Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (31 page)

“Meg?”

“Ooh. Looks like we’re not going to make it that far.”

“What’s happening?”

“People shouldn’t be stereotypes. Big guy, bigger mouth, bad hygiene. He’s telling
Annabeth
off and Julie’s yelling at him.”

“Meg, get them
out
of there.”

“Too late—one of them pushed
Annabeth
. Oops, she tripped.”

I closed my eyes.

“
Aaand
Dane just decked him. Talk later,
gotta
kick some ass.” And she hung up.

Artemis began checking her e-lasers, loosening her shoulder and hip holsters. “How will they do?”

I handed the cell back, strangely calm. “Megan and Julie took Master Li’s class with me, and Meg usually packs a collapsible baton. I saw her use it, once.”

That once was when some drunk varsity boys tried to pick a fight with Dane after a game, and Meg decided she didn’t like the numbers. She whipped the thing out (six inches retracted, nearly a foot and a half extended) in a swing that locked it open with a wicked
k-chunk
sound, and asked Dane if she could have the extras. That ended the party.

A knot of motion caught my eye. “And it looks like they’ve got help. A bunch of the construction guys just headed under the trees.” Over by The Fortress’ doors, heads turned towards the park as
Shankman
lost the attention of his audience.

“
Astra, Artemis, Rush, stand by,
” Lei
Zi
said. “
We’re almost there. If Captain
Verres
gives the go then Artemis and Rush will tag, Astra will tie. Work the south edge; the Guardians will work the north.
”

“South edge, understood, I said. “Dispatch, Captain
Verres
please?”

“
Stand by
,” he responded. “
I’m sending in a squad to try and isolate the fight. This doesn’t have to spread.
”

Then someone fired the rocket. The fire-trail bloomed, from the trees right into one of the club’s narrow windows, and the explosion threw chunks of the wall into the crowd ahead of the fireball.

“
Sweet mother of— Go!
”
Verres
yelled.

“
All Sentinels
,
cancel containment, assume public-safety priorities!
” Lei
Zi
seconded.

Artemis leaped off the edge and I caught her hands as we fell, free-fall most of the way down to pull into a gee-ripping arc under the trees. I dropped her into the middle of the fight and kept going, landing on the sidewalk at the edge of the dust-choked blast zone. Where a guy with a sign took a swing at me.

“
Are you completely
insane
?”

I took the broken sign away and zip-cuffed him, then did the same for the idiot covered in cement dust who emptied his pistol into my back. From the suit and tie, I guessed the guy fancied himself one of
Shankman’s
bodyguards. The Next Great Statesman himself ran for it, surrounded by more suits. With no more threats of violence, I turned to examine the stunned and fallen demonstrators in time to see Rush drop
Quin
off in a blur of speed.

“
Astra, we have the street, take the interior
,” Lei
Zi
instructed.

“Interior, on it!” I launched myself for the hole in the wall, and the second rocket caught me. It helpfully blew me through the hole, throwing me through the tables to slide across the dance floor.

“
Astra! Status!
” Lei
Zi
called through the ringing in my head.

“Just—
 
Hit but mobile.” I sat up to prove it and sucked in a breath, eyes tearing.
Not the ribs again
.

A moment ticked by, then “
Rush has found the launchers, two laser-guided throwaways
.
They put a guy on top of the
Marino Park
coffee kiosk with them
.
Stand down till you’re able
.”

“Thanks,” I said, then looked up. Marcus tossed a table aside to loom over me, offering a hand up I gladly accepted.

“You okay?” the bouncer asked. “Rough entrance.”

I nodded. “I’m good. Is anybody hurt?”

“Nah. Hardly anybody’s here before ten, and I sent everyone else out the back way when
Shankman
and his boys started their scene. Figured I could take them myself if they got through the door.” He looked around at the shattered and scattered tables. A few were burning, and flames crept up the outside wall’s interior paneling.

“I don’t think we’re opening for lunch. Let me get the extinguisher before the fire-system goes off.”

“Don’t mind me.” He got busy while I hugged my ribs and tried to think. My head rang, the world wobbled, spent rocket and explosive burned my nose, and I was beginning to see a sad trend. Enter a house, get blown out the window. Visit a dealership, get blown out into the parking lot. Drop in on a riot, get blown
into
the club. Did the Hollywood Knights have weeks like this?

When the wobbliness faded, I exited through the club’s front door. The “park” was chaos, but, amazingly, there were
no
fatalities. Probably nobody would ever know the credit belonged to Seven. He’d left his GQ look behind and I’d flown right by him without noticing. Collar open and shirtsleeves up, he’d worked his way through the mob so that when the rockets went in he’d been standing right next to the tight group of mourners by the wall. Later he told me he’d been focusing
hard
on nobody getting killed, and apparently his luck listened to him.

Paramedics stepped carefully among sitting and prone protestors. Captain
Verres
’ riot-trained officers moved through the crowd in threes and fours, efficiently cuffing and directing. They didn’t have a lot of fighting to put down; the explosions had changed most demonstrator’s priorities and, going with the flow, they’d thrown flash-bangs to encourage confusion and flight (I’d heard them from inside). Now they swept through a mostly pacified crowd. The air reeked of burned magnesium-ammonium
perchlorate
, and I stepped around rows of zip-cuffed detainees, searching.

I couldn’t see them.
Focus. Be Astra.

“Dispatch.” I queried. “Status nominal. Location of Lei
Zi
?”

“
Lei
Zi
location police command center, A-One. Standing order: do not engage
.
Assist at discretion.”

“Thank you. Artemis’ location?”

“
A-Two location 300 feet to your southwest
.”

I
didn’t
run.

Every concentration of power creates its own opposition, whether that power is military, political, monetary, or social. Opposition groups may or may not be violent, largely depending upon their aims and whether or not they believe the political environment favors them. Citizen-militia groups existed previous to the Event, and their membership has grown in the wake of each superhuman-caused disaster.

Department of Superhuman Affairs, Threat Assessment 10.4, Summary.

Lei
Zi
and Riptide didn’t even get directly involved, which was all to the good; Lei
Zi
could have stunned dozens, she was that good with her control, and Riptide brought his own water-cannons to the fight, but both would have been hard on the crowd.

I found Artemis with Dane and the Bees.
Annabeth
sat on the bricks, shaken but looking okay, while Julie washed the blood off her knees. Squatting beside her, Dane sported bleeding knuckles and the battle-light of his raiding, slaving, Viking ancestors in his eyes. Megan’s open baton lay ignored a few feet away—she wasn’t stupid enough to claim possession of an illegal concealed weapon in the middle of a police action. A couple of construction guys gave statements to an officer while others stood around.

I nodded to Artemis and kept going. I had an excuse; at the command center, I could hear Lei
Zi
yelling at Captain
Verres
.

“Why didn’t anybody tell us about the Paladins?” I’d never seen her seriously angry, and she had good volume.

“Ma’am,”
Verres
replied politely. “We had no idea they were in town.”

Now I wanted Shelly back for the virtual memory she provided. I vaguely remembered seeing a report on some anti-cape militia groups. They met on weekends to train and prepare, waiting for the day when all of us capes decided it was time to openly take over the government and the country and grind norms beneath our heels. No, really.

“And how could you people miss
rocket launchers
?”

“Ma’am, the team on the kiosk held cameras until they fired. Newsfeed timestamps show they didn’t fire until the Chicago News helicopter spotted your pair on the Newberry Tower. We think their intent was to lure your girl in, then pot her.”

“Brilliant conclusion,
captain
.” She made his rank sound like a swearword.

“They’d have probably settled for any flying cape,” I said, stepping up. I made sure my voice was strong and I stood straight. “Captain
Verres
. It’s good it was me—someone like Red Robin would have been… Well, yuck.”

“Astra.” Taking my offered hand, he returned a firm shake. He looked like his voice, completely bald, bull-neck, solid and competent, and he gave me a quick scan. Under the dust and scorch I must have looked alright, because he chuckled.

“Glad it
was
you, then. Hate to have a hero go down on my watch.”

“Do you know anything about them, yet?”

“Only that they’re locals.” He rubbed his head. “The DSA hasn’t warned us about any local chapters, but both are in our database for public disturbances. My guess is they’ve just been talk till now, and
Shankman’s
campaign pushed them into action.”

So now we had a team of
supervillains
and
homicidally paranoid
normals
with bad intentions. We were
never
coming off of Def-1. Lei
Zi
must have read something in my face, because she exhaled and deliberately relaxed.

“I apologize for my outburst, captain,” she said. Then, quietly, “Astra, I’d like you to return to the Dome; we left no one on watch.”

I looked back at the cleanup, nodded. “Thanks, boss. Captain.” He flipped me a salute as I took off.

Dr. Beth actually sighed when I walked into the infirmary. It hurt to peel out of my costume bodysuit (pretty much a loss, miracle-weave or not) and my breath hitched when I raised my arms. He took one look at my scans and ordered me off patrol duty for at least three days. And no workouts.

“Watch” is a joke; it’s not like the TV shows, where a
superteam
has a monitor room and they spend all their time watching the news feeds and listening to emergency-channel chatter and waiting for Things To Happen. Dispatch plugged right into the Chicago Emergency Dispatch System along with police and emergency services; we got our calls when a situation met a determined set of circumstances. So being on watch just meant waiting—and training, studying, eating, sleeping, or catching up on paperwork while waiting. In my case, catching up on schoolwork for the classes I wasn’t attending right now.