Amy, Victoria.

    Damn will the Dallon’s ever have a family Christmas again? Without signifigant mastering?

    1. you’re sounding like Carol with that ‘family Christmas’
      it’s not really a PRIORITY okay
      a better question is if Vicky will ever be able to have a Christmas untained with memories of ‘family’

      1. That wasn’t significant mastering. The Blue Lady leaves way too much of her ‘aligned’ untouched. That Victoria could bring herself to argue with her is evidence enough of that. Also that she can’t order someone to go against their stronger moral codes.

        No, the Godess basically just has really souped up Charisma, like a D&D Charm spell cranked up to 11.

        1. Reminds me of Haley after she drank that potion of Glibness +30.

          Behold, the power of lying! You can pretty much alter reality, if you try hard enough.

        2. As far as I can tell it just makes people loyal to her in the way they’re loyal to people. Which makes it difficult to get them to do specific things but also means she doesn’t have to worry about leaving them unsupervised nearly as much as Teacher.

          I suspect she could get someone to break a pretty strong moral code by specifically forcing the issue, but they’d get stressed out and slow to react and otherwise a lot less useful and Goddess prefers to just turn and tell someone else to do it instead. People have been sort of locking up when asked what they’d do if Goddess outright ordered them to kill or similarly violate a core code, and I suspect they’d react similarly if it actually happened and then do it very poorly.

  6. Really hoping Crystalclear figures out whats happening before he meets Goddess face to face. Otherwise things could start getting bad quickly.

    1. Quick question: if Crystalclear had gotten good enough at using his power to see exactly what’s going on here–would he play dumb and say things like he says here? Depending on how much Breakthrough knows about his power, it might be suspicious if he didn’t mention picking up some sign of Mastery.

      1. Victoria knows enough about him that he had to point something out, but he’s not acting as if he knew Goddess was just a couple blocks away. Plus precogs tend to muddy things when they get together, and her danger sense will probably interfere with his foresight.
        This is going to be such a mess.

  7. “He came to me with a form prepared to counter me. And that is, as far as I detected, only one of three levels of deception that boy was putting into practice. You don’t want to tell me that you’re following his suit.”

    Chris you are my hero.

    1. Yes Cryptid is still best Breakthrough. The story will improve when he’s back in it. I guess maybe the setup is for some sweet while-he-was-offscreen interlude action? Where we’ll learn more about Cryptid and Goddess both? Maybe about Panacea too? Yes please!

      1. It doesn’t say that the other two layers of deception were specifically for Goddess, either. The other two might be something to do with whatever creepiness it is that leaves him leaking onto his bedclothes. Or maybe Goddess discovered the first three for misleading her, and missed more layers about deceiving others.

        1. Did Amy try to help Chris with his power before, or was she indirectly the cause of it? Because it said Chris’ power wasn’t his- or implied it, anyway- and we know Amy could change powers, so would it be so far-fetched to think she might be able to grant powers? Something like Teacher, where natural abilities are heightened to be akin to powers? I’m leaning towards Chris had a power before and she messed with it.

          1. What we know about Chris is basically that natural pre-GM triggers do not kill you, and he doesn’t to our knowledge have a Cauldron tattoo. Victoria inferred that the hazardous changes are due to another person’s power acting on him. Amy had never messed with someone’s power prior to Khephri and I doubt that’s an experience she would wish to repeat, so I’m thinking not her.

  8. Oh my God, Victoria is lost without tattletale and she’s going against Lung. LUNG, who went one on one with Leviathan and lived.

    Also, goddess is an idiot who doesn’t really care that she can be outsmarted.

    Finally, where the hell is dragon? Seriously, someone tell her that Teacher is trying to control parahumans in a prison and she will be right there.

    Goddess is an S class threat and none of the heavy hitters are there.

      1. Lung was having trouble with his power build-up at that time though, and Scion would have simply burnt a bit of lifetime to force-disable his shard and wipe him out.
        Triggering from Contessa, duking it out with Leviathan solo and forcing him to actually give up, and regenerating from Skitter’s injuries twice are enough for any kind of bragging rights, really.

        Accepting to work for Teacher, though… kinda disappointing.

        1. And don’t forget, Lung also managed to escape the Yangban. And iirc he’s the only person to manage to do that(Cody doesn’t count as a person).

  9. For the love of all that is sane; would someone please call the Wardens already.

    Like; I don’t want them to rely on them too much but this seems like a prime situation to get the heavy weights involved.

    1. Thing is, this could be an echidna-like situation. Do you really want heavy hitters right where Goddess can get them?

  10. I’m guessing after this is over Victoria will be giving EVERYONE she works with a schooling on Protectorate protocols

  11. Goddess is extremely petulant and clearly unsuited to be leading a world. However, it’s still extremely interesting to watch two Masters duking it out with their various organizations of whammied servants. It’s like two divine beings playing chess while they themselves are pieces. They’re both calculating and indifferent enough for the metaphor to work.

    1. I’ve been wondering for sometime how much ruling Goddess actually did. I suspect that she left most of the day to day work to her flunkies and just lived it up. Or she was running Shin into the ground. Government systems can go on autopilot for some years before everything starts to really fall apart.

      1. From everything, it sounds like it was in pieces from the beginning. But yes, I agree that it seems more in her nature to allow her whammies to run everything, whether or not they were fit to do so. She relies too much on her power; she assumes competence of her servants, like having their minds aligned to her purposes will suddenly make them better, though I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually believed that. She certainly is arrogant enough to believe it.

      2. For my money, her ruling style was probably basically a global version of what she’s been doing with Breakthrough. She tells her minions to do a thing, and then they go forth and apply their competence to do the thing. I expect the underlying mechanisms of government worked fine, but she’d occasionally demand some random hideously expensive thing and no one would say no. Still, she doesn’t seem inclined to micromanage any more than necessary and takes backtalk with reasonable grace.

        1. I suspect that tolerance for backtalk is not something that was present in her days of ruling Shin. I think she’s had to develop a tolerance to backtalk while living on Gimel without causing the Wardens to stomp her ass. I strongly suspect that she used to be someone who wouldn’t brook any defiance in her days when she ruled Shin. Amy implied that she was realizing that she surrounded herself with people that literally couldn’t talk back to her. She seems to have realized that’s a weakness, but I can see top Heather finding her way to the fore occasionally.

          1. I get the impression she’s always handled criticism better than you’d expect from her overall personality because she knows her minions are loyal to her. But her problem was that her minions wouldn’t question her goals; Breakthrough shot down her initial frontal assault plan but no one said “wait, maybe we shouldn’t attack the prison at all,” and they aren’t going to so long as Goddess wants her power battery back. So they’ll tell her if her plan isn’t a good idea for getting what she wants, but not that it’s a mistake to want something.

          2. “I get the impression she’s always handled criticism better than you’d expect from her overall personality because she knows her minions are loyal to her.”

            Except she’s questioning Victoria’s loyalty over Vic questioning her plans. This to me sounds like Goddess knows if she pushes too hard the ‘alignment’ can weaken, break, or falter. Also that if She can push a minion into a corner of “going against the Godess” and they aren’t faltering it might get them over smaller ethical quandaries.

          3. She’s specifically concerned about Victoria questioning her in a way that may indicate disloyalty, namely objecting without having a specific argument as to why it’s a bad plan, which tends to indicate, uh, the actual thing happening at that very moment. She doesn’t seem to enjoy being questioned at all but did instruct Victoria to raise any actual argument she had.

            Objections to her plans seem to piss her off but not too badly to listen to them.

  12. So the walls are coming down and the concrete is getting cracked everywhere. Is there even going to be a prison left by the end of this?

    No, because Lung is involved.

  13. Lung getting teachered is pretty out of character, Unless this is from a third faction, these could be results of teacher’s acquisition of scapegoat.

    1. Lung’s a mercenary now, though he’s been allied to Marquis for a long time because they get on surprisingly well, given their differences in motivation and practices. It’s possible he’s here because Marquis asked him to keep an eye on Teacher, and Lung likes showing off. Well, not ‘showing off’ exactly, but his power speeds up the more parahumans there are around, and he likes using his power.

    2. Back in the Birdcage, Lung made a limited deal with Teacher that did not involve Teacher using his power on Lung. Most likely that arrangement has continued and Lung is now a free-willed lieutenant commanding a thrall team.

      1. Lung’s reaction to seeing Amy and Victoria together will be interesting. Not ‘that’ kind of together although this story ending up with them married and the narrative being them talking about it to their (biological) children… well, it could happen

        After reading Pact and Twig, I know capable ol’ WeddingBells is of surprising us.

  14. typo thread:
    “I’m really hoping we can close the portal if we need to,” I said, because I’m going to guess that those magenta lines are… bigger threats.”

    missing quotation mark between ‘I said,’ and ‘because’

    1. >In the moment the Wretch was gone, so soon after that I imagined it would have been blocked by the Wretch had it been a tenth of a second faster, Sveta grabbed me by the cloth at the small of my back.

      Bit of a confusing run-on sentence. Consider rephrasing for clarity.

      The description of the movement and positions of V, S, & C is unclear:

      >Sveta grabbed me by the cloth at the small of my back. She was already pulling herself to a destination, and in the process, she pulled me too.

      So Sveta is moving away and pulling Victoria with her…

      >I went high, because I could, and because I knew the people shooting at us wouldn’t be aiming that high with their initial battery. For a moment, I was kind of Sveta’s kite…

      Victoria flies into the air while being pulled by Sveta…

      >We didn’t get away unscathed. Each of those four officers fired off multiple shots. I saw bullets hit my teammates. I saw Capricorn fall in the wake of one shot.

      Sveta and Victoria apparently leave Capricorn where he was, and Victoria sees him fall…

      >As Sveta collapsed into a heap, the three of us stopping at the base of one building.

      But now it seems that all three of them were apparently moving together as they all arrive simultaneously at the base of the building. It’s a little confusing because when Capricorn was mentioned last, he had just fallen while Sveta and Victoria moved away.

      >And Capricorn- he crawled to the base of the wall, sitting up

      Now Capricorn is crawling towards the base of the wall, yet in his previous mention, he was already there at the base of the building/wall. These inconsistencies should be fixed and the description of everyone’s location throughout the scene should be clarified.

      >They shrieked, and then slammed their balcony door closed.

      He shrieked/his balcony door closed. Victoria describes him as the “diaper-man” so she knows his gender, so there’s no reason to use gender-neutral pronouns in her initial description.

      >She shifted her stance and hauled the door shut.

      >A gun fired from within. The door handle came away.

      >Sveta, halfway to reeling her arm in, whipped it. It reversed direction, extending in the direction of the hole.

      >She grabbed someone or something on the other side and yanked.

      This description was confusing because “it” seemingly refers to the door handle, until you realize that she put her whole arm through the hole she created. Since the door handle came away in her hand and there’s no mention of her dropping it, it seems at first as though she’s throwing the door handle back in the direction of the door, then you have to reread the passage once you realize “it” refers to her arm, for it to make sense. It’s also unclear what happens to the door handle. Does she drop it? Fling it when she rips it off the door? Keep it in her hand when her arm reverses direction? Clarifying what happens to the handle would remove the ambiguity of what “it” refers to.

    2. “If I set that law aside- and I didn’t want to, but the situation was complicated, then I had other laws.”
      Em dash opens, comma closes.

    3. “Her primary goal right now was in keeping the Warden and his deputy from accessing any computers to start detonating ankle bombs. ”

      Should be lowercase ‘warden’; the capitalization makes it seem like someone from the hero team is present.

  15. Best guess is that teacher used scapegoat to force lung to help him. Either that or teacher made a VERY good offer. Blindside seems like a Merc so he’s probably getting paid. Hopefully teacher can nullify goddesses master power or this will be a short fight. Also, Sveta yanking a guy by the dick literally made me laugh out loud.

  16. Well, Tristan sure likes to tempt fate. I don’t exactly share his apparent confidence, considering Breakthrough never really handled massive jinxing nicely, so far.
    Better cross your fingers to keep your favourite(s) healthy enough through the night…

    1. Tristan sounding that confident is part of the problem, not the solution.
      I think he knows it too — he’s taken off some significant limiters, mentally.

  17. Oh, man. I’m kind of unreasonably excited to see Lung enter the fray here. I’ve always liked him, though I imagine our heroes are not going to feel the same way.

    As for Victoria…ouch. It really hurts to see her in so much mental distress. Amy is even tainting the memories of Dean now…that girl has a lot to answer for.

    1. At this point, Victoria is doing it to herself. Amy literally did every conceivable thing she could do to make it up to her short of suicide. The girl basically made a martyr of herself for years and Victoria found a way to fAult her for THAT as well.

      1. There’s actually one thing that Amy could do that she hasn’t done and keeps not doing. That’s to stay away.

        Regardless of how much Amy wants forgiveness, she needs to understand that it’s never likely to be coming and that it’s up to Victoria to change her mind on that front. What she did to Victoria easily falls in the category of “unforgivable.” If she really wants to make amends, she needs to realize how painful everything about herself is horrifically painful to Victoria and stop trying to reinsert herself into Victoria’s life despite Victoria’s CLEAR indications that she wants nothing to do with Amy.

        There may come a day when Victoria can bring herself to forgive Amy, but there’s no sequence of actions that are under Amy’s control that will bring that about, unless she’s going to mind-rape Victoria again and MAKE her forgive her. There are consequences to actions and some things can’t be unbroken.

        1. “There’s actually one thing that Amy could do that she hasn’t done and keeps not doing. That’s to stay away.”

          Exactly.

          “If she really wants to make amends, she needs to realize …”

          At this point I believe realization has sunk in.

  18. Continued insights into Goddess:

    1. That bit with the aura was very interesting and unexpected. Apparently her defense power adapts over time and those adaptions aren’t overwritten. That seems in contrast to how it negated Khephri outright on the first use; maybe her danger sense warned her to discharge her power battery to enhance it and block the first strike?

    2. Yup, looks like TK manifests as a single fractal.

    3. Apparently her danger sense is nonspecific about the nature of the danger but she is very good at narrowing it down, and it is sufficient to counteract snipers

    4. I continue to hold that she’s not an idiot. She’s rather overbearing and imperious as you’d expect from someone who styles herself Goddess, but still demonstrates sound tactical and strategic judgement. She listens to her danger sense and somewhat to her minions, though she is annoyed by questioning. She makes effective use of her powers. She even shows the judgement and self-restraint to walk when she’s in a hurry; by point 2 her TK-based flight would limit her ability to use it offensively or defensively and it’s wiser to stay ground-bound in battle, though she had taken to the air to pursue Khephri in the Golden Morning aftermath so she’s probably not completely helpless while airborne.

    She’s not a tactical genius, but she’s probably as smart as Weld or Tecton or Golem or the broad range of reasonably successful non-Thinker commanders not named Taylor we’ve seen.

    1. Also our team had better hope she stays at that level of competence, because if they have to go up against Lung with their usual idiom they are so fucked. Goddess’s TK would probably outmuscle him with the timeframe and audience he’s got, but her normal best solution to a huge bruiser of “Welcome to the team!” probably isn’t going to work here or Teacher wouldn’t have sent Lung in the first place.

      1. Well, Breakthrough has Swansong and Precipice – the two of them can deal ridiculous amounts of damage very quickly. The second Damsel might also assist, depending her current mindset.
        If Lung enters the fight after those have joined up and doesn’t hulk up incredibly fast, he might be in for a nasty surprise, plus Victoria surely knows enough about him to know their only chance is going all out from the start.
        Who knows, maybe he learnt a thing or two about tactics listening to Marquis.

        1. Possibly Damsel, but Lung is a very powerful regenerator as well and her hands are a bit on the fritz.

          With so many witnesses and him already hulking out, he’s probably going to be out of their league before making contact. And just generally Breakthrough is not very good at tactics, and Lung didn’t become undisputed Asian gang lord of Brockton Bay by being bad at fighting. Brockton Bay used to have distinct gangs for different Asian ethnicities.

  19. It’s interesting that we have yet another combatant entering the fray whose power benefits from having a ton of parahumans around. I wonder if Lung’s stubborn drive towards new challenges would be enough for him to just shrug off a Goddess whammy.

  20. Nope. If he got Goddess whammied he’d seek new foes to defeat in her name.

    But I assume Teacher has an applicable countermeasure; you don’t send a deadly physical badass against a mind-controller on purpose if said badass is subject to mind control. I don’t recall any indication Lung has an immunity in general, but Teacher may have secured a cape who can grant immunity. Someone did shield Chevalier against Behemoth burning him alive from the inside, so remote protection against powers does exist.

    1. I wasn’t suggesting power-based immunity. I was suggesting sheer unyielding stubbornness, the kind that makes it hard for a person like Lung to back down from a challenge, the type that motivated him to work with the girl who rotted his balls off in order to find a way to fight Scion at his full strength kind of stubborn.
      I mean honestly I wouldn’t expect it to work, I just think it’d be fun character moment if it somehow did.

      1. Goddess’s Alignment isn’t really something to struggle against in that way. Lung is strong-willed, but it wouldn’t really go up against a core portion of his identity. He’d be as happy with her orders as he is with Teacher’s, so he wouldn’t have anything solid to set his will against.

    1. Blindside’s power works by making them so inconceivably ambiguous that nobody and nothing can directly observe them. Legends claim that even Blindside has been left in the dark. For as the prophet once said,

      That is not spied which can eternal shy.
      And with strange sides even they are blind.

  21. ooh lung might be one of the only non trump able to put goddess in a hole assuming he does not get “aligned”

  22. Man… For all her power, Goddess is actually kind of weak.

    She wants people that won’t be yes-men but she can’t handle any kind of criticism, seems _unable_ to consider anything but her own path when moving foward.

    I’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t such a unpleasant person.

    1. I wouldn’t say that; she hates being criticized but is clearly willing to listen to valid points. Remember she originally planned to sieze Breakthrough’s network and launch a frontal assault but was convinced it’d be a bad idea.

      Her problem isn’t that she’s an idiot, it’s that she’s basically still emotionally a kid. A spoiled kid. But smart enough to understand actions have consequences.

      1. My broad judgement on Goddess’s leadership is that she’s kind of okay. This attack seems about on par with the Fallen town assault from an organizational perspective, and Goddess’s calls have been fine. Probably one of the less intelligent major contenders, but her powerset is relatively easy to use and she’s not dumb enough to catastrophically screw up with it. She could manage the team better and keep them more firmly on-mission, but her control has the huge advantage that she can just tell people what she wants done and they’ll figure out how and she doesn’t micromanage unless something is actually a problem. Her orders are a couple sentences apiece and she doesn’t seem inclined to look over their shoulders so long as everything is going smoothly.

  23. I think…..at some point, this continual dancing around the Amy issue (by keeping things solely from Vicky’s perspective) is getting kind of…..played out past its welcome.

    Obviously there’s a wealth of trauma to unpack and deal with over time, but Victoria’s gone to such a rabid degree of ‘nope’ that at this point, barring some change-up, it doesn’t really feel like she’ll ever get over it. Not to say that it isn’t understandable, but….it’s just kind of dragging along, only with brief moments that just ‘confirm’ Vicky’s lack of change in her thoughts on the matter.

    And with Amy just absolutely wrecking any chance of that happening any time soon as per the most recent interaction, (And without any perspective of Amy’s thoughts since the initial interlude – even after Victoria asked Yamada to try and make sure Amy doesn’t go off the deep end – it feels more and more like a dancing-around-the-issue attempt)

    The Goddess stuff, while interesting in that it’s a master effect that isn’t as stupidly OP as the ones featured in Worm, also isn’t necessarily doing the arc any favors – a ‘subtle’ master effect just leads to repetition of ‘am I me’ over and over and over again – and while there’s some good horror to explore in that feeling, I don’t think it mixed particularly well with overlapping Amy’s ‘return’ into Vicky’s life at this point in time.

    Admittedly, on some level, even after 9ish arcs, it’s also possible Vicky just isn’t really doing it for me as a protagonist, but while I won’t presume to say things are ruined forever, this really isn’t sucking me in at all.

    1. “Admittedly, on some level, even after 9ish arcs, it’s also possible Vicky just isn’t really doing it for me as a protagonist…”

      That was me with Taylor in Worm. Luckily the story overall was good enough to keep me interested, as well as my enjoyment of several secondary characters.

        1. Probably some, but also Taylor does make some pretty bad judgement calls, and while the reasons were understandable they were also mistakes noticable from an outside perspective. Armsmaster was right when he told her that her plan to infiltrate the Undersiders was stupid (he was also a dick).

          1. Actually, right (also a dick) is basically the Armsmaster experience with the single notable exception of assuming a weapon that could cut any physically possible material could seriously injure an Endbringer. In that case he was wrong (also a dick); if he’d been right Leviathan would have been dead and that’d have papered over the truce breach.

        2. “Could we hypothesize that high-school bullies also read Worm?”
          Sure, but I don’t see what that has to do with two people’s disinterest in these characters.

      1. Victoria started out unable to think Amy’s name easily or event to think about her. Then she had fight or flight response, and now is able to be within physical proximity to her. None of this is easy, or happy, or even by choice, but she’s grown better at enduring it.

        As for a team leader, part of this story is that that team Breakthrough aren’t supposed to exist as a team due to all their respective issues, and Jessica Yamada , and Tattletale both told Victoria it was a bad idea.

        I remain of the opinion that as of arc ten we will have POV shift and sicne the story is about both sisters, we will find ourselves with anew protagonist, in the shape of one Amelia Clare Lavere-Dallon, a young woman, who who had her life screwed up by her headstrong self righteous sister, who invaded her personal space and permanently and fundamentally altered her.

        I hope the shift happens and I hope to see soem recall fot Amy’s discussions with Tattletale.

        But.. there is one thing that will make me sign off due to over stretching my belief; Finding out that Greg Veder took over Earth Shin in Goddess’ absence…

        1. While I’m very skeptical as to a protagonist shift, especially when we’ve already had outlook into Amy’s perspective in Worm, I wouldn’t be against it if it resembled the arc where we got Weld and his groups’ perspective.

  24. So… things I only just realized:

    Amy got told to piss off.
    And sent back to base.
    To hang out with…. Chris.

    Chris who already alluded to a desire to meet her,
    and has been actively messing with Goddess.

    Gosh, I wonder what those two are up to, RIGHT NOW.

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