5.18 Carcosa
13th of May, 2011
It hurts Colin to admit it, but maybe, just maybe, his more childish colleague and Nightflyer's antics did more to improve morale and get the rest of the gathered parahumans to relax a little before the battle to come than any speech he could've delivered.
Now, ten or so – ten minutes, thirty-eight seconds to be precise – minutes later, the Brockton Bay contingent mobilized to answer the ongoing S rank incident is now talking with each other instead of anxiously waiting for, to put it crudely, shit to go down. Which it undoubtedly will, as those kinds of events always do.
Case in point, he represses a heartfelt sigh as his communication suit rings with a new caller, mechanically bringing his right hand to his ear more in a bid to inform those keeping an eye on him that something is happening than to make it easier for him to hear.
"Dragon," he greets his friend colleague politely, if a bit curtly, "Do you have an update on the situation?"
"I do," she answers, her tone no-nonsense and filled with just a note of urgency, "The timeline of events isn't exactly clear, but as of fifteen minutes ago, the Butcher and Echidna escaped containment."
Colin frowns under his helmet, and he distantly registers Nightflyer's head snapping his way in a distinctly bird-like manner – which can't possibly be good for the girl's neck, in his own opinion – twin red lenses boring into his skull, the Bay's thief showing just how keen her talent at reading the room are.
Consequently, in the wake of her reaction, most of the chatter surrounding him dies a swift death, and he finds himself at the center of the crammed together crowd's attention.
"How did this happen?" he asks, thinking fast, and already digging for an answer of his own through his connection to the PRT's own reports on the subject with quick and precise motion of his eyes under his helmet, "And why did we only learn about it now?"
"We're not certain, since it happened during a momentary communication breakdown, and while all the barricades the local PRT chapters had set up got hit simultaneously with decoys," his friend colleague quickly answers, "Due to the nature of the threat–" read, the bazillion of human clones throwing themselves with reckless abandon at anything even remotely looking like someone belonging to the right side of the law, "–it took the PRT until I arrived on the scene to clarify what just happened. The Butcher and Echidna's forces have already left Boston, and are making their way down the interstate ninety-five as we speak. They're at the head of a convoy inside a stolen schoolbus, and they're escaping fast, faster than they should be. I suspect some parahuman power is at work here."
Which is quite likely, in Colin's professional opinion; when there's uneasily explainable trouble afoot, the answer is generally parahuman-adjacent.
"What do you think the goal is?" he asks.
"We've just asked Watchdog about it and–" she pauses, "Nevermind, I just received their report. They're going to Brockton Bay–"
Makes sense, he nods to himself, considering the Butcher's involvement and the weakened state of both the ABB and the Empire. It would be in character for him to try to reestablish himself there.
"–to go after Panacea," his previous train of thoughts come to a screeching halt, while a more recent memory of a certain, infuriatingly elusive Tinker rises to the front of his mind.
"It cannot be allowed to happen," he replies with urgency, and maybe just a tad louder than he should have, if the way his current companions stir with his own alarm.
"I, and Alexandria, concur," Dragon answers back after a short pause, "But Echidna's nature and the Butcher's close presence makes it difficult to come up with a plan to stop them without risk. Strider is currently busy bringing the capes who answered the call to Boston, and will be available shortly to extract her, but that will not stop them from making their way to the Bay in time."
Colin grits his teeth to better swallow a curse, and he has to take a short breath to stop himself from acting unprofessional.
He opens his mouth to ask for more intel, because at this point, he is coming rather short on ideas, but gets cut off before he can do so.
"This little Nightflyer has an idea," the oddly neutral voice ringing in the tense, relative quiet of the helicopter, and his eyes snap toward her just in time to see her flick two of her fingers forward, the motion prompting a holographic rendition of the Interstate 95 to snap into being at the center of the cabin.
Colin takes only a second to snap out of the realization that the thief has been able to listen to the entire conversation since the start before asking.
"What is your idea, Nightflyer?" he says while simultaneously linking his own audio inputs to his current call so that his friend colleague can listen in on what the girl has to say.
"Firstly, where are they currently?" she replies, the underside of her left forearm angled upward and her right hand fingers hovering slightly over it.
"Thirty-nine, no, forty miles south from Boston, still following I-95," Dragon answers rapidly.
"Which brings them here–" a blinking red dot appears on the black-and-white rendition with one touch of her fingers – and he feels strangely validated by the confirmation that the girl does have an onboard computer somewhere in her suit, "–and right before that."
Another item starts blinking in red, and Colin instantly realizes what she is going for.
"You want to go after the Braga Bridge itself to slow them down," he voices aloud.
Instantly, and despite not privy to most of the conversation, a chorus of protest starts to echo in the helicopter's cabin.
"Forty-one miles," Dragon 'helpfully' sounds inside his helmet, "I'm relaying Nightflyer's idea to Alexandria."
"Better destroying one bridge rather than losing the Bay and its inhabitants," the thief answers while triggering the fast release of her harness before standing up, her words silencing the ongoing arguments with unprecedented efficiency, "This little Nightflyer can do it. She just needs the go ahead, and preferably access to the PRT channels to give her own updates on the situation. She won't even have to come close to the Butcher, since she has all the toys needed right here with her."
"Relaying to–" another short pause at the other end of the line, "Alexandria just greenlit Nightflyer's initiative."
"Very well," Colin nods while reaching inside one of his suit's compartments for a long-ranged com bead, before saying, "Pilot Langhorn, open the bulkhead."
"...Right away, Armsmaster, sir," the PRT pilot answers back after only a short moment of hesitation, a red light at the back end of the helicopter turning on as the door slowly starts to descend.
"Nightflyer, this is for you," he extends his hand toward the thief, who promptly closes the distance between the two of them to palm the com bead, "This is a long-range version of the standard issue PRT com bead. I don't know how–"
His jaw clicks shut as the proffered object seemingly disappears inside the girl's hand with a ripple of metal, a quick look at his own HUD informing him that the thief has joined the Protectorate channels not even a second later.
"Test? Test?" her characteristic voice echoes right in his ear, the girl nodding to herself as she steps away from him and starts making her way toward the slowly opening bulkhead, her footing sure in spite of the wind already blowing inside the cabin, "It will do."
She stops at the edge, her dark figure bathed in the red light overhead.
"Now… how did it go already?" the girl muses, a finger poking at her cheek, before snapping her fingers, "Oh, right!"
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqrWGlb2INc&list=RDJqrWGlb2INc&start_radio=1
She clears her throat, before making a wide-swipping gesture, a handheld micro appearing in her hand in a flash of dark unlight.
"𝆕What an ama~zing time𝆕" out of nowhere, she sings, her lenses glitching to show half-closed eyelids to Colin's complete and utter bafflement.
"𝆕What a family~𝆕" she gestures toward villains and heroes alike with her free hand.
"𝆕How did~ the years~ go by~𝆕" she twirls on herself and steps backward while bringing the back of her free hand to her forehead, the door stopping to a halt at her back.
"𝆕Now it's only me~…𝆕" a last step backward as she visibly sags, the light overhead turning green, "Rousing applause."
The microphone disappears in another wash of dark unlight as the thief straightens, then falls out of the cabin headfirst, her bladed wings snapping open and into being in an instant.
A lengthy pause follows even as their transport buckles as the thief flies away with the thunderous boom of the sound barrier shattering in her wake.
"What the hell just happened?" Dauntless is the first to ask.
Assault groans, loudly.
"Philistines! I am surrounded by philistines!" he bemoans, before snickering in spite of the slap to the back of his head he earns from his better half for his antics.
"What?" the Trump turns his colleague's way, the incomprehension Colin and pretty much everyone else feels written clearly all over his face.
Slowly, Assault turns himself his way, a grin etched on his feature.
"Tick tock," he answers enigmatically, his lips wobbling with barely repressed laughter.
And try as they might, none of the parahuman present can manage to wrangle a clear answer as to what has the infuriating man so deeply amused even as their flight path gets rerouted toward where Nightflyer will supposedly intercept the doom coming to the Bay.
***
I allow myself one last peal of laughter as I follow with half an ear the chaos my little show left in its wake, before turning serious once again.
Me and my big mouth voluntold myself to take care of the current problem, and I'm not going to let everyone else down. Which won't stop me from cursing in the privacy of my mind the Triumvirate Three Stooges and their chickenshit attitude toward the Butcher, because Legend would've been able to pull exactly the same thing I'm going to do with a wave of his hand – which is why I even asked the greenlight for my idea – but nooo, let the twelve year old handle it instead!
In any case, I am feeling strangely both vindicated and proud about my wings' anti-gravity engines, because I'm currently averaging twelve hundred miles per hour as I beeline toward my future art project the Braga Bridge, meaning that I should be reaching it about–
–now.
I flap my wings in guise of airbrakes as I take in the sights, only grumbling a little to myself when I realize that of course people would be driving over it at this hour – it's the frakking interstate after all – and I don't exactly have a way to stop them from–
I blink as an idea – a rather stupid one, admittedly, but it'll do – comes to me, and bank hard and down toward the northside of the bridge.
"Alright Dell, I'm gonna need a little help for this," I mutter both to myself and my oldest allies as I quickly program a duo of holograms for him to display.
I come to a stop ten or so meters above the spot I chose, fully visible and with my wings spread wide apart at my back–
–which, of course, causes some rubberneckers to slow down, because why wouldn't they?
"Frakking dumbass, all of them!" I curse while hastily slap-dashing the last of my hologram, running it in the palm of my hand for a test, before nodding to myself after ascertaining it indeed works.
With a wide, two armed, large sweeping gesture, two really utterly massive signalisation triangles snap into being on either sides of the segment I selected.
Immediately, the sound of screeching tires and honking reaches me, and of course one utter moron stops smack dab in the middle!
I wait, patiently, a couple of seconds for the Honda Civic to restart.
"Oh, for frakks' sake," I scowl, before dropping down next to him, the pair of Uzi the next part of my plan will require snapping into being with a customary wash of dark unlight.
I look through the driver's window, and come face to face with the pimple-covered face of a barely-above-sixteen boy currently making his best impression of a deer caught in headlights.
I make a 'get moving' gesture with my right hand.
He looks back at me with fear etched all over his face without doing much else, including pressing his gas pedal.
"Emperor saves me from dimwits," I bemoan while stepping closer to his car, before knocking on his window with the barrel of my rightmost Uzi.
Yet again, the guy doesn't react, my actions provoking neither a flight nor a fight response.
Coincidentally, this is when I lose it.
I punch through his window, the sound of glass shattering and a startled yelp promptly following.
"Move the frakk along, you frakking asshole!" I screech in his face.
He screeches too in fright, his hindbrain choosing this moment to finally signal to the rest of his body that maybe if he pressed the gas pedal, he'd be away from the scary cape.
I take a quick step back as his Honda Civic surges forward, zigzaging a bit, before somehow planting itself into the bridge's railing, leaving me speechless.
I look upward, take notes of the fact that he crashed beyond the boundaries I established, and shrug to myself.
"Frakk it, good enough," I take flight once more, the honking on either side of my impromptu 'work in progress' signals getting quite insistent–
–until I start mag dumping on either side of the road, that is.
Apparently, letting an entire hurricane of lead – or so they think anyway – is a good way to make the drivers go real quiet and wide-eyed behind their wheels. But those bullets aren't exactly lead-based.
After all, I still have to find a workaround for storing ammo in my multi-weapon modules, but it isn't that much of a handicap in this particular situation. The reason why? It only takes one line of code to turn the nanites forming the bullets into their 'acidic' – voracious would be the better term in my opinion – counterpart.
Already, the asphalt, cement, and metal of the bridge start to bubble and corrode along, and I only dumped the equivalent of roughly six or so magazines onto it!
Which is of course when I hear a very loud, very insistent honking somewhere in front of me, prompting me to look up–
–and not-quite lock eyes – the distance is simply too big, at least five hundred feet, with a naked guy driving a schoolbus.
I don't exactly need the subtitles to realize that I'm running out of time, and my eyes widen behind my mask as I take flight in a haste, triggering my invisibility as I do so.
I grit my teeth while storing my Uzis, my thoughts churning already–
Another lightbulb moment comes to me, and I start to cackle.
***
"The fuck is that?" Cody asks as he presses himself forward to step closer to their designated driver.
"Fuck if I know," the nameless clone grunts, scratching at his stubble with his malformed, shorter arm, "Road is blocked though, nobody's moving."
"Well, if they don't move by themselves, start pushing, then!" he grins down at him with a friendly pat–
The sky abruptly turns green and, a deafening, hissing roar, quickly followed by a thunderous shockwave and the sound of something crumbling sends him on his ass.
"THE FUCK–" he roars while standing back up, "–WAS THAT?!"
"It seems the heroes destroyed the bridge," the voice of the Accord clone – Discord? eh, maybe, he'll workshop it – answers from behind as the not-man steps next to him, "Which is a bit of a pickle, but not insurmountable."
Abruptly and with a bang, the whole bus sags a little on the right side, prompting both the clone and him to reach for a handlebar.
"...It'll get harder if we get all of our tires shot without being able to do anything about it, though," the not-man adds.
"You don't fucking say," Cody growls, "Any brilliant idea, smartass?"
"One," the clone answers calmly, before pointing to his right.
Cody blinks, then looks where the not-man is currently pointing, which happens to be the exit ramp toward Somerset proper.
"Eh, good enough," Cody admits as another of their tires gets blown, "Let's get another ride and deal with the fucker making trouble for us."
***
I frown a little as I watch what I quickly determined to be the convoy exiting the interstate at a crawl while dismissing my heavy caliber rifle back in 'storage'.
"This is Nightflyer," I call through the Protectorate channels, "Good news, the plan was successful, and the Butcher and Echidna have been stopped. Bad news, they're exiting the interstate toward Somerset. This little Nightflyer advises to redirect the capes concentrated in Boston where she is. She'll try to delay them from stealing another ride as much as she can in the meantime."
I start to fly along, still invisible, one eye kept on the eldritch tendrils digging from on-high toward their hosts. I'm hesitant to take potshots at the clones themselves since the Butcher is currently among them and I don't really want to deal with unruly roommates due to an unlucky collateral.
"Alexandria here," a woman's voice answers shortly after my update, her tone no-nonsense, "Strider will start teleporting our assets on the premises soon, you're cleared to harass them in the meantime. Do not, under any circumstances, take a lethal action against the Butcher, this is an order."
As if I needed your permission for that, Becky, I theatrically roll my eyes under my mask.
"Copy that," I reply instead, twin Lasguns already in hand, "Nightflyer out."