Warlord

Chapter 5

Within the confines of my noise insulated apartment, I found a lot of people being wrong on the internet. Especially about anarchism. My whole thing of tagging No Pasarán and the anarchism symbol and wearing 'no gods, no masters' on my jacket meant that a lot of folks were talking about it. Unfortunately most people saw anarchism as mad-max style anything goes, only the strongest survive sort of thing which was wrong on so many levels.

So I and a couple of other PHO commenters began educating these misguided fools on anarchism and anti-fascism. And unlike my normal crass self I even moderated my language to not get banned because the time it took to hit send meant I could go back and realize how bad of a decision those words would be. Didn't want Tin Mom to bring the hammer down on me rather than the nazi apologists and centrist do nothings.

MLK rightfully blamed the latter for a lot of shit. Turns out the white moderate hated change and defended the status quo, and when the status quo sucked it meat they defended bad shit, but when it's good they defend the good shit. Bunch of thoughtless jerks. They're why all social progress was slow.

That got me quickly tagged as a Goddess of War stan, and someone even joked that maybe I was her. Thank fuck my anxiety was turned off. That would have been a really bad panic attack.

Of course all this typing away meant I almost missed the people with guns right outside my apartment. Almost.

Immediately my full focus turned to those people and the weird part was they were mostly Asian but some were white and working together. Worse they all had a thingy in the back of their necks. Cape shit. Probably explained why the people holding the guns were scared as shitless as the people's homes they were breaking into.

A few dragged my neighbors out, teens included, at gun point.

Fuck.

Immediately I turned to cape mode but then, dashing towards my front door, I realized fuck I lived here! They'd know where Goddess of War lived and thanks to the internet I'd have the whole city knocking in two hours. Worse I realized the only reason I thought of that was because anxiety leaked out when I freaked out about the neighbors.

Clamping down on all of that I watched kicking and screaming people get dragged out of my aura. Another pair of terrified implanted people then tried breaking down my door.

It didn't budge. I reinforced and upgraded my whole apartment and the door was very very upgraded, cause I had a lot of shit. Same reason I had barred windows with reinforced frames.

They tried and tried and then moved on.

I doffed my outfit and then paced about trying to come up with what to do. My favorite plushie flying from my blanket den to my arms to hug. I couldn't reveal myself, and I didn't have a phone to call the PRT. If I did they might trace it back to my apartment and while I hid the incriminating stuff I was obviously wealthier and my place nicer than anything in this section of the city had any right to be. Capital-S Suspicious.

I could sneak out and follow them but as great as my power was, this was exactly the kind of thing I'd need back up for.

And Taylor and I hadn't talked since yesterday and I didn't want to drag her into this.

So, seeing them breaking into the opposite neighbors place, I created a duplicate of their phone. And Snuck out. Nothing said I couldn't call the bootlickers once I was away from my apartment.

So I unlocked my window and temporarily vanished the iron bars as I stealthed onto my fire escape. Donned my cape outfit again, and flew through the night down to the entrance where folks were getting taken with sacks over their heads into a shoddy van.

It drove off after it became full and I started tailing it. Flying through the night eyes on the van as it drove deeper into ABB territory which meant this was them. Only problem was lung was in jail and Oni Lee wouldn't pull this shit. Neither were a tinker for whatever contraption sat in their heads controlling them.

Someone mentioned forever ago a rumor of Lung having recruited a new cape but you couldn't trust everything on PHO, or even most of it.

As they pulled to a stop I stopped my electromagnetic stealth field and let the phone connect to the cell network. A quick call to the PRT emergency number…

"Nine Nine one, what's your emergency?"

"People with things implanted in their heads are dragging people off to ABB territory. They're taking them into a building on…" I flew over and recited the street. "Oh and I'm Goddess of War."

That got a long pause. Before they started asking more questions. What did the people look like, how did I know they were implanted.

Thankfully I could follow them inside invisibly while letting the electromagnetic signals getting through. I just hoped the tinker didn't scan for phone calls.

Speaking of I traveled through the dingy building and the second floor I could already see. "Yea I've snuck inside and they're tying people to beds probably to get implanted."

"The heroes have been dispatched, please remain where you are."

"Sorry I don't take orders from you, but I'll keep feeding you info until I catch the fucker who's doing this." I paused a moment as I noticed something down stairs. The guards with bombs in their heads yes but they seemed to be guarding the outside rather than the inside of a room. "Hostages upstairs, tinker lab I think is in the basement."

"I'm patching you through to Armsmaster now." The lady said before a click.

Then that gruff no nonsense voice spoke through, "Goddess."

"Hey jerk. Found a tinker whose taken over the ABB with tinker tech in every gang member." I rattled off torn between saving the people upstairs and investigating downstairs. Ugh hostages first.

"How can you tell they're implanted? None of the people I spy from my vantage have obvious tinker tech." Oh great he was holding position outside. I guess I did mention that this was a tinker's lab. PHO made a big deal about never fighting a tinker in their own lab.

"I can see through walls and flesh and there's a device embedded at the base of the skull next to the C1 vertebrae." Peeking at the guards inside the hostage room's devices, I added. "They don't seem to be sending or receiving signals from the body. Not integrated with the flesh at all… and are kind of inert at the moment. Oh and the wounds are definitely infected, the surgies are sloppy and I don't think my biokenisis is good enough to fix it yet."

"Bombs." He answered immediately.

"Fuck. Well I can remove them safely, if I need to. But I can't get all of them at once and they'll need Panacea or a good surgeon after. The folks imprisoned upstairs aren't implanted yet but are restrained."

"How would you remove them?"

"Delete the matter, I'm very precise."

"How are you inside." Wow this guy was all questions and answers, no banter but I could respect that. In fact I kind of preferred it to Dauntless's attempts at friendliness. Efficient communication good.

"Stealth field. I have the EM stealth off in the cellphone band range to allow the call. Sight, sound, gravitational-slash-spatial impression, and air currents all undetectable." Then I sighed. "Yes I was the one who snuck into the PRT HQ."

"Noted. I'm remotely activating the phones camera now, show me the layout." Wow he could just do that. Fuck I was glad I didn't have a phone. Though I'd still probably get one for civvies once my new ID came in.

Regardless I held up the flip phone (because my neighbors sure as fuck couldn't afford a smart one) and scanned it slowly over the hostage room. "This is the second floor."

"Can you get into the lab?"

"Well you know my stealth's weakness. Doors. They'll probably notice it open and close but they probably wouldn't suspect a Stranger." Then I hummed. "I think I could throw up an illusion to cover that up now that I'm thinking about it, but that's complicated and I'm a dumb bitch."

"How sure are you of the illusion?"

That earned a groan. "I don't know! I'm already using my power on several things at once and the ADHD only lets me focus so much. I can guarantee stealth into the room, minus the door opening for a moment. Though I could make it look like it came loose and swung open on its own."

"Do that."

Levitating down the stairs I came to the basement door. In a bit of frustration I muttered. "This would be a lot easier if I didn't have to manage my own biology constantly." And it would be. Unlike the stealth field and my inviolability, which I just switched on and let go, the anxiety thing took active effort. Which stole focus. Which meant I couldn't do more active things like illusions… unless I made them static but then I'd have to figure out photon creation and see if I can get that to passively generate rather than actively generate. And yea it was possible but I hadn't tested it because I hadn't thought of it until just now.

So with a subtle altering of the door knobs internals I made it fall apart just a little before nudging the door open slowly as if it were crooked. The two guards stared at the door like it was a pit viper and I levitated in once the opening was big enough.

Inside looked exactly like I'd always imagined a tinker workshop. Big, full of half-finished tech like a mad scientist lived there. With said mad scientist in the middle of tinkering that somehow hadn't noticed the door opening. I swung the camera around to show Armsbastard (heh) the room. And the tinker. Zooming up close on all the tinker tech I noticed.

Of course as I got close to the tinker I noticed… "Uh she has a tinker tech device next to her heart… deadman's switch? Also tinker tech toe rings. Also she has a few other bits of tech in her pockets."

"Noted."

"I'm a do a little experiment." and before he could tell me no I created a second sphere blocking every communication standard in the universe, gravitational waves, EM, air currents, audio. And in this perfectly immutable sphere that only by virtue of my power I could perceive, I created a duplicate of her possible deadman's switch. Immediately I felt it send out a EM signal which got blocked. A moment later it ceased to exist, and I put the toe rings in and nothing happened. Then I moved them around and another signal but not full blast like the switch. "Experiment complete."

"What did you do?" He sounded pissed.

I hummed happily levitating there a foot from the woman I was gonna destroy for how fucked up this all was. "Oh I just tested out her deadman's switch and toe ring detonators. They work off of EM signals that seem to be in the same band as cellphones, and had the strength to reach a cell tower. You 'heroes' in position?"

"Don't." The warning putting every threat he had behind it.

"Too late." A moment later everything besides her flesh (including her clothes, implants, the gear around her) in the room vanished along with the implants in the guards within range. "I've caught her, she's neutralized." The phone pointed at her standing naked in an empty tinker tech workshop. A little invisible box meant she couldn't escape.

The bomb tinker freaked out, covered herself, looked around and then walked face first into the invisible box around her. She raged and screamed and yelled. Swore and threatened helplessly. The door shut and sealed which leaft just her and me, and the camera to Armsmaster.

Revealing myself holding the phone which I angled the camera away from her, I summoned her a dress in her size, on the ground next to her. "Hey you might wanna put that on." Wait I forgot to open a hole in the box to talk through. A moment later I repeated myself.

"Fuck you Bitch!" she roared. "I have a deadman's switch! Don't even think about it."

I smiled innocently. "Oh I removed that too, so no, you don't."

Her face went pale, and then she glared. "You're the bitch who took down Lung."

"The one and only! Also P.S. I turned the phone camera away because Armsmaster is watching so you might want to not flash him. Pretty sure he's still listening, and they started the raid."

With the mention of the camera she scrambled to get the dress on. "What are you gonna do to me?"

"Hand you over to them, but first I wanted to ask you some questions." My innocent tone dropped a moment later. "Why the fucking hell did you kidnap people and put fucking bombs in their skulls?"

Her face contorted into a mix of fear and hate. "Lung taught me how to rule with fear."

"And Lung's a piece of shit, why would you emulate him? I got him tossed in jail for a reason."

"Because people followed him! HE had the whole fucking city in the palm of his hand because the Protectorate was too scared of him. His gang was too scared to refuse him. Businesses. He was powerful, king of the city." Then she sneered at me. "You're just like him. Too powerful to touch so everyone just falls in line behind you trying not to piss you off to much."

I scowled. "I'm nothing like that bastard. He hurt innocent people just like you. People are scared because I'm powerful, yea, but they also know I'm helping the city."

A haughty laugh filled the room. "Helping? People want your blood, you're a filthy mass murder, pissing off all the little whites pearl clutching mothers. Only reason you don't have a kill order is that they're as scared of you as they were of Lung."

Gunfire sounded upstairs, shouting and I glimpsed the guards outside trying to open the door to warn the tinker. An explosion sounded not long after. A megaphone rung out in Armsmaster's voice saying that the tinker had been captured, and disarmed, and to lay down their weapons.

"You know little miss Goddess of War." The smugness pulling me back to focusing on the grand standing villain. "There's gonna be a power vacuum with the ABB gone. The nazis already lost a third of their capes, and their ground forces are decimated. You're just gonna have to do this all over again, over and over. Every gang."

"I wasn't even gonna touch the ABB after I got Lung until you started kidnapping people to implant with bombs! I just hate nazis like any sane person does."

"Mhm, mhm. But there's always gonna be some overly ambitious twat vying for the cities underworld. If you don't take the throne, who will?"

My brain did a record scratch. "What?"

That earned a loud groan and a hand on her hip in a know it all fashion. "Look you're the baddest bitch in town. You don't work for the heroes and refuse. With your body count the publics gonna keep hating you. And a new gang, maybe the teeth? Are gonna move in and cause even more mayhem. Unless you take over. You can run the whole city how you want, fuck the police, rule the city."

Maybe it's the fact that I just spent hours arguing over anarchism on the internet with idiots but that she somehow didn't know about that despite the symbol being on my dress in front of her face, irked me the wrong way. So I gritted my teeth. "I'm an anarchist! No Gods, No Masters. I'm not gonna play dictator for the city."

"Ha! No gods? Bitch you named yourself fucking Goddess of War! What a fucking hypocrite. Not to mention you're working with the heroes which feels pretty ass backwards for a gal who hates the government. You gonna hand me over too? Subject me to their tyranny?"

"Fuck you!"

"No fuck you! You could be the goddess of Brocton fucking Bay but you're too much of a coward to do more than be the heroes' rabid little attack dog. You're no Lung, you're a Hookwol-"

I cut her off by shoving my arm through the barrier to grab her by the neck and lift her off the ground. "Never fucking compare me to a nazi." the last word hissed with seething hatred. My hand squeezed her neck. My power letting me watch the blood flow to her brain lessen, not enough to make her pass out, but to make her unable to think of a retort as I lessened the pressure on her windpipe.

As Armsmaster arrived at the door to the tinker lab and pounded on it, I let go of the Asian woman. Collapsing to the floor she breathed deep and collected herself. Then the door swung open and Armsmaster entered Halberd pointed at me. "Goddess, hand her over."

I deleted the phone from existence along with her prison box. Then with a flicker of will she passed out. "She's all yours, but if she breaks out of custody, I'm killing her." With that I made my escape. Turning invisible while carving out an escape hole in the wall.

I flew home to the eerily quiet apartment building. No life stirred in the apartments above, nor below, left nor right, nor across the hallway. Nothing to distract me from everything that happened.