Chapter 27

OoOoO

Story Day Twenty Nine, May 4th 2011, Wednesday - Morning

OoOoO

They were meeting in a random park, supposedly chosen by Kaiser minutes beforehand, but Jared felt certain that the Empire had known what location they'd be using hours in advance and had already prepared it. In fact, he felt certain Victor was out there somewhere set up as a sniper.

Jared was willing to bet money that he had a set of crosshairs hovering over the back of his head right at that moment.

Then, because they'd seen him block shots before, probably a pair of machinegun nests concealed close by, along with a flamethrower, and a rocket propelled grenade or two.

Because guys like these believed in being thorough - and protecting their leader was something they often felt very strongly about.

Just after he arrived at the spot marked by tape on the tennis court to which he'd been directed, Kaiser stepped out from cover and approached his side of the chosen meeting place, having been shielded by a brick building and strategically positioned dumpsters until practically in position.

Jared also felt certain that Kaiser's body, under that armor, would be covered with bio-monitors transmitting to state-of-the-art medical computers being overseen by professionals trained in whatever means the PRT had devised for determining whether someone was being Mastered or not.

No doubt, on anyone of that medical team receiving what they interpreted as a questionable reading, a signal would go out and Victor would take the shot on Jared.

Or that's how these sort of things usually went, anyhow.

Untrustworthy people are always anticipating betrayals by others - because betrayals are what they would do if the situations were reversed.

"Alright, you called for this meeting. What do you want?" Jared called out, having reached a point where they could speak to one another without shouting, but were still well outside of melee range - as had been insisted on by Kaiser as a condition of this meeting.

Apparently the man had developed a fear of lightsabers. Who would have thought?

"You promised not to poach my people," Kaiser stated flatly, standing across the tennis court from him. Aside from a little distance, the ridiculous little net was all that separated them, providing a token barrier.

Jared, in his Rick Belmont guise, very mildly raised one eyebrow. "I recall quite clearly stating that I would not 'make any efforts' to include your capes in my harem. And she isn't in my harem, not yet anyway. That's still being negotiated. Further, I used no power to influence her. But most importantly, I made no effort to get her on my side - that was all your doing. You fumbled that ball and dropped her when you insisted on taking back her winnings. You drove her out by forcing her to pick which she liked more: you, or twenty million dollars. Her choice was obvious. After that, she was not yours anymore, so our agreement no longer applied. What is more, I was not even in town when she came over, requesting asylum. If my people had not been there, she would have gone somewhere else. You really should not have tried to take that poor girl's money."

From the reaction, a reasonable reply to his confrontational opening was not what the leader of the E88 had been prepared for.

Kaiser had apparently never thought of the situation that way, and it put him on the back foot, so he took a moment before replying, "Ah. Then, perhaps we can negotiate her return?"

Jared had been convinced by that short delay that Kaiser was listening to an earbud, getting advice from others among his lieutenants - probably Victor among them.

No matter.

'Rick' shrugged, unconcerned. "Negotiate with her, if you like. I'll not hold her if she chooses to leave. However, at the moment, my understanding is she is quite invested in becoming a Jedi."

Kaiser paused again. "I would like to negotiate with her, yes."

'Rick' nodded. "I'll be happy to allow that, but I won't let you pressure her."

Kaiser paused once more, cementing Jared's opinion that the man was listening to advice over a radio.

A rather foolish move, with the FBI in town. The Feds had all sorts of toys for intercepting and decoding those types of transmissions. You might as well mail them a picture postcard detailing your crimes.

After a handful of seconds, Kaiser replied, "Yes, that does present a problem. You told Victor recently that in the event of another breech between our two organizations, it would be my turn to offer a 'freebie' to reestablish good will. How about we just skip that breech, and consider the twenty million she owes me to be that goodwill offering? But next time, it will be your turn to make the offering."

'Rick' shrugged again, unconcerned. "Deal. I find her company quite agreeable and would have gladly accepted her if she was destitute, but am happy to let her keep those funds as your peace offering against any pending disagreement. However, out of curiosity, and speaking of the future, how go your preparations for dealing with whatever trouble the FBI brings down?"

Kaiser's body language revealed the man was actually puzzled by the question, considering it to be coming out of left field. "What trouble, pray tell, would the FBI be bringing?"

Jared mimed his own shock at that question. "Surely you jest! Of course you remember my first freebie to Victor, wherein I pointed out that Coil knows your secret identities. I am sure you've heard by now that Coil has been arrested by the FBI, and all of his files have been, or shortly will be, taken and examined by their experts. Therefore, if the FBI does not yet have your secret identities, they will soon. In fact, I wouldn't lay money against them listening to that radio earbud you are using now - they have the equipment, training, *and* the motivation to do so, and they record those things by default, so they can subject them to voice pattern recognition and such. There *is* a reason that I insisted this meetup be in person, and not over any sort of electronic device, you know. I just wanted to remind you about that danger, so if a crisis did hit you did not lay blame where none belonged. I also have to admit, I am curious as to what you are going to do about it."

While the youth was still speaking, a visibly panicking Kaiser had torn open the side of his helmet, ripped out the radio earbud he'd been using, thrown it down onto the tennis court, and crushed it under his heel. Then, resealing his helmet again, the villain pretended casualness as he replied, "Uhh... uhhh... well, uhh... I obviously... can't share, uhh... highly sensitive, secret information like that with an outsider. However, I am curious. What would you do in our situation?"

Jared did his best to hide a smirk, trying not to be too obvious about having seen through Kaiser's attempt to hide the fact that he'd been caught completely off-guard, having apparently never even considered the trouble Coil's arrest put him in. The man's statement amounted to a thinly veiled request of, 'Please, Help!'

"Aside from the obvious?" 'Rick' smiled.

Kaiser fidgeted nervously, composure gone for the moment. "No. Include the obvious. It is always good to have a check to see what is obvious to others. Because if it is obvious to you, it might well be obvious to the FBI."

Jared inwardly had to admit that was a decent recovery. "Well, obviously, you will have already prepared alternate identities to fall back on, once you learned yours were in danger. Whether the places you chose to fall back to are in this country, or another, will have a great deal of impact on how much the FBI can still do to you. And speaking of what the FBI can and will do to you, obviously you will have kept track of which crimes the government associates with which capes, so you'll know which capes have the greatest need to change IDs and hide. For example, Othala, being a support cape, might not be associated with many crimes, so would have minimal need to hide. But Hookwolf, being a dramatic front-liner with a penchant for blood, probably would have more need than most. But you'll know all of that already."

"Of course," Kaiser agreed, the tone of his voice showing that, no, he'd never thought about that but was trying hard to hide that little fact.

Jared nodded, respecting the attempt, if nothing else."Obviously, you will be having your moles in the police, PRT and Protectorate trying to transfer your cases back to their corrupt and inefficient jurisdiction, and out of the FBI's control. Just kicking off that turf war will, at a minimum, buy you some more time to get ready. And you could get lucky, and the PRT gets jurisdiction again, whereupon moles ensure that data gets lost, or corrupted again."

Kaiser was nodding along. "Yes. That is an obvious first choice," he agreed, obviously filing that idea away for immediate use after the meeting.

Jared nodded again. "Aside from using inter-agency turf wars to slow things down, or ideally stop them. You've probably considered attacking the data itself. Coil's base was rigged for self-destruct. I don't know if Crusader would be able to send his ghost-minions through those walls and trigger that mechanism (although you could probably make it work, since those ghosts can't touch anything inorganic they'll probably just fly through those walls, then pick up rats, or someone's leftover lunch, or a leather briefcase, and use them to manipulate controls and hit buttons), but I do know the less time the FBI has to data-mine those computers, the safer you will be. But you will have already plotted out the various attack strategies available to you, and know whether they are worth the risk or not. I do caution that every second you delay, the FBI learns more from those computers. So if you are going to strike, sooner is better. I wouldn't worry too much about the buildings above Coil's base, as Dragon will have known that self-destruct device existed, so the FBI will have evacuated the area of civilians and such."

Jared could swear Kaiser was mentally taking notes.

"Yes, well, obviously... uhh... having considered our best course of action... if it was an attack, I could not discuss it with you." Kaiser stumbled, not having been so out-of-sorts in ages.

Both men there quietly knew that Kaiser would be demanding that Crusader send his ghosts to make such an attack in short order.

And Jared knew that such an attack would be obvious enough (and obviously, flying specters able to pass through any inorganic material were not something the FBI could resolve with just bullets from their service revolvers) that Coil's base would be evacuated by FBI agents and technicians as soon as it became clear what those ghosts were there trying to do.

The FBI were clever guys. He had faith they'd figure out the threat in short order.

And if that building came down? Well, coincidentally, that section of the city had already been devastated by Bakuda's bomb rampage. The law firm Carol Dallon had worked at, whose building had been largely sucked into a black hole, had been less than a block away - and neighboring structures had not escaped damage.

In some ways, that demolition would just be accomplishing something that had to be done anyway. If anything, Coil's demolition charges going off would just be saving the city money. Otherwise, they'd just wind up hiring crews to do the same thing.

Skysaber's Sirens already had plans for renovating that area, which started with demolishing the damaged buildings.

"Of course," Jared continued. "And should you end up going that route, you know the records are only part of the problem."

Still off-kilter, Kaiser did his best to pretend he got the rest of the youth's meaning. "What, pray tell, would you consider to be the rest of it?"

'Rick' gave him an 'Are you stupid?' look. "Obviously, Coil as the one to collect all of that data already knows the same information as is in those files. With him in FBI custody, he'll soon be telling them all he knows about you. After all, what reason does he have *not* to? You holding onto Coil's identity with the threat of releasing it if he did anything with yours is no longer a threat. The FBI, and who knows who else, now have Coil's secret identity themselves - they'd *have* to! They don't play by the same rules as the PRT claims to, unwritten or otherwise. Once he was in their custody, one of the first things the FBI would have done was unmask and fingerprint him. They've doubtless run blood tests and background checks on him by now. There is nothing left for you to reveal about Coil's civilian life that would surprise them. So he has no reason not to reveal everything he knows about you. After all, it's not like you guys are on the same side and he wants to protect you."

Kaiser just stood there for a moment, caught up in realizing just how bad was the situation he was now in.

It was, frankly, worse than the Nazi gang leader had ever imagined.

Bad enough that for the first time in Max Anders' life the thrill of gang life and feelings of power it brought were no longer so sweet, as the thought of facing actual punishment for his crimes turned the former sweet feelings bitter in his stomach, Kaiser suddenly went from feeling like a predator to prey - which was no fun! The very thought left him ill and wishing he'd retired earlier, before this horrible event had come to pass.

High risk, adrenaline junky games where you face off with deadly opponents are for the young, and Max was well into middle age. He could have gone on happily for the rest of his life as just the CEO of Medhall.

But it looked like that was no longer an option.

~It's funny,~ Kaiser reflected, throat suddenly dry, ~How true it is that 'you never know what you've got until it's gone'.~

'Rick' shrugged. "Luckily, you have options. For one, the FBI is new about this whole 'dealing with parahumans' thing. In some ways that has been an advantage for them, as in their ignorance they've been trampling all over the rules. Not following the rules of any system always seems like an advantage in the short term, but they are forgetting that there are long term consequences to that sort of behavior. As the Unwritten Rules are supported by the fact that all involved understand that you either keep them - or they don't protect you."

A sly sort of smile began to spread over Kaiser's face as he heard that news and assimilated the ramifications.

"Now, if you'll excuse me," 'Rick' told the man, "I have a number of young ladies that I made certain promises to, and I intend to keep them. So, good day."

The youth waved jauntily and left.

Kaiser just absently waved him off and hastily departed to go see to his own group's desperate needs.

The explosive device they'd planted under the newly resurfaced tennis court, under the tape where the young man had been standing, went unused, Kaiser never having made the subtle 'kill' gesture that would have caused Alabaster to detonate it - simply dropping the tennis ball he'd held in one gauntlet.

Kaiser had never been too keen on being that close to that big of a bomb, despite the assurances of Krieg and Stormtiger hiding nearby that they could protect him from the blast. So he was thankful not to have needed it.

That kid really was a smooth negotiator. Too bad he wasn't working for the Empire.

OoOoO

The leader of the Empire Eighty Eight left that tennis court and collected his cape bodyguards, already making a great many plans.

However, in defiance of those plans, in another part of that city there came a surprise that tumbled them all to ruin.

Not trusting the volatile local environment, the FBI had thrown a prisoner transport convoy together swiftly, hoping to get their star prisoner and the computers from his base out of town before anything bad could happen.

Bad things, like an attack by the Empire Eighty Eight.

But the FBI had not been swift enough.

If it had just been the one gang, they probably would have succeeded. The Empire had been caught on the wrong foot by the new realities of their situation and were feeling extra cautious of dealing with this new and unpredictable (to them) government agency that had gotten itself involved; caution that had introduced a delay that would have ordinarily let the FBI's swiftly-organized prisoner transport successfully get out of town.

However, the E88 were far from the only gang in that city.

Lung had previously, loudly and publicly sworn vengeance upon Coil for the loss of Mini-Lee (what the public had taken to calling the child cape dressed as the older teleporter, and who'd openly displayed a similar power). And Lung had found out about the FBI's prisoner transport convoy.

Not that that was hard to do.

The faster the FBI arranged such a thing, the less time they had for things like gathering forces, and hiding the real details of the convoy in various ways, such as making cover stories and plausible lies about what the real convoy was and setting up fake convoys to distract. And, in their haste, they had no time for really creative plans for how to get the prisoner and evidence out of town and away from his own support base as well as away from his enemies.

It was a gamble - if they had little time for planning and gathering forces, neither did any potential opposition.

But Lung was a special case in that he didn't need to gather any forces - he was, for lack of a better term, 'an army of one'. So as soon as he found out about the convoy and its route, he could head out to attack it. Lung didn't have many supporters left, but it didn't take much to notice that half a dozen large vans had pulled up to a very public government building and a bunch of armed men were getting in to them after escorting a hooded figure in chains into one of the vans.

A single pre-paid informant making a coded telephone call would have been enough to get the word out, even if the rest of the surviving gang had not already staked out all of the likely spots.

Departing in great haste, the vans had moved off down the street and were halfway to the edge of town before Lung had caught up to them. But when he did catch up, Lung wasted no time before attacking.

The ABB leader didn't even try to figure out which of the identical vans contained his target. Puzzle-solving was beyond him when he was raging.

He simply attacked each van in turn.

The FBI fired everything they had at Lung, hitting him frequently and making little difference to the regenerating super-villain.

The FBI was not the army. They were not used to open fights using all the force that could possibly be brought to bear, like the army was. The FBI's normal opponents were very focused on stealthy crimes - spying and the like - where, if they were discovered at all, they had basically lost already. Sure, some kidnappers, counterfeiters, spies and the like carried pistols and tried to use them to escape. But that was about as far as it usually went. And the FBI's response to that - carrying their own pistols, bulletproof vests, plus some rifles and shotguns - was usually completely adequate. This time, realizing that capes may become involved, they'd even brought extra guns - though the PRT had denied their requests for some Containment Foam, and the Protectorate had said they had no capes available to loan to the convoy.

Before this, the FBI's entry into the cape business had been them playing Spy vs Spy, at which they'd excelled. Now they were learning what it was like to play the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in a kaiju movie.

All the FBI troops in the convoy had rifles or shotguns in addition to their usual pistols. The drivers, instead, had sub-machineguns. Every other van had an M60 medium machinegun. Two of their men even had LAW rockets.

None of that made any real difference to Lung.

To catch up with the moving vehicles, Lung had stolen a motorcycle. He had no strategy, but simply raced right at the last van in the convoy and rammed it. As he had approached, he had gotten shot several times by alert FBI agents. If they'd shot the motorcycle instead, they could have helped, as Lung didn't run as fast as vans drove.

After ramming the van, Lung had proceeded to tear his way into it, attacking all within, one after another, and regenerating all the while from the constant stream of bullets that hit him.

The FBI Special Agent in charge of the convoy could have raced away, writing off those in the last van as effectively dead already and hoping that the last van would be too damaged for Lung to use it to chase down the rest. But he was not that kind of guy. He wanted to both support his own people and also arrest the bad guy. So he had his vans stop and his men deploy to get the most advantage out of their machineguns and LAW rockets.

That worked, and it didn't.

It worked in that no man was left behind. It also worked in that everybody got to shoot Lung. And it worked in that Lung was hit multiple times by every weapon they had, as he went from van to van looking for his target: Coil.

It didn't work, because none of that stopped Lung.

The Law rockets slowed him down a bit, but that was the best they could claim.

FBI troopers near or in vans got batted aside, or flung away, or clawed, as well as receiving some burn damage, while Lung pursued his goal - finding the van that had Coil and killing that man. Troopers firing rifles from further away were largely ignored, for the moment.

It was when he tore open the roof of the 4th van that Lung finally found Coil.

OoOoO

Coil heard the sound of sheet metal tearing, accompanied by a roar from Lung, and promptly peed himself in terror.

He'd been listening to the gunfire, roaring, and general sounds of battle and destruction. He had noted as it got closer and closer. And he knew what it meant.

He had split the timelines every time he thought it may help, both now and earlier. But nobody had given him any chance to make any real difference.

In one timeline, he'd gone quietly from the prison into the van.

In alternates, he had gone limp and made them carry him, or faked epileptic seizures, offered bribes, suddenly burst into frantic escape attempts, or whatever else he could think of. None of it had made any difference. He'd been loaded into the van and driven here no matter what he did. It had been the same for his attempts to get out of prison, and even his attempts to change his circumstances within the van.

None of it made any difference.

And now here he was, wrapped in chains firmly attached to the van while staring at the face of Lung - one cape he had always discounted as being no threat to him. Not even before Lung started losing fights every day, and certainly not after that.

Coil had always been confident he could outsmart the rage dragon. A child could do that. The rage dragon really only had one trick - rage, charge, and bash things. He was basically incapable of any real thinking while raging, and not very good at it at other times either.

The solution was simple - don't be nearby when Lung rages.

But knowing that was not helping Coil now - not while he was a prisoner when no options were open to him. When he'd first heard Lung roar, he'd shouted suggestions to the FBI agents guarding him. They hadn't listened, even though he'd tried repeatedly.

And now Lung was grinning like an evil maniac, as he reached for Coil.

Coil did what he could - he split the timeline. In Timeline A, he dodged right - to the degree his chains would allow. In timeline B, he dodged left.

He did partially succeed.

In Timeline A, Lung's swipe of his claw took off the left half of Coil's face as he halfway dodged, while in Timeline B the swipe of Lung's claw hit Coil's right shoulder, as in both timelines he'd moved to the maximum extent his chains would allow - and in both timelines, that wasn't enough.

But neither timeline was really better than the other. In both, Thomas was critically injured, and just as limited in motion as before, so more dodging was unlikely to do him any good.

So Coil got to experience the agony of his injuries from both timelines as he tried to make do with the situations he had.

In Timeline A, where he'd taken that horrible blow to the head, Coil tried dropping limp and playing dead. He was counting on the act being believable, as it was not far wrong.

In Timeline B, with the shoulder wound, Coil tried dropping to his knees and swearing his eternal loyalty to the rage dragon, desperately hoping that Lung was stupid enough to believe it.

Both timelines ended when a gloating Lung filled the van with flames, causing Coil to experience burning to death in full sensory stereo surround sound agony.

OoOoO

Coil's base had once had all sorts of nifty toys in it.

Being in a terrible rush, the FBI had not even had time to catalog it properly yet. In fact, with the lack of support they were receiving from the PRT, and no one else being cleared for handling this sort of material, notably the Tinkertech Coil's mercs had used, their manpower shortage was acute enough the Feds could not do much more than snap some pictures and seal the base up tight behind them as they pulled everyone they had out to put together the prisoner convoy.

They'd only had time to load the best of Coil's computers onto a couple of pallets and load them into vans, hoping to data-mine them later, once they'd gotten them out to a safer location than Brockton-freaking Bay.

That, and piling all of the weapons they could find into some containers to bring along had been all they'd had time for.

So they had driven away, leaving behind a squad or so of National Guardsmen on watch outside.

That left Coil's lair like a treasure chest, just sitting there, waiting expectantly for someone to grab all of the delicious goodies inside.

Adventurers have very predictable reactions to treasure chests. They are almost conditioned to open and loot them. Posting guards over them just made them more tempting - especially when it was just a few measly guards posted at the main doors as someone seemed to have forgotten in their rush that Coil's base had multiple entrances.

Jared had been keeping tabs on Coil. His scouts reported to him the situation.

Very shortly afterwards there came a conga line of homunculi and golems going in and coming out, mostly via teleport, carrying out everything with the efficiency of an ant hive raiding a pile of sugar that had been left carelessly nearby.

They found all sorts of useful treasures, including food, ammo, and medical supplies, tools... oh, a great many things!

But computers and Tinkertech weapons have their uses too.

And what were vans but treasure chests on wheels?

Coil's computers had been loaded as one of the FBI's top priorities. That had been done early and efficiently. But Jared could find uses for top-tier Tinkertech computers as well as anybody. And those particular few held data that he did not want the FBI to have.

Coil had been collecting data on everybody, after all, not just the Empire. Odds were, there was something in there that might hurt someone that Jared actually liked, if it got out.

Regent had been one of Coil's capes, after all, and that snake had probably known the boy was one of Heartbreaker's kids - Information that if it got out would cause Alec all sorts of problems.

Jared still owed the former Regent a solid.

Not to mention, Coil would have been researching Jared's own various secret identities. And it just would not do to give the Federal government ideas about all of the useful things Rick Belmont could do for them if only they captured and enslaved him - ideas they would no doubt get if they saw Coil's speculation on his powers.

So ideally, they would never see such speculation.

Government and delays went together like rats and filth. In both cases, that was their natural condition, and it took some outside influence for either one to overcome their associated nature. Even when the FBI was in a terrible rush, they could not overcome their nature as a government institution so completely as to have no delays, especially when they'd had so little time to plan and prepare things ahead of time. So those vans that had already been loaded, then locked, just spent some time sitting in a government lot waiting for departure, filled with all of that lovely treasure taken from Coil's base, waiting for the local FBI to get the rest of their ducks in order assembling the convoy, men arming themselves out of arsenals that had to be signed for, and so on.

The vans were not sitting long.

But they did not have to be.

Putting guards over the lot watching them just made the treasure more interesting.

The local FBI office was not a small building, and normally sat mostly empty as other government departments that had once used other parts of it had closed up and moved out as their budgets continually shrank. But lately it was positively swamped, every room and office filled and some waiting in the halls as the ongoing processing of the prostitutes rescued from Lung's brothels was progressing; and its overhead was not a small deal, leaving every FBI agent present, and all the help they could call in, busy as could be dealing with it all.

Distracted cops are the most fun to play with.

As the bored security guards (just Rent-A-Cops drawing government paychecks) stood watch over the lot, none of them noticed when the first invisible homunculus appeared on a rooftop overlook, then popped out and reappeared on top of one of the vans filled with sealed containers of evidence, computers and weapons and such, taken from Coil's base.

Moments later, that homunculus was inside, and the contents of those containers began to go outside, one teleport at a time.

Other homunculi and golems began to invisibly teleport inside those vans, establishing a new line of ants carrying out treasures.

It had been truly said that "One man's garbage is another man's treasure." Over at the Brockton branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms were bins full to overflowing with partially melted gun parts, some thirty-five thousand of them collected from a warehouse that Lung had burned down; the official story being that his gang had ordered them, but some on-the-ball local authorities had noted the irregularities and put them under lock and key, only for Lung to try to take them personally, accidentally causing the warehouse fire that destroyed the lot.

The paperwork on that report was coming together nicely, and the BATF was anticipating a nice feather in their cap over this good bust.

None of them noticed some official forms, perfectly regulation and competently filled out, appeared in their stacks of paperwork as those smoothly progressed through the office. The new paperwork simply asserting that the partially melted guns waiting to be shipping out for final destruction, always going to happen, had already been achieved, rather than waiting on paperwork from the scrap metal facility they'd planned on using.

So the garbage of melted and no-longer-useful evidence vanished from the rubbish bins outside of the BATF office and parts of it reappeared, repackaged as treasure in the newly emptied crates in the backs of some vans waiting outside of the local FBI Headquarters.

Coil's computers likewise got switched.

The Commodore 64 was an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 - the very same year that parahumans appeared on Earth Bet. There had been a warehouse full of them, stuck there when the shipping crisis hit and riots had closed off the harbor of Brockton Bay. In the decades since their abandonment, they had fallen so completely behind the technology curve that most would not even use them as a doorstop anymore.

But they looked very computer-ish.

Jared's constructs had been scouting the city and informing him of what they'd found. They'd discovered that warehouse filled with Commodore 64 computers.

So as Jared's constructs stole Coil's top-of-the-line Tinkertech computers, they each left behind a Commodore 64 in exchange, as much for a joke as anything. Those constructs did have templates making them all part-Fey, and silly Fey were always pulling exchanges like that in fairy tales, stealing things then leaving behind less-desirable substitutes.

The FBI being in a rush, they did not open those evidence crates before departure, just loading their troopers, weapons and prisoner in where they had room, and took off, haste being their priority.

Then Lung had attacked, destroying half the convoy and killing Coil before the FBI agent in charge ordered the surviving half of his men to retreat. Lung was at first happy to let them go, just reveling in the feeling of his own strength and power as he smashed apart their abandoned vans and burned everything left behind, feeling once more supreme and glorying in his own magnificence.

But it did not last long. Without conflict, his power soon began to fade away, and fearing being caught without it, Lung slunk off like the lizard he so resembled.

The FBI did not return, their immediate concern was seeking medical care for the injured among them, then writing down after-action reports and the whole long list of things to be done concerning that, to say nothing of returning to face that whole workload of dealing with those prostitutes freed from Lung's gang.

An insanely busy day just got busier, and with fewer agents left to do it.

Plus, their boss was not going to be happy.

That left the overworked, underfunded, and heavily burdened city services of Brockton Bay to deal with the responsibility of clearing the wrecked FBI vehicles and reopening the road, which was after all a main traffic artery, and so it was critical that it be cleared as soon as possible.

A couple firemen poked their noses into the backs of those burned-out vans, noted the shattered containers filled with burned out bits of weapons and computers, confirmed those were the right containers and still looked full, then finished extinguishing the still-smoldering blazes before letting the rest of city services hoist the vans up onto the backs of flatbed tow trucks for hauling away.

Since this had been marked down as evidence in a cape crime, and containing Tinkertech, those city services followed established procedures and hauled those vans off to a PRT holding lot. This gave the PRT all of the opportunity they needed to annoy the FBI by playing silly games about allowing access to those wrecks until both sides completely forgot about it, and it got lost in the paperwork haze.

Perhaps that had something to do with why, when the local FBI had settled their affairs in order after the disaster of the prisoner convoy and got around to searching Coil's base, they were not quite so surprised as they ought to have been when they found it had been thoroughly stripped, not even furniture or office supplies left behind. The only thing left was trash, street litter tracked in from outside.

Despite some initial success, they figured that was the way their luck had been going on this cape business lately.

Enough of them had lived in Brockton long enough for them to have soaked in the pervasive attitude that "Nothing goes right in Brockton Bay for long" and that was the end of their suspicions.

An open back door got discovered, and the whole thing put down to the city's homeless finding a way in, then camping out inside while taking everything valuable so they could sell it for booze, or whatever. A few dozen homeless nests left behind, and spots of floor covered in ash from burned out campfires, seemed to support that conclusion. What the homeless hadn't stolen, they'd burned for heat.

Or so it seemed.

But Lisa *really* enjoyed her new desk, when Jared gave it to her.

She treated it as though it were some kind of personal trophy of their group's triumph over Coil; and she gloated over that every time she sat at it, like it had once been his desk, or something.

Plus, it went well with all of those filing cabinets filled with secret reports and valuable data, physical evidence and things Coil had never trusted to any computer, that Jared parked right next to those cabinets full of ABB files they'd previously stolen.

The young girl enjoyed them so much that she inwardly decided to make love to the man she hoped to be her husband on top of that big, broad desk on the day after their marriage, as a form of celebration of her freedom (and insult to Coil). Something that Jared remained sadly ignorant of for some time.

Months, even.

Later, they'd learned that the Empire has been so upset and disordered over the FBI threat, that by the time Crusader had been informed and ordered to attack Coil's base to set off the self-destruct, it had already been emptied completely, and all he'd been able to report to Kaiser was the homeless had apparently looted the place. There wasn't even any office furniture left, much less the self-destruct controls.

This had left the Empire even more uneasy and off-balance, with their priority on scrambling to obtain new identities.

OoOoO

With the crisis of the emergency meeting Kaiser demanded dealt with, the redhaired wizard went back to what he had been doing before having that 'drop everything' priority dropped in his lap, namely handling the two trillion dollar crisis his girls had dropped on him.

Dropping what he had been doing to resolve one crisis, in order to deal with another smaller one, always rankled. But having a shooting war with the Empire over Rune would have greatly complicated solving the city's financial problems, so it had just been easier to deal with Kaiser than to ignore his upset; even though solving those financial woes was of greater concern as they had a much more dire set of consequences.

Still, it could be worse.

On one level, the redhead was not all that concerned about the trillion dollar debt. If worse came to worst, then he could always take everyone that mattered to him and skip off to another world. No fuss, no problem.

Banks can't collect on debts if they can't find you, and very few had any sort of inter-dimensional capacity. Even Cauldron, which had access to most of the local cluster, was helpless to reach beyond that - and Redhurst and most of the worlds Jared had recent familiarity with were well beyond their reach.

He had ranks of the Knowledge: The Planes skill, with some crazy bonuses, and knew things about dimensional travel that would make even Cauldron's head spin.

So on some level, this problem was not a major concern for him.

However, on another level, it was serious, for the same reason that a children's play was - it mattered for the development of the children involved.

Skysaber's Sirens, all of them, cared about Brockton Bay to one extent or another. It mattered to them. They mattered to him. Combined, that meant that it mattered to him, just like if A = B, and B = C, then A = C.

Besides, another concern was rebuilding Brockton Bay was their first major project, both together and individually, and their confidence in their abilities going forward would be affected to a very large degree by whether it was a success, or failed.

So it was of vital importance to all of their futures that it do well.

And that meant they needed people, people they could trust, and quickly.

The people who were normally hardest to get, those who would hold the positions of highest trust and responsibility, for Skysaber's Sirens were paradoxically the easiest. Jared simply handed each girl among his Sirens a couple wands of Create Homunculus and set them loose upon the bodies prepared as tofu decoys.

The two processes shared enough in common that using the Create Homunculus spell on the prepared decoy bodies worked just fine (the wizard had tested this before setting some of his Dedicated Wrights to making the wands). They weren't the best results that could have been squeezed out of the process at maximum optimization, but they weren't bad either.

The important thing about them was they looked human, would have all of the same skills to the same crazy levels as the girls animating them, and could be that second rank of financial experts, standing behind their leaders, pushing the organization's goals along.

At fifty such homunculi per girl, they would have the hundreds of true experts needed to form the heart and core of an organization of the size needed to handle the scale of the tasks they'd begun working on.

The core of people hardest to find, hardest to keep, always in too short supply, and the ones most actively hired away by your rivals, would be formed by constructs Jared and his people could trust absolutely.

In one fell swoop, there went the most difficult all of the tasks associated with forming such an organization.

Sure, there were risks associated with using constructs, basically magically animated puppets, in roles normally served by people, when there were the PRT and other organizations on the watch for any oddities (like animated puppets impersonating people). But they did not currently have any good alternatives, and would do what they could to minimize those risks.

But in return for taking on those risks, the risks they lost were often far more deadly, as incompetence, sloth or corruption among the ranks of a company's highest ranking employees could kill any organization, of any size, and in avoiding that they'd automatically sidestepped most of the worst pitfalls that caused most such organizations to die before they really got started.

There was also that business quote, "90% of all management problems are caused by miscommunication."

Being telepathically linked to their homunculi, each one knowing what the others did, miscommunications would be at all-time lows in the highest echelons of the companies they would be forming.

"Is it really that important?" Tammi asked, confused, once he'd explained that last point.

"Oh, definitely," Taylor snorted, answering before he could. "In fact, let me tell you a little story about management. Someone anonymous made it into a poem. It is called, The Plan."

The daughter of a dockworker and an English professor composed herself and began to recite a work closely rooted in both of her parents' backgrounds.

"The Plan

In the beginning, there was a plan,

And then came the assumptions,

And the assumptions were without form,

And the plan without substance,

And the darkness was upon the face of the workers,

And they spoke among themselves saying,

"It is a crock of shit and it stinks."

And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said,

"It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."

And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying,

"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,

Such that none may abide by it."

And the Managers went unto their Directors saying,

"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."

And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another,

"It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."

And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them,

"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."

And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him,

"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor

Of the company With very powerful effects."

And the President looked upon the Plan

And saw that it was good,

And the Plan became Policy.

And this, my friend, is how shit happens."

After five minutes of everyone rolling about on the floor laughing, Tammi rose, last of all, and wiping a tear declared, "Okay. Now I see how that could be a problem. Miscommunication is bad."

Missy was nodding along. "I've worked in a large organization. Let me tell you: miscommunication is the number one cause of all problems; communication is your bridge to other people. Without it, there's nothing. So when it's damaged, you have to solve all these problems it creates."

Lisa was smirking knowingly, "You got that quote off a coffee mug, didn't you?"

Missy stuck her nose in the air playfully. "Doesn't make it not true."

Dinah eyed her closest friend curiously. "Where did you get that coffee mug?"

Missy shrugged unhappily. "It got left behind when the guy who'd owned it got fired by Piggot. I liked the color, only later did I read what it said."

Everyone sobered. That was not funny.

Feeling this to be a good opening, Jared felt very serious as he instructed the group, "Don't think that poem about The Plan is wrong on any important detail, either. In fact, I know of one real-world example I can tell you of right now. There was a German pilot fighting on the Eastern Front against Russia during WW2, who was so very good at his job that he kept getting called back to Berlin to get decorated. On one occasion, Hitler was boasting to this pilot about his new plan for an attack on that front, moving a battalion of tanks here, another there, and so on. The pilot replied, 'I overfly this territory every single day, and you haven't got two battalions of tanks. You have five individual tanks."

The boy looked over his girls very seriously. "Hitler threw a fit, and a lot of general staff officers got executed. But what had happened was exactly what that poem described. The tank drivers got asked how many tanks they had, and their answers were generally along the lines of 'Well, this one would work if I could get the spare parts, and some time in a repair shop'. Then the squad leaders got asked by their lieutenants 'how many tanks have we got', and not wanting to look bad their answers included not just the tanks they had working, but all of those tanks that could work if they got enough repairs. Then those lieutenants got asked by their captains, who fudged their own numbers to look better, including tanks not delivered yet but expected soon on their roster of those ready for active duty, and so on up through the chain of command until those generals reported to Hitler that he had a couple of tank battalions in nearly perfect order."

Jared met the eyes of every girl in his group, one by one. "Yes, we don't like Hitler, but this represents the very real danger of miscommunication in any organization. A leader was about to commit to a major, high-risk project using resources that were almost wholly imaginary, because of those subordinates shading the truth, wanting to look good. Don't think this can only happen to bad guys. It can happen to us, if we're not careful."

On that note, Jared assigned, out of his flesh golems, a half dozen assistants to each of the girls' homunculi as her personal staff (including one to act as secretary, with another as a combination driver/mechanic/butler/guard - two guesses as to which role got the supermodel golem and which the freaky looking homeless one), to carry out her orders and make the most out of each homunculi's abilities.

So between the Skysaber's Sirens forming the first rank of leaders, and their couple hundred homunculi forming the second rank of experts, then a few thousand golems as their personal staff, they had the three most important layers of any organization.

Then they did the whole thing again to get a different set of homunculi for the girls, with their own golem guards, to be the city government.

"Ok," Jared clapped his hands together, and declared, "this gives us the core of two different organizations, just as we need."

"Someone is going to notice that all of your high executives are identical copies of half a dozen girls," Lisa pointed out wryly.

The wizard just smiled, leaning far back in his chair. "Not at first. Remember, these girls are all high-level administrators, and there is going to be a whole lot of administrative work going on as they set up the organizations you are going to run. For the first couple of weeks that's going to be almost entirely in the form of paperwork, emails and phone calls, setting up and arranging things. That's plenty of time for me to build an effective work-around for the problem of their appearance. In the meantime, they've got the same Disguise and Acting skills you do. They'll do fine."

OoOoO

Squealer rolled over in bed, only to discover she wasn't in bed. She was sprawled over her workbench. This was rare, as Skidmark had left standing orders that wherever it was his Tinker passed out, she be taken and tossed into their shared quarters.

He was protecting his secret, not like she cared anymore.

What the vehicle Tinker did care about was that her whole everywhere ached. The kind of ache that immediately led to ~What the Smurf was I up to?~ thoughts. For a moment she actually hoped she was having a bad trip, the kind so bad it almost shocks you sober, as she realized with sobering clarity she was injured, and the extent of her injuries was possibly fatal.

The very shocking realization of, ~I could maybe die from this!~ got her off her back despite horrific pain, and staring around for anything that might help.

Her lab was a mess.

No, scratch that, her lab was *always* a mess. This was a disaster zone. No, scratch that, she'd experienced disaster zones a dozen or more times in the past. This was ... whatever was worse than a disaster zone.

Smurf. Her head hurt.

One moment of assessment later, the woman formerly known as Sherrel Baily, now having been a Tinker so long it almost felt more natural to just go by the cape name of Squealer that lump of Smurf Skidmark had stuck her with, concluded that it looked like a bomb went off in one of the rooms next to her workshop.

There was no other way to explain the chemical fumes, intermixed with a workshop even more of a disaster zone than usual. Oh, and the blown-out wall whose debris covered everything in her lab, including her.

Sherrel coughed up some freaky purple mist ... actual purple mist, with sparkles! and realized that she was not actually nearly stoned enough to be dreaming this.

Oh, and she was bleeding.

Like, seriously bleeding.

Looking down and realizing that she could see half of a wrench poking out of her guts in a way that made plain the other half was inside of her in a way nature had not intended humans to survive, the Tinker shook her head and tried to think past the endorphins currently blocking the pain.

She was in shock. Actual shock-shock, not surprised-shock, or stoned out of her gourd shocked.

She was dying. She needed healing.

Realizing that somewhere around there was a first aid kit, as this was not the first time there had been an explosion in her lab (she was a Tinker, after all), Sherrel looked around, only to realize that it would be useless. A cache of drugs in a safehouse of the Archer's Bridge Merchants? It would have been used to get stoned long ago. It might even have been her that raided it.

Still, bandages would be nice, if there were any left.

Squealer took a step and almost tripped as a bottle nearly got under her foot and rolled. One of the tool chests had been lifted and tossed by the explosion, spilling its contents all over the floor. It was mostly parts for stuff she didn't use much, air conditioners and the like, but apparently one of her underlings had used the oft-neglected toolbox as a place to hide his stash.

She saw a stock of weed. That wouldn't help here, she'd just bleed out faster.

But hidden in there with the weed were seven diapers, wrapped around lumps, one of which had burst open and revealed the shattered remains of a very distinctive bottle.

She knew those bottles. All of the genuine ones had glowing symbols floating just above their surfaces. The Merchants had gotten hold of dozens of them from that cape race. Skidmark had had the 'brilliant' idea of treating them like any other drug, popping open several, mixing them from 50% to 90% with dish soap (he'd even sent guys out shopping to obtain matching colors), then popping the caps back on and reselling them, with the extra poured into new bottles.

The idea that he'd sell those for two to ten times the profit of the originals had died once it had become plain that everyone in the world had been warned about those glowing, impossible to fake, tamper-proof seals.

Skidmark's doctored batches had been obvious fakes to anyone either sane or sober.

Too stupid to be deterred, Skidmark had gone on to the next step of any drug dealer - figuring out how to get high off of it. Only that did not work, either. The stuff cut with dish soap only gave those junkies he'd forced it on the runs. Nothing unpredictable there.

Then he'd had the gang's drug chemists start playing with the stuff. They'd cut it with drugs, mixed the serums together, and done all of the poking and prodding that could be expected of a bunch of meth-heads working with bedpans and other cobbled together tools.

That had led to some freaky stuff.

The first guy to try one of those experiments had shrunk to half his original size. That would have earned him a lifelong nickname of "Hobbit" except the guy had toasted his brains on an overdose the same night. Probably forgot to factor in he'd had one-eighth the mass he normally did.

Idiot.

Next batch had done nothing to the guy who'd toked it, but shocked everyone when it had literally caused palm trees to burst up right through the concrete flooring of the abandoned warehouse they'd been using.

Skidmark had been joyous, certain it had caused that stoner to Trigger. He'd been all ready to call that man some derogatory cape name dealing with erections right up until it became clear that man had no powers at all.

As soon became clear, as experiment after experiment yielded weird, wacky stuff nobody could explain, random reactions from messing with those Tinker serums had been to blame.

Even Skidmark had lost all enthusiasm for the project when one of the follow-on attempts did not seem to do anything at all ... until several of their dealers, guards and runners had come charging in, asking what Skidmark had done.

Because the Smurfing President of the Smurfing United States had called for a live, emergency press conference, having apparently decided out of nowhere that Skidmark was responsible for a plot against him, and using that conference to set a reward of 10,000 bucks on his head.

That had distracted Skidmark from his experiments with the Tinker Serums, and things had sort of ground to a stop after he'd left to go hide out in Canada for a while.

Nobody had been too eager to continue those experiments after he'd left.

For one thing, even the stupid among them had figured out they were warping reality with their experiments on those Tinker Serums.

No one was eager to continue after the last guy got caught up in a 10' diameter unbreachable globe of pure vacuum. Even druggies can recognize a bad death when they see one.

But undiluted, uncut, and un-messed with, those Tinker serums still worked fine.

Sherrel did not bother thinking. She knew she needed healing. She knew those serums could do that, and these still had their tamper-proof seals intact. In no condition to read the names off the bottles, she tore open one of the diapers used to cushion them from blasts (like happened in her workshop once in a while) and drank the bottle of serum concealed within.

The results were instant, but not what she was after.

Her acne cleared up. Tons of complaints and pains she had not even been aware of cleared up, things caught from dirty drug needles and the like.

But what it did not do was anything about her bleeding injuries or that wrench stuck in her gut.

So she popped another one, which fixed her teeth. She actually spent a moment spitting out fillings and dental caps.

She took the next one, which fixed up her hearing, which she had not even realized was bad; but apparently being around loud engines, explosions, and constant clanging from cobbled-together machinery had been very bad for her ears.

On taking the next one, Sherrel found herself clear-headed for the first time in years. Apparently it had cleaned out all of the drugs and their lingering effects from her system, which would be hard to describe to anyone else, but was unmistakable when you experienced it first hand.

Getting impatient, and feeling weaker by the moment from her injuries, Sherrel took up the last two bottles, one in each hand, and quaffed them both, one right after another.

There came a distant clang as the wrench got spat out of her body, along with other shrapnel she had not even noticed was in there. But that took kind of a back seat to the rearrangement of her mental landscape as years of drug damage, trauma, and hardship got corrected all at once.

She passed out, falling down among her scattered tools.

OoOoO

Taking over political control of Brockton Bay proved to be remarkably easy.

Technically, in a democracy, one has to wait for a scheduled election and run a winning candidate. That's how it ordinarily works. But rules for special cases do exist. For instance, President Ford was never elected. President Nixon first appointed Ford as Vice President when his previous Vice President resigned, and then when Nixon also resigned, Ford became president.

Such processes exist to take care of special situations.

All that had been required to gain control over Brockton Bay was for Jared to point out these exceptions existed to a certain few people at the right times. For example, when Mayor Christner had been loading up his truck to leave town, Jared had showed up with Uncle Jeb in a suit beside him as the mayor was walking out of his home to place another box into the back of his moving van, and said his piece.

Briefly summarized, it was, "I see that you're leaving town. That's understandable, most other people are leaving town too, after the economy and real estate prices collapsed. But a few of us want to stay. We want to try to salvage what we can. But if we succeed we need legitimacy. You're walking away anyway. So it will cost you nothing to appoint this man as vice mayor underneath you, which I hope you will do. Further, it will make you look good for having arranged for an orderly transition of power rather than just leaving. So I want you to consider that it will only take five minutes to sign a bit of paperwork and make a short video, which we could release to the news later. While you are considering that, and completely unrelated, I would like to mention that I see you could use an additional trailer to hold the rest of your goods. I happen to have a large horse trailer, perfectly clean, which I want to give you out of respect for how good a mayor you've been. Let me just make a call and arrange that, while you consider other issues."

Bribery is illegal, but there were still plenty of ways to do it, and both mayor and boy there knew it.

So, in such ways, it did not take longer than a couple of hours for people of Jared's choice to have been appointed to all of the necessary political positions.

Then they could really get moving.

OoOoO

Sherrel woke up to silence.

There was never any silence in an active Merchant base. Most of their members were too stoned to remember was that was. Loud rock music, angry shouting, sex, it all contributed to the din of noise that followed the gang wherever they'd set up.

They must have abandoned the base.

Right on the heels of that, Sherrel wondered, ~Why did they leave me behind?~

Quick as a wink, she already had her answer. Looking down upon herself confirmed that she was covered in enough blood to have convinced her that she had died in that explosion.

Angry druggies were not too hot on noticing details. Exploded lab, Tinker not moving and covered in blood, they'd probably pulled up and vanished just to not be forced to deal with disposing of her body.

They were lazy like that.

Sherrel was already up and on her feet, thinking more clearly and rapidly than she could recall doing ... for a long time. Not since college ...

... Oh, Smurf! Her degree! She'd already had most of her Engineering degree, just a couple more credits ...

...

Sherrel paled, shame and horror filling her.

Oh, Smurf! Her DAUGHTER!

OoOoO

On an unwashed cot in a burned out former ABB headquarters, Lung was dreaming.

It was not a pleasant dream.

As had become a theme lately, Lung shivered on his filthy cot under a threadbare blanket in the throes of a nightmare.

In his dream, Lung was reliving the fight he'd had with Glory Girl, replaying those memories over and over.

He tried to roar, but found that a trifle difficult seeing as how a new, disposable, steel halberd had just slashed across his chest, and Glory Girl had just reached into the cavity, torn out his heart, and flung it away over her shoulder.

Again.

Even he found that sight to be rather intimidating, but the follow up kick to his crotch was even worse, as it pulped the flesh clear up to his rib cage and flung him several blocks at the same time.

To say that it hurt would be an understatement of epic proportions.

One factor Lung had been careful not to emphasize to the public about his power was that regeneration was NOT invulnerability! His flesh got hurt. It sent out pain messages, just as it ought to. Then it got better, but that only made it worse, in a way, as he got several weeks of painful recovery and physical rehabilitation crammed into only a few moments.

If anything, he felt MORE pain than the average human, because he felt it both coming and going. And since his power drove him on to seek conflict despite injuries that would have killed any regular man, it did not let him go into shock or experience the endorphins and pain relief methods that would have resulted in blessed unconsciousness. His power was rigged to keep him fighting, and that meant no loss of nerve function, no loss of consciousness, no shock to dull the damage.

So when Glory Girl kicked him so hard he could have opened his mouth to vomit up his own testicles, he felt every moment of that, both as the damage got done, then as it got better.

And just as in real life, in the dream she was not letting up on him.

In his dream, Lung was experiencing all over again the shame and the panic that had filled him that day. He had been in fights before. He knew how his power reacted to violence such as this. He had fought an Endbringer to a standstill! He knew better than anyone how quickly he ramped up when faced with violence.

He liked people to think that it happened near-instantly.

It was not.

It was anything but that.

But it was normally faster than this!

Before this beatdown, he had heard about Glory Girl's fear aura, but in person it was far more intense than he'd been led to believe. He'd soiled himself just from having her glare at him.

Lung was not fighting to win.

No. The rage dragon had, almost since she'd first confronted him, been fighting to get away!

In his dream, he was once more back in that fight where he'd left enough limbs behind in enough places that he knew even as it was happening that not even with his gang's full support could he ever hope to recover them all. He'd been cut in half so many times it had gotten ridiculous.

What was going on with his power?

In those first few moments of the fight he was re-experiencing, it had worked normally, knitting back together tissues and vanishing bruises so quickly they hardly even slowed him down.

Then, his wounds began to heal more slowly. His flames diminished. He'd stopped growing.

Lung's rage-addled mind could not understand it, even after more than a week of nightmares causing daily reviews.

Then, once again, Glory Girl smote Lung from his shoulder down to his crotch with an almost comically oversized two-handed sword, like it was out of some anime.

Kaiser had begun getting creative in the weapons he provided her.

They'd be in the stadium soon, now, with all of the horrific pain and embarrassment that had been.

As the 'mighty' (said more often in jest now than actually meant, even by members of his own gang) Lung tossed and turned, crying out and fairly often wetting himself during his sleep, the last few ABB members who'd still hung around this long finished stripping the base of everything valuable, then slipped off into the growing night.

When he awoke in the morning, there would be no servants bearing breakfast, no whores offering him footrubs or backrubs or other appeasements, no guards keeping him safe.

The 'mighty' Lung would have to rob a homeless beggar to get cash to buy a breakfast of McWaffles, after hiking more than a mile to find a fast food restaurant still in business.

It would be days before he finally figured out that he did not even have a gang anymore.

Also, there were remarkably few Asians left in Brockton Bay, almost as if the entire demographic had decided in advance to get out of there before Lung went out recruiting replacements for the gang that had just completed vanishing out from under him.

OoOoO

Piggot's toadies saved her career by pointing out that being a giant anthropomorphized pig and not speaking any known language did not disqualify her from holding onto her directorship - that in fact, being human or able to communicate in any meaningful fashion with other intelligent creatures had never been requirements for any Federal Government position.

So the organization had to let her keep her job.

Piggot's toadies had already ordered Dragon to prepare for her a device that allowed human speech.

Not that Piggot really needed one. She could still give her favorite six orders by the use of rubber stamps she'd commissioned shortly after coming into office. Her favorite was, "Find Them And Arrest Them" which she applied at every opportunity.

Those six phrases were not quite as broad as could have been hoped, since one of them said, "Fine Assault Ten Days Wages", but at least she could still get across her meaning, and her feelings were particularly clear when she used the stamp, "Find A Scapegoat And Blame Them."

"See!" her toadies would say, "She can still communicate."

Although, to be fair, nobody was quite sure that Piggot knew what she was stamping, because several orders having nothing to do with Assault still got the stamp docking his pay on them. But that was still not firm proof that she did not understand what she was stamping, because that had happened before she'd turned into a pig, too.

As far as disqualifying her as a director, there had been some debate about whether attacking her own people with a battle axe could disqualify her, although that had been answered by pointing out it was a non-lethal, replica of a battleaxe made of foam.

Those same toadies had also argued, successfully so far, that since Lung's victims of that massive bombing attack on the city's high schools had been restored, that he couldn't actually have a Kill Order put on his head for those murders ...

... despite, you know, him having fully intended for all of those people to die, then actually gone through with the act that should have killed them, and everyone from Lung himself, his gang, his victims and their families all having been convinced he'd succeeded at causing those deaths. Him feeling no remorse at all over that, etc.

Those 'deaths' having been reversed by a previously unknown set of parahumans using previously unknown powers had never figured into Lung's plans at all. The Asian gang leader had set out to commit murder, then did it, then was pleased with his success. At no point did he have any regrets concerning those actions, nor could he have planned for all of those effectively dead people to suddenly start moving and breathing again.

So giving him credit for what somebody else did undoing what he had cheerfully done was totally off-sides. He ought to carry full blame for his actions, especially since given the opportunity he'd do them all again. The only thing that stopped Lung from repeating those bomb attacks over and over again and cackling madly about it was his current lack of a bomb Tinker.

But that was not how the toadies were arguing it.

OoOoO

Meanwhile, in a high school cafeteria in California...

Shadow Stalker tried another setting on her Tinkertech translation necklace, then grumped, "Well, [Fetch] this [Flipping] pile of [Crud]!"

She continued on, even angrier, "That [Darned] [Incestuous Person] who invented it can kiss my [Donkey]!"

Across from Shadow Stalker at the cafeteria table sat a fairly nerdy girl, who was the replacement for the ex-minion Shadow Stalker no longer wanted around her. Shadow Stalker thought of her as Minion-Two. She couldn't be bothered to remember their names, especially sub-par poor-quality minions such as this one. Imagine, hanging around with any kind of nerd! That was the bottom of the barrel, even if she was also on the track and basketball teams.

Minion-Two demonstrated how unsatisfactory she was by speaking, and said, "I've been thinking. When you said, 'Now I can resume being a total Naughty Donkey'. This Tinkertech doesn't change anything about your power or abilities, and the only change you are planning in your behavior is your speech. Therefore, you believe that what constitutes being a naughty donkey is the use of words like Smurf."

Sophia had no good response to that, so she just glared while she tried to think of one.

The minion, daughter of two lawyers, if Sophia recalled, paused for a moment in thought. "So does this mean you believe that certain four-year-olds and parrots are bigger naughty donkeys than you are?"

Sophia did know a response to that, and gave it forcefully.

She punched the minion hard in the face, knocking her down.

Then Sophia thought, "Man, I'm going to have to protect my hand next time I do this,"

She waved her fist, to restore some feeling to it, as she stalked away, grumbling, "I *am* an [Infected Posterior], you [Dirty Pig-Dog]. And don't you forget it!"

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

For anyone who hasn't figured it out yet, when her Tinkertech translator device she'd bought for the purpose of bypassing the curse and resuming her swearing says, "Naughty donkey" what Shadow Stalker had been *trying* to say was, she wants to be a 'Bad Ass'.

That's also what she was trying to say when it translated it as [Infected Posterior], just now.of