Chapter Text
By the time she came out of Noelle's mind, she was nursing a mind-splitting migraine, and tasting blood on her lips, breathing in rust as she took slow, deep breaths.
"Ma-"
"Shut." She whimper-growled, and staggered upright, holding her head, staring at the wide hallway covered in rotting sludge, a group of guards cautiously positioned around them, one holding a tinkertech heat blade, ready to chop at Noelle's lower half.
She turned, and glanced up through squinting eyes at the Travellers, all standing on the end of the hall.
Trickster gave her a thumbs up as he jerked his head to the vault door, tightly shut once more, and likely empty, from his gesture.
They'd open it once the toxic fumes got pumped out of the room.
She wiped the blood away, and stared down at her vaguely pink-purple flesh, Evelynn's original form covered in muck and grime and guts and rotted flesh.
Her form, at the moment. Her skin.
Thank fuck Evelynn didn't have a stomach or she would have felt quite green at the moment.
She licked the trail of her own blood off her hand, and regarded it with an exhausted sense of confusion.
She knew intellectually that overusing the summon core put strain on her body and soul, regardless of if she had a Legend equipped or not, but it was especially bizarre to be bleeding from a migraine in a body that had neither a real brain or blood. Was the Legend splitting? Spatial distortion? How did this work?
She could Master ten people semi-effectively and not be anywhere near this wrecked, and that was a testament to how much she'd messed with the girl's head. Hopefully the restraint and understanding would help blunt any untowards effects.
Her curiosity was pushed aside for the moment as the heat blade began to hiss in the air once more behind her.
"Stop. Let her up." She whispered, and the guards quickly raised Noelle, the hiss fading.
She slowly turned, and looked at the girl. She looked horrible.
Noelle was practically covered in tears and blood, her eyes unerringly laser-focused on Taylor like she was the only thing that mattered in the whole wide world.
She likely was, at least to her, but there was so much restraint she'd put into the girl that she wouldn't have any obsessive problems, hopefully.
Her lower body was like a tree trump of flesh at the moment, eyes and shapes that might one day be limbs squirming and bulging.
"Move her to chamber two. Jamie and whoever else wishes to, stay with her. She could use the emotional support. Give the girl some food too. Everyone else, you're dismissed. Send some people to start cleaning up the mess. Get Coil's subordinate to wipe the cam feed of this hallway." She whispered, only audible due to the sheer silence of the hallway.
She only kept the Legend equipped for long enough to find an empty room, stumble into it, and Teleport into her bunker, the darkness and silence so incredibly pleasant by comparison that she immediately slid down to the floor and swapped to herself, her mind empty of thoughts.
As pleasant as this was, she couldn't afford to disconnect.
She Teleported out to an empty apartment that Coil owned, slowly getting up and breathing in and out, in far too much pain to consider doing… practically anything, and slowly put herself on the old couch, sinking into a deep, meditative trance, aided significantly by her brain almost refusing to think actual thoughts.
Maybe ten, or a hundred minutes later, her phone started buzzing in her pocket.
She lowered the volume, and clicked accept, bringing it to her ear.
"Hey, Sam? So, huge development!" Lisa said with an odd amount of cheer in her voice, sounding slightly out of breath. "I found Spitfire! Problem is that she is with Rune at the moment and they're both running away from the E88 on the border between topside and downtown. I have no idea how or why, don't ask. This is drawing a whole fuckload of attention and they're starting to fly into ABB territory to shake the nazis off, so this is likely to turn into a giant war any second because the nazis don't know that Oni Lee is back. And while I have a lot of power and autonomy here, you're the boss, so tell me what you want to do about this and do it fast, my driver's barely keeping up." She finished, speaking a mile a minute.
She hummed, strained, and rubbed her temples as she struggled to think.
Okay. Spitfire was grouping up with Rune. Rune defected. They found Spitfire. Good news.
Bad news was that she still hadn't spoken to Dinah or Sophia, her captive, the bay was about due for its sudden warzone phase, and from the sound of her buzzing phone, both Oni Lee and Bakuda were probably getting called in to deal with the giant cluster of nazi capes gunning it down the street straight towards their "boss's" turf.
And she had zero juice in the tank. Maybe enough to just hold a Legend, a weak one, but that was it.
"Get the Travellers…" She started, then frowned, gritting her teeth as her brain screamed for mercy.
Marissa didn't like fighting, using her power, or hurting people and property.
The least she could do was respect that.
"Get the Travellers to run interference and peacekeeper. No lethal force, minimum harm and property damage if possible. Just try to stop people from killing, or jailing each other. Do not go on the offensive. If things go south, you're all priority, so run. Get me blood samples from capes if possible. If possible also get Spitfire and Rune. Treat them as innocents and try to bring them into our fold, gently. Be the negotiator, please. No needling. I want them, but they're not a huge priority or concern, just do what you can. My head hurts so much I'm bleeding from my nose right now, so I'm... probably not going to do anything after this. Noelle is secure, and I can't function much at the moment, talk with Coil for strategy. I'm going to go sleep for a few hours, so his power should work fine." She finished quietly, using her whole hand to massage her forehead and scowling.
Lisa was silent for a moment, then groaned.
"Shit, okay."
And with that eloquent response, she ended the call.
Taylor took a deep breath, worrying her jaw for a moment as anxiety warred with the simple reality that she couldn't nod right now, nevermind fight or do anything else, really.
This was pretty much out of her hands at this point.
She ignored the constant buzz of messages, her informants and dealers and contacts all likely spamming her about what Lisa just told her, blocking it out by covering her ears and curling into a ball, lamenting the fact that this whole clusterfuck chose right now to start, right after the sole time she made herself almost completely debilitated.
Two painkillers and a pair of earmuffs later, she curled up into a ball on the couch and cast 'Heal' on herself on repeat while meditating, letting the pain slowly ebb away enough to sink into an agonised sleep.
One she was torn out of a mere fifteen minutes later, or so.
She fumbled for the phone, and dragged it up to her ear.
"Hi again! This is kind of out of our pay grade at the moment! Lung's rampaging and the Empire is trying to kill him and the heroes are trying to capture the stragglers which are Spitfire and Rune and there's a fucking Stranger somewhere around here and this whole block is burning to the ground and there so many fucking gang members that I can't even peek my head out of my cover without feeling a bullet fly by my head. Oh and Coil is not in his office and isn't answering, the fucker vanished into thin air. It's too hot, we're retreating. You might lose capes, I'm sorry." Lisa rushed out, to the background sound of what sounded like world war two footage.
Fifteen minutes. How? Just how did shit escalate this bad in fifteen minutes?
"Save Spitfire and Rune, take them with you if you can. Go back to a safe house." Is all she said before she closed the phone, and started thinking.
The Empire was trying to kill Lung. They probably wouldn't succeed, but if Crusader and the entire cape gang was there, they might, even with Oni Lee there.
She couldn't afford to lose Lung.
Fuck, she would trade the entire Empire roster to not lose Lung.
He was the focal point of her entire anti-Endbringer plan, outside of outing her abilities to the whole world and the Simurgh by extension.
Additionally, Oni Lee with Bakuda's bombs would probably slaughter people. Specifically, capes. She told him not to, but she wasn't very sure that information would stay in his head considering how his power worked.
But what could she realistically do here?
Using powers and mana was out of the question entirely. She'd probably get literal brain damage.
She called Oni Lee.
Surprisingly, he answered.
"Lee. Don't kill anyone. Aim to disable."
"Understood." A soft, raspy voice whispered. Oni Lee hung up.
She briefly considered just declaring her job done.
She'd done all she could, right?
But, curse her and her fucking greed, she could come up with so many goddamn ways to use everyone, even beyond warfare.
She could use Kaiser to supply her entire goddamn city with the highest quality steel available, something so good that the PRT scrambled to scrape the iron off any fight he's involved in to take for themselves.
She could use Krieg as a lieutenant and a battering ram, she could use Hookwolf like a living bomb, just drop him in Ellisburg and let the bastard start shredding, she could use Viktor for everything including making sure that any potential threats she encounters have the skills that allow them to be a threat taken away without undue hassle, she could use the weird leotard-wearing giant twins to test spacial magic artifacts and have them be her personal shield and spear, she could use Crusader for search and rescue or even to hurt an Endbringer, assuming his power worked the way the PRT thought it did, she could use Othala for so many fucking combinations, she could use the Empire for so many schemes and operations that would allow her to gain even further funds, legal ones too.
Even a single loss was a loss of so much potential, and with no Travellers there to play peacekeeper, someone would die.
An idea began to form, fairly questionable but relatively risk free.
She made a phone call, and inwardly cussed at every passing second, knowing full well how fast fights could go.
She teleported into Coil's office, where on his desk, a full sniper's kit sat, ready for use. A Glock 17 pistol and a gigantic anti-material rifle chambered in bullets meant to punch through helicopter and vehicle armour.
She picked Orianna, The Lady of Clockwork.
She was the only humanoid yet utterly brainless Legend in her arsenal.
She swung the rifle over her shoulder by the strap and slung the gunslinger belt around the iron skirt, and paused for a moment, wondering if this really was a good idea.
Maybe it wasn't, but she wasn't going to be risking much here, not really.
She switched to the Rune of Inspiration so that Unsealed Spellbook would give her another cast of Teleport, and immediately cast it in one of Coil's front businesses, the brass ball that was her companion clicking as it turned to glance around the small, dark room, with something akin to curiosity.
Not that it had emotions. Technically, Orianna didn't either, but the summon core messed with things to let her without impeding her.
Without human anatomy to exacerbate the migraine or slow her thoughts by force due to biology, and with a short resting period giving her enough juice to act a little, she raced up the steps, finding the sensation of absolutely nothing besides her balance modulator terribly curious, and walked out of the room, through a thin, tiled hallway, and out the back, where a car awaited with its engine rumbling.
She accidentally tore the door off in the process of opening it, startling the driver for a moment, and after a brief moment of frustration that did not show in her mechanical movements nor blank face, threw it aside and climbed in with a chorus of clicking clockwork, the brass ball floating in behind her.
"Go." She said in that voice like a harping trill and a musical box. The driver did, flooring it as she lowered the window.
Merely holding a legend was preventing her migraine from subsiding, but it also wasn't worsening it. And with Orianna having no brain or sense of pain for her body to cross with, she didn't have to worry about every kick of the rifle making her brain bounce in her skull until she could do nothing but sob.
"Go faster." She ordered, and watched the man shiver in unease from the voice as he did so, swerving around cars with manoeuvres that made her both impressed and annoyed at not having a helicopter or a flyer in her employ to ferry her there.
As they got closer, the more frantically the traffic was directed in the opposite direction, making their trip significantly hasten.
Even from far away, she could see the destruction.
Thick plumes of smoke rose into the sky as a non-stop series of pop-pop-pop sounds gradually got louder, a hail of unending gunfire that made her shift with frustration. She watched a building explode, and another's left side simply flash freeze into ice before crumbling down, Bakuda's work.
Lung's roars made them sound like bubble wrap in comparison.
She felt a strange excitement roil up within her, a phantom sensation of her features begging to curl into a wide, teeth-baring grin, one denied by Orianna's unbending 'face'.
She acknowledged the blood lust, and briefly questioned why she felt it. If she should allow herself to feel it.
Another swerve, a screech of tires as the car drifted around the corner, then jerked back to speed forward, engine roaring.
"Good job, Jake."
The man grinned wide, and fiddled with the level thing beside the seat, whatever it was called.
She put the rifle barrel to the window, and switched to The Rune of Precision, locking in Lethal Tempo as her main effect.
The world became a mere cell, squirming under the microscope that were her eyes.
She saw Assault out of the corner of her eye, Battery close behind him as they skirted around the main battle, likely unwilling to get involved and escalate Lung further, but they were gone just as quick as she saw them, blocked by a building.
Another tire-screaming drift, and they came upon a blockade of cars, something like thirty gangsters with their backs to them, shooting away an endless hail, with a dozen more of them dead or bleeding out. Cars weren't good cover, but gangsters didn't seem to be the brightest bulbs.
"Stop or go through?" The driver barked, the muscle car roaring down the street towards the oblivious cannon fodder trading shots with ABB flunkies.
In the distance, she caught a glimpse of Lung.
She wanted him. She needed him.
Four wings, six legs, a genuine dragon bathed in silver and fire.
She felt a phantom sensation in her chest, powered by sheer, overwhelming nostalgia.
How long has it been since she'd seen something so fitting to Runeterra? Something familiar for once instead of all these stupid fucking buildings made of dry ugly stole sludge and cracked sand tiles and blocky metal?
He might be human scum, she might not even know anything about him, not really.
But some part of her she could never excise saw him and screamed home, even if he wasn't a real dragon and no magic ran through his veins.
Lung was impaled by spears and metal spikes as he roared. A jet of fire so bright it looked more like a laser burned through the car Krieg had just thrown in his face and continued through to send Menja crashing through a building with an agonised scream.
Much as she would like to have them all on her side, Lung took priority.
She pulled the rifle barrel out of the window and dropped it on the seat, hooked her pointed fingers into the roof of the car, unclipped the pistol, and tore the roof open, raising her upper body through the hole she'd made, aiming down the street one-handed.
A brief moment of consideration passed before she discarded it.
Unpowered minions were never in short supply.
And they were in the way. She'd pick her driver over these guys any time.
"Go sideways. Strafe around the battle. Let me fire." She ordered in her mechanical trill, and the driver nodded.
A moment later, she pulled the trigger, jerked her arm an inch to the right, again, again, and again, and again, each shot filling her with strength and stacking her effects, each shot coming faster as Lethal Tempo amped up.
The first magazine disappeared in three seconds, leaving behind seventeen dead bodies with holes in their heads and a dozen more people panic-shooting at their armoured car as they scrambled to the sides and stores for cover, only making her job easier and achieving little to nothing as the driver ducked under the top. She quickly reloaded before Lethal Tempo could wind down.
The second magazine unloaded as if the pistol was an assault rifle, each shot making the next come by even faster, her finger a blur on the trigger, leaving another dozen dead gangsters, and a few dead on the ABB side for good measure, because they were just as bad and in the way, albeit on another path.
Her eyes followed the fight ahead, catching glimpses of Oni Lee fighting Crusader with knives and pistols and keeping him at a standstill, while Lung was increasingly looking like a giant pile of angry, shredded meat, getting impaled by giant spikes from Kaiser who was somewhere, she couldn't tell, all the while the Valkyrie twins and Hookwolf worked on trying to cut his head off.
The car swerved, losing its view right as she saw the empire capes leap away from Lung, who was keeping one of the twins at bay by breathing fire at her. Another roar full of fire rocketed down the street and hit one of the twins' shields, spreading out into a blowtorch-like cone of flame to the sides, charring the street black. A brief moment later he burned through and the twin tumbled down the street with a girlish shriek.
Her view was cut again.
Another short moment of empty dilapidated storefronts flashing past, and she got a glimpse of the main battle again as they cut through an alley..
Only Hookwolf seemed to be able to withstand the asphalt-melting temperature of being near Lung, twisting around his upper body and spinning like a deranged snake to flay Lung as the man in question thrashed and clawed at his own throat.
Three giant spikes, each eight feet long and a foot wide, punched into Lung's stomach, awkwardly throwing his lower half up, legs kicking the air while his tail flattened a squat building and a few of his own goons, the fifteen foot tall and thirty foot long dragon already melting the rods by sheer proximity.
A hail of Bakuda's bombs were shot out of the air by Viktor before they could reach the Empire capes, and landed near Lung, one of them crystalizing a leg and a large chunk of his side. The crystal shattered instantly, bearing a lung to the world, heaving and growing as ribs already began to squirm around it.
Lung thrashed and tore Hookwolf off him like a hated scarf, grabbing the two squirming ends of the snake form the nazi had taken as he breathed in, his neck glowing orange through the smoke like the gleaming visage of a snarling monster, blocking Viktor's shots with a wing and swatting projectiles out of the way with his tail.
Hookwolf was about to get cut in half via plasma cutter, Lung version.
Much as she disliked the bastard, he was the third best brute in Brockton.
He had too much potential to fizzle out like this.
She curled her arm in, and jerked her elbow out and to the side, tearing the car's roof further apart, then ducked down to grab the rifle, shoving it through the hole and following, shouldering it.
She got a glimpse of searing white through the scope. She corrected as the car swerved and a wall closed in on the dot of her scope, ready to block her shot should she delay even a millisecond.
The anti-material rifle cracked and rocked her entire body back like shooting a cannon from the shoulder, and the round went clean through one of Lung's four eyes, tossing his head to the side and startling him just enough to allow the melting Hookwolf to reform, the beam snuffed out almost as soon as it began as Lung's jaws cracked shut and wrenched to the side.
The same jaws split four ways and lit up with another blast, being interrupted by a spear as long as a telegraph pole being launched through Lung's throat. The wall blocked her sight as the car sped down a side road, making her wonder if Hookwolf got out.
They'd call it quits soon. Lung was unstoppable, and they only had so much firepow-
A blinding white light lit up the entire sea of smoke she could see over the buildings, while a hazy swirling white shape blinked through it. The car bounced along the road for a moment from the sheer impact. She could only stand there in sheer disbelief.
Purity was back.
Fuck.
What happened to all that cape bullshit about not escalating too much or not killing if you can help it? Was this a special occasion or did this happen often before she 'triggered' and she was too mired in her civilian life to even fucking notice her town becoming a bi-monthly warzone?
Her suspicion of Purity being back was confirmed when the smoke was followed by a shockwave blowing smoke and dust into the alleys they were driving past and clearing a section of the sky, followed by another strobe-light of white flashing with each blast the woman sent.
Did she fly here all the way back from Boston?
It felt like there was some kind of evil god messing with her, sending her as much bullshit to deal with as possible the moment she was unable to exert even a fraction of her actual strength.
She couldn't do anything while the driver gunned it down a side street for another relatively unobstructed view, so she briefly considered her Summoner Spells.
They were all so good, but none of them were fucking applicable here, not in a way she was comfortable revealing to the gangs and the PRT.
She didn't want to heal or burn someone, she wanted them to not kill each other so she could nab their sorry asses later.
She fingered the trigger of the rifle, gently, mechanical eyes following the white star zipping around to dodge shots, the ground shaking constantly as she just kept. Blasting.
How much juice did she have in the tank?
Then another blur shot straight towards Purity from the side, and she breathed out a sigh of relief as the two shapes began chasing each other in the skies.
Glory Girl was buying Lung time.
Thank god.
Figuratively.
It was so odd to feel emotions while not physically feeling them too. Relief felt so much more bland.
She flickered for a moment, and held her phone in one hand, the other keeping the rifle pinned to the roof of the car.
She opened Oni Lee's message first, likely sent by a clone for all she knew.
NL: bakuda's hit.
NL: convenience store across the street from the empire, one floor tall, green sign, on fire
NL: Secured her. Bleeding from the head. Can't help her.
She thought for a second, then ducked under the hole she'd made.
"Avoid the heroes at all costs, and slow down. Look for a grocery shop on fire, green sign, on the ABB side of the fight, park around it and be vigilant."
The driver whose name she believed to be Jake but wasn't certain, nodded, and switched speed with the lever thing, taking a sharp turn for a more open street.
Their tires crunched on glass and wove past abandoned vehicles, slowing them down, while the occasional civillian rushed past on the street, whatever few of them were left around the area.
Thankfully this was mostly a Chinatown thrift shop and warehouse area, so actual civvie casualties should be low. Most people shopped here, they didn't live here.
Her mind itched for someone else to kill, a desire she found to be both alluring and vaguely concerning because wow she was so battle-starved it wasn't even vaguely amusing.
This wasn't the time however.
Her eyes flicked to a dash of green, and frowned when she realized it was some restaurant or another themed after jade, a small place with now-shattered windows and not a lick of flame.
Voices came from ahead, and she pulled out her pistol.
For a moment, she wondered if there was any benefit to killing these guys.
To be frank, she would have use for regular gangsters, and they weren't going to go down that alley, nor be at risk from them.
With a mental sigh she blamed on a missed opportunity to stack up her permanent effects, namely, Legend:Alacrity, Tenacity, and Bloodline, she lowered the pistol into the belt's holster, and put her hand back on the handle of the rifle.
The white light that was Purity was now fighting both Glory Girl and some… blue forcefields that kept trying to cut her off.
All they were managing to cut off seemed to be the woman's restraint, because helix blasts of light started getting tossed around as if from a machine gun, one narrowly missing their car to slam into and through the side of an abandoned store to their left.
Purity seemed to mostly be trying to get away, however. An outright retreat that was turning desperate.
She turned, and took aim.
Her scope moved a few degrees off target, accounting for the fading shockwaves of the fight that seemed to be winding down, and then accounting a bit more for the breeze that came from the opposite direction, judging by the way the fires licked at the air.
A barrier zipped through the air to intercept Purity as she tried to book it for the clouds, something vaguely purple-blueish and shaped like a bowl, moving above her as she kept firing down at Glory Girl.
She switched the main effect to Fleet Footwork.
Her rifle cracked.
The barrier shattered, and she immediately ducked into the car, hoping they wouldn't know where that shot came from as her body glowed gold for a brief moment, a soothing chill momentarily relieving the pain of her skull splitting apart before it faded.
She stared at the open sky above for a few seconds before poking her head out again, watching Purity gun it for where the Empire were roughly stationed.
She could assume that meant a retreat.
She sighed in relief, but without lungs and with the voice box of a text to speech program that decided to impregnate a music box and an off-key clockwork harp, it just sounded like she made a shut-down sound as if she was some kind of automaton.
Orianna technically was, but whatever.
She rose up again, and put the rifle against the roof, scanning for people to save or kill.
A flattened building still roaring with flames broke the monotony of warehouses and old industry buildings flashing by, and gave her an image that genuinely surprised her.
The PRT had sneakily surrounded the Empire roster from the back from what she could see, and were letting Lung and Oni Lee retreat.
So the Empire could retreat in Lung's direction who was about half the size of fucking Leviathan, or fight their way out of the encirclement.
Why Lung was retreating, only he could guess, but she was still surprised at the PRT actually… doing something. She was used to the spandex boys being pretty for the camera and pretending to be useful and not much else, or at least she was without the rose tinted glasses of young adolescence and admiration.
"Found it!" The driver yelled, and punched the roof, in case she hadn't heard.
She turned, and saw the exact building Oni Lee had described.
He stepped on the gas, pulled another expert drift, and hurriedly straightened the car in the small street next to the store.
She kicked the door open and off its hinges and mentally reminded herself to keep this guy and fix up his car for his excellent driving, when her head didn't feel like a ball of agony.
Then she raced across the street in an awkward strut that looked like she was power walking in a video put on fast-forward, a look both unsettling and natural for her to do, before jumping up and Flashing onto the roof with a flash of golden sparks from both her teleport point and her destination.
Bakuda was easy to find, sprawled out on the roof in her stark white costume, with a concerningly large puddle of blood around her cracked visor, and a worryingly steep dent in her helmet.
Viktor probably sniped her.
She resisted the urge to slap the woman for even being here as she zipped to her, swapping to the Inspiration Rune and hurriedly casting two Heals before bending down to take her helmet off.
To her relief, all she saw was a bruised and bleeding Mia rather than a mass of barely alive gore. She knew the bullet hadn't penetrated, but the chance to burst someone's skull open from the mere impact of a round was completely possible.
She pulled the helmet back on, gently.
"Damn it Mia, what the fuck are you even doing here?" She asked in Orianna creepy, vaguely emotionless voice.
She flickered, and her phone was in her hand again, calling Oni Lee while she lightly shook the woman's shoulder.
He picked up almost instantly.
"Bakuda should be healed somewhat, enough to not die or have long-lasting problems. She's somewhat coherent, waking up. Come pick her up. Is the fight winding down?"
He grunted in a way that sounded both exhausted, painful, and affirmative.
Well he's shit out of luck, because she had no more heals to spare.
"Good. Casualty report?"
"None that matter. Injuries, plenty. Some severe." He succinctly rasped, and she took that at face value.
Cricket should be fine, Hookwolf was alive, Stormtiger seemed to be alive considering the sheer volume of explosions she was still hearing, Kaiser and the twins were almost definitely alive, Purity was fine, Crusader, Krieg and whoever the hell else she was forgetting, they were all alive and ready for the taking.
So why did she feel like she just lost a fight she didn't even know she was a part of?
"I'm leaving. Come pick her up."
She hung up.
She Flashed off the side of the building with another burst of golden sparks and a sharp sound she couldn't quite categorize, then fell ten feet down to land next to the driver's window, making him jump half a foot in his seat and curse loudly.
"Dismissed. Excellent work. We'll fix your car up later."
He wordlessly nodded, and with a screech of tires, drove off.
Now… should she try to make sure the Empire gets out of the encirclement?
She walked into the alley as she thought, faintly hearing Oni Lee's teleporting get closer and reach Bakuda above and to the side.
If she did not help the Empire, she was practically certain that they would lose capes to the Protectorate, numbers advantage or not. This was the perfect set-up to gut the Empire, and if the local director didn't take it, they'd be a complete moron.
Kaiser wasn't stupid either, of course.
Considering she didn't catch a single glimpse of him, he must have been hiding the entire fight or in a really good position.
So the Empire wouldn't crumble, but it could still get crippled.
Normally, she could care less, but if the PRT got a hold of Empire capes, locating and gathering them in the aftermath would end up very frustrating and demanding of her resources, assuming the E88 didn't just bust them out for her.
Something she could probably nudge in their direction, actually, and get a favour for doing, under the guise of Coil's scheming...
Conversely, she also couldn't jump into the fray herself. It was one thing to swerve around the outskirts of a fight with a sniper rifle, and a whole nother thing to jump on another one without any real guarantee she could get out, escape, or win at all, with uncertain or zero allies.
Of course, she could escape from anywhere and anything should she be captured by the heroes or something, but the information they'd get on her in the meantime could prove highly frustrating to deal with.
She flickered, and quickly called Lisa.
Two rings this time.
"Hey Sam, big sister mine." Lisa chirped, sounding pleased as a cat. Taylor could hear her stretch like one too. "We've got three extra passengers, but we're fine. Heading to a safe house. You will be one very happy girl when we catch up." Lisa said with an audible grin, and Taylor hummed to show she heard, still thinking.
They were probably still in the getaway truck. She could order them to turn back and help the Empire.
But after a brief moment of thought, she reigned herself in, and changed her mind.
Some greed was good.
Too much, and she'd end up getting burned, nevermind the chance one of her own would be captured with what looked like the entirety of the local Protectorate branch brawling it out with the tired and scorched Empire capes. To have her own captured felt like a betrayal to an unspoken agreement.
If the nazis got themselves caught, she'd deal with it in due time.
"Good job, Lisa. Who is the third passenger?" She asked, trying to force some warmth into the mechanical voice.
Lisa took a moment to reply.
"That… is the coolest and creepiest voice I've ever heard. Wow. Ah but, our third passenger is uh… hey, do you mind if I tell her?" Lisa said the latter end of the sentence from further, likely asking someone else.
"Eh, go for it." A young, nonchalant voice replied.
"Huh. Well, do you remember Grue? My old teammate before lizard-brain decided to kill us?"
She glanced around the alley, and ducked into a small alcove as a car drew near.
"Yes. Grue, Brian. You talked about him a bit."
She was genuinely curious where this was going.
She also was fairly sure she could not manage to speak if she turned back into herself at the moment, so she held onto Orianna as Oni Lee and some presumed ABB gangsters loaded Bakuda up into the car around the alley's mouth.
They drove off a moment later, right as Lisa began to explain, her voice calmer and more subdued.
"Yep. Well, turns out his sister triggered as a Stranger at some point, and she found my new gal-pal Spitfire, and they grouped up for a while, on the run, having fun and doing… homeless adventures, I don't know. Unfortunately, while, uh, what'd you say your cape name is?"
"Imp!" The girl said brightly and proudly, and Taylor had a feeling she'd like the girl.
Lisa chuckled.
"Yeah so, while Imp was out on a supply run for them, which is why I couldn't figure out how the hell Spitfire was staying upright without stealing stuff while looking for her-"
"Wait, you were looking for me?" Spitfire asked, voice high in surprise.
Goddamnit people, let her talk.
"Yeah, we thought you might want to join a group that isn't completely evil and won't make you kill people or gut you for being a "threat", but you were surprisingly good at hiding." Lisa said, then probably waved her off or shrugged.
Lisa's body language was practically ingrained in her brain for some reason, to be able to tell that without any audial cues.
" Anyways, when Imp went on a supply run, half the damn Empire roster showed up as if they forgot Imp existed-"
"They did! That's my power! I just didn't realise we were being watched so that kinda backfired that time!" The girl exclaimed, and Lisa growled with mock frustration.
"Hey, let me tell the damn story, do you know how hard it is to tell my sister something she doesn't know these days?"
Her sister.
It felt really nice to hear Lisa say that, and… seemingly somewhat mean it.
Oh, wait. Ugh, of course that's what this is about. Lisa wanted to act like a know-it-all smartass for once because she knew something Taylor didn't and had probably been itching to do so for ages.
She rolled her eyes, already feeling significantly better about deciding to not help the Empire any more than she already had.
"Anyways, Imp goes to relieve some supermarket of their food supplies, Spitfire gets ganged up on, and almost immediately captured, then she gets dragged off to Empire territory. Like deep, deep in Empire territory. Then Kaiser him-fucking-self shows up to give her a speech to make her join them, but Spitfire's not really into the whole world war two cosplay scene, and says no, and instead of giving her a better pitch or anything, the motherfucker shrugs and says she'll make a fine 'breeder for Gesellschaft'."
She stilled, and imagined that so did the occupants of the truck, from the odd pause.
"I still don't know who the hell that is but I can guess from the name that he's not exactly good news, huh?" Spitfire mumbled, barely audible.
Spitfire- no, Emily was sixteen. She is a teenager.
A fucking child.
She's not entirely sure why children are such a sensitive subject to her, but the mere thought of what might have happened to her makes her lock her ball joints in place so she doesn't crush the phone in her hand. Or turn around to blow up Kaiser's head with a 50-cal BMG round to the side of the skull.
"Gesellschaft are the German equivalent of the Empire. Now, surprisingly, a new heroine arrived to save the day!" Lisa said dramatically, and Taylor felt faintly amused.
"Ugh, fuck off." A moody voice grumbled from afar, followed by a chorus of background humm that might be snickering or shuffling.
"That heroine was Rune! Apparently, saying that kinda shit about a teenage girl in front of a teenage girl wasn't Kaiser's best idea, nazi or not-"
"I'm not a nazi, I'm just racist!" Rune said with clear exasperation in the background while Lisa continued, and Taylor for some reason found what Rune said so fucking funny she almost choked her voice box into playing an alarm sound.
She wasn't even sure what was so funny about that, but it was.
Lisa didn't seem to find it so, and continued.
"-because when they started tying up Spitfire, Rune pretended to assist, then zipped out of there with her and managed to find a trashcan they could use as a transport."
"I still have vomit all over my fucking leg…" Rune grumbled.
"Yeah, we can smell it." Krouse laughed in the background.
"Hey, I get it, can we stop bringing that up?! It was like riding a rollercoaster except it had no rails, I had fucking zip ties on my wrists, there were no safe bars, we were getting shot at and there were spikes popping up everywhere so we were practically flying in zig zags and Rune's a shit driver! And we were in a trashcan! It STANK!" Spitfire exclaimed in a voice somewhere between mindlessly venting and genuinely offended.
And maybe the others couldn't hear it, but she could. That tremor hidden beneath the frustration.
She wanted to wring Kaiser's neck like a towel for that.
Lisa chuckled.
"I'm not a shit driver! We should have crashed fifty times before we did! I turned our trashcan into a plane! I'm fucking excellent! " Rune barked.
"Yeah, well, anyways, they took a fall, got hit a bit, and then Imp stole a bike and found them, helped them stay free until Lung got there, and then it devolved into that giant shitshow until we came along and found the trio trying to escape the heroes, which we helped them with, and that's about it. Did you do anything in the meantime?"
She sighed, an artificial action in this body.
"Yes. I couldn't sit this out. Too greedy. I got here after you, saved Hookwolf and Purity from getting torn in half or captured, and got our girl Bakuda stabilised so that Oni Lee could take her back. Done for today. Can barely talk."
Lisa waited for more.
Taylor didn't give her more, because that was all she really achieved here.
"That's it? You suck at storytelling."
She could do better, she just didn't care to.
"Maybe. Regardless, I have a skull-splitting migraine at the moment so the instant I drop my current mechanical cape I'm likely going to collapse. You'll have to do things on your own at least until tomorrow. If you could get our three new guests somewhere to chill out until they can hear my offer, that'd be appreciated."
"Hm, alright. Also, I changed my mind on my cape name. I think Insight is better. More fitting, and it's more independent if we break off in the future or if something happens. Only downside is that it reveals what my power does, to some extent. The whole magic medieval aesthetic is cool and all but I think that's mostly your style, you know? You cool with it?"
"Of course. It's your name. I was just suggesting. I'm going to go and pass out now. Be ready to brief me on what I missed."
"Sure thing."
She closed the phone, dug a bit further into her little alcove in the alley, and Teleported to her bunker.
She put her head on a leaf and root near the bottom of the breather plant, and swapped back to her real form.
Instantly, the headache seemed to turn from a phantom sensation to something akin to someone pounding a spike through her skull with every pulse of her heart.
She whimpered and curled into a ball, only having the brain capacity to cast Heal on herself off cooldown.
Notes:
Trouble does not end here, unfortunately for Taylor.
See you all next chap, and tyvm for the comments and criticisms, they motivate me to keep writing. :)