Mist of Shadows
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Dawn and Reincarnation Part 35
🕑 Added 2019-11-26 07:59:27 +0000 UTC“Is this a trick?” David demanded, glaring at the video clip showing Scion’s death.
“All of the paths involving Scion vanished,” Contessa offered, not sure what had killed him, just that he was dead and wasn’t coming back. “I tried pathing a way to bring him back just to make sure… nothing, not possible, not in one step not in a thousand years of trying.”
Rebecca Costa-Brown pulled her attention away from watching the clip that someone had captured of his death. “What happened?”
“Someone killed him without us!” David snapped.
Paul sighed as he realized his friend was upset about someone else killing Scion before they could, while he was just glad he was dead and not coming back. “Regardless, he’s dead. That’s cause for celebration.”
David glared at Legend, he was always willing to see the best in people. “Unless whatever killed him is worse.”
Paul turned to look at Contessa. “Can you find anything about whoever or whatever killed him?”
“No,” Contessa admitted. “I don’t have enough information to run a simulation.”
“Which means they’re like David and Scion,” Rebecca said, less than happy to replace one problem with an unknown problem that might be worse.
“Which means they’re probably another Entity,” David complained.
Legend shook his head. “We shouldn’t borrow trouble. They might just be a powerful new Trump or have a Stranger power that makes them hard to path. Has anything else strange happened?”
“You mean beyond someone taking out most of the Slaughterhouse Nine, including The Siberian by all reports, the cape responsible for linking the Yangbang together being dropped on a world without parahumans without a clue what happened and Teacher dying in his cell of an apparent heart attack?” Contessa asked.
“How did they kill the Siberian?” David demanded.
“No idea, they’re immune to my power,” Contessa admitted. “Which means they’re probably the same group that killed Scion.”
“Do you think they knew what Scion was?” Paul asked thoughtfully.
“Does it matter?” David snapped.
“Of course it matters. If they knew what Scion was then killing him could have been heroic. Killing the Slaughterhouse Nine certainly was.”
“That doesn’t explain Teacher, he was locked up in prison,” Rebecca pointed out.
“Coincidences happen,” Paul pointed out, wondering if his friends were grasping at straws.
Contessa shook her head. “He was part of several paths before his death, it shouldn’t have happened.”
“In that case, what were the chances of him escaping?” Paul asked as he looked at Contessa.
“Considering his power, I can’t rule it out,” Contessa admitted.
“What are we going to do about whoever killed Scion?” David demanded.
Paul watched David’s expression out of the corner of his eye. “I’m hoping they show up for the next Endbringer fight and kill them.” He sighed as he noticed the wince and tension on his friend’s face at the idea of someone else killing the Endbringers. “On that note, I need to get back and field questions about Scion’s disappearance.”
“Same,” Rebecca admitted.
“I’ll keep looking for odd events,” Contessa offered, not sure what else to do as her power was being particularly unhelpful.
“Thanks.” Paul put his mask back on. “Door to my office.”
Rebecca waited until Legend had left and the doorway closed before she turned to look at David. “Keep your eyes open, we might be dealing with another entity or we might be dealing with a heroic cape.”
“If they’re a cape, they’re obviously a Trump,” David mused thoughtfully, wondering if he’d get to fight them.
“Or they’re part of a team,” Rebecca said, not so much because she believed that there wasn’t a powerful Trump involved but more because David was acting like a kicked puppy that he didn’t get to lead some grand fight against Scion. While she was worried that someone was running around with enough power to kill Scion, she refused to jump to the conclusion that they were working against humanity before she had more information. “We don’t have enough information either way.”
David turned to look at Contessa. “Can you find Bonesaw? She might have seen whoever or whatever took out the rest of the Nine.”
“Of course…” Contessa trailed off as the path for collecting Bonesaw broke. “And my path for finding her just collapsed.”
Doctor Mother hurried into the room. “The Sleeper is gone!”
“As in we lost sight of him?” Rebecca asked as she turned to look at the Doctor.
“No, as in gone, one minute he was on camera and the next his head was blown apart by a high powered rifle.”
“Someone is killing dangerous villains,” Rebecca said.
“Probably because they’re planning something horrific,” David argued.
“I’ll get Watchdog on this. Door to my office,” Rebecca said, wanting to get back before she was missed and tired of David’s grumbling. Even if there was a greater threat on the horizon, Scion was dead and wouldn’t be coming back.
David watched Rebecca step through the door then turned to look at Contessa. “If we can’t find them, we’re going to be working blind.”
Contessa nodded. “I’ll talk to Kurt, he might have more luck.”
“Door, office,” David ordered, wanting to get back if he was needed.
Contessa waited for the door to close then turned to look at Doctor Mother. “They’re immune to my power, you’ll probably have more luck with a normal team of analysts than I will.”
“What are you going to do?” Doctor Mother asked.
“I’m going to work on relocating the rest of the case 53s, I doubt they’ll confuse anyone other than Scion and having them around might result in someone showing up here to clean up our mess.” Contessa wasn’t sure that relocating them would help but at this point there wasn’t a good to keep them around and several reasons to make sure they ended up somewhere better than in a cage.
“What if their powers are useful?”
Contessa shook her head. “The only reason we had a chance against Scion is that he was a depressed idiot. Anyone that can stealth kill him like they did… let’s just hope they’re not a threat.”
“I’ll have the analysts go over the records.”
0o0o0
“So in short, my little sister is a magic using queen of an island of naked magic girls and you managed to kill a dark god that made the First Evil and Glory look like chump change?” Elizabeth asked with amusement.
“It’s been an interesting couple of weeks,” Xander replied with amusement.
“When did my little sister become the most dangerous member of the group?” Elizabeth asked, only half joking.
“Since always?” Willow shrugged when Elizabeth turned to look at her. “Mom is still the key, which means that she’s the most dangerous Scooby by default.”
“Can you please not call her that?” Elizabeth begged.
“I knew her as your little sister for seven years, she was my mother in the other world for more than double that,” Willow said with amusement.
“Yes, but that means I’m dating my niece,” Elizabeth complained.
“Which is worse than perving on your sister?” Willow teased, having seen how Elizabeth had checked out Dawn’s behind.
“Yes?” Elizabeth asked. “Maybe?”
“If you can’t keep it in your pants, keep it in the family,” Faith teased as she walked into the living room with a bowl of ice cream.
“That was horrible,” Elizabeth complained as she glanced at the naked projection.
Faith snickered as she sat down next to Xander. “Oops, I’m a bad girl, do you want to spank me?”
‘Yes!’ Elizabeth shook her head. “Changing the subject, what’s the plan?”
“Do you mean my fiendish plan to get the four of you in bed together or the plan for dealing with the Endbringers?” Xander asked with amusement.
“That sounds more than a little warped,” Willow said, not exactly against the idea if it meant she could have Faith and Xander or watch them fuck Elizabeth.
“Best Master ever,” Faith teased as she fed Xander a bite of ice cream.
Elizabeth ignored the heat in her cheeks as she imagined the five of them in a king sized bed. “Only if you’re there with us,” she said as she looked at Xander, still horrified that Buffy had picked an animated corpse over her friend.
“I have no objection to spending time with my girls,” Xander assured her with a grin. “As for the Endbringers, we should be able to destroy their cores with magic. If not, Dawn can probably figure out something that will let us hurt them.”
Tara looked away from the torched remains of the Butcher’s shard and opened a portal back to Joyce’s kitchen. “That should be the last of the problematic shards.”
“Hopefully,” Dawn muttered as she stepped out of Tara’s portal into the kitchen.
Willow turned to look at the kitchen when she felt two magic users appear. “On that note, do you want to hit the beach and relax a bit or grab some of the magic users and clean up the bay?”
“Ogling the naked girls on the beach sounds good,” Dawn said as she walked out of the kitchen with Tara following her, “but we could use the metal from the cargo ships.”
“I’ll call Fred, she’ll want to help,” Willow said as she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed Fred’s number as she headed for the kitchen.
“Sounds good,” Dawn agreed. “Actually, if we’re going to clean up the bay, we might as well go the extra mile and clean up the bay. Who wants the ability to manipulate heavy metals?”
“I’ll do it,” Elizabeth volunteered, a little annoyed that they hadn’t already cleaned up the bay using her mother’s powers. “We should have dealt with the cargo ship years ago. It wouldn’t have even taken all that much effort, just having Mom hand someone the ability to clean up chemicals would have been a good start or the ability to manipulate manipulate metal and pull the ship apart a bit at a time. Why the hell didn’t we do it?”
“Probably because you didn’t want to destabilize things,” Xander assured Elizabeth, curious if it was a case of his friends being dropped in with backstories like what had happened with Dawn and the monks’ spell or if things had just conspired to keep them from fixing the city before they’d shown up. Either way, that made some fairly substantial changes so it was probably safe to assume that they’d be able to improve the city.
“Do we have a plan?” Elizabeth asked.
“The first step is to give people hope of a better tomorrow. We can do that globally by destroying the Endbringers and we can do that locally by cleaning up the bay,” Dawn promised. “The next step is dealing with Lung and Oni Lee, without the capes the ABB will fracture or dissolve making it easier for the police to deal with. After that, we hit one of Hookwolf’s dog fighting rings.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Even if we stopped it, they’d just set up at another location and break Hookwolf out before he gets to the Birdcage.”
Dawn shook her head. “You’re looking at it the wrong way. Unlike with the ABB, the Empire capes aren’t the problem, they’re merely using the movement to make money. If you hit a dog fighting ring and capture everyone betting, that decreases the amount of assholes in the world that are willing to bet on innocent dogs fighting each other.”
“You think the police are going to arrest people and jail them for being in the ‘wrong place’ at the wrong time?” Elizabeth asked.
“We have telepaths on staff and a virtually endless number of worlds to send people to. I have no problems dumping these fuckers on one to see if they can make it as stone aged presents.”
“Dawn, you can’t just…” Elizabeth turned to look at Xander. “Tell her she can’t relocate a bunch of…”
“I believe the words you are looking for are Nazi sympathizers or Neo-Nazi fucktards… or wastes of space?” Xander offered. “And yes, she can, even without Tara’s help she can use the portal stones.”
“That doesn’t mean she should,” Elizabeth grumbled, not entirely convinced that Dawn and Xander didn’t have a point.
“You’re right but the legal system has already proven useless. They’d pay a fine, maybe do some community service and be back on the street in a month, tops. If we banish them or ruin their reputation, we can probably get them to leave the city which would help the city recover.”
“Some of those people might not be nazis,” Elizabeth argued.
“That’s why we have telepaths. Besides, unless they’re undercover police or PRT agents, they willingly showed up to watch dogs fighting.”
Elizabeth turned to look at Tara. “Can you talk some sense into them?”
Tara shook her head. “I like dogs and no, I dealt with these types of idiots growing up in both lives. You can’t convince most of them that it isn’t someone else’s fault.”
“Just look at it as giving them their deepest desire, a world without anyone else,” Xander suggested. He turned to look at Willow as she walked back in. “What do you think about banishing a bunch of Neo-Nazis to an uninhabited world?”
“I was raised Jewish,” Willow replied.
“What happened to justice and laws?” Elizabeth asked as she looked at her friends.
“Is this rhetorical?” Dawn asked. “Since when have we cared about laws?”
“Since..” Elizabeth trailed off as Xander coughed.
“Rocket Launcher,” Xander said helpfully.
“Wasn’t me and we legitimately needed it,” Elizabeth complained.
“Let’s see, breaking and entering, countless numbers of disturbing the dead violations, trespassing, and probably a few hundred other crimes I’m forgetting. We’ve always been more about justice than rules. The rules say they get a slap on the wrist, justice says they should be sent elsewhere so they can’t bother people.”
“Moving on, what did Fred say?” Elizabeth asked, wanting to change the subject.
“Vicky is flying her and Amy here, they should be here shortly then we’ll head to the bay once Joyce gets back with the paperwork from the city. We should probably grab a team of girls if we want to make a show of things.” Willow wouldn’t mind making the statement of hey look we can toss large ships at anyone that puts be stupid on their list of things to do.
“Speaking of statements,” Dawn muttered. “We should probably track down the lunatics that worship the Endbringers before we start killing them.”
Faith turned to look at the doorbell when it rang. “That reminds me, I still need to collect the bounty on the Slaughterhouse Nine,” she mused as she walked over and opened the door.
Vicky blinked as she looked at the naked girl that had opened the door. “Do we have the right house?”
“Faith?” Fred asked as she stared at the girl she remembered from her time in L.A.
“More or less,” Faith said as she stepped back so they could come in.
“Welcome to the madhouse,” Elizabeth said as Vicky, Amy and Fred walked in and Faith shut the door.
Amy glanced between Faith and Fred. “Where did you meet her?”
“It’s been a while,” Fred said, wanting to wait to get into the crazy mess of past lives until after Vicky left. “Let’s grab what we need and start the clean up.”
“I need to grab a few people while we’re waiting for paperwork,” Dawn said as she walked over to the closet, put her key in the lock and opened the door to the island. “I’ll be right back,” she said happily as she walked through the door.
“That’s an interesting power,” Vicky said as she looked at the sunny courtyard she could see through the door. “Can you really clear the ships in the harbor?”
“With enough people we can and will, even if we have to cut it into sections,” Willow said, happy that things were finally moving in the right direction.
“Do you need help moving things?” Vicky asked, wanting to be part of cleaning up the bay.
Elizabeth smiled at Vicky. “We’re not going to object to help.”
Vicky glanced between Xander and Faith. “Are you capes or just friends?”
“Both,” Xander replied with amusement.
“What can you do?” Vicky asked as she eyed Xander’s athletic frame.
“I’m a Brute,” Xander said, seeing no point in trying to convince her that magic was real or admitting that he was any of type of Master.
“Can you fly?” Vicky asked.
“Not yet, I’m still working on it, maybe one day,” Xander said, knowing that he’d eventually find a cape to copy that could fly.
“I don’t think it works that way,” Vicky said as she turned to look at Faith. “Powers?”
“I have a red button that I push and ninja turtles show up,” Faith said ‘innocently’.
Amy snorted. “Right, ninja turtles.”
Faith stuck her hand behind her back then embraced the source and wove an illusion of a small remote with a red button on it. “I have a remote,” she said as she pulled the ‘remote’ out from behind her back, “don’t make me push the button.”
Amy snickered as she realized Faith was smirking. “I have to call bullshit on that.”
Faith pushed the button and wove an image of a ninja turtle with a black belt. “See, ninja turtles.”
Amy reached out and poked the humanoid turtle, unsurprised when her finger went through the illusion. “Nice try but nope.”
“Would you believe I’m a power copying god?” Faith teased.
“Nope.”
Faith snickered. “Fine, I’m a magic user.”
“We’re not going to believe that either,” Vicky said with amusement.
‘Try slayer,’ Fred thought, making a mental note to figure out what was going on when she had a chance.
Joyce walked out of the kitchen carrying a folder of paperwork. “I got the contact. We’re good to harvest the ship as long as we utilize the local workforce in some significant fashion. We should be able to pile up the scrap at the lot and have the local union sort everything.”
“Which should make our local chatterbox happy,” Fred said with amusement, thinking about her friend Taylor.
Dawn walked out of the door with Nazar and two dozen young women and men along with Erik and Rose. “This should be more than enough people.”
Joyce grinned at the group of people crowding her living room. “We’ll take a door to the lot then open a door to the wreck and haul everything through, with any luck, the PRT won’t even realize there’s a problem until we’re done.”
“You got permission, right?” Vicky asked warily.
“From the Mayor,” Joyce assured her. “He’ll call the PRT in the morning. No point in stretching the project out for months like the last time the city tried to hire outside help.”
Nazar wasn’t sure who the PRT was but he was familiar with the concept of officials being difficult. “Don’t wander off, let us know if anyone gets tired,” he ordered as he looked over the group of channelers.
Tara opened a door to their lot with the portal stone. “Let’s go.”
0o0o0
Director Pigot glared at the PRT agent. “What do you mean the cargo ship blocking the channel is gone?”
“I mean it’s gone,” the agent said. “Dauntless flew over the area, it’s missing.”
“How does a cargo ship the size of a large building just vanish!” she demanded.
“I’m just the messenger,” the agent replied. “We had some agents on the rig confirm that the cargo ship is gone.”
“Find out what happened!” she ordered, wishing her kidneys weren’t screwed up enough that she couldn’t have a drink without ending up in the hospital. ‘First the Slaughterhouse Nine gets obliterated by an unknown team then Scion vanishes and now we’re missing a cargo ship.’ She scowled as she realized the agent had taken her order as a dismissal and left with haste. She turned her attention back to her paperwork, knowing the damned paperwork still needed to get done.
0o0o0
Comments
Mist of Shadows
It's nice to see the crazy from an outside point of view.
Ben Benson
Hooray!!! It would have felt unfinished if you had decided to skip this aspect of the story.
