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Got the Grimoire, Chapter 20
🕑 Added 2024-11-25 01:49:54 +0000 UTCFollowing Dean's little information reveal, I did not go storming off to have a talk with Director Piggot or summon my Vestment and start blasting. Give me a little credit, I’m not that hot-headed.
Because after just a minute of critical thinking (once I silenced the burning rage) of course they'd saved him from the Birdcage. He had far too useful of a power to waste and they hadn't rescued him in an overtly public manner. I found a brief news blurb about it, but it hadn't made national or even local headlines because no guards had been injured. Four men, all found unconscious on the side of the road, the transport just… gone. Vanished into thin air. It had their MO all over it.
The irrational portion of me still wanted to don my magic jacket and then go on a one man crusade until Coil was nothing but ashes. However, I had to be objective and careful. Cauldron had vast resources at their disposal. They had Eidolon, Alexandria, and Legend at their beck and call. And they had Contessa. I wasn’t sure if I was a blindspot, but I suspected I wasn’t yet, because Alexandria had said her Path had shifted when I appeared, which implied I could still be Pathed. Which, let me tell you, put a shudder of unease down my spine. At any moment, if they decided I was more trouble than I was worth, one portal and a high caliber pistol would probably be enough to end me. Especially since I’d given them back their trump card in the form of a restored Eidolon. Not to mention, for all my dislike of Coil, I didn’t think they’d just let him go freely back to his criminal enterprises. No, he’d have a debt to pay and Cauldron had various ways to collect.
All of that burned through my mind as I made a bit more small-talk with Amy and her friends before taking my leave. Let my friend the white mage know I’m safe, check. Once I returned to the Overlook, I began to plot and scheme. Cauldron had good intentions, even if doing things like releasing a scum villain from a lifetime in hell seemed… stupid. There had to be a better way to preserve useful powers for the final fight against Scion other than just letting bastards like that run free.
Decisions, decisions.
After a few hours of brainstorming, pacing, and typing notes, I came up with a tentative solution. One that would get me called crazy by my colleagues, at best.
Now I just had to convince Cauldron it was viable. Should be right up their alley.
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I meandered through the Docks, hidden beneath an illusion of darkness and shadows. It was nearing evening, which meant some more… unsavory characters were beginning to be on the streets. It wasn’t completely night, so there was still some foot traffic, just ordinary folks going about their business with increased speed, but once in a while I spotted a young punk putting up a tag or a very suspiciously dressed man lingering on a corner making shady looking deals with equally shady individuals. Signs of the ABB’s presence were there for those with the knowledge to look, mostly meaning a lot of Asian restaurants, bars, and bodegas and the colors red and green being very prominent everywhere.
That brought my thoughts to Lung. The Dragon of Kyushu. Another villain I despised. Content to just sit back and let the world burn while he ruled his small kingdom, when he had a power that could make a true difference. What he did to Taylor still made my stomach twist with rage, not to mention the people he murdered, robbed, and trafficked as part of his ‘business’. If he took a bit more care to make his territory nicer, invested in the community he made his living off of, then it was possible that maybe, just maybe the Empire wouldn’t have such a large backing as it did. Instead, people saw the dirty streets, near open drug use, barely hidden brothels, and a giant scary dragon-man and decided that maybe the Empire wasn’t so bad an alternative, choosing to ignore the large amount of homeless and minorities that vanished in their territory or were mugged, the ‘white-collar’ drugs being distributed, and the businesses that got vandalized or burned down. It was easier to turn a blind-eye to crime when you had something like the ABB to compare it to. The Empire was ultimately just as heinous, they were just good at hiding it.
Who to take down first…
I stopped atop a rooftop and dispelled my illusion, leaving me standing there in my Kage disguise and just… thought for a minute, sitting down upon a heating vent. Night was beginning to fall when a sudden light flared above me. My eyes flicked up to see a glowing woman pointing a palm at me.
“Don’t move! Are you with the ABB?” She demanded to know.
What the hell…?
“Hero,” I said simply. “Triggered last month.” I squinted up at her. “Purity? What are you doing so deep in ABB turf? Kaiser wants to start a gang-war so soon after an Endbringer fight?”
The glowing woman flinched and slowly lowered her hand. “I’m not with the Empire anymore.”
“Really? And you operating against just the ABB is coincidence?” I asked with a small snort.
“I can’t move against my former teammates. They know my identity. And Coil’s men have- had too much firepower. So the Docks is the only place I can really patrol,” she tried to justify herself.
“I see. Well, more heroes is always nice. I’m Kage.” I saw confusion. “Japanese. Means ‘Shadow’.”
A very, very conflicted expression flitted across her face. “O-Oh, so you’re umm-”
“A jap? Chink? Chigger? Slanty?” I helpfully provided.
She ignored my assistance and I could see her hand was getting twitchy. “I-I thought Lung recruited all the Asian men in this part of town…”
“I’m only half, so I don’t count and I’m from the border neighborhood, not here exactly,” I explained. “I grew up out of town.”
“...You don’t have an accent…”
“Lady, I'm a fifth-generation Japanese-American, my ancestors moved here over a century ago and endured a lot to build the life me and my family have now. I don’t have an accent because I grew up here in the US of A, just not in Brockton Bay.”
That seemed to mollify her somewhat and her glow dimmed ever so slightly. “Oh, that’s… nice. Sounds like your family did things all by the book.” A tentative smile formed, just barely visible beneath the light. “I wish all immigrants did that, we’d have less crime that way.”
Oh this stupid…
I took one breath. Two. Rome wasn’t built in a day nor was Nazi indoctrination easily purged. “Sure. Look, I’ve got places to be tonight, so can I go or are you gonna blast me?”
“I um, wasn’t going to blast you even if you were a criminal, I was just going to call the police,” she said. “But look, if you’re a hero, maybe you could help me?”
“How so?” I asked neutrally.
“I found an ABB warehouse acting as a distribution center. It’s filled with drugs, weapons, and girls, all waiting to be sold off,” she explained. “I’m not strong enough on my own to attack an operation that large, there will be too many guns and too big a chance of both Lung and Oni-Lee showing their faces. I can make either run if it’s one on one and I hit Lung early enough, but both at the same time plus all their thugs would be too much for just one person.” Her glow dimmed somewhat and I wondered if it had to do with her mood or mental state. “I was debating going to my old team for help or reaching out to some ex-members like me, but I…” She trailed off and shook her head. “Those are last resorts. If I had another hero watching my back, then I bet we could do it.”
I waited for a minute. “What about two extra heroes?”
“Pardon?”
“I know another independent who’s in this area. She was injured pretty badly by Lung, so either she’ll want payback or she’ll want out of the game, but I can at least approach her and see. She’s white, if that helps.”
“I-I don’t care what race she is if she’s a hero,” Purity said feebly, though I could practically feel the relief wafting off of her. One minority was hard enough for her to stomach I think. “O-Okay, how should this work, do we meet here tomorrow night or something?”
“If I was ABB, then that would be a perfect way to ambush you. No, let's do this,” I projected a small card with a burner phone number that I’d purchased. “Burner. Get one yourself if you don’t have one. Message me where you want to meet within a half hour or less when you’re ready, that way there’s no time for anyone to set any kind of trap. I’ll either bring my friend or just be by myself, but either way, we can come up with a plan once we know what we’re working with.”
Purity nodded thoughtfully and tucked the card away into a belt pouch. “Very well.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, debating my next offer, before deciding to hell with it. “Do you need a power boost?”
Purity froze. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’m not stupid. Your actions fluctuate with how often the sun has been out, at least for the last couple years, which is when I’m guessing you left the Empire. I might look all dark and mysterious, but my powers are illusions, which include light, so I’ll ask again, do you need some extra juice?”
She slowly nodded, a look of relief passing over her face. “That would be… appreciated. The higher the intensity, the better and sunlight is best, can your powers-”
I took the moonlight, the reflected light of the sun, and focused it into an aura around her. Her words cut off and the light of her power flared brilliantly. “Oh. Oh wow. That’s… It’s like I’m sunbathing in the middle of summer. Better even.”
“Good. I’d hate for an ally to be at half-strength if we’re taking on the ABB.” I stood and cracked my back a bit.
“I have a question if you wouldn’t mind…”
“Shoot.”
“Most people can’t look straight at me. You have been this entire time.” A note of tension entered her voice. “So does that mean you can see my face?”
“I control light very easily. Yes, I can see your face, but don’t worry about it, you think I can easily pick out one white lady from another off the street? And I mean, your hair and eyes are still different, I doubt you’d look even remotely the same out of costume,” I said with a shrug. “I have no interest in who you are in civies.” Play to her preconceived notions. I’m not white, therefore I’m probably not as smart or critically thinking.
Tension slowly left her face and she nodded. “Alright. I think I can work with you if you’re willing to do the same. A hero is a hero after all,” she said, mostly to herself.
“Indeed,” I agreed. But not all heroes are equal. You’re still a racist bitch at heart, aren’t you, Kayden?
“I need to get going then, if we’re going to be doing something major tomorrow. I’ll send a text for a nearby location we can meet at. Thank you, Kage.” She smiled radiantly and then took off into the sky, leaving a glowing trail behind her.
I watched her leave and cursed under my breath and kicked at a nearby chimney as I debated how this was going to play out long-term. Purity was an insanely racist person by any metric. She formed a splinter team called ‘The Pure’ after all. It wasn’t the Empire’s motives she disliked, it was their methods and Max Anders in particular. But she also loved her daughter and was the closest thing poor Theo Anders had to a maternal figure. And she had the potential to be a mass-murderer, what with the whole ‘rampage through the Docks’ crap she pulled after her identity was outed and her child taken. Tragic, but worth slaughtering civilians? I chalked up the lack of kill-order to either ‘Wildbow hadn’t thought of it yet’ or ‘Cauldron meddling’, because she was a fairly powerful cape. I wasn’t going to throw away a potential resource, but neither did I want a ticking-time bomb as a permanent ally.
Problems for the future.
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I had almost forgotten how to use phone-books, but I wasn’t quite that young. I’d had to crack one open a time or two and the Heberts were in there believe it or not. Consequence of having a landline even when most of the world was transitioning to cell phones. I punched in the number and waited patiently.
A man’s voice answered. “Hebert residence.”
I eyed my watch and decided it wasn’t too late or odd to be calling. I altered my voice with Lunatic Eyes to sound a touch younger. Well… quite a bit younger really. “Hi there, I’m calling to speak to Taylor?”
Suspicion instantly entered into what I could only assume was Danny Hebert’s voice. “May I ask who’s calling?”
Right, bullied daughter. Probably thought it was a prank call or something. “My name is Mak, I have a group project with her, for Parahuman studies.”
“Just a moment.”
I heard Danny speaking muffled words and another one answer. Then Taylor’s voice filled the line. “Mak?” She asked tentatively.
“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t mind the voice, just aging it down a bit. How’re you feeling?”
“Better, thanks to you and Pa- Amy. Why are you calling exactly?”
“Wellllllll,” I drawled. “I have an opportunity to strike a pretty good solid blow against the ABB thanks to a local cape’s efforts, but I figured the more the merrier. You up for it?” I heard her inhale sharply and practically feel the effort of thought she was putting into it. “You wouldn’t need to be on the frontline if you don’t want to, just your power’s information gathering ability would be incredible. And even if Lung shows up… Well, I’ll be there.”
“So Canberra was real then? All the rumors and speculation?” There was a note of excitement in her tone now. “Teleporting a city, fighting off the Simurgh, that was all y- Magus?”
“Yep.”
“Count me in.” Steel entered her voice. Good. Lung hadn’t broken her.
“Excellent. There’s a cafe on the Boardwalk. Fancy gold lettering, french name. Meet me there tomorrow, after school. Bring your costume, if you can.”
“I will. Thanks.”
“‘Course. See ya.”
“Yeah, see you.”
She hung up and I let out a low chuckle. Burned half to death and still itching to fight, eh?
Queen of Escalation indeed…
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As late as it was getting, I still had a few things to do before I turned in for the night. More specifically, I had to establish an alibi and then follow through with my intentions of healing all the long-term patients that I had been refused access to. So I made sure I was seen throughout the Rig after I requested a transport and walked into my pseudo-Tinker’s lab. Meanwhile, a duplicate that I had created was healing patients under the cover of multiple illusions.
The Vestments were truly a cheat code of epic proportions, but just donning them didn’t necessarily mean I had to access their full power and risk burning myself out. Creating a single duplicate of myself and maintaining it was child’s play compared to other feats I’d pulled off while wearing it. Then I just had to trust myself as I began another portion of my plan.
See, I wasn’t able to fugue properly as I wasn’t a true Tinker. It made things go by incredibly slowly and made my magi-tech come out rather shoddy as well. But, I had the education of a Clocktower Mage as well. Including one of their staples: Hypnosis. Usually used to make mortals forget anything about the Moonlit world, it could also be used on oneself in order to hyper-focus on a task, like rituals or in my case, creating technology.
So I fixated on what I wanted built, then cast the spell and slipped into a mental haze.
I’m not sure how long passed as things were just a fog of motion as I went about building what I’d envisioned, but it was like a dream in the sense that time stretched and compressed in equal measure, both no time and all the time in the world passing me by.
I was broken out of that state when I felt a solid shake on my arm. “-ak! MAK!”
I blinked at the concerned expression on Hannah’s face, but rubbed at my rather dry and itchy eyes. “Sorry, MM, I think I was experiencing a Tinker fugue for the first time,” I lied. “What's up?”
“Director Piggot was wondering where you were. You’ve been here all night?”
“I… think so? Came in around eight last night cause I had some ideas on how to improve the Tinker aspect of my abilities.” I stretched a bit, feeling joints pop. And now that I was paying attention, I was really hungry and thirsty. “What time is it anyway?”
“It’s ten a.m. You were fuguing for a good fourteen hours,” Hannah shook her head in an exasperated motion. “Seriously, Colin is bad enough. Start setting alarms or something. It’s a good thing we’re on leave right now, otherwise you might have missed an appointment or something.”
“Sorry,” I apologized again. “What was that about the Director wanting to see me?”
“No, she was literally just wondering where you were. Tried emailing and calling you, even sent an agent by your residence. You know you can live somewhere other than a hotel, right?”
“I’ve had other priorities,” I shrugged. “I’ll look into a proper home soon, I promise. Why’d the Director want to know my location exactly?”
“Because she received a series of very strongly worded, almost threatening, calls and emails from members of the hospital administration. Somebody apparently went through all of their long-term care facilities and healed everyone. Something I know you were not expressly authorized to do.” MM stared at me with crossed arms, but her eyes were smiling. “But, since we have very clear evidence that you were here all night, we can chalk it up to a new parahuman healer instead.”
“I’d have thought you’d be a bit more annoyed. After all, that parahuman healer wasn’t authorized to do something like that, just like I wasn’t authorized to go after Coil,” I said innocently.
Hannah’s answering look was mildly irritated. “Apples and oranges, Mak. Moving against Coil was reckless and could have endangered the stability of the city. Still might. A mysterious healer bending the rules to get around corporate greed and heal those who needed it? That’s just a Good Samaritan at work as far as I’m concerned.”
“Ah, so you admit that bending the rules can be acceptable in certain circumstances?” I asked.
“I never said that. But… yes. Laws are not perfect and cannot be used universally. Especially since capes came around,” she muttered the last part. “However, as members of the Protectorate, our mandate is to uphold the law. We should not sidestep it without extreme circumstances or need, else we might become little better than the parahumans of China, Russia, or Africa. Warlords and tyrants. Rulers.” Her eyes were distant, as if looking at some far off memory. “I’ve seen in person what a world ruled by the strong is like. It is far from pleasant.”
“...I’ll try to be better about following the rules, MM, because you’re right, actively intervening and trying to rule would make parahumans into tyrants. Like something out of the Dark Age. But I can’t just stand by while people are suffering and I can do something.”
Hannah shook her head and patted me on the shoulder. “You wouldn’t be a hero otherwise. Just… be careful. It’s a slippery slope once you start ignoring the law.”
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Friday, February 25, 2011
After my fugue session and brief conversation with Hannah, I crashed. Hard. By the time I woke up, it was past four in the afternoon and I felt a brief flare of panic.
I’m supposed to be at the Boardwalk!
I hastily took a shower, shaved, and threw on fresh clothes, then stepped from the shadows of my room on the Rig to the shadows beneath the edge of a building on the Boardwalk. I joined the growing Friday-afternoon crowd until I was able to make it into the cafe, praying that Taylor was still there and wouldn’t take my being late personally.
Thankfully, she was still there, though not alone.
Goddammit Lisa…
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A/N: Apologies dear Patrons, I wanted to try and get another chapter out in addition to this, but I fell sick this week and barely got this one out. I forgot (and I think a lot of writers in general do too) that Purity is in her vigilante phase at this point pre-canon. Still not a good person and I don't intend to white-wash her, but she has a ton of firepower and it would be a shame to waste that. Hope y'all have a good week :)
Comments
X Blade
Good job
ciaran mullen
great story <3
