Fluff Chapter Sixty-Six - Yet Another Call

Chapter Sixty-Six - Yet Another Call

lanie was almost getting used to being called over by the HRT to deal with Boss-related issues.

Most new heroes... or hero-adjacents, got into a bit of trouble every month or so. In the bigger, busier cities, where there was an actual villain presence there would be more frequent issues, but even then, it was rarely the sa person every ti.

The Boss and her brats were trying to turn the norm into an exception. lanie pulled her mask up to rub at her eyes, then tugged it back down. The troopers in the armoured van with her made a point of not looking.

Who could bla her for being a little tired? It was nearing supper-ti. She should have been in her little flat, eating canned spaghetti, not being shuttled over to so super-cri scene.

The van rolled to a stop, the back doors opened, and the troopers leapt out of the vehicle. Of the six, four carried non-lethals. Guns that fired electrified nets, or large-bore guns that fired bean-bag rounds. They had tasers and pepper-spray cans on their hips. The last two had proper assault rifles, loaded with a mix of tracer, armour-piercing, and hollow-point rounds.

The HRT t violence with violence in kind. A rogue playing around and landing softened blows while avoiding civilians would get a bean-bag to the face. A villain on a murder spree would be put down like a rabid dog.

That was the price of civilization in an era of heroes and villains.

lanie jumped out last, then she straightened her back and took on the guise of laton. She wasn’t all that keen on acting the hero. It took too much energy, and all the other heroes got from it was so better PR.

She didn’t care if her action figures didn’t sell well or if her Witter didn’t have the most followers. She cared more about getting stuff done. Which had sohow translated into a style of its own which the damned HRT PR-reps adored. It was ‘genuine’ and ‘business-like’ in a way that appealed to a certain demographic.

Point was, she walked out of the van as if she was about to walk up to soone who owed her a heap of cash.

What she found was a few warehouses, so smaller factories, and a couple of empty lots nearby. This was the more active, industrial side of Eauclaire, a city that was very much not known for its industry.

A couple of police cars were parked on either end of the street, and a few more Heroic Response Team vans too, with white-green lights flashing and lighting up the area even though the sun wasn’t down yet.

There weren’t many gawkers out, but she knew that would change. The news crews were probably already breaking speed limits to be the first on the scene.

Most of the attention was on a nondescript building in the middle of the street. Just so warehouse made of cinderblocks with a loading door at the front and not much of a yard around it.

A row of n and won were being held to one side. She counted nine of them, in all-black one-piece outfits that made it hard to make out any details about them. Chubby or thin, male or female, it was all hidden by the bagginess. The pile of helts nearby suggested that there was more to it than just that.

“What in all the damns is that?” she muttered.

“Ma’am,” a trooper said as he approached her. It was one of the legal-advisor troopers. Lightly ard and armoured, with a tablet computer practically fixed to his hands. “We have the, ah, heroes of the day off to the side. If you want to address them.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. He led her, but stayed close enough to talk. “What’s the situation here?”

“Multiple calls from pedestrians and passersby, they heard gunshots within the warehouse. One distressed call from a young woman whose car was wrecked, just over there.” He pointed to an alley next to the warehouse where a car was, indeed, a write-off. By the looks of it a van within the alley had ramd into its side. “We arrived on the scene to find the Boss and her, ah, brigade, as well as HRT-affiliate hero Glamazon on the scene. They captured a number of suspects.”

“I can see that,” lanie said. The Boss had a real gift for finding trouble. “Any idea of the tiline yet?”

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

“Um, no ma’am. There’s a big gap between the call, and our arrival,” he said.

“Why’s that?” she asked.

“Initial reports didn’t suggest mask involvent. The first responders were the police. Um, it’s possible that the heroes here left, then returned.”

lanie humd. That was a little weird. “Why do you think that?”

“Well, they have ice cream.”

When she found the Boss, her many brats (was there another, new one?) and Glamazon, they were all grouped together next to a bus stop. The Boss was straight-backed and looked serious, with her lips in a thin line and what lanie could see of her brows pressed together. She was holding a chocolate-vanilla swirl in one hand, partially licked.

The kids had ice cream too, though most of theirs was spread across their cheeks and hands and so on their costus. The bear-girl, Ursa Minor, had her plastic bear mask lifted up so much to eat that lanie was quite certain she couldn’t see anything.

“So,” lanie said as she got closer. “What was it this ti?”

The Boss shrugged. “They kidnapped my sis-- one of my companions.” She gestured to two of the girls, including the one that lanie wasn’t familiar with and who didn’t seem to have much of a costu going on except for a half-mask and a lab coat. “And a friend too,” the Boss added.

The legal-trooper was noting things down, though she knew this was being recorded. “So, they kidnapped two kids off the street or sothing?”

“We were at the dollar store!” Bandit... one of Bandit, said.

lanie rubbed her eyes. There was a lot she wanted to say. The Boss was being sothing of a thorn. But, on the other hand, how could you tell a young woman not to act to save her own sister.

The fact that at least one of the Boss’ brats was her sister was an open secret. Money was on two of the girls being sisters and the other being a family friend that just tagged along. Now there was yet another new girl.

It was common knowledge that Power Day tended to work out best for younger people, but that usually ant teens-to-young-adults, with the average age being sothing like twenty-one. The Boss and her crew were going to skew the entire statistics on their own at this rate.

The Boss nodded, and lanie snapped back to attention.

“They kidnapped two of them, yes. We knew where they were since... well, keep this between us?”

lanie touched the trooper on the shoulder, and he paused the recording. She knew he’d start it up as soon as he could. “Go on?”

“Bandit can see through all of her... selves,” the Boss said

lanie nodded. That wasn't too surprising. A few clone-makers could see and sense through their own clones. Usually it ca with a downside, like the clones only lasting a certain amount of ti, or sothing like that. In this case, it seed like Bandit was limited to three identical or near-identical clones of herself. That was probably for the best. The HRT got really twitchy when people had exponential powers.

“We’ll keep it to ourselves,” she said. “So, you knew where they’d taken her. Or one of her, anyway. Why didn’t you call it in?”

Glamazon looked to the Boss, then back to lanie. There was sothing else, but the girl was being quiet about it. Maybe she could poke later.

“We didn’t have ti? They have a torture room in there,” the Boss said. “We ca as soon as we could.”

“Right,” lanie said. What kind of ss was all of this? “What’d you find in there?” she asked with a gesture over her shoulder to the warehouse.

The Boss worked her jaw while eyeing the building in question, then she turned her focus back onto lanie.

When had she gone from a shy, bumbling girl to soone she wasn’t sure she wanted to et in a dark alleyway? There was sothing about the kid that had changed, or maybe that had beco more obvious since they’d first t.

“Nothing happened that we couldn’t handle,” she said.

And that was that.

They asked a few more questions, got no answers, and then the girls took their leave, which left the HRT and lanie with a whole lot more questions to ask.