June 9th, 2013, 8:59 PM
No dossiers Victoria had yet encountered could match Royal Intelligence’s for depth, even redacted, and as soon as she had finished her meeting with Steelmind and was back at her office, she dove into the one on Jacobin - it still called him ‘Hood’ - immediately.
There were dozens of camera shots of him on the page; in almost all of them, he wore the same outfit, the old hooded sweatshirt and ski mask, but only two cameras had managed to snap pictures of his new armored super-suit. Victoria could check their best estimates of his height, weight, build, look at their attempted reconstructions of his appearance, yet there were no photographs of him without his mask, and nothing about his past. It contained full descriptions of each of his attack, yet the analysis lacked the Tyrant’s signature style, his instinct for sudden brilliance and impossible connections. This had been compiled for the great man, by his agents.
What did they speculate about his powers? She leaned forwards. No effects on electrical systems had been reported and he hadn’t lifted anything but iron yet, and so they guessed his powers were ferrokinetic, not magnetic. They guessed, she knew. Electromagnetic powers let you disable robots without shattering them, but Jacobin broke his. Their estimates of his total power were obsolete - they hadn’t tracked any acceleration more than thirty thousand newtons of force, and he’d proved himself far stronger than that against Pyre.
Royal Intelligence had gathered a wealth of information (she spread the printouts out over her desk) and all of it was useless. Jacobin was of average height, average weight, dark skin, dark hair; from the St. Andrews flag on his forehead he was of preconquest blood or family, which limited them to only about a hundred and fifty thousand candidates. He could be thirteen to fifty if he was a good enough actor, eighteen to thirty-five if he wasn’t. He targeted a wide enough range of areas that he either had a fast car or travel powers (he did), or he was homeless and migrated from place to place, which was hardly unlikely - Victoria knew quite well what the life of a child of some unknown knight and a dirt-poor mother was likely to be like. (her thoughts slowed) After all, some of - Ilderia’s - knights had been, men and women she’d plucked from a life of poverty and obscurity because of the spark she saw in them. And Jacobin had never had a patron, and without one he’d turned to pointless hate the way Chrona or Acerbus might have if they hadn’t had a lord to follow.
The file on Luminosa she put aside to savor later. There was a hunt on, and Victoria knew all she needed to about Luminosa - the only question would be what Steelmind would share with her. Luminosa’s plan had been clear enough; she wanted to control Jacobin. If his attacks could be timed better, if he could be restrained and protected so that he survived until after sister and brother had begun their feud, he would be a deadly weapon for the side that wielded him. Yet Luminosa clearly couldn’t control him; that he was causing chaos now, instead of when it would serve a unifier’s ambitions, was clear proof of that.
If R-I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) help her it would be her job to solve the problem. Time to armor up - a few moments for it to close around her and then the long checks to make sure that everything was working; the AP blades, the razor whips, the new railgun… most importantly, the infra-red vision and the radio.
“No-one,” she said. “Be ready to move in five minutes. No-three, you have his trail?”
“No-three, affirmative.” The trap she’d placed wasn’t explosives, it was a chemical spray she’d bought in America. It was distinctive, did not appear in nature, and was completely useless for any other purpose - and that meant that it was easy to track.
Melissa, with her equipment, was a very good tracking device, even if, like the compound, she had little other use.
- 9:02 PM -
Were looked at his team. Remote, Chainwind, Redwatch, and young Adamant. Five to one odds, and all capable of going after an invisible target; Remote’s pocket missiles were heat-seaking, Chainwind’s destructive powers had a broad area of effect, Redwatch could see through walls, and Adamant…
“Your first test,” Were said tersely. “Got mad.”
“What do you expect to happen when someone goes for me?” she growled. “Sir.”
“Oh, I expect you to run. Anger’s good, girl.” He grinned a wolfish grin. “Just keep it under control.”
She sniffed, half-smiling. New, tough, still the weak spot in the group. That only left two knights to guard Lizzy. They didn’t come cheap.
He stepped back to speak to the team. “With no rain, Adamant and I can follow the smell of burned flesh and metal.” His eyes tracked them. “Remember, when we find him, we establish a perimeter and stay back until the princess arrives. She wants to handle this herself.”
They all nodded, Adamant slowly enough to be legitimate. Good. He hadn’t had to remind her that however badly she’d been hurt, he’d been almost torn in half.
“Move.”
The trail was easy enough to find and then to follow, even in the dark. The battle had been near enough to the palace so that the district boundaries were narrow; they crossed from one to another easily enough.
Finally they arrived. The third county, but one of the parts that hadn’t been properly rebuilt, with plenty of space to hide and plenty of escape routes, through basements and roofs and alleyways. Exactly the sort of place Were expected to find him.
“Do you see him?” he asked Redwatch quietly.
“I see the costume and the man.”
Were’s monster-head transformed back into his normal one. “Good enough.” He slipped a hand into his pocket. Made a call.
The blur appeared on the third ring as Bloody Lizzy picked up. What she heard was a cry from his sentries and firing. Not Adamant, damn it; Remote, blasting off all his missiles at the first sign of danger.
“We have trouble,” growled Were.
And then it was nothing but chaos, and below the chaos a man quietly sitting up, rubbing exhaustion from his eyes, picking up a backpack, and walking away.
- 9:45 PM -
The radio was a stream of neverending profanity punctuated by bullets and explosions and screams. The Thunderer was swearing - something about missiles being faster than he was - and then there was an explosion and his body rolled down the street, neck tilted at an odd angle and then Captain Crush ran out into the open, stopped over his body, and then stood there with his force-fields raised under the punishing fire of three supers, taking micromissiles and bullets and energy-beams into the best defense he could while Jim Skullcracker looked at him and swore.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Jim went up the walls without bothering with a fire escape straight onto a roof, to where one of the supers had built a nest and was firing rockets at the ground below not watching his idiot back. Jim kicked him savagely and added a TK push to the boot, sending him flying across the narrow street. Didn’t look to see where he landed; a flying woman - Adamant, he recognized from his files - tackled him, and it was all he could do to shift his force so she had to push against him full-strength. She was stronger than he was, but that didn’t matter; a change of his weight and a TK-enhanced judo throw, and she was off. Then he threw himself flat as the lasers passed through the space where he had been, before pulling himself to a position where he could crouch behind cover, drawing a pair of pistols, and emptied the left-hand pistol at Adamant.
She was new and proud and so the trick worked. She stood, hands on her hips in a taunting gesture, letting the bullets tear at her clothes and bounce off her bulletproof skin.
She opened her mouth for a taunt, and Jim carefully took aim with the pistol in his right hand and shot her, first in the left eye, then in the right, and then ducked behind better cover while she stumbled off into the air. This wasn’t the fight he wanted but it was the one he had, wasn’t it?
- 9:45 PM -
Were dodged left, right as Nicator’s razor whips cut through the air past him. Under her armor, Victoria was intent on the battle. At the levels they were playing at the Nicator was light armor and a few good blows from Were would tear it open (just like he’d torn Dreamlight’s head off) and - the whip sliced through the air at chest height - and so she was staying at long range. The railgun would be a waste of a hand; the razor whips tore across a full arc of space, dancing together to restrict the space Lizzy’s captain could hide in more and more.
Which was why Were grabbed one of them, wrapped it around a clawed hand - let it bite, why don’t you, you can heal - and yanked, pulling her inwards. Victoria accepted the pull towards him and allowed herself a single superior smirk. Alea iacta est.
“I am the thunderbolt,” she whispered as the lightning coursed from her heart out through her gauntlets and through the whip, illuminating the night with the thunderstruck frame of Bloody Lizzy’s captain. Were howled loud enough to shatter eardrums (unprotected eardrums, unaugmented eardrums) and the howl grew fainter and fainter as the bolt ignited his fur and boiled his blood. She pulled the whip back to her hand when he finally went silent, and steadied herself, sheathing the other whip as she moved forwards to check on the body.
The blast hit her low, sending her scrambling, the razor whip snaking back into her gauntlet to land with a click. It looked like a windstorm and was a drill of pure kinetic energy, a directed tornado spinning straight at her. Her shield whined in protest. Who was throwing it? That boy, there, the one screaming at her.
The railgun went to her right hand and she fired without aiming, the magnetized copper shells leaving traces of fire behind them like a missile’s trail. He hit the ground before she fired and she went to ground, ran to take cover, took another shot, then went around and through a window to approach him from the side and while he still thought she was in front of him, shot him in the heart.
Only then did something real come on their comm:
“No-three, Bloody Lizzy’s coming! Her knights were attacked! She’s coming with reinforcements!”
Victoria blinked and refocused, slowing her breathing. Yes. Nicator was standing over the bodies of two of Bloody Lizzy Balog’s knights, at least one dead.
“No-one, retreat. Retreat now. Fall back to -”
For a moment Victoria considered. This was the third district. How much pull did she have with her new patron?
The answer was obvious: She had none, but where else could she run?
“The palace of the Third.”
“No-four, no-five is down!”
“Carry him if you can, leave him if you can’t. But run!”
- 9:46 PM -
Jim leaped from the rooftop to land next to Captain Crush, bouncing off his shield to land behind him, picked up the Thunderer’s body as Crush turned to see what was behind him, and started running, followed by Crush a moment later. Whoever had been firing off the lasers did not pursue. They’d brought an armored car as a getaway vehicle, and Jim dumped the corpse into the back seat and let Crush take the gunner’s seat while he drove, Nicator riding shotgun.
There was no rain on the streets, no clouds in the sky, to block out the lights, though it had been raining far too heavily for summer, and so they drove by the moon as much as the streetlights. Nick was giving directions, and Jim was listening with one ear and watching traffic with one eye and keeping all but one percent of his attention on pursuit, pursuit that continued not to come.
9:50 PM
It was the war again that Lizzy saw when she touched down, knights and soldiers with her. An ordinary block until it had dissolved into carnage; broken windows and beaten-in walls, blood and bone across the concrete and asphalt.
“Ambulances,” snapped Bloody Lizzy into the Girardoni’s phone. “At my address. One dead, one critical, two injured.” Then the helmet unfolded so she could give Redwatch an icy look directly. “And you… what happened?”
(Redwatch was one of the men she watched. Her power wouldn’t save her from him, and so she made sure to have the Girardoni on whenever he was in the room; the titanium alloy in the helmet was a secondary defense to the shields, and she only really needed the helmet as a gas mas..)
“We were attacked,” he said. “Allies of the fugitive, or Steelmind’s men - I don’t know. They were good.”
He never had any allies. This was Steelmind. “But you were uninjured. Pray tell, why was that?”
Redwatch swallowed, and she could see he dared not lie to her. “They ran.”
“Before killing you, and yet after every other member of your team was down?”
“They must’ve heard you were coming?” suggested Redwatch with a smile no more than slightly terrified.
Ah, flattery. Lizzy knew that her knights much preferred dealing with their employer only as a source of paychecks. She could be feared and worshipped from a distance as easily as in person, and Were had the knack for inspiring loyalty as she did not.
“Describe the start of the fighting,” she said.
“A shadow ran past and charged, and then Remote was firing, and -”
“Remote fired first?”
“Yes,” groaned Adamant, “idiot.” Lizzy gave her a faint smile; she hadn’t guessed anyone could still be conscious with lead contact lenses, but anyone who could might have a future in her service.
“Keep an eye on them, Redwatch,” she said. “Tell the ambulances where to go. Where’s Remote?”
“Don’t know,” Redwatch gasped.
“He’s fired and if I see him again I’ll kill him,” Lizzy said, and swept onwards. She had a captain to avenge.
- 9:59 PM -
Steelmind’s remote body alerted him to the fact that someone was bashing on his palace door, and he extended his consciousness to it and to the security cameras. It was the outer door to a wide, walled courtyard; the inner door was still unbreached.
It had been wise to remove himself to the Third District after his confrontation with his sister. He could use remote bodies for everything his real body could do except accessing anything that was both gene-locked and impervious to his powers, and there was very little that qualified other than a few of the least child-safe of their father’s weapons.
“What are you doing, Nicator?” his remote body asked.
“Running away,” said the armored knight. Three of his knights were with him, one unconscious or dead, the other two talking quietly. Steelmind zoomed a camera in, made a recording of them, and stretched his senses into the street security cameras, as Nicator continued, “Lizzy’s knights decided to bump off the competition. One of mine is dead.” “He’s not -” said Crush, ignored by the others. “Two or three of theirs,” said Nicator.
Damn it. He thought he’d have more time. “Are you certain?”
“No,” admitted Nicator. “Some people are very hard to kill. But Lizzy’s on the warpath. I am here to ask for refuge.”
He considered a long, long moment, while the knights looked on, and while his cameras tracked the vengeful progress of Bloody Lizzy through the streets of his district, and finally Steelmind said, “You have it,” and the gates opened.
“Thank you,” said Nicator, and stepped inside, as, under Steelmind’s orders, every combat robot in the district and beyond converged on the palace. Steelmind had a battle to win.