10

Chapter Text

The Twin Pines Mall had been intended as competition for the Boardwalk and the Lord's Market. It was a huge square building in the middle of a city block of parking, with an open center court and a vaulted glass ceiling, an enormous decorative pool and fountain, and three stories of full-sized shops. Unlike the Boardwalk or the Market, it would be open year round, available so residents could shop in climate-controlled comfort.

But shortsightedness did the project in. The reason the Market and the Boardwalk had persisted for so long was that the people in the area didn't need more than that; the small neighborhood and downtown shops got all the local money, and the tourists only wanted to go to the scene open air shops or the ritzy seafront stores and restaurants, not a shopping mall. The building had barely been finished before the investors looked at the numbers and folded their hands, unwilling to send good money after bad. They got a huge tax deduction for business loss, and settled in to wait… fruitlessly… for someone to come buy the property. It had sat abandoned ever since then, while the owners waited for the building to crumble to dust on its own.

That was just fine with Skidmark. The old mall was perfect for the Merchant Rave; having some fat old rich white dudes footing the bill to build the perfect arena for his show was just the cherry on top. Made him laugh just thinking about it. He walked around the top floor of the building, Mr. Lucky in hand, looking down and watching his crew set things up.

"But why Christmas Eve?" Mush asked him. "Most people have big parties on New Years." The little deformed runt was tagging along behind him, dogging his steps. His powers weren't much use for getting things set up-- well, he'd been useful for clearing out all the trash, first, but now he had nothing better to do than follow Skidmark around.

"First off, BLEEP you, that's why," Skidmark said, rolling Mr. Lucky between his palms. "Second, I ain't most people. Third, that's when the cops and the BLEEPing Protectorate is out looking for raves and parties and BLEEP like that. Nobody's out on Christmas BLEEPing Eve, so nobody'll come looking for us." He looked down and started yelling. "HEY YOU STUPID BLEEP! BLEEP YOUR BLEEPING BLEEP! DON'T PUT THE FOOD WAGONS NEXT TO THE COKE TABLES! PUT IT NEXT TO THE HASH PIPES, FOOL! BLEEPing idiots, put the food on the far side of the place from the people with all the munchies, they get lost on the way to the food tables and end up eating each other.

"No, the blacklight posters go in the store on the BLEEPING FIRST floor, not the BLEEPing TOP floor! You think I want them acid trippers and shroom monkeys trying to FLY, land on a nigga's BLEEPING HEAD? Yeah, come to think of it, throw some o' them mattresses on the bottom floor under the guard rail just in case. I din't pay for this place, I ain't moppin no BLEEPin brains off no BLEEPin' floors…

"AND WHERE THE BLEEP ARE MY PORTA POTTIES? SQUEALER!!!"

"WHAT??" Came a shout from below.

"You got them BLEEPing power lines hooked up yet?"

"In a minute! Trainwreck's punchin' some holes through to the city power mains--" There was a crunch and the sound of crumbling concrete. "We're good!"

"A'ight," Skidmark said, brushing dust off his nonexistent cuffs. "That's me. Mister world class Party Planner."

"Hey Skidmark!"

"WHAT?"

"The food guy wants to know what to do with the pot brownies-- with the food, or with the drugs?"

"'sa good question. Wait a minute--" he stuck his head over the rail. "I DIDN'T GET NO BLEEPIN' POT BROWNIES!"

"You didn't?"

"DO I LOOK LIKE BETTY BLEEPIN' CROCKER TO YOU, WOMAN? Mush, go down there and-- hell, do somethin' about the brownies. Move 'em, sell 'em EAT 'em all I don't care." Mush scurried off.

Skidmark growled to himself and returned to prowling, eventually tossing himself into a broken down old chair he'd brought in for a new "throne." This last couple months had been hard. But tonight, tonight was going to turn things around. He pulled the silver briefcase handcuffed to his arm up into his lap and opened it up, looking at the contents the way other men would look at a lover. Six vials. Six.

After tonight, the Merchants were making one mother of a comeback. And when it was done, they were gonna tear that Skinwalker apart.

Taylor sat down on the couch next to her father. "Merry Christmas, Daddy" she said, handing him a package and giving him a peck on the cheek.

"And Merry Christmas to you too," he said, handing her a package in return. It was their little tradition: one package the night before. The miniature Christmas tree had two or three more presents under it for each of them, that would be opened the next day. This first one though was still special.

He finished picking the package open-- he'd always done that, trying to keep the paper in one whole piece. It drove Taylor crazy, she'd keep urging him to "just rip it open already!" Inside was an old fashioned pocket watch, complete with a platinum chain. He wound it and listened to it tick.

"Hey, nice. Very classy," he said. "I'll be the envy of the dockworkers." He'd always longed for something so classical and dignified. he was going to have to buy a waistcoat just to have a pocket for it.

Paper flew from Taylor's hands in wild shreds. "ohhh," she said, pulling out a set of tortoiseshell combs. "Oh these are beautiful. Though I don't know when I would wear them..." she took them out anyway and, with a bit of fumbling and a little help from Danny, used them to pin her hair up. She looked at her reflection in the windowglass, beaming. Then for a moment she looked wistful.

"Wishing your boyfriend could be here?" Danny said, tugging on a loose lock of her hair. It hurt him how critical his beautiful little girl was of her appearance, but even at her lowest she had always been proud of her long black mane of hair. The combs had been the perfect gift, he thought with pleasure; a perfect adornment for her lustrous crown of curls.

"Daddy--!" The words 'he's not my boyfriend' rose to her lips but didn't quite leave them. Instead she nodded. "He said he'd be here for New Years, though," she said.

"I'm sure he wishes he could have been," Danny said. He pulled another package out from behind the sofa pillow where he'd hidden it. "Which is probably why he dropped this off the other day..."

Taylor squeaked and grabbed the package. The paper vanished in a twinkling and she sat there, holding a lovingly bound hardback volume, titled in gold lettering. "The collected works of O. Henry," she read aloud. She opened to the first page and a letter fell out.

"Dear Taylor;

You've spent so much time talking about your favorite authors, I figured I'd give you a chance to read one of my own. You'll like his work; he was an original American classic.

I'm sorry I couldn't come over for Christmas, but believe me, it's for a good cause and it's something I have to do. I want so much to show you what I've been up to, and I can't wait until I can let you see it for yourself.

Till then, I'll be thinking of you, and hope you'll be doing the same.

All my best wishes,

Adrian"

"Oh that is so...what, what's so funny?" Because Danny Hebert was shaking with silent laughter.

"Honey, he got us," he said. "He got us both." Taylor stared at him, mystified. "Let me ask; did Adrian give you any suggestions for what gift to give me?"

Taylor blushed a bit but nodded. "He spotted the watch at the Market and told me it'd be perfect for you," she said.

Danny laughed out loud at that. "Well, I called him up to ask how you were doing at school one day," he said. "I mentioned I was trying to think of a good gift for you, and he blurts out "tortoiseshell combs," and then fumbled around saying it was because you were so proud of your hair… he even told me where I could find some classy old-fashioned ones like these..." He looked at her confused face. "Haven't you ever read O. Henry, honey? Of all the classic authors, for you not to have read--" he chuckled. He pointed at the book. "Tell you what: Open that up to 'The Gift of the Magi" and read it for me."

She obeyed, turning to the table of contents and finding the story. "One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas...."

She read on, and it became obvious to Danny when she started to suspect because the smile on her face started turning into a gleeful grin. When she got to the part about the watch fob and the tortoiseshell combs she laughed out loud. "That STINKER!" she said between gales of laughter. "How did he pull this off??"

Danny chuckled till his sides hurt. "He probably got the idea when we both asked him for gift advice, and couldn't resist the joke," he said. "He is right though. The Gift of the Magi, the Ransom of Red Chief, the Last Leaf, the Cop and the Anthem, A Retrieved Reformation… his stories have practically become American folklore. There's hardly a scriptwriter on the planet that hasn't cribbed the plot from one of his stories. You probably have read his stories or at least heard of them, and just not known it."

Taylor flipped through the pages, looking over the titles and the few illustrations to each story. "I can't wait for you to meet him," she said. "He's a great guy, really." A look of worry fleetingly appeared in her eyes. "Sometimes I feel like he wants to take the weight of the whole world on his shoulders."

Danny sat back and smiled. "I'm sure he'll turn out to be a great guy," he said. "New Year's is soon enough."

Night fell. Adrian looked down from a nearby hilltop onto the Twin Pines Mall. There were mobs of people moving around in the normally empty parking lot, and lights were beginning to blaze up inside the building. How in blazes did Skidmark expect to hold this "rave" of his without pulling down the attention of every cop and cape in the Bay? This mess was probably visible from orbit!

Not his problem, though. He pulled down his hoodie and hitched his backpack up on his shoulders. His goals tonight were a lot simpler than figuring out what was going on in Skidmark's messed up brain. Get in. Take out the security. Clear out the crowds. Take out the capes. Pull in the cops. He recited this to himself like a mantra as he trudged down the hill.

For the first step, he was going in the easy way: through the front door. That's why he was in his Human form. He'd worn some of the ratty clothes left over from his Goodwill raid, just some jeans and a hoody. They were clean, but scruffy enough to pass as normal for this crowd. Getting in didn't look like a problem either. It wasn't like Skidmark was setting up a velvet rope or anything.

Just as he reached the edge of the parking lot, something that sounded like several diesel engines rumbled to life. The sounds coming from the mall grew muffled and distant and the air began to shimmer. With a cracking noise, the building, the parking lot and everything in it vanished.

Adrian cursed. So that was how he was going to pull it off. Squealer was the Merchant vehicle tinker, and she was notorious for at least two things; the ugliest brute-force vehicles anyone had ever seen, and cloaking devices that were almost obscene in how well they worked. It wasn't unusual in Brockton Bay to see the Merchants making an escape in a getaway vehicle that looked like a garbage truck had mated with a tank, only to see it shimmer and vanish into thin air right on the street. Or worse, to be driving down what looked like a calm early morning city street and have one of Squealer's vehicular nightmares appear out of nowhere right on top of you. Drivers in Brockton Bay had such nerves of steel they made New York cabbies look like sissies.

Apparently she'd hooked up one, or several of them to judge from the sound he'd heard, to cover the building. Someone might notice the abandoned building was missing, but noone in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve was going to go over and look to see what had happened, or even care that much. Well, perfect. That was just one more thing to deal with.

He ran forward, one hand out in front of himself, hoping it wasn't anything more solid than a stealth field. He stumbled as the world began to grow wavy, but a hand grabbed him and pulled him on through. It was one of the Merchant guards, a gun slung across his back. "Better hustle, kid," he laughed, mocking humor in his eyes. "You almost missed the party." He gave Adrian a half-shove towards the front doors. A couple more Merchants were at the door, shaking people down and checking them for weapons (and probably for valuables, if he didn't miss his guess.)

The crowd alternately pulled and shoved him forward till he was standing in front of a huge, burly black man, with bloodshot eyes and a paunch that made him look like a prizefighter gone to seed. He held out his hand for Adrian's backpack. Adrian pulled it off and held it open; the guy roughly pulled it open further and looked inside. All he saw were some odds and ends; some meal bars, extra socks and underwear, some bits of junk that could've been anything, but obviously nothing that set off any alarms with the guy.

There was a reason for that. Adrian had stuffed his haversack down inside the ratty backpack, disguising it. After many long nights and painstaking labor, he'd managed to convert his useful-yet-limited one-pocked bottomless haversack into one with two. His weapons, costume, and gear were all in the second pocket, which the bloodshot-eyed guard didn't know how to open. He grunted and let go of the bag. "You ain't gonna party much without any cash or stash," he said.

Adrian gave him a mocking curl of the lip back. "Like I'd tell you where I kept my cash OR my stash," he said. The guy sneered back, but there seemed to be a little more respect in his bloodshot eyes for someone who wasn't a complete fool. He shoved Adrian inside.

The first impression was crowded. The second was blinding. The third was deafening. The loudspeakers were pounding out something approximating music; it was hard to tell what, it was so loud all you could hear or feel was the thundering beat. There were lights, strobes, and even a few laser lights blazing in every direction. Bodies were pressed in everywhere, hanging from the rails on all three floors, trying to move to the beat or move against each other. There was a haze in the air, almost thick enough to be from a smoke machine. Adrian caught a whiff and immediately had to cast a decontaminate on himself to keep from getting an instant contact high.

The only clear space was the center of the open court, where a huge pool and fountain had been. The water was long gone and the fountain had been ripped out, leaving a six-foot-deep concrete pit, about fifty feet on a side. A crudely welded iron cage was suspended above it on chains. Parked directly to one side of the pit was one of Squealer's creations. It looked like a porno from a monster truck rally. Most of it was cross between a six-wheeled, oversized humvee and a cherry-picker crane. High up in the basket was Skidmark, holding a big trash bag and wearing a Santa hat and coat. The drug king of Brockton Bay grabbed a microphone and yelled into it.

"WASSUP, BLEEPERS? HO HO BLEEPING HO!" He reached into the sack, pulled out a handful of dime bags-- some with pills, others with nuggets of weed-- and flung them out over the crowd. The crowd went wild, scrabbling for the free goodies, hands outstretched trying to catch them out of the air. Skidmark repeated the toss a couple of times, then emptied the bag into the air, tossing it away when he was done.

He let the crowd roar a bit, then signaled for attention. "ATTENTION, BLEEPERS!" he bellowed, making the speakers boom and whine with feedback. The noise faded to a dull roar. "IT'S TIME FOR A MERCHANT RAAAAAAVE!" The crowed roared in approval.

Adrian took advantage of the noise. It was time to get to work. He slipped into the shadows of one of the ruined storefronts and hid behind one of the empty shelves. He shifted into worgen form and hastily donned his costume and gear, changed to his sabertooth panther form and disappeared. He kept one ear on what Skidmark was shouting as he began prowling the perimeter.

"Now you BLEEPers, you're asking me-- 'Skidmark, you sexy BLEEPing BLEEPer, what have you got for us?' And I'm here to tell you-- we got BOOZE!" A roar of approval answered that. "We got DRUGS!" Another roar. "We got HOES!" An especially loud animal noise of approval went up. "And tonight, for one night only-- we got THE CAGE MATCH!" Makeshift spotlights illuminated the concrete pit and the cage above it. Cheers resounded.

Skinwalker kept on the move, slipping from shadow to shadow. He didn't have much in the way of equipment left. He'd blown most everything he had on the Cauldron attack and then some. What he had left he was going to have to make very good use of. Particularly he had the strobes and sirens of about a score of unfinished Alarm-o-bots, the last of his completed bots that had been serving as security at the Lost Workshop…. And some seaforium charges. A lot of seaforium charges.

As he arrived at what he considered strategic locations, he would decloak and plant one of the unfinished Alarm-o-bots. Any armed Merchant he stumbled across were swiftly dealt with; the fools were all facing inward, gawping up at their illustrious leader as he showered them with his profanity-laden speech. He crept up behind one after another, knocked them out, tagged them, and stuffed them in one dark uninspected corner or another, their hands and feet zip-tied and duct-tape over their mouths.

"For you BLEEPS who don't know what the BLEEP the Cage Match is about, Clean the BLEEP out of your BLEEP BLEEP and BLEEP BLEEP ears and listen the BLEEP up!"

His primary goal were the emergency exits. There were guards inside and out at each one. Those he had no choice, it would be too complicated to quietly take them out. He sneaked up in stealth and planted the charges, and hoped they were smart enough to get out of the way when the balloon went up.

"BZZZT BLEEP BLEEPITY BLEEP BLEEP BLONK A BLEEP BLING BLAPPY BLAPPITY BLINGO BLANGO BOING BLEEP EFFITY EFFIN BLEEEEEP!"

Skinwalker had to pause at that one. Dang.

"EFFIN BLEEPIN microphone shorted out on my tongue—aaow-- Anyway you BLEEPS, this is how you make your CHOPS in the MERCHANTS. You want in? You go in the Cage. Whoever comes out STANDIN' UP is a MERCHANT. Yeah, you get the free decoder ring and all that BLEEP. You a scrub, you wanna get a PROMOTION? Get some better money, better BLEEP and more BLEEP with your BLANK? you go in the Cage with another homeboy who wants a promotion-- one that comes out standin up, gets his stripes! And the more matches you walk in on, the higher up you go!"

"Hey, we'll even cut you a deal! You got a tab you runnin' with us? Wanna clear it out? Survive a round in the cage and we'll cut it by half! Take two an' we'll cut it again!"

The stealth field generators weren't hard to find. They were up on the roof, huge ungainly things that looked like they'd been built out of diesel engines. It must have taken a ton of fuel to power a cloak that large. There were three or four merchants up their with submachine guns, passing a spliff or three and cursing their luck at having to stand out in the cold. He rolled the seaforium pots under each roaring, chugging engine and skulked back inside, sneaking down the enclosed stairwell. This was grim. If he went through with this, even with all he was doing, there was no guarantees. Someone could be injured, maybe even mortally, in the chaos. These guys weren't footsoldiers, though. They'd gone up a few ranks… trusted with weapons, given bandanas to mark their rank. They'd killed already, in the cage if nowhere else. These weren't cute little comedy characters, lovable drunks and wacky stoners from some idiotic sitcom. These guys were scum.

But could he even do this? If he HAD to, absolutely had to, could he kill?

It was then that he heard someone screaming, muffled and frantic. He looked over the rail; down below five guys had dragged a girl into the stairwell of the fire escape. Two were holding her arms while a third smothered her mouth with a filthy paw. The other two were busy tearing off what little she was already wearing.

Something switched off inside him. He transformed from panther to worgen and vaulted the rail. He landed silently behind the two tearing at the girl's clothes and seized both their heads in huge taloned paws. He brought their skulls together with all his strength.

Before their bodies had even slumped to the floor, his hands lashed out, smashing the heads of the two holding her arms against the concrete block wall behind them with a sickening crunch. The last one holding the girl didn't have time to scream. Adrian reached around the girl, grabbed the grimy man by his neck, throttling him. He pulled him off her and whipped him by his neck overhand behind him. The rapist's plummet down the stairwell wasn't clean; he clanged off the rails a few time on the way down before hitting the bottom floor with a wet thump.

The girl, thankfully, was too terrified to scream. She cowered against the wall, trying to cover herself as she stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes. He pulled his hoodie out of his haversack and tossed it to her. She grasped at it, pulling it to herself.

"Get out," he said. "While you can." Whimpering, she scurried past him, plunging out the exit at the bottom of the stairwell and into the cold night. There was no challenge by the guards that were supposed to be there. Fair odds those particular Merchants were the ones piled at his feet.

The would-be rapists, incredibly, were still alive. He could hear them struggling to breathe; one moaned faintly. Snarling silently, he trussed them up, zip ties all around and just enough Azeroth bandages and drops of potion to keep them from dying...the entire time gnashing his teeth so hard his fangs almost broke. Yes, oh yes he could kill. The question was whether he could hold himself back from it.

The answer was: yes. For now.

"But lemme tell y'all something NEW has been added!" Skinwalker heard that and quickly returned to stealth form, slipping back indoors. "New" was not good.

"Yeah. BLEEP yeah! There's gonna be six GRAND BLEEPING PRIZE WINNERS this time." Skidmark held up a silver briefcase and turned, showing it to the crowd. Skinwalker could see that it was cuffed to his wrist by a long steel chain. He'd mistaken that earlier for some bit of jewelry.

"Y'all know what this is?" Skidmark said. He opened the case, letting everyone see what was inside: six glass vials, each nestled in foam. They glimmered in the harsh light. "Magic in a bottle. The Genie's lamp. You've heard the legends and the legends are true… Cape Juice. Powers in a bottle.

"We gonna pick six of you BLEEPS that does best in the Cage. One bottle each. Drink it down and get to walk the earth like a GOD!"

Skinwalker quickly shifted to an owl-- the mob never noticed; every greedy eye was fixed on the case. He fluttered up to a nearby decorative buttress and focused in on the case. For a creature who could spot a fieldmouse from a hundred feet up, it was an easy read. Yes, there it was: the Cauldron logo, etched in the stopper. They were real.

"SO LET THE BLEEPING GAMES BEGIN!"

That was all it took. Half a dozen would-be contestants pushed past the Merchant guards holding back the crowd and dropped into the pit. Knives, chains, and broken bottles came out. Down in the cockpit of her vehicle, Squealer hit a lever and the cage began to drop.

Skinwalker changed back and crouched on his perch. "I don't think so," he said. He pulled a remote control out of his pocket and hit the button.

All around the perimeter, sirens began to whoop. Red and blue strobes began flashing. "YOU ARE SURROUNDED! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP! SURRENDER!"

The response was gratifying. The crowd of drunks, junkies, partiers and wannabe rebels began screaming as if Leviathan himself had just popped out of the fountain. As one, the mob began pushing in any direction, so long as it looked like it was away from those lights and sirens.

Which happened to be, thanks to careful timing and placement, in the direction of the exits. Skinwalker hit another button and the seaforium charges blew. With a deafening blast all the doors, fire exits, and loading dock shutters in the building blew outward and away, sending Merchant guards flying and leaving a clear path out into the freezing snow-blown night.

At the same time the four cloaking device engines chugging away on the roof suffered a catastrophic failure as their undersides were blown out through their tops. The aura concealing the building from sight and attention popped like a soap bubble and the neighbors for a mile in every direction were woken from their dreams of sugarplums by an eruption of light, noise, explosions and screaming.

For an added touch, batches of pandarian fireworks whistled into the sky, showering the area with sparks. "Let's see the patrolmen ignore that," Skinwalker muttered.

The mob poured out into the parking lot in every direction, fleeing where none pursued. Those that didn't found themselves being pursued by six-foot-tall extinguisher bots. Skinwalker hadn't quite perfect them though. They tended to keep dousing his forges, his candles, himself when he was asleep… they were sufficient for the job of laying down fire suppression and chasing the last of the junkies out. More than one stoner smoking a bong or spliff regretted not opting for the brownies instead as they suddenly found themselves eating a faceful of fire extinguisher foam.

It was at this point that Mush and Trainwreck made their appearance. They came thundering in, Trainwreck in yet another kludged together steam-junk suit of armor, Mush wearing the content of two or three dumpsters. They spotted him perched on the wall and came running, yelling.

Skinwalker gave it a five count. When the East wall was clear of any civilians, he pulled out another remote and flicked the "on" switch.

He'd not had resources to build everything he needed. he'd blown most of his stockpile on the attack of opportunity on Cauldron. There was no possible way he could have built himself a brand new army of six foot robots in three months, much less a week. But it was amazing the stopgap measures you could make when you had a gnomish shrinking or enlarging ray.

BOOM! The East wall… a late unlamented shoe store… exploded inward. In through the rubble came a gigantic Tonk, one of the caterpillar-treaded dwarven war machines of Azeroth. Its turret rotated, bringing its vastly oversized barrel to bear.

THOOM. The cannonball struck Trainwreck square in the chest. His suit's arms and legs went flying in all four directions and his torso, crumpled into ruin, hit the wall and tumbled to the floor. The limbless tinker lay there, cursing violently, trapped… and unable to run even if he could have crawled out.

Mush rallied, wadding together a boulder of trash and heaving it at the worgen. It missed by a yard, splattering against the wall and raining trash everywhere. Skinwalker wasted no time on him. A bottle of lamp oil arced across the intervening space, splashing over the cape and his trash-golem body. Right behind it was a ball of sunfire.

"No, wait--!" Mush screamed, trying to ward off the sunblast with upraised arms. It did no good. The oil soaked mass of plastic and paper and rotting gassy mung went up like a tiki torch. Mush ran screaming, shedding lumps of his burning body as fast as he could. He tumbled to the floor after a few hundred feet, falling down just clear of the burning mess, his tendrils smoking. Two Extinguisher-bots cornered him, spraying the burning waste and the burning cape with extinguisher foam.

And then there were two.

As the tonk continued firing randomly in every direction, raising dust and raining rubble, Skinwalker leaped from the flying buttress to the hanging cage, then from the cage to the arm of the cherry-picker. He climbed up it hand over hand, fast as a man could run on level ground, and leapt into the basket. Skidmark hadn't stopped screaming a mixture of orders and profanities the entire time, but noone was listening. He turned and saw the worgen in the basket with him and nearly shat himself.

Skinwalker grabbed the chain to the briefcase and snapped it between his hands like a strand of twine. He grabbed the case just as Skidmark gathered his one scattered wit and hit him with his powers. Suddenly the floor of the cherry picker platform under Skinwalker's feet turned slick as grease and some force shot him backwards and over the rail. He ricocheted off the cage with a crack-- he felt ribs break-- then he landed on the roof of the Tonk.

Bullets began spalling off the Tonk's thick hide all around him. Hastily he pulled open the hatch in the eagle's head cockpit and dropped inside, seconds before the cage dropped and bounced off his hull. A hasty Heal to his ribs was all he could manage at the moment; things were getting a little bit exciting.

Even though he shrank down to human form again there was little room in the cockpit. Most of the space was taken up with a gnomish gadget that pinged and buzzed and sizzled and went "vumm" every few seconds. This was his little kitbash solution to needing a full sized vehicle: he'd built a toy Tonk and then installed a gnomish enlarger inside. He'd kludged it from the blueprints for a World Shrinker Ray; Once activated, every so often it would send a pulse of "Enlarge" through the vehicle, keeping it at its current size. The extinguisher-bots had been treated the same way, with a quick squirt of enlarger ray. Unfortunately he didn't have enough to build enlargers for all of them, so in another ten minutes or so they were going to smeerrrrp back to their regular toybox-ready size.

He gave the enlarger an uneasy glance. If that thing broke down, things were going to get a trifle cramped inside this Tonk.

Bullets pinged and whined off the Tonk's skin. Apparently there were some loyal holdouts. Skinwalker wasn't too worried about that, but they were liable to fish something out bigger, sooner or later--- something a lot larger than a .45 bullet banged violently against his hull. Speak of the Devil. It looked like Squealer had gotten at least one of the guns on her Hellmobile lined up on him.

As he recalled from canon, some idiot had sold this bunch rocket launchers at one point. He didn't want to test his craftsmanship against that.

He looked down at the briefcase. Mission parameters had changed. This case was vital evidence, proof that could bust half a dozen conspiracies wide open. He had to get this fight out in the open and on his terms again. He grabbed the controls and spun the gun turret around til it was pointing straight into Squealer's front grille, not ten feet in front of him.

He fired. With an almighty bang the bulldozer shovel Squealer had bolted to the front of her vehicle for armor was blasted off. It went flipping end over end to crash someplace on the second floor. The whole vehicle tilted sideways, threatening to tip over, crane and all. Even over the gunfire Skinwalker could hear Squealer and Skidmark shrieking and swearing. He took advantage of their excited distraction and threw the Tonk in reverse.

With a spray of gravel and a roar from the enlarged engine, the Tonk shot backwards and out the way it had come in. He roared across the parking lot, his treads ripping the asphalt. All around in every direction he could see police lights, real police lights, closing in on the abandoned shopping mall. All the more reason to get Skidmark, Squealer and their cannon-covered Helltruck away from here.

So far, so good: a moment later Squealer's Helltruck rocketed out of the ruptured wall, bouncing on all six tires as it caught air leaving the building. The cherry-picker had been lowered down and locked, and Skidmark was riding in the basket like an elephant rider in a howda, screaming and gesticulating.

No, not just waving his arms, Skinwalker realized. Skidmark was laying down his power ahead of the Helltruck, making it go faster.

Skidmark had a power you'd probably expect more out of the gamer-nerd villains uber and leet: he could lay down patches of energy on any surface that acted like the booster arrows in Mario Kart, making anything that crossed them accelerate in the direction he laid out. He was hanging on the basket resting on the vehicle's hood, using his free hand to toss down patch after patch after patch in front of the Helltruck's wheels. In his other hand he was clutching a black globe of some sort-- it kind of looked like an eight ball. Was it something he needed to make his power work, Skinwalker wondered?

No time for that. The Helltruck was in hot pursuit, guns blazing like strobe lights, and it was closing fast. Skinwalker opened up the throttle and threw the Tonk in reverse, roaring out of the parking lot, crossing the neighboring road, and hurtling down an intersecting street. Backwards, no less.

He had three shots left. It was a residential district but Skinwalker had little choice. He lowered the Tonk's cannon and fired. Squealer dodged as the road erupted. The second shot cavitied the road ahead of the Helltruck, but it bounced over the craters with its six fat wheels without a problem.

Then Skidmark laid down a streak of accelerator. The Helltruck rocketed forward and struck the Tonk with an enormous smash. When Skinwalker shook his head clear, he'd reverted to worgen form again. The hatch on his cockpit was gone, along with a good part of the roof, and his cannon and treads were wedged in the Helltruck's mangled grille. He yanked on the controls; no go, he was stuck on the front of Squealer's Helltruck like a reindeer on Grandma's bumper. And they were STILL rolling down the road at breakneck speeds, his back wheels sparking off the pavement as the tread belt rattled off them.

Then the enlarger began to spark. "Oh, not good," Skinwalker muttered.

He looked up and Squealer's eyes met his. She saw his predicament. She gave him a leer fit for the Devil and tromped on the accelerator. The roar from the engine was like the end of the World coming.

Skinwalker looked over his shoulder. The street they were on ended at a half-mile paved pier. The half-mile pier ended in a rustic wooden pier. The wooden pier ended in the bay. They roared off the road and began hurtling down the pier, smashing signs and fishing shacks on either side the entire way. Skidmark was screaming like a lunatic, waving the black ball over his head. "We got 'im, Mr. Lucky! We got 'im now!!"

Skinwalker scrabbled at the controls. Brakes weren't working. Engine wasn't working. Pretty soon the Enlarger wasn't going to be working.

The cannon was working. He grabbed the trigger and looked Squealer in the eyes again over the hoods of their conjoined vehicle. Her eyes went wide as she realized at the last second what he was going to do.

Could he kill?

If he had to.

"HEY SQUEALER," he yelled. "TANK…YOU!"

And yanked the trigger.

Had the Helltruck not lost its front armor the story might have ended differently. But the shovel in the front was long gone, and the cannon barrel was wedged right up against the Helltruck's radiator. The cannonball smashed through the engine block, through the cab behind it, through the dual engines behind that, and out the back of the vehicle, destroying everything in its path and engulfing everything else inside the vehicle's armored hide in a cauldron of flame. Smoke and burning fuel and red hot steel erupted from the tail of the vehicle like the vomit of hell. The Helltruck came to a thundering halt, plowing to a stop just a few dozen yards from the end of the wooden pier.

But alas, even in the world of capes, action must equal reaction. The damaged Tonk and all its contents, including the briefcase full of miracle potions and one worgen, blasted free of the Helltruck's grasp and went hurtling off the end of the dock. They hit with a mighty splash, and disappeared in the icy waves.

The sudden halt dismounted Skidmark from his steed. By pure luck he vaulted clear of his dead girlfriend's burning vehicle to safety. He tumbled down the length of the dock, ending up on his hands and knees. For a wonder, he still had Mr. Lucky clutched in his hand.

"BLEEP," he groaned, getting up off his bloody hands and knees. He looked back at the truck. It was gutted, the inside a raging inferno. "Squealer!" he shouted. For the first time in ages he showed some human feeling; he watched, stunned and bereft, as the truck and whatever was left of his woman burned.

"The briefcase!!" he suddenly screamed. He ran for the end of the dock. The wooden quay was already badly damaged and threatening to crumble into the water. He clung to the sinking post and tried, uselessly, to see where the briefcase had gone. It had sunk to the bottom of the Bay, apparently. "BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP it, those BLEEPING briefcases are supposed to BLEEPING FLOAT!" He screamed. He sank to his knees. "five… and a half.. million… bucks," he moaned. Every last bit of operating capital the Merchants had left, and more. That's what it had cost to get those vials. He was broke, he was in debt to people he didn't even want to think about, the rest of the capes in his gang were down or dead, and his last hope of the Merchants pulling a comeback had just disappeared into the depths.

He held up the magic 8 ball and shook it, looking into its window. "Come on, Mr. Lucky. I need your help," he pleaded. "Come on, Mr. Lucky. It was you who told me about those vials, it was you who told me where to get them, all of this was all your plan, c'mon, you gotta have a way to get me outta this--"

The bubble-window remained dark.

"BLEEP YOU!" Skidmark screamed. "This is all YOUR fault, you TRAITOR!" He took the 8-ball and flung it out into the waves as far as he could. It barely made a splash. He turned in a circle, pulling at his scorched dreadlocks with his fingers. "What do I do, what do I do..."

The damaged dock sank a little further. Something sloshed in the water. Skidmark turned on his heel and stared at the water suspiciously. Something was moving around down there. He carefully lowered himself down onto the last few boards of the pier, squinting…

Not many people know anything bout Skidmark's formative years. Largely because nobody cares. But it must be said that at one point he was an ordinary innocent child. And during those formative years, when he was about eight years old, his jackass of an older brother tricked him into going to the theater to see a new movie-- "Orca."

This was one of the many would-be imitators that came out after the debut of "Jaws," about a vengeful killer whale pursuing the sailor that had killed its mate and calf. It was corny, it was schlocky, it was hilariously awful. But to an eight-year-old Skidmark it had been a sleigh ride into mind-blowing terror that had impacted on him the rest of his life. He couldn't even be in the same room as a Shamu plushy without having to make a break for another room.

So one can only imagine the depths of utter, mind-shattering horror that clutched his soul when a full grown bull killer whale erupted from the water below.

He had time for one chilling scream before that enormous mouth closed over him.

 Several miles away, a man at a computer sat back and contemplated what he'd seen. He'd gotten a front row seat of the entire battle of the Twin Pines Mall, from the moment Skidmark had climbed aboard the cherry picker to the last few seconds of him shaking Mr. Lucky and screaming at him-- then a few seconds of rapid sky-ocean-sky-ocean ending in a splash, and darkness.

It had been what, three years ago now? That he had a stroke of luck and learned of the drug kingpin's obsession with the plastic toy. On an impulse he'd had one of his agents steal the thing and replace it with one with a few technological additions, such as a spy camera and microphone and a specially made text screen that imitated a real 8-ball's liquid chamber. With this trinket he'd been able to not only spy on his rival, but to actually order him and his entire gang around. It had turned an annoying problem underfoot into a useful resource.

The footage of late had been particularly entertaining, as Skidmark had begun carrying his lucky 8-ball everywhere with him. Entertaining and enlightening. This new cape was versatile, eccentric and if pressed, ruthless. He demonstrated a startling range of abilities and at levels the resources in the PRT only guessed at. He also had a gift for insights into leveraging powers to their best effectiveness, if his little gifts to the Protectorate and the Wards were any indicator. He would make an extraordinarily useful asset, and a deadly liability. The only option for dealing with him was to recruit him, or eliminate him.

Coil turned away from his desk and leaned back, contemplating how he might accomplish either.

About a mile down the beach, a pair of Brockton Bay's bravest, sitting in their squad car at the end of a short dock filling out paperwork, found themselves witnesses to an extraordinary sight.

"OhJesusJesusJESUShelpOHLordJESUSlordLORdOHGODhelp..."

Plowing through the water, its head held high, was a killer whale. It swam past the end of the dock, water pluming in its wake.

It appeared to be dragging Skidmark of the Merchants in its mouth by his leg. The leader of the merchants was dressed in a sodden Santa Claus coat and, for a wonder, was not swearing. He appeared to be praying.

"OHJESUSMARYandJOSEPHandPETERandPAULandSAINTJEROME! "

Apparently to anyone and everyone who he thought might be listening.

"PETERPAULANDMARY! EARTHWINDANDFIRE! HARRY KRISHNA! HARRY KARI! HARRY POTTER!!"

They got out of their squad car silently, unable to take their eyes off the spectacle. The whale was swimming in a wide figure eight, dragging its terrified toy around in the icy waves.

"HEAR ME ALLAH! SAVE ME BUDDAH! HELP ME KALI!!…"

Officer Charlie, the quicker thinking of the duo, reached in the window of the patrol car, honked the horn and flashed the lights. The orca stopped and stood on its tail; they had gotten its attention. Or perhaps it had been trying to get theirs.

"OH MISTER ROGERS! OH KENNY ROGERS! OH BOB ROSS! HAVE MERCY ON ME!"

The whale swam in closer to the beach. The two officers panicked when it began whipping its head back and forth; they'd both seen enough nature documentaries to remember seeing how a killer whale snapped the neck of a seal. They needn't have worried; the orca wasn't going for the kill-- it was just winding up. With a wrench of its head the magnificent sea animal flung Skidmark in a high arc towards the shore.

"OPTIMUS PRIME SAVE OUR SOOOUUUUULS!!!!"

The leader of the Merchants landed on the cold, wet sand with a splat. He groaned in pain for a second, then got up on his knees, feeling himself over. "I'm alive. I'M ALIIIIIVE!" he began laughing hysterically. He clung to the first officer who ran up, weeping and giggling and falling into a complete breakdown.

"You're also under arrest," Officer Charlie said, pulling out the cuffs and slapping them on the sopping wet junkie.

"That's nice," Skidmark said, nodding and smiling. Then he fell to the sand and curled up in a fetal ball, shivering and weeping and making blithering noises. When the PRT van arrived, they had to carry him onto it on a stretcher.

Further on down, out of sight under the docks, the orca beached itself. Its mouth opened and it began making slow, painful retching noises. After several seconds of obvious pain, a silvery metal briefcase slid out of its mouth and onto the sand.

Once the blockage was clear the orca changed, shrinking down to the form of a bedraggled, badly battered worgen in a sodden, singed cloak. Skinwalker fished around in his haversack and pulled out a rune-covered stone. He squeezed it in his fist. A minute ticked by, then two. Glowing lights began to spiral around him. "Hope this works," he groaned. Then he vanished.

He reappeared in the Lost Workshop a few feet above the stone floor. He hit it with a thump, eliciting more groans of pain. "Well, it worked," he muttered to noone. Hearthstones, he had learned in his efforts to make one, were a lot more limited than in the game. Which only made sense. If they were as quick, reliable and efficient as they were in the game, Azeroth's armies would have built strategies around them; having entire platoons set their hearth back at the base camp, for example. Or setting up a secure command network based on mail carriers Hearthstoning across the globe. Or they'd be a hub of commerce: even with as little as a single person could carry, being able to deliver anything across the globe instantly would make it well worth the investment. Alliance Express, heh.

But in reality they were slow to operate, difficult to make, and even more difficult to reset to a new location. In fact they were generally given as a gift on the birth of a child, and most people kept them set to the town of their birth their whole lives. Their primary purpose was to let the folks at home know you were still alive (the twin of the stone glowed so long as the wielder was still breathing) and… to let the mortally wounded return home to die.

That was not an ideal train of thought. He forced himself to his feet and limped, then crawled, then dragged himself up the stairs to his bed. He considered it a triumph that he sprawled atop it, rather than on the floor next to the stupid briefcase. One of the alarm-o-bots trundled up and tried to push a roll of bandages into his hand dangling over the side. "Thanks little buddy," he mumbled. "Don't think that's gonna do the trick."

He tried for a quick heal. It sputtered out. Then he tried for a slow heal over time. That failed too. An efflorescence?… nothing.

He was wishing to high heaven he'd taken alchemy. He'd be guzzling healing potions like they were Dr. Pepper right now if he had. This was bad. The pain was everywhere, inside and out. (served him right for swallowing a briefcase then puking it back up.) What was wrong?

He was a druid, blast it, why weren't any of his healing and purifying spells working? He needed help. He could go get help… but how. He wasn't a mage, he didn't have a laundry list of places and ways to teleport someplace. Druids only had one real location they could port to.

….Where was it?

Even as he was sliding from consciousness he could hear alarm bells sounding. Alarm bells, right! "Alarm Clock," he slurred. "Set Alarm for 9am, December 31."

The alarm clock dinged. "Alarm set for morning, 9am, December 31," she said soothingly.

Perfect. He didn't want to miss his date.

Where was that place? He could get help there, couldn't he?

Oh right. He clenched his fist and alien light swirled.

"Moonglade."

He woke lying on a grassy slope, at the shore of a glittering lake. Trees vaulted overhead. The air was warm and redolent with the scent of green growing things. He heard fish splashing in the water and birds chirping in the trees.

He looked around as best he could without sitting up. "This isn't Moonglade, is it?" he said aloud.

Got it in one.

He sat up and twisted around to see who was speaking. A glowing, humanoid form was sitting next to him with its back against the tree shading them. Hello again. Glad to see you finally figured it out.

"Agent?" Skinwalker said. "What the heck is going on? Where am I?"

Ah, I see I spoke too soon. Agent sighed. Very well, I shall attempt to explain. I think I'll start with the last question first. You attempted to teleport to Moonglade. Correct?

"Yyyyes, I kind of remember that," Adrian said.

It's an ability, indoctrinated into every Azeroth druid from their first day. A place to flee to in time of need… second only to the Emerald Dream as a place of sanctuary. It was your first, natural choice when in a state of distress.

However, the problem with that is that there is no Moonglade in this world. So lacking that locale, your powers defaulted to the next choice of sanctuary… attempting to reach the Emerald Dream.

"Attempted." Adrian repeated.

Good of you to catch that. To make it brief, this world has no Emerald Dream, either. The Titans who made Azeroth created it as a sort of… starting blueprint. A parallel plane of Azeroth that served as a baseline against which to measure changes or endeavours they made after a certain point. He paused. Coincidentally you'll note that there's no "robotic lifeforms" in the Emerald Dream. Which should tell you a lot about the Titans and others who claim that all life on Azeroth was originally "perfect" metal and stone, and that organic life was the result of a "Curse of the flesh."

"So what's the real story?" Adrian asked.

Several of the Titans had something of a … mechanical lifeform fetish. They ran around for a few thousand years, screwing up everyone else's work and turning everything into metal and stone golems. The "Curse" is life returning to it's proper state.

"Makes sense," Adrian grunted. "I noticed that for all their talk of "the perfection of iron" or "the weakness of flesh," their women still had breasts. I don't know about you but I think of anything more useless, unlikely or counter-productive than boobs made of rock." he snorted. "I kept picturing their men getting together and weeping, "Ach, Ah remember when they jiggled..."

To his surprise, Agent tipped his head back and laughed. Now that was worth the price of admission.

"So if this isn't the Emerald Dream, what is it?" Adrian said.

It is a small pocket dimension, unique to yourself, to which you can retreat in times when you are in dire need of restoration, Agent said. A sort of personal Emerald Dream. While you are here, you have one foot in the material world and one world in the extradimensional. It renders you somewhat… ghostly seeming back on the material plane, making you difficult to injure, influence or move-- but it allows your physical body to restore as if it were entirely here.

"And you are here because…?"

Because it is technically outside the normal material realm, so I am not breaking the rules by being here. His voice seemed smug. Of course I cannot do anything to help you back in the material world either, but we can at least chat… discuss things… offer advice…

"A loophole," Adrian grinned. "Clever stinker."

True, true. Agent's demeanor turned severe. Of course you weren't expected to urgently need this place for another hundred years or so. You really did a number on yourself.

"What?"

Adrian, when is the last time that you slept a full night? Or even half a night? How many weeks has it been, that you've been going to school all day, work all afternoon and then prowling through the night? How many nights have you spent in your Workshop, building and rebuilding and stockpiling?

"But I had to get ready--"

Not all at once! Not in one month, or three, or even twelve. Don't get me wrong, you've set things in motion, many of them months or even years ahead of schedule… but you're trying to accomplish everything at once, and it's burning you out. It almost killed you. To say nothing of your injuries. You kept using heal after heal after heal, not taking time to rest and recuperate and let your body heal naturally. It ran your magical batteries down as much as your physical batteries and left you with a just-healed-enough body. And every time it was a little less effective. You're not a video game character, you can't just snap your fingers and heal instantly for free.

In addition to all those breaks, bruises, cuts and stabs and whatnot you got in your nightly excursions, that final explosion did a number on you, he added. You were within a few feet of the center of the blast wave, and it basically bruised your everything. Soft tissues, bones, internal organs. He looked over his glasses pointedly. Swallowing a briefcase didn't help matters.

Adrian shuddered. It was only now that he realized what might have happened had any of the vials leaked.

No, you wouldn't have Triggered, Agent said to his unasked question. Not even as a case 53. You flat out can't. The vials would have just killed you. What would have been left of you would have looked like it hatched at Chernobyl. Agent put on his glasses. As it is, you're going to have to spend quite some time in this state, recuperating.

"How long?" Adrian asked anxiously.

Don't worry, only several days to a week.

"But--"

I'm sorry, I can't be any more specific than that, Agent said. For now you need to sleep.

No, wait… It's too close! I won't make it in time-- Adrian tried to protest. But he only slumped down, too weary to speak, lying on the soft green grass.

Don't worry. I'm sure we'll get you out of here in no time.

Adrian heard no more.

"Three… Two… One..."

"Happy New Year, Brockton Bay!"

Taylor blew on her party horn, but it was only a halfhearted effort. They toasted the New Year with sparkling white grape cider in silent awkwardness.

Danny tried to think of something to say. "Pumpkin..."

"Don't, Daddy," Taylor said. "It's okay. It happens, right?" She got up and headed for the stairs. "I'm gonna go on to bed." She trooped up the stairs, leaving her father alone to watch the fireworks on TV and dwell on things.