We set up on top of a building near the east end of G district to watch the meeting. We hadn't known where it was, but the guy we were following showed up early, so we had some waiting to do. We hid up on top of a building with Callie using her stealth field to cover us. The wishes should cover us even if something went wrong with that, but there was no use advertising that to Alden, plus it was more amusing to be able to talk during the wait instead of sitting in silence.
Sadly, nobody felt like chatting, we were all too tense, so we did end up just sitting around until the meeting started. It was easy to notice when that happened, because one second the blonde guy with the pointy beard was alone, and the next he was surrounded by a number of figured in pitch black robes with beaten bronze masks. I nudged Alden. "Any ideas where the hell they came from? Because I don't recognize them as any faction I've heard of, but my experience is limited."
The bearded man looked troubled, but shook his head. No, but that doesn't mean anything. One use costumes are often employed for meetings like this. Keeps people from being traced. All we can do is wait and listen to what they say, then maybe try to follow them." Of course, he didn't know about the wishes we'd set up to make sure someone here slipped. We would definitely get some clues.
The blonde guy, Marc, cleared his throat loudly, making it plainly visible that he wasn't comfortable here. "Good, you've arrived. There's a problem. Your agents aren't holding up their end. Ronnie the Beef was up to the task, but Way Crazy Wyatt is barely focused on shaking confidence in Cicero's leadership at all. He's too caught up in rampaging around and enjoying himself."
One of the figures made a disapproving sound. "As expected. It is simply not worth trusting such unreliable figured to advance our goals. I suspect a more visceral response is needed. Perhaps...unleashing the Wendigo?" His voice was wicked and cruel, reveling in the suffering he was proposing, and something gave me a very bad feeling about whatever he'd just suggested.
Not that it mattered. One of the other masked figures smacked him upside the back of his head. "Gods damn it Andy, we've been over this. That is NEVER a proportionate response to anything. Stop suggesting it. You don't even save it for times when it's hypothetically warranted. Last week you suggested we unleash the Wendigo on Darrel when he made us all chip in for the lunch bill. It's never going to happen."
Andy rubbed the back of his head, muttering under his breath. "I thought it was a good idea. Not my fault you guys are so wimpy about how you get things done. It would have totally worked too. I bet you not a single person would have been causing trouble for us if we unleashed the Wendigo."
The other robed figure raised a hand again and Andy shied back. The unnamed figured ground out. "Yes, because they would have been dead. Everything would have been dead. That's literally all the Wendigo is good for. There's a reason we keep it in a dark hole in the ground." He paused, clearly suspicious of something. "Have you been going down there to talk to it on weekends again? You know we told you to stop doing that."
The third unnamed figure sighed. "Enough, Paul. He's young, I'll talk to the boss about keeping him out of the pit. You're not wrong that it's a bad idea to be down there." His eyes swiveled to Andy. "And you, the next time you suggest we unleash the Wendigo for any reason other than some kind of war, I'm going to throw you in that hole yourself and you can try talking to it in person." He glared for a minute before turning back to the blonde man. "Apologies. You know how the newbies can be."
"As for the rest of it." The unnamed third figure said. "We aren't your babysitters. We already committed quite a bit of resources to this venture, helping Mr. Jack-tastic break through to E rank and then arranging for the Jerks to be shipped over. Getting them here through WCP channels without alerting any of our enemies was no mean feat, and we did so under the impression you would use the opportunities granted to assume control." That was interesting. I could only assume that Mr. Jack-Tastic had used some sort of elixir to make his breakthrough. I'd don that myself with my breakthrough to G rank, so I knew it worked as long as you hadn't used up your safe elixir percentage. They had taken a much more direct approach than expected.
Marc snarled. "We're TRYING, but they're incompetent. Cicero has been in charge for quite some time, and a vote of no confidence isn't something any of the factions in the circus are going to rally behind unless it comes at the right time. We need to prove him unfit, and your lackeys aren't getting the damn job done. I don't know what you need the circus for, but you wouldn't have been doing all this for nothing. You can't just bail at the last second."
Third figure shook his head. "That's where you're wrong. We approached Melissa because as a fringe element she was more amenable to working with us, but her very attempt to oust him will be sufficient pressure to leverage Cicero into an agreement if needed. We've wasted too much time and effort on this venture, and we're done. Figure this out with the resources we've given you, or we'll take another path to our objectives. Don't contact us again unless the job is completed or you're forfeiting the contract. But be warned. If you give up, you'll be responsible for repaying the resources used. That is a heavy bill."
Marc looked furious. I had expected him to pull back meekly, scared of the forces behind the robed men, but I had neglected to remember one very important thing. Marc was a member of the Starchaser Pavilion, and everyone there was a fucking lunatic. A red glow suffused the man as he began to grow. Marc's body shifted and changed until the formerly medium sized man was twenty feet tall, glaring down at the hooded figures. "You think I'm fucking scared of you chumps? We're not your dogs. We agreed to work with you as equals, if you think you can threaten the pavilion and get away with it you have another thing coming!"
His voice boomed across the street around us, driven by massive powerful lungs as he bellowed in rage and lifted a foot to slam it down on the nearest figure. The closest man to him, Andy, snorted and raised his hands, clouds of frost gathering to his palms as he prepared to receive the strike. Before I could register what was happening, Alden cursed and darted out of our concealment, leaping from the rooftop and smashing down among the three figures harder than should have been possible.
I watched ground crack beneath him and then saw the other three men stagger as something slammed into them, and I figured out exactly what Alden's power was. Gravity. Alden's ability was the power to effect gravity. I almost whistled. That was a hell of a power. In the end though I didn't have time. I glanced over to Callie. "Ok, I get why he didn't want to watch one of his get torn apart, because three on one is bad odds even for a pavilion member, but what are we supposed to do?"
"The deal was we wouldn't interfere without his permission. He specifically mentioned interfering with pavilion business." Callie said with a grimace. "We're supposed to stay out of it. If Alden can't handle this we can jump in, but for now stay in concealment. He seems to think he's strong enough to take all of us, so I doubt he'll have a problem with a two on three fight." She didn't sound any happier than I was, but she settled back in to watch, and I did the same. The wish would cover us enough not to be revealed unless we broke stealth.
I heard the unhappy growls of the wolves and grimaced. We might understand staying back, but the puppies weren't really ones for planning. We kept them in line, but it was still unfortunate. I focused back on the fight to take my mind off things. And damned if it didn't. Alden was tearing apart the three robed men, while Marc was standing back in shock watching his boss rip through them. Not literally mind you, there was no blood, but it was easy to see the integration of combat and ability in every one of his moves.
Alden's combat style involved lots of grappling. Joint locks, throws, even holds. But where a normal person would use their center of gravity and body weight for that, Alden seemingly blended his power into his fighting style completely. Throws involved smashing gravitational strikes, locks were assisted by vortexes of gravity pulling the limb in whichever way it was being twisted and holds crushed down with power of a plummeting mountain, pinning the men under an inexorable weight.
The ice hands that Andy had used had never managed to land as Alden swept under the outstretched grip and grabbed the man in a suplex, smashing him down with force multiplied exponentially by a powerful gravitational pull. Every action and motion was supported by his power, making it exponentially more effective, but the actual martial art at play was clearly an incredible polished combat style that would have been devastating even without it. It took Alden roughly a minute and a half to crush the three of them.
The other two tried to intervene, one using some kind of acid conjuration and the other some kind of golden augmentation energy, but nothing managed to stop the bearded man as he took them apart. Despite the amazing show though, that wasn't the biggest shock. We'd gone out of our way to wish for the opponents to slip up and reveal something, and then had. It was the third man, Paul, who used that golden energy. When he'd gone down, had lost his mask, and my eyes snapped to Callie's as we both recognized him. He was the obnoxious attendant from Sanctuary Hall. The one who had been yammering on about the Peace Lord as he brought us in to speak to the E ranker.
That meant we now knew who the faction backing the Jerks and trying to oust Cicero was. The ones working with the other Candidate. It was Sanctuary Hall. The healers were the ones behind all of this. I tried to puzzle through the potential fallout of this, and couldn't even begin to grasp it. I wasn't a politician, and even if I had been we'd never actually learned the ins and outs of the politics here beyond what we needed to know. This whole plan was a massive line of carefully arranged dominos and we were only able to see the last few to fall.
Alden was restraining the robed figures and turning to tell off the giant form of Marc, who was now literally shrinking back from the smaller man as he resumed his original size. I noticed a slight movement to one side and barely managed to call out a warning to Alden as a massive wave of black corrosive gas came pouring down the street, seemingly appearing from nowhere. The bearded man reacted fast, stomping down and smashing a depression in the ground where he and Marc could take cover.
The gas receded, and I saw Alden had shielded Marc's body with his own, his back scorched and twisted by the corrosion, though I was relieved to note he was still alive. Marc helped him to his feet. "Alden? Can you hear me? Come on boss man, don't black out, you need to stay conscious." The rest of us were already on the way down to help, and the wolves, Callie, Benny and I took up a defensive perimeter as Jessie put her hands on the bearded man and began to heal him. I didn't have time to watch the progress though, I was too busy staring hard at the series of robed figures emerging from the dark of the street. Looked like these assholes had brought backup.
