Spam

“Ok”

Rose typed the quick, terse response into her cell phone as she returned to HQ. Debriefing was quick and routine, and she was dismissed with orders to get something to eat, shower, and rest up.

She parted ways with Chariot, making sure to gently squeeze him on the shoulder as she left. He wasn’t much for authority figures, which made him one of the best partners if Rose wanted to do something on patrol without being tattled on. That meant that the young black teenager got lots of friendly smiles and casual touching… well, a lot for Rose, anyway. She was a married woman after all, and a fifteen year old boy didn’t need much to be happy.

On the way back to the mess hall, Rose took a detour to check on Vista. She knew Missy probably wouldn’t be in her room, since she was scheduled to be halfway through a patrol, and that was what Rose was really hoping for. She slipped in, grabbed the oversized t-shirt Missy slept in, and shoved it into her own bag. Rose pulled out the shroud, still in the form of a ribbon, and it took the form of that very same shirt before Rose had time to figure out how the magic item even worked. Convenient.

She left the room quickly after that, so as to preserve the illusion she was merely checking in on her team mate and just happened to find her room empty. It was a bit thin, since the basic patrol schedule was posted days in advance, but not so obvious as to be a dead giveaway.

With any luck, Vista would return and take a nap in her room wearing her normal pajamas. That would do very nicely, especially if Rose could influence her dreams to provide a cover story of some kind. Even if not, Vista would functionally just have a new power. Suspicious in the ****, since this was not a world in which such things happened without a cause, but there was little that the PRT could do.

Rose drank a few cups of coffee with her lunch, fully expecting to pull an all-nighter. She requested permission to do a circuit along the edge of the docks starting at dusk, which was automatically rejected. The note attached said, quite simply, that she had her orders and she would follow them. She was to stand by and patrol to the south, near the college, as scheduled. That irritated Rose more than she cared to admit.

Gil probably needed her assistance. He was a clever man, to be certain, but more than a little reckless. He didn’t even know what his enemy looked like, and he didn’t have any powers to speak of beyond the ability to call out a few companions as bodyguards.

Rose drummed her fingers upon the desk in her room, and decided that she didn’t want to tolerate this bullshit for any longer than she needed to. She pulled out the small dragon figurine and placed it on her shoulder. It may have been psychosomatic, but she thought she could feel a faint vibration from it as she started to pen a letter.

“Carol Dallon

I hope this message finds you well, or as well as could be hoped. My name is Lily, but you’re more likely to recognize my public persona of Flechette.

I have been doing some research upon your team, and I must say I am immensely impressed. New Wave has done something great in Brockton Bay, and I would like to contribute if I might. I know you are a family based team, but I think it may be time for you to expand past that. Any team must grow and evolve if it is to survive through tragic circumstances.”

As she wrote, she formulated a plan. She was an industrious sort, and none could deny that. Even her recent disciplinary issues were officially attributed to overzealousness. Everyone on the Wards had been giving it their all, far above and beyond what they were legally required to do. In fact it was beyond what they, as a team consisting mostly of minors, were legally allowed to do.

Once she was done writing, she brought her letter to the mail room and then placed an additional request at the central console. This one was directed to Weld, the official leader of the Brockton Bay Wards. It was short, of course. Weld was a gentle soul, and not one who needed flowery language.

“Weld, I’m sorry, but I need some damn sleep. Can someone cover my next patrol?”

••••••••••

Boco followed the sound of barking when he reached the train yard, eventually touching down nearby. Not even Gil was entirely sure about his plan, but he had seen the kind of luck Snow demonstrated in the past. Supposedly the train yard’s resident supervillain, titled Hellhound in the PRT file system, kept a large pack of dogs here which she could magically enhance into powerful shock troops capable of going toe to toe with most of the other capes in the city. Hellhound’s stated goal, when she bothered to speak to anyone, was to be respected and left alone.

Snow had two very significant assets on hand for her mission: first, Creature Defense. Snow had a tag which made it so that animals would be largely disinterested in harming her. They would never do so without ample warning; even if ordered to kill by an outside **** they would stop short of ****. Combined with Snow’s good fortune and lovable nature, Gil sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t need to use the Shiho Card to resurrect his first companion. It would be a complete waste to use one of his stronger cards on someone with no interest in ****.

Second, once she encountered an animal, any animal significant enough to be considered at least tier one, then she’d get a Nuzlocke ball. Ideally that would be a giant monster dog, but anything could work. After all, he had access to the Bazaar now. In general, Gil concluded that he could filter any unwanted captures before selling them. The Bazaar was notoriously bad in its selection, but there was always a chance he could get cannon fodder or some kind of moderately useful tools in return for a dog.

Thus, though he had to weather Keilnei’s disapproving glare, he pointed Snow in the right direction and sent her to visit one of the most antisocial and psychotic villains in Brockton Bay. She strolled off into the night with nothing but her lightly armored Hunter Clothes and Blackpaw’s ball to protect her. She’d be fine. Probably.

••••••••••

Gil wasn’t exactly being subtle, but he stuck to areas where people would be unlikely to open fire. Basically, that meant checking his map frequently and minimizing exposure to the Merchants and Fenrir’s Chosen. He had no doubt that reports of the mysterious man on a giant black bird would get back to the PRT, especially if Panacea tried to do a background check.

For the sake of having an emergency escape hatch and more plates in the air, Gil brought Keilnei back to the monument park. Not directly there, obviously, just a few streets over. She would meet up with Candress and look into the Merchants. He even handed her his tablet so she could track the target’s location. He made it clear that he wanted those bottles recovered, but didn’t exactly encourage the duo to go get themselves killed.

Gil did not at all miss the fact that the two women were, while armed, also gorgeous and clean. He was taking a bit of a risk here, but he thought it was worth it. Keilnei could pretty easily overpower most people they were likely to encounter; from what he’d seen of Draenei women they were roughly as strong as human men of the same size. Given that Keilnei was an athletic 7 foot tall woman currently compressed into a 6’6” frame, she was probably more than a match for any baseline human thug.

They’d be carrying a few dozen small bags of cocaine, thanks to Zena’s pick pocket power in the dungeon, so at least they’d have a vaguely plausible reason to be in Merchants territory. Who knew? They might even make a few friends; neither knew much about selling ****, so it would be currency for bribes instead.

He left his supporters behind so that he could complete a few risky tasks all by his lonesome before the sun went down. Second would be trying to get in close to Menja; first was heading to the docks. He wanted to build a local safehouse for himself, where people who were explicitly his agents might congregate. It wasn’t exactly that he intended to build a new gang, but he was fully aware that’s how it would be seen by most.

If he remembered his timelines, mutual aid societies had largely fallen out of favor in America unless they were built around some kind of racial minority. Given that Gil was white to the point of pasty, he probably couldn’t swing one of those, especially given the presence of multiple openly white supremacist groups. He considered working with the Pure for a bit, but it would cut off too many options, including open association with the now mixed-race Rose.

For a private little clubhouse where a few friends could meet without anyone kicking his door down to steal his shit, he didn’t have a lot of options. The nicer parts of town still had enough law and order for squatting to be off the table, so anywhere with heavy PRT presence was a bad idea. The Merchants were notoriously anarchistic in the worst possible way, and didn’t defend their borders from Chosen raiders. The Pure had the whole racism thing, and the Chosen had most of the worst traits of the prior two. That left only a few teams that openly held territory.

The Undersiders were relative small fries, not even on his list of Company approved factions, but they guarded their turf fairly well. If Snow worked her magic, he would be happy to have Hellhound as a landlord as long as the rent was acceptable. She was the only threat he was likely to run into around the train yard, because she was absolutely brutal with intruders. He’d just need to find a building that didn’t need to be condemned, set up shop, and avoid pissing off the dog lady.

Skitter was supposedly more reasonable, having set herself up as a petty lord near the docks. She could control bugs, and in a condemned city that made her an absolute nightmare. Gil was fairly sure he’d already picked a fight with her the last time he’d been in town, but hopefully she hadn’t actually seen him then. If she had, he’d be teleporting back to the skyblock immediately. That’s why he’d come alone except for Boco, after all. He couldn’t have teleported Keilnei out with him.

He had the cash needed to pay rent thanks to all of the monsters dropping money in Noa’s dungeon. He’d already converted most of the small coins into American cash, and they totalled out at over ten thousand dollars; a life changing amount of money in this time period, but not quite enough to make any really big moves. Hopefully he’d get just as much from the next few floors; a nest egg to hold him over until he could get a more reliable source of income.

Unfortunately, that didn’t matter unless someone would show up and take his money. Skitter didn’t appear when Gil touched down, nor was any information about her forthcoming. The locals closed ranks, offering him taciturn responses ranging from stony silence to a quiet affirmation that she would know he came around. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do for now; he could come back in the morning, perhaps.

••••••••••

Ethan used his hips to pull the latch and push open the door to kennel 8. It was his turn to feed and groom the dogs, per the boss’s orders, and that was bad enough. Kennel 8 was where Bitch kept the dogs that, in any normal shelter, would be put down. Dangerous, poorly trained beasts that even Ethan’s boss had difficulty controlling. Bitch loved dogs too much to even consider killing them, but someday one of these was going to rip someone’s arm off.

As such, Ethan was terrified to see some dumbass putting her entire arm into Boulder’s kennel. Boulder was a giant black and brown Caucasian Shepherd that had either never learned that biting hurt people, or he had learned it and weaponized it to ensure compliance. Whatever his thought process, someone had definitely taught the giant dog that biting was a good way to get what he wanted.

“Do you want to come home with me?” She asked, “I’m sure Gil and the others would love you.”

He froze, mouth wide with terror. This idiot was potentially seconds from a lethal injury if someone made the wrong move. Boulder actually quite liked being pet; the problem was that he took it very badly when someone stopped. He walked forward quietly, and calmly in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the barking of dogs who knew dinner had arrived.

“Ma’am, keep petting for now, but I’m going to ask you to take a step back.” He said, “I’m going to give that dog his dinner, and you’re going to pull away while he’s distracted. Okay? Don’t move too quickly.”

The woman turned and withdrew her hand, giving Ethan a clear view of her. She was a slim woman up top, with substantial hips, pale skin, and shiny black hair. Boulder growled at her, but didn’t snap at her wrist. She smiled at Boulder fondly.

“Don’t you worry,” she said, “I haven’t forgotten you, but it’s rude to ignore people.”

Ethan stared, then remembered that technically he was a supervillainess’s henchman.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” He demanded, pawing at his belt for his pepper spray in case things went south, “No one is supposed to be here!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Snow White.” She said putting her hands to her cheeks. “Wait a moment. If no one is supposed to be here, who takes care of the dogs?”

“O…Kay.” Ethan said, squinting. “I do. I meant that no one else was supposed to be here. These dogs are dangerous.”

When she said it outright, this woman did look a lot like the Disney princess in question. Eerily so, in fact. She’d also been casually petting one of the most vicious beasts at the shelter and was completely fine.

“Oh no!” Snow said, “This one is a very good boy. He’s just terribly worried about being left alone.”

She probably wasn’t wrong. Most aggression from dogs came from fear and anxiety. Boulder growled again, and Snow looked down at him.

“Of course,” she said, “if you’d like we can do that.”

She pulled out a goddamn pokeball and pointed it at the dog. A beam of red light shot out at the big dog and it disintegrated. Ethan’s jaw dropped.

“What did you do!” He yelled, “Biter! Barker! I need a cape!”

He ran from the confused looking woman out to the common room. His best guess was that they were under attack from Uber and Leet, based on the pokeball, but whatever was going on seemed firmly above his pay grade. Worse, if that “pokeball” had just killed the dog, Bitch would be pissed.

When the two powered henchmen entered, Barker taking the lead with a swagger in his step, Snow was midway through feeding the dogs. She waved at the two men merrily.

“Hello!” She said, “I didn’t get an opportunity to say so, but I was told to speak to Miss Hellhound. Would either of you be willing to provide an introduction?”

••••••••••

And our first poll for this segment! Vote on a very small fragment of Missy’s fate!

https://strawpoll.com/poy9kbm6DgJ