36

Abjuration 4.1

That night, we began a campaign against the ABB. Through Coil's intel, we'd already identified many of the villain gang's properties, fronts, supply caches, etc.

Our targets were three forced prostitution rings.

The three of us flew through the night sky under the cover of Skitter's bugs. We came to a stop a block away from the first location, watching from the rooftop.

Skitter's newest tranquilizer bugs, courtesy of Araliac, swarmed forth. They were like unnaturally large mosquitoes that could deliver several payloads of sedative before running out, instead of having to restock from a central supply like normal mosquitoes.

The bugs stealthily went inside the building and found their way to every ABB gang member, employee, client, and prostitute.

Within five minutes, every human in the building was down almost all at once. Quiet and efficient. We went in to sweep the place of cash and weapons. Although we had plenty of money now, there was no reason not to take more.

Then we rounded up the unconscious people and woke up the prostitutes, explaining to them their newfound freedom.

Some had family they wanted to go back to, but many didn't know what to do. They had lost everything. A number had been trafficked from overseas and had nowhere to go.

"Is there anything we can do for them?" Skitter asked, looking at the pitiful women who did not seem particularly happy about being free.

"We could leave some contact information and let them work for us in the future. Although we're just three people now, it wouldn't hurt to start thinking about manpower needs as we expand. If they want to fight, we can train them. Otherwise, they can help us with search and rescue, marketing and PR, whatever. I'm sure we can find something useful for them to do," I said.

So we left some contact information for them and called the police over to take care of the rest.

Our next two targets went just as smoothly. These were unpowered gangers and non-combatant employees, after all.

By the time we were done with the third one, it was only eleven. Thanks to our flight capabilities, getting around was really fast. We barely spent two hours on all three operations, and were left wondering if we should keep going.

We quickly came to the conclusion that there was no reason not to press our advantage. While our enemies were unfamiliar with our methods, we could blitzkrieg through them. And Bakuda was especially vulnerable right now, so we went all out.

We began hitting ABB weapons caches and drug distribution joints. We raced through their territory like a storm, silently crushing all resistance.

A few of the places we'd hit had gangers armed with Bakuda's bombs, but they never had a chance to retaliate with them. We were always taking them down from a block away.

It wasn't long before we collected nearly two million in cash, and twice that value in illegal goods. These spoils I had arranged for quiet pick up by Major Heroux's forces so that we wouldn't waste any time transporting it ourselves each time.

There were a few Bakuda bombs at some of the sites, including embedded into human victims. We didn't take any of these. Instead, Araliac removed the bombs from victims, then I had Agate phase all of them out of existence. Trapped in agatespace, they would stay there forever until eventually obliterated by the Chaos energy.

But after hitting six more locations stealthily, Bakuda had been alerted that something was wrong.

Skitter's power wasn't developed enough to listen through her bugs yet, so it was Agate who was spying on the occupants of our next target.

"They've just been ordered to give an update to Bakuda every five minutes. It looks like we can expect reinforcements to come this time if we stay too long, so we'll have to move faster," I said.

The girls nodded, then Skitter sent her bugs to attack right after an update.

As before, the gangers inside the building went down almost simultaneously. Even at the most extreme ends, they held on for no more than five seconds before succumbing to the tranquilizer.

We flew over and immediately prepared to remove the bombs embedded inside forced recruits and gangers.

But just as we stepped inside the building, a loud, and awkwardly non-instantaneous thought came from Agate.

'GET… OUT…OF…THERE…TIME…SLOW!'

I reacted immediately and shouted to Araliac and Skitter the same. Araliac grabbed onto me and flew out, while Skitter surrounded herself in bugs and followed right after.

We barely made it back out the door when an explosion blew us away.

I tumbled onto the ground with Araliac, her wings torn but still mostly intact. Our costumes held up, but I felt the some of the heat transfer through it to my body. Our costumes weren't fireproof yet. These organic materials were actually fairly combustible, except for the moisture content.

I raised my head to see the whole building had been destroyed, the ground near it was red hot, and a fire was spreading to nearby structures.

"Fuck!" I swore, getting up painfully and pulling Araliac up with me. Her wings were repaired in short order, and we flew over to Skitter, who was still groaning on the ground, surrounded by scorched bugs. Atlas flew over, and we picked up Skitter and placed her on the beetle before retreating to a nearby rooftop.

We unlocked and removed Skitter's helmet so that Araliac could heal her. She had been slightly behind us and closer to the explosion, taking more damage.

I informed the PRT and fire department, then we stayed there for a moment, mentally recovering.

"They're all dead…" said Skitter, looking at the flaming ruins.

"She sacrificed them to try and get to us," said Araliac.

"She's feeling cornered already. I underestimated her. If we hit any more places, she'll probably do the same. Or worse," I said.

"Damn it! I can't believe it. All those people…" Skitter clenched her fists.

"I think we should stop here for tonight. Let's head back," I said.

We flew back to our warehouse base in silence.

O O O

"So she's basically using all of her victims as hostages now," Amelia said.

"If things go very badly for her, she might try to take the whole city, maybe the whole east coast, hostage. I'm pretty sure that's what her super EMP bomb is supposed to be for."

"We have to find her and stop her at the source," said Taylor. "That's the only way to save the people she kidnapped to work for her."

"Finding her workshop won't be easy. I don't have any helpful 'precognitive' clues as to where it might be," I said, making air quotes. Taylor was already aware that I didn't have real precognition, just knowledge of a limited number of possible timelines. I had already explained to her in between our training sessions the same things I told Amelia about my past minus the rant about whether I really wanted to save the world and the girl who was betrayed at the end.

"Even if we found it, attacking a Tinker in her own workshop is suicidal, especially one of Bakuda's calibre. It's also possible that she'll have it protected from bugs by the time we find it. She does have a habit of expanding her repertoire by analyzing other capes' powers, as we've seen with her bombs, but bombs are far from the only thing she can make."

"Should we work with the Protectorate? Or form an alliance with the villains, like you said happened in other futures," Taylor said.

"You really think the villains will agree to an alliance if it's just Bakuda? She's not doing as much damage to the city by herself and she's basically a newcomer without a reputation," Amelia said. "Besides, the alliance would really only be with E88, considering that Coil's our prisoner, and he was the one that hired the Undersiders, Faultline, and the Travelers, right? And the Merchants, well they're kind of useless. And I don't really want to ally with villains."

"I think I might have an idea…" I said, deep in thought.

O O O

Mini-Interlude (Bakuda)

"Fucking damn it!" Bakuda screamed. She had been listening to the reports coming in of ABB assets getting attacked. The last few days had seen multiple attacks from E88 and the Merchants. Surprisingly, Coil's mercenaries hadn't made any moves despite being quite close to the docks.

But even so, she was barely holding on. As the only cape left in the gang, she had been hiding in her workshop, not willing to face other cape teams outnumbered.

She had tried to hire Uber and Leet, even, but they refused saying that they'd been hired for an exclusive long-term contract.

She didn't have the money to afford hiring Faultline's Crew to protect her crumbling territory if she wanted to keep making bombs.

And tonight, nearly one-third of her remaining assets and locations had been attacked one by one. All of them getting wiped out before support could even arrive.

"I'm going to show them all…shit!" She swore again when she made a mistake with her bomb construction, too angry and frustrated to be as careful as she had to be.

"T-there's a call for you, Bakuda-sama!" A fearful Asian man stammered, stumbling into Bakuda's workshop.

"What the fuck are you doing interrupting my work? Do you want to die?" The last cape in ABB gave him a glare.

"M-my sincerest apologies, Bakuda-sama! A group of men of unknown affiliation took several of our members hostage, and demanded to speak with you!" He quickly explained while holding out a phone.

Bakuda narrowed her eyes and left the Faraday Cage that was her workshop to take the call.

"Hello, Bakuda."

"Who the hell are you?"

"You might know of me as Coil."

"Coil? The fuck do you want? I'm very busy."

"I expected no less from a genius like you. However, I believe you will find this conversation worthwhile."

"If you understand my genius then understand that my time is valuable. Get to the fucking point already, I have bombs to make and people to torture."

"I would like to make a deal with you. With the defeat of Lung and Oni Lee, the ABB is quite vulnerable. Other groups in the city are all eying your territory, not to mention pressure from the heroes. I would offer you a chance to secure your position."

"You, offer me a chance to secure my position? How exactly would you do that?"

"I have many resources. Money, men, connections. You wouldn't have to rely so much on your forced recruits, which frankly isn't good for business and attracts the wrong kind of attention to our city. I could lend some of my many resources to your use—in a secret capacity, of course—even take some of the pressure from the other gangs off of you, if you would agree to do some things for me from time to time."

"Fuck no! You're off your rockers if you think I'm gonna work for you, bastard!" Bakuda grit her teeth when Coil revealed that he was aware of her forcing civilians to work for her.

"Nothing like that, I assure you. Just a few small favours here and there. It would be more of an alliance and a truce."

"I don't need to be allied with you! Once I break Lung and Oni Lee out, the ABB will be stronger than ever!"

"Are you sure, Bakuda? As a gesture of goodwill, how about I give you a bit of intel? Lung is in a coma. He won't be of any help even if you break him out of captivity. Is it really worth it to rescue a leader that is helpless, when you could be a queen in your own right?"

Bakuda was silent for several long seconds.

"What exactly do you want from me?"

"I understand you've been working on a bomb that would wipe out one-fifth of America's electronic infrastructure?"

"What? How the hell do you know that? Nobody knows that!"

"That doesn't matter. As mighty as Lung's rule has been, the ABB as an organization has never been very wealthy. If I give you the resources, can you make more than one such bomb?"

Bakuda had a weird look on her face. "Of course I can. If I had better materials, I could make it a hell of a lot bigger too!"

"Is that so? How about a bomb strong enough to erase a continent?" The voice asked in a challenging tone.

Now Bakuda stood as if frozen.

"Bakuda…?"

"Hmfuehehe…hahahaha…" Her face twisted and she erupted into a mad fit of cackling.

After nearly a minute, she calmed down. "Tell me more about this alliance."

O O O