Fluff Chapter Fifty-Nine - Gremlins in the City

Chapter Fifty-Nine - Gremlins in the City

Emily had a headache, but she imagined that the HRF's was a thousand tis worse.

They had spent the night, two days ago, in the warehouse that Trinity had found. It wasn't comfortable, or amusing, but it had been safe. Still, the entire ti, Emily couldn't help but feel like they were about to be pounced on.

So she had devised a plan. One that, much to her sha, relied a lot on Maple. She was... a little hesitant to put any pressure on Maple. The girl was her smallest sister, and even if she wasn't the newest now that Aurora was here, Emily still felt like Maple was fragile. The girl was often withdrawn, and shy, and seed almost afraid of her own shadow.

She had asked anyway, and Maple was overjoyed. At least, Emily thought she was? It wasn't like Maple was that emotive.Trinity would have been bouncing on the spot and Teddy bragging like the bear that got to the honey, but Maple was far more reserved than her sisters.

Her plan was simple, and she had enacted it within an hour of everyone waking up the next morning.

They couldn't stay in the warehouse anyway. It had no running water, no place to bathe, and the nearest thing to a kitchen was a tiny breakroom. They had to go.

But just because they had to leave didn't an that she couldn't turn that leaving into an opportunity. They turned the warehouse into a trap. Maple was kind enough to rip the microwave they found in the break room apart and turned the digital clock in it into a tir plugged into a PA system.

The rest of her sisters laid out their own traps. Cords at ankle height across the floor, heavy items placed above doors that were left ajar, Trinity found an entire tub of petroleum jelly and gleefully spread it across a section of linoleum flooring.

The traps were a little childish and silly, sure, but that didn't matter. The goal was to slow anyone inspecting the building down.

They left, the tir on Maple's alarm system set to go off three hours after they left.

Trinity scouted ahead, and by mid-morning, they were staying in a small restaurant not too far from the more industrial section of Saint Arie. The restaurant had gas stoves, which she managed to turn on to cook up so breakfast from a few cans of non-perishables.

They left that restaurant in the early evening, after noticing a few HRF patrol cars a few blocks over.

They moved slowly, making sure to look up and avoid notice, and they left traps in their wake.

Emily was... kind of terrified of her sisters. Moreso than usual. Given just a few minutes to make so traps, they ca up with silly things. Given half a day... they had spring-loaded boards with rusty nails hidden behind doors, with trigger chanisms that were surprisingly complex.

They did more than just that, of course. If the patrols were a problem, why not address them?

That first evening, after finding a place where they could stay for the night, they started producing caltrops using nails. They had a collection of broken glass bottles and she had to make the difficult choice of whether or not to veto the molotov cocktails. She decided not to set the city on fire.

Trinity was sent out to scout for HRF patrols, and when they found one investigating one of their earlier traps, she sent Teddy out with a knife.

The bear girl popped six tires before Emily Sisterported her back to her side and out of the grasp of any troopers.

She slept a little better that night.

Her plan hinged on sothing rather simple: logistics.

If she was having a hard ti scrounging up materials and food and water for such a small group, then she imagined that the HRF might be having trouble as well. They had a lot more staff, more troopers, heroes that wanted to be pampered.

The next day, they circled around and discovered the main artery that the HRF used to draw in supplies. They had set up a way station just within the bounds of the Endga. She imagined that it had been outside when this all started, but the encroaching Endga had swallowed it up.

Her sisters set their traps. Thin wooden boards with nails across so roads, caltrops and broken glass spread on others and through alleys to deter search parties, a few more trip-wire traps.

Her sisters couldn't stop giggling. It was rather disconcerting, but... well, it was working.

They stole a transport van that had co into the waystation and which was poorly guarded. Aurora drove it off to their newest hideout, then they all fell on it like vultures. They had new equipnt after that. Radios, clothing for troopers, first aid kits and survival gear. Even a crate of MREs which tasted... alright.

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They couldn't keep it all, of course, but they could scatter it all over the place and make a ss.

That evening, they slashed more tires with the cover of early darkness, then after listening into the radio chatter for a while (with Maple tinkering on the device to make it impossible to trace) Emily had a good idea of how their codes and procedures worked.

There were probably ways to make it much harder for soone to simply listen in and understand the chatter. More codes and euphemisms and lingo, but the HRF was strained, and they were a little lazy.

She coached Aurora on what to say since her voice was the deepest amongst them, then they started to call for reinforcents from one station or another. Maple made a voice changer, and soon they were faking two-way conversations, calling out alerts at three in the morning, and basically gave the HRF the run-around all night.

Eventually they figured it out and stopped using radios at all, but that was fine.

The goal wasn't just to disrupt the HRF. It was to slow them down and make the entire operation in this Endga as costly as possible.

They spent the morning doing more creative sabotage. Emily was particularly fond of taking out HRF vehicles. She ntioned adding sugar into their gas tanks when they were parked at one of the depots, but Maple ca up with a better solution, sothing that had required bleach and packing foam and a few other things mixed together and poured into a cheap gas tank.

She almost felt bad when a couple of HRF trucks had their hoods blown clean off an hour later.

They started guarding their depots after that, so they had to move on to other things. It was... well, she was loath to admit it, but it was kind of fun. Like playing pranks on people, only not quite entirely so innocent.

That was the part that made her stomach twist. There were people on the other side of the fun.

Troopers with twisted ankles, who would need tetanus shots, and maybe a bit of therapy. There were heroes--people that she had maybe even admired, in the sa way that one might admire a firefighter, or an idol from afar--who were rushing from one end of the city to the other on a wild goose chase because of her and her sisters.

Emily rubbed at her forehead and tried not to think about that too hard. Thinking about it wouldn't help. They were still coming after her sisters. They were still trying to win the Endga. They still had numbers, vehicles, radios, safehouses, dics, food, water, and official permission to punch children in the face if those children happened to be villains.

So no, she wasn't going to feel too bad.

Maybe a little bad? She was pretty sure that a normal, non-villainous person would be feeling a bit worse, at the mont.

She wasn't going to stop, though. They were so close to winning. Another day. She didn't know if the HRF was aware of just how close they were to losing this entire thing, but she didn't care.

"They're moving different," Trinity said.

Emily looked up.

They were in the back room of a small hardware store. The front windows had been covered with old posters and a few shelves had been pushed around to make the place look as abandoned as possible from the street. It slled like dust, tal, and old paint. There was a bathroom, which had been the deciding factor when Emily picked the place.

One of Trinity's bodies was sitting in a large outdoor recliner.

"Different how?" Emily asked.

"Less dumb," Trinity said.

Teddy, who was lying across two sacks of potting soil like a bear on a couch, snorted. "They're evolving."

"Where are they heading?" Emily asked.

Trinity frowned, then frowned harder. "Uh, they're mostly moving away from here?"

Her other body was scouting, and had sohow made her way to the upper floor of a building that had a good view of the HRF headquarters.

"I think they think we're on the other end of the city," Trinity said.

"Oh... what doesn't make any sense," Emily said.

"Could it be a trap?" Athena asked.

"Maybe. Let's grab what we can get in here. Can soone find Maple? And... yeah, one last move. Then we'll hunker down for the last few hours. This is almost done."

She couldn't wait to be back ho.

***