Firewall

Keilnei, with Charlotte shadowing her, did in fact see Candress’s signal. She’d hit targets smaller than the elf at distances further than this, and she was taller than the crowd, which was slowly calming down after Skidmark’s command.

She stopped short, prompting Charlotte to run into her back, and pulled out the tablet. As expected, it had a prompt to complete the mission. This time, Keilnei didn’t stop to read, fully aware that the people around her were still a threat. She merely pressed the button and started looking for an exit while a rolled up piece of paper settled into her pocket.

Brockton Bay

Acquire a vial of “superpowers in a can.”

Reward: 5 credits, Lesser Normalization Scroll

“Good news.” She said, “It looks as if my companion is reasonably safe for now. I’d rather not tempt fate, you?”

Charlotte nodded emphatically. Unfortunately, the exits were guarded by men with guns. The best they could do was dive into another shop, out of the line of sight of most of the gang members present. They had had quite enough combat for one day, and neither was inclined to pick more fights.

In fact, once they were safely hidden behind a shop counter, Charlotte seemed to lose whatever rush of adrenaline had carried her through the last hour. She began shuddering, and even threw up on the floor. Keilnei wasn’t sure what else to do, so she lay a hand upon her back and whispered what her commander had told her after her own first taste of combat.

“It’s always awful.” She said, “You will grow as you face it, but this feeling? It means you still have your heart. You did well for your first time.”

Charlotte wrapped her arms around Keilnei’s waist and sobbed. Neither of them immediately noticed when the walls around them began to shift and become fine marble carved into a thousand shapes of hands and the repeated face of a beautiful young woman. Even when they did, the strange reality warping magic posed no danger to them so long as they stayed still and made no attempt to interfere further with the night’s events.

••••••••••

Rose woke from her trance, but regretted it immediately. Her body had been sleeping soundly while she was assisting Gil and possessing Charlotte, but she’d pushed her ghostly side far more than she ever had before. Focus was nearly impossible, and her head throbbed with a developing migraine.

She reached out for her phone, seeing that it was just past midnight. Flechette only had a couple hours to sleep before she’d be expected to return to active duty; in all likelihood she’d need to do a double shift to make up for calling out.

She looked over at her suit and stared at it for several long moments. It had changed, becoming tighter, more like Shadowstalker’s old outfit. More fit for the slightly curvier body that Rose realized that she now sported. Her phone’s camera did a decent job showing lips that were plumper, hair that seemed resistant to damage from hard water, and breasts large enough to necessitate rather than suggest a sports bra.

A part of her, the Lily part, knew for a fact that she’d always looked approximately like this. She had shuddered at the thought of guys jacking off to her and her teammates, both here and in the misty and unformed New York team. She knew that this was normal; the majority of capes were total knockouts.

She could remember conversations with Missy where her teammate complained that where most super women got to be statuesque stunners, something in her genetics had decided that Vista needed to be as cute as a bunny rabbit. That made it nearly impossible to get any respect from civilians; she just couldn’t project any gravitas. Personally neither half of Flechette had any complaints about Missy’s appearance, but that was admittedly quite beside the point.

The other half of her, the Rose half, knew something had changed. The memories didn’t quite line up; mostly the memories from before the split, when Rose had been a spirit observing the heroines of this world. The Undersider girls had been far from hideous, but now they were quite a bit more attractive. Skitter in particular had been thin enough that Rose hadn’t been certain if she were man or woman when she was seated.

Rose didn’t have the mental energy to really dive deep into that. She crammed a protein bar into her mouth to justify her wakefulness, then got back in her bed. She wondered what effects Vista’s new suit would have on her. Supposedly it could alter the wearer’s body type based on Gil’s preferences, but he hadn’t been sure if that would actually happen. So many things that may happen, so few he was certain would. His job seemed infuriating whenever they spoke of it, and grew moreso whenever she was expected to participate.

She laid her head back down, and hoped against hope that Gil would be alright. On the one hand she knew he was older than her, even counting her years as a ghost and second life as Lily added on. On the other, he was so reckless. If he died, he’d carry on in some form. She wasn’t so sure about herself. Such worries, however, were nowhere near enough to stop her from falling quickly into a deep, dreamless sleep.

••••••••••

Candress looked down at the victors in the arena. A trio of dark skinned people that looked to be a father and his son and daughter, judging by their similar faces and builds. A woman with a potentially fatal wound in her gut, who stubbornly continued to stand. Finally, a man whose skin and hair glowed brightly, who seemed to be the source of the random uncontrolled bursts of magic. They pulsed too quickly for Candress to latch onto, unfortunately, and as far as she could tell she couldn’t draw magic directly from any of the capes around her

The glowing boy had been a bit more aware of local custom than Candress, but his suggested name of “Eraser” was immediately and brutally rejected. Nearly as swiftly as Candress’s own name, to the point that she wondered if they had never intended to allow her to choose her own name. It seemed an adequate way to establish a pecking order to immediately reject one’s first decision.

The newly dubbed “Scrub” was allocated one of the cans, which he chose to pass on to one of his companions, and the remaining four were to be distributed to the four people left standing. Candress was told to shut up when she inquired about one for herself, as she hadn’t been inside of the arena. All of these decisions were made with a level of crude pomp and circumstance that dragged the time out.

Candress, as the newest and most junior member of the inner circle, was given the unpleasant task of clambering down the rumble with a metal canister for the man chosen by the glowing boy. She’d been told, quite forcefully in fact, that she couldn’t use it even if she were stupid enough to try. Given that her powers were of a very different type, that seemed questionable, but he could be forgiven his ignorance on that count.

She did seriously consider making a run for it, but every eye was upon her. Even if Candress could use the magic within these potions, she doubted she would be able to face the few hundred lunatics still left standing after the brawl, let alone the nearly two dozen enhanced Merchants who would surely object.

Then, suddenly, an orange man with a long tail dropped from the high, vaulted ceiling. He attempted to place his palm upon Candress’s forehead, but her lingering frost armor prevented whatever mischief he had in mind. She blasted him with a shard of ice which he mostly dodged with inhuman alacrity, leaving a long cut across his side.

That won her only a fraction of a second, as his tail lashed out and swept her feet out from under her. He delicately plucked the canister from her hand, then stomped on her gut to knock the wind out of her.

Things deteriorated from there, presumably, but Candress lost track of things after that.

Candress didn’t know how long she was out, but it must have been some time because by the time she awoke she was in a temple built of intersecting stone walls. It was actually much brighter, with dozens of evenly spaced sconces filled with burning braziers and torches. The walls, floor, pillars, and flames all rippled and moved about as if they were poorly secured cargo on a roaring sea.

As her senses returned to her fully, she recognized that there was an ongoing battle happening around her. The covenant included the merchants, high and low, who all appeared to be doing battle against a single group of less than a dozen people including the strange orange man.

Despite outnumbering the interloper slightly in terms of powered individuals, defending their own territory, and surrounded by an incredibly large number of sycophants, the Merchants were not able to maintain the upper hand. The shifting terrain consistently moved to intercept or separate the Merchants, turning it into a series of unfavorable duels.

Candress was shocked to find that her frost armor had barely depleted, which was good because Skidmark had taken down the walls of magic she’d been using as a free wellspring. The ice shard she’d launched at her assailant had contained much of her remaining mana, and what little she’d hung onto drained away quickly in this realm.

She grasped her bat and looked around. She appeared to be within a single cavernous room, and nothing that looked much like an exit presented itself. Her frost armor would surely disappear soon, and her first excursion into the dungeon had taught her exactly how well a fight with people like this would go without her magic.

Strangely enough, that meant that the safest place for her would be near, but not within, the heaviest combat. Skidmark and a gigantic blob monster stood near the case of powers in a can, holding off attacks from the orange monkey man and a woman wearing heavily padded dark grey armor. It seemed that the attackers lacked a healer; Candress could think of no other reason that he’d still be nursing the gut wound. It seemed to be seriously hindering their plan, which had apparently hinged on perfect execution from the orange man.

Skidmark’s woman was crawling out of some kind of large iron beast which was covered in rapidly crystallizing sludge that gunked up the tires. Within the arena, a red haired woman in a flattering green and black jumpsuit was barely dodging Scrub’s blasts as she closed on him; Scrub seemed entirely incapable of hitting her, nor did he seem exceptionally well positioned to face her in direct combat by the way he scrambled away.

Candress hadn’t really focused on the others present, but whenever she looked at a duel between powered individuals it was the one who dressed more professionally that was winning, often despite two to one odds. Of course, she only caught glimpses of such battles as the marble walls shifted around her, sliding upon unseen rails when they weren’t rising and falling into the ground.

Candress steepled her fingers, knowing that she could likely stay out of this. Perhaps she even should; she knew nothing of the Merchants and did not care for their ways from what she had seen. However, they had resources and beautiful women with magical powers. They thought she had joined them earnestly, as foolish an assumption as that was.

Candress drew her revolver, switched off the safety, and joined the battle. She tried to drink in the magic making the walls move, but it was like sipping upon water as it slowly melted. Refreshing, but far too slow to be useful. She weaved through the confused and panicking Merchant rank and file, green eyes blazing, took aim, and fired upon the fat man vomiting sludge all about himself.

The redhead, without missing a beat, rolled out of the way of another blast from Scrub and fired a bullet at Candress with deadly accuracy. She wasn’t sure how the woman had done it; she’d essentially been firing from the hip, but had Candress not had her frost armor it surely would have ended far worse for her. Levi’s instincts kicked in, and Candress dove behind some rubble that would serve as adequate cover.

Candress was no miracle shot like the woman with the shamrock on her chest, but she was a far better gunman than any of the rabble attending the rally. Good enough to **** the attackers to account for her. They couldn’t focus entirely upon their individual fights, not with Candress constantly moving to get a bead on targets despite the shifting walls, nor could they simply breach a barrier made from Skidmark’s power that surrounded the case.

Not a single one of the group of people that were later identified to Candress as Faultline’s Crew went down in the battle, but they seemed more inclined towards living to fight another day over fighting to the bitter end. The fact that **** or serious injury was proving plausible was more than enough reason for them to retreat.

When the walls rose in a great arc, cutting off each member of Faultline’s crew from the Merchants, the defenders stood tall. The marble temple faded away, revealing the mall beneath the grand illusion.

Skidmark hauled himself up onto the stage and crowed his victory. Personally Candress was of the opinion that losing half of one’s men and merely driving off a foe without any casualties on their part hardly qualified as a victory, but she supposed morale was important to a warlord. She casually drew in mana from the slowly disappearing **** field around the canisters and started healing a few of the Merchants around her. Scrub had ended up with a broken jaw, for example, and an older human man with silver shot hair and breath that smelt of **** had severe burns.

“That’s right, cocksuckers!” Skidmark roared, “Archer Bridge Merchants own this town!”

The Merchants, most of whom had been entirely useless, cheered along with him. Candress joined the inner circle, cringing inwardly but not entirely sure how to extricate herself at this point. For now, it seemed best to smile, wave, and track Keilnei’s movements as the towering woman fled with Charlotte.

One of the other women in the inner circle, a tan colored woman whose black hair covered her face, clapped Candress on the shoulder.

“Nice one, Snowblower.” She said with a raspy voice, “Shit! Not even using your powers and you just straight up tried to ice the snail.”

“It seemed for the best…” Candress said, leaving a question in her voice.

“Oh shit, man.” She said, “This your first night? Name’s Whirligig. Welcome to paradise.”

••••••••••

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