Mist of Shadows
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Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 35
🕑 Added 2018-11-05 22:27:48 +0000 UTC Carol Dallon looked down her nose at Victoria as she handed her the paperwork she’d requested. “This would be easier if your friends were an official team.”Victoria glanced over at her father that was sitting in his favorite chair, looking rather amused and being no help at all. “If you know a way to avoid the unofficial, yet more or less mandatory power testing required for the registration, they’d probably be interested.”
“Technically speaking, you’re just required to prove that you can control your powers, it’s a safety thing,” Carol said thinking about the various hero or rogue groups she knew of that had went villain after getting sued because something had went wrong.
Victoria snorted. “Which basically requires that you disclose all of your powers which goes into a database which any of the various gangs’ moles can access.”
Mark spoke up, “That only really applies to the Bay, most directors are pretty lax about that and you can get away with an interview or just filing the paperwork.”
“That doesn’t exactly help when you’re a teenager,” Victoria complained.
Carol rolled her eyes. “You can also sidestep the issue if you have a Protectorate member vouch for you, which is probably the easiest method.”
“I’ll let them know,” Victoria replied as she turned and headed for the door.
“Stop. You’re not leaving until you explain what you were doing taking out a villain without us,” Carol said firmly.
Victoria sighed as she turned around to look at her mother. “You would have called the PRT about the raid, which means one of Coil’s contacts would have called him. We’re also fairly sure that he has some sort of Pre-Cog or chance manipulating power that without the group’s power interactions would have caused the whole thing to fail.”
“You still should have at least called us,” Carol replied stubbornly.
“He had enough explosives in his fail safe to take out a city block in the middle of the financial district! We weren’t going to risk it,” Victoria replied with a huff.
“You could have explained that,” Carol complained.
“And people could have died while we argued about it.” Victoria shook her head. “We can discuss this later we drop him off and the PRT takes responsibility for him.”
Mark said, “Best of luck with the paperwork.”
“I don’t suppose you want to come fill it out for me?” Victoria asked jokingly.
“Take your mother, she’s the lawyer,” he replied, knowing that his suggestion would give him several hours of peace and quiet, which was rather convenient as he had a game to watch.
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Carol agreed as she walked over to grab her coat and car keys.
Victoria opened her mouth to reflexively argue then closed it as she realized that taking a cape lawyer with them was probably a good idea all things considered. “Fine, they can meet us there.”
“I’ll hold down the fort,” Mark said with a smirk.
“We’ll call if something comes up,” Carol said as she finished putting her coat on and headed for the door.
Victoria pulled out her phone and worked on a text to Kevin while she absently followed her mother. ‘We’re on our way to the PRT. Mom’s going to be there to handle all the legal paperwork.’
0o0o0
Alec glared at Brian over his shoulder. “This sucks.”
“Weren’t you the one that said you didn’t want to go up against the Trump that liked zapping people with lightning?” Brian asked as he set another bag by the door.
“That is completely different. There’s a chance the PRT won’t find the base,” Alec grumbled as he went back to disassembling his entertainment system.
“Lisa gave me even odds that Armsmaster was going to call in Dragon to deal with Coil’s computers.”
“Fuck!” Alec cursed as he redoubled his efforts, knowing it was just a matter of time before they had to deal with a large group of heroes. He’d rather not have to leave everything behind, especially his save games.
“Pretty much,” Brian agreed as he grabbed his last two bags and walked over to the door.
“I get that we have to bug out but where are we going?” Alec asked as he continued packing his game systems up.
“A garage, at least for tonight. We’ll figure it out from there.”
“A garage?” Alec asked warily as he looked over his rather comfortable couch. “What about the couch?”
“The couch won’t help you in prison,” Brian said as he headed to the kitchenette to pack up what they could salvage while waiting for the van or truck that Lisa said was coming.
“That’s not the point, I still want my couch,” Alec complained. “Why isn’t Rachel helping?”
“Because Rachel is dealing with her dogs. Feel free to tell her that your stuff is more important than her dogs.”
Alec shook his head. “All my fuckin’ nope, I may have been born in the dark but it wasn’t last night.” He turned to look at the door when he heard a knock. “Are you expecting anyone?”
“Truck delivery!” Gothic called out.
“Just a minute,” Brian said as he walked over and opened the door. “Panacea?”
“Nope, that’s my other half,” she replied with amusement. “Tattletale said you needed help moving your stuff.”
“Ah, sorry,” Brian replied as he stepped back from the door. “That would be helpful.”
Gothic walked into the converted warehouse and glanced around at the decent looking furniture. “Where did you get the couch?”
Alec laughed. “See, she gets it.”
Brian huffed and swatted Alec on the back of his head. “So, how much room is in the truck?”
“Standard non-CDL U-haul, but I have an alternate solution,” Gothic replied as she pulled a scroll of town portal out of her pocket.
Alec raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“I make a portal and we haul everything through then load the couch and anything else we can’t fit through the portal into the truck,” Gothic replied and unfurled and tossed the scroll in one practiced motion toward the wall.
“Right, portal…” Alec trailed off as the scroll vanished and a blue glowing portal appeared next to the wall. “What the fuck?”
“I’ll raise you a how the hell?” Brian said agreeably as he studied the so called ‘portal’ that looked like it opened to somewhere with a car lift, cement floor and lots of tools.
“It’s a thing,” Gothic replied smugly.
“How long does that last?” Brian asked.
“Probably until I close it or I go to sleep.”
“Probably?” Alec asked.
Gothic shrugged, “I haven’t tested if they stick around when I’m sleeping, it’s an expendable item not a power.”
“What happened to Tattletale?” Brian asked warily.
“She’s currently busy raping Coil’s computers and various other things. I didn’t want to have to deal with the PRT so I volunteered to play transportation and here I am.” She picked up one of Grue’s bags then slid it through the portal. “You’re going to have to do most of the heavy lifting because this portal closes if I go through and then come back. So chop, chop.”
Alec opened his mouth to say something snarky then decided that insulting the person helping them was a bad idea, especially since she could hit them with lightning if they pissed her off.
0o0o0
Danny pushed the mute button on the television and then answered the ringing phone after checking the caller ID, “Taylor, what’s up?”
“What would you say if I adopted some poor homeless villains to keep them off the streets and out of trouble?” Taylor asked innocently.
“How many?” Danny asked warily as he took off his glasses.
“I think I have a list… Let’s see, five from that group and four from that one, so nine?” Taylor offered.
Danny pinched the bridge of his nose firmly and started polishing his glasses, “Nine supervillains? There’s no way we could fit nine more people in the house, much less supervillains.”
“We have the apartments,” Taylor offered.
“Some of which have been rented, but that is an option…” Danny agreed thoughtfully. “However, this is contingent on which supervillains you’re talking about.”
“Well, we took out Coil who was holding a gun to the Undersiders’ heads and making them work for him, which is where four of them came from,” Taylor continued, “Rachel probably needs a lawyer but the rest of them are all penny ante stuff that can probably be hand waved away…”
“Rachel Lindt is one of your rescuees?” Danny asked dubiously.
“Yep!” Taylor agreed.
“Right, well there’s the issue of one or more counts of murder, but I’ll have the lawyers look into the charges, I think some of it was trigger related which have special circumstances,” Danny agreed after a moment. They’d already adopted Uber and Leet of all people so more ducklings weren’t exactly a surprise at this point.
“Great!” Taylor exclaimed happily.
“Who are the others?” Danny asked bluntly and Taylor found her good mood dropping a bit.
“Coil had a Case 53 that we had to fix and her friends are called the Travellers, I think,” Taylor replied with a shrug. “Don’t worry, we have money and assets we can use to make sure they stay on the straight and narrow.”
“We’ll need to get someone working on whatever charges they have extant otherwise it’s harboring a fugitive and that’s not something we need on our heads Taylor,” Danny said firmly.
“All else fails we can give them new identities or something,” Taylor replied.
“You’re missing the point,” Danny replied as he stood up and walked into the kitchen to retrieve a beer which he proceeded to drain in three long swallows.
“Isn’t it better that they have gainful employment and don’t commit more crimes?” she offered sheepishly.
“Ideally,” Danny replied with a sigh, “but you have to be careful Taylor and these people may not all be worth rescuing even if their friend the Case 53 was. Are all of them in the city?”
“Not right now, or at least Noelle hasn’t said they were,” Taylor replied.
“Then let’s defer that decision until we’ve actually met them,” Danny said with a sigh. “Maybe some of them are employable at your garage or with the Union…”
“Hopefully,” Taylor agreed.
“You’re going to need more space with a team that big,” Danny said after putting the beer bottle in the recycling, “I’ll look into who owns those old United Fruit Company aging warehouses near your garage tomorrow and we can figure something out I’m sure.”
“That sounds good,” Taylor agreed, knowing they’d need the space.
“When are you going to be home?” Danny asked.
“Not sure, I’m trying to tie up loose ends.”
“Just remember, you have school in the morning,” Danny reminded her.
“I know, at least tomorrow is Thursday,” Taylor replied with a yawn.
“Just finish your project and get home so you can actually get some sleep.”
“I’ll try,” Taylor assured her father.
Danny headed back into the living room. “I’m going to want to hear the full story at some point.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll explain it tomorrow.”
“I’ll hold you to it, night Little Owl,” Danny ended the call.
“Night Dad,” Taylor whispered as she put her phone back in her pocket then walked out of her office at the garage, hoping she’d have enough time to figure out how to spin everything in such a way that she didn’t get grounded until the end of time.
She closed and locked the door then jumped off the balcony, trusting her safe fall ring to protect her. She walked into the garage over to where Randal, Noelle, and Tattletale were bitching about Coil and his insane death trap.
“We really should have just put a bullet in his head,” Randal grumbled.
Taylor raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“You didn’t see his plans for exposing the identities of the Empire 88 capes. Normally I wouldn’t care about a bunch of Neo Nazis, but Purity left the Empire almost a year ago and has a small child the PRT would have tried to grab.”
“Are they really that stupid?” Taylor asked in disbelief.
Tattletale shrugged. “Director Pigot isn’t, but she’d probably get blamed for the war that would cause and it would go downhill from there.”
Noelle shook her head. “That sounds like a remarkably stupid idea.”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of insanity, population: Coil,” Randal grumbled.
“At least he’s out of our hair,” Taylor said.
“Until he breaks out,” Tattletale complained.
“If he breaks out, he’s going swimming in the bay in cement shoes,” Randal assured Tattletale as a town portal opened near the lift.
“Please tell me that you deleted all of that crap from the servers?” Taylor asked hopefully.
“I also scrubbed the drive, I don’t want to start a war.” Randal wasn’t going to screw Purity over, considering she’d gotten out of the life. Besides, it would be far easier to deal with the more insane Empire capes if no one was expecting anything.
Taylor watched a bag come through the glowing blue portal. “We should probably help them move everything.”
“It would be faster and I need to get my stuff,” Tattletale agreed.
0o0o0
Dennis looked up as Chris walked into the wards’ area. “Did you actually get to see Coil?”
“Yeah, they brought him in on a stretcher and he’s in a coma,” Chris replied as he walked over to see who Dennis was torturing on the forums. He frowned as he realized that Dennis wasn’t on the PHO forums. “That’s not PHO.”
“Nope, Cape Barbie; someone came out with a portal hack.”
“What?”
Dennis pulled up the screenshot he’d taken. “See, portal.”
Chris snorted. “That’s obviously someone messing with you.”
“That was me, I took the screenshot!”
“Why are you playing Cape Barbie as a giant titted … nevermind, I don’t wanna know.” Chris shook his head.
“Exactly, if I’m going to play this money sink for untold number of hours I’m at least going to enjoy it.”
“No idea how you can afford to play that game,” Chris shook his head. Cape Barbie redefined the words Pay to Win in big bold letters.
“It turns out that a Cure Disease potion from Alchemist costs a lot less than chemotherapy; it also works a hell of a lot better,” Dennis replied with a grin. “Besides if you buy the big bundles of coins when they’re on sale at the best discount it’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad he says,” Chris muttered and shook his head, those big coin bundles started out at $50 and went all the way to $200.
“It’s not like I buy all the random toys for codes and stuff, but I know someone who does collect Barbie crap and doesn’t play computer games,” Dennis smirked. Between his friend and the codes off the stuff he bought his cousin, he was doing pretty good for gear.
Chris sighed bemusedly and raised an eyebrow, “So where does this portal lead aside from the item shop?”
“I DON'T KNOW! The cheeky bastard took a picture, waved, jumped through and closed it behind him!” Dennis exclaimed, slapping the desk with a thud.
“How did he take a picture, there aren’t cameras for sale…” Chris trailed off as he realized he’d just admitted to knowing enough about the game to know that.
“I dunno!” Dennis exclaimed before what Chris just said parsed and turned and raised an eyebrow at his friend speculatively. “Something you want to share?”
“I don’t play that crap, but maybe I watched a video or two or Youtube,” Chris muttered. “I spend my money on extra tinkering stuff and you can’t get out of the starter zone without something boosting you.”
Dennis shrugged. “Or someone. It also depends on when you try.”
“I guess,” Chris shrugged, “it’s more fun to make things than get yelled at by prepubescent girls and have them act like they’re teabagging you when they don’t even have balls.”
“So it would be better if they had balls?”
“It would at least fit the animation better,” Chris defended.
“Maybe but it wouldn’t fit the world.”
“I’m pretty sure it fits hentai animation whether they have balls or tentacles exploding from their crotches and eating your face in realistic gory 3D.”
“Anyways… any idea how they hacked it?” Dennis asked.
“Do I look like a software engineer?” Chris asked sarcastically. “Modular stuff is my tinker specialty. If you really want to know how they hacked the game you should probably ask Dragon.”
“Yeah, because I can just call her up and ask?” Dennis replied sarcastically.
“You’d have similar amounts of success,” Chris replied with a grin and patted him on the head patronizingly.
“Fine, did you at least find out anything interesting?”
“Gothic sounds like the person he/she’s copying?” Chris replied with a shrug.
“Oh?” Dennis asked, rather curious about the new Trump.
“It’s a bit eerie having a doppelganger. They know a lot about tinkertech or can fake it at least.”
“Guy or girl?” Dennis asked.
“No clue, I didn’t ask,” Chris replied as he sat down at the next computer and brought up a cad program.
“Any idea where the lightning comes from?” Dennis asked as he swapped back to the PHO forum to check the latest discussion about Neverland’s crew.
“Nah, getting straight answers out of them is like pulling teeth.”
0o0o0
Gothic glanced around the garage at the collection of chairs and boxes that the Undersiders had hauled through the portal. They’d stuffed everything they wanted to keep that was too bulky to fit through the portal into the truck. “Is there anything I need to pick up on the way back?”
Brian glanced at Lisa then looked back at Gothic. “If you wanted to be nice, you could pick up Rachel. She should be done feeding her dogs.”
“I have the address, I was planning on stopping by and giving her dogs a tune up anyways. Anything else?”
“A couple air mattresses?” Taylor asked, knowing they didn’t have enough beds for everyone.
“Pizza and beer,” Alec spoke up as he flopped down on a chair.
“I can grab a pizza,” Gothic replied then walked through the portal back to the Undersiders’ cleaned out base which caused the portal to close behind her.
“So, that’s a no on the beer?” Alec asked a touch of annoyance.
“Pizza sounds good,” Noelle agreed.
“Probably for the best,” Tattletale pointed out, not wanting to deal with drunken parahumans if she could avoid it.
“Yeah, that’s a no on alcohol,” Taylor agreed, knowing her father wouldn’t appreciate them supplying alcohol to minors.
Alec sighed as he realized he’d have to grab his own alcohol later. “If we unloaded the couch, I’d have a place to sleep.”
Tattletale shook her head. “We’re not unloading the couch twice, well three times considering we had to haul it up the stairs because you were too cheap to have the delivery guys do it.”
“Secret base,” he defended himself.
“That might hold water if you hadn’t had them deliver the furniture there in the first place,” Tattletale complained.
“Officially it was delivered next door, I just bribed the delivery guy to drop it off at the base.”
Tattletale shook her head. ‘Screw it, I’m just glad we’re done with Coil and going semi-legit.’
“Speaking of locations, where we are?” Alec asked, having stepped through the portal.
“We’re in a garage, I thought you knew,” Tattletale teased, rather ecstatic about being out from under Coil’s thumb.
“No shit,” Alec replied sarcastically as he glanced at the lifts. “I meant in general.”
Taylor spoke up, “We’re in the docks, not that far from Charlie’s Diner.”
“At least we’re not in gang territory,” Brian said a touch relieved.
Randal looked up from browsing the forums. “Nope, just DWU territory.”
“Anyone else bored?” Alec asked.
“You’re always bored unless you’re playing games or screwing with people,” Tattletale replied.
“You could always play one of your mobile games,” Brian pointed out.
“Eh, I’ve beat them all. I’m still bored,” he complained.
Brian shook his head. “You could buy a new one.”
“That takes effort,” Alec replied cheekily.
Randal laughed as he closed his laptop and headed for the door. “Follow me, we have a couple computers set up in the office upstairs with various games, we might as well relocate while we’re waiting.”
“Awesome,” Alec agreed as he followed the other cape.
Noelle glanced at Neverland. “I’m game.”
“Works for me,” Taylor agreed as she followed the guys.
Brian shrugged then followed the others..
