Mist of Shadows
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Dawn and Reincarnation Part 32
🕑 Added 2019-11-12 07:47:14 +0000 UTC
Joyce glanced at the tablet lying on the end table. “Do you have any idea how many people would kill for your tablet?”
“More than I’d like,” Dawn admitted as she worked on giving Xander a shoulder massage. “I’m more worried about someone sneaking in and stealing it than I am someone killing me.”
“Just because you’re immune to blades doesn’t mean you’re immune to parahuman powers,” Joyce warned. “The Siberian ripped out Alexandria’s eye and everyone thought she couldn’t be hurt.”
“I realize that,” Dawn assured her. “Thankfully, I know how to kill the Siberian and she should be dead within the hour.”
“You’re going after the Slaughterhouse Nine, aren’t you?” Joyce asked warily.
Dawn gestured toward Faith. “Nope, we’re going to send Faith to deal with the problem.”
“Yay! Project wetworks girl is a go,” Faith said cheerfully.
Tara shook her head. “It’s like Faith and Xander had a child, all the snarky with additional questionable jokes.”
Xander grinned but kept his mouth shut, his jokes generally did exactly what they were supposed to, distract people and relieve tension depending on the situation.
Faith snickered as she blew Tara a kiss. “You know you love me.”
Tara smiled at Faith then glanced between Dawn and Joyce. “Do we have a plan other than using portals to get Faith into position?”
“I was thinking about giving her a Stranger power so that she could just slip in and kill them before they even realized she was there.” Dawn shrugged. “No point in being sporting when you’re dealing with a gang of mass murderers.”
“You can give people Stranger abilities?” Joyce asked, wondering if Dawn’s ability was a more limited form of her own.
“And everything else,” Dawn replied smugly. “I can basically hand out five powers of a decent strength, sadly I can only hand out one power to each person.”
“I’m familiar with the idea,” Joyce said with a grin.
“How many powers can you give out?” Xander asked, catching on.
“Same as Dawn, five decent strength powers. Do you have a preference?” Joyce asked Faith.
Faith glanced at Dawn. “What do you think, some sort of stealth power?”
“That depends…” Dawn glanced at Joyce, not sure her mother would appreciate her next idea, “on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go.”
“What do you mean?” Faith asked.
Dawn grabbed her tablet and brought up Noelle’s information. “One of the capes I ran into can make twisted evil clones of people with slightly different powers. If you sneak in with a Stranger ability and a Striker ability to knock people out.”
Xander shook his head. “You want to farm the Slaughterhouse Nine for powers, don’t you?”
“They’re insanely dangerous,” Joyce warned. “Not to mention you’re talking about killing people for power.”
“You’re right, I’m talking about taking a chance to change the entire game by killing evil clones of crazy bastards. Nothing humanity has tossed at the Endbringers for the last few decades has done shit from what I can tell. Faith gets stronger by killing living creatures. Crawler would likely give her the ability to adapt to anything that damages her and she’s a protection.”
“Which means that Xander can just resummon me if something kills me,” Faith mused, seeing Dawn’s point.
“Exactly. Hatchet Face has a Brute rating and nullifies powers around him but can’t disrupt the Siberian which means that Faith could probably walk up and put a 50 caliber bullet through his eye into his skull without a problem.” Dawn was reasonably sure the bullet would go through his head just fine but better safe than sorry. “The Siberian is a projection which means we just have to kill the person that manifests her. If we do this right, Faith could spawn dozens of Siberians.”
“Or just one depending on how the power improves,” Faith said thoughtfully. “Either way, it’s probably worth it.”
“As much as I’d like to, I can’t say you’re wrong,” Joyce admitted. “None of the Endbringer fights have ever caused any lasting damage to the Endbringers. Where do we start?”
“I’m going to need a decent gun to kill Hatchet Face, do you think the Merchants would have anything large enough?” Faith asked Joyce.
“Probably,” Joyce agreed. “Most of the gangs have a few large caliber guns stashed for use against brutes, mostly because of Lung.”
Dawn pulled up the file on the Merchants. “They’re supposed to be based in the abandoned lighthouse at the start of the story. There can’t be all that many abandoned lighthouses in or around the city which means it should be really easy to find the place.”
Faith glanced at Xander. “In that case, I’ll take Stranger and Brute abilities and we’ll take care of the Merchants.”
Xander nodded. “I’m going to want a Stranger rating considering we have to stay within a few blocks of each other. Can you give me an ability to cure drug addiction?”
“I can try,” Dawn replied as she focused on finding something that Xander could use to cure drug addiction. “I can give you a Shaker ability that creates a healing cloud that would deal with physical and mental issues, including drug addiction.”
“Can you make it pink?” Xander asked with a wicked grin.
“Sure…” Dawn trailed off, wondering what was running through her friend’s twisted mind.
“Great, can you give Tara the ability to conjure costumes?”
“Technically, why?” Dawn asked suspiciously.
“Because me sewing a dinosaur costume would take a long time and look like crap?” Xander asked with amusement.
Dawn stared at Xander then turned to look at Joyce. “Do you have a video camera? This is either going to be epic or epically horrible.”
“I’m sure I can find something,” Joyce said, amused at the idea of humiliating the Merchants.
“I’m also going to need a megaphone,” Xander said cheerfully.
0o0o0
“I’ll scare you, then you’ll flee but I’ll cap you in the knees!”
“What the fuck is that cornfucking shit?” Skidmark grumbled as he stumbled out of bed.
“Oh dear friend, won’t you stay? Why don’t we just go and play!”
Skidmark grabbed his gun and ran down the stairs to cap whoever the hell was shouting a fucked up song. He burst out of the lighthouse door and saw a cheerful looking purple dinosaur holding a megaphone and dragging a rusty bloody iron pipe behind him as he walked slowly toward the lighthouse. He stared at the glowing pink clouds that followed the dinosaur and clung to several of his men. “What the fuck?! Kill it! Kill it with fire!”
Xander casually strolled through the storm of gunfire as he slowly walked toward the man as he sang, “Would you like a hug? I’m going to mug you!”
“Why won’t you fucking die!” Skidmark shouted as he set up his field and started tossing people at the abomination coming for him, feeling like he was having the worst trip he’d ever had.
“Final form!” Xander shouted gleefully as he raised the rusty pipe.
Tara shook her head as Xander utterly butchered the song then changed his bullet ridden costume into a Tonberry costume, complete with a large knife in place of the rusty pipe.
Skidmark took one look at Xander’s costume then ran. “Fuck that!”
Faith almost felt guilty as she cut the drugged out idiot’s head off as he ran past her but he had no problem addicting people and spreading his shit around the city. She wiped Dawn’s sword off on his shirt then walked over and used the nifty stun power that Dawn had given her to start knocking out the various gang members shooting at Xander. She glanced toward town when she heard multiple sirens start up in the distance. “Do you think they noticed the gratuitous amounts random gunfire?”
“Decently hard to miss,” Dawn said as she walked out of the lighthouse with a large bag of cash and Squealer sprawled over her shoulder.
Xander turned to look at the Dawn, rather amused by the bandit mask she’d put on over her ewok costume. “Let’s go, I’d rather not have to explain the mess.”
Faith glanced back at Skidmark’s headless corpse. “Or the dead body.”
“Yeah, they might get twitchy,” Xander said as he started walking toward the row of warehouses where they could get out of sight and take a portal.
0o0o0
Assault walked over to where Armsmaster was looking down at Skidmark’s severed head. “First Lung, now Skidmark. At this rate, we’re going to be out of a job by the end of the month.”
“Hardly,” Armsmaster replied, knowing that more gangs would just move in. “What did you find out?”
“Someone stole the cash and left the drugs and most of the weapons.”
“Most of?” Armsmaster asked warily.
Assault shrugged. “One of the gang members was ranting about someone swiping their rocket launcher.”
“Great, just what we needed,” Armsmaster muttered.
Assault smiled as he thought about the man that had been ranting about talking dinosaurs. “The men were ranting about a demonic dinosaur of doom that wouldn’t die no matter how many times they shot it. I’d say they were higher than kites but most of them were disturbingly lucid. How do you want to write this up? The men were complaining about pink clouds which probably means a second parahuman.”
“The dinosaur themed cape could be a Changer and Brute or it might be a projection.”
“So some child triggered with the ability to summon cartoon characters? The Director is going to love this, can I tell her?” Assault asked cheerfully.
Armsmaster considered the question and realized that letting Assault report the situation meant he’d have more time to figure out what the hell happened. “Sure, that gives me time to figure out what happened.”
“At least he wasn’t killed by a crossbow bolt,” Assault said cheerfully as Battery walked over.
Armsmaster glared at Assault. “Keep pushing it and I’ll make her your responsibility.”
‘Fine with me, she’ll be on the next transport to the birdcage,’ Assault thought as he turned to look at Battery. “Any luck?”
“One of the men is claiming that Skidmark’s head just fell off which means we’re probably dealing with at least three parahumans,” Battery said as she looked down at Skidmark’s head. “On the upside, the Merchants just lost most of their drugs, money and capes.”
“Did they find Squealer and Mush?” Armsmaster asked.
Battery shook her head. “No sign of Squealer even if several of the Merchants claim she was inside.”
Assault glanced down at Skidmark, not terribly surprised that someone had killed him, just that it had taken as long as it had. “She’s a Tinker, they probably walked off with her.”
“One of the Merchants claimed Mush was guarding the main stash and would break them out of jail but I doubt he’d bother,” Battery said, fairly sure that Mush was already out of the city with the rest of the gang’s money.
Armsmaster turned to look at Assault. “Talk to your contacts, see if they’ve heard anything then tell the Director, we’ll try to find some evidence or a lead.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Assault said as he walked off to place a few calls.
0o0o0
“How did it go?” Joyce asked when Dawn and Tara walked into the room from the garage.
“We killed Skidmark and stole his cash and tinker,” Dawn said as she walked over and sat down on the couch. “We cured her various addictions and dealt with her health issues. I gave her a power to fix her mental issues and she’s currently at the base chilling with some video games and pizza while she gets her head on straight. Xander and Faith are dealing with another problem and will call when they’re done.”
Tara glanced at Dawn’s tablet. “Speaking of powers, can you give me the ability to instantly read and comprehend text files?”
“Close enough.” Joyce gave Tara the ability to touch a computer or data storage device and instantly read and comprehend any file on it as well as if she’d sat down and studied the material for days. “That should do it.”
Tara reached down and touched the tablet and read the files. “You should probably do the same thing for Xander and Faith when they get here. We’re going to need to deal with the Yang Bang.”
“The Chinese parahumans?” Joyce asked, having heard a lot of nasty rumors over the years.
“Yeah, they have several useful capes and like kidnapping people. Without Null they won’t be able to share powers and without Two any powers they could have shared would only be a fraction of their original strength. They also have a brainwashing Thinker that needs to be in prison.”
Dawn turned to look at Joyce. “Okay, I need the same ability.”
“Same,” Joyce replied as she swapped the Blaster power she’d let Dawn use for the tech reading power. “That should do it.”
Dawn copied the power that Joyce had loaned her then grabbed the tablet and read the files. “Yeah, I’m going to need to buy a piece of property for the portal stones.” She handed the tablet to Joyce. “Here.”
Joyce read the file then blinked. “We’re going to have to kill Scion.”
Dawn nodded. “Which is why I’m going to use my ter’angreal that creates a portal stone network. I should be able to use my key to jump to his world then I’ll just destroy his actual body with balefire.”
“Do you think Leet has made a shield device like Glory Girl’s shield yet?” Tara asked, knowing that her shield would stand up to a direct hit of Scion’s death beam, if only briefly.
“No idea but Buffy is good at reverse engineering tinkertech,” Joyce offered.
Dawn blinked. “Buffy is a Tinker?” she asked in disbelief, trying to picture her sister as someone with any technical skills and failing.
“She had a substitute teacher back in middle school that brought in some broken tinkertech and challenged people to figure out how they worked without telling them that it was basically impossible. Buffy got really frustrated when she couldn’t figure it out when the teacher implied that it was simple and sort of lost it. Thankfully I found her blaster before she could prove that it worked to the asshole…” she trailed off as she connected Armsmaster’s last name to the sub. “Fucking Tinkers!”
Dawn blinked. “What?”
“Armsmaster was the fucking substitute teacher!” Joyce complained.
“If you want, we could prank him until he snaps,” Dawn offered.
Joyce considered the offer then sighed as she realized it wasn’t worth causing Dragon stress. ”It’s tempting but it was fairly mild as triggers go. We should probably haul Saint through a portal stone once we get everything set up and leave him there.”
“That reminds me, we should probably put Teacher on the list of people that need to die,” Dawn said thoughtfully.
“I’ll get a notebook,” Joyce said as she walked over to the desk to grab a notebook. “We might as well make a list.”
“I’m going to take a nice long vacation once we’re done killing Scion and the Endbringers,” Dawn muttered, fairly sure she’d just get dragged off to some other world in need of help.
“It’s good to have dreams,” Tara teased.
Dawn stuck her tongue out at Tara.
0o0o0
Faith carefully lined up her shot and put a bullet through the window of the hotel and through Hatchet Face’s eye and out the back of his head and through the wall behind him. Thankfully the X-ray vision Dawn had loaned her let her make sure there was no one in the next room and the sound damping power that Dawn had lent Xander meant no one heard the shot. She turned turned her attention to Shatterbird and put a round through her head before anyone realized they were under attack.
Faith turned and put a round through the wooden door and Jack’s head when he tried to get out of line of sight of the window. She put a round into Mannequin’s chest only for the armor to deflect the round as the armor cracked. She waved at The Siberian as the naked projection ripped through the remains of the window. “Parley?”
Faith set her gun in the back of the truck she’d been using as a stand and waved to the Siberian. “By now!” She grinned as Xander summoned her to his location a few blocks away. “That was fun.”
“He’s in the van,” Xander said as he pointed toward an older van parked on the side of the street.
“I’ll take care of it,” Faith said as she walked toward the van and activated her new power to nullify powers, taking particular joy when she opened the sliding door and Manton tried and failed to activate his power and summon his projection. “Nope, not happening, I ate her.”
“What?!” William Manton shouted.
Faith reached down and grabbed him by his coat and pulled him out of the van. “You’re going to stay quiet or I’m going to kill you. Do you understand…” she trailed off as a dart appeared in his neck. She turned to look at Xander as Manton slowly fell unconscious. “You just had to ruin my speech, didn’t you?”
“He’s never going to wake up, so what’s the point?” Xander asked as he walked over and glanced at the contents of the van, seeing nothing of interest other than a laptop and a briefcase. He pulled out the burner phone that Joyce had given him and called the only number in the contacts list.
“Presentation?” Faith asked with a fake pout, rather happy that Xander had used one of the darts that Coil had stockpiled.
“Mission accomplished?” Dawn asked hopefully.
“We have Manton drugged and his powers suppressed, we need a pick up before Crawler or Mannequin show up,” Xander said, wanting to leave before they started a large cape fight in the middle of the town where the nine had been hiding.
“Shit!” Faith complained as she saw Crawler heading their way down the middle of the street.
Xander reached through his angreal in his pocket and pulled the beast into the air with cable thick threads of hardened air. “It’s called leverage.” He tied the beast’s legs in threads of air, making sure he didn’t have any leverage to pry himself free.
Faith gestured at Manton’s van and used Shatterbird’s power to rip the glass out of the windows and form into a spinning glass spike.
“Bring it,” Crawler growled.
“I need his head cut open,” Faith said cheerfully as she suppressed Crawler’s powers.
Xander twisted crawler around and opened a gateway so it cut through his skull, letting Faith rip his brain apart with the glass shards, taking out the bit in the brain responsible for powers and killing him instantly. “That was easy enough.”
“What happened?” Dawn asked.
“Crawler showed up, I was expecting more,” he dropped Crawler as he reached out with threads of air and bound Mannequin’s chains in place as the twisted spherical cyborg jumped out of the shadows at him. He used several small gateways to cut through Mannequin’s various chains apart then cut through his chest plate and hauled him over to Faith.
Faith punched through the unit that contained the Tinker’s brain and crushed it between her fingers. “We should kill the cultists next, this would have been easier if I had magic.”
“On that note, can you have Tara open a portal to the base before something else tries to kill us?” Xander asked as he grabbed the laptop and briefcase from the van.
“Not a problem.” Dawn smiled at Tara. “Can you open a portal between the base and Xander?”
“On it,” Tara said as she opened a portal a few feet in front of Xander that led to the base.
“Thanks, we should probably copy Manton before he wakes up,” Xander said as he stepped through the portal into Dawn’s base.
“I’ll be there in a minute to swap Faith’s power so she can copy him,” Dawn assured him, wanting to deal with Manton before a certain fedora wearing troublemaker showed up.
