Mist of Shadows
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Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 21
🕑 Added 2018-07-21 04:11:48 +0000 UTC Sherrel scowled as she stepped out of her current workshop and glanced around at the unwashed drugged out idiots sprawled over the sad excuses for furniture they’d assembled in the old garage. ‘Mike… Frank? Maybe Frank…’ she wasn’t sure, she normally just called him hey fucker, or hey you. She glanced at a skinny waste of a woman being fucked from behind by a guy she was fairly sure was one of Skid’s muscle or at least had been before Hookwolf had murdered Skids. She could already feel things shifting, people gathering together and giving her greedy looks when they thought she wasn’t looking. ‘Just a matter of time.’She glanced over at Darel. She knew he was one of the few people that knew where Skidmark stashed most of the gang’s money. Normally it wouldn’t matter as he was ‘loyal’ enough or at least too afraid of Skidmark killing him to get stupid but with Skids dead, she doubted he’d remain ‘loyal’ for all that long. She briefly considered trying to keep the gang together then decided that it wouldn’t work. ‘Maybe if I hadn’t left everything other than tinkering to Skidmark. Time to make tracks.’ She walked over to the blaring radio and turned it off. She shouted into the suddenly quiet room, “Okay you bitches! Listen up, Skids might be dead, but he’s not forgotten! We’re going to give that fucker one last proper send off!!”
She forced herself to smile as a lot of the drugged out morons cheered. She waited until it calmed down then shouted, “We’ll worry about the fucking Empire tomorrow, break out the good shit, 50% off!” She wasn’t sure how to feel as the cheering turned downright thunderous in approval of discount drugs. She cranked the stereo as loud as it could go then walked back into her workshop and shut and locked the doors behind her. ‘Fucking ungrateful cunts, they care more about the drugs than Skids.’
She ignored the little voice in the back of her head that reminded her that Skids had cared more about the fucking drugs than anything, including her as she worked on loading her tools into her large almost tank like rig. ‘I should have enough charge on the stealth system to get out of town, fuck staying around when the Empire comes to finish the job.’ She smiled as she thought about what the greedy fuckers would think when they showed up to the warehouse to look for the stash and found it missing.
0o0o0
“Money, drugs, grab the Tinker if you can, just make sure the Merchants are finished before the Empire does,” Coil ordered then ended the call on Tattletale before she could complain about the mission.
‘Asshole.’ Lisa closed her phone and stuck it in her pocket. “We’ve got a problem. I need you to find a spot to save your game, we’ve got a mission and not enough time to plan.”
“When?” Brian asked from the kitchen as he opened the fridge to grab a soda.
Alec didn’t bother to look up from his game as he worked on finishing his current fight. “Doing what?”
“Looting the Merchants before the Empire finishes them off and gets the money, drugs, and credit,” Lisa replied as she walked over to her laptop so she could pull up a map of the merchant’s current territory. “We need to hit them in less than two hours.”
“Fuck that, you’re asking us to jump in the middle of a meat grinder and a toxic waste dump,” Alec pointed out as he finished the fight then saved his game. “What the hell is the boss tossing in to make it worth it?”
‘Nothing worth the hassle,’ Lisa complained mentally as she pulled up a current map of the area. “He gave me the location of their main stash house which means all we have to do is rob them blind while they’re busy dealing with the Empire. If we time things right, we’ll be long gone before Squealer shows up which should screw the Empire’s plans, painting Hookwolf as nothing more than a blood thirsty lunatic.”
“At which point the PRT will probably put a kill order on him,” Brian pointed out as he walked back into the living room to look at the map over Lisa’s shoulder. “Can we make this work?”
“We’ve had worse jobs,” Lisa replied as she mentally traced the route they’d have to take to make it to the building without getting bogged down.
“Really? Cause I can’t think of any,” Alec pointed out as Rachel walked into the room with two of her dogs. “I’m all for screwing with the Empire and the Merchants but if this goes south we can’t afford to have the Empire after us.”
“Job?” Rachel asked as she reached down and scratched Angelica behind her ears.
Lisa nodded. “Yeah, the boss needs us to hit the Merchants and distract Hookwolf from making a clean sweep of things.”
“I’m in,” Rachel stated as she headed toward the kitchen to grab her dogs a snack.
Alec smirked as he thought about sticking it to the heroes by ‘proving’ that it took villains to clean up the city. “Fine, explain how we’re going to pull this off without dying horribly and I’m in.”
“With style,” Lisa replied then started explaining her plan which was probably going to go horribly wrong but they didn’t have a lot of time and Coil wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
0o0o0
Kevin scowled as he looked at the aerial map of the city that Randal had pulled up on his laptop. “Not that I’m complaining about your heroic plan to save the day and clean up the streets but how are you planning on getting close to Squealer without giving her enough warning to escape or set up a nasty surprise. Her stuff might look like it’s one step from the scrapyard but it’s usually fairly solidly built.”
“Ninja wall walking,” Gothic joked as she set her empty plastic cup on the desk next to her computer.
“It’s a residential area, I don’t think it would help,” Randal replied with amusement.
Taylor frowned as she studied the map. “This would be easier if we had some method of turning invisible.”
“One of the first things I made,” Kevin complained as he thought about the sheer number of irreplaceable devices Armsmaster had destroyed over the last couple years. He couldn’t really blame the hero for doing his job but it was still annoying.
“Probably for the best considering the exotic particles that particular device used,” Randal pointed out.
“Yeah, doesn’t mean it wasn’t an awesome two weeks,” Kevin replied with a grin.
Taylor shook her head, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what . “Any other ideas?”
Amy spoke up, “You’re overthinking it. We don’t need to be invisible, we just need a way to get there without being seen which we have.”
“Like portals?” Gothic asked with amusement.
Taylor frowned. “I’d rather not advertise that I can open portals but as long as we’re careful it might work.”
Amy shook her head. “I was actually thinking about the shadow vials and hoverboards.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Gothic asked with a pout.
Randal laughed. “Less exposure to Taylor’s insanity.” He patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sure you would have thought about it eventually.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Taylor replied as she opened her crafting page and started looking through her available ingredients.
“Assuming we can get there, then what?” Gothic asked.
Kevin laughed. “Then we kick ass and chew bubblegum.”
“What does bubblegum have to do with it?” Taylor asked as she worked on assembling the best magical hoverboard she could with her available components.
“It’s from Duke Nukem… nothing?” Kevin asked in surprise, he’d have thought the saying was used enough to be recognizable but apparently not.
“Sorry, is that from a movie or something?” Taylor asked as innocently as she could as she tossed the vial of shadow dye into the mix and hit the button.
Kevin twitched as he tried to figure out how she’d avoided hearing the saying considering it had been used more than a few times in different movies and games and just plain popular culture. “No, it’s from a video game, at least originally.”
“Oh right, that’s the one with the mind controlling space aliens, right?”
“No, that’s Xcom or various other games, Duke Nukem was about an alien invasion…” Randal trailed off as he saw the pitch black hoverboard appear in Taylor’s hand. The black mist pouring off of it reminded him a lot of the mist that came off dry ice in how it flowed over the board and onto the ground. “Damn, that’s awesome.”
“Yeah, I’m going to have to figure out how to make the shadow dye,” Kevin said as he reached over and poked at the board. He smiled as the mist flowed around his hand. “Huh, the mist isn’t an illusion.”
“Or it’s an extremely good one,” Gothic pointed out as she thought about how much fun they were going to have scaring the crap out of the villains.
Amy studied the board as Taylor examined her newest creation. “I’m going to have to see if I can get this effect in different colors once we deal with the Merchants.”
“It’s worth a shot.” Taylor dropped the hoverboard and smiled as it hovered a foot above the office’s carpet, pouring black mist onto the carpet. “At least it’s not spreading over the entire floor.”
“There’s that,” Amy agreed.
Gothic snickered. “I don’t know, it could be fun.”
Taylor shook her head. “Considering it’s pretty much continuously producing mist, it might cause some issues if it wasn’t evaporating or vanishing. We should probably try to run some tests on the vapor when we have time but we should get back to planning the… what’s a heroic word for attack?”
“Mission,” Gothic suggested helpfully.
“Right, mission against the Merchants.” Taylor turned to look at Amy and Gothic as she started assembling the pieces of another hoverboard. “Any suggestions from our experienced heroes?”
Amy paused for a second to get her thoughts in order, not used to someone actually asking her thoughts when it came to the combat part of a mission. “I’m thinking shock and awe, mostly shock with our lightning gloves but one of our largest advantages is that we’re an unknown group.”
Gothic nodded. “I like it. It lets us take advantage of the mover rating our boots give us.”
“Which is important considering we’re not bulletproof, merely bullet resistant.” Taylor was fairly sure their armor would stand up to a few hits but it wasn’t going to feel good and might leave a bruise.
“In other words, try to avoid getting hit,” Amy stated firmly.
“On that note, I’m going to use the bathroom while I have the chance,” Gothic replied as she headed for the bathroom.
“Good call,” Taylor replied as she tossed a vial of shadow essence into the ingredients box then hit accept as the rest of the group started gathering their gear.
0o0o0
Taylor smiled as she cleared the truck that someone had ‘parked’ across the street with almost ridiculous ease. Her smile slipped from her face as she scanned the war zone she’d dropped into, over thirty people were dead or dying on the ground near a garage and Hookwolf was in his metal form doing a decent job of holding off the large van sized four legged beasts attacking him. She sprinted toward the fight, knowing that she needed to put Hookwolf down before he realized her team was there if she wanted to avoid anyone else getting killed.
Gothic cleared the truck three seconds after Taylor then ran toward the closest group of Merchants as fast as she could as the rest of her group spread out looking for targets. She raised her hands and swept lightning over the rather shocked group of thugs. “Zort!”
Amy ignored her doppelganger’s insanity as she ran to the first body to check to see if they were still alive. She wasn’t terribly surprised that the man was already dead as it looked like someone had driven a rather sharp stake through his chest. Only long experience in the hospital kept her from vomiting into her mask as she saw the next couple Merchants had been torn apart by blades. She turned and dashed for a car as a group of Hookwolf’s men opened fire on her. “Shit!” She lurched forward as she felt something hit her shoulder from behind. “Fuck, I’m a healer!” She staggered into a dash when she felt another two impacts on her back.
Taylor brought both her hands up and unleashed as much lightning as she could at Hookwolf. She was a touch surprised and relieved when the metal cape started twitching and thrashing as the electricity managed to fry something important. “Stand down!”
Tattletale twitched as she heard something hit the top of the car she was hiding behind then a shadowy figure dropped down next to her. “Shit!”
Kevin sprinted forward as he saw a group of thugs turn to shoot Taylor in the back while she dealt with Hookwolf. He raised his hands and blasted the group of thugs, hoping it was enough to drop them without killing anyone. “Put your weapons on the ground!”
“Don’t shoot! I’m a hero,” Amy replied then frowned as she realized the girl might be a villain. At least she didn’t match any of the descriptions of the Empire capes and she looked far too normal to be a Merchant cape.
Tattletale sighed in relief as she realized the shadowy cape wasn’t going to kill her. “Good, I don’t suppose you have a way out of here?”
Randal felt slightly guilty as a couple Empire goons were gunned down as a group of drugged out Merchants opened fire with various guns as he ran between them. ‘Fucking hell.’ He grunted as a bullet clipped his leg feeling like someone had just hit him with a baseball. He gestured behind him and unleashed a blast of lightning at the thugs that had shot at him then ran for an overflowing concrete trash bin that he could use as cover as he tried to figure out his next move.
Amy shouted so she could be heard over the screams mixed in with the almost constant gunfire, “My friends are dealing with it!”
Regent stared in shocked disbelief as the shadowy capes walked through the battle blasting the shit out of anyone that was moving, the few bullets that struck them ricocheting away. “Fuck me!”
“Not how I was expecting this to end,” Grue admitted as he ducked back behind the corner of the building he was using for cover.
Taylor took a step back as the two large beasts turned and looked at her. “Nice monsters?” she offered, unsure if she needed to blast them or not.
Bitch whistled. “Sit!”
Taylor was relieved when the creatures went from menacing to friendly or at least less hostile looking. She looked around at the unconscious and dead gang members scattered around the street. “That could have went a lot worse, considering who was involved.”
Gothic dragged an unconscious zip tied thug over next to another pile of them then walked over and checked on Hookwolf, making sure the unconscious cape was stable, had a penis of a five year old, and was in a coma, she didn’t need him waking up while they were sorting everything.
“No sign of Squealer,” Taylor replied as Amy and an unfamiliar cape walked out from behind a car. “Who’s your friend?”
Tattletale glanced around at the identically dressed capes, the shadowy cloaks and boots were a nice touch, if ominous. “Name’s Tattletale, thanks for the assist.”
“They came to help, speaking of help, I’m going to make the rounds,” Amy replied as she headed toward toward the closest group of gang members to make sure none of them bled to death.
“No problem, it’s always nice to see another hero team trying to help,” Taylor replied as she started working on disarming all of the gang members by tossing their guns and knives into her salvage box.
Regent opened his mouth to complain about being called a hero then changed his mind as he saw one of the girls casually blast an Empire gang member with lightning that had been reaching for a gun. ‘Fuck that, if the scarily effective and ominous capes want to call us heroes, I can live with that.’ He plastered a smile on his face and stepped out from behind the car he was using as cover. “That’s us.”
Kevin felt like laughing as he glanced between the group of minor villains as they walked over, looking more than a little nervous. He was curious how a group of escape artists and thieves were involved in this particular mess. “How did you get involved in this mess?”
Tattletale said, “We got a tip about a stash house.”
‘Figured you’d slip in and rob everything, not a bad idea, looks to have gone horribly wrong but not a bad idea.’ Kevin watched Gothic drag another unconscious thug over next to the others as he replied, “Makes sense, hit their cash and they’d have less money to buy drugs.”
“So what happened when you got here?” Randal asked curious how they were going to spin things.
Tattletale frowned slightly as she heard the sirens in the distance getting closer. “We found the door open a couple inches and the lights on, figured we’d knock and see if we could borrow a cup of sugar. Once we got there, we realized the room was tossed so we did our heroic duty and went looking for trouble.”
Regent noticed one of the new capes’ shadows making wanking motions and smothered a laugh. It was nice to see that Tattletale’s bullshit didn’t work on everyone.
Grue was a bit surprised that Lisa had managed to stick pretty close to the truth. They’d shown up, snuck into the house and found the house empty. “A couple dozen Merchants showed up while we were inside checking on things then Hookwolf showed up with a couple dozen minions and started ripping through everyone.”
Regent stared as he noticed the shadow using a shadow broom to brush away Grue’s darkness when it got too close. “I don’t think he believed the Merchants when they said Squealer was missing,” he said absently.
Taylor looked up from salvaging an uzi. “Missing? Maybe someone already got her.”
“Or she left,” Randal suggested.
“Point, it wouldn’t be the first time a cape has ditched a failing gang,” Kevin agreed.
“Do you have names or do we just have to make something up?” Regent asked a touch sarcastically.
Kevin laughed. “Sure, I’m Minion One, he’s Minion two and Neverland is our fearless leader.”
“Minion Two?” Regent asked with amusement. He gestured toward Amy and Gothic. “Let me guess, Minion Three and Four?”
“Nope, Player One and Two,” Amy called out as she patched up a gunshot wound enough that he would make it to the hospital, trying to ignore the fact that Gothic was doing the same thing and adding breasts to a man who probably didn’t need or want them.
“Right…” Lisa trailed off as she saw flashing lights coming up the street. “Rachel, we should probably get back and check on the rest of your dogs.”
Taylor said, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll square things with the cops.”
“Thanks,” Grue replied as he turned and headed toward the dogs.
Kevin watched them leave with a touch of amusement. “You know they’re villains, right?”
“But they seemed so nice,” Taylor replied teasingly as she continued salvaging people’s weapons and drugs and tying shoelaces together. “We really need to grab some something a bit sturdier than zip ties, maybe handcuffs or something if we’re going to keep doing the hero gig.”
“It certainly helps,” Amy agreed as she moved to patch up the next gang member while they waited for the cops.
0o0o0
