Flames spreading over non-flammable surfaces—

“We need to get out of here, the building is going to burn.” Taylor nods at my warning and Danny tries to look like he knows what he’s doing, because he is a parent and that is just habit at this point. Being crouched over us as he tries to protect us from some other possible explosion just helps sell the look.

I guess suicidal overconfidence runs in the family.

“I don’t see anybody acting deliberately, anyone in the near vicinity is panicking,” Big Sister informs me as she focuses on something quite beyond the table we are using as an impromptu barricade.

“Right, so no ambushes to take out stragglers, that—” Docks area, buildings low, averaging at two floors—“Danny, you know this place, does it have any back entrance?”

“No, Jeff always complains it’s rusted shut.” He looks at the windows, where the glass panes are starting to burn with—is that pink fire? “Stairs?”

“Stairs,” I confirm, as I get up and start pulling them both towards the kitchen.

The place is mercifully empty, and we only meet a waiter with a lost look and a panicked cook when we arrive at the door to the stairs hiding in the kitchen (where the smell of overly fried fish almost manages to jump up in the list of things I am in a hurry to avoid experiencing right now). No need to worry about evacuating civilians. Oh, shit—

“Tay—”

“Already on it. I am drawing arrows with bugs to guide trapped civilians in the area.” I nod gratefully, and her father looks like he’s almost starting to actually believe his daughter is a superhero.

I am about to tell them to get their clothes wet to—Combustion doesn’t emit visible residue. Combustion consuming non-flammable materials. Combustion likely consuming smoke as it is released.

Thank God for small mercies.

Combustion unlikely to leave behind identifiable remains.

Well, aren’t you a fucking ray of sunshine?

Danny takes the lead and pushes the door open before rushing up with only a muffled protest from the cook before the waiter silences him with a hand on his shoulder. The floor above the dinner is a residential space—family business, father and son, mother absent—right. As soon as he climbs the last step, I overtake him and go straight to the back of the building, where a window shows the back alley where supplies would be delivered in any place that wasn’t as dilapidated as what this previously buoyant area currently is. They are lucky the city can’t even afford regular health inspections.

The height—eight feet plus the height of the window—may not—parkour articles indicate significant risk of injury when falling over eight feet without rolling. Shit.

“Tay, are you carrying any silk lines?”

“Yes. Braiding them at the moment.”

“Thank God. We are going to need—” tensile strength— “make that six—” The crashing sound of a door falling off its hinges interrupts my instructions.

Unusual properties of combustion particularly effective at undermining structures—

“Fuck! New plan, extra number one, number two, you lower this man,” I point at the cook and the waiter before pointing to Danny, “to the ground then we lower your father so they can help catch us when we drop.”

“What? But dad—” Seems the waiter has regained enough of his bearings to argue with the bossy client currently invading his home. Unconvenient.

“Move it! We have—” exotic combustion not leaving any residue that can act as structural support—“less than two minutes!” The fact that my warning is punctuated by the sound of the frying oil deflagrating helps make me more convincing. I should hire a sound effects specialist.

Also, I am now doubly grateful this fire doesn’t leave residues.

Without further prompting, they start lowering Danny, who does everything he can not to be a nuisance and insist Taylor goes first.

Soon, the two older men are outside the building, and not a moment too soon as I can feel the broiling torrent of air rushing up the stairs at our back. I look at Taylor, and heroism and logic agree enough that my selfishness is defeated before it can be expressed.

Without a word, we help the waiter get out the window so that the three men—greater upper body strength on average—can help us if we fall.

“Tay—” there’s no time to argue, and I don’t know what to say to make her go first—

Before I can finish my line, her lips meet my own, dry and rough, and my train of thought derails as my eyes meet her warm ones.

“What—”

“For good luck,” she says with a faint smile. And then pushes me out the fucking window.

Dammit, Tay! Couldn’t you just break up like a regular person!

Taylor Hebert unlikely to break up with Lisa Wilbourn in current—

I know that!

Thankfully, the three men down there aren’t as useless as the stereotype would imply and manage to catch my weight without much of an issue—I am not even going to remark about how the waiter managed to cop a feel.

Likelihood of—

Not now! Tay—

And Taylor jumps out the window just as the flames burst out of the frame. She seems to hang out in mid-air before her arm flashes forward and a glint of metal sails from her hand before it tangles on the power line crossing the alley, the silk line trailing from it allowing her to swing and hang just for a moment before the power lines rip from the walls and she falls the rest of the way down, her long legs bending and absorbing her momentum before the very tips of her fingers brush the ground and the cables fall around her as her hair gracefully settles over her shoulders.

…

Gymnastics. I am making her sign up for gymnastics.

This is very important.

She disentangles her keys and silk from the cables before she gets up, brushing her disheveled ponytail behind her shoulder as she straightens up and her battle mindset takes over. And the sound of the second floor of the building we had just been on collapsing doesn’t even make her flinch.

… Now put on some sunglasses and walk away from an explosion, Tay. You know you want to.

“You two don’t know anything about this. There are villains who would torture you if they thought you knew even a clue about a cape’s secret identity. Follow the arrows toward a safe area. Run.” Her voice is cold, steady. Thrilling. “You,” she points at her dad, “are coming with us.”

And she turns toward the alley’s exit and begins to walk with long, confident steps, expecting me to just follow.

Well, I hate to see you leave, darling, but I love to watch you go.

By which I mean, I don’t have any objections to following her… lead.

***

We don’t immediately run away from the area, as Taylor makes me call the fire department and relay a detailed account of the situation (including that trying anything with a firehose would be a spectacularly bad idea unless the flames are a regular, sane color) as we circle around the fire and her range allows her to map everything going on in the affected area. We come across a few people catching their breath after narrowly escaping the glam inferno, and I can see Taylor’s father wonder at the realization of how many lives his daughter just saved. Enough to make up for some traumatized bank-goers, by my account (pun very much intended, also, insert ‘eat the rich’ crack).

The fire at the periphery is quickly becoming the regular kind, constrained by the laws of physics and color theory, so it appears that whatever Bakuda pulled here is centered at the point of origin and unable to spread, though the aftermath is still a problem the city will need to deal with as soon as possible.

Which is quite a pity, seeing as…

“This is a coordinated strike,” I announce with none of the glibness I would dearly like to add after a quick check on social media allows me to connect the dots.

“What? Who would—” Danny starts to ask.

“Bakuda, the current leader of the ABB,” Taylor anticipates. “If she is willing to get this much attention, she will be gearing up for something that will protect her from the backlash.”

“Yes. Freeing Lung. Shortsighted, as it will only allow the E88 to claim legitimacy when orchestrating a response.” I almost tsk at the stupidity, but I am kind of used to it at this point.

“Legitimate Nazis. Of course. God, I hate this city.” Danny looks a bit hurt at his daughter’s comment, but… It’s hard to argue with reality. Not that I back off from a challenge.

“That’s a lie and you know it,” I try to add some levity. Also, to allow my in-law to catch up with our back and forth, because apparently he is not yet tuned to the hivemind—

Unlimited parallel processing of sensory input would allow Taylor Hebert to—

Not the time. Save it for when I am about to fall asleep and you want to keep me up all night shivering in terror.

Taylor Hebert likely to intervene if Lisa Wilbourn rendered unable to sleep. Intervention likely to involve—

Her father is right here!

Father-daughter pairings not as popular as unrelated siblings, though—

That’s it, I am cutting you off from the internet.

“Lisa? Any clues?” And now I need to pretend I just drifted off because of something important and pertinent, and not because my Power likes to go off on random tangents just to get a rise out of me. Let’s see, what do I know…

Oni Lee’s teleportation ability involves replication of equipment worn when—

“Yes. Fuck, yes! Something very important has—Danny, we need you to drive us to the Rig. Right the fuck now.”

“Language,” he protests out of habit as he starts leading us toward his parking spot. Oh mister, if you want to ‘teach me a lesson,’ you are barking up the wrongest tree.

Daniel Hebert unlikely to foster sexual interest in Lisa—

And now I feel offended. Fucking fragile ego.

Well, not the time to explore how my low self-esteem and daddy issues have most likely messed up my ability to relate to older men and it is a goddamn godsend I am not the tiniest bit hetero, because that would have been a minefield—

Lisa Wilbourn stalling to avoid—

Where were you when I was procrastinating for my exams?

Sigh.

Resigned to my fate, I take out the burner phone I used to talk with Armsmaster and dial up the number he called me from, because that’s the one I am relatively sure isn’t bugged. He picks up at the second ring.

“This better be important,” he greets me.

“Who writes your lines? The guy sorely needs more motivation.” Taylor raises an eyebrow, likely deducing who I am talking to by my tone. And body language. And my anticipatory grin.

Worthy snark rivals are few and far between, and should be ever treasured.

“That doesn’t sound important. Hanging up.” Jerk. You know you like it.

“Fine, fine: Oni Lee is about to assault the Protectorate’s base with a full loadout of tinkertech explosives that he can spam at will due to his power. His aim is to free Lung, and the current terrorist attacks all over the city are just a smokescreen. Spoilsport.”

“At some point in the near future, we need to have a talk about priorities.”

“See? Now you are getting into it!”

He sighs into the phone, which comes across as a very annoying burst of crackling white noise. I am pretty sure he did it on purpose.

Taylor opens the backdoor for me before climbing on the shotgun seat, leaving me to my natural habitat: the backseat driver. She knows me so well.

“Any further revelations about the impending destruction of the local hero base where my living quarters are located, or can I get to work?”

“As if you would stop on my behalf. I can hear your armor being mounted.”

“So I need a better sound filter for this phone. Thank you for your valuable input.” Damn. Are you sure you don’t have a tiny Thinker rating yourself, Colin? You could join the club; the first box of Tylenol is free!

Danny starts the engine and I signal him toward—

Main roads most likely to be targeted in attempt to disrupt emergency response. Adding semi-stochastic attacks to obscure pattern would—

Toward where we are less likely to be blown up as we don’t cross the direct routes to attacks from first responders. Which will add half an hour to the trip. Fuck.

“Listen, Colin, I have seen what her bombs can do in person, and it’s a fucking nightmare. You cannot fight a defensive battle and do anything but die messily.” Danny looks like he’s about to comment, probably something along the lines of an exhortation to an absent divine figure or maybe something to do with fornication (or both), but Taylor shushes him. Thanks, sweetie, I expect a repeat performance on all future Christmas dinners.

“Your faith in my tactical acumen is duly noted. Any actual suggestions?” The whirring of the servos stops, and I can hear his hurried steps, rushing now that his armor is properly fitted. Impressively fast, though I shouldn’t be surprised.

“Empty your base of every squishy normal, shoot Lung full of your tinkertech tranqs, take him on a remotely controlled boat to the middle of the sea and load it up with flashbangs strong enough to permanently blind the psychopathic mime as soon as he boards it.” Danny takes a sharp turn at my insistence (and at Taylor’s nod—it seems he still trusts his daughter better, for some unfathomable reason).

“…” Come on, Colin, don’t make me fight you on this.

“Colin?” There’s an edge to my voice, but I would rather not think of what.

“I am trying to succinctly express how many laws your suggestion would violate. It will take some time.” Shit.

“Well, how about you think the list of names of people who are likely to die with any other plan. I bet that will also take some time.” Danny is looking at me through the rearview mirror. Because, obviously, he has already put together who it is that I am talking to and is appropriately horrified at what he can make out of the conversation. Apparently, he’s sane.

Uh. Weird. Well, nobody is perfect.

“Lisa…” Armsmaster hesitates, which I am willing to bet is never a good sign. “I can evacuate the building; the rest of your plan is not viable.”

“Fuck.”

“Language.” Oh, come on!

“Then giftwrap Lung for him and leave the baby Godzilla at the door. Save on the collateral.”

And now I hear the emergency alarms going off and the containment foam dispensers start spraying their load.

“I am afraid that ship has sailed. Unlike the remotely controlled one,” he says. And hangs up.

On the one hand, I hate it when people hang up on me. On the other, he slipped that little quip about my boat plan, which is kind of heartwarming.

Oh, I guess the circumstances also merit some leeway—wait, what—

“Taylor, what the Hell are you doing?”

“Changing.”

“Obviously, but why the fuck are you putting on your costume?”

“I am starting to think living without adult supervision isn’t doing you any good, Lisa,” Danny dryly mutters.

“I can guarantee that adult supervision accounts for about ninety-five percent of my current problems. And Tay, sweetie, I am not letting you go out to brawl with Lung and Oni Lee on your own!”

And now she’s looking at me as if I am the one who is somehow acting like an insane person. Sanity isn’t hereditary, Tay!

Mental illnesses often rooted in physiological causes that are transmitted genetically—

She fought Lung on her first night out, Power, don’t argue with me about this.

“You what?!”

“Daaad,” she starts to whine like a teenager who doesn’t want to be embarrassed in front of her girlfriend, which is as disturbing as is cute, before she catches herself and flushes. “Dad, I am not going to brawl with them, I will just…”

“Get in range of a teleporter who carries enough grenades and exotic explosives to turn the whole city into a Godzilla movie homage?” I helpfully clarify.

And Danny slams the brakes of the car. Which, rude, but I will forgive.

This time.

Also, I shouldn’t need a superpower to remind me safety belts are there for a reason. Ouch, my forehead.

“I didn’t realize Godzilla was still popular,” Danny adds nonchalantly. Most likely to avoid directly confronting Taylor when she’s digging in her heels. I should take notes.

“I mean, it’s either that or something to do with Endbringers, and things are looking grim enough—”

“Will you two stop stalling and—”

“Not if you still plan to fight—”

“If I am not going to fight, what’s the point of going to the Rig—”

“To give remote support! We aren’t heavy hitters, and your power just has two settings: annoyance and murder!”

“Then maybe I should—”

And there’s a sound like a watermelon splattering on a sidewalk, and I can see flashes of stroboscopic light reflecting off a window before the sounds of violence erupt at our back.

Because this was the safest route. Which doesn’t mean it was safe.

I turn to see what kind of fucked up, Escherian nightmare Bakuda’s feverish mind has come up with this time, but I don’t see a towering spire of acid-spitting rainbow mussels or something like that.

No. I see people hitting… Everything.

Each other, the nearest doors, windows…

“They are going to kill themselves.” Thank you, Danny, what would the group’s Thinker do without your valuable input?

“Tay…”

She’s looking out the window over her father’s shoulder, absolutely bewildered. Lost.

Right. That’s what I am here for.

Uncoordinated—

“Try to trip them and—” The man nearest to us, a portly man with a combover and a brown suit who was punching a trashcan with his already bloodied hands, trips on what I guess is a silk line and rolls down the street before he starts dragging himself toward his previous target.

Fixation on target indicates—

“They will only attack what they were looking at when the bomb detonated. Prioritize couples and groups—” When they hear me, both Taylor and Danny rush out of the car and start running toward two kids who are bleeding heavily from their noses and mouths as isolated people start falling as Taylor’s insects get busy. Of course, I follow them, because it seems having the survival instincts of the average Brocktonite is the kind of thing you pick up just by living here. Like the accent, or systemic poverty.

And so I find myself carrying a small kid in my arms that is doing his best to evade my grasp so that he can go back to beating up the little girl who keeps hounding my steps. I am torn between horror movie and Benny Hill sketch, at this point.

But Taylor and Danny are wading into the melee, and there was a group of burly dockworkers who… Damn it. Power, how do we—

Objective fixated on detonation. Fixation visual stimuli—

It can’t be this easy.

Hoping against hope, I cover the little boy’s eyes while trying not to drop him. He struggles for a few seconds, enough that I start to doubt—

“Wha—what is going on?!” And now he renews his struggles to get out of my grip and the little shit manages to punch my boob.

No good deed goes unrewarded.

“Cover their eyes! If they don’t see their objective, they calm down!”

 I test how well the cure works by lifting the kid over my shoulder and seeing how he reacts to his overly attached pursuer. He doesn’t start trying to jump from my hold to tear her throat out, which is good, but he does start crying and calling his previous target when he sees ‘Sally’ so mad at him and with her blood-streaked face, which is bad, because now I can’t hold the moral high ground against Taylor when it comes to traumatizing innocent bystanders.

So I drop him like a sack of potatoes and grab Sally and cover her eyes till she stops struggling in murderous rage and starts doing it in wild panic. Which is much better, of course.

I mean, therapists still need to make a living, you know?

Lisa Wilbourn using humor to disassociate from situation—

No shit, Sherlock. I am not equipped to calmly process a world in which a deranged terrorist makes little kids murder each other with their bare hands.

Also, my head hurts, and not just because all of the hair-pulling. Wonderful.

I keep moving so that shock doesn’t set in and go help Taylor and her father use the blankets they grabbed from God knows where to blind as many people as possible as quickly as possible and then I select those lucid enough to recruit for further help with the situation as Taylor starts using her flies in a way that is most decidedly unhygienic, but will make a lot of ophthalmologists happy. Soon enough, everyone is back to normal, if normal includes sprained wrists, broken fingers, busted lips, some worrying eye injuries…

All right, not normal at all, but at least nobody is dead.

Or dying.

With faltering steps, we go back to the car, and I take a shuddering breath when I finally sit down after the exertion of wrestling very uncoordinated but also extremely motivated adults.

And Danny starts the car.

He turns to look at me, face set in determination.

“Where to?” he asks.

I look at Taylor, who silently nods, and then take out my phone and do the quickest search I can while Power starts hammering at my temples.

“Three blocks south and two to the east. It looks like a maze-like distortion. Taylor can help guide the survivors out.”

And Danny nods at me, a small, grateful smile slipping out, before he turns back and speeds up.

Taylor remains silent, focused.

And I close my eyes, and try to rest as much as I can before I am needed again.

***

The rest of the day proceeds just like that, jumping from one crisis to the next as Taylor and I stretch our abilities as much as possible to lower the body count of the insane monster behind this massacre. Danny falls silent after pulling a child out of the liquefied cement that was about to suffocate him, and I don’t have the heart to try to engage him.

He drops us two blocks from our hotel after Taylor explains to him how to handle the evidence she has been gathering for so long and how to react to the possibly unavoidable PRT investigation. He follows along and nods where appropriate, but…

We will need to talk to him. Soon.

But there’s another man on a Quixotic, doomed quest to fix this city I should speak to before.

I call Armsmaster, this time on speaker, in the unlikely case Taylor wants to break her moody silence and comment from where she’s been huddled on our bed.

He picks up on the sixth ring.

“Second Lieutenant Jessica Fairchild, transferred from Boston two months ago and working on her law degree on her downtime. Private Harry O’Malley, started working on the Brockton division seven years ago and planned to retire here, without any drive for promotion or transfers. Sergeant Richard Nowak, son of immigrants, transferred from the army three years ago and would always start a fight if someone called him ‘Dick…’” And his voice breaks.

“You don’t have to continue,” I tell him, as gently as I can while Taylor looks at the phone with growing horror.

“I… I do.”

And Armsmaster… Colin spends the next ten minutes telling us a list of names and ranks, always adding in a personal detail, sometimes slipping an anecdote, either fond or aggravated. And he doesn’t cry, but it’s only because of sheer practice.

When he finally winds down, all three of us share a silence that I don’t dare qualify. But I called him for a reason, and it wasn’t this, even if I should have known… Fuck, my eyes sting and—

And Taylor wraps me in her arms, and I quietly sob on her shoulder because of people I have never met, for faces I have never seen, and for a man who still is not a friend who is grieving.

I never would have made it as a villain. Too soft-hearted.

I clear my throat, for once not looking for a dramatic effect, and tell Colin what I have wanted to tell him since I bandaged the bleeding stump where a veteran nurse used to have an arm.

“Taylor and I… We are ending this. No rules.”

And there’s silence from the other end of the line, before I hear a crackling that sounds like something very high-tech turning on.

“Tell me if I can help,” Colin says, and I feel the ghost of my smirk settling on my lips.

Because of course he can. And he will.

 

==================

This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ, where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available Patreon. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 81 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Also, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!