Warlord

Chapter 4

It was too good to be true, that the empire fucked off. I never believed it but I wanted to hope. Hope they'd realize I was unstoppable and the only path was to give up or get out. No such luck. The bastards dug their heels in.

See while the Protectorate took a 'we're not dumb enough to go toe to toe with someone who casually takes out a ramped up lung' approach, the public cried for blood from my body count that was closing in on triple digits. Fifty was the threshold for a kill order so people were chomping at the bit.

Fuck I hated this city. I cleaned up the ship graveyard. I took out Lung, I was ridding the city of nazis, and all the pearl clutching suburban folk could think was that I wasn't being civil about it. The nazis were civil outside of the racial slurs, and the sexuality slurs, and the slurs for trans people, and the slurs for disabled people, and the slurs for the poor. Outside of that they acted civil.

Meanwhile I was a murderous bitch who stole fathers and sons from their families. Which was true.

Point was outside of the bad press the nazi capes were starting to come out and preform shows of force, but also community outreach. They were trying to win the war with good PR as nazis. And they were winning on that front not that they could stop me.

So I took action. Violent nazi killing action. My first showing was now. PHO talked about Krieg showing up with Alabaster and Rune to terrorize some businesses into becoming empire fronts. So I flew straight there, and found the trio doing just that. Smashing up a storefront.

My only problem was Rune. She was still a teen and just like with Winslow I really didn't want to kill a teenager. She was young enough her choice in the matter felt suspect compared to her upbringing.

Still that left the other pair. One of which was in full SS uniform because the nazis didn't hold back on being as terrible as they could be. The other less covered up since his power mutation made him stand out.

I landed stealthily before them in the middle of the street. Protectorate had yet to respond, and neither had new wave. Then lifting my stealth I looked at them. "I thought I made myself clear on nazi fucks in Brocton Bay."

A moment later my fuck physics hammer appeared.

Rune fell in behind Krieg with Alabaster standing before me with nothing but tinkertech weapons. Weapons which he opened fire with. Weapons that did literally nothing to me. Lasers not burning, the balck beam that tore matter apart doing nothing. That grenade that turned into a blackhole for a moment doing nothing.

I crossed the distance in a second and smashed Alabaster into the ground hard enough that windows would have shattered if I hadn't contained the pressure wave. My hammer turning the supposed immortal into paste.

Rune chucked rocks at me tryin to crush and burry me but I just unmade them as they got close.

Krieg though? His power always seemed a bit strange. A brute but not by his own strength. Heck his power was suspiciously like a weaker more specialized version of mine. HE controlled the area around himself. Made other brutes into weaklings, made himself tough as nails.

Flying right up into his space I reached out a hand and picked him up by the throat. "Do you even have a power? You're as pathetic as your grunts."

A desperate haymaker came for my head and it did literally nothing. Fist met immovable object, but somehow his power prevented the force from hurting him. Kicking punching he could do nothing. He shouted in anger and then as my hand closed in around him he turned to desperation before his voice cut out entirely.

Before his eyes shut I whispered, "You could have left, lived. Or just given up being a nazi. You chose this. Die." And I crushed his neck and tossed him to the side.

Rune spent every second since I grabbed Krieg to fly away and I let her. Kids got to live, especially if they ran rather than commit to being terrible.

Behind me I noted Alabaster hadn't reformed, which according to his well-known four second respawn meant he was playing possum with a new power use, or I'd killed him for good.

With the street covered in blood and debris, and a single dead nazi body, I then decided to tag one of Runes rocks with my anarchist anti-fascist graffiti.

Something that took long enough for Miss Militia to arrive. Wow I hadn't actually met her yet. Weird. Her gun flickered between a few states before settling on an anti-material rifle. "Goddess, you're under arrest."

"No." And I vanished from her sight, my hammer unmade as I flew off.

Mentally I tallied the nazi kill count. Kaiser was still alive, along with Purity, Viktor, Crusader, Stormtiger, the giantess twins, Rune, and Othella. The last two being off my kill list, but the rest would die if I found them.

Especially Kaiser.

Halfway across town I stopped when I realized something. Miss Militia tried to arrest me despite that being a dumb impossible thing. She knew she couldn't take me. Her power was ordinary guns. Something failed to add up there. If they seriously wanted to arrest me, she would have stalled for back up. Miss Militia knew she couldn't take me alone if she was going against orders. Thus it had to be orders to arrest me but they weren't serious about them?

Wow that might've been the cleanest logic I'd ever used.

Either way it seemed that the Protectorate and PRT would be trying to take me in but not in any serious capacity. Wait, no that's what they did with the gangs. I was being treated like Lung. Token efforts to fight but them knowing it'd never work.

Fuck that felt awkward, and kinda bad. I wasn't as bad as Lung. I stuck to my morals pretty hard, even in a school full of the most despicable non-nazis I'd ever seen. That I'd be seen as the guy who when I first met him was talking about killing kids and then ended up almost killing Taylor. The girl life seemed to have a hard on for making miserable. I was nothing like that bastard.

Still if PRT response to me changed I might want to go look it up on PHO. So I flew back to my apartment all stealthy like and got onto my as high end as could be computer to check to see what changed.

In doing so I stumbled upon the thread of my fight literally minutes ago. How the hell were these people so fast?! Well some of them seemed to be asking the important question of why'd I let Rune go when I could easily have caught her. I may have used my personal account to simply agree with them correctly identifying my reasoning.

A comment that got shat on a minute later.

Others argued about what my powers were. That I was just Alexandria with a hammer, or secretly an endbringer (thanks Void cowboy, that was like the wrongest answer), or some kind of power copier. A big argument was over if my no selling of Krieg was a trump power, because someone let slip the PRT cape classifications and PHO went nuts trying to figure them out and start trying to rank capes.

Overall the whole thread tested my patience and anxiety control. I then needed to unwind in the only way I knew how. Hanging out with my unoffical little sister Taylor.

It was two days after the big stalk and talk. Second day of footage didn't quite get the confession either and had more psychological torment than physical. I made Emma trip on her strut away after a particularly brutal attempt to blame Taylor for her own mother's death. An attempt that seemed to hurt her pretty bad.

She didn't want to talk about it afterwards and I left her alone.

Today though? Today I'd make sure she was alright, Saturdays meant no school so hopefully her spirits were a bit better.

In my civvie guise I knocked on the door and thankfully saw him coming before someone I could only assume was her father answered.

His face spoke of unspeakable weariness. "How can I help you?"

"Uh can you tell Taylor I'm here? I'm a friend."

"She said she wanted to pick something up at the grocery store, won't be back for a while."

"Oh… well uhm." this was awkward.

With a small smile he opened the door wider and stepped out of the way. "I haven't seen her have friends over in a long time. Come in."

Taking the invite on its face I walked on in. "Have you ever wondered why?"

"I have." His eyes flickered to me while he lead me into the living room. "But maybe you could finally answer the question."

"That'd take breaking her trust and I'm not willing to do that." Could never quite tell if my blunt honest was a blessing or a curse. "But I think the answer is pretty self-evident if you think about it."

That plastered a hard look on his face. He found his palms interesting for a moment as he opened them in his lap from the recliner. "It probably is. I haven't been the most… attentive parent."

"A fucking understatement but you're still leagues better than my parents." Wow I got him to wince.

"I deserve that."

"Yup."

That brought him to a long pause. "So how did you meet my daughter?"

"Bumped into each other a few times while out and about and I felt a little protective of a teen girl out alone in Brockton Bay. This city kinda sucks."

"I think it's better than most folks give it credit for. Hell with the graveyard gone the city might finally recover. Shame it took a mass murderer to do it." Oh he did not just insult me to my face. Regardless of the insults validity.

"Well that mass murderer is restricting it to nazis, so I can't complain. People have been way too tolerant of actual nazi murderers in this city."

His face hardened. "You sound a lot like Annette."

"Then she's a smart woman."

"She was." What did he… oh, OH he was talking about Taylor's mom. Wow her mom was anti-fascist?

"Taylor actually avoids talking about her, think you could tell me?"

Standing up he walked towards the kitchen. "Not without a beer."

True enough he came back with one and then dove into talking about his dead wife. Stories that frankly made her seem like a fucking bad ass. She apparently ran with Lustrum which was all sorts of cool. Militant feminist turned mother turned professor. Used to throw bricks at cops too. Aka the coolest mom I'd ever heard of.

Then part way through him rambling off on another story, Taylor walked in with several bags of groceries. She took one look at me and her whole body tensed. "Hey Aster."

"Hi Taylor! You want any help with those?"

"Its fine." And she walked into the kitchen.

Of course I ditched her dad, who wasn't terrible like mine but the fucker still had his head stuck in the past with his wife rather than the present with his daughter. Maybe it was the low empathy, but I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

Still I followed her in and sat at the kitchen table while she put stuff away. "Wanted to check in with you. You doing alright?"

"I'm fine." More and more bags emptied as she stowed the goods. Lot of stuff for cooking but Danny didn't strike me as a cooking man.

"I've never lied to you, don't lie to me."

Her head swiveled half way to the pantry to strike me with a glare. The spiders in the basement suddenly moving in their webs. With a breath, her motion resumed and she finished stowing the can of tomato sauce. "I can't decide on the thing. The one I want, requires me to…" She trailed off as her eyes glanced to the kitchen door.

In the other room her father just managed to get up after stewing for a while. Both of us watching him wander over to kitchen. Entering he looked between the two of us. "So I see you got a new friend."

"Yea." Taylor looked so fucking uncomfortable.

"You haven't had many friends over in a while." Oh damn I wanted to throttle him.

Which is why I cut in before she could answer. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Their shared immediate snap to me stares and glares were unsettling. My anxiety almost broke out of its carefully managed prison, but I held my ground as Danny frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You just told me you haven't been there for your daughter. You left her to fend for herself, and now you're trying to pry into her business rather than earning her trust back first. Maybe learn her boundaries and respect them and actually be there for her before you expect her to open back up."

"Don't talk to my dad like that." Oh fuck she was mad but hell I was mad too.

"No, she's right. I deserve that." Wow, I knew there was a reason I hadn't punched his face in yet. Maybe it was his beer loosening him up. "I didn't even know about the bullying until I found you in the hospital. I haven't been there for you, why would you trust me with anything?"

That left Taylor's mouth hanging open just a crack before sealing shut. Sorrow covering her face. "I was the one who didn't tell you."

"Hard to tell a man who would barely talk to you. I think-" Steeling his face with a glance up wards and tightened fists he continued. "I think I needed to hear that, someone calling me out on my shit." His gaze lowered. "I don't know you anymore little owl and that scares me. I can't protect you and-"

I cut in. "If you're going to lose her too its easier if you've got some distance?"

He shook his head. "She grew up without me. I've been stuck on how she was, with Annette and I but she grew up, and I wasn't there."

Taylor started for the door but I called out to her all the same. "Taylor, I'd give him a chance. But it's your choice." She only slowed a step before heading upstairs. It turned to him. "Whatever she says, whatever she wants, you need to follow her lead. Let her make the decisions, don't force anything onto her. Not even for her own good."

"I want to protect her." Slowly he made his way over and put away the last of the groceries.

"Too bad, she can protect herself."

"She ended up in the hospital."

A million responses sat upon the tip of my tongue but I couldn't say them. Not without breaking her trust. Taylor didn't tell her dad for a reason, and as much as she should, she had control and trust issues and those trumped anything else. Giving her someone she could trust and talk to felt a million times more important than fixing her physical situation.

I stood up, stretched, and said to him without looking at him, "I'm not your boss, do whatever you want." and I walked out of the Hebert house.